Quotes About Self-awareness

Like so many addicts, I'd thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around

When our emotional intelligence is restricted, we often do not know what we really want, and can consequently struggle mightily with even the smallest decisions.

The most expeditious way to get past an unpleasant emotional experience is to embrace it and to fully feel and express it.

Ambivalating is one of the healing processes of psychotherapy. When clients are encouraged to thoroughly explore their conflicting feelings about job or relationship issues, they eventually connect with a deep intuitive sense about what is best for them.

Natural anger eventually arises when we really get how little and defenseless we were when our parents bullied us into hating ourselves.

Until all of the emotions are accepted indiscriminately (and acceptance does not imply license to dump emotions irresponsibly or abusively), there can be no wholeness, no real sense of well being, and no solid sense of self esteem.

Cognitive recovery work aims to make your brain user friendly. It focuses on recognizing and eliminating the destructive thoughts and thinking processes you were indoctrinated with in childhood.

We cannot be healthy human beings without accepting and experiencing the full range of human feelings.

As emotional recovery progresses, the mindfulness described above begins to extend toward our emotional experience. This helps us to stop automatically dissociating from our feelings. We then learn to identify our feelings and choose healthy ways to respond to them and from them.

I believe the quality of our emotional intelligence is reflected in the degree to which we accept all of our feelings without automatically dissociating from them or expressing them in a way that hurts ourselves or others.

We need to understand exactly how appalling parenting created the now self-perpetuating trauma that we live in. We can learn to do this in a way that takes the mountain of unfair self-blame off ourselves.

It is crucial for deeper level recovery that we learn that feelings of fear, shame and guilt are sometimes signs that we have said or done the right thing. They are emotional flashbacks to how we were traumatized for trying to claim normal human privileges.

When you intricately understand how antagonistic your parents were to your healthy sense of self, you become more motivated to engage in the self-help processes of rectifying their damage. The more you identify their damage the more you know what to fix.

As a survivor becomes more adept at angering and crying, fear of his feelings will decrease, and opportunities to learn to simply feel will present themselves.

Thankfully, I eventually realized that I had unresolved attachment issues, and sought out a Relational therapist who valued the use of her own vulnerable and emotionally authentic self as a tool in therapy.

We can learn to be emotional in benign ways. We can have our emotions without holding onto them. We can soften and relax into our feelings without exiling or enshrining them. We can let our feelings pass through us when they have fully served their function.

We do not have to let other people's irresponsible emotional expression alienate us from our feelings.

Self-mothering is a resolute refusal to indulge in self-hatred and self-abandonment. It proceeds from the realization that self-punishment is counterproductive. It is enhanced by the understanding that patience and self-encouragement are more effective than self-judgment and self-rejection in achieving recovery.

Experiencing one's own inadequacies and still going on in spite of them are two of the greatest achievements of adulthood.

Any attempt to dictate what thoughts, feelings, and sensations are proper or improper creates a breeding ground for guilt and shame.

When the moral judgment is removed, individuals are able to acknowledge and experience their authentic life energy freely.

You don't have to be a good person to be a good writer--history shows it's better if you're not--but you have to understand your badness.

The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others, and no one thinks about reforming himself.

I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.