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If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!

Irvin D. Yalom

A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche’s message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
IRVIN D. YALOM

Country Curious Experiment Life Live Message People Person Repeat Same Such Through Way Willing
Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Alternate Between Footprint Marvel Mountain Now Sob Think Together Torrential
Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Endlessm Still Greatest Instrument Learn Understanding Work
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)
IRVIN D. YALOM

Behind Borderline Label People Treat Violence
One reason patients are reluctant to work in a therapy group is they fear that things will go too far, that the powerful therapist or the collective group might coerce them to lose control–to say or think or feel things that will be catastrophic.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Far Fear Group Once Patient Powerful Reason Reluctant Therapist Therapy Thing Too Work
If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Choose Growth Pain Pleasure Prepare Some Want
Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Credo Import Therapeutic Life Living Perhaps Single Unexamined Worth
The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Death Fail Fear Fully Life More
What? ‘Borderline patients play games’? That what you said? Ernest, you’ll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That’s exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Country Emest Game never People Person Real Said Therapist Think
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
I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Cluster Individual Known Last Live Old People Person Some Someone Thought
Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Decide Life Miserable Spend Think
To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Another Care Experience Fully Individual Know Mean Other Possible
The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Creative Discipline Member Orthodoxy Outgrow Ultimate
Indeed, the evidence supporting the efficacy of group therapy, and the prevailing sentiment of the mental health profession, are sufficiently strong that it would be difficult to defend the adequacy of the inpatient unit that attempted to operate without a small group program.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Attempt Difficult Evidence Grow Health Impatient Indeed Operate Profession Small
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Belief Children Compulsive Develop Ever Famous Future Grow Large Mpregnable Ourselves Project Protective Rescuer Rich Ritual Through Ultimate
The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One’s own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one’s sphere of control.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Control Drive Enlarge Fear Limitation Motivate Oneself Own Power S[Here
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Also Day Decade Distant Feel Future Himself Man One Psychiatrist Spent Strongly
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
Only the wounded healer can truly heal. (97)
IRVIN D. YALOM

Heal Healer Only Truly Wound
To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Activity Another Concerned Growth Life Love Mena
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
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
…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Creator Death Life Money Unlive
… sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Better Give Hope Later Past Sooner
I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Another Crave Dream Love More People Possess
Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
IRVIN D. YALOM

Being Dose Mean Require Universal

If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!

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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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