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The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.

Irvin D. Yalom

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
Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
IRVIN D. YALOM

Being Dose Mean Require Universal
To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Extent Life Alone One Responsible
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
The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Anxiety Creator Death Like More Unlive
Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Alive Day Dead Ever Exist Forty Known Memory No One Perhaps Some Soon Truly Years
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
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
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
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
Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns–fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns–seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Away Concern Cure Dear Death Interpersonal Meet Neurotic Psychoneurious Rejection Seem Sense
Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Look Other Out Patient See Window World
To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Acute Best Every Experience Impatient Knowledge Offer Some Therapy
Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
IRVIN D. YALOM

Consummated Death Die Life Lose One Terror
Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it’s absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Absolute Allow Clear Determine Empty Free Friendship Man Premiseble Way
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

The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.

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The path to decision may be hard because it leads into the territory of both finiteness and groundlessness—domains soaked in anxiety.

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