Matthew Walker Quotes

In treatment, all of the negative things I did were stripped away and I had to start processing my feelings.

Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again.

Painful events leave scars, true, but it turns out they're largely erasable. Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroanatomist who had a stroke that obliterated her memory, described the event as losing '37 years of emotional baggage.'

I've always been one of those people that, if I am angry, I just hold it in. And I always kind of, like, wrote it in a song and put it aside for myself because it helps me get it out. It's almost like exercising; it's almost like that for me.

Music became a healer for me. And I learned to listen with all my being. I found that it could wipe away all the emotions of fear and confusion relating to my family.

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.

I have had moments where I've had mental-health issues and I've felt like yoga and meditating and reading these Buddhist self-help books actually really help.

As the weeks went on, I realized there was an important role comedy would play in healing the tragedies of September 11. Comedy can help people cope, and many people were coming to the clubs to laugh out the stress.

Turning feelings into words can help us process and overcome adversity.

The big 'Aha!' moment is that the trauma never goes away.

To switch off, I will take a sleeping pill if I have to. I also found myself realigning things.

I've been in therapy since I was five, but music goes way, way, way, way, way beyond therapy.

I'll never forget my mom coming into the room middle of the night with YouTube videos of hypnotizing people saying, 'You're happy, you're going to be okay,' and she just played it in my ear as I slept.

I use humor as a way to digest anything.

What you start learning is that to get over a breakup, you kind of have to live through the emotions and not run away from it because then it lasts longer.

Learning how to have 'healthy' attachments sounds easy, but in fact, for someone like me who had damaged early relationships, it's like learning to be fluent in Chinese.

Making music has always made me happy. When I go through a situation, the best way for me to get over it is to bundle up all of my emotions about it, put it in a little shell, create something, and then let it go.

That aggression came over time from dealing with stuff - 'Anger Management' really is what it's called. That project came out and I felt a weight lifted off my chest. I learned something about myself.

The past does not haunt us. We haunt the past. We allow our minds to focus in that direction. We open memories and examine them. We reexperience emotions we felt during the painful events we experienced because we are recalling them in as much detail as we can.

First you have to witness that you are stressing out: Oh, my trigger is here. The news is stressing me out or This line is so long. Let yourself feel it. You don't want to spiritually bypass these problems. Give yourself a couple of minutes to sit in the feeling. Acceptance sets you free from the stress of expectation.

I just like the child's nightmares and therapy, once an experience has found the light of day I'm no longer under its spell, I'm free to tell it. I hope in telling honestly I can in some way help other people to do so also.

Emotional access to the truth is the indispensable precondition of healing.

later down the road of life, i made the discovery that salt water was also good for the mental abrasions one inevitably acquires on land.

When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.

You don't need the painful memories, because either you've resolved them. Denying always makes them want to come back. Denial is a mechanism that doesn't work. But allowing them to come back in little by little, those memories, you can begin to be quite comfortable with them, and it's even nice to have that as part of the map of your life.