The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOMAnd if you do the latter, you’re not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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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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This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
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There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can’t treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)
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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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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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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.
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A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming 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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Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.
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Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.
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I don’t let any personal views about religion cause me to want to take away something that’s offering the patient comfort.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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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.
IRVIN D. YALOM