psychology

I think the stigma attached to mental illness will disappear just like it did for cancer years ago.

Ego depletion comes from American psychologist Roy Baumeister, who believes that enduring something stressful exhausts our capacity for willpower to the extent that we give in to our temptations that we would rather avoid.

It is awesome to note that the works your work are working but that should not be a joy. The ultimate joy should be that the works of your work are indelible.

To take good care of ourselves, we must go back and take care of the wounded child inside of us. You have to practice going back to your wounded child every day. You have to embrace him or her terderly, like a big brother or a big sister. You have to talk to him, talk to her. And you can write a letter to the Little child in you, of two or three pages, to that you recognize his or her presence, and will do everything you can to heal his or her wounds.

One of the great self-deceptions--and one of the great foolishnesses--is to tell yourself, Only I will know. Only you will know that you are a liar; only you will know you deal unethically with people who trust you; only you will know you have no intention of honoring your promise. Whose knowledge or judgment do you imagine is more important? It is precisely your own ego from which there is no escape.

When people encounter the free market and they recoil or react negatively to it, they're merely confessing that voluntaryism, trade and negotiation are foreign and threatening to them, which tells you everything about how tragically they were raised.

Each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows.

But it__ tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it__ tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants. When I met Nick, I knew immediately that was what he wanted, and for him, I guess I was willing to try. I will accept my portion of blame. The thing is, I was crazy about him at first. I found him perversely exotic, a good ole Missouri boy. He was so damn nice to be around. He teased things out in me that I didn__ know existed: a lightness, a humor, an ease. It was as if he hollowed me out and filled me with feathers. He helped me be Cool Girl _ I couldn__ have been Cool Girl with anyone else. I wouldn__ have wanted to. I can__ say I didn__ enjoy some of it: I ate a MoonPie, I walked barefoot, I stopped worrying. I watched dumb movies and ate chemically laced foods. I didn__ think past the first step of anything, that was the key. I drank a Coke and didn__ worry about how to recycle the can or about the acid puddling in my belly, acid so powerful it could strip clean a penny. We went to a dumb movie and I didn__ worry about the offensive sexism or the lack of minorities in meaningful roles. I didn__ even worry whether the movie made sense. I didn__ worry about anything that came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feel myself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy.

The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper: the wish to know the secret of things and of life.

Psychosis is person less persona, raving sincerity.

People think you have only to __ell_ a person that he __ught_ to do something in order to put him on the right track. But whether he can or will do it is another matter.

Clever deceivers rarely tell outright falsehoods. It__ too risky. The art of deception is closely related to the magician__ craft: it involves knowing how to draw attention to a harmless place, to deflect it away from the action. Deeply entrenched patterns of perceptual, emotional, and cognitive dispositions serve as instruments of deception. A skilled deceiver is an illusionist who knows how to manipulate the normal patterns of what is salient to their audience. He places salient markers__omething red, something anomalous, something desirable__n the visual field, to draw attention just where he wants it.

The moment we refuse to hurt others because of our own pain, is the time we evolve as souls.

The Sufi is one who does what others do _ when it is necessary. He is also one who does what others cannot do _ when it is indicated.

The lightning said to the oak tree: __tand aside, or take what is coming to you!

Pride is a fallacy. None of us are greater than the sum of our parts.

The great triumph (or horrible tragedy, depending on how you look at it) of being human is that our brains have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to understand our mortality. We are, sadly, self-aware creatures. Even if we move through the day finding creative ways to deny our mortality, no matter how powerful, loved, or special we may feel, we know we are ultimately doomed to death and decay. This is a mental burden shared by precious few other species on Earth.

It is not only negative feelings that become blocked. The repression extends to more and more of his emotional capacity.When one is given an anesthetic in preparation for surgery, it is not merely the capacity to experience pain that is suspended; the capacity to experience pleasure goes also - because what is blocked is the capacity to experience *feeling*. The same principle applies to the repression of emotions."Chapter 1: Discovering the Unknown Self, pg. 9, Bantam Edition, 1984