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One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.

Irvin D. Yalom

If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Cease Climb Enough Height Loo Reach Tragedy Tragic We
Live right, he reminded himself, and have faith that good things will flow from you even if you never learn of them.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Even Good Himself Learn Live never Night Remind Thing
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. YALOM

Awareness Began Brought Come Confrontation Death Due Existential Experience Increase Preciousness Think
Some have expressed the very opposite feeling–the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Enough Expression Fear Feeling Interest Opposite Some Write
Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Awareness Despair Pay Price Self
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. YALOM

Defense Despite Most Staunch Venerable
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Death Doctor Enter Evidence Example Ned Priest Professional Soldier
When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?
IRVIN D. YALOM

Cluster Dead Death Living Memory Person Truly Vanish Wonder
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Before Birth Darkness Death Identical Life Spark Void
I never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anything Beter Met never Something Take Way
It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one’s germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!
IRVIN D. YALOM

Alleviate Another Bear Child Children Consciousness Gem Life Loneliness Need Provide Purpose Reproduce Sperm Use Wrong
Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Critical Isolation Process Psychotherapy Relationship Terror Therapist
One thing I feel clear about is that it’s important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven’t really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won’t look back upon my forties with regret.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Clear Feel Important Lety Live One Thing
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Couch Experience Like Long Need Personal Side Therapist
None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Book Future Idea might None Part Patient Reality Say Some Trouble
Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Absorbed Being Distinction Heidegger Make Thing Way World

One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.

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One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.

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