Quote

Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful.

Harriet Lerner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Harriet Lerner
Thing
Trying
Helpful
Stop
Sometimes

More quotes by Harriet Lerner

Image
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
Image
Women are raised to be the nurturers and steadiers of rocked boats, to hold relationships in place as if our lives depended on it. But it shores up your own dignity and integrity if you're able to say, There are a million things I love about you, and I want our relationship to continue. I forgive you 95 percent, but not this 5 percent.
Harriet Lerner
Image
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
Image
We will be in tune with our bodies only if we truly love and honor them. We can't be in good communication with the enemy.
Harriet Lerner
Image
If what we are doing with our anger is not achieving the desired result, it would seem logical to try something different.
Harriet Lerner
Image
We all fear change, even as we seek it.
Harriet Lerner
Image
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
Image
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
Image
You can't evaluate a prospective partner if you insulate your relationship from your family and friends--and his.
Harriet Lerner
Image
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
Image
Whole-hearted listening is the greatest spiritual gift you can give to the other person.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Every time I open Facebook, I see a post with something like, We must forgive or be prisoners of our own bitterness and hate. People think that forgiveness is all-or-nothing, but this myth hurts people. You can forgive 10, 97, or 14 percent. Forgiveness is complicated.
Harriet Lerner
Image
The miracle is that your children will love you with all your imperfections if you can do the same for them.
Harriet Lerner
Image
The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Although it's not useful to drown in despair, it's also not useful to keep a 'positive attitude' when this means concealing or denying real emotions.
Harriet Lerner
Image
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
Image
Intensity is not the same as intimacy, although we tend to confuse these two words.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Men are often (though not always) the pursuers for sex, just like women are often (though not always) the pursuers for conversation.
Harriet Lerner
Image
The term girl not only serves to avoid certain anxiety-arousing connotations inherent in the word woman regarding aggression, sexuality, and reproduction, it also serves to impart a tone of frivolousness and lack of seriousness to ambitious, intellectual, and competitive striving that women may pursue.
Harriet Lerner
Image
No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human.
Harriet Lerner