Quotes About Emotions

We all have a deep yearning to understand ourselves and be understood. When I see couples in therapy, often one or the other will complain, not "you don't love me" but "you don't understand me

Sometimes the only thing to do is yell "Fuck!

The price of loving so deeply is feeling so deeply—but it's also a gift, the gift of being alive.

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?

There's a difference between pain and suffering," Wendell says. "You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much.

There's another related concept that I share with John: impermanence. Sometimes in their pain, people believe that the agony will last forever. But feelings are actually more like weather systems: They blow in and they blow out. Just because you feel sad this minute or this hour or this day doesn't mean you'll feel that way in ten minutes or this afternoon or next week. Everything you feel – anxiety, elation, anguish – blows in and out again.

If you sign up for intimacy, getting hurt is part of the deal.

Your feelings don't have to mesh with what you think they should be," he explained.

They'll be there regardless, so you might as well welcome them because they hold important clues.

how our histories affect the ways we think, feel, and behave and how at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past.

As Andrew Solomon wrote in The Noonday Demon: "The opposite of depression isn't happiness, but vitality.

Do you think I'm a bad person?" she'd ask, and I'd assure her that everyone who comes to therapy worries that what they think or feel might not be "normal" or "good," and yet it's our honesty with ourselves that helps us make sense of our lives with all of their nuances and complexity. Repress those thoughts, and you'll likely behave "badly." Acknowledge them, and you'll grow.

No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable.

Neuroscientists discovered that humans have brain cells called mirror neurons that cause them to mimic others, and when people are in a heightened state of emotion, a soothing voice can calm their nervous systems and help them stay present.

it's okay to hold one person in your heart and fall in love with another, that our capacity for love is big enough for both.

regularly made an effort to remember one of the most important lessons from my training: There's no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn't be ranked, because pain is not a contest. Spouses often forget this, upping the ante on their suffering—I had the kids all day. My job is more demanding than yours. I'm lonelier than you are. Whose pain wins—or loses? But pain is pain.

Sometimes when we don't like our feelings, we toss them to others like a hot potato.

What makes night within us may leave stars. —Victor Hugo

Then I feel the tears well up. Laughter to tears—grief. I'm going to miss Julie and I'm having a hard time with this myself. Sometimes the only thing to do is yell, "Fuck!

For Rita, joy isn't pleasure; it's anticipatory pain.

We're going out again," I announced at my final session with Evan. "But it's weird, because I don't feel the way I'm used to feeling. There was no chemistry, but I'm really looking forward to seeing him again." Evan smiled. "Isn't that chemistry?" he asked. "If you're excited to see someone again?

Sometimes people can't identify their feelings because they were talked out of them as children.

When the rush is there, you're not acting like yourself. You're nervous and insecure. There's no critical thinking and you make idiotic choices: I just want to rip his clothes off and breathe his air and so what if he's clinically depressed!

the famous stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.