When fear makes your choices for you, no security measures on earth will keep the things you dread from finding you. But if you can avoid avoidance - if you can choose to embrace experiences out of passion, enthusiasm, and a readiness to feel whatever arises - then nothing, nothing in all this dangerous world, can keep you from being safe.
Martha BeckSilence comes in two varieties: One that nourishes and comforts; another that chokes, smothers, and isolates. Solitary confinement is the worst kind of imprisonment we can inflict on fellow humans, and if you are forced to keep silent about some dark secret, you live in solitary confinement. Without the bridge of communication connecting you to other human beings, you canโt share your burdens, canโt receive comfort, canโt confirm that you still belong. Silence is the abyss that separates you from hope.
Martha BeckPolite strangers often tell soothing lies about our physical appearance that prevent many of us from facing, discussing and solving our real problems.
Martha BeckTo make an activity joyful, keep adding things until the activity as a whole becomes more appealing than repulsing.
Martha BeckThe effect of emotional venting is to sustain an unsatisfactory status quo. Most people think the opposite, that complaining is part of an effort to change an unsatisfying situation. Nope. Complaining lets off pressure so that we neither explode with frustration nor feel compelled to take the often risky steps of openly opposing a difficult person or situation. Keeping emotional pressure tolerably low doesn't change problematic circumstances but rather perpetuates them.
Martha Beck