This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.
IRVIN D. YALOMThe 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.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.
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I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome.
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves.
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
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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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It’s not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It’s like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death’s terror.
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I never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
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Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
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… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
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Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
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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