Quotes About Growth

Over the years, during lazy daydreams, she'd sometimes allowed herself to fantasize about running into him. But in her thoughts, they'd still been kids. She couldn't imagine them relating to each other as adults. Whatever Shane sparked in her, she'd thought she'd outgrown. But they weren't who they used to be. They were better.

she was reminded that he was just a person. He mad massive mistakes, he felt things, he was sorry, ad he was trying to find his way, like everyone else.

But part of her calm was also knowing that those abysmal final years of their relationship could never happen to the person she was now. There's no way she could let a man make her feel so unseen for so long. Now she knew what it was like to be seen.

And then, for the first time ever, Shane ignored what he desperately wanted and made his first truly responsible decision.

Moving to New York was about reinvention. If you didn't want that, you stayed in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

You know what I read?" asked Eva through her pasted-on smile. "A tree grows its branches out until it touches the tips of the next closest tree. And they're linked forever. Because if they're really close, their roots grow together. They're so intertwined underneath that no matter what happens above ground, they stay connected.

Change also comes when we learn to do something different, to make choices in our thinking and daily routines that interrupt a downward spiral and create an upward one.

even though the false self is meant to protect the more vulnerable self, it actually has the effect of weakening it. When people who have become dependent on false-self functioning go into therapy or enter a 12-step program, they can go through a period of feeling very vulnerable and shaky because they are removing their coping strategy and exposing the pain underneath it. But over time, new healthy emotional habits get created, and new ways of healthy coping get practiced and adopted.

Science can now illuminate why approaches like psychodrama, 12-step programs, group therapy, journaling, bodywork, yoga, exercise, and massage work; why one-to-one therapy can help us learn a new style of attachment; why changing the way we live and the nature of our relationships can change the way we think and feel, and vice versa; and why quick fixes don't work but why a new design for living does.

Today there is help all around—articles abound on these subjects, 12-step rooms are around the corner, and help is down the hall in many schools and workplaces. But we have to reach out and take hold of the help. And we have to stick with it until we can create meaningful change in our lives.

we're expressing in our adult lives the anger we had to hold in as children. Our anger might also be acting as a defense against deeper feelings of pain and helplessness. We need to get to the root so that we can change the pattern.

This ability makes us more available to all of life. It builds self-confidence and inner strength.

Change comes when we have sat in the pain long enough and fully enough so that we can feel it, can open our mouths and talk about it, see it for what it is, reorder and understand it, and then walk out of it. This does not mean that we won't feel bad, hurt, angry, or triggered about our past again. It just means that if and when we are triggered, we won't catapult into an unconscious place from which we can only act out, shut down, or dive straight into self-medicating behaviors.

In working through the pain of a traumatic past, it is important to help clients to identify not only what hurt them, but what sustained them.

It's easy to plant a seed and sprinkle it with water, but once the sun scorches the ground, and the earth soaks up all the moisture, you're left with nothing but a thirsty little flower trying desperately to make it out of the dirt.

Don't swear off all the fruits just because you ate one bad apple.

we grew apart. The thing is, we loved each other, and on some level we always will, but when you're twenty-three and you fall in love, you tend to think that love will supercede any problems. Realizing that no matter how much you love somebody, no matter how desperately you want a relationship to work, life can act as an oxidizer and corrode it to pieces." - Loring Blackman

There's nothing like heartbreak to crack a person wide open. But the cracks can sometimes act as reservoirs too.

I nodded, refusing to consider the possibility that any of us are doomed to die the same sorry people we sometimes become.

How does that goddamn cliché go? If I'd known then what I know now. Or maybe I should have heeded the opposite warning. Maybe I should have delved a little deeper into then back when I was wandering aimlessly around now.

Do you think people can change?" I nodded, refusing to consider the possibility that any of us are doomed to die the same sorry people we sometimes become.

the past was a worthless human ability that had evolved for the sole purpose of reminding mortals of their mistakes.

You don't just go to college to get a job. You go to discover who you are.

I am somebody who... - I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I need that freedom, that ability to make mistakes out there. Because there's a fine line between making a mistake or being brilliant.