Quotes About Vulnerability

He is a man, and he is afraid. This is not a good combination.

Alice started to cry. It came with no sound, no shuddering, no childlike hysterics, just a soul-deep release that turned into moisture and dripped down her puffy pink cheeks. She touched her tears, frowning. Then she looked up at Julia and whimpered two words before she fell asleep. 'Real hurts.'

but sometimes one person can hold you up in life, keep you standing, and without that hand to hold, you can find yourself free-falling no matter how strong you used to be, no matter how hard you try to remain steady.

Love rips the shit out of you and puts you back together like a broken toy, with all kinds of cracks and edges. It's not about the falling in love. It's about the landing, the staying where you said you'd be and working to keep the love strong.

He has been in her heart for so long it is as if she knows him already, but she doesn't. She does not know what to say or how to say it, and suddenly she is afraid that there is a wrong way to move forward, a mistake that once made cannot be undone.

Nothing was easier to shatter than the fragile shield of an idealist.

Love meant always being a little afraid.

Leni saw suddenly how hope could break you, how it was a shiny lure for the unwary. What happened to you if you hoped too hard for the best and got the worst? Was it better not to hope at all, to prepare? Wasn't that what her father's lesson always was? Prepare for the worst.

It's not weak, you know. To feel things deeply, to want things. To need.

Only in the desert do we become aware of our terrible simple-mindedness, but we are afraid of admitting it.

Human gesture. Betrayed, betrayed.

from within their thicket of nowhere left to hide

How they made out of shamelessness something beautiful, for as long as they could.

Here — your shirt , he said, after. Lifting it. Bringing it to me as if it were not a shirt but a thing immaculate, or in flames, or— with a single sword positioned through it— a sacred heart.

What I am is good enough if I could only be it openly.

What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly.

When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance… provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another.

It is so obvious when a person is not hiding behind a facade but is speaking from deep within himself.

So, here we are, all of us poor bewildered darlings, wandering adrift in a universe too big and too complex for us, clasping and ricochetting off other people too different and too perplexing for us, and seeking to satisfy myriad, shifting, vague needs and desires, both mean and exalted. And sometimes we mesh. Don't we? - Attributed to James Flynn, Ph.D.

It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function.

He is learning that the feelings which exist are good enough to live by. They do not have to be coated with a veneer

To discover that it is not devastating to accept the positive feeling from another, that it does not necessarily end in hurt, that it actually "feels good" to have another person with you in your struggles to meet life —this may be one of the most profound learnings encountered by the individual whether in therapy or not.

It will be clear that the very expression of this fear is a part of becoming what he is. Instead of simply being a façade, as if it were himself, he is coming closer to being himself, namely a frightened person hiding behind a façade because he regards himself as too awful to be seen.

I find that this desire to be all of oneself in each moment—all the richness and complexity, with nothing hidden from oneself, and nothing feared in oneself—this is a common desire in those who have seemed to show much movement in therapy. I do not need to say that this is a difficult, and in its absolute sense an impossible goal. Yet one of the most evident trends in clients is to move toward becoming all of the complexity of one's changing self in each significant moment.