And if you do the latter, you’re not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.
IRVIN D. YALOMLiving safely is dangerous.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
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The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.
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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.
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Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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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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Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
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Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
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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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Were not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.
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I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
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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.
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Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
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Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.
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… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
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Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.
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Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.
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If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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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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Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts.
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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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To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
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I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
IRVIN D. YALOM