Rollo May on anxiety
Rollo May103 quotes“Anxiety is essential to the human condition. The confrontation with anxiety can relieve us from boredom, sharpen the sensitivity and assure the presence of tension that is necessary to preserve human existence.”
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Therapy isn’t curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human.
Rollo MayRollo May Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
Rollo MayRollo May It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love.
Rollo MayRollo May To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment.
Rollo MayRollo May There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever.
Rollo MayRollo May The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them.
Rollo MayRollo May What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?
Rollo MayRollo May When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.
Rollo MayRollo May People only change when it becomes too dangerous to stay the way they are.
Rollo MayRollo May Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism.
Rollo MayRollo May Fortunately, however, we no longer have to argue that self -love is not only necessary and good but that it also is a prerequisite for loving others.
Rollo MayRollo May Vanity and narcissism – the compulsive need to be admired and praised – undermine one’s courage, for one then fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own.
Rollo MayRollo May Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.
Rollo MayRollo May A dynamic struggle goes on within a person between what he or she consciously thinks on the one hand and, on the other, some insight, some perspective that is struggling to be born.
Rollo MayRollo May The amazing thing about love is that it is the best way to get to know ourselves.
Rollo MayRollo May Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration.
Rollo MayRollo May
Original quotes
From our community writers
And that is how time heals, not by erasing but by blurring all the memories.
VesmirVesmir Let me follow my dream. Let me follow my queen.
Moses AlexanderMoses Alexander Be kind to yourself, the way you would be to someone you love.
Courtney PeppernellCourtney Peppernell We need to surrender ourselves to the water before we can climb the spiral ladder.
Nikol MejdnNikol Mejdn You gave me the courage to rise but my darling robin why did you fly leaving me behind these four walls all alone?
Ophelia ScarlettOphelia Scarlett Giving up your dreams is easy, but ask yourself is it really easy to live without dreams?
Sania AbbasSania Abbas It’s funny how we say a person ‘made’ us when they actually broke us. Sort of like how I say ‘funny’ – but I actually mean sad.
Ranata SuzukiRanata Suzuki You can’t keep living backwards – Reminiscing on what was, And terrified to pursue What could be.
J.S BrownJ.S Brown
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More on anxiety
Anger and anxiety make you tired most.
BK ShivaniBK Shivani When Christ becomes our central focus, contentment replaces our anxiety as well as our fears and insecurities.
Charles R. SwindollCharles R. Swindoll The secret of perfect health lies in keeping the mind always cheerful – never worried, never hurried, never borne down by any fear, thought or anxiety.
Sathya Sai BabaSathya Sai Baba I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.
ZoroasterZoroaster Anxiety clouds everything you know to be true.
Sarah J. MarvinSarah J. Marvin What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.
Alexander PopeAlexander Pope Anxiety and fear are cousins but not twins. Fear sees a threat. Anxiety imagines one.
Max LucadoMax Lucado
