This Christmas Eve, as last year, I have selected some of the most pertinent quotes from posts I wrote in 2019, along with some seasonal images and beautiful depictions of winter.

This year I’ll also include some quotes I’ve put on Twitter, the ones which you have indicated you have liked the most.

I hope they may bring you some warmth, insight, hope, comfort and love….and, perhaps, some new Ways of Thinking to carry forward into the New Year.❤️

“In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”

Carl Rogers

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers

“When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, “Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it’s like to be me.”” Carl Rogers

“Kindness is a blind entity, it does not see race or religion, sexuality or gender. Kindness is the one thing taught by them all. It underpins acceptance, love and tolerance and it instigates change.”

Amy Overend

 

“We often tend to ignore how much of a child is still in all of us.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

“The most sophisticated people I know – inside they are all children. ”
― Jim Henson

“The child that we once were still remains inside us all. She or he is still there, in memories, reactions, experiences.” –Linda Berman

“Not knowing also allows the therapist to be fully there for the patient, a quiet and strong presence, listening and attending to the patient’s needs, rather than to her own theoretical formulations. How often does one experience such authentic support?”

Linda Berman.

 

John EverettMillais. Christmas Eve. Wikimedia Commons.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Carl Jung

Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

Viktor E. Frankl

“Ways of thinking about ourselves develop from early experience with our primary caregivers. The responsiveness of the other person to the child, the way in which the child’s image is mirrored and reflected in the mother’s eyes, crucially influence the child’s self image.”

Linda Berman

Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A Christmas Carol. Wikimedia Commons.

“When you grow up”, I said, “do you ever stop feeling little and weak?” “No,” she says. “There’s always a little frail and tiny thing inside, no matter how grown-up you are.”

David Almond

Partridges in the Snow. Józef Chełmoński. Wikimedia Commons.

“As a psychotherapist you can’t help anyone take a journey you haven’t taken yourself.”

Linda Berman

Gustave Caillebot Rooftops in the Snow. Wikimedia Commons.

“Neurosis is the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.” C.G. Jung

“Nothing is worth more than this day.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Claude Monet. The Magpie. Wikimedia Commons.

“Forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else. It’s something you do for yourself. It’s saying, ‘You’re not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.’ It’s saying, ‘You don’t get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.” Jodi Picoult

“I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh. ‘Parsonage Garden in the Snow.’Flickr. mark6mauno

“Exclusion is derived from fear, ignorance, and power, whilst inclusion is derived from love, compassion, and respect.” Michelle Emso

TO ALL MY READERS, MAY 2020 BRING YOU HEALTH, HAPPINESS AND

SOME WONDERFUL THOUGHTS -WHEREVER YOU LIVE IN THE WORLD.

I WISH YOU PEACE AND LOVE – WHATEVER YOUR RACE, ETHNICITY, AGE, LANGUAGE, ABILITY, DISABILITY, RELIGION, GENDER, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, NATIONALITY, BELIEFS. 

🙏