Quotes About Emotions

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing.

For many people, going into the depths of their thoughts and feelings is like going into a dark alley—they don't want to go there alone.

I know that often people create faulty narratives to make themselves feel better in the moment even though it makes them feel worse over time—and that sometimes, they need somebody else to read between the lines.

John said that when he was struggling with the pressure of his marriage and his career, he used to think that there'd be a point when he'd be happy again, and then when Gabe died, he thought he'd never be happy again. Now, he says, he's come to feel it's not either/or, yes or no, always or never. "Maybe happiness is sometimes,

The First Confession Allow me to get defensive for a minute. You see, when I told Wendell that everything was just fine until the breakup, I was telling the absolute truth. Or, rather, the truth as I knew it. Which is to say, the truth as I wanted to see it.

The more you welcome your vulnerability, the less afraid you'll feel.

Relationships in life don't really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you've been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)—all of them evoke memories, conscious or not. Often they inform how you relate

His expression is sad instead of angry now. Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it's outward-directed—angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious.

the upside of being a therapist's child is that nothing gets shoved under the rug; the downside is that you'll be totally screwed up anyway).

But now the kiss has presented another crisis for Rita—possibility. And that may feel even more intolerable to her than her pain.

Forgiveness is a tricky thing, in the way that apologies can be. Are you apologizing because it makes you feel better or because it will make the other person feel better? Are you sorry for what you've done or are you simply trying to placate the other person who believes you should be sorry for the thing you feel completely justified in having done? Who is the apology for?

I've sat with patients who describe their grief as "monstrous" and "unbearable"; one patient, quoting something she heard, said it made her feel "alternately numb and in excruciating pain.

Ongeacht hoe openhartig we als samenleving zijn over zaken die we vroeger angstvallig verzwegen, het stigma op onze emotionele problemen en zielenroerselen blijft immens. ... Maar waarvoor zijn wij dan zo bang? Het is niet alsof we een kijkje nemen in die duistere krochten, het licht aandoen en een stel kakkerlakken aantreffen. Vuurvliegjes houden ook van de duisternis. Er is schoonheid op die plekken.

maybe part of being a good dad is allowing yourself the full range of human emotions, of really living, even if living fully can sometimes be harder than not.

Our experiences with this person are important because we're probably feeling something pretty similar to what everyone else in this patient's life feels.

reaction formation, unacceptable feelings or impulses are expressed as their opposite,

but maybe part of being a good dad is allowing yourself the full range of human emotions, of really living, even if living fully can sometimes be harder than not.

People don't have to tell you their stories with words because they always act them out for you.

As a therapist, I know a lot about pain, about the ways in which pain is tied to loss. But I also know something less commonly understood: that change and loss travel together. We can't have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same. To help John, I'm going to have to figure out what his loss would be,

Everyone wages this internal battle to some degree: Child or adult? Safety or freedom? But no matter where people fall on those continuums, every decision they make is based on two things: fear and love. Therapy strives to teach you how to tell the two apart.

Of course, anger serves another function—it pushes people away and keeps them from getting close enough to see you. I wonder if John needs people to be angry at him so that they won't see his sadness.

How can there be an endpoint to love and loss? Do we even want there to be? The price of loving so deeply is feeling so deeply – but it's also a gift, the gift of being alive.

She still equates feeling loved not with peace or joy but with anxiety.

Displacement (shifting a feeling toward one person onto a safer alternative) is considered a neurotic defense, neither primitive nor mature.