Quote

Early fear was felt cellularly and was indeed real. Defensive postures were necessary, but defenses generalize cellularly in adulthood and do not expire. It takes conscious work to undo them. Ironically, as long as we keep using defenses, we actually maintain the original force of the fear.

David Richo

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

David Richo
Felt
Indeed
Defensive
Keep
Early
Posture
Real
Necessary
Adulthood
Postures
Work
Conscious
Maintain
Generalize
Long
Takes
Originals
Expire
Actually
Original
Defenses
Force
Defense
Undo
Fear
Using
Ironically

More quotes by David Richo

Image
The challenge is to find our destiny in exactly what we are refusing to engage in.
David Richo
Image
The most exciting part of finding out who we are is discovering our own uniqueness, who we are outside the box, beyond the categories in a Psychology 101 textbook. In our inimitable singularity, there is an infinite range of possibility that cannot be tied to any one description of what it means to be human or healthy.
David Richo
Image
In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission. When any of these happens to us, we are being summoned to make a transition. It will always mean leaving something behind,...The paradox here is that loss is a path to gain.
David Richo
Image
Mindfulness is both a state of being and a daily spiritual practice, a form of meditation.
David Richo
Image
True optimism is not the prospect of control over pain or elimination of it but survival through it.
David Richo
Image
Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.
David Richo
Image
In mindful grief, we become the landing strip that allows any feelings to arrive. Some crash, some land softly. Some harm us, but none harm us in a lasting way. We remain as they taxi away or as their wreckage is cleared away. We can trust that we will survive.
David Richo
Image
Bread takes the effort of kneading but also requires sitting quietly while the dough rises with a power all its own.
David Richo
Image
Fate often allows a future to take shape with no regard for our expectation, plan, or readiness. Fate's skillful editing of our life choices is like the careful grooming of lads on their first day of school: combed, polished, scrubbed, newly dressed, and glowing too. This is how we become ready for our life lessons.
David Richo
Image
We were born with four words engraved on our bodies and in our hearts: Love me, hold me.
David Richo
Image
When we notice a connection between our present fears and their origins in early life, we are finding out how much of our identity is designed by fear. Is fear the architect of me?
David Richo
Image
Mindful grief means mourning and letting go of the past without expectation, fear, censure, blame, shame, control and so forth. Without such mindful grief, neither past nor person can be laid to rest.
David Richo
Image
The foundation of adult trust is not “You will never hurt me.” It is “I trust myself with whatever you do.
David Richo
Image
Synchronicity is a term used by Carl Jung to describe coincidences that are related by meaningfulness rather than by cause and effect.
David Richo
Image
Relationships are not about how two people can survive each other but about how the whole world becomes more capable of love, with all its dim anguish and glowing rapture.
David Richo
Image
I see that mankind still survives after all its attempts to destroy itself and so I surmise that it is the law of love that rules mankind.
David Richo
Image
Once we understand that what happens beyond our control may be just what we need, we see that acceptance of reality can be our way of participating in our own evolution.
David Richo
Image
The opposite of interpersonal trust is not mistrust. It is despair. This is because we have given up on believing that trustworthiness and fulfillment are possible from others. We have lost our hope in our fellow humans.
David Richo
Image
We do not create our destiny we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.
David Richo
Image
There is a natural and inviolable tendency in things to bloom into whatever they truly are in the core of their being. All we have to do is align ourselves with what wants to happen naturally and put in the effort that is our part in helping it happen.
David Richo