#mastery

Even you, the professional helper, often mistaken for the enlightened Guru or Staretz, can become lost in your thoughts that you must be competent without fault. You may become enthralled with your identity as a professional, even the pressures of the culture of mastery that expects you to heal your clients without fail. Never mind all of the variables over which you have no control, it is up to you, according to the canons of mastery, to control the health and well-being of those for whom you provide professional care. This potentiates a furthering alienation between you and your clients. You are at risk to become, if you have not already, the one who does to your clients; to be the one the active subject acting upon the passive and receptive objects, your clients; to be the one in possession of special knowledge, technique and mastery. All of this conspires to coax or coerce you into treating your client as reduced, a mere case. Unawareness to these influences gives you little chance to consider their influence on your practice in the clinical setting, much less give attentive efforts to resist or change them. ↗

— Scott E. Spradlin

#dbt #dialectical-behavior-therapy #luce-irigaray #mastery #mental-health

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#appetite #color #does #firmness #itself

With all our mastery over the powers of Nature we have adhered to the view that the struggle for existence is a permanent and necessary condition of life. ↗

— Frederick Soddy

#condition #existence #life #mastery #nature

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. ↗

— Leonardo da Vinci

#self-mastery #art

A strong life force can be seen in physical vitality, courage, competent judgment, self-mastery, sexual vigor, and the realization of each person’s unique talents and purpose in life. To maintain a powerful life force, forget yourself, forget about living and dying, and bring your full attention into this moment. ↗

— H.E. Davey

#courage #judgment #ki #life-force #meditation

We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways. ↗

— Clarence Day

#fact #first #grand #her #mastery

Mastery passes often for egotism. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#mastery #often #passes

When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art. This is contingent upon mastery of the medium. ↗

— Hans Hofmann

#become #contingent #emotion #every #expression

The mastery of the turn is the story of how aviation became practical as a means of transportation. It is the story of how the world became small. ↗

— William Langewiesche

#became #how #mastery #means #practical

Through his mastery of storytelling techniques, he has managed to separate his character, in the public mind, from his actions as president. He has, in short, mesmerized us with that steady gaze. ↗

— James Nathan Miller

#character #gaze #his #managed #mastery