Quotes About Coping

There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.

Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.

When we can laugh through our tears, we are being given a powerful message. Things may be bad, but they cannot be all that bad.

The only thing to know is how to use your neurosis.

The worst is not sSo long as we can say "This is the worst."

We must learn from life how to suffer it.

Regression in grief must be seen and supported as a means toward adaptation and health.

None of us can be free of conflict and woe. Even the greatest men have had to accept disappointments as their daily bread. ... The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

I survived my childhood by birthing many separate identities to stand in for one another in times of great stress and fear.

Someone asked me... how I felt and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell - Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said he felt like a little boy who has stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.

Schizophrenic behaviour is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.

The point of therapy is get unhooked, not to thrash around on how you got hooked.

Fortunately, analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself remains a very effective therapist.

Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities, the strength, the wisdom, the virtue you ought to have. You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert it only irritates.

All sorrows are bearable, if there is bread.

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.

The worst is not so long as we can say, "This is the worst."

Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience.

Dear 2020: Could you please stop trying to kill us for, like, five minutes?!

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering — this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutory day-time advice for everyone. But at three o'clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn't work — in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

It's usually very gradual... It's latent. It waits. It lays in wait for the time when you think, "It's fine now, I'm okay." And then... then the next thing you know, it's not okay. Things are not going so well.

How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?