Quotes About Self-awareness

We each have a personal myth, a vision of who we really are and what we want. Health means that part of what you want is to give to others.

Without siblings you get quite a skewed vision of yourself and of the world. I always felt I didn't understand how it worked. I remember feeling quite lonely.

I don't know whether I can call myself a visionary.

I don't see myself as a visionary at all.

The purpose of inquiring about people's parents isn't to join them in blaming, judging, or criticizing their parents. In fact, it's not about their parents at all. It's solely about understanding how their early experiences inform who they are as adults so that they can separate the past from the present (and not wear psychological clothing that no longer fits).

Too often people feel pressured to forgive and then end up believing that something's wrong with them if they can't quite get there - that they aren't enlightened enough or strong enough or compassionate enough ... You can have compassion without forgiving. There are many ways to move on, and pretending to feel a certain way isn't one of them

And if you can tolerate these deeper feelings long enough to understand them and listen to what they're telling you, you'll not only manage your anger in more productive ways, you also won't be so angry all the time.

Sabe, em relação a esses idiotas, eu tenho uma ideia a respeito. E se as pessoas que estão te deixando louco não estiverem tentando te deixar louco? E se essas pessoas não forem idiotas, mas razoavelmente inteligentes, e só estão fazendo o melhor que podem num determinado dia?

If they can see themselves more clearly through our reflections, we can see ourselves more clearly through theirs. This happens to therapists when we're providing therapy, and it happens to our own therapists too. We are mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors, showing one another what we can't yet see.

But sometimes—more often than we tend to realize—those difficult people are us.

Talking can keep people in their heads and safely away from their emotions. Being silent is like emptying the trash. When you stop tossing junk into the void—words, words, and more words—something important rises to the surface.

He'd given me permission to feel and also a reminder that, like so many people, I'd been mistaking feeling less for feeling better.

O terapeuta explicou que, com frequência, diferentes partes do nosso íntimo querem coisas distintas, e se silenciamos as partes que consideramos inaceitáveis, elas encontrarão outras maneiras de se fazerem escutar.

Sometimes we imprison ourselves with a narrative of self-punishment.

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

This stage [relapse] is hard because the behaviors people want to modify are embedded in the fabric of their lives; people with addiction issues (whether that addiction is to a substance, drama, negativity, or self-defeating ways of being) tend to hang out with other addicts.

A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, but it's up to the patient to take a good look at that reflection, to stare back at it and say, "Oh, isn't that interesting! Now what?" instead of turning away.

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

Hell is other people.It´s true - the world is filled with diffucult people...but sometimes - more often - than we tend to realize - those diffucult peopel are us.

What's the difference between settling and compromising? When it comes to marriage, what can we live with, and what can we live without? How long does it make sense to hold out for someone better—who we may never find, and who may not exist or be available to us even if he did—when we could be happy with the person right in front of us?

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.

Insight is the booby prize of therapy" is my favorite maxim of the trade, meaning that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don't change when you're out in the world, the insight—and the therapy—is worthless

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

Often, though, people carry around the belief that the majority of their problems are circumstantial or situational—which is to say, external. And if the problems are caused by everyone and everything else, by stuff out there, why should they bother to change themselves? Even if they decide to do things differently, won't the rest of the world still be the same?