athymia

4 days ago

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Henry David Thoreau

1 week ago

...Could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy.

― The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

1 month ago

“It has gradually been driven home to me that I cannot be of help to [a] troubled person by means of any intellectual or training procedure. No approach which relies upon knowledge, upon training, upon the acceptance of something that is taught, is of any use. These approaches seem so tempting and direct that I have, in the past, tried a great many of them. It is possible to explain a person to himself, to prescribe steps which should lead him forward, to train him in knowledge about a more satisfying mode of life. But such methods are, in my experience, futile and inconsequential. The most that they can accomplish is some temporary change, which soon disappears, leaving the individual more than ever convinced of his inadequacy.

The failure of any such approach through the intellect has forced me to recognize that change appears to come about through experience in a relationship … If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur.

Carl Rogers, one of my heroes

(and yes, there is a reason I am posting this right after reading that previous article.)

(via psychotherapy)

1 month ago

myserendipities:

“A fight is going on inside me,” said an old man to his son. “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you.”

The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, “Which wolf will win?”

The old man replied simply, “The one you feed.”

~ Wendy Mass

2 months ago

“No conflict can be solved so long as all parties are convinced they are right. Solution is possible only when at least one party begins to consider how he might be wrong.

Arbinger Institute (The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict)

2 months ago

“Always this same morbid interest in other people and their doings, their privacies, their dirty linen, always this air of alertness for personal happenings, personalities, personalities, personalities. Always this subtle criticism and appraisal of other people, this analysis of other people’s motives. If anatomy presupposes a corpse, then psychology presupposes a world of corpses. Personalities, which means personal criticism and analysis, presuppose a whole world laboratory of human psyches waiting to be vivisected. If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink, at last, as human psychology.

D. H. Lawrence

2 months ago

“Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

Oprah Winfrey

2 months ago

“Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.

Azar Nafisi

2 months ago

“People think that the suicidal are sitting there suffering in their own pain all day, just stewing, sitting there getting ready to express it. But really, what the suicidal are doing is watching Wheel of Fortune. Perhaps having a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Maybe another bowl. Somewhere in the middle of the second bowl, the meaningless of the entire universe begins to close in on them.

John Darnielle (via liesandstatistics) (via fuckyeahthemountaingoats) (via serwal) (via digitalbath) (via jumbledemotion) (via abirdfriend)

3 months ago

“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.

Lao Tzu (via maluna: myfengshuilife: ammph: bulifeyt) (via myserendipities)

3 months ago

“Weren’t we all crazy in our sleep? What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of the neighbor’s children?

Jeff Lindsay
(via chloerae)

3 months ago

“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, should’ve, would’ve, happened. Or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on.

Tupac (via hellovagina)

4 months ago

“I don’t know, I think that if I could just accept the fact that my life is supposed to be difficult. You know, that’s what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I’ll just be glad when something nice happens.

Jesse (Before Sunrise)

dazzled:

maddieness:

“Do you ever get that feeling where you don’t wanna talk to anybody? You don’t wanna smile and you don’t want to fake being happy. But at the same time you don’t know exactly what’s wrong either. There isn’t a way to explain it to someone who doesn’t already understand. If you could want anything in the world it would be to be alone. People have stopped being comforting and being alone never was. At least when you’re alone no one will constantly ask you what is wrong and there isn’t anyone who won’t take ‘I don’t know’ for an answer. You feel the way you do just because. You hope the feeling will pass soon and that you will be able to be yourself again, but until then all you can do is wait.”

— (via eletheowl) (via deyandraa) (via reachingforrecovery) (via heartbunnies-rabbits)

4 months ago

“Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself- and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to- letting a person be what he really is…. Most people love you for who you pretend to be…. To keep their love, you keep pretending- performing. You get to love your pretense…. It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act- and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image- they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it- they feel like you’re trying to steal their most precious possession.

Jim Morrison (via thingsgohazy) (via unchainedmelody) (via skysignal)