Albert Ellis quote:

"Almost all humans have the goals of staying alive and being happy.  Too many people are unaware that it is not outer events or circumstances that will create happiness; rather, it is our perception of events and of ourselves that will create, or uncreate, positive emotions.  People who are aware that they control their emotional and behavioural destinies have a far greater chance of experiencing more joy, less misery, and a healthy stability, even when coping with hardships.  How?  They choose to think in rational, realistic, and life-enhancing ways.  In so doing, appropriate and healthy emotions and actions result."

Ellis, A., and Joffe Ellis, D., 2019.  Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy.  Washington DC: American Psychological Association, p.3.

---

Brené Brown quotes:

“Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

Brown, B., 2016.  Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.  London: Penguin Books Ltd, p.57.

---

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”

Brown, B., 2017.  Rising Strong.  New York: Random House, p.182.

---

Carl Jung quotes:

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."

Jung, C., 1973.  Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950.  1st ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., p.237.

---

"The descent into the depths always seems to precede the ascent."

Jung, C., 1980.  The archetypes and the collective unconscious.  2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, p.19.

---

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

Jung, C. and Jaffe, A., 1989.  Memories, dreams, reflections.  New York: Vintage Books, p.247

---

"The greatest mistake an analyst can make is to assume that his patient has a psychology similar to his own."

Jung, C., 1981.  The structure and dynamics of the psyche.  Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, p.498.

---

Carl Rogers quotes:

"There is another peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone: It is like listening to the music of the spheres, because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal.  Hidden in all of the personal communications which I really hear there seem to be orderly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole.  So there is both the satisfaction of hearing this person and also the satisfaction of feeling one's self in touch with what is universally true."

Rogers, C., 1980.  A Way of Being.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p.8

---

"When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten.  I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy.  It is as though he were saying, ‘Thank God, somebody heard me.  Someone knows what it's like to be me’."

Rogers, C., 1980.  A Way of Being.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p.10

---

"It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard."

Rogers, C., 1980.  A Way of Being.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p.12

---

"People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be.  When I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying, "Soften the orange a little on the right-hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and use a little more pink in the cloud colour." I don't do that.  I don’t try to control a sunset.  I watch it with awe as it unfolds."

Rogers, C., 1980. A Way of Being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p.22.

---

"I have always been better at caring for and looking after others than I have in caring for myself.  But in these later years, I made progress.”

Rogers, C., 1980.  A Way of Being.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p.80

---

"I realize that if I were stable and steady and static, I would be living death.  So I accept confusion and uncertainty and fear and emotional highs and lows because they are the price I willingly pay for a flowing, perplexing, exciting life."

Rogers, C., 1980.  A Way of Being.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p.89

---

"We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy.  Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know."

Rogers, C., 1980.  A Way of Being.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p.116

---

"The state of empathy, or being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person."

Rogers, C., 1980.  A Way of Being.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p.140

---

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.  I believe that I have learned this from my clients as well as within my own experience that we cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are until we thoroughly accept what we are.  Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed."

Rogers, C., 1961.  On becoming a person.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p.17.

---

"Experience is, for me, the highest authority.  The touchstone of validity is my own experience.  No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience.  It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming me."

Rogers, C., 1961.  On becoming a person.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p.23 - 24.

---

“In my early professional years, I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person?  Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”

Rogers, C., 1961.  On becoming a person.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, pp.32

---

"The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself."

Rogers, C., 1961.  On becoming a person.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p.56

---

"One of the most revolutionary concepts to grow out of our clinical experience is the growing recognition that innermost core of man's nature - the deepest layers of his personality, the base of his 'animal nature' - is basically socialized, forward-moving, rational and realistic... He is realistically able to control himself, and he is incorrigibly socialized in his desires.  There is no beast in man, there is only man in man."

Rogers, C., 1961.  On becoming a person.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, pp.90 – 91

---

“Here is a personal description of what it seems like to accept oneself as a stream of becoming, not a finished product.  It means that a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits."

Rogers, C., 1961.  On becoming a person.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 122.

---

"It seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state.  It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness.  It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted, fulfilled, or actualized….The good life is a process, not a state of being…It is a direction, not a destination. The direction…is that which is selected by the total organism, when there is psychological freedom to move in any direction."

Rogers, C., 1961.  On becoming a person.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, pp.186 - 187.

---

“If I can listen to what he can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to him; if I can see its personal meaning for him, if I can sense the emotional flavour which it has for him, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in him.”

Rogers, C., 1961.  On becoming a person.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p.332

---

"Each person is an island unto himself, in a very real sense; and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself."

Rogers, C., Kirschenbaum, H. and Henderson, V., 1989.  The Carl Rogers reader.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p.22.

---

"A second characteristic of the process which for me is the good life, is that it involves an increasing tendency to live fully in each moment.  I believe it would be evident that for the person who was fully open to his new experience, completely without defensiveness, each moment would be new."

Rogers, C., Kirschenbaum, H. and Henderson, V., 1989.  The Carl Rogers reader.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p.413.

---

"The only reality I can possibly know is the world as I perceive it at this moment.  The only reality you can possibly know is the world as you see it at this moment.  And the only certainty is that those perceived realities are different.  There are as many real worlds as there are people!"

Rogers, C., Kirschenbaum, H. and Henderson, V., 1989.  The Carl Rogers reader.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p.424

---

"The only man who is educated is the man who has learned how to learn; the man who has learned how to adapt and change; the man who has realized that no knowledge is secure, that only the process of seeking knowledge gives a basis for security.  Changingness, a reliance on process rather than upon static knowledge, is the only thing that makes any sense as a goal for education in the modern world."

Rogers, C., 1969.  Freedom to learn.  Columbus, Ohio: C.E. Merrill, p.104.

---

Irvin Yalom quotes:

"The effective therapist should never try to force discussion of any content area: therapy should not be theory-driven but relationship-driven."

Yalom, I., 2008.  The gift of therapy.  London: Piatkus, p. xviii.

---

"I prefer to think of my patients and myself as fellow travelers, a term that abolishes distinctions between ‘them’ (the afflicted) and ‘us’ (the healers).”

Yalom, I., 2008.  The gift of therapy.  London: Piatkus, p.8

---

“The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.”

Yalom, I., 2008.  The gift of therapy.  London: Piatkus, p.11

---

"If you make a mistake, admit it.  Any attempt at cover-up will ultimately backfire.  At some level the patient will sense you are acting in bad faith, and therapy will suffer.  Furthermore, an open admission of error is good model-setting for patients and another sign that they matter to you."

Yalom, I., 2008.  The gift of therapy.  London: Piatkus, p.31 - 32