Quotes About Coping

You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me.

People often mistake numbness for nothingness, but numbness isn't the absence of feelings; it's a response to being overwhelmed by too many feelings. John

There is a continuing decision to be made as to whether to evade pain, or to tolerate it and therefore modify it.

Sometimes "drama," no matter how unpleasant, can be a form of self-medication, a way to calm ourselves down by avoiding the crises brewing inside.

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing.

but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

when we feel fragile, we're like raw eggs—we crack open and splatter if dropped. But when we develop more resilience, we're like hard-boiled eggs—we might get dinged up if dropped, but we won't crack completely and spill all over the place.

reaction formation, unacceptable feelings or impulses are expressed as their opposite,

know that therapy won't make all my problems disappear, prevent new ones from developing, or ensure that I'll always act from a place of enlightenment. Therapists don't perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. A patient may become less reactive or critical, more open and able to let people in. In other words, therapy is about understanding the self that you are.

As a therapist, I know a lot about pain, about the ways in which pain is tied to loss. But I also know something less commonly understood: that change and loss travel together. We can't have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same. To help John, I'm going to have to figure out what his loss would be,

Of course, anger serves another function—it pushes people away and keeps them from getting close enough to see you. I wonder if John needs people to be angry at him so that they won't see his sadness.

Displacement (shifting a feeling toward one person onto a safer alternative) is considered a neurotic defense, neither primitive nor mature.

Pushing aside emotions only makes them stronger.

emotional sobriety"—the ability to regulate one's feelings without self-medicating, whether that medication comes in the form of substances, defenses, affairs, or the internet.

This was grief: You laugh. You cry. Repeat.

Often people talk about suicide not because they want to be dead but because they want to end their pain.

avoidance is almost always about fear.

You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much.

You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering

hadn't considered that if the only thing that keeps you going all day is knowing you'll get to turn on the TV after dinner, you probably are depressed.

It's much harder to find the strength to live your life when those you love are gone." He

Hallie had had plenty of practice over the years at hiding her true feelings and presenting a brave face to the world.

Life might not work out as you'd want it to, but you just got on with it anyway.