If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
IRVIN D. YALOMI think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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I never want to take away something when I don’t have anything better to offer him in a way.
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish.
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Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
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Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love.
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Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you “Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?” – Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent.
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Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
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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.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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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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Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.
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Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
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It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one’s germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!
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Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.
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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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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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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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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.
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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.
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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
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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.
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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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I don’t let any personal views about religion cause me to want to take away something that’s offering the patient comfort.
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
IRVIN D. YALOM