Quotes by Psychologists - Page 45

To identify with others is to see something of yourself in them and to see something of them in yourself--even if the only thing you identify with is the desire to be free from suffering.
Melanie Joy
2. Overcommitment and time pressure are the greatest destroyers of marriages. It takes time to develop any friendship...whether with a loved one or with God Himself.
James C. Dobson
Arvandus!" I tried again to reach him. "You can come back now. I'm alone and would love to argue with you again.
J.M. Hackman
Friendships unfold gradually as women share intimacies with one another- this takes time. You need to be willing to let your friends know the real you, but you don't want to spill your guts out the first time you're out to lunch.
Irene S. Levine
Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia.
William James
The kindest way of helping yourself is to find a friend
Ann Kaiser Stearns
Here's champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends.
Mardy Grothe
Did you just tell us you're gay?" Asks Nick"Yes.""Okay," he says. Abby swats him. "What?""That's all you're going to say? Okay?""He said not to make a big deal out of it," Nick says. "What am I supposed to say?""Say something supportive. I don't know. Or awkwardly hold his hand like I did. Anything"Nick and I look at each other."I'm not holding your hand," I tell him, smiling a little."All right"--he nods--"but know that I would.
Becky Albertalli
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
William James
The language of love is the only language understood but not spoken the world over.
Amit Abraham
We're really endless in a way. If time goes on forever, then any way you divide it is also forever. A tenth of infinity is infinity. It's only us that think the time is gone. It isn't. We're still there. Still at our wedding. Still on honeymoon. All the good times are still happening. Even in the middle of the bad times to come, we'll still be together. Forever, in a way.
Jason Dias
For despite what some people say, love is not only a sweet falling bound to come and quickly go away.
Erich Fromm
Empty Spaces I wanted to feel less.To not be burdened by emotion,To not feel sadness,To not know loss.I envied the inanimate,The trees that stand proudly in winter,Not missing their leaves.I wanted to be weightless,To not experience limitation.I didn’t want time to pass,The blur of days, months, years.It moved too quickly,I wanted to grasp on,Hold it.It eluded me,Intangible,Like light.I wanted to preserve life before you were gone.I didn’t want to know grief.But the pain kept me connected.It meant that I loved you,It meant that I would always be a little broken,It meant that our love filled all of the empty spaces.It meant that you would be with me... forever.
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
We all care intensely for the narrative of our own life and very much want it to be a good story, with a decent hero.
Daniel Kahneman
Western societies want men to be upstanding, proactive citizens who take responsibility for themselves, who work with others to improve their communities and nation as a whole. The irony is that society is not giving the support, guidance, means, or places for these young men even to be motivated or interested in aspiring to these goals. In fact, society - from politics to the media to the classroom to our very own families - is a major contributor to this demise because it is inhibiting young men's intellectual, creative, and social abilities right from the start. And the irony is only compounded by the fact that men play such a powerful part in society, which means they are effectively denying their younger counterparts the opportunity to thrive.
Philip G. Zimbardo
Inevitably, if we are to grow and change as adults, we must gradually learn to confront the challenges, paradoxes, problems and painful reality of an insecure world.
James P. Krehbiel
Desire is the key to motivation. It is the key to develop a healthy personality and a positive attitude towards oneself and others.
Amit Abraham
No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.
B.F. Skinner
The utmost form of respect is to give sincerely of your presence.
Mollie Marti
Every person is a living treasure box. Listening holds the key.
Mollie Marti
Helping others in need is not only a responsibility of life it is what gives meaning to life.
Mollie Marti
Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. ... One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs — not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can "be", that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves.
Rollo May
A fear is a reaction to a specific danger, to which the individual can make a specific adjustment. But what characterizes anxiety is the feeling of diffuseness and uncertainty and the experience of helplessness toward the threat.
Rollo May
I didn't come up with the lie. It wasn't mine. They handed the lie to me, and I tried like hell to make it work for a while.
Kenneth Logan
Now whenever I left class to go to the boys' room, I worried that I would end up on the blue tiled floor in a puddle of piss and blood.
Kenneth Logan
The depressed and the suicidal are often lonely and inhibited. Discussions of inhibition in this context usually emphasize fear of rejection.
David L. Conroy
19. Those who are the happiest are not necessarily those for whom life has been easiest. Emotional stability results from an attitude. It is refusing to yield to depression and fear, even when black clouds float overhead. It is improving that which can be improved and accepting that which is inevitable.
James C. Dobson
Many men find themselves unable to cope with even minor frustration. They get angry over trivial things, such as a broken pencil lead or an overcooked hamburger. Their anger erupts and gets out of control. They feel as though they are constantly under attack, that everyone is out to get them, and that nobody understands or cares about them. They may even get superstitious and believe that fate has it in for them, or that God has turned against them. This feeling of having no control leads to a state of continual frustration and anger.This tendency to react with instant anger can be called rage. Rage is anger that never completely goes away. Unlike regular anger, it is not a response to a specific event; rather, it is a response set, or tendency. In other words, it is an automatic way of reacting to the world without much thought. When you react to more and more situations with anger, it becomes your habitual response. You may often find yourself furiously yelling or seething inside without even knowing what it was that made you so angry. Rage sees personal attack in every disagreement. Rage causes you to feel threatened when there is no threat. And rage causes you to viciously counter-attack even a minor threat.Rage is like a wounded animal. It attacks anything that moves. And as with a wounded animal, the attacks do nothing to ease the pain. Rage depersonalizes individual people and events into a faceless, nameless "them".
Thomas J. Harbin
If you pay attention, you may find that it is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing the thing that will evoke fear and other disquieting emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.
Harriet Lerner
Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.
Susan Jeffers
You may be surprised and encouraged to learn that while inability to deal with fear may look and feel like a psychological problem, in most cases it isn’t. I believe it is primarily an educational problem, and that by reeducating the mind, you can accept fear as simply a fact of life rather than a barrier to success.
Susan Jeffers
… the secret in handling fear is to move yourself from a position of pain to a position of power.
Susan Jeffers
We fear beginnings we fear endings. We fear changing we fear “staying stuck.” We fear success we fear failure. We fear living we fear dying.
Susan Jeffers
Don’t become that which you fear most.
Lisa Cypers Kamen
We may believe that anxiety and fear don't concern us because we avoid experiencing them. We may keep the scope of our lives narrow and familiar, opting for sameness and safety. We may not even know that we are scared of success, failure, rejection, criticism, conflict, competition, intimacy, or adventure, because we rarely test the limits of our competence and creativity. We avoid anxiety by avoiding risk and change. Our challenge: To be willing to become more anxious, via embracing new situations and stepping more fully into our lives.
Harriet Lerner
When we take rejection as proof of our inadequacies, it's hard to allow ourselves to risk being truly seen again. How can we open ourselves to another person if we fear that he or she will discover what we're trying desperately to hide—that we are stupid, boring, incompetent, needy, or in some way deeply inadequate? Obviously we won't meet many people's standards or win their affection, respect, or approval. So what? The problem arises when shame kicks in and we aren't able to view our flaws, limitations, and vulnerabilities in a patient, self-loving way. The fear of rejection becomes understandably intense when it taps into our own belief that we are lesser than others—or lesser than the image we feel compelled to project.
Harriet Lerner
Fears and expectations that date back to earlier experiences of dependency, but that didn't arise during courtship or dating, are activated as commitment to the relationship increases. As a result, partners start to anticipate the worst, not the best from their relationship.
Stan Tatkin
By processing information from the environment through the senses, the nervous system continually evaluates risk. I have coined the term neuroception to describe how neural circuitsdistinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous, or life-threatening. Because of our heritage as a species, neuroception takes place in primitive parts of the brain, without our conscious awareness.
Stephen W. Porges
A child's (or an adult's) nervous system may detect danger or a threat to life when the child enters a new environment or meets a strange person. Cognitively, there is no reason for them to be frightened. But often, even if they understand this, their bodies betray them. Sometimes this betrayal is private; only they are aware that their hearts are beating fast and contracting with such force that they start to sway. For others, the responses are more overt. They may tremble. Their faces may flush, or perspiration may pour from their hands and forehead. Still others may become pale and dizzy and feel precipitously faint.
Stephen W. Porges
Playing nice" comes naturally when our neuroception detects safety and promotes physiological states that support social behavior. However, pro-social behavior will not occur when our neuroception misreads the environmental cues and triggers physiological states that support defensive strategies. After all, "playing nice" is not appropriate or adaptive behavior in dangerous or life-threatening situations. In these situations, humans - like other mammals - react with more primitive neurobiological defense systems. To create relationships, humans must subdue these defensive reactions to engage, attach, and form lasting social bonds. Humans have adaptive neurobehavioral systems for both pro-social and defensive behaviors.
Stephen W. Porges
It's more that I want to leap in and say certain things and do certain things, but I always seem to hold myself back. I think a big part of me is afraid.
Becky Albertalli
Success or failure inbusiness is caused more by mental attitude even than by mentalcapacity." Banish the fear-attitude; acquire the confidentattitude. And remember that the only way to acquire it is—toacquire it.
Walter Dill Scott
Thousands of years ago, when our ancestors encountered a predatory animal like a lion, it was best to react immediately and not stand around thinking about the lion, admiring its beauty or wondering why it was bothering them instead of tracking down some tasty antelope. Thus, the fast track to the amygdala kept our ancestors alive.
John B. Arden
That is why in adult life, people generally tend to relive rather than live, that is, to repeat the patterns of the past and defend the primary fantasy in the defiance, and avoid the real gamble or real adventure of taking a chance on something new. They are afraid that if they really cry out, if they really ask, if they really scream for help, that it won't come, and they'll be in the same panicky frightened state they were in when they were little.
Robert W. Firestone
Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.
Philip G. Zimbardo
But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.
Kay Redfield Jamison
Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about their history. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that is no longer exists, continuing to fear and avoid dangers that, although once real, have not been real for a long time.
Alice MIller
The greatest fear dogs know is the fear that you will not come back when you go out the door without them.
Stanley Coren
The human body is sustained by the same prana that nourishes the universe. The body (your equipment) has the ability to control and use this special energy through the use of "pranayama". Don't let true word scare you - it just means to control, channel, and direct the flow of prana through the use of breath.
John Holland
What are the messages that you are entertaining?
Asa Don Brown
If there is a single factor that makes spiritual direction effective as a change agency for the soul, it is this: spiritual direction holds our shame at bay long enough for us to see ourselves as God sees us in Christ.
Gary W. Moon
Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.
William James
The highest goal of spirituality is Self-realization, but what does that mean? It means to feel your Self as a living reality in this moment, and there is always only this moment. (10)
Gay Hendricks
Remember that self-doubt is as self-centered as self-inflation. Your obligation is to reach as deeply as you can and offer your unique and authentic gifts as bravely and beautifully as you're able.
Bill Plotkin
Perfectionists are not all negative, miserable, unhappy and over controlling individuals
Asa Don Brown
Perhaps the day will come where the validity of one's spirituality will be judged not by the correctness of one's theology but by the authenticity of one's spiritual life. When that day comes, an authentically spiritual Buddhist and an authentically spiritual Christian may find that they have more in common with each other than they do with those in their respective religions who have failed to develop their spirituality. (Beyond Religion, p. 98)
David N. Elkins
Life is a purposeful action.
Asa Don Brown
Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.
Tara Brach
Don't let the covers fool you. Books, like lives, are wiggling, evolving, living things. They're not bound by pages or authors or schools of thought. They're not born when they're printed; in fact, they only start to live once they're read. So first of all, we thank you, reader. You dignify this work we do, and we're sincerely grateful for your time and attention.
Kelly G. Wilson
Some things can be fixed. Some things are just too broken.
Susan Vaught