Self Destructive Behavior Quotes

Having children is not an act of God. It's not like you're walking down the street and pregnancy strikes you; children are a result of a conscious decision. For the most part, female-headed households are the result of short-sighted, self-destructive behavior of one or two people. ~ Walter E. Williams

Abstaining from sex, hitting the books, and wearing loose-fitting clothes are common ways that girls try to molt their "slutty" image. But more often their shame leads them to self-destructive behavior. They become willing to do things that they wouldn't have dreamed of doing before they were scandalized because they now feel they have so little to offer. Some girls do drugs or drink to excess in an attempt to blot away their stigma. Others become depressed and anorexic. And others think so little of themselves that they date boys who insult or beat them. ~ Leora Tanenbaum

Well it's been about 100 years and every attempt at a comics writers' union has failed miserably. There is, sadly, a long history of short-term thinking and self-destructive behavior among my fellow comic book creators. No matter how many horror stories they have heard they won't even go so far as to hire themselves a lawyer when they need it. It breaks my heart. I am a very proud union member of the Writers Guild. And I can't imagine my fellow comic creators being able to pull something like this together. ~ Brian Michael Bendis

A few people had always made lousy choices. But how had a preexisting human propensity for self-destructive behavior exploded into a plague? As Mark's real, much more complete story - the one he didn't tell Berens - proved, it wasn't the increased availability of a drug like heroin, though that was gas on the flames. Lancaster's drug problem predated heroin, OxyContin, Percs. The problem wasn't caused by drugs at all, or government handouts, or single-parent families. While addiction could be as individual as people, common themes included alienation and disconnection. * ~ Brian Alexander

If you genuinely care about someone, you won't let them ruin themselves. It's as simple as that.
Don't use your 'supportive friend' excuse to justify your ignorance.
If someone in your life is living a self-destructive lifestyle, don't encourage them. Don't stand on the sidelines and watch. Do something.
Tell them they're worth more than that. That they're bigger than what they're facing. Tell them there are better ways to heal. Better ways to grow.
Tell them they can be friends with better people.Tell them there's no escape from reality but it only gets better if you face it. Tell them they're killing themselves slowly by intaking drugs.
Tell them you love them and don't want them to get hurt. Tell them that you care.

Do. Everything. You. Can.
Because even if they may not listen, at least you'll know you tried. ~ Ambu

I know what it is to want something that could destroy you. ~ Nenia Campbell

Whether adult children of toxic parents were beaten when little or left alone too much, sexually abused or treated like fools, overprotected or overburdened by guilt, they almost all suffer surprisingly similar symptoms: damaged self-esteem, leading to self-destructive behavior. In one way or another, they almost all feel worthless, unlovable, and inadequate. ~ Susan Forward

A destructive or creative state of psychological madness must trace itself to a source. By finding the source of their misery, a person might be able to corral the crazy desire prematurely to terminate their existence. An old saying suggests that self-hatred is the central cause of all self-destructive actions. Self-hate might consist of anger that we harbor towards other people who maltreated us. Repressed anger and pent-up hostility that we retain against other people that has no viable direct escape hatch can reflect and turn inward against ourselves. Perhaps we regret that we allowed other people to demean us, or rue that we lacked a protective level of self-esteem to begin with. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

From the writing stage, I had envisioned a film that would be bright and light, even if the movie addresses adolescent unrest and self-destructive behavior. Talking about adolescence, I wanted to make a very musical film that was also a love story with a sensorial, sensual dimension and which had a strong emotional impact. ~ Alante Kavaite

Avoid enablers. These are people who make it easy for you to perform your self-destructive behavior. People you go on a smoking break with. People who encourage you to take risks. Your partner, if he or she encourages you to be lazy or feeds you too much food. Try to enlist these people in your reform efforts, and if you can't, put some distance between you. ~ Richard O'Connor

Self-destructive behaviors do not exist because there is a force within us that tries to hasten our return to an inorganic state; they exist because they provide short-term relief from pain that threatens to become intolerable. ~ David L. Conroy

I believe this movement will prevail.
I don't mean it will defeat, conquer, or create harm to someone else.
Quite the opposite.
I don't tender the claim in an oracular sense.
I mean that the thinking that informs the movement's goals will reign. It will soon suffuse most institutions, but before then, it will change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destructive behavior. Some say it is too late, but people never change when they are comfortable. Helen Keller threw aside the gnawing fears of chronic bad news when she declared, "I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!" In such a time, history is suspended and thus unfinished. It will be the stroke of midnight for the rest of our lives.
My hopefulness about the resilience of human nature is matched by the gravity of our environmental and social condition. If we squander all our attention on what is wrong, we will miss the prize: In the chaos engulfing the world, a hopeful future resides because the past is disintegrating before us. If that is difficult to believe, take a winter off and calculate what it requires to create a single springtime. It's not too late for the world's largest institutions and corporations to join in saving the planet, but cooperation must be on the planet's terms. The "Help Wanted" signs are everywhere. All people and institutions including commerce, governments, schools, churches and cities, need to learn fro ~ Paul Hawken

The atomic bomb was created with the destruction of men in mind ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Though there can be other causes, most self-destructive behavior is the result of the fact that we have two minds that don't communicate very well. ~ Richard O'Connor

It's important to recognize your own self-destructive behavior and be honest about it. You're only hurting yourself or losing out on your truth and happiness. I'm not afraid to face my own personal stuff. It's so important to dig it up and figure it out and move on. ~ Christina Aguilera

A truly moral nation enacts policies that encourage personal responsibility and discourage self-destructive behavior by not subsidizing people who live irresponsibly and make poor choices. ~ Benjamin Carson

So yes I know how angry, or naive, or self-destructive, or messed up, or even deluded I sound weaving my way through these life stories at times. But beautiful things. Graceful things. Hopeful things can sometimes appear in dark places. Besides, I'm trying to tell you the truth of a woman like me. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Trying to impose our personal agenda on someone else's experience is the shadow side of love, while real love recognizes that life unfolds at its own pace. ~ Sharon Salzberg

My view of addiction, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol or any list of other things, is the same reason I asked my mother why I wasn't a drug addict or alcoholic, which is because when you're not loved, often people become an addict and self destructive. Now the opposite of love is indifference and even worse is rejection and abuse, and I meet those people. ~ Bernie Siegel

The best way to keep yourself from doing something grossly self-destructive and stupid is to avoid the temptation to do it. For example, it is far easier to fend off inappropriate amorous desires if one runs screaming from the room every time a pretty girl comes in. ~ Jim Butcher

Ruthlessly, in despite of itself, the Enlightenment has extinguished any trace of its own self-consciousness. The only kind of thinking that is sufficiently hard to shatter myths is ultimately self-destructive. ~ Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer

This was home: running along a razor's edge of self-induced terror, calculating mortality against probability.
Assignments were the reprieve. When she was abroad, although she would do whatever was necessary to get the job done, there was a degree of normalcy, sanity, purpose, and the destructive forces propelling her to gamble with her life were dormant. ~ Taylor Stevens

I can be very self-destructive, but quietly. ~ Sam Taylor-Wood

I hate being forced to do things. I hate people telling me what to do, so I'll do the complete opposite. It's a bit self-destructive sometimes. ~ Sky Ferreira

America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive. ~ John W. Gardner

Racism built me into a person that was set up to be self-destructive. ~ Jayson Blair

A woman's life may die away in the fore of self-hatred for complexes can bite hard and, at least for a time, successfully frighten her away from coming too near the work or life that matters to her ... Many years are spent not going, not moving, not learning, not finding out, not obtaining, not taking on, not becoming. The vision a woman has for her own life can also be decimated at someone else's jealousy or someone's plain out destructiveness towards her family, mentors, teachers, and friends are not supposed to be destructive if and when they feel envy, but some decidedly are, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. No woman can afford to let her creative life hang by a thread while she serves an antagonistic love relationship , parent, teacher or friend. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Later you referenced that anecdote to illustrate that my expectations were always preposterously outsized; that my very ravenousness for the exotic was self-destructive, because as soon as I seized upon the otherworldly, it joined this world and didn't count. ~ Lionel Shriver

Rage that has nowhere to go is redirected against the self, in the form of depression, self-hatred, and self-destructive actions. One of my patients told me, 'It is like hating your home, your kitchen and pots and pans, your bed, your chairs, your table, your rugs.' Nothing feels safe – least of all your own body. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Being self-critical is good; being self-hating is destructive. There's a very fine line there somewhere, and I walk it carefully. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

Dignity is not a symbol bestowed on man, nor does the word itself possess force. Man's dignity is a force and the only modus vivendi by which man and his history survive. When mid-twentieth century Germany did not let man live and die with this right, man became an animal. No matter how technologically advanced or sophisticated, when man negates this divine right, he not only becomes self-destructive, but castrates his history and poisons our future. This is what 'The Nazi Drawings' are about. ~ Mauricio Lasansky

What I was concerned about when I wrote the 'Downward Spiral' record was being a self-centred destructive force. The point was tearing down everything in a search for something else. ~ Trent Reznor

If you're not careful, you can fall into a destructive cycle of self-pity. ~ Victoria Osteen

As psychiatrists we must teach ourselves to interpret the overall picture. With regard to Lisbeth Salander, you can see on her body, for example, a multitude of tattoos and piercings, which are a form of self-destructive behaviour and a way of damaging one's own body. We can interpret that as a manifestation of self-hate." Giannini turned to Salander. "Are your tattoos a manifestation of self-hate?" she said. "No," Salander said. Giannini ~ Stieg Larsson

Just remember enough never to be vulnerable again: total forgetting could be as self-destructive as complete remembering. ~ Helen Clark MacInnes

Tell me this. What is it with men and feeling like they have to act like self-destructive superheroes whenever trouble shows up?"
"It's the only way we know how to love. ~ Andrew Pyper

Still, we've gone soft since those days of wartime sacrifice, haven't we? Contemporary humans are too self-centered, too addicted to gratification to live without the full freedom to satisfy our every whim - or so our culture tells us every day. And yet the truth is that we continue to make collective sacrifices in the name of an abstract greater good all the time. We sacrifice our pensions, our hard-won labor rights, our arts and after-school programs. We send our kids to learn in ever more crowded classrooms, led by ever more harried teachers. We accept that we have to pay dramatically more for the destructive energy sources that power our transportation and our lives. We accept that bus and subway fares go up and up while service fails to improve or degenerates. We accept that a public university education should result in a debt that will take half a lifetime to pay off when such a thing was unheard of a generation ago. ~ Naomi Klein

So why has this potentially self-destructive system of economic arrangements lasted? Probably because of habits of restraint, honesty and moderation which accompanied its emergence. ~ Tony Judt

If you have to wait for a long time, you have to seize hold of the waiting or it will become destructive. If you let things slide, your consciousness will waver, awakening fear and restlessness, then depression strikes, and you're pulled down. ~ Peter Hoeg

Should is how other people want us to live our lives. It's all of the expectations that others layer upon us.

Sometimes, Shoulds are small, seemingly innocuous, and easily accommodated. "You should listen to that song," for example. At other times, Shoulds are highly influential systems of thought that pressure and, at their most destructive, coerce us to live our lives differently.

When we choose Should, we're choosing to live our life for someone or something other than ourselves. The journey to Should can be smooth, the rewards can seem clear, and the options are often plentiful.

Must is different. Must is who we are, what we believe, and what we do when we are alone with our truest, most authentic self. It's that which calls to us most deeply. It's our convictions, our passions, our deepest held urges and desires - unavoidable, undeniable, and inexplicable. Unlike Should, Must doesn't accept compromises.

Must is when we stop conforming to other people's ideals and start connecting to our own - and this allows us to cultivate our full potential as individuals. To choose Must is to say yes to hard work and constant effort, to say yes to a journey without a road map or guarantees, and in so doing, to say yes to what Joseph Campbell called "the experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of be ~ Elle Luna

We're all self-destructive when we're young. We all rebel. If we don't, there's something wrong. But when a Chicano kid's in a rebellious state, he has nowhere to go but to put himself in jeopardy with the police. When a kid who has some class privilege rebels, he's in a beautiful room and he can buy these horrible CDs and drugs. He's buffered from being a criminal. ~ Jimmy Santiago Baca

I tried everything I could to prevent my son's fall into meth addiction. It would have been no easier to have seen him strung out on heroin or cocaine, but as every parent of a meth addict comes to learn, this drug has a unique, horrific quality. In an interview, Stephan Jenkins, the singer in Third Eye Blind, said that meth makes you feel "bright and shiny." It also makes you paranoid, delusional, destructive, and self-destructive. Then you will do unconscionable things in order to feel bright and shiny again. ~ David Sheff

I know one gay ex-Mormon who is a talented, self-destructive alcoholic. Whenever he is drunk and going on a tear, we are back to the Mormon Church and his being thrown out of the Mormon Church and growing up with this sense of being evil. ~ Andrew Solomon

More times than I'm willing to admit I am my own worst enemy, which suggests that more times than I'm willing to admit I should allow God to be my own best friend. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

When you're at peace with yourself and love your self, it is virtually impossible to do things to yourself that are destructive. ~ Wayne Dyer

They don't think "I care," "I hurt," or "I have feelings." It just seems like I'm always "wrong," always "selfish," always "self-centered" and everything else that's negative and destructive. ~ Beatrice Sparks