Counseling Quotes

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.

Have you ever noticed that fear affects your physical mind and body?

The word 'survivor' carries a weight of remembrance that has broken the minds and bodies of more than a few men and women. It also contains a humbling light of recognition that compels many to do whatever they can to help reinforce the efforts of those who might be 'at risk' of not just giving up on their dreams, but of giving up on their continued existence.

The mouth tastes food, the heart tastes words.

In simple, the past is a time gone by and no longer exists in the present moment, but we choose to allow this past to occupy our minds, our bodies and our very existence.

Real happiness provides you the confidence that you never thought was obtainable.

A child's attachment process begins within the first year of life...

Allow yourself to be an anchor and anchored by others.

Teams that spend a lot of time learning the tricks of the trade will probably never really learn the trade.

An anchor should be someone who is personally open and willing to communicate.

This is one of the difficulties and pleasures of studying the Inklings; Christians all, they offer, along with the expected 20th-century psychological explanations for behavior, unexpected spiritual ones.

You cannot contain evil by shaming it, or making people feel guilty, but only by revealing it toward it is, and then seeing the good as better.

Author says her father was so diplomatic that when people came to him for solutions, people not only accepted them, but they believed they thought of them.

Perception is a vice with which each person is capable of perceiving his or her reality.

Often, our misunderstandings about love are born in disruptive family relationships, where someone was either one-up or one-down to an extreme. There is an appropriate and necessary difference in the balance of power between parents and young children, but in the best situations, there should be no power struggles by the time those children have become adults - just deep connection, trust, and respect between people who sincerely care about each other.In disruptive families, children are taught to remain one-up or one-down into adulthood. And this produces immature adults who either seek to dominate others (one-up) or who allow themselves to be dominated (one-down) in their relationships - one powerful and one needy, one enabling and one addicted, one decisive and one confused.In relationships with these people, manipulation abounds. Especially when they start to feel out of control.

The world’s greatest achievers have been those who have always stayed focussed on their goals and have been consistent in their efforts.

their anxiety, justified or not, was genuine,

It turns out that up to 35 percent of people with bipolar disorder also have ADHD.

We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—hourly and daily. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the task which it constantly sets for each individual.

However, if you do not believe your clients, they may sense your doubt and never fully trust you. As Bruce Goderez (1986), director of a PTSD inpatient unit says, "It is important for the clinician and counselor to be willing to be made a fool." In other words, it is better that you believe a client who is lying or distorting the truth than to disbelieve a hurting trauma survivor who may never seek help again if your attitude is one of disbelief or disdain. Even if that client were to continue in therapy, they would never fully trust you.

Alex had cooked, and coaxed, and helped Mark form borders around the shapeless days. Alex had given meaning to the word "servant".

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.

There is no greater grief, than when a parent losses a child.

You're so haunted by other people's futures that you forget, the only future you cannot see is your own.

The loss of a child exploits the emotions of each individual it encounters.

I could go into their reality any time I chose to, but they could never come into mine. This is what I called 'helping' them.

If you ask an Irishman for directions, he might be quick to answer, Well if I were going there, I would not start here.

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.