“Forgive my indifference; I'd rather be distant than devastated.”
― Ahmed Mostafa

“I found myself in a pattern of being attracted to people who were somehow unavailable, and what I realized was that I was protecting myself because I equate the idea of connection and love with trauma and death.”
― Zachary Quinto

“Embrace those parts of yourself that you've skillfully avoided until now. That's your true adventure.”
― Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road

“Many of us learned that keeping busy…kept us at a distance from our feelings...Some of us took the ways we busied ourselves—becoming overachievers & workaholics—as self esteem…But whenever our inner feeling did not match our outer surface, we were doing ourselves a disservice…If stopping to rest meant being barraged with this discrepancy, no wonder we were reluctant to cease our obsessive activity.”
― Maureen Brady, Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse

“Reasoning with senselessness will never build faith. Faith is strengthened when you stop collecting fragmented signs and questionable hunches, in order to build an acceptable reason for your wrong decisions and less than desirable circumstances.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Defensive devaluation is a protective device that makes love bad, trust unimportant and people "no darn good any way". People who have been deeply hurt in their relationships will often devalue love so it doesn't hurt so much. And they often become resigned to never loving again.”
― Henry Cloud, Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't

“In the grief that comes with recognizing what happened to us, we often feel there is nowhere to turn for solace…We do things to keep it away, such as becoming overly busy or using drugs or alcohol to numb our feelings. When we are caught up in resistance, we do not feel hope, but when we surrender to our sadness fully, hope trickles in.”
― Maureen Brady, Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse

“Feeling. I didn’t want to feel.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“Life is a lot more pleasant when you learn from other people’s mistakes.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“Viver passou a ser uma questão de evitar a dor a qualquer custo. Numa espécie de encarceramento voluntário, você vai sendo acossado dia após dia pelo medo do desconforto.”
― Jeferson Tenório, O avesso da pele

“A person must face the root cause of their relentless personal pain. Irrespective of whatever bricks buttress our youthful personal philosophy, pain avoidance, and pain therapy are likely two of its foundation stones.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“You can't always rely on taking the pain. You need to learn to avoid it.”
― Meg Collett, Fear University

“One of the hardest things you'll ever do is give yourself permission to be in pain of any kind. There's a reason we have survival instincts, so that we don't die. That goes for humans, animals (redundant, I know), all the fishes in the sea, everyone. Some researchers even say that even plants feel pain and a cucumber will scream when you cut it. (And some others say that's crap because they have no brain or central nervous system.) The point is, we're all wusses. And emotional pain is the worst.”
― Anne Clendening, Bent: How Yoga Saved My Ass

“The world of reality exists. The world of fantasy exists. The great boundary between the world of reality and the world of fantasy is the boundary of pleasure and fallacy. So many people enter into the world of realities through the the gate of betrayal and pain of the world of fantasies. If you live in the world of fantasies, ponder!If you live in the world of realities, learn and use your lessons.”
― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

“Home never has enough distractions, only walls and mirrors.”
― Rasmenia Massoud, Tied Within

“We just didn’t want to go home, where we would be surrounded by what we truly are and all that we pretended to be, facing what we might never reach.”
― Rasmenia Massoud, Tied Within

“We hate to lose more than we love to win. It’s more natural to avoid pain than to seek extra happiness.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Medical textbooks never talk about the pain that's caused by anything that doctors do... And many doctors think that the pain is justified "if it's for the patient's good." That is never true. The least we can do, as healers, is everything in our power not to cause pain.”
― Aude Mermilliod, Le Chœur des femmes

“Oh Dear
You will never
Know the pain
Your girl has
Suffered”
― Jennifer West, Jennifer Bares All

“And there's a lot I need to let go of.
But it's so much easier playing a game than living a life.”
― Eric Smith