Quotes from Tara Bennett-Goleman

By mindfully monitoring your thoughts rather than letting them dictate how you behave, you will start to win emotional freedom from your fears.

schema therapy, which focuses on repairing maladaptive emotional habits.

mindfulness creates a "wise" attention, a space of clarity that emerges when we quiet the mind. It makes us more receptive to the whispers of our innate intuitive wisdom.

means to penetrate dense emotions. This meditative awareness, I've found, can bring us a remarkably subtle understanding of our emotional patterns and so help us find ways to unravel deep fixations and destructive habits.

This meditative awareness, I've found, can bring us a remarkably subtle understanding of our emotional patterns and so help us find ways to unravel deep fixations and destructive habits.

Our emotional reactions often distract us from the present, filling our minds with relentless thoughts about another time and place, filling our bodies with turbulent feelings.

She would remind herself that in reality she was safe despite her fears, or that her hyperventilating was only a sign of temporary anxiety, not a sign that she would suffocate.

At this level of mindfulness, it may help to use the method of naming—bringing to mind a single word that identifies the nature of the disturbance.

Schema therapy gives us a clear map of destructive habits. It details the emotional contours of, say, the fear of abandonment, with its constant apprehension that a partner will leave us; or of feelings of vulnerability, such as the irrational fear that a minor setback at work means you will end up jobless and homeless.

can't do this,' 'I feel overwhelmed,' and 'I hate myself'. So I labeled them 'M1,' 'M2,' and 'M3,' for 'morning tape thoughts.' This way I can more easily watch the habitual play of thoughts running through my mind, without taking them too seriously or getting hooked in.

Equanimity practice can be an inner resource to turn to whenever we face difficult moments. The practice of equanimity involves silently repeating to yourself a phrase while you reflect on its meaning.

May I accept things as they are. I wish you happiness and well-being, but I cannot make your choices for you or control the way things are.

Becoming aware of these emotional habits is the first step, because unless we can catch and challenge them as they are triggered by the events of our lives, they will dictate how we perceive and react.

There are several forms of the loving-kindness meditation. Here's one. Just as I want to be free from suffering, may all beings be free from suffering.

The Dalai Lama advises practicing equanimity before loving-kindness as a way to take the sting out of attachment to wanting things to be a certain way.

A Buddhist principle holds that awareness leads to empathy.

her craving for food was actually masking her need for emotional nurturance.

whenever something triggers them our feelings flare and our perceptions become distorted.

And with this loosening of our usual identifications, we become less defined by our reactions as we widen the scope of who we think we are.

These emotional habits operate as powerful lenses on our reality, leading us to mistake how things seem for how they actually are.

mindfulness practice improved the ability of the meditators' brains to control their negative emotions.

By becoming mindful we can drop the compulsion to try to make disturbing thoughts go away, to agitate ourselves by worrying, or to try to make things better or in any way different. We can be with life just as it is, observing completely what happens, without immediately trying to change it.

When a schema trigger disturbs your equilibrium, stirring strong feelings and reactions, it can be quite helpful first to calm your mind down and neutralize your feelings by, for instance, meditating on your breathing for a bit.