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Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.

Irvin D. Yalom

A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Avoid Deceptively Far Favor Free Genuine Ignorant Man
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
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
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
If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Admire Behave Love Must One Oneself Way
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
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
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
Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Barely Consciousness Just Membrance Mirror Softly Under
Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Between Difference Fall Infinite Love Passion People Spark Stand
It’s not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It’s like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death’s terror.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Aware Death East Every Face Moment Much Not Only Stand Stare Sun Terror Try
The therapist can make the group feel safer by allowing each patient to set his or her limits and by emphasizing the patient’s control over every interaction.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Allow Each Emphasize Group InterAction Limit Patient Safer Set Therapist
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
Reality always creeps in–the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Always Creep Experience Helplessness Indeed Morality Reality

Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.

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Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.

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