Counseling Quotes

I have frequently thought to myself, 'If I can teach my daughter one thing, it will be the love of self unconditionally.' Unconditional love and peace are obtainable, but they are only obtainable if I can learn to move beyond the conditions that I placed on my life. When conditions are placed on my life and on the lives of others, they ensure that I will never experience the depths of love and happiness.

Asa Don Brown

A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.

Richard Rohr

I found that the same softness which once made me a target now compelled people to trust me with their stories.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

The counselor says that with more time and more surgeries, I will begin to feel normal again. She says this with a mouth that can still smile. It’s so easy to be reassuring when you have lips.

Rasmenia Massoud

It turns out that up to 35 percent of people with bipolar disorder also have ADHD.

Julie A. Fast

As you may already know, post-traumatic stress disorder is extremely complex. Each client has a unique, perhaps virtually unbelievable, set of experiences, and an almost equally set of reactions to those experiences.

Aphrodite Matsakis

We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—hourly and daily. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the task which it constantly sets for each individual.

Viktor E. Frankl

I could help you,” I said. “Counseling, drugs, a religious advisor, a girlfriend.

Janet Evanovich

Paul didn't just see emotions. He saw the need they represented.

Beth Moore

However, if you do not believe your clients, they may sense your doubt and never fully trust you. As Bruce Goderez (1986), director of a PTSD inpatient unit says, "It is important for the clinician and counselor to be willing to be made a fool." In other words, it is better that you believe a client who is lying or distorting the truth than to disbelieve a hurting trauma survivor who may never seek help again if your attitude is one of disbelief or disdain. Even if that client were to continue in therapy, they would never fully trust you.

Aphrodite Matsakis

When a person in your life continuously displays to you they do not care, there comes a point where you may want to start believing them.

Mark W Boyer

most of us can only deny short-term pleasures because we see a realistic path between self-denial now and something better down the road.

David Brooks

Facing one’s past can be a perilous activity. For the client, joy must exceed misery. Personal successes must far outweigh losses. Pleasure must exceed pain. Always. Always. To do otherwise is a failure of the counselor.— André Chevalier

Nikki Sex

You cannot contain evil by shaming it, or making people feel guilty, but only by revealing it toward it is, and then seeing the good as better.

Richard Rohr

Treat this crisis as practice for the next crisis.

John Parenti

There is an inverse relationship between control and trust. Trust is more of a two-way exchange than most people, especially those in power, realize. Leaders in government, news media, universities, and corporations think they can own trust, when, of course, trust is given to them. Trust is earned with difficulty and lost with ease. When those institutions treat constituents like masses of fools, children, miscreants,or prisoners, when they simply don't listen,it's unlikely they will engender warm feelings of mutual respect. Trust is an act of opening up. It's a mutual relationship of transparency and sharing. The more ways you find to reveal yourself and listen to others, the more you will build trust, which is your brand.

Jeff Jarvis

Will therapy make you feel any better? Not if it's working.

Code Black

This is one of the difficulties and pleasures of studying the Inklings; Christians all, they offer, along with the expected 20th-century psychological explanations for behavior, unexpected spiritual ones.

Philip Zaleski

Dost thou want another eye beside that of Him who sees every secret thing?

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

failure is costly, both to society and to individuals. Pretending that all people are equal in their abilities will not change the fact that a person with an average IQ is unlikely to become a theoretical physicist, or the fact that a person with a low level of music ability is unlikely to become a concert pianist. It makes more sense to pay attention to people’s abilities and their likelihood of achieving certain goals, so people can make good decisions about the goals they want to spend their time, money, and energy pursuing

David Hambrick

You're so haunted by other people's futures that you forget, the only future you cannot see is your own.

Minority Report (TV show)

A mentoring nurse to new doctors: "Check your own pulse first.

Code Black

In the reflected gaze of his (her husband's) steady admiration, she saw the face of the girl he had fallen in love with.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Almost everything I've done is technically wrong, but Paul never mentioned the mistakes, only the corrective measures.

Stefan Fatsis

One must always forgive another's passion.

Pat Conroy

If you ask an Irishman for directions, he might be quick to answer, Well if I were going there, I would not start here.

Steve Stockman

Someone mentioned therapy to me once. I read a book instead. ~ Drew Stirling

Jayden Hunter

The actions and emotional responses of others are not your responsibility. You cannot rescue people from themselves. This is for them to do. — André Chevalier

Nikki Sex

their anxiety, justified or not, was genuine,

Robert A. Caro

When is a train most free? Is it when it goes bouncing across the field off the track? No. It is free only when it is confined (if you will) to the track. Then it runs smoothly and efficiently, because that was the way that its maker intended for it to run. It needs to be on the track, structured by the track, to run properly. You too need to be on the track. God's track is found in God's Word.

Jay E. Adams

Author has developed a routine of daily emotional debriefing with his kids as he tucks them in at night. To encourage the habit of keeping uncluttered, open heart, he starts with basic questions asking whether anyone has hurt them or made them angry to help them process at an age-appropriate depth. As they mature, he will add questions.

Andy Stanley

Part of the genius of (Nick) Sabin's system was that he understood that no matter the skill set, he was inheriting vulnerable kids from various backgrounds. For those times when they made poor decisions, as they invariably did, the safety net must be strong as far and wide as possible.

Jeff Benedict

soon he’ll reach for her because she’s beautiful, and she’s his wife. If she cringes away from him because you’ve convinced her he isn’t good enough for her, how will that make him feel? If she submits to him out of obligation, how will that make her feel?What if she approaches him and later is ashamed of wanting her own husband because he isn’t good enough for her? It’ll be hard for a marriage to last under those conditions. This isn’t what you want for Susan. Forgive him. Accept him. You’ll be doing your daughter a favor.

Elaine Cantrell

Deanna's job (as counselor) is to keep us from deluding ourselves.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode Guide Team

The mouth tastes food, the heart tastes words.

Hmong Proverb

The biblical counselor must always remember that the ROOT problem is deeper than skin; it is sin. The ultimate cure is not culture, but Christ.

James MacDonald

Being Scared-off by EvilLastly, we deny the presence of evil because we are terriﬁed by the horrendously hurtful, cruel, and bloody kinds of evil people tell us about—if we are willing to listen. This was poignantly brought home during an interdisciplinary case conference involving a resident who was counseling for the ﬁrst time a woman who had been sexually abused. As we worked with him, it became clear that he was resisting entering what he called the 'psychic cave" of her sealed—off experience from which she was shouting for assistance. Because of his resistance, he was not providing her the support and guidance she so desperately needed, and he was not facilitating her working through the abuse and hurt that were continuing to impact her life. As he was confronted about this at one point in the conference, he stated tearfully: "I'm afraid if I help her move into her memories. I will have to go with her, and if I go with her, my view of the world as a basically good and safe place will be shattered. I'm not sure I can handle that for myself, or be able to think about the fact that my wife and kids may be more vulnerable living in this world than I can be comfortable believing" (Means 1995, 299).

J. Jeffrey Means

Sacramental listening reminds us that current suffering isn’t the end of the story. God loves us deeply, and the vision for the future is vaster and more magnificent than we could ever imagine. In these moments of profound human presence, we are awakened to the divine presence and see that the kingdom of God is coming and yet is already here.

Richard Rohr

When emotions turn and stay sour, when thoughts become cynical and judgmental, good and compassionate treatment is on the line. Helpers who become sour and cynical tend to begrudge their high need clients for their neediness. There is a risk that helpers become too well-practiced at taking a bleak view of those they have avowed to assist. There is a temptation to begin to blame clients for their failure to improve. If treatment ends pre-maturely, with either a client never returning to treatment or a helper 'firing' them out of frustration, there is a tendency for the client to take the fall. Of course what we are talking about here are signs of burnout.

Scott E. Spradlin

The word 'survivor' carries a weight of remembrance that has broken the minds and bodies of more than a few men and women. It also contains a humbling light of recognition that compels many to do whatever they can to help reinforce the efforts of those who might be 'at risk' of not just giving up on their dreams, but of giving up on their continued existence.

Aberjhani

I'd always follow Nixon's orders, but you can't order somebody to be happy.

Charles W. Colson

It is not rubbish! It is the part of people that you do not understand.

E.M. Forster

Alex had cooked, and coaxed, and helped Mark form borders around the shapeless days. Alex had given meaning to the word "servant".

Davis Bunn

God can make good use of all that happens, but the loss is real.

C.S. Lewis

Loss is only temporary when you believe in God!

Latoya Alston

Although the client-centered approach had its origin purely within the limits of the psychological clinic, it is proving to have implications, often of a startling nature, for very diverse fields of effort.

Carl Rogers

Should you operate upon your clients as objects, you risk reducing them to less than human. Following the culture of appropriation and mastery your clients become a kind of extension of yourself, of your ego. In the appropriation and objectification mode, your clients’ well-being and success in treatment reflect well upon you. You “did” something to them, you made them well. You acted upon them and can take the credit for successful therapy or treatment. Conversely, if your clients flounder or regress, that reflects poorly on you. On this side of things the culture of appropriation and mastery says that you are not doing enough. You are not exerting enough influence, technique or therapeutic force. What anxiety this can breed for some clinicians! DBT offers a framework and tools for a treatment that allows clients to retain their full humanity. Through the practice of mindfulness, you can learn to cultivate a fuller presence to the moments of your life, and even with your clients and your work with them. This presence potentiates an encounter between two irreducible human beings, meeting professionally, of course, and meeting humanly. The dialectical framework, which embraces contradictions and gives you a way of seeing that life is pregnant with creative tensions, allows for your discovery of your limits and possibilities, gives you a way of seeing the dynamic nature of reality that is anything but sitting still; shows you that your identity grows from relationship with others, including those you help, that you are an irreducible human being encountering other irreducible human beings who exert influence upon you, even as you exert your own upon them. Even without clinical contrivance.

Scott E. Spradlin

Perfectionism is adaptive if you are mindful of your humanhood.

Asa Don Brown

Unfortunately, there is no expiration date on grief

Elizabeth Czukas

When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you’re going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life… it’s a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.

Patrick Swayze

All you need is one safe anchor to keep you grounded when the rest of your life spins out of control

Katie Kacvinsky

Respect your needs and limitations as you work through your grief and begin to heal

American Pregnancy Association

Healing doesn’t mean forgetting or making the memories insignificant. Healing means refocusing

American Pregnancy Association

The loss of my child broke my spirit.

Asa Don Brown

Allow yourself to be an anchor and anchored by others.

Asa Don Brown

An anchor should be someone who is personally open and willing to communicate.

Asa Don Brown

The loss of a child exploits the emotions of each individual it encounters.

Asa Don Brown

Letting go of the past, is like opening the flood gates of healing to be set free.

Asa Don Brown

The benefits of forgiveness are limitless.

Asa Don Brown

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Counseling Quotes

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