Psychological Coping Quotes

It's not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It's like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death's terror. We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.

It doesn't matter if the truth is right there out in front of your eyes. You will find a way, a mechanism, in order to keep your own system of denial. So as I always say it, denial is a river that runs in the - in Egypt. So we became very good in that.

…the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin. But when I made my way in the world I wanted to indulge myself in my fantasies to the extent that I could afford.

Most people who offer their help do it to make themselves feel better, not us. To be honest, I don't blame them. It's superstition: If you give assistance to the family in need... if you throw salt over your shoulder... if you don't step on the cracks, then maybe you'll be immune. Maybe you'll be able to convince yourself that this could never happen to you.

It will suffice thee to remember as concerning pain ... that the mind may, by stopping all manner of commerce and sympathy with the body, still retain its own tranquility.

This sounds so bleak when I say it, but we need some delusions to keep us going. And the people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can't.

I don't believe in superstitions. I just do certain things because I'm scared in case something will happen if I don't do them

I've been fascinated with the subject of loss for a long time. In particular, I'm interested in how people, consciously or unconsciously, spend their lives replacing the things they lost when they were children.

Fortunately, we can take in only so much misfortune; what exceeds that limit either destroys us or leaves us indifferent.

The Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn't sex but something else.

If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I’m not saying that the truth doesn’t matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.

I've seen the worst. In my head, I've seen the worst. When I go into a fight, I'm all right. You know what I'm saying? I've already made it.

But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing.

Perhaps the greatest consolation of the oppressed is to consider themselves superior to their tyrants.

Am I getting braver, or just getting accustomed to being terrified?

I was never particularly gregarious. I was quite shy, closed in. It's a classic isn't it, your psychiatrist will tell you, that's how I release it, through music.

If I haven't had any long term psychological side effects from all the things I've already done on this show, this isn't gonna hurt much more.

I don't really have a realistic life. Anyway, I am a schizophrenic so there two persons in me. Because I am the person I put on for the public and the person that I am really . . . deep inside me. So I have to cover it all up with . . . glamour and all that bullshit . . . make-up . . . glamour, dresses, color, etc., etc. . . . trying to hide a very . . . fragile person, really . . . very vulnerable to attack.

The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".

When the pressures really mount, the neurotic must choose: Shall he have a good cry, or set fire to his neighbor's house?

We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.

I needed something--the distraction of another life--to alleviate fear.

People can rationalize in funny ways to hold onto their dreams and needs.