Quotes About Understanding

They all needed to feel loved in order to live better lives.

Multiple personality disorder was redefined in 1994, when the name was changed to dissociative identity disorder (DID) so as to reflect a better understanding of the condition. Whereas the term multiple personality means that the person has developed several different personalities, dissociative identity means that a fragmentation of the main personality has occurred.

If you point out a "truth," for want of a better word, to patients before they're able to hear or admit it, they lose trust in the therapist; their defences take over, and they improve only superficially. Overinterpreting to the client is the sign of a new or insecure therapist. A therapist can lead patients to the door of understanding, but they shouldn't drag them in. Their patients will enter when they're ready.

Get off your high horse and get yourself grounded! Know what it is like to have your world turned upside down! Your becoming a good therapist is not about putting yourself apart from the people you work with; it is about coming to know intimately their pain, their humiliation, and their ability to rise above it.

Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.

I still don't understand anything- exept that somehow I know that You are love. And that in my heart has been so great a love for Christy as I did not know could exist on this earth. You, God, must be responsible. You must have put it there. So what do I do with it now?

Truth could never be wholly contained in words.

I'd long since learned that no difference in viewpoint should ever be allowed to cause the least break in love. Indeed, it cannot, if it's real love. ...But relationships can be kept intact without compromising one's own beliefs. And if we do not keep them intact, but give up and allow the chasm, we're breaking the second greatest commandment.

We were trying to understand, then, what her life was about to become. I think we're still trying to understand.

I want you to be crazy about me," I'd said, and he said, "You want that. I know. But you also want space to think and work. Freedom. You want to rest sometimes. You'd hate me if I tried to contain you." He'd sighed, pressed his lips into a thin line. "I love you, but you want impossible things, Ash," he said, finally, and it was true. It still is. I want impossible things.

I decided that not talking is like a litmus test for a real friend. You can just sit there and be. Not always be filling up the air with words

The fact that you don't grasp the meaning of something doesn't mean it has none.

Maybe she doesn't want to understand things she doesn't think she can change anyway. Maybe sometimes you just have a couple of rotten choices. Like you can fail to comprehend the world you've got, or you can see it as this ugly, evil, dangerous place and not be able to do a damn thing about it.

So, I guess people figure it's not as hard to lose your mother when you never got along anyway. But they're wrong. They're dead wrong. It's always hard to lose your mother. Always. If you loved her, if you hated her. If she smothered you, if she ignored you. It doesn't matter. She's your mother. Your mother. That's just a very tough bond to break.

We're all just doing our best.' I left out the second part. 'Even if it doesn't look so good from the outside.

I think you're the first person I've ever known . . . I might not say it right. We'll see . . . who really sees me. And I mean the whole thing of me, not just the part that fits with how they want to see me. And it seems weird to me, because the first person I met who really sees me for all of who I am . . . you know . . . can't see.

I guess if you're really a friend, you overlook certain things. Its easy to be friends with someone who only says things you want to hear. I guess if you're really a friend, you have to cut a friend some slack.

So if you run around putting a pillow under people to cushion their fall . . . well, I'm just not sure it's quite the favor we think it is.

If it takes you apart, that's not love. Love puts you back together.

People learned by what they experienced. It mattered little what anyone said to anyone.

I'm not saying I know it all. In one way, we've all just got the time since we got up this morning. But I've seen a lot of people walk a lot of roads. Some not so happy. And it makes them what they are. So if you run around putting a pillow under people to cushion their fall . . . well, I'm just not sure it's quite the favor we think it is.

When somebody holds a view that seems to make no sense, know that it makes sense to them, but for reasons you don't know anything about yet. And I guess in a lot of cases,

Smart is overrated. Most of the harm done in this world is done by people who fancy themselves smart. And they are—book smart. But most really smart people have no sense. They value their brains too highly. I'd rather have someone with sense. And a little heart.

Not a one of us can be everything somebody else wants us to be. Trouble comes when we try to pretend we can. Or when people see it like a betrayal. You know. That somebody won't meet all their needs. My mom used to say it's because we weren't put here on earth to take care of each other. And that it's silly to get mad at someone for letting you down when they're just being who they are. She said it's like getting mad at your dog for not being a cat.