Stephen Grosz > Quotes

“Closure is just as delusive-it is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“Being present, whether with children, with friends, or even with oneself, is hard work. But isn't this attentiveness -- the feeling that someone is trying to think about us -- something we want more than praise?”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“It is less painful, it turns out, to feel betrayed than to feel forgotten.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“Being loved is the problem, because love is a demand - when you're loved, someone wants more of you.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“In trying so hard to be different from our parents, we're actually doing much the same thing -- doling out empty praise the way an earlier generation doled out thoughtless criticism. If we do it to avoid thinking about our child and her world, then praise, just like criticism, is ultimately expressing our indifference.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. But if we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us- we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don't understand.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“There cannot be change without loss”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“The future is a fantasy that shapes our present.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“we all try to silence painful emotions. but when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us and why.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“Pyschoanalysts are fond of pointing out that the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we're going to, but an idea in our mind now. It is something we're creating, that in turn creates us. The future is a fantasy that shapes our present.”
― Stephen Grosz

“A lot of people, especially psychoanalysts, assume that happiness can only be found in a couple - but not all of us are made for a relationship.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“For a minute, the fantasy frightened her, but ultimately, this fear saved her from feeling alone.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“my breakdown was like a furnace and what was burned away was any belief in my own feelings”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“The bigger the front, the bigger the back.”
― Stephen Grosz

“As he spoke, I had the mental image of a small boy switching on the nightlight, not because he wants to be able to find his parents during the night, but because he fears his parents will forget him - lose him - in the dark.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“Psychoanalysts are fond of pointing out that the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we're going to, but an idea in our mind now. It is something we're creating, that in turn creates us. The future is a fantasy that shapes our present.”
― Stephen Grosz

“At one time or another, most of us have felt trapped by things we find ourselves thinking or doing, caught by our own impulses or foolish choices; ensnared in some unhappiness or fear; imprisoned by our own history. We feel unable to go forward and yet we believe that there must be a way.”
― Stephen Grosz

“Being present builds a child’s confidence because it lets the child know that she is worth thinking about.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“i knew tht we all have the capacity to act in self-destructive ways, nevertheless i had a kind of faith that the desire to live was more powerful. now, instead, i felt its fragility. peter's suicide made me feel that the battle between the forces of life and death was far more evenly pitched.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“When I'm in a couple, I feel I'm disappearing, dying - losing my mind.”
― Stephen Grosz

“I think it takes time – it took me time – to realise just how very different people are from each other.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“He seemed never to have acquired a skill that we all need: the ability to make another person worry about us.”
― Stephen Grosz

“Experience has taught me that our childhoods leave in us stories like this – stories we never found a way to voice, because no one helped us to find the words. When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us – we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don’t understand.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“Ultimately, the thrill created by being told ‘You’re so clever’ gave way to an increase in anxiety and a drop in self-esteem, motivation and performance.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“We receive and we lose, and we must try to achieve gratitude; and with that gratitude to embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“The author Karen Blixen once said, 'All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.' But what if a person can't tell a story about his sorrows? What if his story tells him?”
― Stephen Grosz

“...the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we’re going to, but an idea is our mind now. It is something we’re creating, that in turn creates us. The future is a fantasy that shapes our present.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“At one time or another, we all try to silence painful emotions. But when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us, and why.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“Es mejor haber perdido algo que ser ese algo que alguien olvidó.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“And being dirty and broken – how could he love, or be loved? Going back AS A GIFT to my father for his eightieth birthday, my wife and I organised a trip to Hungary.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves