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. YALOMDeath, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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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.
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One doesn’t do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.
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Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
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To care of another individual means to know and to experience the other as fully as possible.
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Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
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Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?
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None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future.
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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.
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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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To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
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Living safely is dangerous.
IRVIN D. YALOM