Four major existential concerns – death, meaning in life, isolation, and freedom – play a crucial role in the inner life of every human being and.
When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune.
Whereas the truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes over flow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
In general, e mai bine sa nu ataci un mecanism de aparare, decat daca acesta creeaza mai multe probleme decat solutii si daca ai ceva mai bun de pus in loc.
Nu experientele in sine, ci felul in care le interpretam determina calitatea vietii noastre.
We humans appear to be meaning-seeking creatures who have had the misfortune of being thrown into a world devoid of intrinsic meaning. One of our major tasks is to invent a meaning sturdy enough to support a life and to perform the tricky maneuver of denying our personal authorship of this meaning. Thus we conclude instead that it was “out there” waiting for us. Our ongoing search for substantial meaning systems often throws us into crises of meaning.
What has been given is a new perspective on living life, and what has been taken away is the illusion of limitless life and the belief in a personal specialness exempting us from natural law.
Creating yourself is a source of great pride, but it also leads to a feeling of having no foundations. I’ve known many gifted children of immigrants who have a sense of being lilies growing in a swamp – beautiful flowers but no deep roots.
Trebuie sa ai in tine haos si frenezie pentru a da nastere unei stele care danseaza.
For one can never really be helped by another; one must find the strength to help oneself.
Nonetheless, the past is part of your present consciousness – it forms the spectacles through which you experience the present.
That was the first important discovery I made about Betty: she was desperately isolated, and she survived this isolation only by virtue of the sustaining myth that her intimate life was being lived elsewhere. Her friends, her circle of acquaintances, were not here, but elsewhere, in New York, in Texas, in the past. In fact, everything of importance was elsewhere. It was at this time that I first began to suspect that for Betty there was no “here” there.
The more the therapist is able to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing, the less need there is for the therapist to embrace orthodoxy.
Therapists have a dual role: they must both observe and participate in the lives of their patients. As observer, one must be sufficiently objective to provide necessary rudimentary guidance to the patient. As participant, one enters into the life of the patient and is affected and sometimes changed by the encounter. In.
Too often, we therapists neglect our personal relationships. Our work becomes our life.
Someone’s got to do some more research, but I would really like to know: when a CBT therapist really gets distressed, who does he go see?
When you meet someone, you know all about him. On subsequent meetings, you blind yourself to your own wisdom.
Fame, for example, consists of the opinions of others and requires that we must live our life as others wish.
At the end of his life, no man, if he be sincere and in possession of his faculties, would ever wish to go though it again. Rather than this, he will much prefer to choose complete nonexistence.
I dream of a love in which two people share a passion to search together for some higher truth. Perhaps I should not call it love. Perhaps it’s real name is friendship.