Quotes About Introspection

But sometimes—more often than we tend to realize—those difficult people are us.

Talking can keep people in their heads and safely away from their emotions. Being silent is like emptying the trash. When you stop tossing junk into the void—words, words, and more words—something important rises to the surface.

He'd given me permission to feel and also a reminder that, like so many people, I'd been mistaking feeling less for feeling better.

Once we know what we're feeling, we can make choices about where we want to go with them.

I think about how it's the not knowing that torments all of us. Not knowing why your boyfriend left, not knowing what's wrong with your body. Not knowing if you could have saved your son. At a certain point, we all have to come to terms with the unknown and the unknowable. Sometimes we'll never know why.

Each time, Rita was shocked to find herself alone, but her history didn't surprise me. We marry our unfinished business.

Not knowing is a good place to start," he says, and this feels like a revelation. I spend so much time trying to figure things out, chasing the answer, but it's okay to not know .

Are you apologizing because it makes you feel better or because it will make the other person feel better? Are you sorry for what you've done or are you simply trying to placate the other person who believes you should be sorry for the thing you feel completely justified in having done? Who is the apology for?

A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, but it's up to the patient to take a good look at that reflection, to stare back at it and say, "Oh, isn't that interesting! Now what?" instead of turning away.

Hell is other people.It´s true - the world is filled with diffucult people...but sometimes - more often - than we tend to realize - those diffucult peopel are us.

They'll be there regardless, so you might as well welcome them because they hold important clues.

Every person you've been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)—all of them evoke memories, conscious or not. Often they inform how you relate to yourself and others. Sometimes you have conversations with them in your head; sometimes they speak to you in your sleep.

Sometimes when we don't like our feelings, we toss them to others like a hot potato.

Het is niet alsof we een kijkje nemen in die duistere krochten, het licht aandoen en een stel kakkerlakken aantreffen. Vuurvliegjes houden ook van duisternis. Er is ook schoonheid op die plekken. Maar we moeten ernaar kijken om die te kunnen zien.

Like me, the women I met with at the bar were embarrassed by the way they'd dismissed men in the past, evaluating every guy as either too-something or not-something-enough. These guys didn't fit our image of the person we thought we'd end up with, leaving us to end up with nobody

What makes therapy challenging is that it requires people to see themselves in ways they normally choose not to.

We can't convince people not to be self-destructive, because for now, the self-destruction serves them. What we can do is try to help them understand themselves better and show them how to ask themselves the right questions until something happens—either internally or externally—that leads them to do their own persuading.

It turns out that most of us aren't aware of how we actually spend our time or what we really do all day until we break it down hour by hour and say it out loud.

and I'm not sure if it's all of your annoying questions or the sadistic silences you put me through—but I feel like you get me, you know? And I don't want your head to get too big or anything, but I thought, you have a more complete picture of my total humanity than anyone else in my life.

Projective identification is like tossing a hot potato to the other person. The man no longer has to feel his anger, since it's now living inside his partner.

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. This happens to therapists when we're providing therapy, and it happens to our own therapists too. We are mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors, showing one another what we can't yet see.

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.

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.

Relationships in life don't really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you've been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally) - all of them evoke memories, conscious or not. Often they inform how you relate to yourself and others. Sometimes you have conversations with them in your head; sometimes they speak to you in your sleep.