Quotes About Healing

therapy works best when people start getting better—when they feel less depressed or anxious, or the crisis has passed. Now they're less reactive, more present, more able to engage in the work.

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

There's a difference between pain and suffering," Wendell says. "You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much.

A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, but it's up to the patient to take a good look at that reflection, to stare back at it and say, "Oh, isn't that interesting! Now what?" instead of turning away.

In the early sessions, it's always more important for patients to feel heard and understood than it is for them to gain any insight or make any changes.

Sharing difficult truths might come with a cost — the need to face them — but there's also a reward: freedom. The truth releases us from shame.

how our histories affect the ways we think, feel, and behave and how at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past.

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

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 1 Idiots Chart note, John: Patient reports feeling "stressed out" and states that he is having difficulty sleeping and getting along with his wife.

In therapy we say, Let's edit your story.

People may seek peace and clarity, understanding and healing, but deathbeds themselves are often a stew

the famous stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Sitting-with-you-in-your-pain is one of the rare experiences that people get in the protected space of a therapy room, but it's very hard to give or get outside of it—even for Jen,

Instead, you release them in layers, moving closer and closer to the tender core: your sadness

the upside of being a therapist's child is that nothing gets shoved under the rug; the downside

Some people hope that therapy will help them find a way to be heard by whoever they feel wronged them, at which point those lovers or relatives will see the light and become the people they'd wished for all along. But it rarely happens like that.

Some people hope that therapy will help them find a way to be heard by whoever they feel wronged them, at which point those lovers or relatives will see the light and become the people they'd wished for all along. But it rarely happens like that. At some point, being a fulfilled adult means taking responsibility for the course of your own life and accepting the fact that now you're in charge of your choices. You have to move to the front seat and be the mommy dog driving the car.

Study after study shows that the most important factor in the success of your treatment is your relationship with the therapist, your experience of "feeling felt." This matters more than the therapist's training, the kind of therapy they do, or what type of problem you have.

If an addict stops drinking, for instance, family members often unconsciously sabotage that person's recovery, because in order to regain homeostasis in the system, somebody has to fill the role of the troubled person.

If we no longer feel, we should be grieving our own deaths.

Loss of trust is harder to repair.

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing. And, of course, often what seem like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones.

Irvin Yalom, the psychiatrist, wrote that it was "far better that [a patient make progress but] forget what we talked about than the opposite possibility (a more popular choice for patients)—to remember precisely what was talked about but to remain unchanged.

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it.