Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.

But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.

We tend to think that the future happens later, but we're creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists.

There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked, because pain is not a contest.

Relationships in life don't really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you've been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)--all of them evoke memories, conscious or not.

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.

Follow your envy - it shows you what you want.

peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.

You can have compassion without forgiving. There are many ways to move on, and pretending to feel a certain way isn’t one of them.

Don’t judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don’t be afraid of the truth.

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.

It’s impossible to get to know people deeply and not come to like them.

The inability to say no is largely about approval-seeking—people imagine that if they say no, they won’t be loved by others. The inability to say yes, however—to intimacy, a job opportunity, an alcohol program—is more about lack of trust in oneself. Will I mess this up? Will this turn out badly? Isn’t it safer to stay where I am?

Above all, I didn't want to fall into the trap that Buddhists call idiot compassion - an apt phrase, given John's worldview. In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.

Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope.

The opposite of depression isn’t happiness, but vitality.

Most big transformations come about from the hundreds of tiny, almost imperceptible, steps we take along the way.

Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it’s outward-directed—angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious. But often it’s only the tip of the iceberg, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll glimpse submerged feelings you either weren’t aware of or didn’t want to show: fear, helplessness, envy, loneliness, insecurity. And if you can tolerate these deeper feelings long enough to understand them and listen to what they’re telling you, you’ll not only manage your anger in more productive ways, you also won’t be so angry all the time.

But many people come to therapy seeking closure. Help me not to feel. What they eventually discover is that you can’t mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You’ll also mute the joy.

If the queen had balls, she’d be the king.” If you go through life picking and choosing, if you don’t recognize that “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” you may deprive yourself of joy.

Just because she sends you guilt doesn’t mean you have to accept delivery.

In the best goodbyes, there’s always the feeling that there’s something more to say.

at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past.

In therapy we aim for self-compassion (Am I human?) versus self-esteem (a judgment: Am I good or bad?).

Happiness (t) = w0+ w1  γt−jCRj+ w2  γt−jEVj+ w3  γt−jRPEj Which all boils down to: Happiness equals reality minus expectations.

What people don’t like to think about is that you can do everything right—in life or in a treatment protocol—and still get the short end of the stick.

Losing somebody you love is such a profoundly lonely experience, something only you endure in your own particular way.

Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals. —Gretel Ehrlich

What most people mean by type is a sense of attraction—a type of physical appearance or a type of personality turns them on. But what underlies a person’s type, in fact, is a sense of familiarity. It’s no coincidence that people who had angry parents often end up choosing angry partners, that those with alcoholic parents are frequently drawn to partners who drink quite a bit, or that those who had withdrawn or critical parents find themselves married to spouses who are withdrawn or critical.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.—James Baldwin