Quotes About Empathy

Maybe part of the problem of feeling like this life isn't my real life is that I have no connections, no real links to anyone.

Share too much and someone can hurt you.

To know other people thought he'd made a mistake vindicated me. I wasn't a bad girlfriend, he was simply going through a period of temporary insanity and he'd come to his senses soon.

When you love someone, them being hurt is worse than any pain that you could suffer.

What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?

W]hen I see men callously and cheerfully denying women the full use of their bodies, while insisting with sobs and howls on the satisfaction of their own, I simply can't find it heroic, or kind, or anything but pretty rotten and feeble.

However, when we are depressed, being reminded of other people's suffering only serves to increase our self-hatred.

When a depressed person shrinks away from your touch it does not mean he is rejecting you. Rather he is protecting you from the foul, destructive evil which he believes is the essence of his being and which he believes can injure you.

After all I've done for you' has alienated more children from their parents than any act of parent cruelty.

we can love someone without understanding that person.

But Mrs. Brockington, old, alone, almost crippled by rheumatism, had faith and courage. She had more. She had a warm serenity, and when Ellen was with her, she almost had it too. For goodness is catching. Mrs. Brockington was further on the road Ellen wanted to travel, and because Mrs. Brockington had got there, Ellen felt she might get there too.

No matter how you resent other people's company, when you have it, you can't concentrate so fiercely upon your misery as you would without it.

Children make parents as wretched as parents make children; but children do not really believe that. They can't understand how it is that those whom they take for tyrants can be hurt by the victims of the tyranny.

When you find yourself responding to someone else's behavior, it can be easy to dwell on what that person has done and how terrible it is and what exactly they should should do to fix it. Instead, try looking at your own feelings as a true message about your internal state of being, and decide how you want to deal with whatever's going on.

Introducing your lovers helps prevent one of the scariest aspects of jealousy, which is the part where you imagine that your lover's other lover is taller, thinner, smarter, sexier, and in all ways preferable to funky old you. When you meet that other person or when your lovers meet each other, they meet real people, warts and all, and so often wind up feeling safer. Introducing

Remember, as you look at yourself, to look kindly, and also remember that you are not balancing a checkbook: anything you see that you don't like, or that you want to change, is not a debit that you subtract from your virtues. When you learn to reflect on your strengths, it becomes easier to look at your weaknesses with acceptance and compassion. Keep your virtues at their full value and cherish them.

It seems to me that faithfulness has very little to do with who you have sex with." Faithfulness is about honoring your commitments and respecting your friends and lovers, about caring for their well-being as well as your own. If

when you own your feelings, you have lots of choices. You can talk about how you feel, you can choose whether or not you want to act on those feelings, you can learn how to understand yourself better, you can comfort yourself or ask for comfort. Owning your feelings is basic to understanding the boundaries of where you end and the next person begins and the perfect first step toward self-acceptance and self-love.

We know from extensive experience that appearance and wealth are not predictors of good loving. We try to avoid ranking people as better or worse than each other and are unhappy with those who want to relate to our rank more than our selves. Hierarchies produce victims on the top as well as the bottom, because it is almost as alienating to be approached by too many people for the wrong reasons as it is to be approached by nobody at all.

Only when we're all willing to own our emotions, and let our lovers and friends own theirs, does anyone have the power to change and grow.

A technique for good listening is to listen to what your partner has to say without interrupting and let them know you heard them by telling them what you think they just said.

A basic precept of intimate communication is that each person owns their own feelings . No one "makes" you feel jealous or insecure—the person who makes you feel that way is you. No matter what the other person is doing, what you feel in response is determined inside you. Even when somebody deliberately tries to hurt you, you make a choice about how you feel.

Cuando has construido una relación satisfactoria contigo mismo, entonces tienes algo de gran valor para compartir con los demás.

When we see someone who intrigues us, we like to feel free to respond, and, as we explore our response, to discover whatever is special about this new, fascinating person. We like relating to different kinds of people and reveling in how our differences expand our horizons and offer us new ways to be ourselves.