Terry Real: Breaking the cycle of shame, anger, and depression

An inwardly shame-based outwardly driven man coupled with an inwardly resentful outwardly accommodating woman—that's America's power couple, man.

Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to his ancestors and spares the children that follow.

For most children, it's safer to blame [themselves] than to come to grips with a random hostile universe. It makes a lot more sense that I brought this on myself. That means that if I do something different, I might be able to control it—versus the people who are supposed to protect me from the world are inflicting me with the brutality of the world, and I'm completely in their care and helpless.

What most people think of as self-esteem is confidence ... That ain't self-esteem. Self-esteem is spiritual ... You have worth and dignity as a human being because you're here on this planet, and your worth cannot be better or worse than the guy to the left or the guy to the right—no matter what you say or do.

One of my great mentors, a woman named Pia Mellody, defined trauma or injury as any significantly less than nurturant transaction between parent and child. Any significantly less than nurturing transaction between parent and child injures the child.

Every man is a bridge spanning two legacies: the one he inherits and the one he passes on.

This happens all the time: Guys go off and work 100 hours a week to be worthy of the wife and kids who just want them to come home already.

I run around the country, Peter, telling therapists that there are some serious design flaws in therapy, and the biggest design flaw is that we're all taught to be terminally nice to our clients and people don't tell the truth.

Under the patriarchal system, one can either be connected or powerful, but you can't be both at the same time ... Under the system we're all in, you can either be connected (that's affiliative feminine) or you can be powerful (that's independent masculine), but you can't be both at the same time.

There are many, many parents who are warm and nurturant when they're warm and nurturant, and then they turn on you and they're brutal. That's not an uncommon pattern, and what that does to a child is just confusing ... It breathes a great deal of mistrust because the rug is always being pulled out from under you.

It's exactly our parents imperfections and how we adapt to them that shape what most people would call our character. I call it our adaptive child self.