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Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.

Harriet Lerner

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Harriet Lerner
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Others
Self
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Lonely

More quotes by Harriet Lerner

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Often when someone apologizes - like a parent who says to a child, I'm very sorry I neglected you when you were a kid - they also ask, Do you forgive me?, because they want the other person to be over it. However, healing can take a great deal of time. And if we forgive too quickly, we cut the process short.
Harriet Lerner
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As many have observed, it is easy to tell a lie, but it is almost impossible to tell only one.
Harriet Lerner
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Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.
Harriet Lerner
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Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful.
Harriet Lerner
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Those of us who are locked into ineffective expressions of anger suffer as deeply as those of us who dare not get angry at all.
Harriet Lerner
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The miracle is that your children will love you with all your imperfections if you can do the same for them.
Harriet Lerner
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I'm a good example of wanting to apologize only for my precise share of a problem--as I calculate it, of course--and I expect my husband Steve to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Since we're not always of one mind on the math, it can lead to the theater of the absurd.
Harriet Lerner
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The bolder and more courageous you are, the more you will learn about yourself.
Harriet Lerner
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You can't evaluate a prospective partner if you insulate your relationship from your family and friends--and his.
Harriet Lerner
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Differences don’t just threaten and divide us. They also inform, enrich, and enliven us.
Harriet Lerner
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It's a cliché, but also a deep truth (as cliché's tend to be), that you can't love another person very well if you don't love yourself.
Harriet Lerner
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Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses.
Harriet Lerner
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We all fear change, even as we seek it.
Harriet Lerner
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No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human.
Harriet Lerner
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Anxiety is extremely contagious, but so is calm.
Harriet Lerner
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Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self.
Harriet Lerner
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Being who we are requires that we can talk openly about things that are important to us, that we take a clear position on where we stand on important emotional issues, and that we clarify the limits of what is acceptable and tolerable to us in a relationship.
Harriet Lerner
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The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible.
Harriet Lerner
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If you want a recipe for relationship failure, just wait for the other person to change first.
Harriet Lerner
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Through words we come to know the other person--and to be known. This knowing is at the heart of our deepest longings for intimacy and connection with others. How relationships unfold with the most important people in our lives depends on courage and clarity in finding voice.
Harriet Lerner