Matthew Royal’s Reviews > Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy > Status Update

[A] strategy for interacting with [angry people]. The essence of this method was: (1) Don't turn [him] off by defending yourself. Instead, do the opposite— urge him to say all the worst things he can say about you. (2) Try to find a grain of truth in all his criticisms and then agree with him. (3) After this, point out any areas of disagreement in a straightforward, tactful, nonargumentative manner."

"Perfection is man's ultimate illusion. It simply doesn't exist in the universe. There is no perfection. It's really the world's greatest con game; it promises riches and delivers misery. The harder you strive for perfection, the worse your disappointment will become because it's only an abstraction, a concept that doesn't fit reality."

"Sadness comes, however, without distortion. It involves a flow of feeling and therefore has a time limit. It never involves a lessening of your self-esteem. Depression is frozen -- it tends to persist or recur indefinitely."

"You can replace your guilt with a more enlightened basis for moral behavior--empathy.... Empathy is the capacity to conceptualize the impact of what you do on yourself and on the other person, and to feel appropriate and genuine sorrow and regret without labeling yourself as inherently bad. Empathy gives you the necessary mental and emotional climate to guide your behavior... in the absence of the whip of guilt."

"Be sure you actually write down upsetting thoughts.... when you write them down, they become exposed to the light of reason."

"twisted thinking is a major cause of your suffering."