Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.
IRVIN D. YALOMThe more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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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Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
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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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He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
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If I had to pick out a therapist in a movie that I’d like to go see as a personal therapist, it would be Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting.
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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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You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable.
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We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion.
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The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
IRVIN D. YALOM