Quotes About Psychology

The department shrink spent weeks trying to convince me I was deeply traumatized, but eventually he had to give up, admit I was fine (sort of regretfully; he doesn't get a lot of stabbed cops to play with, I think he was hoping I would have some kind of fancy complex) and let me go back to work.

Most people have no reason to know how memory can turn rogue and feral, becoming a force of its own and one to be reckoned with.

It's ironic, isn't it? A hundred psychology students, and not one of us recognized a classic psychopath. You know the strange thing? I wished I had done everything he claimed I had. If I had, then it would all have made sense: I would have been getting what I deserved. But I hadn't done any of it, and yet that made absolutely no difference to what happened. There was no such thing as cause and

Plenty of people have told me—and several of them even meant it as a compliment—that I have a God-given talent for fucking with people's minds; and what you can do to strangers is nothing compared to what you can do to your very own family.

This watching through cool intent eyes and delicately adjusting one factor or another till a man's fundamental instinct for self-preservation cracks, is savagery in its most pure, most polished and most highly evolved form.

Various therapists and psychiatrists have diagnosed various things along the way, but what it comes down to is that Dina is no good at life. It takes a knack that she's never quite got hold of.

The moment I said Broken Harbor to O'Kelly, every faded scar in my mind had lit up like a beacon. I had walked the glittering lines of those scars, obedient as a farm animal, from that moment straight to this one. I had moved through this case shining like Conor Brennan had shone on that dark road, a blazing signal for predators and scavengers far and wide.

if you're interested in learning more about his schema model, read Reinventing Your Life).

the more turbulent the emotions expressed on paper, the greater the improvement in their immune function.

Automatic thoughts are the slippery initial defining thoughts of a schema, the ones that prime the flood of feelings and lead to a schema attack.

When therapy was successful, two kinds of changes showed up in person after person: the schemas' grip on their lives loosened, and the script changed for the better its typical outcome.

When the amygdala heats up with intense activity, emotionally loaded thoughts loom larger in our field of attention.

This would explain how our schemas shape so powerfully the way things seem, almost as though they cast a spell over us.

mistrust elicits rage, deprivation can foster a deep sadness.

Of course I'm anxious now—my schema fears are making me assume I'm going to be abandoned or left out.

In Buddhist psychology, compassion is seen as a direct antidote to aggression.

If the amygdala recognizes an emotionally potent stimulus similar to something we reacted strongly to in the past, it unleashes a flood of emotion and a fitting action.

Each schema has its own emotional hallmark, a distinctive gut-level, wrenching feeling that takes us over when the schema has us in its grip.

Buddhist psychology acknowledges our disturbing emotions but sees them as covering our essential goodness like clouds covering the sun.

Strong emotions are messages from the unconscious.

A schema represents an outmoded holdover from earlier learning. In other words, remind yourself, "I'm having this reaction because of what I learned to do back then, not because of what's actually happening right now.

To some extent, raw emotions arise from a part of the brain without words.

Loss of control lies at the core of the vulnerability pattern. The distinctive emotional signature of vulnerability is an exaggerated fear that some catastrophe is about to strike.

whenever something triggers them our feelings flare and our perceptions become distorted.