The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
IRVIN D. YALOMA focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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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.
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To love means to be actively concerned for the life and the growth of another.
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I 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.
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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.
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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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As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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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.
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And if you do the latter, you’re not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.
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Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
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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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A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves.
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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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Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.
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The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.
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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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All these things I’ve written so much about. That’s why I’ve made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there.
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Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
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Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
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To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.
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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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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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The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.
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Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.
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A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOM