Quotes & Sayings About Psychological Pain

My house was built by a partnership called Desire and Ignorance; they often work together, and always with disastrous consequences. It's surprising they aren't more talked of in the press. They are great survivors but incompetent builders. Desire is famous only for pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, while Ignorance casts a veil over all his unexamined assumptions and makes wrong ones every hour. Together, they created the psychological reality where I live. Hardly a surprise, therefore, if it's unfit for purpose! — Simon Parke

Poetry has its uses for despair. It can carve a shape in which a pain can seem to be; it can give one's loss a form and dimension so that it might be loss and not simply a hopeless haunting. It can do these things for one person, or it can do them for an entire culture. But poetry is for psychological, spiritual, or emotional pain. For physical pain it is, like everything but drugs, useless. — Christian Wiman

A decade ago, Australian philosopher and professor of sustainability Glenn Albrecht set out to coin a term to capture the particular form of psychological distress that set in when the homelands that we love and from which we take comfort are radically altered by extraction and industrialization, rendering them alienating and unfamiliar. He settled on 'solastalgia,' with it's evocations of solace, destruction, and pain, and defined the new word to mean, 'the homesickness you have when you are still at home. — Naomi Klein

Emotional and psychological pain were to become, perhaps, the most powerful force in molding the course of my life. For some people, pain and hurt breed bitterness and cynicism. For others it causes them to look deeply into themselves and into life itself in an attempt to understand the meaning beneath seemingly capricious or arbitrary happenings. — Joseph Girzone

Our goals should stretch us bit by bit. So often when we think we have encountered a ceiling, it is really a psychological or experimental barrier that we have built ourselves. We built it and we can remove it. Just as correct principles, when applied, carry their own witness that they are true, so do correct personal improvement programs. But we must not expect personal improvement without pain or some 'remodeling.' We can't expect to have the thrills of revealed religion without the theology. We cannot expect to have the soul stretching without Christian service. — Neal A. Maxwell

As more people have found the courage to break through shame and speak about woundedness in their lives, we are now subjected to a mean-spirited cultural response, where all talk of woundedness is mocked. The belittling of anyone's attempt to name a context within which they were wounded, were made a victim, is a form of shaming. It is psychological terrorism. Shaming breaks our hearts. All individuals who are genuinely seeking well-being within a healing context realize that it is important to that process not to make being a victim a stance of pride or a location from which to simply blame others. We need to speak our shame and our pain courageously in order to recover. Addressing woundedness is not about blaming others; however, it does allow individuals who have been, and are, hurt to insist on accountability and responsibility both from themselves and from those who were the agents of their suffering as well as those who bore witness. Constructive confrontation aids our healing. — Bell Hooks

Now, as I look back on my life, I can honestly say I wouldn't change it. The pain and suffering have brought me psychological understanding and spiritual strength. I still feel the pain when I reflect on those experiences, but while once they would throw me deeper and deeper into anxious despair, now they feed my desire to keep growing. (3) — Marie Balter

Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is ... The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds. — Dan Millman

She averted his eyes, but not before he recognized the pain in them, a tormented and languished gaze, a stare preserved for people who were able to love deeply enough that they could be destroyed by it. For a moment, he knew that gaze intimately, remembering it from a time long gone. The ache of a shattered belief once known. He knew that feeling. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

The truth is that no one can keep you captive. No one can keep you unhappy. No one can keep you abused. Our lives rise to the level we accept. I do believe we can rise from the screaming blood of our losses, of extreme pain, physically debilitating emotion, psychological neglect, and apathy, and not merely survive, but thrive. We do not need to let our histories or our losses define us except in the way we choose. We can use them as fuel to create real depth, beauty, connectedness, and compassion in our lives. Our stories can make us exceptional people, not damaged ones. If we choose to be truthful with ourselves. And if we choose to digest and release the pain rather than try to avoid it. This is how pain accumulates and creates more pain, leading to neurosis, pathology, and brittleness of spirit. — Jewel

Because of that, he didn't know how to love someone who actually loved him. He had learned a twisted, tormented kind of love filled with pain and exploitation. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

The quality of mind cultivated in vipassana is almost always referred to as "mindfulness," and the literature on its psychological benefits is now substantial. There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.12 — Sam Harris

As Shweder points out, not only is moral responsibility virtually never assigned to sufferers but to even hint at it is considered "blaming the victim," one of the main heresies within our Western society. The responses to suffering, then, are always provided by experts, whether pain management, psychological or medical treatment, or changes in law or public policy. In — Timothy Keller

You never have to suffer because of, or be denatured by, another person, even someone you love. — Rossana Condoleo

This is our part in spiritual war. We proclaim Christ's truth by praying it, speaking it and (undoubtedly most importantly) by demonstrating it. We are not to accept with sere pious resignation the evil aspects of our world as "coming from a father's hand." Rather, following the example of our Lord and Savior, and going forth with the confidence that he has in principle already defeated his (and our) foes, we are to revolt against the evil aspects of our world as coming from the devil's hand. Our revolt is to be broad
as broad as the evil we seek to confront, and as broad as the work of the cross we seek to proclaim. Wherever there is destruction, hated, apathy, injustice, pain or hopelessness, whether it concerns God's creation, a structural feature of society, or the physical, psychological or spiritual aspect of an individual, we are in word and deed to proclaim to the evil powers that be, "You are defeated." As Jesus did, we proclaim this by demonstrating it. — Gregory A. Boyd

Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious. They are emotional anesthetics. Heroin and cocaine, both powerful physical painkillers, also ease psychological discomfort. — Gabor Mate

three things were most important in easing life's final journey. People needed strong relief from physical pain and troublesome symptoms, they needed to preserve their dignity, and they needed help with the psychological and spiritual pain of death. — Annie Clara Brown

The psychological pain
and the ethical shame
of American poverty are made greater by the fact that this country possesses the wealth and the energy to raise all children to a minimally decent standard of living. — Kenneth Keniston

What sustains and gives continuity to the fear of the past and also to the fear for the future? Surely it is thought - thought of what one has done in the past, or of how a particular disease has given pain and one is afraid of the future repetition of that pain. Fear is sustained by memory, by thinking about it.
Thought, in thinking about past pain or pleasure, gives a continuity to it, sustains and nourishes it. Pleasure or pain in relation to the future is the activity of thought. I am afraid of something I have done, its possible consequences in the future. This fear is sustained by thought. That is fairly obvious. So thought is time - psychologically. Thought brings about psychological time as distinct from chronological time. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Pennebaker began his studies in the 1980s when he asked students to write about traumatic, stressful or emotional events for twenty minutes over three consecutive days. His results found improvements in both physical and psychological health. People were happier and healthier when they wrote, including reduced visits to doctors, positive effects on blood pressure, improved liver and immune system functioning and less use of pain medication. Writing also had beneficial effects on emotional health and enhanced social relationships. — Patricia McAdoo

Community does involve psychology stuff - which, in my opinion, is why roughly 90 percent of new communities fail. Forming a community is deeply psychological. Emotional pain and hidden expectations exert a powerful pull on people, and community founders are no exception. Put a group of people in a community visioning session, and you have dozens of different needs and expectations, known and unknown, ricocheting invisibly around the room. — Diana Leafe Christian

In one recent experiment, Damasio and his colleagues had subjects listen to stories describing people experiencing physical or psychological pain. The subjects were then put into a magnetic resonance imaging machine and their brains were scanned as they were asked to remember the stories. The experiment revealed that while the human brain reacts very quickly to demonstrations of physical pain-when you see someone injured, the primitive pain centers in your own brain activate almost instantaneously- the more sophisticated mental process of empathizing with psychological suffering unfolds much more slowly. It takes time, the researchers discovered, for the brain "to transcend immediate involvement of the body" and begin to understand and to feel "the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation." (p220) — Nicholas Carr

Even though people experiencing dementia become unable to recount what has just happened, they still go through the experience -- even without recall.

The psychological present lasts about three seconds. We experience the present even when we have dementia. The emotional pain caused by callous treatment or statements occurs during that period. The moods and actions of people with dementia are expressions of what they have experienced, whether they can use language and recall, or not. — Judy Cornish

When we say to people, 'I will pray for you,' we make a very important commitment. The sad thing is that this remark often remains nothing but a well-meant expression of concern. But when we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and touched by him in the center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate. It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed by God into his own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness, and misery, not because of some great psychological or emotional capacity, but because God's heart has become one with ours. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Anxiety, the other characteristic of modern man, is even more basic than emptiness and loneliness. For being "hollow" and lonely would not bother us except that it makes us prey to that peculiar psychological pain and turmoil called anxiety. — Rollo May

Self-pity, a dominant characteristic of sociopaths, is also the characteristic that differentiates heroic storytelling from psychological rumination. When you talk about your experiences to shed light, you may feel wrenching pain, grief, anger, or shame. Your audience may pity you, but not because you want them to. — Martha Beck

All of the sudden, my right leg caved in. I crumpled to the floor in pain. The doctor weren't sure I'd ever be able to play again ... and even if I did recover physically, the psychological scars of so traumatic an injury might never heal. — Wilt Chamberlain

I suppose I do believe that the greatest art consoles a wound that it creates, that art can give you the capacity to endure and respond to the pain it forces you to feel. Psychological pain, I mean. — Christian Wiman

Woody Allen once said that 90 percent of life is about showing up. Ninety percent of healing people in psychological pain is shutting up - at least long enough to let them bleed the truth. That sounds easy, but it isn't. (68) — Keith Ablow

If the person you were fighting had any kind of wound,worry it and keep at it And the pain would be much more intense.It was the psychological angle and all.Once a cut was there,it was human nature to try to protect it from more harm. — Martina Cole

Apache have the strongest nation in the world behind them. So we're going to inflict pain where our European aunts and uncles had to endure it. And so the fact that you could actually get Nazis scared of a band of Jews, that's - again, that's a gigantic psychological thing. — Quentin Tarantino

In Hull's view, all learning involves the reduction of basic drives (like hunger, thirst, sex, or pain), and current behavior is therefore a product of drive reduction in the past. That is, what we do today in a certain situation is a function of what we did in the past that was successful in reducing drives in similar situations. This is essentially a psychological version of the philosophical position known as hedonism, the idea that we live our lives in such a way as to seek pleasure and avoid pain. — Joseph E. Ledoux

Pain or not, I would most likely walk around in a suicidal reverie the rest of my life, never actually doing anything about it. Was there a psychological term for that? Was there a disease that involved an intense desire to die, but no will to go through with it? Couldn't talk and thoughts of suicide be considered a whole malady of their own, a special subcategory of depression in which the loss of a will to live has not quite been displaced by a determination to die? — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Yet a period's character does affect individual character. Psychology, the study of what happens in our minds, is tightly interwoven with culture, the name we give to our beliefs, practices, and social behaviors. The scholar Andrew Delbanco goes so far as to define culture as a collective psychological notion. "Human beings need to organize the inchoate sensations amid which we pass our days - pain, desire, pleasure, fear - into a story," Delbanco writes. "When that story leads somewhere and thereby helps us navigate through life to its inevitable terminus in death, it gives us hope. And if such a sustaining narrative establishes itself over time in the minds of a substantial number of people, we call it culture. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

Now he understood. After a while, pain simply stopped. It was as though your mind was able to create a firewall beyond which it would not let you venture. You had to have a break from your anguish, or you'd go crazy. It was the psychological equivalent to fainting when physical pain became overbearing. — Elizabeth Berg

Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning. — Joyce Carol Oates

There is no doubt about it, these animals are trying to destroy me mentally. Blows come in psychological form, ripping through my defences, tearing me apart internally. In the the face of this new but very effective game of destruction I cry like a child. Shattered!No injuries are apparent. What is going on, why? — Jimmy Boyle

Man does work for profit in order to enjoy pain; but in a positive sense, he works to enjoy the excitement and meaning that achievement provides for his own psychological growth and thereby his happiness. — Frederick Herzberg

Men do oppress women. People are hurt by rigid sexist role patterns. These two realities coexist. Male oppression of women cannot be excused by the recognition that there are ways men are hurt by rigid sexist roles. Feminist activists should acknowledge that hurt, and work to change it - it exists. It does not erase or lessen male responsibility for supporting and perpetuating their power under patriarchy to exploit and oppress women in a manner far more grievous than the serious psychological stress and emotional pain caused by male conformity to rigid sexist role patterns. — Bell Hooks

The quotes are often poignant or funny (one man before the firing squad requests a bulletproof vest) and often don't register as much more than interesting historical documents from centuries past. But read in aggregate, all that pain piles up. Essentially, Elder has amassed a collection of what people say when they know they are going to die, the final product of what could be seen as psychological torture. — Jonathan Messinger

There's nothing.
Nothing to hold on to while the current takes me.
Whatever I might have had until today, I've lost.
I feel my love for her, swelling; bloating into something that's about to explode, like an abscess that's been allowed to rot for too long, but the pain drowns it so completely I know I'm never coming back out. This feeling, that you're choking and that your body is underwater, immersed in the ocean, a dense flood that overpowers your breathing abilities, and your will to survive gets drowned right along with it. And as I'm drowning I see her face and hear her voice - and it doesn't give me hope, it terrifies me. I'm terrified because I know she's going to be the death of me. I'm terrified because I know I won't be able to cope. I'm terrified because the darkness is the only true friend I've ever had and if it wants to embrace me I don't have the power to make it stop. — Kady Hunt

This is the message of your life and my life - it's that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it: Panta Rhei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children - nothing lasts. To the degree that you avert your gaze from this truth, you build the potential for pain into your life. Everything is this act of embracing the present moment, the felt presence of experience, and then moving on to the next felt moment of experience. It's literally psychological nomadism is what it is. — Terence McKenna

The inner experience of fallure is totally different than failure. Going to fallure means 100% commitment - you leave nothing in reserve, no mental or physical resource untapped, you never give yourself a psychological out. Failure means making a decision to let go, to be less than 100% committed, when confronted by fear, pain and uncertainty. — James C. Collins

Most doctors are uncomfortable with medical conditions that have a psychological basis. — John E. Sarno

We do just about anything to avoid pain and preserve a sense of self, and this compulsion often results in us creating psychological defenses. — Tom Butler-Bowdon

Effort and pain may not be avoided. Physical and psychological breakdowns occur. The support of a like-minded group, dedicated to The Art of Suffering, provides a safety net. An individual will push harder and risk more in the company of trustworthy peers ... — Mark Twight

Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having their legs off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Looking at that pain in her eyes, he felt a closeness with her that he had never experienced before. Like they shared something powerful and unspoken, something so deep and devastating, it bonded them together. He knew then, that if she didn't forgive him, he would never survive.

He was nothing without her. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

The contraption was something V had bought but had never used: He'd kept it only because it had terrified him, and that was reason enough to own the thing. To be robbed of sight and hearing was the one thing guaranteed to make him lose his fucking shit - which was precisely why Butch picked the mask. He knew too well the buttons to push - physical pain was one thing ... but the psychological stuff was so much worse. And therefore more effectual. — J.R. Ward

Modern Christianity, in dramatic reversal of its biblical form, promises to relieve the pain of living in a fallen world. Then message, whether it's from fundamentalists requiring us to live by a favored set of rules or from charismatics urging a deeper surrender to the Spirit's power, is too often the same: The promise of bliss is for now! Complete satisfaction can be ours this side of heaven. Some speak of the joys of fellowship and obedience, others of a rich awareness of their value and worth. The language may be reassuringly biblical or it may reflect the influence of current psychological thought. Either way, the point of living the Christian life has shifted from knowing and serving Christ till He returns to soothing, or at least learning to ignore, the ache in our soul. — Larry Crabb

We have the tendency to judge others by their surface appearance, and to find only their negative qualities. But if we search beneath the surface we discover that a myriad of strains mix together to create a particular person's nature. The faults we perceive are likely to be the effect of circumstances, the psychological response to trauma, abuse, rejection, heartbreak, insecurity, pain, confusion, or disease. — Radhanath Swami

Differentiating from parental introjects and psychological defences based on the emotional pain of childhood is essential not only for neurotic or seriously disturbed individuals; it is a central developmental issue in every person's life. — Lisa Firestone

Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain. — Dean Koontz

If I have any complaints about my youth ... one is that many well-meaning adults lied to me. Not spiteful lies with malicious intent but lies designed to prevent emotional and psychological pain - lies told by the people who cared about me most: my parents, teachers, relatives. — Chris Crutcher

Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems. Those problems always have both physical and psychological components- anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain. — Chris Prentiss

In a world threatened by pain and death, stories of miracle workers are a psychological necessity, because the alternative is unmitigated horror and despair. — Philip Ball

With sincerity, courage, & honesty, one can face death, extreme physical pain, & even extreme psychological pain. One can resist persecution from individuals, society, or government. To live in preparation of adversity & finding ways to preserve your core values --this is what it means to learn "how to live. — Qiu Miaojin

Like physical pain, our psychological pain is an indication of something out of equilibrium, some limitation that has been exceeded. And like our physical pain, our psychological pain is not necessarily always bad or even undesirable. — Mark Manson

Today the pain seems to be gone, along with fear and shapelessness. — Ophelia Callens

Time and again, people transcend the paralyzing effects of psychological pain when they have sufficient contact with someone who can hear them empathically. — Marshall B. Rosenberg