As a therapist, I know a lot about pain, about the ways in which pain is tied to loss. But I also know something less commonly understood: that change and loss travel together. We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.

Frankl’s book: “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.

Reacting vs. responding = reflexive vs. chosen. We can choose

Follow your envy – it shows you what you want.

peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.

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

“If the queen had balls, she’d be the king.” If you go through life picking and choosing, if you don’t recognize that “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” you may deprive yourself of joy.

What people don’t like to think about is that you can do everything right—in life or in a treatment protocol—and still get the short end of the stick.

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.

we talk to ourselves more than we’ll talk to any other person over the course of our lives but that our words aren’t always kind or true or helpful—or even respectful. Most of what we say to ourselves we’d never say to people we love or care about, like our friends or children.

“Modern man thinks he loses something—time—when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains except kill it.” Fromm was right; people didn’t use extra time earned to relax or connect with friends or family. Instead, they tried to cram more in.

The four ultimate concerns are death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness.

Sometimes the only thing to do is yell, “Fuck!”

Here you can find my review of Maybe You should Talk to Someone

Photo by Violetta Kaszubowska