Quotes About Emotions

Elle Remembered Yorkshire road and the flat he shared with Caitlin and their daughter, and she almost stopped and turned back, and then she hardened herself against it. It's his problem if he wants to sleep with someone and he shouldn't, she told herself. It's a one night thing. I'm in the clear. It's sex, nothing else.

She stood firm, biting her lip. "I asked you a question, Rory. Yes, or no?" He hesitated. "It's not as easy as that." 'It is," said Elle, feeling her heart physically ache. "It has to be. If you won't come to the pub with me, I have to go now, otherwise I'll change my mind, and that would be stupid. Very, very stupid.' She covered her face with her hands, breathing deeply. "As stupid as I've been these past few years... Oh, God, no.

Their marriage was based on silence these days. More and more. What they didn't say was everything, and what they did, inconsequential.

windows, shouting, 'There's a huge dead

When forgiveness experts talk in binary language ("You either forgive the wrongdoer or you are a prisoner of your own anger and hate"), they are collapsing the messy complexity of human emotions into a simplistic dichotomous equation.

If you pay attention, you may find that it is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing the thing that will evoke fear and other disquieting emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.

Countless self-help books, blogs and seminars promise relief from suffering, when pain and suffering are as much part of life as happiness and joy.The only way to avoid being mistreated in this world is to fold up in a dark corner and stay mute. If you go outside, or let others in, you'll get hurt many times. Ditto if you've grown up in a family rather than begin raised by wolves. Some people will behave badly and will not apologize, repair the harm, or care about your feelings.

Why must they share their uncensored reactions?" She was referring to the corrosive criticism that wears couples down as they selectively attend to what bothers them in a partner rather than speaking to what they appreciate and admire. And she was referring to the raw, unbridled emotional exchanges that, when unchecked, erode intimacy and connection in family relationships.

All the assertiveness training and communication skills in the world can't prevent a relationship from becoming fertile ground for silence and stonewalling, or for anger and frustration, or for just plain hard times. No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human. We can influence the other person through our words and silence, but we can never control the outcome. That said, what we can

Nothing, but nothing, will block the awareness of anger so effectively as guilt and self-doubt. Our society cultivates guilt feelings in women such that many of us still feel guilty if we are anything less than an emotional service station to others.

One might debate whether it is preferable to be a cat or a person, but why get into it? If you are reading this now, you are not a cat and never will be. So along with the good days, you're going to experience the entire range of painful emotions that make us human.

Surely human consciousness would take a big leap forward if our wish to hear and understand were as great as our wish to be heard and understood.

We begin to use our anger as a vehicle for change when we are able to share our reactions without holding the other person responsible for causing our feelings, and without blaming ourselves for the reactions that other people have in response to our choices and actions. We are responsible for our own behavior.

venting anger does not solve the problem that anger signals.

Real closeness occurs most reliably not when it is pursued or demanded in a relationship, but when both individuals work consistently on their own selves. <...> Working on the self includes clarifying beliefs, values, and life goals, staying responsibly connected to persons on one's own family tree, defining the "I" in key relationships, and addressing important emotional issues as they arise.

All of us are vulnerable to intense, non-productive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family—in particular, losses and cutoffs. If we do not observe and understand how our triangles operate, our anger can keep us stuck in the past, rather than serving as an incentive and guide to form more productive relationship patterns for the future.

Venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur.

what fuels human unhappiness in both the personal and political realm can be boiled down to these three key emotions—anxiety, fear, and shame.

We can only absorb so much anxiety without becoming sick or symptomatic ourselves.

manage ourselves when we are in their grip.

Change is an anxiety-arousing business, both for the one doing the changing and for those affected by the change. Often we fear that another person's move toward new ideas and experiences will create a gulf so wide that we will not be able to reach them.

Let us question these questions. Anger is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, meaningful nor pointless. Anger simply is. To ask, "Is my anger legitimate?" is similar to asking, "Do I have a right to be thirsty? After all, I just had a glass of water fifteen minutes ago. Surely my thirst is not legitimate. And besides, what's the point of getting thirsty when I can't get anything to drink now, anyway?

working on key emotional issues at their source, lays the groundwork for more solid intimate relationships in the present or future.

When we speak from the heart, we long for an ear to hear us, and we all have experienced that down feeling when we perceive ourselves as written off or misunderstood.