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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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Harriet Lerner
Helpful
Stop
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More quotes by Harriet Lerner

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Anxiety is extremely contagious, but so is calm.
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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.
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What initially attracts us and what later becomes 'the problem' are usually one and the same.
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If you want a recipe for relationship failure, just wait for the other person to change first.
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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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Women ... have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the soothers, the peacemakers, and the steadiers of rocked boats.
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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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.
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The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.
Harriet Lerner
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There are some things for which there is no apology, and on the question of slavery, there is no adequate apology for ripping people out of their homeland and bringing them here in chains. There is no adequate apology for the ongoing horrific legacy of racism.
Harriet Lerner
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the body, seeking truth, sends a signal. But decoding it, interpreting its meaning, and knowing how to proceed from there is another matter entirely.
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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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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The first world we find ourselves in is a family that is not of our choosing.
Harriet Lerner
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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
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Believing that all women should want to be mothers makes about as much sense as believing that all men should want to be engineers.
Harriet Lerner
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If what we are doing with our anger is not achieving the desired result, it would seem logical to try something different.
Harriet Lerner
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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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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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Men are often (though not always) the pursuers for sex, just like women are often (though not always) the pursuers for conversation.
Harriet Lerner