Quotes

More Quotes

• "Repentance is the nourisher of piety, the procurer of mercy."

  — Thomas Watson

  The Doctrine of Repentance

• "The two great graces essential to a saint in this life, are faith and repentance. These are the two wings by which he flies to heaven."

  — Thomas Watson

  The Doctrine of Repentance

• "Psychological work ultimately leads us to closure and to the goal of change…"

  — David Richo

  How to Be an Adult

• "Committed action refers to purposeful behavior change in the service of chosen values, with a willingness to experience the thoughts, feelings, and reactions that show up in the process of moving forward."

  — Jill A. Stoddard and Niloofar Afari

  The Big Book of ACT Metaphors

• "One secret of healthy living is the cultivation of healthy self-doubt."

  — Thomas R. Lynch

  Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy

• "Radical openness assumes that we don’t see things as they are but rather as we are."

  — Thomas R. Lynch

  Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy

• "Self-care is central to life itself."

  — Paul Gilbert

  The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy

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

  — Louise Hay

  Meditations for Personal Healing

• "After years of individual counseling with clients, and conducting hundreds of workshops and intensive training programs… I find that there is only one thing that seems to heal every problem, and that is to love yourself."

  — Louise Hay

  Meditations for Personal Healing

• "A good therapist is always working on themselves and continuing to grow."

  — Jay Earley

  Self-Therapy: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS, A New, Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy

• "To integrate means to make whole from separate parts."

  — Charles Whitfield

  Healing the Child Within

• "Healing means moving toward wholeness or integrating."

  — Charles Whitfield

  Healing the Child Within

• "Reclaiming your wounded inner child is a Zenlike experience."

  — John Bradshaw

  Homecoming

• "Three things are striking about inner child work: the speed with which people change when they do this work; the depth of that change; and the power and creativity that result when wounds from the past are healed."

  — John Bradshaw

  Homecoming

• "Compassion involves developing the courage to be open to our anger and rage, not some kind of ‘soothing it away’. Indeed, to say it again, soothing is useful to act like a safe haven but also in preparation to courageously engage with what we need to."

  — Paul Gilbert

  The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy

• "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

• "If we have not experienced ourselves as unconditional love, we have more work to do, because that is who we really are."

  — Father Thomas Keating

  The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation

• "Our sense of self-worth is much less easily shaken if it is derived from a deeply held sense of self-compassion and self-respect, rather than being contingent on fulfilling certain ideals."

  — Erin Olivo

  The Self-Acceptance Project

• "We know how to be kind and compassionate to others when they’re feeling bad about themselves or are suffering in some way. We know what to say and do. We just have to remember to do it for ourselves."

  — Kristen Neff

  The Self-Acceptance Project

• "The loving Adult is both father and mother to the Inner Child, regardless of whether we are a man or a woman."

  — Margaret Paul

  Inner Bonding: Becoming a Loving Adult to Your Inner Child

• "All of us face the job of becoming a loving mother and father to our Inner Child."

  — Margaret Paul

  Inner Bonding: Becoming a Loving Adult to Your Inner Child

• "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

• "A good therapist is like a good server: attentive, tuned in, but not intrusive."

  — Jeffery Smith

  Psychotherapy: A Practical Guide

• "… empathy is nearly the perfect medicine."

  — Jeffery Smith

  Psychotherapy: A Practical Guide

• "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

• "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

• "The word psychotherapy consists of two Greek words: psyche (soul) and therapy (care)."

  — Thomas Moore

  Care of the Soul

• "May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life."

  — John O’Donohue

  To Bless the Space Between Us

• "Make… soul care a way of life, and you may discover what the Greeks called eudaimonia—a good spirit, or, in the deepest sense, happiness."

  — Thomas Moore

  Care of the Soul

• "One must become who one truly is before constructive, true change is possible."

  — Dave Mann

  Gestalt Therapy: 100 Key Points & Techniques

• "When one is at home in oneself, one is integrated and enjoys a sense of balance and poise. In a sense that is exactly what spirituality is: the art of homecoming."

  — John O’Donohue

  To Bless the Space Between Us

• "May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within."

  — John O’Donohue

  To Bless the Space Between Us

• "While psychotherapy and spiritual practice may both incorporate reflection and presence, the home base of therapy is reflection and the home base of spirituality is presence."

  — John Welwood

  Reflection and Presence: The Dialectic of Awakening

• "… being fully present with ourselves overcomes the inner war, at least for a moment, between self and Other, between “me” and “my experience.” And from there, everything looks and feels different."

  — John Welwood

  Reflection and Presence: The Dialectic of Awakening

• "It takes time and practice to develop the ongoing consciousness: “Am I being a Loving Adult to my Inner Child?”"

  — Margaret Paul, PhD

  Inner Bonding

• "If we do not accept the responsibility of being both the father and mother to our Inner Child, then our Child will seek elsewhere for someone to do it."

  — Margaret Paul, PhD

  Inner Bonding

• "By reparenting our Inner Child, we can release and heal the pain from the past."

  — Margaret Paul, PhD

  Inner Bonding

• "Psychotherapy generally fails when it does not help individuals to discover the place within or without (depending upon the individual’s belief system) where they can go to connect with the spiritual truth."

  — Margaret Paul, PhD

  Inner Bonding

• "One reason to practice purification is to cool out, so we’re not creating so much heavy karma for ourselves."

  — Ram Dass

  Polishing the Mirror

• "While traditional spiritual cultures of the East have specialized in illuminating the… “heaven” side of human nature — Western psychology has focused on the earthly half… We need a new vision that embraces all…. domains of human existence…."

  — John Welwood

  Toward a Psychology of Awakening

• "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

• "It is only when we are willing to do our own inner work and take full responsibility for our own Inner Child that we can change the dysfunctional, codependent parenting that dominates our society. As we become healthy, so will our children and their children, leading to a healthy society."

  — Margaret Paul

  Inner Bonding

• "Even when we try hard to be good parents, when we are not being loving to our own Inner Child, we are teaching our children to be unloving to themselves."

  — Margaret Paul

  Inner Bonding

• "For a strong and lasting partnership, both of us must be connected to our own inner feelings, as well willing to be open to learning about the other’s."

  — Margaret Paul

  Inner Bonding

• "The most important thing we can learn about loving each other is the paradox that we must learn to love ourselves first."

  — Margaret Paul

  Inner Bonding

• "Those of us who have suffered from extreme physical, sexual, and emotional abuse have a big challenge trying to create a loving Inner Adult."

  — Margaret Paul

  Inner Bonding

• "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

• "When our Inner Child is feeling consistently loved by our Inner Adult, he or she is a wondrous being—trusting, creative, imaginative, curious, passionate, playful, energetic, enthusiastic, spontaneous, soft, sensitive, sensual, with an incredible sense of wonder and aliveness. Delighted just to be alive, he or she is open and receptive to new ideas and experiences."

  — Margaret Paul

  Inner Bonding

• "When you are being loving to yourself, your shame lessens and your self-esteem rises."

  — 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

• "Self-care is not a selfish act; it is an act of generosity for self and others."

  — 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

• "Solace and care come from many sources. Others who listen deeply, attentively, and nonjudgmentally can be found in the least expected places. Take note, pay attention, and seek help from those willing to be present with you. Time with these kinds of people can carry you through perilous terrain."

  — Joanne Cacciatore

  Bearing the Unbearable

• "For thousands of years, oriental and shamanic healers have recognized not only that the mind affects the body, as in psychosomatic medicine, but how every organ system of the body equally has a psychic representation in the fabric of the mind."

  — Peter Levine

  Waking the Tiger

• "In overcoming the destructive force of trauma, our innate potential… lifts us to new heights of mastery and knowledge."

  — Peter Levine

  Waking the Tiger

• "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

• "Source energy moves through various pathways in our bodies in a continuous pattern… feeding life into all of our cells."

  — Alexis Brink

  The Art of Jin Shin

• "… the idea of source energy—ki-eki, also known as universal or ancestral energy… and this energy is what we tap into when we perform Jin Shin."

  — Alexis Brink

  The Art of Jin Shin

• "The challenge of trauma treatment is not only dealing with the past but, even more, enhancing the quality of day-to-day experience… When you can’t be fully here, you go to the places where you did feel alive—even if those places are filled with horror and misery."

  — Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

  The Body Keeps the Score

• "Ultimately, the main goal of trauma therapy is to relegate the trauma to its rightful place in the client’s past."

  — Babette Rothschild

  The Body Remembers

• "Body awareness implies the precise, subjective consciousness of body sensations arising from stimuli that originate both outside of and inside the body."

  — 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

• "You are human. You are imperfect. You don’t begin with perfectly pure motives. If you’re like most of us, your motives are probably almost embarrassing next to the excellence you want to reach. You look in the mirror and you know this to be true. And guess what? It’s not a secret. Get started anyway. Begin where you are. It’s the only place where you can begin."

  — Eric Greitens

  Resilience

• "Depression and anxiety are downward spirals: patterns of negative, unhealthy activity and reactivity that the brain ends up stuck in… Recent research has uncovered the power of the upward spiral: the fact that small positive life changes lead to positive brain changes in its electrical activity, its chemical composition, and even its ability to grow new neurons… Upward spirals can reverse the downward patterns of depression and anxiety…"

  — Alex Korb

  The Upward Spiral

• "… by making small changes in your thoughts, actions, interactions, and environment, it’s possible to change the activity and chemistry of the key brain circuits underlying depression and anxiety."

  — Alex Korb

  The Upward Spiral

• "It takes an integrated and unified psyche to embody the wisdom and beauty of awakened consciousness."

  — Adyashanti

  The Deep Heart

• "Ultimately, self-acceptance relates to the opening of the heart. It has to do with the long, hard journey of loving ourselves."

  — Mark Nepo

  The Self-Acceptance Project

• "The person to whom we have the highest moral obligation is the one over whom we have the highest influence, and that is our future self. So, if you want to give yourself a gift tomorrow or next year, or perhaps in the next lifetime, treat yourself well."

  — Rick Hanson

  The Self-Acceptance Project