Quotes from Catherine Gildiner

powerlessness in a relationship is one of the main causes of stress or anxiety. Making psychological changes also provokes anxiety. It's very hard to break a habit, especially when you've adapted yourself to a particular pattern that, however maladaptive, has kept you alive. The unconscious is powerful, and it will fight to the death to keep an old pattern in place.

Anger is not a feeling; it's a defence. When you can't acknowledge your true feelings because they're too excruciating, you defend against them with anger.

What puzzled me was why I seemed to be so troubled by all these irregularities and exceptions to major rules while others blithely marched ahead.

Whatever role we are loved for in our family, we will continue to enact it, despite the toll it takes.

The problem with a small town is that when you don't buy into the powers that be there are very few other choices. It's like a play where there is only a "virtuous" lead, a villain, and bit players. Better to be the villain because you're not duped into believing you're in more than a play, and at least your name goes on the program.

Patients who were rarely praised as children, often distrust the positive things people say about them as adults. A child's concept of self is formed in childhood and it takes a long time with many affirmative examples to turn that self-concept around.

gave me a going-away present on behalf of Rochdale, a book by Paul Tillich called The Courage To Be. Bob wrote inside, Cathy, read this sometime in your life when you need "to be." He was right. Later in my life when I was at a low that book pulled me through.

unconscious never cares for the facts.

People who don't feel pain can't feel joy.

Anger is a defense, not a feeling, ....analyze what feeling the anger was covering.

When you go from fearing your mother to feeling sorry for her, it usually means you've travelled a long way toward recovery.

If a person is continually stressed, the stress uses up the immune system and there's nothing left to fight cancer. (Research has shown that children who suffer abuse are about 50 percent more likely to get cancer than other children.)

psychological technique called reframing: taking a concept and relabelling it so as to alter its meaning.

Why have boundaries if everyone is going to drive through them, leaving nothing but rubble? No one's going to do what I want. Why should they?" Laura had just perfectly defined powerlessness, and powerlessness in a relationship is one of the main causes of stress or anxiety.

Making psychological changes also provokes anxiety. It's very hard to break a habit, especially when you've adapted yourself to a particular pattern that, however maladaptive, has kept you alive. The unconscious is powerful, and it will fight to the death to keep an old pattern in place.

The only thing I do know is that when your mother labels you negatively, you believe her—for who else forms your self-image?

True narcissists, like Charlotte, never think they're wrong. When they react by lashing out, they're convinced that they're simply defending themselves against some nefarious provocation from someone trying to harm them. When they feel threatened, they go into overdrive and retaliate quickly. Narcissism can be described as a trigger-happy defence.

Intimacy is a hard language to learn, especially if it's been discouraged. But you've done it.

One thing I know is that we all do things we're ashamed of. Shame erupts when you violate some taboo. Anyone who says they haven't suffered shame either hasn't lived or else is lying.

When people share their feelings, they feel better, less stressed and less anxious. If you plan on having a life partner, it's emotional intimacy that will be the glue that holds you together long after the physical intimacy fades.

The definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting different results.

The second revelation occurred when her unconscious released the idea, or the false belief, that her mother would love her only if she were totally perfect. Of course, that wasn't true. Her mother was incapable of loving her, and being perfect wouldn't alter that fact. That insight helped to free Madeline from trying so hard to please her mother.

Every life is a piece of art put together with all means available.

emphasized that anger is a signal that someone wants to be treated differently, which is healthy; cruelty is when someone deliberately wants to hurt someone