Alice Miller Quotes About Suffering

Quotes about: Suffering

• What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.

  Alice Miller

  Pain, Recovery, Addiction

  Alice Miller (2008). “Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth”, p.126, Basic Books

• Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.

  Alice Miller

  Children, People, Expectations

  Alice Miller (1997). “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, p.87, Basic Books

• The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation.

  Alice Miller

  Past, Childhood, Suffering

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.19, Macmillan

• It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.

  Alice Miller

  Ocean, Ignorance, Evil

  Alice Miller (2012). “Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries”, p.139, Anchor

• The abused children are alone with their suffering, not only within the family, but also within themselves. They cannot crate a place in their own soul where they could cry their beart out.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Self Esteem, Soul

• Every life and every childhood is filled with frustrations; we cannot imagine it otherwise, for even the best mother cannot satisfy all her child's wishes and needs. It is not the suffering caused by frustration, however, that leads to emotional illness, but rather the fact that the child is forbidden by the parents to experience and articulate this suffering, the pain felt at being wounded.

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Children, Pain

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.254, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

• The knowledge that you were beaten and that this, as your parents tell you, was for your own good may well be retained (although not always), but the suffering caused by the way you were mistreated will remain unconscious and will later prevent you from empathizing with others. This is why battered children grow up to be mothers and fathers who beat their offspring

  Alice Miller

  Mother, Children, Growing Up

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.115, Macmillan

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