Terri Cole Quotes

Another person's bad, unconscious, or straight-up unhealthy behavior does not need to dictate yours.

It's not your job to educate every person in the world on healthy boundaries. It is your job to know and protect your own healthy boundaries.

We should not be concerning ourselves with the whys of others. After all, people can and will ask and expect ridiculous shit from us. That's not your problem unless you make it so. Focusing on them is only a distraction. Put your attention back on yourself.

What you think of me, is none of My business

You must establish healthy boundaries to protect your gifts, talents, sensitivity, and life, so that you are making conscious choices about how you spend your precious time and energy.

He was a man with a son who stuttered and another probably on his way to becoming a juvenile delinquent and a daughter with a harelip who sneaked in at night from God knew where and a wife who resented his profession. Yet I knew it was not for himself or for any of us that he was praying. More likely it was for the parents of Bobby Cole. And for Gus. And probably for an asshole named Morris Engdahl. Praying on their behalf. Praying I suppose for the awful grace of God. 2 She wore a white terry-cloth robe and her feet were bare.

All you need to do right now is be open to the idea that your responses to current things in your life might be driven by, say, five-year-old you. Would you let a five-year-old make major decisions for your marriage or family? Would you let a five-year-old decide your career moves? I don’t think so.

A woman by the name of Terry Cole-Whittaker wrote an incredible book entitled What You Think of Me is None of My Business. This title bears remembering and repeating every day because, regardless of the goals, intentions, and dreams you aspire to, there will always be someone to shower you with negativity. They might tell you that it can't be done, that you'll never achieve it, or that you lack the ability or intelligence. They might even laugh at you because of your optimism. Regardless of the person, if you run with a crowd that doesn't support your goals and intentions, you might want to get away from them as soon as possible. Their presence in your life will kill your attitude, smother your energy, and snuff out your dreams. If you can't get away from them, before you allow them affect you, keep in mind that the influence and power they have over you is what you allow it to be.

dying fish industry brought attention to the plight of the disappearing generations-old industry in the San Francisco Bay. Cole wrote about street gangs in Chinatown, the proposed needle exchange program in the Tenderloin, and the alarming increase in the suicide rate among Hispanic youth. But the article that got the most attention was “The Path of the Pedophile.” Granted, Cole’s brush with death at the hands of his subject, Terry Kosciuszko, brought a bit more publicity than Cole would have preferred. The reaction in hate mail was far stronger

J.K. Rowling’s and Terry Pratchett’s. He liked to lose himself in fantasies where people always solved their problems, made sure that right was done and evil cast aside. If only life was that simple.

Jimmy smiled, wide and mindless, the way a pit bull smiles before he bites you. He said, “How about that, Terry. You think we got something as pussy as the mafia down here?

You will never win with a Boundary Destroyer. Even if you have the best bullet-pointed argument in the world, the Boundary Destroyer is not going to acknowledge your truth. Convincing them of your perspective is a thankless, energy-zapping task... Just as it's pointless to win with a Boundary Destroyer, it's also a waste of your precious time and energy to convince people to see your point of view. Those who know the real you won't for a second doubt you or your intentions. Others may take the Boundary Destroyer's side, but you have to let go of caring what others think.

He strolled to Taran, who stiffened bodily, and hovered a hand just above the wound at his shoulder. “May I, Terry?” “It’s Taran,” he grumbled. Zalaric shrugged. “Whatever.” Taran’s mouth popped open. I bit my lip to hide my smile. A speechless Taran was something I never thought I’d see.

Yes, from time to time when I’m giving myself the permission to love myself, it may appear to you that you are the one who has showered me with love feelings. The reality is that the love feelings I feel when I am with you come out of me. This quote is from Terry Cole–Whittaker in her book What You Think of Me is None of My Business.

Can you talk?” “Absolutely. What did you find out?” “I’m going to put you on speaker. Terry’s here.” The sound qual ity went from crisp to hollow when she put him on speaker. “Hey,

our primal instincts for survival are hardwired into our DNA. Often, this primal fear clouds our judgment and prevents us from seeing life as it really is. Or even how it could be. We’re too busy (unconsciously) hoping we don’t get rejected/annihilated.

As Marianne Williamson once wrote, “It is not too late. You are not too old. You are right on time. And you are better than you know.

Give yourself permission to be the one who makes decisions for you.

Kicking self-abandonment, deceit, denial, and resentment to the curb allows you to create a life based on joy, freedom, and genuine intimacy.

She had a misguided sense of loyalty, even to those who didn’t deserve her devotion.

The different boundaries that need your attention are physical, sexual, material, mental, and emotional. Within these categories, your boundaries may be rigid, porous, or healthy.

If you deny yourself the right to change your mind, can’t speak up, or say no, every decision carries the weight of a life sentence.

For hundreds—if not thousands of years—women have been marginalized and objectified.

Your personal boundaries are informed by your childhood experiences, cultural norms, gender roles, and an array of other factors. In the meantime, individuals like us still need to sort out the overt and covert sexist assumptions, projections, and judgments we have endured and internalized since childhood. Whether or not we are conscious of the impact, these disempowering sentiments can powerfully inform our sense of self in a very negative way.

The evolution of women’s rights directly impacts our conscious, unconscious, and collective relationship to our beliefs about boundaries, even today.

Terry Ito had said Eddie Tang was on his way up. Maybe Eddie figured taking advantage of Mimi Warren and stealing the Hagakure were the keys to ascendancy.

Here’s the thing, though: you’re in charge of writing the instruction manual on you. That manual gets “read” by everyone you encounter. If you feel disrespected, undervalued, or taken for granted, that simply means it’s time to rewrite your instruction manual, setting the bar higher for yourself and everyone else in the process.

declining help is a covert way of maintaining control. You may not want to feel like a burden, indebted, or risk being vulnerable. This can show up in ways both large and small. You may be so committed to self-reliance that you don’t even let a cab driver help you put your heavy bags in the trunk on the way to the airport. Or you may find yourself in the midst of a family health crisis or work drama and simply hole up, taking care of everything for and by yourself. But here’s the thing, healthy vulnerability (or voluntary vulnerability, which we cover in chapter 6) is the foundation for authentic intimacy.

There are a few ways this internalized oppression manifests in women. We invalidate our own experiences, for example, by not speaking up because we fear being seen as drama queens. We become overly concerned with our physical attractiveness, identifying with youth and beauty so much that we believe we are less valuable as we age or if we show signs of aging. We readily prioritize the needs and desires of others above our own, as if self-sacrifice proves that we are “good.” Internalized oppression only reinforces our disordered boundaries.

Unpacking the inherited beliefs that took root in childhood is critical in living with full agency. This mostly unconscious material has been informing all aspects of your lived experience, and a lot of the time, not in a good way.

Secondary gain is the unobvious gain we receive by staying stuck in unhealthy patterns of behavior.

the effort in the world won’t help you to move forward until you can become aware of, and explore, how you “benefit” from dysfunctional behaviors or, more specifically, what feelings and experiences the secondary gain guards against.

Asking yourself what you get to not feel, face, or experience if you stay stuck will reveal its hidden benefit. Asking this question is a powerful tool for moving past resistance.

That lack of acknowledgment can lead children to internalize the dysfunction and also sometimes wonder if something must be wrong with them, since the parents act like their dysfunctional behavior is normal or didn’t happen.

You owe no one your immediate yes—or even your delayed yes. A pause and then a simple “I’d like to think about it” can be a useful response. You will be amazed at how liberated you feel by not automatically agreeing to something that is counter to your real feelings.

Am I giving from a place of love or a place of fear or need? As

By becoming indispensable, you might also find a sense of security.

Over-giving and codependent behavior eventually lead to feeling empty because at the end of the day there’s nothing left for you. Are you really a constructive problem-solver if your blanket solution to life is I’ll do more? Nope. Because no one can do that forever. The way out of this hellacious, self-sabotaging trap is mindfulness plus self-care. To interrupt these ingrained patterns, consider yourself first, instead of giving to others first. Consider checking in with yourself before committing.

They are over-achieving in every way, guided by a belief that to be worthy means they need to handle it all. “Help” is a dirty word unless they’re the ones helping. While they are busy doing, doing, doing, they miss one crucial fact: they are completely undoing themselves in the process.

to become a high-functioning codependent, your childhood was, in some way, dysfunctional, and that leads to these behavioral patterns of over-responsibility that can be tough to break. For HFCs, helping, fixing, doing, and saving are an ingrained, unconscious compulsion.

You teach best what you most need to learn.

any time you opt for being fake-nice instead of being truthful, you’re setting yourself up for unsatisfying experiences, resentment, and the loneliness of not being authentically known.

I learned to bury my true feelings. Adaptively, I transmuted them into more allowable ones (anger became sadness, for example) and ignored my gut instincts. This strategy kept me safe from disapproval and eased my primal fear of being kicked out of the clan if I dared to upend the unspoken rules.

perpetually operating on get-it-done autopilot or afflicted by the disease-to-please, a phrase coined by renowned psychologist and women's issues expert Dr. Harriet Braiker, this may land as bad news. Yes, you will have to slow down and step out of the well-worn grooves of your comfort zone to know, express, and protect your authentic self.

matter what cards I’d been dealt in this life, I could not only request a new hand, I could create an entirely new game.

Personal boundaries are like a guidebook that you create to clearly identify permissible ways that other people may behave toward you.

Healthy internal boundaries are incredibly valuable. When you have them, you can consistently rely on yourself to do what you say you're going to do. You feel peaceful inside because you trust yourself enough to take care of you.

how others, including Gus, responded to her stating her needs was not her responsibility. It was not her side of the street. Her responsibility was to know, state, and negotiate for her needs.

That’s where she began to realize that no amount of self-punishment or over-functioning could change

from the standpoint of the unconscious mind, repetition compulsion makes stunning sense. It is our mind’s way of hoping for a better outcome.

According to psychologist Carl Rogers, caregivers or parents teach children conditions of worth, the standards of behavior that children must follow to receive love and avoid criticism.

The adult in you has probably been rationalizing and making excuses for why your folks failed you the way they did. (I don’t need to know them to know they did cuz they’re flawed humans just like the rest of us. This is the moment to prioritize your actual truth. Let’s agree right now that all of our people did the best they could with the consciousness they possessed at the time. If they could have done it better, we will be generous and assume they would have.

The point of going back to your childhood experiences is not to condemn anyone, but to understand. You also need to be willing to separate your image of your parents now (if they are still living) from who they were then.

There are unlimited opportunities for you to start to take up more space in the world, and each time you do, you’re reinforcing a vital truth: you matter.

your comfort zone is a prison.

Fear of success and fear of failure are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is fear of change.

To get your needs met, you have to be willing to be specific about what you would like and then open your mind and heart to a compromise, a conversation, a negotiation, a yes, or a no. Compromising with discernment is important (especially if historically you’ve been the one who is always giving in). Know the difference between giving in just to keep the peace and making a concession that feels healthy and equitable. If you’re always getting the short end of the compromise stick, that’s not healthy or equitable.

Sometimes when we are highly sensitive or HFC, we squash our desires when we sense that pursuing (or even expressing) the desire will hurt feelings or provoke a loved one’s judgment or wrath. This goes doubly so for empaths.

your deal-breakers are between you and you. You don’t need someone else’s validation to make your deal-breaker okay. It’s your choice—and more importantly, your life. So get clarity on what’s a definite nope, and you will have an easier time knowing what to keep and what to discard.

When it comes to the preferences that involve others, however, you are required to communicate.

prioritizing your feelings and truly taking care of yourself now can be a corrective emotional experience. Think of it as an opportunity to reparent yourself and provide the consistent nurturing and encouragement you deserve. In essence, we become the good, healthy, present parent we may not have had.

Unlike self-criticism, which asks if you’re good enough, self-compassion asks, ‘What’s good for you?

if you are a high-functioning codependent (HFC) or a highly sensitive person, you are especially susceptible to the Boundary Destroyer’s ploys. While you absolutely do not have to be raised by a Boundary Destroyer to struggle with them in your adult life, growing up in a household where the parents’ needs come first (at the expense of the child’s well-being) will make you more likely to encounter (and by “encounter” I mean “be tortured by”) Boundary Destroyers until you are able to heal the original wound.

HFCs also often fall into the category of highly sensitive people. This means having a sensitive nervous system, being acutely aware of subtle mood shifts in the people around them, and feeling overwhelmed when in a highly stimulating environment.

A vibrant sense of self is based on self-trust, a strong connection to your inner knowing. That is your birthright, lovely. Do you know who doesn’t give a crap about that? The person gaslighting you.

Shame commonly stems from childhood experiences. Although most of us experienced things that made us feel temporary shame in childhood, persistent shame in adulthood usually originates from chronic abuse or neglect a long time ago. Shame feels hopeless, like there is something fundamentally wrong with you that cannot be fixed. Healthy guilt, on the other hand, can actually motivate us toward positive action and self-correction. It has a level of redeem-ability that shame does not. If you feel guilty, you can make amends, apologize, or take responsibility for your actions, bolstering your self-worth in the process. We all make mistakes, and there is something freeing about owning up to whatever needs to be cleaned up.

Unhealthy or toxic guilt is a different beast. It is related to disordered internal boundaries, such as taking on guilt for other people’s feelings or situations, which you have no actual control over. This is common for those who have grown up in chaotic or dysfunctional homes, where children feel responsible for everything. They may think, If Dad is angry, it must be my fault, and therefore I am bad.

voluntary vulnerability—being discerning and thoughtful about how you share your body, your emotions, your history, and yourself with others.

Yes, it is scary to speak up if it’s not something you’re accustomed to doing. Understood. However, know that adult-you is not scared. Adult-you doesn’t feel the need to destroy your best efforts at living an empowered and self-directed life in an attempt to keep the peace. It’s the kid in you who is saying, “It’s fine. I didn’t mean it.