Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
IRVIN D. YALOMI don’t let any personal views about religion cause me to want to take away something that’s offering the patient comfort.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
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Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.
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I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.
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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.
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Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.
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The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.
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Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
IRVIN D. YALOM