"The inability to say no is largely about approval-seeking. The inability to say yes is more about lack of trust in oneself."

"Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope."

Numbness is in the absence of feelings.It’s a response to being overwhelmed with too many feelings.

Numbness

<ul><li>Counseling is getting advice. </li><li>Therapy is acquiring more self-understanding.</li></ul>

Counseling Vs Therapy

To people, going into the depths of their thoughts and feelings it’s like going into a dark alley and they don’t want to go there alone.People come to therapy to have someone to go there with.

A Metaphor For Therapy

"Follow your envy - it shows you what you want."

"The opposite of depression isn’t happiness, but vitality."

Freedom involves responsibility.And there’s a part in most of us that finds responsibility frightening.

You Are Your Own Jailer 

"The things we protest against the most are often the very things we need to look at."

It refers to the part of the mind that holds ancestral memory, or experience that is common to all humankind.

Collective Unconscious 

"But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life."

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

"The nature of life is change. The nature of people is to resist change."

<ul><li>A therapeutic alliance is a trust that is needed before work can be done. Patients need to feel heard and understood. </li><li>But therapy work is an intricate dance between support and confrontation.</li><li>Therapists help patients see themselves better and ask the right questions until something happens internally or externally.</li></ul>

On Therapy

"Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them."

Many people avoid trying for what they really want in life because it’s more painful to get close to the goal but not achieve it than not to have taken the chance in the first place.

"Almost" Is Always The Hardest

“We tend to think that the future happens later, but we're creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists. But if we spend the present trying to fix the past or control the future, we remain stuck in place, in perpetual regret."

This is the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one’s knowledge or competence.

Ultracrepidarianism

There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked because pain isn’t a contest.You can’t get through your pain by diminishing it, you get through it by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it.You can’t change what you’re denying or diminishing.

On Pain

Privacy is good, but secrets are toxic.

Privacy Vs Secrecy

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You Are Your Own Jailer

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Own Your Role

When you are wrong, own it

With Responsibility, You Are Free