Therapy Psychology Quotes & Sayings

Family therapists view the therapeutic relationship as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself. Family therapists see beyond the problematic patterns in the family to the potential healing power of family relationships. — Joseph A. Micucci

In cases where treatment with medication is warranted, work on family interactions will help to reduce symptom severity and promote better functioning in the long run. — Joseph A. Micucci

Good therapy, gently but firmly, moves people out of denial and compartmentalization. It helps clients to develop richer inner lives and greater self-knowledge. It teaches clients to live harmoniously with others and it enhances Existential consciousness, and allows people to take responsibility for their effects on the world at large. For me , happiness is about appreciating what one has. Practically speaking,this means lowering expectations about what is fair, possible and likely. It means,finding pleasure in the ordinary. — Mary Pipher

In situations where I feel unclear or I do not know what to say or do, I turn my attention within myself. Then I listen to what my intuition and to what Existence within myself wants in this moment. Through listening within in this way, an answer often comes in the form of a creative and authentic impulse to say or do something or simply being silent until Existence is ready to respond. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Positive psychology is not remotely intended to replace therapy or pharmacology. So when depressed, anxious or in panic or post-traumatic stress disorder, I am all for therapies that will work. Positive psychology is another arrow in the quiver of public policy and psychology through which we can raise wellbeing above zero. — Martin Seligman

Personal Construct Therapy was the pioneer of a fully constructivist psychology, emphasizing that people are essentially like scientists in continually developing meanings and explanations of the world, which are employed to guide action and decision making. — Jacqui Stedmon

Families come into therapy with their own structure, and tone, and rules. Their organization, their pattern, has been established over years of living, and it is extremely meaningful and very painful for them. They would not be in therapy if they were happy with it. But however faulty, the family counts on the familiarity and predictability of their world. If they are going to turn loose this painful predictability and attempt to reorganize themselves, they need firm external support. The family crucible must has a shape, a form, a discipline of sorts, and the therapist has to provide it. The family has to know whether we can provide it, and so they test us. — Augustus Y. Napier

My training makes me uneasy with a happy mystery. — Jonathan Rottenberg

Niebuhr [Oden's Doctoral adviser at Yale and leading 20th century Christian theological ethicist] wanted all of his graduate students to have some serious interdisciplinary competence beyond theology, so I chose to be responsible for the area of psychology of religion. I hoped to correlate aspects of contemporary psychotherapies with a philosophy of universal history. The psychology that prevailed in my college years was predominately Freudian psychoanalysis, but my clinical beginning point in the late 1950's had turned to Rogerian client-centered therapy. The psychology that prevailed in my Yale years was predominantly the empirical social psychologists like Kurt Lewin and Musafer Sherif. I gradually assimilated those views in order to work on a critique of therapies and assess them all in relation to my major interest in the meaning of history. — Thomas C. Oden

Sometimes it is very difficult to keep in mind the fact that the parents, too, have reasons for what they do
have reasons, locked in the depths of their personalities, for their inability to love, to understand, to give of themselves to their children. — Virginia Mae Axline

It's not too difficult to get the skeletons out of the closet with people, but to get the gold out is a different matter. That is therapy. Psychology is the Art of finding the gold of the spirit. — Robert Johnson

Psychotherapy and counselling should make people aware of themselves and of the difficulties which they face. This then gives them the freedom to choose for themselves. In this sense, unlike behaviour therapy, psychotherapy is value-free: no advice, suggestions or recriminations are given. Indeed the only value of psychotherapy is respect for the individual. Such respect, however, in a mechanistic and objectifying society ... becomes a political act. — Paul Kline

The first thing you need to know if you are a survivor is that parts of you have probably been trained to create a variety of symptoms and behaviours. Abusers actually train child parts to cut the body, to make other parts cut, to attempt suicide, to create flashbacks by releasing pieces of visual or auditory memories, to create body memories of pain or electroshock, and to create depression, terror, anxiety, and despair by releasing the emotional components of memories to the rest of the personality system. The front person and most of the rest of the system do not know that this is the source of these feelings and behaviours. p126 — Alison Miller

I consider therapy successful when the family members (or individual clients) have discovered ways to get what they need from their relationships with the people in their lives, so that their relationship with me is no longer necessary to sustain them. Like a chemical catalyst that facilitates a reaction between two other substances, the therapeutic relationship catalyzes the transformation of relationships in the lives of clients. But the real healing takes place not in the therapeutic relationship but in the client's relationships with significant others. — Joseph A. Micucci

No one really knows why humans do what they do. — David K. Reynolds

The best way to overcome depression is to work it to death. Whether it be your body or your mind, just be active and some relief you'll find. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

People with OCD including myself, realize that their seemingly uncontrollable behavior is irrational, but they feel unable to stop it. — Abhijit Naskar

The role of the therapist is to reflect the being/accepting self that was never allowed to be in the borderline. — Michael Adzema

Punishment symptoms Many of the other types of programming produce psychiatric symptoms, usually administered as punishments by insiders who are trained to administer them, if the survivor has breached security or disobeyed the abusers' instructions in other ways. These symptoms serve a variety of purposes, such as disrupting therapy, getting the survivor into hospital, or getting the survivor to return to the perpetrators to have the programming reinforced.
p126 — Alison Miller

If the sound of happy children is grating on your ears, I don't think it's the children who need to be adjusted. — Stefan Molyneux

I did a little bit of acting - some guest spots here and there. I got a job working as a therapist doing individual and group crisis intervention and family therapy. I did that for two years. I left to do 'Boston Legal.' So my psychology career has been interwoven into my acting career, and it's my safety net and fallback. — Meredith Eaton

The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain. — Gabor Mate

The manic relief that comes from the fantasy that we can with one savage slash cut the chains of the past and rise like a phoenix, free of all history, is generally a tipping point into insanity, akin to believing that we can escape the endless constraints of gravity, and fly off a tall building. "I'm freeeee ... SPLAT!". — Stefan Molyneux

What is the black shadow? It's the running inner dialogue we have with ourselves all day long about our fears of being inferior as black people. It is our internalization of the white man's lie that blacks are inferior to whites
the very lie that was the foundation of our ancestors' enslavement. The black shadow is more than simply internalized racism; it's also our complex feelings of fear and despair about being black, and consequently our longing to be less black. — Marlene F. Watson

It is fear that makes you believe that you are living and that you will be dead.What we do not want is the fear to come to an end. That is why we have invented all these new minds, new sciences,new talks, therapies, choiceless awareness and various other gimmicks. — U.G. Krishnamurti

It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert. — Nathaniel Branden

There is also an emerging therapy called "Energy Psychology" that connects the — Veronique Desaulniers

Many of the benefits of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) can be obtained without going into therapy. There are a number of self-help books, CDs and computer programs that have been used to treat depression and some of these have been tested in clinical trials with positive results. I can particularly recommend these two books. One is 'Control Your Depression', the lead author of which is Peter Lewinsohn, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon ... The other book that I can recommend with confidence is 'Feeling Good' by the psychiatrist David Burns. 'Control Your Depression' emphasizes behavioral techniques like increasing pleasant activities, improving social skills and learning to relax. 'Feeling Good' puts greater emphasis on changing the way people think about themselves. But both books include both cognitive and behavioral techniques. — Irving Kirsch

We parents are in the process of losing parts of ourselves, of waking up each morning to find ourselves changed by our children. We may fantasize that we are not really changed, that we can go back to poring over Wittgenstein, immersing ourselves in the latest movies, being beach bums- whatever it was that we were before the child or children came into our lives. But part of what we have lost is the part of our identity that is the person-without-children. The parent we are now has a life inextricably entwined not only without our past life and our private selves but also with the lives of our children. — Daniel Gottlieb

Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us. — David Richo

Therapy isn't Radio.We don't need to constantly fill the air with sounds. Sometimes, when its quite, surprising things happen. — Mary Pipher

Presence is not a question of judging or evaluating a client or a client's situation. Presence is to see the client's situation in a positive and creative light with a vision for how the present situation of the client relates to his further spiritual development. It is to accept a person as he is. It is to understand that the person is exactly where he needs to be in order to take the next step in his spiritual development. It is not about fighting with problems, darkness, drama and defences on the personality level, it is about becoming aware. It is about lighting the light in the inner being of another person. — Swami Dhyan Giten

The fields of clinical psychology and psychiatry exist specifically to help the emotionally unstable become more stable and lead happier, healthier lives. Unlike in the eras of Vincent Van Gogh and Abraham Lincoln, there is now professional help available for those who suffer from emotional illness. Treatment may require therapy or even medication, but hope is now available every single day in practically every city in the civilized world. — David J. Lieberman

One of the best ways of repressing emotions is artificial certainty. — Stefan Molyneux

Even though we were still waiting for Don, therapy was well begun. We were engaged in a subtle, often predictable, and very important contest with the family about who was going to be present at the meetings. Carl and I had revealed some of what our relationship had to offer: a good-humored liking for each other, an ability to cooperate, and an insistence on remaining ourselves. I was clearly not going to be the reverential assistant to the older man. And perhaps most important, Carl had intuitively modeled some of the process of therapy for the family. By sharing insight into his own personality, he was saying by demonstration, It's important to search for you own unconscious agenda. — Augustus Y. Napier

Untraumatized people have a natural instinct to make healthy decisions in the best interest of their true selves. They are only limited by their immaturity and the brokenness of their external world. — Daniel Mackler

This book is dedicated to those who have died as a result of mind control and/or ritual abuse, and those who have lived when they would rather have died. — Alison Miller

Although the client-centered approach had its origin purely within the limits of the psychological clinic, it is proving to have implications, often of a startling nature, for very diverse fields of effort. — Carl Rogers

It has been a long road for us as family therapists to reach an understanding of just this phenomenon-the sense of the whole, the family system. While we could have explained the theory of meeting with the whole family to the Brices, at that anxious moment it would not have touched them. There are situations where, in the words of Franz Alexander, the woice of the intellent is too soft. The family needed to test us. They needed the experience of our being firm. As unpleasant as it was, our response must have reassured them. They knew, and we sensed, how difficult their situation was and how tumultuous it could become. They simply has to know that we could withstand the stress if they dared open it up. — Augustus Y. Napier

To embrace love, we risk heartbreak. To resist love, we risk emptiness. — Jennifer Lane

I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists. — Vladimir Nabokov

Spontaneity in the therapeutic work arises when the therapist can allow creative and authentic impulses to arise from moment to moment from the inner being, from the meditative quality within, from the inner emptiness, from the capacity to surrender to life. Then the therapist becomes less of a technician and more of an artist in the therapeutic work. It is then when the therapist and client meets in awareness without any barrier between. — Swami Dhyan Giten

In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth? — Carl R. Rogers

There's no weakness as great as false strength. — Stefan Molyneux

As our children turn even five or six degrees away from us, we have to be aware of our fear and our excitement and our hope for them. And as that five or sex degrees turns into ten or twenty degrees, even ninety degrees, we have to monitor those feelings every step of the way-and ultimately realize that our child is another human being and not necessarily and extension of us. — Daniel Gottlieb

I think we owe it to our children to share our wisdom. If we share our wisdom for the purpose of changing our children, then that's hitting them over the head with a hammer or shoving something down their throats. If the wisdom turns into advice, that's selfish. But if we simply share ourselves and let our children know our hearts, then it's a gift. And I think it's a gift we're responsible for giving them. — Daniel Gottlieb

The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors
psychology, sociology, women's studies
to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view. — P. J. O'Rourke

There's not a drug on earth can make life meaningful — Sarah Kane

I explain to my patients that abused children often find it hard to disentangle themselves from their dysfunctional families, whereas children grow away from good, loving parents with far less conflict. After all, isn't that the task of a good parent, to enable the child to leave home? — Irvin D. Yalom

The individual psychotherapy patient comes to the therapist with an almost automatic deference, a sense of dependence and compliance. The role pattern is old and established: the dependent child seeking guidance from a parent figure. There is no such traditional image for the family, no established pattern in which an entire family submits to the guidance of an individual. And the family structure is simply too powerful and too crucial for the members to go trustingly into an experience that threatens to change the entire matrix of their relationships. If the family therapist is to acquire that initial "authority figure" or "parent" role that is so necessary if therapy is to be more powerful than an ordinary social experience, he has to earn it. — Augustus Y. Napier

The healing power of music is vast. Music therapy is in its infancy in Western psychology. If we knew more, we'd be able to do amazing things, and maybe even make permanent changes in the brain's mysterious workings. With a simple song and four chords, you might be able to do something useful, even life-changing. With all the songs you know, you might be a virtual, veritable medicine chest for the right person. — Gary Talley

Emptiness and the not-"I" is the quality that arises when the therapist consciously moves out of his own way without hindering the therapeutic process through his own ideas, attitudes, expectations and concepts. He is present, available and responds with the truth in the moment. — Swami Dhyan Giten

All children should be taught to unconditionally accept, approve, admire, appreciate, forgive, trust, and ultimately, love their own person. — Asa Don Brown

Often during writing, I am compelled by OCD to delete and rewrite a word or sentence over and over again. — Abhijit Naskar

More often than not, it's disrespectful to them (our children) - and disrespectful to their struggle with their tasks in life- if our own anxiety as parents makes us cling to our children. It's disrespectful is we demand more intimacy than they are willing or able to give. Too much involvement with our children is not an act of love- it's an act of selfishness. — Daniel Gottlieb

I'm getting my psychology degree with a focus on marriage and family therapy. — Danielle Fishel

It was regarded as almost outside the proper interest of an analyst to give systematic attention to a person's real experiences. — John Bowlby

Techniques are like tools: The more you have, the more options for getting a job done - but you have to know what you are building first. — Joseph A. Micucci