Stephen Grosz Quotes

There cannot be change without loss

we all try to silence painful emotions. but when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us and why.

When I'm in a couple, I feel I'm disappearing, dying - losing my mind.

Pyschoanalysts are fond of pointing out that the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we're going to, but an idea in our mind now. It is something we're creating, that in turn creates us. The future is a fantasy that shapes our present.

Being loved is the problem, because love is a demand - when you're loved, someone wants more of you.

I want to change, but not if it means changing.

Closure is just as delusive-it is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief.

The author Karen Blixen once said, 'All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.' But what if a person can't tell a story about his sorrows? What if his story tells him?

I knew tht we all have the capacity to act in self-destructive ways, nevertheless i had a kind of faith that the desire to live was more powerful. now, instead, i felt its fragility. peter's suicide made me feel that the battle between the forces of life and death was far more evenly pitched.

At one time or another, most of us have felt trapped by things we find ourselves thinking or doing, caught by our own impulses or foolish choices; ensnared in some unhappiness or fear; imprisoned by our own history. We feel unable to go forward and yet we believe that there must be a way.

A lot of people, especially psychoanalysts, assume that happiness can only be found in a couple - but not all of us are made for a relationship.

For a minute, the fantasy frightened her, but ultimately, this fear saved her from feeling alone.

It is less painful, it turns out, to feel betrayed than to feel forgotten.

Being present builds a child's confidence because it lets the child know that she is worth thinking about.