Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic...but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned.

We can discuss our feelings and problems without expecting people to rescue us too. We can settle for being listened to. That’s probably all we ever wanted anyway.

But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.

"i want to hear what's happened to you," she said evenly after a while. she gestured in the direction, down river, of the butcher shop. "it's just that there is nowhere else to start," she said gently. "niether of us is the same. but i'm different because of small, good, manageable things. you're different because ... things i don't know."

Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life

Start by knowing that who we are is okay. Our feelings and thoughts are okay. Our opinions count. It’s okay to talk about our problems. And it’s okay to say no.

No question; language can free us of feeling, or almost. Maybe that's one of its functions - so we can understand the world without becoming entirely overwhelmed by it.

In fact, research shows that the process of labeling emotional experience is related to greater emotion regulation and psychosocial well-being.

​When it’s safe to talk about mistakes, people are more likely to report errors and less likely to make them.

The more aware of our feelings, the more competent we are likely to be in restraining them when necessary, and the more easily will we loosen such restraint when circumstances no longer seem to require it.
Also in this way we will not need to use up any more energy than necessary.
The release of pent-up feelings almost always seems to be refreshing and energizing, so long as they do not explode into destructive conduct which we later have good reason to regret.

But what I liked best was the matter-of-fact way we talked about it. Nowadays, of course, if anything is controversial we don’t talk about it. We sweep it under the carpet. Just in case, God forbid, it should make us uncomfortable. So we avoid talking about things. And that can’t be good. Stopping talking about things is the first stage in stopping thinking about things.

It is important for us to see that our mentors are human and therefore fallible; it makes our own shortcomings more tenable.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

Communicating our expectations is brave and vulnerable. And it builds meaningful connection and often leads to having a partner or friend who we can reality-check with.