Quotes About Awareness

The second people felt alone, I noticed, usually in the space between things—leaving a therapy session, at a red light, standing in a checkout line, riding the elevator—they picked up devices and ran away from that feeling. In a state of perpetual distraction, they seemed to be losing the ability to be with others and losing their ability to be with themselves.

Being silent is like emptying the trash. When you stop tossing junk into the void—words,words,words—something important rises to the surface.

Yalom wrote in Existential Psychotherapy, our awareness of death helps us live more fully—and with less, not more, anxiety.

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.

Reacting vs. responding = reflexive vs. chosen. We can choose

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.

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

Displacement's a bitch, isn't it? We all use defense mechanisms to deal with anxiety, frustration, or unacceptable impulses, but what's fascinating about them is that we aren't aware of them in the moment.

Half my life is over, I would say, seemingly out of nowhere, in our very first session—and Wendell would jump right on this. He was picking up where my internship supervisor had left off years earlier. You won't get today back. And the days were flying by.

Maybe our pasts don't define us but inform us.

Your feelings don't have to mesh with what you think they should be," he explained. "They'll be there regardless, so you might as well welcome them because they hold important clues." How many times had I said something similar to my own patients? But here I feel as if I'm hearing this for the first time. Don't judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don't be afraid of the truth.

Who looks inside, awakes.

you can't mute one emotion without muting the others.

But feelings are actually more like weather systems—they blow in and they blow out. Just because you feel sad this minute or this hour or this day doesn't mean you'll feel that way in ten minutes or this afternoon or next week.

dance allows our bodies to express our emotions in a way that words sometimes can't. When we dance, we express our buried feelings, talking through our bodies instead of our minds — and that can help us get out of our heads and to a new level of awareness. That's partly what dance therapy is about. It's another technique some therapists use.

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

When we dance, we express our buried feelings, talking through our bodies instead of our minds—and that can help us get out of our heads and to a new level of awareness

You won't get today back.

you can't mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You'll also mute the joy.

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.

Einstein: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

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.

Pushing aside emotions only makes them stronger.

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.