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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.

Irvin D. Yalom

Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Decide Life Miserable Spend 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
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
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
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
One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Compreghend Oneself Order Our Preoccuped
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

Anxiety Both Decision Domain Finiteness Groundlessness Hard Lead Path Soak Territory
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Blossom Costly Diminish Existence Forever Knowledge Price Shadow Some Wound
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
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
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
The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Creative Discipline Member Orthodoxy Outgrow Ultimate
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.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Effect Growth Life Local Patient Pleasure Ripple Salutary Take Touch
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
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
The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
IRVIN D. YALOM

Accept Accuse Act Another Being Fully Oneself Reveal Therapeutic Vehicle

When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.

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When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.

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