Feeling Good Together Quotes

“Pride and Shame. Intimacy requires humility and the willingness to examine your own failures in your relationships. This can be painful because feelings of shame get in the way, especially when we care about the person who’s criticizing us and we sense that her criticisms are true. We don’t want to hear it. So instead of listening and acknowledging the truth in the criticism, we put up a wall and get defensive. We tell ourselves that the other person doesn’t know what she is talking about. Of course, this annoys the other person, and she intensifies her attack. What might have been a golden opportunity for intimacy simply becomes an endless battle of egos.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The secret to making troubled relationships work

“You can’t use this technique in a vacuum. You have to work hard on listening, acknowledging how the other person was feeling, and sharing your own feelings, without making any demands or trying to find a solution. You stop trying to solve the problem, but you don’t stop listening, sharing your feelings, and supporting your partner. Sometimes the attempt to solve the problem is the problem, because no one is listening or acknowledging the feelings.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“close relationships depend on being emotionally open. That means opening up, telling people how you feel and asking about how they feel.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“Assertiveness is the second characteristic of good communication. You express your feelings openly and directly, using “I Feel” Statements, such as “I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable right now” or “I’m feeling sad.” In addition, you share your feelings tactfully so the other person won’t feel belittled, attacked, or put down.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“expression (Assertiveness), and caring (Respect). The acronym, EAR, will help you remember these three components: E = Empathy, A = Assertiveness, and R = Respect. Bad communication is just the opposite. You don’t listen, you don’t express your feelings openly, and you don’t convey any caring or respect.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“To make sure she really grasped this, I told her that I’d play the role of the negative voice in her mind, and I’d try to make her feel anxious, inadequate, and bitter, and she could play the more objective, positive, self-loving voice. I call this technique the Externalization of Voices.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“Self-blame is not the antidote to blaming your partner. As you can see in the table on this page, self-blame triggers guilt, anxiety, depression, and giving up. It won’t lead to love or to meaningful solutions to the problems in your relationships with other people. Personal responsibility, without any blame at all, is the mind-set that leads to intimacy.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“Hilda looked helpless and inadequate, but she was actually controlling her husband in a powerful way. Her self-blame was her not-so-subtle way of keeping Charles in a straitjacket. She was really saying, “I can’t bear to hear what you’re telling me. Don’t say anything critical or I’ll make you pay!” She was so fragile that I had to discontinue the couples therapy so I could work with her individually. Hilda’s self-blaming tendencies were a huge barrier to intimacy. She simply couldn’t endure the pain of getting close to the man she loved because she didn’t know how to love and accept herself.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“When you’re done, ask yourself if there are any disadvantages of blaming the other person. Is there a downside? For example, if you blame the other person: You’ll feel frustrated and resentful because nothing will change. The other person will feel judged and insist that it’s all your fault. The conflict will be demoralizing and exhausting. You won’t be able to get close to the other person. You won’t experience any spiritual or emotional growth. People may get tired of your complaining.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“if a colleague constantly criticizes you, you could tactfully point out that she’s wrong and explain your own thinking so she’ll understand where you’re coming from. Or if a depressed friend constantly complains and puts a negative spin on everything, you could encourage him to cheer up and look at the positive side of things. Or if you’re fed up because your wife never listens, you could be assertive and tell her that your ideas and feelings are just as important as hers. And if you have a friend who uses you, you could tell him that you’re not going to put up with his self-centered behavior any more. How well do these strategies work? You probably know the answer to that question. When you try to change someone you’re not getting along with, he’ll nearly always dig in his heels and resist. This is a fact of human nature. You could even say that trying to change someone forces him to remain exactly the same. So if you’re trying to change the”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“But now I have a new question for you: How are you going to make the relationship better? You can: Wait for the other person to change. Try to change the person you’re not getting along with. Focus on changing yourself. Lots of people patiently wait for the other person to change. If you choose this option, you may be in for a long wait. Although we all have the capacity to learn and grow, it can take years for people to become more loving and open, and it may never happen. Waiting for someone to change is essentially the same as choosing to maintain the status quo.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“When you’re at odds with someone, you have three choices: you can maintain the status quo, you can end the relationship, or you can work to make the relationship better.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“We all do these kinds of things when we’re not getting along with other people, but owning up to it can be very painful. I know that when I’m at odds with someone, I hate to examine my role in the conflict because I feel certain that it’s the other person’s fault. When it finally dawns on me that I was actually provoking the problem, it feels embarrassing and shameful.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“We all do these kinds of things when we’re not getting along with other people, but owning up to it can be very painful.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“Allison seemed oblivious to the fact that she was causing the very problem that was bothering her. If she’d tried to design a behavior modification program to make sure that her husband would never share his feelings with her, she couldn’t have done a better job. She punished him every time he tried to express his feelings, and she’d been doing this to him for decades. The impact of her behavior wasn’t exactly subtle. At the same time, she had no interest whatsoever in examining her role in the problem. She made it clear that this topic was strictly off-limits. Perhaps the pain of self-examination was more than she could endure.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“Bad communication is just the opposite. Instead of opening up, you hide your feelings or act them out aggressively. Instead of listening to your partner, you argue defensively and insist that he or she is wrong. And instead of conveying caring and respect, you go to war and try to put your partner down. Allison and Burt agreed that these ideas made perfect sense.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“First, you have to be able to express your feelings openly and directly. Second, you have to be able to listen nondefensively when your partner talks. Third, you have to treat your partner with respect, even if you feel angry or frustrated.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work

“she’d just read an article titled “Loneliness in Marriage” in a popular women’s magazine. The article stated that men and women have trouble communicating because they’re inherently different. When boys are growing up, they play with trucks and learn to solve problems and achieve goals. In contrast, when girls are growing up, they play with dolls and learn to talk about their feelings so they can develop emotional bonds with each other. Allison said she was relieved to discover that millions of women throughout America felt just as lonely and frustrated as she did because their husbands couldn’t deal with feelings or intimacy. She explained that her husband, Burt, was exactly like that— he was an accountant and understood numbers, but didn’t understand a single thing about emotions. She”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work