Quotes About Authenticity

The strength within ourselves—through access to our own real needs and feelings and the possibility of expressing them—is crucially important for us if we want to live without depression and addiction.

It's just that when we were younger we were not free enough to live our lives the way we really were.

individuals who refuse to adapt to a totalitarian regime are not doing so out of a sense of duty or because of naïveté but because they cannot help but be true to themselves

Porque uno está libre de depresiones cuando la autoestima arraiga en la autenticidad de los sentimientos propios y no en la posesión de determinadas cualidades.

In contrast, there are those with great gifts, often precisely the most gifted, who do suffer from severe depression. For one is free from it only when self-esteem is based on the authenticity of ones own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities.

Accommodation to parental needs often (but not always) leads to the "as-if personality." This person develops in such a way that he reveals only what is expected of him and fuses so completely with what he reveals that one could scarcely guess how much more there is to him behind this false self.

Consciously experiencing our legitimate emotions is liberating, not just because of the discharge of long-held tensions in the body but above all because it opens our eyes to reality (both past and present) and frees us of lies and illusions

But such a sensation can happen only when I feel free and remain open and receptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones.

That balloon flew up very high in a good wind but was suddenly punctured and soon lay like a little rag on the ground, for nothing genuine that could have given inner strength and support had ever been developed.

To free themselves of this compulsion they need to be able to share their feelings with someone—they need the experience of being listened to, understood, taken seriously, of no longer having to hide. Only then will they know that this is the nourishment they have been searching for all their lives.

Individuals who believe that they feel what they ought to feel and constantly do their best not to feel what they forbid themselves to feel will ultimately fall ill—unless, that is, they leave it to their children to pick up the check by projecting onto them the emotions they cannot admit to themselves.

Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self.

One of our most vital functions is an ability to listen to the true story of our own lives. Accordingly, the central issue in this book is the conflict between the things we feel—the things our bodies register—and the things we think we ought to feel so as to comply with moral norms and standards we have internalized at a very early age.

I was not out to paint beautiful pictures; even painting good pictures was not important to me. I wanted only to help the truth burst forth.

As she never wanted me to be the way I really was, I had to actively conceal my authentic feelings from her.

The body would become aware of this sooner or later, and no amount of fine-sounding words would be able to deceive it for long.

If this were fiction, as I said, it would be too much, but it is true.

this is not a story, only life.

The preference most of them had for seeing through their camera, rather than looking at the real thing, and so on.

Now there were grown men and women who would try to look like teen-agers until

?ã tá»›i tình tr?ng trÆ°á»›c Ä'ây chÆ°a t?ng có. Buông trôi theo dòng. Cho Ä'i. Má»™t s? ng??i cho Ä'i, má»™t s? ng??i không. Rào c?n gi?a cái bên trong và bên ngoài c?a tâm trí b?n b? ??p ??. Sá»± chân thá»±c Ä'òi h?i Ä'i?u ?y.

Tess was my first experience of a woman who had inhabited her weirdness, moved into the areas of herself that made her distinct from those around her, and learned how to display them proudly.

Exactly,' she said, and made her point as simply as that. There wasn't a lot of bullshit in my heaven. ~pg 8

These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors