As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.
IRVIN D. YALOMJust as you were about to step on it, I asked you “Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?” – Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
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Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
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Indeed, the evidence supporting the efficacy of group therapy, and the prevailing sentiment of the mental health profession, are sufficiently strong that it would be difficult to defend the adequacy of the inpatient unit that attempted to operate without a small group program.
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We take pleasure not only in the growth of our patient but also in the ripple effect—the salutary influence our patients have upon those whom they touch in life.
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Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
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There is some evidence, for example, that those who enter the death-related professions (soldiers, doctors, priests, and morticians) may in part be motivated by a need to obtain control over death anxiety.
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To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.
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The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One’s own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one’s sphere of control.
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… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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Therapists need to have a long experience in personal therapy to see what it’s like to be on the other side of the couch and see what they find helpful or not helpful. And if possible, get into therapy at different stages of their life with different kinds of therapists just to sample a bit.
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To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
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Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
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If I’m among men who don’t agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself.
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The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient’s control over every interaction.
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
IRVIN D. YALOM