Things I Have Learned From Patients

-The opposite of love is indifference.
-The best revenge is living well.
-The best way to raise a good child is for the parents to love each other.
-The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than it is in theory.
-The essence of psychotherapy is to learn to understand, then forgive and forget.
-Everyone is entitled to make mistakes.
-If you get the first 25 years of your life right, the next 75 years take care of themselves
-The only self-help book you need is yourself.
-Medication helps about ten percent, therapy about ninety percent.
-Be an ant, not a grasshopper.
-Life is what happens after 5:00 p.m.
-Most people's idea of the ideal family comes from television.
-Even the Simpsons are happy.
-To be happy in a relationship requires you to first be happy with yourself.
-G-d provides opportunities.
-You can never have too much education.
-You can have too much therapy.
-Sometimes, it takes years of therapy to reach an answer so obvious that it was always there.
-In therapy, the patient has all of the answers. The physician only helps him find them.
-The most important part of anyone's life is the first six years. Treat them like gold.
-A little obsessiveness is not a bad thing.
-Mind the holes in anyone with a swiss cheese ego.
-If you sleep well at night, you can probably deal with most of your problems pretty well.
-Pick your fights.
-Depression is anger turned toward the self.
-Never be jealous of your children.
-The key to a good marriage is compromise.
-Most any psychiatric diagnosis given to a child is only a guess.
-Grudges only hurt the grudge-holder.
-The psychotherapist may not cure disease, but helps patients to learn how to love.
-There are two spheres of life - the home sphere and the work sphere. We need calm in one of them.
-In general, people are searching for peace and quiet.
-Almost everything truly is small stuff.
-The ego is soluable in alcohol.
-Television is not necessarily bad for children.
-To understand the concept of ambivalence, think of sitting in your car at a red light. You cannot decide to turn left or right. The light changes to green and the cars behind you start to honk. You still are just sitting there.
-Ruminating about the past is like watching the same movie over and over again and hoping that the ending changes.
-Look for answers where you'll find them, not simply where the light is better.
-Intimacy starts with holding hands and saying I love you.