Danika > Danika's Quotes

“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”
― Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence

“We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art--we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones.”
― Anaïs Nin, In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays

“In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”
― Carl R. Rogers

“What I mean by this is that it is natural to want to demonstrate our competence, to show our patients that we have something to offer. This inclination can get in the way of maintaining enough reserve to let people make their own discoveries and come up with their own solutions to the problems in their lives.”
― Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Guide

“When its patent on Prozac expired, Eli Lilly put the same recipe into a pink pill, named it Serafem, and created a new "illness": premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) (Cosgrove, 2010). Many women become irritable when premenstrual, but it is one thing to say "I'm sorry I'm kind of cranky today; my period is due" and another to announce "I have PMDD." It seems to me that the former owns one's behavior, increases the likelihood of warm connection with others, and acknowledges that life is sometimes difficult, while the latter implies that one has a treatable ailment, distances others from one's experience, and supports an infantile belief that everything can be fixed.”
― Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process

“Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.”
― C.G. Jung

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”
― Fred Rogers

“...the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death

“... sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death

“What? 'Borderline patients play games'? That what you said? Ernest, you'll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That's exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis. There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can't treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Lying on the Couch

“I should have become an "I" before I became a "we".”
― Irvin Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“Mature love is loving, not being loved.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy

“It is easier, far easier, to obey another than to command oneself.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else...”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death

“To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy

“I explain to my patients that abused children often find it hard to disentangle themselves from their dysfunctional families, whereas children grow away from good, loving parents with far less conflict. After all, isn't that the task of a good parent, to enable the child to leave home?”
― Irvin Yalom, سپیده حبیب, Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psychotherapy – A Therapist's Clinical Stories of Memorable Patients and Transformation

“To fully relate to another, one must first relate to oneself. If we cannot embrace our own aloneness, we will simply use the other as a shield against isolation.”
― Irvin D. Yalom

“Nonetheless, the past is part of your present consciousness—it forms the spectacles through which you experience the present.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Lying On The Couch

“Too often, we therapists neglect our personal relationships. Our work becomes our life.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Gift of Therapy

“[T]he act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.”
― Irvin Yalom

“An important question in mental health shouldn’t be “What’s wrong with you?” but, rather, “What’s happened to you?”
― Eleanor Longden, Learning from the Voices in My Head

“I decided that my mind, body, and spirit had worked together to craft the best they could with limited resources, and to see myself as a helpless victim of chronic “mental illness” was merely adding insult to injury.”
― Eleanor Longden, Learning from the Voices in My Head