Quotes About Introspection

Therapy elicits odd reactions because, in a way, it's like pornography. Both involve a kind of nudity.

I remember saying that there was a difference between examining and dwelling, and if we're cut off from our feelings, just skating on the surface, we don't get peace or joy—we get deadness.

Who looks inside, awakes.

I think about how it's not knowing that torments all of us. At a certain point, we all have to come to terms with the unknown and the unknowable. Sometimes we'll never know why.

John lowers himself onto the couch, kicks off his shoes, then stretches out, lies down, and adjusts his head on the pillows. Usually he sits cross-legged on the sofa, so this is a first. I notice, too, that there's no food today. "Okay, you win," he begins with a sigh. "Win what?" I ask. "The pleasure of my company," he deadpans. I raise my eyebrows.

I'll bet you could name five truly difficult people off the top of your head right now—some you assiduously avoid, others you would assiduously avoid if they didn't share your last name. But sometimes—more often than we tend to realize—those difficult people are us. That's right—sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.

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. Why do I do the very thing that will guarantee my own unhappiness over and over again?

For many people, going into the depths of their thoughts and feelings is like going into a dark alley—they don't want to go there alone.

The First Confession Allow me to get defensive for a minute. You see, when I told Wendell that everything was just fine until the breakup, I was telling the absolute truth. Or, rather, the truth as I knew it. Which is to say, the truth as I wanted to see it.

That's right—sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.

the upside of being a therapist's child is that nothing gets shoved under the rug; the downside is that you'll be totally screwed up anyway).

we are asking forgiveness of others to avoid the harder work of forgiving ourselves.

The eminent Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung said this: "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls." But he also said this: "Who looks inside, awakes.

Freud argued that "the physician should be impenetrable to the patient, and like a mirror, reflect nothing but what is shown to him.

particularly liked this line from Frankl's book: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

know that therapy won't make all my problems disappear, prevent new ones from developing, or ensure that I'll always act from a place of enlightenment. Therapists don't perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. A patient may become less reactive or critical, more open and able to let people in. In other words, therapy is about understanding the self that you are.

Insight is the booby prize of therapy" is my favorite maxim of the trade, meaning that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don't change when you're out in the world, the insight—and the therapy—is worthless. Insight allows you to ask yourself, Is this something that's being done to me or am I doing it to myself? The answer gives you choices, but it's up to you to make them.

Sometimes I wonder, Who am I to make the important decisions in my own life? Am I really qualified for this? Everyone wages this internal battle to some degree: Child or adult? Safety or freedom? But no matter where people fall on those continuums, every decision they make is based on two things: fear and love. Therapy strives to teach you how to tell the two apart.

In other words, therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are so that you aren't trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life.

Every day, our patients are opening up questions that we have to think about for ourselves. If they can see themselves more clearly through our reflections, we can see ourselves more clearly through theirs.

I remember a quote from Einstein: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." I've always felt that made sense, but, like most of us, I also believe that I should be able to think my way out of my problem by going over and over how I thought myself into it.

You are not the best person to talk to you about you right now.

we both know in a bone-deep way that there's nothing else to say.

It's only in silence that people can truly hear themselves. ... Even great joy is sometimes best expressed through silence.