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“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson One of the trickiest behaviors to overcome or change…
“‘Well,’ said Pooh, ‘what I like best,’ and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.” – A.A. Milne…
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) teaches distress tolerance skills as a way to mindfully tolerate and move through uncomfortable thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Internal distress can feel overwhelming and unbearable at times, but reacting to distress by fighting or…
“The appearance of things change according to the emotions and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.” – Kahlil Gibran Emotion regulation is all about identifying, managing, and responding to emotions in a way that allows them to be useful and productive aspects of your…
“Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom.” – Aldous Huxley In my last post, “10 Practical Examples of Opposite Action – Part One,” we explored a variety of distressing, intense, or difficult emotional…
“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.” – Jim Rohn When you find yourself experiencing an emotion that is somehow getting in the way of harmonious relationships with others, pursuit of your goals, or living in accordance with your true values, opposite action can be an incredibly…
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” – Kahlil Gibran Emotions can often be experienced so suddenly or deeply that little time or energy is given to question the facts or happenings that prompted the emotional experience. When emotions feel visceral and real in this way, we may…
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” – Viktor Frankl Things in life are rarely “always” one way or the another. When you live according to absolutes or extremes, there is a tendency to become easily overwhelmed, overly stressed,…
“The curious paradox is when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” – Carl Rogers In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), the word “dialectic” refers to balancing and comparing two things that seem to be quite different – even contradictory. In DBT, this balance is between change and acceptance. For many people,…
“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But, let us never fear to negotiate.” – John F. Kennedy In our relationships with others, we inevitably need things from them at times just as they need things from us at other times. The exchanges that we have with others about how to get our own needs…
