Each of us was once a child, and, although we may not realize it, we carry that child within us, as an aspect of who we are. Sometimes we shift into the state of consciousness of the child we once were, and respond to situations in our adult lives as if, for all practical purposes, we were still that child, with his or her values, emotions, perspectives, and distinctive way of processing experience. Sometimes this is desirable–for example, when we experience the child\’s spontaneity and playfulness. It is undesirable, however, when we reactivate that child\’s insecurities, dependency, and limited grasp of the world (Nathaniel Brandon).The hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the see of a peach (Carson McCullers).

In order to believe he is loved, the wounded child behaves the way he thinks he is supposed to… Gradually, the false self becomes who the person really thinks he is. He forgets that the false self is an adaptation, an act based on a script someone else wrote (John Bradshaw).

We are, each of us, our own prisoner. We are locked up in our own story (Maxine Kumin).

A psychological script is a person\’s ongoing program for his life drama which dictates where he is going with his life and how he is going to get there. It is a drama he compulsively acts out, though his awareness of it may be vague (Muriel James & Dorothy Jongeward).

In the entire history of science, it is hard to find a discovery of comparable consequence to the discovery of the power of unconscious beliefs as a gateway–or an obstacle–to the hidden mind, and its untapped potentials (Willis Harmon).

We know from surgical experiences that electrical stimulation delivered to the temporal area of the brain elicits images of events that occurred in the patient\’s past. this is confirmation that such memories are \’stored,\’ but in most instances they cannot be voluntarily recollected. Thus, all of us \’know\’ more than we are aware that we know (Richard Restak, M.D.).

As a repository for emotional memory, the amygdala [in the brain] scans experience, comparing what is happening now with what happened in the past. Its method of comparison is associative: when one key element of a present situation is similar to the past, it can call it a \”match\”… It frantically commands that we react to the present in ways that were imprinted long ago, with thoughts, emotions, reactions learned in response to events perhaps only dimly similar, but close enough to alarm the amygdala (Daniel Goleman)

…because of our unique human endowments, we can write new programs for ourselves totally apart from our instincts and training (Stephen Covey). It is a marvelous faculty of the human mind that we are also able to stop old programming from holding us back, any time we choose to. The gift is called conscious choice (Shad Helmstetter).