Quotes About Empathy

Prayer alone can do a lot of good for the people you pray for. Beyond that, it's not necessary to try to help the whole world. Concentrate on your own circle of companions who need you. Then, whatever you do will be of greater benefit.

I am not kind to the air I breathe, nor the food I eat, nor to you.

If you don't love your characters who else will?

I cannot understand how humility exists, or can exist, without love, or love without humility

many people are good at talking and bad at understanding

It is a good proof and test of our love if we can bear with such faults and not be shocked by them. Others, in their turn, will bear with your faults, which, if you include those of which you are not aware, must be much more numerous.

For at times it happens that some trifle will cause as much suffering to one as a great trial will to another; little things can bring much distress to persons who have sensitive natures. If you are not like them, do not fail to be compassionate.

Let us look at our own shortcomings and leave other people's alone; for those who live carefully ordered lives are apt to be shocked at everything and we might well learn very important lessons from the persons who shock us. Our

Each partner, in fact, shares in the honor and dishonor of the other.

The Lord has no body now on earth but yours, no hands now but yours, no feet now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which His compassion looks out to the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless His people.

there is no reason why we should expect everyone else to travel by our own road, and

People can't listen until they're ready. I sure couldn't. I was, like, deaf to everyone except the thoughts. They were the boss of me.

It feels sadder when a black person says Nigga Because it sounds like Nigger.

Before you open your mouth," I tell him, "I want you to stop and think. Ask yourself: 'What is the thing I'm about to say going to feel like to the person I'm speaking to?

There's No Redeeming Value in Harshness

Like so many of the men I treat, Stan was being instrumental. His focus was on the task at hand, not on the subjective feelings of his partner. He was looking after her; he was not attending to her emotional needs.

Objectively" Stan was 100 percent right. At the same time, however, he was 100 percent tin-eared when it came to his wife's subjective experience. Worse, every time Lucy tried to tell him what bothered her, every time she tried to bridge the gap between them, Stan only retreated more staunchly into his precious rightness.

resolution comes only by giving up that dream and taking in that you and your partner are not, in fact, going to see all things the same way.

Our human brains—in fact, most mammals' brains—are built for co-regulation.

Paul, as a child, missed out on synchronicity.

And the more trauma you sustained as a child, the more compelling you and me becomes.

As a couples therapist, I have three sources of information: what the partners report about themselves and each other, how they behave in front of me, and how I feel witnessing their behavior.

There is no redeeming value whatsoever in harshness. Harshness does nothing that loving firmness doesn't do better.

In your close relationships, urgency is your enemy, and breath is your friend.