Us Quotes

“What I’d like to leave you with is simply this. Even something that sounds as individualistic as working on one’s self-esteem turns out to be social. You are neither better than nor less than other people. Those countless others who we carry in our heads, judging us and being judged. Who’s up, who’s down, who’s right, who’s wrong. Wake up. None of that matters.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Research shows us that giving brings much longer-lasting happiness than receiving does. Once we trade in the Great Lie of superiority and inferiority, we can step into the humility of knowing we are not above but a part of our marriages, our families, our society, our planet.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Microaggression is an example of the emotional violence of contempt.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“The emotion driving both shame and grandiosity is contempt.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“The world of us, of interdependence, rests on a foundation of collaboration — collaboration with nature, with one another, with the inspiration that sometimes passes through us. The world of us is a realm of innovation and abundance. The world of win-win. But individualism rests on a foundation of competition—competition with nature, with one another. It bestows a lordly sense that you are your own source of inspiration. It’s the world of win-lose.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Here’s a few things to know about grandiosity and, in particular, about the difference between grandiosity and shame. First of all, they are both lies; they are purely delusional. One human being simply cannot be fundamentally superior or inferior to another. Not fundamentally. Whether you’re a serial killer or a saint, Mahatma Gandhi or a homeless alcoholic, all people have equal essential value, worth, and dignity. Your essential worth comes from the inside out; it can’t be earned or unearned. It is yours at birth, and it’s yours unto death. [...]

It’s hard to see that equality in everyday life. Whether we allow ourselves to acknowledge it or not, most of us have an exquisite sense, in any setting, of just where we are in the pecking order. And where everyone else is as well. The only problem with that type of judgment is that it’s one hundred percent nonsense.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“I don’t ask women to speak truth to power if it’s physically dangerous. Relational Life Therapy holds that couples counseling is not the right course of action if there’s a threat of physical harm.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“As a therapist, I deliberately allow myself to be swept up in whatever feelings I have toward my clients, which I believe is often useful information. It’s like I have an antechamber in my mind, like an airlock in a submarine. I allow part of me to bathe in whatever the emotion is—annoyance, helplessness, repulsion—but the emotion stays contained in the antechamber while the rest of me, the observing me, decides how best to use that emotion.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Patriarchy celebrates dominance. God gave Adam dominion over all the beasts that flew or swam or crawled upon this earth. That was a really bad idea.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Because love does heal us; love transforms — if we are willing to move past our own egos and show up for the occasion.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“By focusing on a couple’s pattern, I hold no one at fault, yet have the freedom to call things as I see them.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Don’t defend yourself—yield. Yielding can work as a core negative image buster.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Like a Chinese finger puzzle that tightens as you try to pull it apart, you’ll never get out of this mess by contesting your partner’s core negative image. You have to lean into it instead. “Yes,” I could have said, “I was late.” Period. End of story. “And yes, it was irresponsible of me, as I can tend to be.” Now that’s an apology.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“I do not believe partners can provide a “holding environment” for each other that is exquisitely and always safe. Relationships are to some degree dangerous. Otherwise, there would be no place for vulnerability. Where’s the courage in jumping if you already know you’ll be caught? We are mortal, as I tell my clients. Life is full of risk. If you want to stay utterly safe, don’t get out of bed in the morning.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“How different are the assertions “I need more sex” and “We need a healthy sex life.” From ego to eco, from me to we. No matter the particular school or technique, what all good couples therapists have up their sleeves is the wisdom of we.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“The idea of unilateral control is, for the most part, a delusion, just as the idea of a freestanding individual is a delusion. But belief in either of these twin delusions has very real consequences.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“He believes with little hesitation that all Americans should have an even playing field. He also believes that, by and large, they do. Many men who share Jim’s brand of rugged individualism are subject to what I call privileged obliviousness. Like most rugged individualists, he simply doesn’t much register the existence of those who are excluded. [...]
Jim sees society as a meritocracy. You can raise yourself up by your bootstraps. Cream rises to the top: if you are successful, it is because you have earned it. And conversely, if you are not successful, it is because of some internal flaw—a lack of drive, or intelligence, or some other capacity.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Generally speaking, grandiose women are even more difficult to treat than grandiose men. Not always, but quite often, grandiose women have advanced degrees in offending from the victim position: “You hurt me, so I have no shame or compunction about hurting you twice as hard back because, after all, I’m your victim.” Grandiose women often inhabit the role of angry victim, a righteously indignant avenging angel. They are difficult for therapists to work with because, unless the therapist goes very carefully, confronting a grandiose woman may well cast him or her as the new victimizer. [...]
Remember, any fool can clobber their client with the truth. But a therapist who joins through the truth takes the client along, helps them see where they’ve veered off track. In order to accept the therapist’s confrontation, the client must feel that they are on their side.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“My father’s words did me no favor, and in fact, this kind of false empowerment is a form of abuse. Yes, incest is a form of abuse. Confiding in your child about your disappointing marriage is also a form of abuse. And making a child into the family hero — the light all others depend upon — is a form of trauma.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“For well over fifty years, psychotherapy has struggled mightily to help people rise above their feelings of inferiority and shame. But what about the other self-esteem disorder? So far, we’ve done a terrible job at helping people get over their sense of superiority and grandiosity. Superiority and inferiority are flip sides of the same coin; most people have both disorders. In our culture, we often tend to link the two, seeing grandiosity as a defense against shame. Every bully is really wounded inside. A common notion is that if someone were only able to love and heal the core of their insecurity, their grandiose thinking and behaviors would wither away on their own. Good luck with that. Two kinds of people hold a strong belief that loving the hurt child underneath will cure a person’s grandiosity: they are codependent women and psychotherapists.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Relational consciousness, by contrast, is synonymous with ecological consciousness. It corrects the delusion of dominion and replaces it with the knowledge that we are not outside and above nature but rather live within it as parts. This is ecological humility.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Our nervous systems were never designed to self-regulate. We all filter our sense of stability and well-being through our connection to others.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“couples therapy, once said that the day you turn to the person sleeping next to you and realize that you have been had, that this is not the person you fell in love with, and that this is all some dreadful mistake—that, Framo claims, is the first day of your real marriage. Welcome to humanity. No gods or goddesses here. And what a great thing that turns out to be. While we may long to be married to perfection, it turns out it is precisely the collision of your particular imperfections with mine—and how we as a couple handle that collision—that is the guts, the actual stuff of intimacy. Harmony,”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Most of us try to get more of what we want from our partners by complaining when they don’t get it right. That’s got to be about the worst behavioral modification program I’ve ever heard of.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“true liberation is freedom from our own automatic responses.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Paul, as a child, missed out on synchronicity.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Generally, they’re cut off from their emotions. Without ancillary help from a grown-up’s nervous system, they did—and still do—find emotions, theirs and often yours, overwhelming.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Our human brains—in fact, most mammals’ brains—are built for co-regulation.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“Neurobiologists tell us that it takes two things to unlock and open up a neural pathway. The first is that the implicit must be made explicit. Sometimes you need help seeing what you don’t see. But you must be open to the feedback. Second, there must be some sort of recoil, a sense of discrepancy, of “Oh no, I’m not sure I really want to keep doing that.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

“In this regard, we are all a type of narcissist. None of us sees ourselves directly—our self-perceptions are filtered through acquired knowledge.”
― Terrence Real, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship