"Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?" - Mary Oliver

“A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.” ― B.F Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity

nytimes.com/2023/02/20/wel…

Every effective therapy helps us see what we avoid and how we avoid and then face what we avoided. -Jon Frederickson

We find things that help a little and then we beg them to help a lot.

Interesting comments on the grades given to the evidence for interventions... statnews.com/2023/03/20/chi…

Another powerful example of Sarno's work healing. wsj.com/articles/jimmy…

"Once you read “Succession” as primarily about how abusive cycles replicate themselves across generations, so much of what it’s saying about wealth and power snaps into focus." nytimes.com/2023/03/25/opi…

"... When we finally get past the protective barriers we built as children and we actually feel our genuine emotions, even when those emotions are grief or anger, we certainly feel relief. But we don’t feel only relief... it feels right. And we feel good." -Diana Fosha

“To the extent you hide your feelings, you are alienated from yourself and others, and your loneliness is proportional.” - Dorothy Briggs

“Hate is a lack of imagination.” - Graham Greene

Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. - Peter Levine

"When we’re lost in thought, when we’re dreaming, what have we lost? We’ve lost reality. Our life has escaped us." - Charlotte Joko Beck

"The goal isn't to be happy with my voice. What I want is to simply have one." - Jhumpa Lahiri

"From the beginning, the patient needs to have an experience, a new experience, and that experience should be good—that is, it should feel right and true." - Diana Fosha

"Trust in things being as they are is the secret of life. But we don’t want to hear that. I can absolutely trust that in the next year my life is going to be changed, different, yet always just the way it is." - Charlotte Joko Beck

x.com/DKThomp/status…

"One has to confront TMS, fight it, or the symptoms will continue. Losing one’s fear and resuming normal physical activity is possibly the most important part of the therapeutic process." - John Sarno

"Wellness is a by-product of our ability to tolerate our internal experiences." - Hilary Jacobs Hendel

Many patients have been punished for being honest about their emotions. They learned to conceal their feelings to maintain attachment to an insecure figure. We must show them that feelings are safe and strengthen relationships.