#therapy

People who are diagnosed as having "generalized anxiety disorder" are afflicted by three major problems that many of us experience to a lesser extent from time to time. First and foremost, says Rapgay, the natural human inclination to focus on threats and bad news is strongly amplified in them, so that even significant positive events get suppressed. An inflexible mentality and tendency toward excessive verbalizing make therapeutic intervention a further challenge. ↗

— Winifred Gallagher

#attention #buddhism #focus #meditation #therapy

She listened for the pain in my words, not to the narrative itself. She was intuiting what it meant to me, what was most important, what, in that confused mass of experience and yearning she heard in my voice, she could single out to give back. ↗

— Alice Sebold

#experience

By marrying to soon, many individuals sacrifice their chance to struggle through this purgatory of solitude and search toward a greater sense of self-confidence. They glance at the world outside the family and with hardly a second thought grasp anxiously for a partner. In marriage they seek a substitute for the security of the family of origin and an escape from aloneness. What they do not realize is that moving so quickly from one family to another, they make it easy to transfer to the new marriage all their difficult experiences in the family of origin. ↗

— Augustus Y. Napier

#therapy #experience

...in the lower self, love is neediness, “chemistry” or infatuation, possession, strong admiration, or even worship—in short, traditional romantic love. Many people who grew up in troubled homes and who experienced a stifling of their Child Within become stuck at these lower levels or ways of experiencing love. ↗

— Charles L. Whitfield

#ptsd #self-help #therapy #family

There is no worse parent than an unhappy parent! ↗

— Rossana Condoleo

#divorce-coaching #divorce-frustration #divorce-relationship #family-counselling #family-therapy

The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients, other important projects and activities-writing, teaching, tennis, research-clamored for his attention. But today nothing seemed important. He suspected that nothing had ever been important, that his mind had arbitrarily imbued projects with importance and then cunningly covered its traces. Today he saw through the ruse of a lifetime. Today there was nothing important to do, and he ambled aimlessly down Union Street. ↗

— Irvin D. Yalom

#psychology #psychotherapy #schopenhauer #freedom

I'm fine. Well, I'm not fine - I'm here." "Is there something wrong with that?" "Absolutely. ↗

— Ned Vizzini

#sadness #suicide #therapy #funny

The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life. ↗

— Wilhelm Reich

#fear-of-life #orgasm #pleasure #psychoanalysis #psychology

Life is a purposeful action. ↗

— Asa Don Brown

#psychology #psychotherapy #spirituality #waiting-to-live #life

I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged. ↗

— Koren Zailckas

#emotions #families #family #family-therapy #memoir