Harriet Lerner Quotes & Sayings

We will be in tune with our bodies only if we truly love and honor them. We can't be in good communication with the enemy. — Harriet Lerner

Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others. — Harriet Lerner

Our society cultivates guilt feelings in women such that many of us still feel guilty if we are anything less than an emotional service station to others. — Harriet Lerner

Shame is paralyzing and debilitating. It invites us not to be heard, at least not in an authentic way. Acting courageously when shame enters the picture requires extraordinary courage because people will do anything to escape from shame or from the possibility that shame will be evoked. It is just too difficult to go there. Even for people who will walk in to the fires of transformation to face fear.

Men and women tend to manage shame differently. Generally, men have less tolerance for shame, perhaps because they are shamed almost from birth for half their humanity. The so called feminine part of themselves including anything vulnerable or seen as weak. Men often sit with shame for only a nanosecond before flipping it into something more masculine or therefore tolerable like anger or rage or a need to dominate devalue or control. — Harriet Lerner

In long-term relationships ... we are called upon to navigate that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness ... we confront the challenge of sustaining both
without losing either. — Harriet Lerner

Kids want nothing more than for all the important adults in their life to get along. — Harriet Lerner

An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way. — Harriet Lerner

Throughout evolutionary history, anxiety and fear have helped every species to be wary and to survive. Fear can signal us to act, or, alternatively, to resist the impulse to act. It can help us to make wise, self-protective choices in and out of relationships where we might otherwise sail mindlessly along, ignoring signs of trouble. — Harriet Lerner

There's a widespread belief that if you have solid self-esteem you don't need outside affirmation and praise. This is patently untrue, by the way. — Harriet Lerner

Don't count on the power of your love or your nagging to create something that wasn't there to begin with. — Harriet Lerner

The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible. — Harriet Lerner

Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses. — Harriet Lerner

While women once acquired relationship skills to "hook," "snare," or "catch" a husband who would provide access to economic security and social status, the position of contemporary women has not changed that radically. Much of our success still depends on our attunement to "male culture," our ability to please men, and our readiness to conform to the masculine values of our institutions. — Harriet Lerner

Silence can pose a greater threat than the difficult truth. — Harriet Lerner

It's remarkable how many couples can precisely describe their particular pattern of painful fighting, and claim to be helpless to change it. — Harriet Lerner

We're vulnerable to repeating history, especially if we don't know what's driving us. For example, it may be a family tradition to marry someone with addiction problems, or who is an injured bird in need of caretaking. Or, you may be drawn to guys who remind you of your distant, unavailable father
or your ill-tempered mother
with the unconscious belief that you can take an old story, and through the power of your love, give it a new, happy ending. — Harriet Lerner

Our society doesn't promote self-acceptance and it never will. First of all, self-acceptance doesn't sell products. Capitalism would fall if we liked ourselves the way we are now. Also, people who feel shamed and inadequate themselves tend to pass it on. I'm sure you've noticed that many individuals and groups try to enhance their self-esteem by diminishing others. — Harriet Lerner

Women ... have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the soothers, the peacemakers, and the steadiers of rocked boats. — Harriet Lerner

A marital therapist recently teased me, "Are you writing another book to help women speak up? I'm trying to help my clients be quiet." Then she said more seriously, "Why do people think they have to tell each other everything they feel? — Harriet Lerner

Before modern feminism, stories of female ambition were silenced or erased; even now, they are told with apology ("Yes, it's a great honor to be a Nobel Prize laureate, but really, what I love best is staying home and being a mother to Kevin and Annie"). — Harriet Lerner

Although it's not useful to drown in despair, it's also not useful to keep a 'positive attitude' when this means concealing or denying real emotions. — Harriet Lerner

..All of us are vulnerable to intense, non-productive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family - in particular, losses and cutoffs. If we do not observe and understand how our triangles operate, our anger can keep us stuck in the past, rather than serving as an incentive and guide to form more productive relationship patterns for the future. — Harriet Lerner

Relationships are most likely to fail when we don't address problems or hold our partner accountable for unfair or irresponsible behavior ... the ability to clarify our values, beliefs, and life goals
and then to keep our behavior congruent with them
is at the heart of a solid marriage. — Harriet Lerner

Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change. — Harriet Lerner

Likewise, the other person has a right to know us accurately, to consider the relationship and make plans for the future based on facts, not fantasies or projections. — Harriet Lerner

venting anger does not solve the problem that anger signals. — Harriet Lerner

Intensity is not the same as intimacy, although we tend to confuse these two words. — Harriet Lerner

People marry with a deep longing that their partner will tend to their wounds, not throw salt in them. Honor your partner's vulnerability. — Harriet Lerner

Those of us who are locked into ineffective expressions of anger suffer as deeply as those of us who dare not get angry at all. — Harriet Lerner

The rush of sexual attraction can act like a drug and blur our capacity for clear thinking. This can lead us to distance ourselves from our friends or even abandon our life plan for someone who couldn't otherwise be relied on to water our plants and feed our cat. — Harriet Lerner

What initially attracts us and what later becomes 'the problem' are usually one and the same. — Harriet Lerner

Underground issues from one relationship or context invariably fuel our fires in another. — Harriet Lerner

Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan. But to have any meaning or viability at all, a life plan must include intimate relationships. — Harriet Lerner

Feeling essentially superior to other people is as sure a sign of poor self-esteem as feeling essentially inferior. — Harriet Lerner

The body, seeking truth, sends a signal. But decoding it, interpreting its meaning, and knowing how to proceed from there is another matter entirely. — Harriet Lerner

The more we seek exclusivity in friendship, the more it becomes obligatory and the less likely it is to fulfill the wonderful vision of what true friendship can be. — Harriet Lerner

Keep in mind that the tendency to be judgmental - toward yourself or another person - is a good barometer of how anxious or stressed out you are. Judging others is simply the flip side of judging yourself. — Harriet Lerner

When you can't see yourself objectively, you won't see anyone else objectively, either. — Harriet Lerner

Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful. — Harriet Lerner

If you exchanged wedding vows, tape them to your bathroom mirror and read them aloud to yourself every morning along with the ritual brushing of teeth. It's not realistic to believe that you will live your promises as a daily practice
unless you're a saint or a highly evolved Zen Buddhist. Not where marriage is concerned. But you can make a practice of returning to your vows when the going gets rough. — Harriet Lerner

It is an act of courage to acknowledge our own uncertainty and sit with it for a while. — Harriet Lerner

Men are often (though not always) the pursuers for sex, just like women are often (though not always) the pursuers for conversation. — Harriet Lerner

Control is an illusion - a fact you will learn very fast if you become ill, or have things fall apart in some other way. When we understand vulnerability and suffering as an essential part of being human, our individual fate can be easier to manage. — Harriet Lerner

We cannot make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern. — Harriet Lerner

Anger is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, meaningful nor pointless. Anger simply is. To ask, "Is my anger legitimate?" is similar to asking, "Do I have the right to be thirsty? After all, I just had a glass of water fifteen minutes ago. Surely my thirst is not legitimate. And besides, what's the point of getting thirsty when I can't get anything to drink now, anyway?" Anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel
and certainly our anger is no exception. — Harriet Lerner

Being who we are requires that we can talk openly about things that are important to us, that we take a clear position on where we stand on important emotional issues, and that we clarify the limits of what is acceptable and tolerable to us in a relationship. — Harriet Lerner

But therein lies the paradox: Speaking out and being "real" are not necessarily virtues. Sometimes voicing our thoughts and feelings shuts down the lines of communication, diminishes or shames another person, or makes it less likely that two people can hear each other or even stay in the same room. Nor is talking always a solution. We know from personal experience that our best intentions to process a difficult issue can move a situation from bad to worse. We can also talk a particular subject to death, or focus on the negative in a way that draws us deeper into it, when we'd be better off distracting ourselves and going bowling. — Harriet Lerner

It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run but, it will never make you less afraid. — Harriet Lerner

No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human. — Harriet Lerner

We may view it as our responsibility to control something that is not in fact within our control and yet fail to exercise the power and authority that we do have over our own behavior. Mothers cannot make children think, feel, or be a certain way, but we can be firm, consistent, and clear about what behavior we will and will not tolerate, and what the consequences are for misbehavior. We can also change our part in patterns that keep family members stuck. At the same time we are doomed to failure with any self-help venture if we view the problem as existing within ourselves - or within the child or the child's father, for that matter. There is never one villain in family life, although it may appear that way on the surface. — Harriet Lerner

The first world we find ourselves in is a family that is not of our choosing. — Harriet Lerner

I've seen any number of devastated men in therapy who tell me their wives left them out of the blue. The women, however, claim to have voiced their anger and discontent for a long time. Both are right; he hasn't listened well enough; she hasn't shared her thoughts about leaving clearly enough or early enough in the process. Often one person doesn't make a serious issue of divorce until she's finally made up her mind to leave. Any changes her partner then agrees to make are too little, too late. In the end, neither spouse has had the opportunity to test the potential for change in their marriage. — Harriet Lerner

Don't use "below-the-belt" tactics. These include: blam- ing, interpreting, diagnosing, labeling, analyzing, preaching, moralizing, ordering, warning, interrogating, ridiculing, and lecturing. Don't put the other person down. — Harriet Lerner

We all long to have a relationship so relaxed and intimate that we can share anything and everything without first thinking about it. Who wants to hide out in a relationship in which we can't allow ourselves to be known? Speaking in our own voice, not in someone else's, is an undeniably good idea. I've yet to meet the person who aspires to be phony or invisible in her closest relationships. The dictate "Be yourself" is a cultural ideal touted everywhere, and luckily, no one else is as qualified for the job. — Harriet Lerner

Your children are not little mirrors reflecting back the good or bad job you've done. — Harriet Lerner

Whatever your sex fantasy is with your partner, consider it normal. — Harriet Lerner

If you're married to an entrenched non-apologizer, it won't help to doggedly demand one. Some folks lack the self-esteem required to take responsibility for their less than honorable behaviors, feel remorse, and offer a heartfelt apology. And many people are so hard on themselves for the mistakes they make, they don't have the emotional room to admit vulnerability and apologize to a partner. — Harriet Lerner

If you treat man as he appears to be, you make him worse than he is. But if you treat man as if he already were what he potentially could be, you make him what he should be. — Harriet Lerner

The bolder and more courageous you are, the more you will learn about yourself. — Harriet Lerner

If what we are doing with our anger is not achieving the desired result, it would seem logical to try something different. — Harriet Lerner

When anxiety disrupts functioning, it's psychiatric illness. — Harriet Lerner

The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to. — Harriet Lerner

We may believe that anxiety and fear don't concern us because we avoid experiencing them. We may keep the scope of our lives narrow and familiar, opting for sameness and safety. We may not even know that we are scared of success, failure, rejection, criticism, conflict, competition, intimacy, or adventure, because we rarely test the limits of our competence and creativity. We avoid anxiety by avoiding risk and change. Our challenge: To be willing to become more anxious, via embracing new situations and stepping more fully into our lives. — Harriet Lerner

Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others. — Harriet Lerner

Telling a true story about personal experience is not just a matter of being oneself, or even or finding oneself. It is also a matter of choosing oneself. — Harriet Lerner

what fuels human unhappiness in both the personal and political realm can be boiled down to these three key emotions - anxiety, fear, and shame. — Harriet Lerner

Moving in this direction requires us to clarify - to ourselves and others - what's important to us. Having an authentic voice means that: We can openly share competence as well as problems and vulnerability. We can warm things up and calm them down. We can listen and ask questions that allow us to truly know the other person and to gather information about anything that may affect us. We can say what we think and feel, state differences, and allow the — Harriet Lerner

Differences don't just threaten and divide us. They also inform, enrich, and enliven us. — Harriet Lerner

The miracle is that your children will love you with all your imperfections if you can do the same for them. — Harriet Lerner

Fear is a message - sometimes helpful, sometimes not - but often conveying critical information about our beliefs, our needs, and our relationship to the world around us. — Harriet Lerner

Yet all of us are vulnerable to intense, nonproductive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family - in particular, losses and cutoffs. — Harriet Lerner

If you want a recipe for relationship failure, just wait for the other person to change first. — Harriet Lerner

Love alone is never a good enough reason to marry. — Harriet Lerner

Being in touch with our bodies, or more accurately, being our bodies, is how we know what is true. Harriet — Harriet Lerner

Many people value criticism in the early stage of a relationship, but become allergic to it over time. Remember this: No one can survive in a marriage (at least not happily) if they feel more judged than admired. Your partner won't make use of your constructive criticism if there's not a surrounding climate of admiration and respect. — Harriet Lerner

Marriage is the lightning rod that absorbs anxiety and stress from all other sources, past and present. When marriage has a firm foundation of solid friendship and mutual respect, it can tolerate a fair amount of raw emotion. A good fight can clear the air, and it's nice to know we can survive conflict and even learn from it. Many couples, however, get trapped in endless rounds of fighting and blaming that they don't know how to get out of. When fights go unchecked and unrepaired, they can eventually erode love and respect, which are the bedrock of any successful relationship. — Harriet Lerner

Through words we come to know the other person
and to be known. This knowing is at the heart of our deepest longings for intimacy and connection with others. How relationships unfold with the most important people in our lives depends on courage and clarity in finding voice. — Harriet Lerner

As long as we can feel hope, there is hope. — Harriet Lerner

We need to hear the sound of our voice for what we think and need. — Harriet Lerner

I'm a good example of wanting to apologize only for my precise share of a problem
as I calculate it, of course
and I expect my husband Steve to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Since we're not always of one mind on the math, it can lead to the theater of the absurd. — Harriet Lerner

Fear has never helped anybody make good choices. It leads to clinging when we should be walking. — Harriet Lerner

Deception and 'con games' are a way of life in all species and throughout nature. Organisms that do not improve their ability to deceive - and to detect deception - are less apt to survive. — Harriet Lerner

But one of the hallmarks of emotional maturity is to recognize the validity of multiple realities and to understand that people think, feel, and react differently. Often we behave as if "closeness" means "sameness. — Harriet Lerner

If we only listened with the same passion that we feel about being heard. — Harriet Lerner

My debt to feminism is simply incalculable. Feminism allowed me to see past a 'reality' that I had once taken as a given. It helped me to pay attention to countless voices, my own included, that I had been taught 'don't count.' Feminism allows me to maintain hope. — Harriet Lerner

Judging people for whom they love (a same sex partner) rather than by whom they harm, should in itself merit a psychiatric diagnosis. — Harriet Lerner

The best apologies are short, and don't go on to include explanations that run the risk of undoing them. An apology isn't the only chance you ever get to address the underlying issue. The apology is the chance you get to establish the ground for future communication. This is an important and often overlooked distinction. — Harriet Lerner

experience of our self and the other person becomes fixed and small. My goal is to challenge us to engage in novel conversations that will create a larger, more empowering view of who we are and what is truly possible. — Harriet Lerner

Pretending can be a bold form of experimentation and inventiveness. In pretending joy or happiness, we may discover or enhance our capacity for it. — Harriet Lerner

Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to. — Harriet Lerner

The challenge in all intimate relationships is to preserve both the "I" and the "we" without losing either when the going gets tough. If we're faced with a choice, we need to choose speech over silence, keep our behavior in line with our stated values and beliefs - and save ourselves first. — Harriet Lerner

Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self. — Harriet Lerner

Whole-hearted listening is the greatest spiritual gift you can give to the other person. — Harriet Lerner

You can't evaluate a prospective partner if you insulate your relationship from your family and friends
and his. — Harriet Lerner

If you pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics. — Harriet Lerner

Nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness. — Harriet Lerner

We commonly confuse closeness with sameness and view intimacy as the merging of two separate I's into one worldview. — Harriet Lerner

We all fear change, even as we seek it. — Harriet Lerner

We'll always be disappointed if we believe that we can plan for a peak experience and make it happen. True joy can't be anticipated or planned. It just strikes. — Harriet Lerner

Believing that all women should want to be mothers makes about as much sense as believing that all men should want to be engineers. — Harriet Lerner