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Quote by Marsha M. Linehan

“Wisdom and freedom require the ability to allow the natural flow of emotions to come and go, experiencing emotions but not being controlled by emotions. Always having to prevent or suppress emotions is a form of being controlled by emotions.”

Quote by Marsha M. Linehan

Work

DBT Skills Training: Manual

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Author

Marsha M. Linehan
Marsha M. Linehan

Marsha M. Linehan is a renowned psychologist known for her contributions to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). Born on May 5, 1943, she is a prominent researcher and clinician in the field of mental health. more

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“And it seemed to me that even if you weren’t actively letting your emotions ride its surface, the ocean still went on giving you something, teaching you some sort of lesson. Perhaps that was why I had never actually considered its existence before—never really thought about the thundering of the waves as they sweep in endlessly toward the shore. But since I was thinking about it, what on earth did people in the city turn to when they felt the need to reckon with “balance"? Maybe the moon? That seemed like the obvious choice. But then the moon was so small and far away, and something about it felt sort of lonely, and it didn’t seem like it would really help . . .”

“He speculated that, just as a powerful west wind blows away thick banks of clouds, the graphic, scorching emotion that passed through his soul in the form of a dream must have canceled and negated the longing for death, a longing that had reached out and grabbed him around the neck. All that remained now was a sort of quiet resignation. A colorless, neutral, empty feeling. He was sitting alone in a huge, old, vacant house, listening as a massive grandfather clock hollowly ticked away time. His mouth was closed, his eyes fixed on the clock as he watched the hands move forward. His feelings were wrapped in layer upon layer of thin membrane and his heart was still a blank, as he aged, one hour at a time.”

“As hard as I try, as hard as I always try, I cannot keep the sounds inside. Pain is a unique thing. You can feel so much of it at once that you don’t feel anything at all. You can have a little bit of pain and feel like crawling into a hole and dying. Then there’s the other amount of pain, the kind where it feels like the whole world is caving in on you and nothing will ever matter until it goes away, and everything is better again, and then you realize that you can’t keep in the screams, the laughter, the tears, the shouts. Everything wants to express itself at once because if it doesn’t, you will break into a million pieces and the pain will take over in ways it didn't before.”

“All peoples are more the same than they are different. We all mostly want the same things out of life, but those slight differences generate emotion, and emotion generates a sense of importance. Therefore, we come to perceive our differences as disproportionally more important than our similarities. And this is the true tragedy of man, that we are doomed to perpetual conflict over the slight difference.”