A sad yet inspiring and poignant selection of support quotes to bring comfort and solace when you have unsupportive family or toxic relationships.
Best Support Quotes to Bring You Comfort From Unsupportive Family
Family is supposed to represent the support network in your life that you can rely on for unconditional love during hard times – no matter what.
A lack of support from those we love most can be hugely detrimental to our mental health.
Alas, that’s not always a reality, and it’s a sad fact of life that all too often we’re left feeling hurt and disappointed by a lack of care, or even plain cruel actions.
Experiencing a lack of support from those we love most can be hugely detrimental to our mental health, leading to a loss of confidence and self-esteem. But, if there’s any comfort to be found in such situations, it’s that it’s a tragically common family dynamic – there are many people suffering in the same way.
I hope these quotes about toxic family will bring you some sense of solace and external support. And perhaps these self-love affirmations may help you to trust in your own worth.
97 Quotes About Dysfunctional Families
1. Shoutout to people who grew up with emotionally unsupportive parents and have to hear other people talk about how supportive their families are while you’re basically guiding yourself through life. You’re strong and brave.
Unknown
2. Set healthy boundaries with unsupportive people. Release hurts by forgiving, bless their hearts, and then farewell to them.
Unknown
3. I was born into this family but all I got was hate in a place where I was supposed to get love and acceptance.
Unknown
4. A person struggling for someone because of an unsupportive family has greater value than a person with a supportive family.
Unknown
5. There is no room for unsupportive friends and family—only space for positivity.
Unknown
6. If you’re going home to an unsupportive family this holiday season, remember that your worth is not defined by what they say or how they treat you.
Unknown
7. Fielding unsupportive family pressure and sticking to your healthy guns!
Unknown
8. Families are forever, and I wondered if the slogan was meant as a promise or a threat.
Brady Udall
9. Just because they are your family doesn’t mean that they know what’s best for you or your life.
Unknown
10. Our family became a place where you screamed for help but no one heard, not ever.
Marceline Loridan-Ivens
11. Being brushed aside is the easiest way to discard a child.
Sherrie Campbell
12. Family is where you’re meant to be most free. Don’t let blood chain you down.
Unknown
13. A family is a social system and if that system is dysfunctional, the ramifications for the children growing up within it are grave. In what is known as generational drug addiction, the adult children of drug addicts and alcoholics are quietly suffering all over the world. By the time the children have grown up, dysfunction has been deeply ingrained in mind, body, and brain.
Christopher Dines
14. Stop expecting loyalty from people who can’t even give you honesty.
Unknown
15. A big shout out to all the kids who grew up in an unsupportive family while they hear about another supportive family around them: You have a life worth living, you are strong and brave.
Unknown
Toxic Family Quotes
16. Some of the most poisonous people come disguised as friends and family.
Unknown
17. It’s okay to cut toxic family members out of your life. Blood ain’t thicker than peace of mind.
Unknown
18. Never let the lack of support deter your mission.
Unknown
19. You should never sacrifice three things—your family, your heart, or your dignity.
Unknown
20. Toxic mothers are image-oriented rather than love-oriented.
Sherrie Campbell
21. A dysfunctional family is not a family at all. It’s a toxic relationship parading as a requirement.
Unknown
22. Toxic family relationships spoil all other relationships unless you remove the poison before it’s too late.
Unknown
23. A good family will see your boundaries and move around them. A toxic family won’t even realise they’re there.
Unknown
24. One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
Euripedes
25. I knew, deep down, that I was different from my family. I knew just by looking in the mirror.
Alex Dalton
26. Just because someone is your family doesn’t mean you have to keep them around if they are toxic or abusive. Don’t let people guilt you.
Winnie Nantongo
27. Families are homes built on a foundation of trust and love. A toxic family can never be home because the foundation doesn’t exist.
Unknown
28. I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel all alone.
Robin Williams
29. Letting go of toxic people in your life is a big step in loving yourself.
Hussein Nishah
30. Most people don’t listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply.
Stephen Covey
31. Family is supposed to be there for you no matter what comes your way. Shame on the ones who are not, that’s not what family is about.
Unknown
32. Our family was stuck in a cosmic hamster wheel of toxic love – making the same mistakes, saying the same words, being hurt in the same ways generation after generation. I didn’t want to keep playing a role in this tragedy of errors.
Yamile Saied Méndez
33. When we are raised in toxic families, we often go through a time period, and for some of us, a lifetime, of repeating the toxic patterns we were raised in with other people in our lives. We do this until we decide we’ve had enough pain and choose to genuinely examine our patterns and stop the craziness for good.
Sherrie Campbell
34. If a man’s character is to be abused, say what you will, there’s nobody like a relative to do the business.
William Makepeace Thackeray
35. The harsh truth of every relationship, even between those who love each other, like fathers and sons and daughters or husbands and wives, is that the love is always unequal.
Karl Taro Greenfeld
36. I was in denial of the glaring reality that my existence depended on my willingness to comply with the family policy of me earning the splinter of space they granted to me.
M. Wakefield
37. Learn to use the criticism as fuel and you will never run out of energy.
Orrin Woodward
Best Unsupportive Family Quotes
38. Family is supposed to be our safe haven. Very often, it’s the place where we find the deepest heartache.
Iyanla Vanzant
39. Just because your father’s present, doesn’t mean he isn’t absent.
Elizabeth Acevedo
40. But the people who mattered were the people you chose instead of the people who were yours by an accident of birth. Real family was heart as much as, if not more than, blood.
Martina Boone
41. Dysfunctional families despise the truth-tellers and whistle-blowers. They are all about admiring the Emperor’s new clothes, and they turn on anyone who dares to mention the nakedness.
Sherrie Campbell
42. See, I think there are roads that lead us to each other. But in my family, there were no roads – just underground tunnels. I think we all got lost in those underground tunnels. No, not lost. We just lived there.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
43. A family can be the bane of one’s existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one’s existence. I don’t know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.
Keri Hulme
44. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.
Maya Angelou
45. No matter how good you are, someone is always going to be against you. But never let them be the limit of your success.
Terry Mark
46. Dysfunctional families can’t give you love because love can’t come from people who don’t love themselves in the first place.
Unknown
47. Families must be built on love, trust, and acceptance but dysfunctional families have no such traits, which is why they are what they are.
Unknown
48. Make sure everybody in your ‘boat’ is rowing and not drilling holes when you’re not looking. Know your circle.
Unknown
49. We don’t like what we don’t know or understand.
Amy Jo Martin
50. Saying ‘no’ to family doesn’t make you a bad person, it makes you an honest person.
Unknown
51. Children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people.
Leslye Walton
52. The ones who say, ‘You can’t,’ or ‘You won’t,’ are probably the most scared that you will.
Unknown
53. Blood makes you related, loyalty makes you family.
Chris Diaz
More Quotes About Dysfunctional Families
54. I explain to my patients that abused children often find it hard to disentangle themselves from their dysfunctional families, whereas children grow away from good, loving parents with far less conflict. After all, isn’t that the task of a good parent, to enable the child to leave home?
Irvin Yalom
55. You can love them, forgive them, want good things for them, but still move on without them.
Mandy Hale
56. If you allow people to make more withdrawals than deposits in your life, you will be out of balance and in the negative. Know when to close that account.
Christie Williams
57. Mindfulness won’t ensure you’ll win an argument with your sister. Mindfulness won’t enable you to bypass your feelings of anger or hurt, either. But it may help you see the conflict in a new way, one that allows you to break through old patterns.
Sharon Salzberg
58. Surround yourself with people that reflect who you want to be and how you want to feel, energies are contagious.
Rachel Wolchin
59. Dear family, please continue to include me in your activities when it’s convenient for you, and then act confused and upset when I ignore you.
The Black Sheep
60. Throughout life, you will find those people who are selfish, hateful, and inconsiderate. You can’t change people, but you can change how much they are a part of your life.
Unknown
61. Unhealthy families discourage individual expression.
Susan Forward
62. As I was growing up, no one in my family got their needs met through respectful negotiation and compromise.
Olga Trujillo
63. I forgive, but I also learn a lesson. I won’t hate you, but I’ll never get close enough for you to hurt me again. I can’t let my forgiveness become foolishness.
Tony Gaskins
64. The only thing we had in common was DNA, which gave us limited mileage conversationally.
Naoise Dolan
65. The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.
Margaret Sanger
66. My goal as a parent is to never make my children feel like they don’t belong. Nobody deserves to live life as the shunned black sheep.
Unknown
67. Look for the good, not the evil, in the conduct of members of the family.
Proverb
68. Family members have almost the same habits as they are brought up by the love of one mother and deliver the same love to the entire family.
Unknown
69. A father who can leave his wife for the lust of body of other ladies is deprived of the love of all other members of his family.
Unknown
70. In one family, all goes by two and two. If a member of it has any interest, he or she will confide it to some one other, but the rest know nothing. In another family, all feel what touches one, nothing is kept dark from the father and mother, brothers and sisters all share. This family habit is by far the better, it strengthens the tie between the members, and makes the home one home.
Charles Buxton
71. The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach
If you’re struggling with unsupportive family, try these tips to help you cope.
Inspirational Quotes About Healthy Family Relationships
72. The secret of a happy home life is that members of the family learn to give and receive love.
Unknown
73. Great parents build bridges instead of walls.
Reed B Markham
74. I feel that the greatest gift that I can give my children is the freedom to be who they are.
Will Smith
75. The only people I have seen who have been truly pushing for the truth are the family members.
Sibel Edmonds
76. Immediate, often unsolicited, sometimes undeserved forgiveness—that is what turns the wheel of family life.
Kelly Corrigan
77. Family isn’t always blood. It’s the people in your life who want you in theirs—the ones who accept you for who you are.
Unknown
78. There is an interconnectedness among members that bonds the family, much like mountain climbers who rope themselves together when climbing a mountain, so that if someone should slip or need support, he’s held up by the others until he regains his footing.
Phil McGraw
79. We automatically expect our family members and closest friends to be here when we wake up every morning to start our day. Don’t take one single thing or person for granted. If you love them, tell them, show them.
Unknown
80. When any trouble comes at home, all family members take it as its own and this is called family love.
Unknown
81. In my family, strangers are relatives.
Kate Rockland
82. A warm house does not always depend on its structures, but depends on the heat of relationship that all members have towards each other.
Ky Vanchay
83. Everyone needs a house to live in, but a supportive family is what builds a home.
Anthony Liccione
84. I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.”
Amy Poehler
85. Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.
Oprah Winfrey
86. The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill
87. She didn’t need to understand the meaning of life; it was enough to find someone who did, and then fall asleep in his arms and sleep as a child sleeps, knowing that someone stronger than you is protecting you from all evil and all danger.
Paulo Coelho, Brida
88. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
Mark Twain
89. If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams
90. If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw
91. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy
92. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Mother Teresa
93. None of us can change our yesterday, but all of us can change our tomorrows.
Colin Powell
94. Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
95. I will not allow anyone to walk in my mind with dirty feet.
Mahatma Gandhi
96. I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!
Theodore Roosevelt
97. If the family you choose before your birth no longer supports your path towards fulfilling your true destiny, it is never too late to find a new tribe.
Anthon St. Maarten
An inspiring support quote can be so uplifting and make a huge difference if you don’t have a close-knit family and you’re having a tough time with.
Best friends can provide a truly great support system, often better than the one we’re given by default.
Remember, the perfect family often portrayed on social media is largely a myth. Thankfully, while we can’t choose our family, we can choose your friends. The most important thing is to always choose a healthy relationship over a toxic one, regardless of our link to a person.
And good friends are the people who we actively choose to have and keep in our lives, for all the right reasons, not just because they happen to be blood relatives. At the end of the day, best friends can provide a truly great support system, often better than the one we’re given by default.
And there’s nothing wrong in that, those relationships are a blessing and a privilege.
Why not try these journal prompts for self love to start building your self worth?