Quotes About Coping

therapy works best when people start getting better—when they feel less depressed or anxious, or the crisis has passed. Now they're less reactive, more present, more able to engage in the work.

There's a difference between pain and suffering," Wendell says. "You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much.

Then I feel the tears well up. Laughter to tears—grief. I'm going to miss Julie and I'm having a hard time with this myself. Sometimes the only thing to do is yell, "Fuck!

not that she's hiding her feelings; it's that she can't access them. There's a word for this kind of emotional blindness: alexithymia. She doesn't know what she's feeling or doesn't have the words to express it.

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. And, of course, often what seem like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones.

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 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.

I would have to cope with not knowing what my future held, manage my worry, and focus on living now.

flight to health is a phenomenon in which patients convince themselves that they're suddenly over their issues because, unbeknownst to them, they can't tolerate the anxiety that working through these issues is bringing up.

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.

Now I keep in mind that none of us can love and be loved without the possibility of loss but that there's a difference between knowledge and terror.

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it,

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. And, of course, often what seem like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones.

I was finding it hard to manage my negative thoughts because, outside of Wendell's office, they didn't have much of an outlet.

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

But, Wendell says, like my patient, I've come up with my own way to cope. If I screw up my life, I can engineer my own death rather than have it happen to me. It may not be what I want, but at least I'll choose it. Like cutting off my nose to spite my face, this is a way to say, Take that, uncertainty.

numbness isn't the absence of feelings; it's a response to being overwhelmed by too many feelings.

There's a difference between pain and suffering. 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.

There's a difference between pain and suffering," Wendell says. "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.

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

If something upset her, she usually talked about it or cried and then got on the road to getting over it or changing it. … Kate had a tendency to bury her hurts deep inside and when they tried to rear their ugly heads, she effectively pushed them right back down. Kate gave the appearance of handling upsets well, when in actuality she did not handle them at all.

sometimes life's like a bad waiter and serves you exactly what you don't want. You can cry and scream and order him to take it back, but in the end, you're the one who has to deal with what's finally set before you.

Was a sadness so profound that the mind sought escape into fantasy?

It hurts to cry," she said, her voice raspy. "It hurts worse not to." "Did you cry?" "For four days straight." "Is that how long it took you to bury them?" "Yes, ma'am," he said in a voice that sounded like stone grating against stone.