Quotes About Understanding

her first conversation with Matt, one that lasted until dawn and still hasn't ended.

The people who are watching us--the people who really see us--don't care about the false self, about the show we're putting on.

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

Before you speak, ask yourself, What is this going to feel like to the person I'm speaking to?

Years later, when I've done thousands of first sessions, and information-gathering has become second nature, I'll use a different barometer to judge how it went: Did the patient feel understood? It always amazes me that someone can walk into a room as a stranger and then, after fifty minutes, leave feeling understood, but it happens nearly every time. When it doesn't, the patient doesn't return. And because Michelle did, something had gone right.

A therapist will hold up a mirror to patients, but patients will also hold up a mirror to their therapists.

The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm had made this point more than fifty years earlier: "Modern man thinks he loses something—time—when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to

Wendell says that if I've been taking such copious notes during our phone calls, I probably haven't been able to listen to Boyfriend, and if my goal is to be open to understanding his perspective, that's hard to do when I'm trying to prove a point rather than have an interaction in earnest. And, he adds, I'm doing the same thing to him in our sessions.

It's easy to conflate the intimate experience of romance or sex with the intimate experience of having somebody pay undivided attention to the details of your life, accept you fully, support you without competing agendas, and know you so deeply.

I wonder why I seem to be more curious about you than you are about yourself?

People want to be understood and to understand, but for most of us, our biggest problem is that we don't know what our problem is. We keep stepping in the same puddle.

I have a feeling that there's a lot of buried love between John and Margo because I know this: love can often look like so many things that don't seem like love.

It's 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.

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

Sitting-with-you-in-your-pain is one of the rare experiences that people get in the protected space of a therapy room, but it's very hard to give or get outside of it—even for Jen, who is a therapist.

You have two ears and one mouth; there's a reason for that ratio"),

Our must-haves and deal-breakers are the "what," when they should be the "why.

Sprechen das Englisch!

was more to a guy than a handsome face, a chiseled body and a big penis. Having a great sense of humor and the ability to carry on a meaningful conversation definitely counted for a lot.

As I grew older, I found I could surrender my own comfort so effortlessly it didn't qualify as sacrifice.

I believe it was the Lord...for who else could know your trouble and ours and bring us together in this right way?

It's not that you like being sad, but you start to see the value of it. You don't judge sadness so harshly.

Plus vieux, tu comprendras que, malgré les apparences, il n'y a pas de bon ou mauvais moment. Il y a un moment, point final.

What is it about sadness that can be so fulfilling?