Quotes About Coping

I feel very sorry for myself - that is what grief is.

Wouldn't it be wiser to experience the day ahead and savour it, as if it were my last, and postpone for a while my appointment with my pills and my whisky until the moment comes when I don't feel like coping any more and all anticipation has gone?

It's not men who cope with death; they resist, try to fight back and get their brains trampled out in consequence; where women just flank it, envelop it in one soft and instantaneous confederation of unresistance like cotton batting or cobwebs, already de-stingered and harmless, not merely reduced to size and usable but even useful like a penniless bachelor or spinster connection always available to fill an empty space or conduct an extra guest down to dinner.

If this were my country, Odile said, wrinkling her nose, I would not be angry. No? Hollis asked. I would drink all the time. Take pill. Anything.

some of the wrong people die. Be ready for it. This isn't Curious George Uses the Potty.

Sometimes when people are under stress, they hate to think, and it's the time when they most need to think.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

the failure will trigger the "flight" instinct

Richard G. Tedeschi and Lawrence G. Calhoun (2004). "Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence," Psychological Inquiry 15: 1–18. The researchers have a test of post-traumatic growth, called the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), that you can find online. We also recommend the excellent Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg. Also see:

I couldn't control what was done to me. But my response to it was in my control.

Danger will come upon us when it will. We can't stop it. We can only try to be prepared. There's no point in looking ahead to that danger and suffering its effects even before it comes to us.

Anger and self-pity are useless emotions, so I push them away and speak calmly, even though my heart is breaking all over again.

She taught me to close myself off from the sorrow of others so that I might survive

It was something he would figure out only after Bobby dumped him: that his imagination was what made the real world, and real people, only barely palatable for him.

If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.

If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man.

I think most of us tell ourselves we don't want what we think we can't have just to make life bearable.

I think most of us tell ourselves we don't want what we think we can't have just to make life bearable.

I've always got stage fright,' he says. 'There's always a level of fright. If I can just make it manageable rather than overwhelming then I've won.

Survival has its own etiquette.

When people who believe themselves to be addicts or alcoholics come under great stress or trauma, they mentally give themselves permission to drink or use drugs as a remedy.

Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems. Those problems always have both physical and psychological components- anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain.