Quotes About Coping

It's often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, "Stay there. Don't move." JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Memory is a slippery thing. When something terrible happens to you, like the loss of someone you love...memory can turn into a soft blanket that hides you from the loss.

A real friend makes you feel better about yourself. Friends help you cope when you think you're done and offer hope that it can get better. They love you as you are but won't let you stay that way. Clearly, having friends improves our lives. And best friends? They make every good thing even better.

You aren't feeling sorry for yourself over wrapping paper, are you? Yes, yes, she was. It was certainly possible to like your life 364 days a year, and then come Christmas, begin to wonder about it. But what could she do? Nobody came into a bar to hear a bartender's problems, did they?

The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well.

The sick individual cannot simply shrug it off, pull out of it, or slow down mentally.

Without healthy avenues to process loss, people fragment their experiences, neglect their real stories, numb out, and try to cope on their own, which often results in anger, depression, and anxiety.

managed it better if

Some days life just wasn't worth the trouble of chewing through the leather straps on the straitjacket.

How did people do this, for heaven's sake? How was she supposed to get up and go on with this sorrow hanging on her, dragging her down?

We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime.

Before you get too giddy, remember therapy isn't going to come cheap." "What do you want to do? Sell one of the kids?" He grinned wryly. "No, I already looked into that. Ohio isn't one of the states where it's allowed." "So what are our options?" "We could tip some whale hunters to the location of your mom.

tough-titty-said-the-kitty,

you must try to get on with things or the grief will destroy you. You must put away the reminders of loss to have any hope of surviving

When you're circling the drain, worrying about direction is pointless.

the bumping hurts more than the cutting. The cutting doesn't prevent you from walking.

If suffering is ubiquitous in life, the withdrawal from and avoidance of suffering is accordingly the withdrawal from and avoidance of life. You

I'm an emotional eater. When I get upset, my diet goes out the window.

Drownin' your sorrows only irrigates 'em.

Never try to drown your sorrows if she can swim.

Yet, in fact, both were deeply sensitive and very much alike, Frank keeping everything inside, Pete letting it out, and steamrollering it before it could bother him.

Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.

If, occasionally, my mind gets the sense that the world around me is not doing what I'd like it to do, I may disappear for a day or even a week. That's something I've needed to deal with.

People cannot stand too much reality.