“One thing that has surprised Julie about going through the process of watching herself die is how vivid her world has become. Everything that she used to take for granted produces a sense of revelation, as if she were a child again. Tastes- the sweetness of a strawberry, it’s juice dripping onto her chin; a buttery pastry melting in her mouth. Smells - flowers on a front lawn, a colleague‘s perfume, seaweed washed up on the shore, Matt’s sweaty body in bed at night. Sounds – the strings on a cello, the screech of a car, her nephew’s laughter. Experiences - dancing at a birthday party, people-watching at Starbucks, buying a cute dress, opening the mail. All of this, no matter how mundane, delights her to no end. She’s become hyper-present. When people delude themselves into believing they have all the time in the world, she noticed, they get lazy. She hadn’t expected to experience this pleasure in her grief, to find it invigorating, in a way. But even as she’s dying, she’s realized, life goes on - even as the cancer invades her body, she still checks Twitter. At first she thought, why would I waste even ten minutes of the time I have left checking Twitter? And then she thought, why wouldn’t I? I like Twitter! She also tries not to dwell on what she’s losing. “I can breathe fine now, “Julie says, “but it’ll get harder, and I’ll grieve for that. Until then, I breathe.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Maybe you can let yourself cry too.”
“One foot, then the other. Don't look at all five feet at once. Just take a step. And when you've taken that step, take one more. Eventually you'll make it to the shower. And you'll make it to tomorrow and next year too. One step.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“One of the most important steps in therapy is helping other people take responsibility for their current predicaments, because once they realize that they can (and must) construct their own lives, they're free to generate change.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Attachment styles are significant because they play out in people’s adult relationships too, influencing the kinds of partners they pick (stable or less stable), how they behave during the course of a relationship (needy, distant, or volatile), and how their relationships tend to end (wistfully, amiably, or with a huge explosion).”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Wendell explains that my pain feels like it's in the present, but it's actually in both the past and the future. Therapists talk a lot about how the past informs the present- how our histories affect he ways we think, feel, and behave and how at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past. If we don't accept the notion that there's no redo, much as we try to get our parents or siblings or partners to fix what happened years ago, our pasts will keep us stuck. Changing our relationship to the past is a staple of therapy. But we talk far less about how our relationship to the future informs the present too. Our notion of the future can be just as powerful a roadblock to change as our notion of the past. In fact, Wendell continues, I've lost more than my relationship in the present. I've lost my relationship in the future. We tend to think that the future happens later, ut we're creating in our minds every day. We the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Next time you're about to rule out some guy because he's not your ideal, try to focus on the good things about him, because some guy is going to have to focus on the good things about you, even though he may have wanted someone more easygoing or taller. Every time you start to dissect some guy, note that he's willfully ignoring all of this in order to go out with you.”
Source: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
“Look for reasons to say 'yes' instead of 'no,' he reminded me. Screen in rather than constantly screening out. Always ask yourself this: If an interesting guy were right in front of you, would you honestly turn that person away because of a few pounds or inches, or a sentence in a profile that you don't like? If so, that's fine. Just don't complain when you can't find anybody suitable because you've eliminated every potential guy on a technicality. Because if these guys eliminated people on technicalities, they probably wouldn't date you, either.”
Source: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
“You can let more people into the mix who could possibly make you happy. Or you can hold out for that two percent of men who you assume meet your requirements, and hope that coincidentally, someone in that two percent feels that you're in his two percent. And even then, the people you assume to meet your requirements might in fact not be the right fit for you.”
Source: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
“When I look at my friend's marriages, with their routine day-to-dayness, they actually seem far more romantic than any dating relationship might be. Dating seems romantic, but for the most part it's an extended audition. Marriage seems boring, but for the most part it's a state of comfort and acceptance. Dating is about grand romantic gestures that mean little over the long-term. Marriage is about small acts of kindness that bond you over a lifetime. It's quietly romantic. He makes her tea. She goes to the doctor appointment with him. They listen to each other's daily trivia. They put up with each other's quirks. They're there for each other.”
Source: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
“Well you seem like you're enjoying the experience of suffering, so I thought I'd help you out with that... There's a difference between pain and suffering,' Wendell says, 'You're going to have to feel pain- everyone feels pain at times- but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“How can there be an endpoint to love and loss? Do we even want there to be? The price of loving so deeply is feeling so deeply – but it’s also a gift, the gift of being alive.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“From time to time, Wendell and I have discussed the ways parental relationships evolve in midlife as people shift from blaming their parents to taking full responsibility for their lives. It’s what Wendell calls “the changing of the guard.” Whereas in their younger years, people often come to therapy to understand why their parents won’t act in ways they wish, later on, people come to figure out how to manage what is. And so my question about my mother has gone from “Why can’t she change?” to “Why can’t I?”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Pushing aside emotions only makes them stronger.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“...many people come to therapy seeking closure. Help me not to feel. What they eventually discover is that you can’t mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You’ll also mute the joy.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Displacement (shifting a feeling toward one person onto a safer alternative) is considered a neurotic defense, neither primitive nor mature. A person who was yelled at by her boss but could get fired if she yelled back might come home and yell at her dog. Or a woman who felt angry at her mother after a phone conversation might displace that anger onto her son.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people’s feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“I spend so much time trying to figure things out, chasing the answer, but it’s okay to not know.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“I’ve lost more than my relationship in the present. I’ve lost my relationship in the future. We tend to think that the future happens later, but we’re creating it in our minds every day.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“You have a breakup, but you didn’t lose a spouse. So friends assume that you’ll move on relatively quickly, and things like these concert tickets become an almost welcome external acknowledgement of your loss—not only of the person but of the time and company and daily routines, of the private jokes and references, and of the shared memories that now are yours alone to carry.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“...therapy won’t make all my problems disappear, prevent new ones from developing, or ensure that I’ll always act from a place of enlightenment. Therapists don’t perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. A patient may become less reactive or critical, more open and able to let people in. In other words, therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Talking can keep people in their heads and safely away from their emotions. Being silent is like emptying the trash. When you stop tossing junk into the void—words, words, and more words—something important rises to the surface. And when the silence is a shared experience, it can be a gold mine for thoughts and feelings that the patient didn’t even know existed.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“...by Google-stalking Boyfriend I was holding on to a future that had been canceled. I was watching Boyfriend’s future unfold while I stayed locked in the past. I’d need to accept that his future and mine, his present and mine, were now separate and that all we had left in common was our history.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“You have two ears and one mouth; there’s a reason for that ratio.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Infant (hope)—trust versus mistrust
Toddler (will)—autonomy versus shame
Preschooler (purpose)—initiative versus guilt
School-age child (competence)—industry versus inferiority
Adolescent (fidelity)—identity versus role confusion
Young adult (love)—intimacy versus isolation
Middle-aged adult (care)—generativity versus stagnation
Older adult (wisdom)—integrity versus despair”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Some people hope that therapy will help them find a way to be heard by whoever they feel wronged them, at which point those lovers or relatives will see the light and become the people they’d wished for all along. But it rarely happens like that. At some point, being a fulfilled adult means taking responsibility for the course of your own life and accepting the fact that now you’re in charge of your choices.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“There's a biblical saying that translates roughly as 'First you will do, then you will understand.' Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and experience something before its meaning becomes apparent. It's one thing to talk about leaving behind a restrictive mindset. It's another to stop being so restrictive. The transfer of words into action, the freedom of it, made me want to carry the action outside the therapy room and into my life.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“During my training, a supervisor once told me, "There's something likable in everyone," and to my great surprise, I found that she was right.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“I particularly liked this quote from Frankl's book: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Children, bound by parental rules, are really free only in one aspect—emotionally. For a while, at least, they can cry or laugh or have tantrums unselfconsciously; they can have big dreams and unedited desires. Like many people my age, I don't feel free because I've lost touch with that emotional freedom.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Não tivemos um profundo “grand finale”, como Julie vinha chamando nossa última sessão. Suas últimas palavras para mim foram sobre um filé. “Deus, o que eu não daria por um filé!”, disse, com a voz fraca, baixinho. “É bom que eles tenham filé onde quer que eu esteja indo.” E, então, adormeceu. Foi um final em nada diferente das nossas demais sessões, onde ainda após o “nosso tempo acabou”, a conversa perdurava. Nas melhores despedidas, sempre existe a sensação de que existe algo mais a ser dito.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“What parents needed, I believed, wasn't another book about how they had to calm down and take a break. What they needed was an actual break from the deluge of parenting books.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Depois que Julie soube que estava morrendo, sua melhor amiga, Dara, querendo ser útil, enviou-lhe o conhecido ensaio “Bem-vindo à Holanda”. Escrito por Emily Perl Kingsley, mãe de uma criança com síndrome de Down, esse texto trata da experiência de ter suas expectativas de vida viradas de cabeça para baixo. Esperar um bebê é como planejar uma viagem fabulosa à Itália. Você compra um monte de guias e faz seus planos maravilhosos. O Coliseu, o David de Michelangelo, as gôndolas de Veneza. Pode ser que você aprenda algumas frases práticas em italiano. Tudo é muito excitante. Depois de meses de expectativa e ansiedade, finalmente chega o dia. Você faz as malas e vai. Várias horas depois, o avião aterrissa. A aeromoça aparece e diz: “Bem-vindos à Holanda”. “Holanda?!?”, você diz. “Como assim, Holanda?? Minha viagem era para a Itália! Eu deveria estar na Itália. Passei a vida toda sonhando em ir para a Itália.” Mas houve uma mudança no plano de voo. Eles aterrissaram na Holanda, e é lá que você tem que ficar. O importante é que eles não te levaram para um lugar horroroso, desagradável, imundo, cheio de pestilência, fome e doenças. É apenas um lugar diferente. Então, você precisa sair e comprar novos guias. Precisa aprender uma língua completamente nova. Você vai conhecer todo um novo grupo de pessoas que nunca viu. Trata-se apenas de um lugar diferente. É mais tranquilo do que a Itália, menos chamativo do que a Itália, mas depois que você está lá por um tempo e consegue recuperar o fôlego, olha em volta... e começa a reparar que a Holanda tem moinhos de vento... e a Holanda tem tulipas. A Holanda tem até Rembrandt. Mas todo mundo que você conhece está na agitação de ir e vir da Itália... Todos se vangloriam sobre a temporada maravilhosa que passaram lá. E pelo resto da sua vida, você dirá: “É, era para lá que eu deveria ter ido. Foi isso que planejei”. A dor disso nunca, jamais, jamais, jamais desaparecerá... porque a perda desse sonho é uma perda muito, muito significativa. Mas... se você passar a vida toda lamentando o fato de não ter chegado à Itália, pode ser que nunca se sinta livre para aproveitar coisas muito especiais e encantadoras que existem na Holanda.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“In other words, personality disorders are ego-syntonic, which means the behaviors seem in sync with the person’s self-concept; as a result, people with these disorders believe that others are creating the problems in their lives. Mood disorders, on the other hand, are egodystonic, which means the people suffering from them find them distressing. They don’t like being depressed or anxious or needing to flick the lights on and off ten times before leaving the house. They know something’s off with them.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“O terapeuta explicou que, com frequência, diferentes partes do nosso íntimo querem coisas distintas, e se silenciamos as partes que consideramos inaceitáveis, elas encontrarão outras maneiras de se fazerem escutar.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“O que este livro pergunta é: “Como mudamos?”, e o que ele responde é: “Ao nos relacionarmos com os outros”.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Sabe, em relação a esses idiotas, eu tenho uma ideia a respeito. E se as pessoas que estão te deixando louco não estiverem tentando te deixar louco? E se essas pessoas não forem idiotas, mas razoavelmente inteligentes, e só estão fazendo o melhor que podem num determinado dia?”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Quase’ é sempre o mais difícil, não é?” disse, certa tarde. “Quase conseguir alguma coisa, quase ter um bebê, quase conseguir uma tomografia sem problemas, quase não ter mais câncer.” Pensei em como muitas pessoas evitam tentar coisas que realmente querem na vida, por ser mais doloroso chegar perto do objetivo, mas não consegui-lo, do que nem chegar a arriscar.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“Que prazo você acha que deveria ter a sentença desse crime? Um ano? Cinco? Dez?’ Muitos de nós torturamo-nos por nossos erros durante décadas, mesmo depois de termos, genuinamente, tentado nos redimir. O quanto essa sentença é razoável?” (posição 5836)”
Source: Talvez você deva conversar com alguém: Workbook
“How long do you think the sentence for this crime should be? A year? Five? Ten?' Many of us torture ourselves over our mistakes for decades, even after we've genuinely attempted to make amends. How reasonable is that sentence?”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“We grow in connection with others. Everyone needs to hear that the person's voice saying, 'I believe in you. I can see possibilities that you might not see quite yet. I imagine that something different can happen, in some form or another.' In therapy we say, 'Let's edit your story.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“We grow in connection with others. Everyone needs to hear that other person's voice saying, 'I believe in you. I can see possibilities that you might not see quite yet. I imagine that something different can happen, in some form or another.' In therapy we say, 'Let's edit your story.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“What makes for a good marriage isn't necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane and often boring non-profit business. And I mean this in a good way.”
Source: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
“Well, sure, the vows say “in sickness and health” and “for better or worse” and all that, but that’s kind of like clicking okay to the terms and conditions when you download an app or sign up for a credit card. You don’t think any of that is going to apply to you.”
Source: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
“By trying so hard to provide the perfectly happy childhood, we're just making it harder for our kids to actually grow up.”
“Dating is about grand romantic gestures that mean little over the long term. Marriage is about small acts of kindness that bond you over a lifetime.”
Source: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
“Could it be that by protecting our kids from unhappiness as children, we’re depriving them of happiness as adults?”
“Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.”
“The three words women most want to hear from a man are, "You lost weight"”
