Topics — Humanness and Emotions

"We don’t feel connected because we feel safe. We feel safe because we feel connected."

— Thomas R. Lynch

Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy

"The strongest of all warriors are these two—time and patience."

— Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace

"The things that we love tell us what we are."

— Thomas Merton

Thoughts In Solitude

"Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn!"

— Robert Burns

Man Was Made To Mourn

"Excessive caution destroys the soul and the heart, because living is an act of courage, and an act of courage is always an act of love."

— Paulo Coelho

Manuscript Found in Accra

"It is a strange quirk of the human condition that the living tend to take life for granted."

— Jeremy David Engels

The Art of Gratitude

"Through you nature becomes aware of itself. Nature has been waiting for you, as it were, for millions of years."

— Stillness Speaks

Eckhart Tolle

"…the social nature of the human being as the source of our uniquely creative intellectual capacities as well as our capacity for anxiety."

— Rollo May

The Meaning of Anxiety

"Fears may mask anxiety."

— Rollo May

The Meaning of Anxiety

"Evolution is the ongoing transformation of the impulse to live into the will to love."

— David Richo

Everything Ablaze: Meditating on the Mystical Vision of Teilhard de Chardin

"When people start to love themselves more each day, it is amazing how their lives get better."

— Louise Hay

Meditations for Personal Healing

"Love is… passion and compassion…"

— J. Krishnamurti

The Wholeness of Life

"Emotions… are ancient mechanisms that provide moment-by-moment feedback information for individuals in relationship to their motive-environment interactions, and provide the impetus for motivation and action…"

— Paul Gilbert

The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy

"The child wants simple things. It wants to be listened to. It wants to be loved.… It may not even know the words, but it wants its rights protected and its self-respect unviolated. It needs you to be there."

— Ron Kurtz

As cited in Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child

"Just tell me how you judge your childhood and youth, and I will tell you who you are."

— Søren Kierkegaard

As cited in: The Quotable Kierkegaard

"Love is like water because it is forceful beyond measure and yet its basic nature is to yield and seek the low places. Its fluid nature melts into other structures and gives life to everything it touches."

— Eric Ehrke

The Promise of Wholeness

"In our pursuit of wholeness, a crisis can look like a problem initially but gracefully transform into a blessing."

— Eric Ehrke

The Promise of Wholeness

"A vital goal of being human is to master earthly forms of love."

— Eric Ehrke

The Promise of Wholeness

"Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life."

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Torquato Tasso, as cited in Oxford Essential Quotations (1 ed.)

"One who can practice five things wherever he may be is a man of humanity… earnestness, liberality, truthfulness, diligence, and generosity."

— Confucius

Analects, as cited in Oxford Essential Quotations (1 ed.)

"Honest plain words best pierce the ears of grief."

— William Shakespeare

Love's Labour's Lost

"Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer."

— C. S. Lewis

A Grief Observed

"The prudent man aspires not to pleasure, but to the absence of pain."

— Aristotle

Nicomachean Ethics

"Anyone can become angry…That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not easy."

— Aristotle

Nicomachean Ethics

"Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men."

— Seneca

Seneca Essays: On Providence

"The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical virtue."

— Francis Bacon

Essays of Francis Bacon: Of Adversity

"… It is true greatness, to have in one the frailty of a man, and the security of a God."

— Francis Bacon

Essays of Francis Bacon: Of Adversity

"… the good things, which belong to prosperity, are to be wished; but the good things, that belong to adversity, are to be admired."

— Francis Bacon

Essays of Francis Bacon: Of Adversity

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage."

— Anais Nin

The Diary of Anais Nin vol. 3

"… the great wisdom of life is to realise that we can be the masters if the things that try to enslave us."

— Paulo Coelho

Manuscript Found in Accra

"Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage to face what he already knows."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols

"You can’t heal what you can’t feel."

— John Bradshaw

Homecoming

"Just as too much physical force can break a child’s bones, too much control can break a child’s spirit and fracture his psyche. It can cause a splintering of self, causing a child to disown some parts of himself and to inflate others."

— Beverly Engel

Healing The Emotional Self

"… emotions make things matter."

— Paul Gilbert

"Many therapies recognize that it is the avoidance of feeling and experiencing of emotions (fear, anger, sadness, or even love and happiness) called experiential avoidance that contributes greatly to mental health problems."

— Paul Gilbert

The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy

"Emotions… are what bring people into therapy, are at the root of the ‘experience of suffering’, and in some approaches are the focus for therapy."

— Paul Gilbert

The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy

"Daily life, if one is alert to the dynamics of the unconscious, brings us to new levels of realization not only about where we are but who we are."

— Father Thomas Keating

The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation

"To be human is to make mistakes, and sometimes this means that we will hurt others, whether our closest loved ones or people we’ve never met. To be human is to say, “I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me” as we dance a dance of closeness and pain, remorse and forgiveness, rupture and repair."

— Sheryl Paul

The Wisdom of Anxiety

"To be human is to have hidden caverns inside the labyrinth of psyche, shadowlands that you cannot see or know until you’re cracked open. From the fissure, the light floods in and illuminates the shadow, causing what lives below to fly up into consciousness."

— Sheryl Paul

The Wisdom of Anxiety

"Transmuting emotion is one way way of turning the dark, murky world of the confused mind into the radiance of clear vision."

— John Welwood

Awakening The Heart

"… caring for the self means learning to regulate our emotions when we can through our rhetoric; and, when we cannot, learning to let our emotions wash over us without allowing them to dictate our words and control our behavior."

— Jeremy David Engels

The Art of Gratitude

"The world is disclosed to us through our emotions."

— Jeremy David Engels

The Art of Gratitude

"Looking at the world through grateful eyes, we quickly realize that meaningful work needs to be done, and what the struggle must be. Our struggle is soulful, but it is not otherworldly—in fact it is very much of this earth, it is a struggle to ensure that we do not destroy the planet that gives us life, it is a struggle for the earth."

— Jeremy David Engels

The Art of Gratitude

"The garden is a spiritual place where the mind dwells."

— Shunmyo Masuno

Zen Garden Design

"Nature is always moving and transforming, and Japanese gardens express this quality through the use of plants and trees that move with the wind and change over the seasons."

Zen Garden Design

"More than anything else, beauty helps people grow. If we always look at beautiful things, our kokoro “spirit” can be calm. More than anything else, human sensibility and sense of beauty can be developed."

— Shunmyo Masuno

Zen Garden Design

"We should always remember that it is not practical for ordinary people to live in the depths of the mountains. So how can it be wrong for them to build waterfalls by their hillside cottages and plant a few trees as well? Pay no attention to anyone who tells you that you must not plant trees in this or that place!"

The Art and Wisdom of Japanese Gardens

"When we feel held by a caring presence, by something larger than our small frightened self, we begin to find room in our own heart for the fragments of our life, and for the lives of others. The suffering that might have seemed “too much” can awaken us to the sweetness of compassion."

— Tara Brach

Radical Acceptance

"Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns. Entangled in the trance of unworthiness, we grow accustomed to caging ourselves in with self-judgment and anxiety, with restlessness and dissatisfaction."

— Tara Brach

Radical Acceptance

"No matter what problems we struggle with—anxiety, depression, negative rumination, self-doubt, chronic pain—they do not have to keep us from acting in a way that brings our lives meaning and purpose."

— Steven C. Hayes, Ph.D.

A Liberated Mind

"Anxiety is not a sign of sickness, a weakness of the mind or an error for which we should always seek a medical solution. It is mostly a hugely reasonable and sensitive response to the genuine strangeness, terror, uncertainty and riskiness of existence."

— Alain De Botton

The School of Life

"When we’re anxious, worried, or angry, we can’t make good decisions. When we’re free, we make better decisions. This freedom is something we can attain whenever we like with the practice of breathing in mindfulness, walking in mindfulness."

— Thich Nhat Hanh

How to Relax

"The simple and honest process of letting people know that discomfort is normal, it’s going to happen, why it happens, and why it’s important, reduces anxiety, fear, and shame. Periods of discomfort become an expectation and a norm."

— Brené Brown

Daring Greatly

"…if we have the strength and the courage to confront our own emotions and to accept every one of them as a part of us, we cannot only finish our “unfinished business,” but, as we have so often seen, add months and even years to our lives…"

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

On Grief & Grieving

"Unfinished business encompasses all those things we haven’t said or done. The feelings we wish we allowed ourselves to feel. Those feelings that we have ignored and not attended to."

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

On Grief & Grieving

"Why grieve? For two reasons. First, those who grieve well, live well. Second, and most important, grief is the healing process of the heart, soul, and mind; it is the path that returns us to wholeness."

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

On Grief & Grieving

"Grief is the intense emotional response to the pain of a loss. It is the reflection of a connection that has been broken. Most important, grief is an emotional, spiritual, and psychological journey to healing."

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

On Grief & Grieving

"Unfinished business is the biggest problem in life…. the more lessons we learn the more business we finish, and the more fully we live, really live life."

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

On Death & Dying

"There is no correct way or time to grieve."

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

On Death & Dying

"… allowing fear does not make one broken, it makes one human."

— Robyn D. Walser

Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Positive Psychology

"You are not separate from nature. We are all part of the One Life that manifests itself in countless forms throughout the universe, forms that are all completely interconnected. When you recognize the sacredness, the beauty, the incredible stillness and dignity in which a flower or a tree exists, you add something to the flower or the tree. Through your recognition, your awareness, nature too comes to know itself. It comes to know its own beauty and sacredness through you!"

— Eckhart Tolle

Stillness Speaks

"You reconnect with nature in the most intimate and powerful way by becoming aware of your breathing and learning to hold your attention there. This is a healing and deeply empowering thing to do. It brings about a shift in consciousness from the conceptual world of thought to the inner realm of unconditioned consciousness."

— Eckhart Tolle

Stillness Speaks

"You need nature as your teacher to help you reconnect with Being. But not only do you need nature, it also needs you."

— Eckhart Tolle

Stillness Speaks

"Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path."

— John O’Donohue

To Bless the Space Between Us

"If we learn to dissociate from the pain of our reality, we can survive a childhood of tremendous betrayal, sadness, pain, and fear. But dissociation… from pain is not selective; we inevitably disconnect even from the joy of being alive."

— Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Aware

"The risk of unexamined emotional pain is that it comes back to influence our waking as well as sleeping life."

— Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Aware

"Our ability as parents to be open and present for our children enables them to be both differentiated from our own expectations and desires for how they should be and linked to us through compassionate, respectful communication, enabling the integrative circuitry of their brains to develop well."

— Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Aware

"It might be helpful if more people would talk about death and dying as an intrinsic part of life just as they do not hesitate to mention when someone is expecting a new baby."

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

On Death & Dying

"Since in our unconscious mind we are all immortal, it is almost inconceivable for us to acknowledge that we too have to face death."

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

On Death & Dying

"It is one of the weightiest decisions: to decide what to do with your life. The challenge is to find a way of life that will be in harmony with your gifts and needs."

— John O’Donohue

To Bless the Space Between Us

"The great law of life is: Be yourself."

— John O’Donohue

For Beauty, To Bless the Space Between Us

"… empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance."

— Arundhati Ray

Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Positive Psychology

"The best way to help a child through a challenging moment is to give them a story about it, whether they’re being bullied, have fallen in love for the first time, or the tooth-fairy failed to show up."

— Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin

The Story Cure

"It is our privilege, and our responsibility, to find joy and laughter while fully aware of the wide array of pain and perils, as well as the vast possibilities for being of service on our precious planet."

— Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Aware

"Feelings in themselves don’t necessarily lead to wisdom, but the process of opening fully to them can."

— John Welwood

Reflection and Presence: The Dialectic of Awakening

"If we could let ourselves feel just what we feel, instead of reacting against it, condemning it, or trying to manipulate and suppress it, perhaps we would develop greater confidence about facing whatever life confronts us with."

— John Welwood

Awakening the Heart

"Emotions are our most common experience of being moved by forces seemingly beyond our control. As such, they are among the most confusing and frightening phenomena of everyday life."

— John Welwood

Awakening the Heart

"… adolescence is a period when many begin to challenge adult knowledge and imagine not only how the world might be but also how it should be."

— Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Aware

"Mystics in many spiritual traditions see suffering as necessary, essential, the only means toward closeness to God or to existential transcendence. Yet in our medicalized world, normal bereavement and trauma are turned into mental disorders with diagnostic codes, which then become treatable with medications. But if grief is a disease, so too must be love."

— Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

"Beauty and pain coexist. But when we are in the early phases of grieving, in order to eventually see beauty in the world again, we must first feel and inhabit our pain."

— Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

"The caterpillar does not become a flying caterpillar; it morphs into a butterfly."

— Ram Dass

Polishing the Mirror

"The best and most pleasurable conversations invariably involve an exchange of ideas and the probing of truth. The memory of such conversations affords happiness well into the future, becoming an inexhaustible reservoir of pleasure even in the direst moments of distress and pain."

— Robert Pogue Harrison

Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

"If you want your child to reach her potential, one of the most important traits to nurture is tenacity—the “I’ll stick with it” approach to challenges."

— Kenneth R. Ginsburg, Martha M. Jablow

Building Resilience in Children and Teens

"If we want our children to experience the world as fully as possible—unfortunately with all its pain, and thankfully with all its joy—our goal will have to be resilience."

— Kenneth R. Ginsburg, Martha M. Jablow

Building Resilience in Children and Teens

"Our challenge is to recognize the gifts in every child and, more importantly, create the circumstances in which young people will discover their own strengths, so they can ultimately determine those areas in which they can make their greatest contributions."

— Kenneth R. Ginsburg, Martha M. Jablow

Building Resilience in Children and Teens

"We must prepare our children to thrive and succeed far into the future. We need to bear in mind that our goal in raising children is to prepare them to be successful at 35, 40, or 50 years of age."

— Kenneth R. Ginsburg, Martha M. Jablow

Building Resilience in Children and Teens

"Our love is the most protective, enduring force we offer our children… The genuine sense that they are worth being cared for offers the bedrock of self-regard that will affect their behaviors and emotional well-being during childhood and adolescence, as well as the security from which they will launch into adulthood."

— Kenneth R. Ginsburg, Martha M. Jablow

Building Resilience in Children and Teens

"When your relationship exhibits consistently high levels of secure functioning, you and your partner automatically increase the resources you’re able to use for personal development, mutual physical and mental health… You become more resilient as individuals and as a couple, able to manage the slings and arrows of life and its unknowns."

— Stan Tatkin

We Do

"When our Inner Child feels consistently unloved by our Inner Adult, the Child’s false beliefs, adopted in childhood when parents were unloving, are reinforced—beliefs that we are bad, wrong, unlovable, unimportant, inadequate, defective in some way."

— Margaret Paul

Inner Bonding

"The Inner Child is the aspect of our personality that is soft, vulnerable, and feelings oriented—our “gut” instinct. It is who we are when we were born, our core self, our natural personality, with all its talent, instinct, intuition, and emotion."

— Margaret Paul

Inner Bonding

"Inner Bonding is a process of connecting our Adult thoughts with our instinctual gut feelings, the feelings of our “Inner Child,” so that we can live free of conflict within ourselves."

— Margaret Paul

Inner Bonding

"We must gently help our children be exposed to the injured heart of another so they can consider the impact of their unkind behavior."

— Susan Stiffelman

Parenting with Presence

"If we want our children to discover their passion and purpose, we must stay open to what they drift toward rather than pushing them in directions we prefer they follow but that do not call to them."

— Susan Stiffelman

Parenting with Presence

"Kids whose boundaries are respected have a much easier time setting them appropriately with their peers."

— Susan Stiffelman

Parenting with Presence

"It is our challenge and opportunity to foster in our children the living, breathing knowledge that they are worthy — as is — of being loved."

— Susan Stiffelman

Parenting with Presence

"We need to raise our children to know they are inherently worthy of love and happiness so that they will be able to absorb all the good that comes their way."

— Susan Stiffelman

Parenting with Presence

"Establishing boundaries helps us raise children who know how to handle disappointment and who are therefore strong, adaptable, and self-reliant."

— Susan Stiffelman

Parenting with Presence

"When we cannot shield our children from painful experiences, the next best thing is to be fully present to them, helping them through the process by letting them feel their sadness and disappointment."

— Susan Stiffelman

Parenting with Presence

"Parental neglect and rejection in childhood can adversely affect self-confidence and relationships in adulthood, as people repeat old, frustrating patterns and then blame themselves for not being happy."

— Lindsay C. Gibson

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

"Attentive and reliable emotional relationships are the basis of a child’s sense of security. Unfortunately, emotionally immature parents are usually too uncomfortable with closeness to give their children the deep emotional connection they need."

— Lindsay C. Gibson

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

"Sorrow and contentment, grief and beauty, longing and surrender coexist in the realm of sameness… We are not either happy or sad. We are not either grieving or grateful. We are not either content or despairing. We are both/and."

— Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

"For all who love, suffering is inevitable. To love deeply is one of life’s most profound gifts, and the loss of a loved one is one of life’s most profound tragedies."

— Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

"Grief education is quintessential to shifting our culture’s antagonistic relationship to grief, and expressive, creative arts are an important part of this."

— Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

"It almost seems that the only way to eradicate our grief would be to relinquish the love we feel — to disassemble our loved one’s place in our lives. But checking in with the wisdom of our heart, we see that is impossible. Grief and love occur in tandem."

— Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

"The psychologist Rollo May wrote, “One does not become fully human painlessly.” It is through inhabiting, often painfully, our emotions that we are able to become fully human. Through grief, we can experience an alchemical transformation that cannot be contrived, hastened, or imparted by others."

— Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

"Grief comes to one and all; no one is exempt. We must remember our dead. We must do better for the bereaved. We must embody compassion. To be redeemed we must remember. Remembering is our duty — and the only thing that will save us."

— Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

"The practice of conscious “abdominal” breathing… is the bridge between the conscious and unconscious functions of our nervous system."

— Alexis Brink

The Art of Jin Shin

"One of the difficulties with shame is that it does not seem to be expressed and released in the same way as other feelings: Sadness and grief are released through crying, anger through yelling and stomping about, fear through screaming and shaking… Though it appears not to discharge, it does seem to dissipate under very special circumstances—the nonjudgmental, accepting contact of another human being."

— Babette Rothschild

The Body Remembers

"Anger is an emotion of self-protection. It may involve an effort to prevent injury or specify a boundary. It is also a common response to having been threatened, hurt, or scared, or to the person who caused it. Anger can escalate to rage when the threat is extreme or when assertions of “Don’t!” or “Stop!” are not respected."

— Babette Rothschild

The Body Remembers

"Emotions, though interpreted and named by the mind, are integrally an experience of the body."

— Babette Rothschild

The Body Remembers

"It takes incredible courage to open our heart… and it takes enormous courage to explore the depths of our heart."

— John J. Prendergast

The Deep Heart

"The heart area is central to human experience. It is where we feel most affected and touched, both emotionally and spiritually. Our sense of meaning springs from the heart, as does our sense of oneness or communion with the whole of life."

— John J. Prendergast

The Deep Heart

"When you know the answer you won’t ask the question."

— Unknown Zen Master

Alan Watts, Psychotherapy East & West

"True healing is not a destination, not about ridding yourself of pain, fear, sorrow, and all that, not about becoming perfect, or immune, or untouchable, but has something to do with saying YES to the present moment (the only moment we are ever truly in connection with), and affirming it, even if it is uncomfortable right now."

— Jeff Foster

The Self-Acceptance Project

"When we’re in the deepest, darkest, and worst emotional state, when it seems like self-acceptance is the farthest away, we are in fact one instant from the awareness that can transform us completely."

— Raphael Cushnir

The Self-Acceptance Project

"Self-acceptance is a great matter, asking much of us, and giving back even more. Exploring and cultivating intimacy with what’s in the way of self-acceptance is an essential journey for us, if we are to truly come alive."

— Robert Augustus Masters

The Self-Acceptance Project

"An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world."

— Lisa Feldman Barrett

How Emotions Are Made

"Our most habitual and compelling feelings and thoughts define the core of who we think we are."

— Tara Brach

Radical Acceptance

"The particular sensations, emotions or thoughts that arise when we practice mindfulness are not so important. It is our willingness to become still and pay attention to our experience… With time we develop the capacity to relate to our passing experience, whether in meditation or daily life, with deep clarity and kindness."

— Tara Brach

Radical Acceptance

"The love and understanding of a friend, like a deep well of the purest water, refreshes the very source of our being."

— Tara Brach

Radical Acceptance

"The true quality of our love is exposed by the stresses and strains of our relationships with others, especially those with whom we work the closest."

— Alexander Strauch, Robert L. Peterson

Agape Leadership

"It is not feelings that are the problem, but what we do with them that matters. The freedom to deal with them and to confront them with reason and faith is what makes us fully human."

— Thomas Keating

The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation

"Normally, emotions need to be expressed in some way in order to be processed. Emotions are energy. If they are not processed, they become blocks in our bodies and nervous systems to the free flow of our energy systems and of grace."

— Father Thomas Keating

The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation

"…conscious anxiety is more painful but it is available also to use in the service of integration of the self."

— Rollo May

The Meaning of Anxiety

"The constructive way of dealing with anxiety… consists of learning to live with it, accepting it as a “teacher,” to borrow Kierkegaard’s phrase, to school us in confronting our human destiny."

— Rollo May

The Meaning of Anxiety

"The human being is not something to be overcome, but undergone."

— Simon Critchley

On the Human Condition, Dominique Janicaud

"The human condition is defined by the feelings and emotions associated with our existence, our “conscious” experience of past and future, cognizance of the passage of time, and our vexed awareness of our mortality."

— Robert G. Bednarik

The Human Condition

"Emotion skills are the key to unlocking the potential inside each one of us."

— Marc Brackett

Permission to Feel