Needy Person Quotes

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I'm the kind of person who would rather get my hopes up really high and watch them get dashed to pieces than wisely keep my expectations at bay and hope they are exceeded. This quality has made me a needy and theatrical friend, but has given me a spectacularly dramatic emotional life.
Mindy Kaling (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns))
You can't quantify love, and if you try, you can end up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that really has more to do with personality-the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom-almost never-an even proposition.
Emily Giffin (Baby Proof)
A person shows signs of clutching on too fast, of being needy, of not hearing the word "no," of jealousy, of guarding you and your freedom. But the signs can be so small they skitter right past you. Sometimes they dance past, looking satiny, something you should applaud. Someone's jealousy can make you feel good. Special. But it's not even about you. It's about a hand that is already gripping. It's about their need, circling around your throat
Deb Caletti (Stay)
At those times when I’m weak, needy, and depressed, I must remember there’s someone who feels worse. To that person, I would appear whole.
Larry Godwin (Transcending Depression: Quest Without a Compass)
We are all weak most of the time,' she said finally. 'Look at the baby. Born to his mother, he learns how to eat from her, how to walk, talk, hunt, run. He does not invent new ways. He just continues with the old. This is how we all come to the world, James. Weak and needy, desperate to learn how to be a person.' She smiled at him. 'But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way.
Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing)
I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.
George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline)
I’m not sharing. You’re mine. No one will touch you but me. I have an addictive personality. I always have. And you just became my number one addiction. I’m gonna want this. A lot. I’m needy and demanding, and now you’re the only one who can meet that need.
Abbi Glines (Bad for You (Sea Breeze, #7))
You love too hard," he said. "It's the only way to love," I replied. I am tired of every person coming my way telling me that I am too needy for love. I am not needy for love. I just love.
Najwa Zebian (The Nectar of Pain)
BEWARE OF THOSE Beware of those who are bitter, For they will never allow you To enjoy your fruit. Beware of those who criticize you When you deserve some praise for an achievement, For they secretly desire to be worshiped. Beware of those who are needy or stingy, For they would rather sting you Than give you anything. Beware of those who are always hungry, For they will feed you to the wolves Just to get paid. Beware of those who speak negatively About everything and everybody, For a negative person will never say A positive thing about you. Beware of those who are bored And not passionate about life, For they will bore you with reasons For not living. Beware of those who are too focused with Polishing and beautifying their outer shells, For they lack true substance to understand That genuine beauty is in the heart That resides inside. Beware of those who step in the path of your dreams, For they only dream to have the ability To take half your steps. Beware of those who steer you away From your heart’s true happiness, For it would make them happy to see you Steer yourself next to them, Sitting with both your hearts bitter. Those who are critical don’t like being criticized, And those who are insensitive have a deficiency in their senses. And finally, Beware of those who tell you to BEWARE. They are too aware of everything – And live alone, scared. Poetry by Suzy Kassem
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
I've grown up with an ethic, call it a part, that insists I hide my pain at all costs. As I talk, I feel this pain leaking out—not just the core symptom of BPD, but all the years of being blamed or ignored for my condition, and all the years I've blamed others for how I am. It's the pain of being told I was too needy even as could never get the help I needed.
Kiera Van Gelder (The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating)
The psyche cannot tolerate a vacuum of love. In the severely abused or deprived child, pain, dis-ease, and violance rush in to fill the void. In the average person in our culture, who has been only "normally" deprived of touch, anxiety and an insatiable hunger for posessions replace the missing eros. The child lacking a sense of welcome, joyous belonging, gratuitous security, will learn to hoard the limited supply of affection. According to the law of psychic compensation, not being held leads to holding on, grasping, addiction, posessiveness. Gradually, things replace people as a source of pleasure and security. When the gift of belonging with is denied, the child learns that love means belongin to. To the degree we are arrested at this stage of development, the needy child will dominate our motivations. Other people and things (and there is fundamentally no difference) will be seen as existing solely for the purpose of "my" survival and satisfaction. "Mine" will become the most important word.
Sam Keen (The Passionate Life: Stages of Loving)
We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another, especially when it's a really busy person, like you, taking care of a needy, annoying, neurotic person, like you.
Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)
Changes in Relationship with others: It is especially hard to trust other people if you have been repeatedly abused, abandoned or betrayed as a child. Mistrust makes it very difficult to make friends, and to be able to distinguish between good and bad intentions in other people. Some parts do not seem to trust anyone, while other parts may be so vulnerable and needy that they do not pay attention to clues that perhaps a person is not trustworthy. Some parts like to be close to others or feel a desperate need to be close and taken care of, while other parts fear being close or actively dislike people. Some parts are afraid of being in relationships while others are afraid of being rejected or criticized. This naturally sets up major internal as well as relational conflicts.
Suzette Boon (Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology))
It refers to the drive to need no one, or more specifically, the fear of being dependent. Counter-dependent people go to great lengths to avoid asking for help, to not appear, or feel, needy. They will make every effort not to rely on another person, even at their own great expense.
Jonice Webb (Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect)
Your husband may not be a wealth of pregnancy information, but he is a wealth of 'you' information. He probably knows you better than anyone else in this world (which means he understands your current neediness pretty well). He also probably loves you more than anyone else in this world. So, while he may not be the person to turn to if you need to know how to soothe breast tenderness, he's the perfect person to turn to when you need a hand to hold.
Erin MacPherson (The Christian Mama's Guide to Having a Baby: Everything You Need to Know to Survive (And Love) Your Pregnancy)
See how they love one another.” Not a bad gauge of health. “There was no needy person among them.” A better metric would be hard to find. There is one line that stopped me in my tracks: “And awe came upon everyone.” It would seem that, quite possibly, the ultimate measure of health in any community might well reside in our ability to stand in awe at what folks have to carry rather than in judgment at how they carry it.
Gregory Boyle (Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship)
The abuser sees it as a huge victory to turn an independent survivor into a needy, dependent person who can no longer make decisions without the abusive person’s help.
Shannon Thomas (Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse)
If you’ve ever met an energy vampire (and you probably have), you’ll get the distinct feeling that this person has an intense need to prey off the vitality of others. There is a kind of acute neediness present in energy vampires which can be quite overwhelming and depleting to those they come in contact with.
Mateo Sol (Awakened Empath: The Ultimate Guide to Emotional, Psychological and Spiritual Healing)
It wasn’t as if she’d thought it through or anything, how what a person wanted wasn’t always what they needed, and what a person needed might be the last thing they could ever want.
Shannon Celebi (Small Town Demons)
I suspect that many of us, if given the chance to make one person in our lives love us more, would have no trouble in choosing where to point a finger. We are all needy, all vulnerable, all terrified that perhaps that person has an excellent reason to withhold affection. We shape our purposes to make ourselves worthy and often do not see until much later how it was love—or perhaps the lack of it—that both picked us up and dropped us off at crossroads.
Kevin Hearne (Shattered (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #7))
According to Jesus, acknowledging our neediness opens the door to genuine and lasting happiness. Religions usually talk about what a person has to "do", but Jesus talks about what we "can't do". He says that our weakness, not our power or what we bring to God, enables us to know God.
Paul E. Miller (Love Walked Among Us: Learning To Love Like Jesus)
In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietitude of every day life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive. To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must first get out of the way.
Toni Morrison (Beloved)
I think that every living person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group thinking, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there, the problem is the needy beast of a thing living in my chest.
Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (Paperback))
Acceptance. We want someone to look at us, and really see us—our physical flaws, our personality quirks, our insecurities. And we want them to be okay with every square inch of who we are. We’re always afraid we might be too needy or too much work. We put all these limitations on ourselves and our relationships because we’re afraid that we’re not really loved. That we’re not really accepted. We hide little pieces of ourselves because we think that might be the one thing that finally drives away the person who’s supposed to love us.
Michele Bardsley (Cross Your Heart (Broken Heart, #7))
Kindness never use harsh words its touch warmth the needy person.
Kishore Bansal
Worship gatherings are not always spectacular, but they are always supernatural. And if a church looks for or works for the spectacular, she may miss the supernatural. If a person enters a gathering to be wowed with something impressive, with a style that fits him just right, with an order of service and song selection designed just the right way, that person may miss the supernatural presence of God. Worship is supernatural whenever people come hungry to respond, react, and receive from God for who He is and what He has done. A church worshipping as a Creature of the Word doesn't show up to perform or be entertained; she comes desperate and needy, thirsty for grace, receiving from the Lord and the body of Christ, and then gratefully receiving what she needs as she offers her praise-the only proper response to the God who saves us.
Matt Chandler (Creature of the Word: The Jesus-Centered Church)
What helps most is remembering that such a cry or attack or sly blow is a reflection of that other person’s inner state; it is not an omniscient summary of you. Your reaction reflects your own inner state, and that can tell you which aspects of your own inner world are needy of attention. p.291
Stephanie Dowrick (Intimacy and Solitude: Balancing Closeness and Independence)
I had been thinking a lot about how the media has created this complex, fictionalized cartoon version of me, you know, this man-eating, jet-setting serial dater who reels them in, but scares them off because she’s clingy and needy; then she’s all dejected, so she goes into her lair and writes a song as a weapon. I mean, man, that’s pretty intense. And I started thinking about what an interesting character that person is. And, if I was that person, what would my life motto be, my mantra? What would I say? I think I’d own it.
Taylor Swift
But simple people don’t understand complicated ones and thrust the latter back on themselves, more ruthlessly than any others, I thought. The biggest mistake is to think that one can be rescued by so-called simple people. A person goes to them in an extremely needy condition and begs desperately to be rescued and they thrust this person even more deeply into his own despair. And how are they supposed to save the extravagant one in his extravagance, I thought. Wertheimer
Thomas Bernhard (The Loser)
A successful person expects a clapping hand, an ailing person expects an open hand.
Anthony Liccione
She has never understood, nor been able to relate to a herd mentality. She doesn't get along with followers and avoids the bandwagon. She marches to her own tune and does it alone. She's despised by the weak-minded and respected by the strong. She ruffles the feathers of the flock because she champion's the defenseless and pick's on the mob. Does she wish she could not give a damn and live an ordinary life surrounded by nodding and needy ordinary people? At times...but she'd be bored out of her mind when she's never bored alone, and because of that she's patient because a couple of times in a lifetime she's lucky enough to come across a memorable, magnetic and remarkable person - one worth knowing, even if just for the brevity of a conversation.
Donna Lynn Hope
Sometimes we are fooled by appearances. In my opinion, we should never be sorry if we later discover that we were mistaken while doing a good deed. The need to help should be our first reaction and offering help should be the genuine manifestation of being a good human as our parents taught us to be. Sometimes, we may discover we helped the wrong person, but that should not be a reason to stop helping other people in need, even though we were fooled previously. If you want to do good there are opportunities everywhere. Don’t let the fools spoil your good heart.
Nico J. Genes (LESSONS in LIFE: Achieving a better you through self-reflection)
You can't quantify love, and if you try, you can wind up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that has really has more to do with personality- the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom- almost never -even proposition. Someone always loves more.
Emily Giffin (Baby Proof)
Perhaps you had an overprotective, needy caretaker who really wanted a child very dependent and never able to leave. Or the caretaker’s own sense of strength or self-worth was bolstered by being stronger and so needed.
Elaine N. Aron (The Highly Sensitive Person)
I have, by God’s grace, learned as a member of the Christian community what is the nature of God’s mercy, which does not leave me to overcome my sin by my own effort, so I have something to say to the fellow-sufferer who does not know where to look for hope. And what I have to say depends utterly on my willingness not to let go of that awareness of myself that reminds me where I start each day—not as a finished saint but as a needy person still struggling to grow.
Rowan Williams (Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another)
To understand the peculiar power of the Coquette, you must first understand a critical property of love and desire: the more obviously you pursue a person, the more likely you are to chase them away. Too much attention can be interesting for a while, but it soon grows cloying and finally becomes claustrophobic and frightening. It signals weakness and neediness, an unseductive combination.
Robert Greene (The Art of Seduction)
Inferiority is not banal or incidental even when it happens to women. It is not a petty affliction like bad skin or circles under the eyes. It is not a superficial flaw in an otherwise perfect picture. It is not a minor irritation, nor is it a trivial inconvenience, an occasional aggravation, or a regrettable but (frankly) harmless lapse in manners. It is not a “point of view” that some people with soft skins find “ offensive. ” It is the deep and destructive devaluing of a person in life, a shredding of dignity and self-respect, an imposed exile from human worth and human recognition, the forced alienation of a person from even the possibility of wholeness or internal integrity. Inferiority puts rightful self-love beyond reach, a dream fragmented by insult into a perpetually recurring nightmare; inferiority creates a person broken and humiliated inside. The fragments— scattered pieces and sharp slivers of someone who can never be made whole—are then taken to be the standard of what is normal in her kind: women are like that. The insult that hurt her—inferiority as an assault, ongoing since birth—is seen as a consequence, not a cause, of her so-called nature, an inferior nature. In English, a graceful language, she is even called a piece. It is likely to be her personal experience that she is insufficiently loved. Her subjectivity itself is second-class, her experiences and perceptions inferior in the world as she is inferior in the world. Her experience is recast into a psychologically pejorative judgment: she is never loved enough because she is needy, neurotic, the insufficiency of love she feels being in and of itself evidence of a deep-seated and natural dependency. Her personal experiences or perceptions are never credited as having a hard core of reality to them. She is, however, never loved enough. In truth; in point of fact; objectively: she is never loved enough. As Konrad Lorenz wrote: “ I doubt if it is possible to feel real affection for anybody who is in every respect one’s inferior. ” 1 There are so many dirty names for her that one rarely learns them all, even in one’s native language.
Andrea Dworkin (Intercourse)
These venomous, needy souls speak of “toxic masculinity,” but who is more toxic than the person who needs to change to the whole world so that they can love themselves?
Jack Donovan (Fire in the Dark: Men and Gods)
In a room full of people, it makes sense to help the person who’s suffering the most, the one we know best, the one we’re most capable of helping. Sometimes that person is you…
Leslie Becker-Phelps (Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It)
touchKindness never use harsh words its touch warmth the needy person.
Kishore Bansal
A broken women has nothing to offer a whole man. A broken man has nothing to offer a whole women. Why? The successful relationship is predicated on each person coming to the union to give, give, give.....this is the perfect formula for success! Broken people are needy and selfish!!
Mz Liz
Tonight, though, he could not help seeing his mother as a spiritual sister to the beautiful, needy and depressive girl who had broken apart on a frozen road, and to the plain, homeless outsider now lying in the chilly morgue. Leda, Lula and Rochelle had not been women like Lucy, or his Aunt Joan; they had not taken every reasonable precaution against violence or chance; they had not tethered themselves to life with mortgages and voluntary work, safe husbands and clean-faced dependants: their deathsm therefore, were not classed as "tragic", in the same way as those of staid and respectable housewives. How easy it was to capitalise on a person's own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree tnat it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.
Robert Galbraith (The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1))
When we take rejection as proof of our inadequacies, it's hard to allow ourselves to risk being truly seen again. How can we open ourselves to another person if we fear that he or she will discover what we're trying desperately to hide—that we are stupid, boring, incompetent, needy, or in some way deeply inadequate? Obviously we won't meet many people's standards or win their affection, respect, or approval. So what? The problem arises when shame kicks in and we aren't able to view our flaws, limitations, and vulnerabilities in a patient, self-loving way. The fear of rejection becomes understandably intense when it taps into our own belief that we are lesser than others—or lesser than the image we feel compelled to project.
Harriet Lerner
Because—as I’d discovered—loneliness is not a function of company, but rather it is a consequence: an unpleasant symptom of a needy state of mind that desperately seeks to extract happiness from a source outside itself.
Aspen Matis (Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir)
If only you would understand the silent speech and the real pain within the innermost man of they that suffer in silence, you would never keep silent to their suffering. So many people can’t speak everything about how they are suffering for the sake of dignity and confidentiality. Though they smile, they smile out of a deep pain within. When you look at someone suffering, just see how he is suffering and in so far as you can, be the joy to the innermost man of the person to the best of your ability. Don’t wait for his words, just look and see!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Love often doesn’t make any sense at all. It likes to creep up on you when you’re least expecting it, with the person you’re least expecting it to be with. It climbs walls and crosses oceans to find you. When it’s your time, love will track you down. Love isn’t possession, it isn’t codependency, it isn’t jealousy, and it isn’t neediness or clinginess. It’s not meant to complete you, but to complement you. If it’s toxic, it isn’t love. Love isn’t finding a “better half,” but an “equal match.” Love is letting go when you want to hold on. Love will never require you to sacrifice your dreams or your dignity. Love isn’t uncertainty. It isn’t a “maybe” thing. It isn’t a question. It’s always an answer. Love is beautiful. It is magical. It is life-changing. It is breathtaking.
Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
For there was not a needy person among them, because all those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, 35 and laid them at the apostles' feet. This was then distributed for each person's basic needs.
Anonymous (HCSB: Holman Christian Standard Bible)
The only big weapon anyone has against you is that you’re human. Fucked-up, a bit. Imperfect, yes. In this, you are like every great human who has ever lived, male and female alike. If you’re slutty, well, Mary Wollstonecraft was pretty slutty. If you’re needy, my God, Charlotte Brontë’s needs could devour a person alive. If you’re mean, or self-destructive, or crazy, I assure you, Billie Holiday managed to record ‘Strange Fruit’ while being spectacularly self-destructive, and Sylvia Plath wrote Ariel while being both crazy and very, very mean. The world is still better with those works in it. Humanity is still lucky that those particular women existed, and that, despite their deep flaws and abudance of raw humanity, they stood up and said what they had to say.
Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear... and Why)
The main difference between these alternatives is symmetry. Dependence is an asymmetrical involvement: One person needs the other, but not vice versa, so the needy person is one-down. Interdependence is symmetrical: Both parties rely on each other, so neither is one-up or one-down. Moreover,
Deborah Tannen (You Just Don't Understand)
What could prompt parents to give up sleep, sex, friends, personal time and virtually every other pleasure in life to meet the demands of a small, often irritatingly noisy, incontinent, needy being? The secret is that caring for children is, in many ways, indescribably pleasurable. Our brains reward us for interacting with our children, especially infants: their scent, the cooing sounds they make when they are calm, their smooth skin and especially, their faces are designed to fill us with joy. What we call “cuteness” is actually an evolutionary adaptation that helps ensure that parents will care for their children, that babies will get their needs met, and parents will take on this seemingly thankless task with pleasure.
Bruce D. Perry (The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook)
On the positive side, you are “in love” with your partner. This is at first a deeply satisfying state. You feel intensely alive. Your existence has suddenly become meaningful because someone needs you, wants you, and makes you feel special, and you do the same for him or her. When you are together, you feel whole. The feeling can become so intense that the rest of the world fades into insignificance. However, you may also have noticed that there is a neediness and a clinging quality to that intensity. You become addicted to the other person. He or she acts on you like a drug. You are on a high when the drug is available, but even the possibility or the thought that he or she might no longer be there for you can lead to jealousy, possessiveness, attempts at manipulation through emotional blackmail, blaming and accusing — fear of loss. If the other person does leave you, this can give rise to the most intense hostility or the most profound grief and despair. In an instant, loving tenderness can turn into a savage attack or dreadful grief. Where is the love now? Can love change into its opposite in an instant? Was it love in the first place, or just an addictive grasping and clinging?
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
Far from resisting the emergence of the new caste system, Clinton escalated the drug war beyond what conservatives had imagined possible a decade earlier. As the Justice Policy Institute has observed, “the Clinton Administration’s ‘tough on crime’ policies resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history.”99 Clinton eventually moved beyond crime and capitulated to the conservative racial agenda on welfare. This move, like his “get tough” rhetoric and policies, was part of a grand strategy articulated by the “new Democrats” to appeal to the elusive white swing voters. In so doing, Clinton—more than any other president—created the current racial undercaste. He signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which “ended welfare as we know it,” replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with a block grant to states called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). TANF imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance, as well as a permanent, lifetime ban on eligibility for welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense—including simple possession of marijuana.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
Security means the state of being free from danger or threat. Danger means the possibility of suffering harm or injury. The possibility of something unwelcome or unpleasant happening. There are times I have to stress as I express the correct, precise, real and honest definitions; so that the deceptive, politically motivated folks who destructively branded me as “threat to danger” would realise their double denial duplicity, dishonesty and hypocrisy. Have you at least questioned the personal motives and faulty malicious and intentional misjudgment or at least be honestly curious to discern the motive of a cunning person who warns you against another as a danger, a threat or a risk to life or security? Did the political harridan mean political threat to her political coalition or a danger to reveal the harridan's creative deception matched with her political ambitious power links? ~ Angelica Hopes, K.H. Trilogy
Angelica Hopes
We are so selfish that we want the person with whom we are sharing our life to be as needy as we are. We want “someone who needs me” in order to justify our existence, in order to feel that we have a reason to be alive. We think we are searching for love, but we are searching for “someone who needs me,” someone we can control and manipulate.
Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship (A Toltec Wisdom Book))
I get needy I need more than any person should need anything
Bett Williams (Girl Walking Backwards)
If you are an educated person, you will need to be careful not to assume that uneducated people are too stupid to understand the Bible.
Mez McConnell (Church in Hard Places: How the Local Church Brings Life to the Poor and Needy (9Marks))
This is how we all come to the world, James. Weak and needy, desperate to learn how to be a person.
Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing)
This is how we all come to the world, James. Weak and needy, desperate to learn how to be a person.” She
Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing)
Many survivors of relational and other forms of early life trauma are deeply troubled and often struggle with feelings of anger, grief, alienation, distrust, confusion, low self-esteem, loneliness, shame, and self-loathing. They seem to be prisoners of their emotions, alternating between being flooded by intense emotional and physiological distress related to the trauma or its consequences and being detached and unable to express or feel any emotion at all - alternations that are the signature posttraumatic pattern. These occur alongside or in conjunction with other common reactions and symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem) and their secondary manifestations. Those with complex trauma histories often have diffuse identity issues and feel like outsiders, different from other people, whom they somehow can't seem to get along with, fit in with, or get close to, even when they try. Moreover, they often feel a sense of personal contamination and that no one understands or can help them. Quite frequently and unfortunately, both they and other people (including the professionals they turn to for help) do misunderstand them, devalue their strengths, or view their survival adaptations through a lens of pathology (e.g., seeing them as "demanding", "overdependent and needy", "aggressive", or as having borderline personality). Yet, despite all, many individuals with these histories display a remarkable capacity for resilience, a sense of morality and empathy for others, spirituality, and perseverance that are highly admirable under the circumstances and that create a strong capacity for survival. Three broad categories of survivorship, with much overlap between them, can be discerned: 1. Those who have successfully overcome their past and whose lives are healthy and satisfying. Often, individuals in this group have had reparative experiences within relationships that helped them to cope successfully. 2. Those whose lives are interrupted by recurring posttraumatic reactions (often in response to life events and experiences) that periodically hijack them and their functioning for various periods of time. 3. Those whose lives are impaired on an ongoing basis and who live in a condition of posttraumatic decline, even to the point of death, due to compromised medical and mental health status or as victims of suicide of community violence, including homicide.
Christine A. Courtois (Treatment of Complex Trauma: A Sequenced, Relationship-Based Approach)
Introverts are often thought to be shy, and they may battle the perception that they dislike people or company or that they’re grouchy or social misfits. Extroverts, however, battle the perception that they’re flighty or shallow or relentlessly happy. People tend to assume extroverts are bad listeners, hate being alone, and are irrationally “needy” for the company of others.
Anne Bogel (Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything)
I want to give you affirmation. But if I don't give you enough, you should ask for it." "Isn't asking for affirmation — I don't know — needy?" He looked perplexed. "Isn't the point of something like this that the other person tries to meet your needs, and you try to meet theirs?" I was quiet for a few seconds before saying, "Is this what they teach in therapy? Because it's blowing my mind.
Curtis Sittenfeld (Romantic Comedy)
The more different someone seems from us, the more unreal they may feel to us. We can too easily ignore or dismiss people when they are of a different race or religion, when they come from a different socioeconomic “class.” Assessing them as either superior or inferior, better or worse, important or unimportant, we distance ourselves. Fixating on appearances—their looks, behavior, ways of speaking—we peg them as certain types. They are HIV positive or an alcoholic, a leftist or fundamentalist, a criminal or power monger, a feminist or do-gooder. Sometimes our typecasting has more to do with temperament—the person is boring or narcissistic, needy or pushy, anxious or depressed. Whether extreme or subtle, typing others makes the real human invisible to our eyes and closes our heart.
Tara Brach (Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha)
Such are the problems with nontriune gods and creation. Single-person gods, having spent eternity alone, are inevitably self-centered beings, and so it becomes hard to see why they would ever cause anything else to exist. Wouldn’t the existence of a universe be an irritating distraction for the god whose greatest pleasure is looking in a mirror? Creating just looks like a deeply unnatural thing for such a god to do. And if such gods do create, they always seem to do so out of an essential neediness or desire to use what they create merely for their own self-gratification. God’s Ecstasy Everything changes when it comes to the Father, Son and Spirit. Here is a God who is not essentially lonely, but who has been loving for all eternity as the Father has loved the Son in the Spirit. Loving others is not a strange or novel thing for this God at all; it is at the root of who he is.
Michael Reeves (Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith)
Chapter 90: [This] Countryside I swear by [this] countryside, you are a native settled on this land, as well as any parent and whatever he may father. We have created man under stress. Does he reckon that no one can do anything against him? He says: "I have used up piles of money!" Does he consider that no one sees him? Have we not granted him both eyes, a tongue and two lips, and guided him along both highroads? Yet he does not tackle the Obstacle! What will make you realize what the Obstacle is? It means redeeming the captive, or feeding some orphaned relative on a day of famine or some needy person in distress. Then he will act like someone who believes, recommends patience and encourages mercifulness. Those will be the companions on the right-hand side, while the ones who disbelieve in Our signs will be companions on the sinister side: above them a fire will hem them in.
T. B. Irving (A Translation Of The Meaning Of The Noble Qur'an)
psychologically abusive people set out to take down the biggest challenge that presented itself at the time. The abuser sees it as a huge victory to turn an independent survivor into a needy, dependent person who can no longer make decisions without the abusive person’s help. The abuser often complains about how weak the survivor has become, but it is exactly the abuser’s actions that have made the changes. Blaming the survivor is the ultimate insult.
Shannon Thomas (Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse)
Notice in Acts 4 that there were “no needy persons among them.” Why? Because they shared with “anyone one who had need.” The expression of neediness in the community allowed the economy of love to flow. But in churches in America and other places where affluence poses special problems, the situation is very different. These cultures are enslaved to the fear of death and death avoidance holds serious sway. In these cultures the expression of need is taboo and pornographic. What results is neurotic image-management, the pressure to be “fine.” The perversity here is that on the surface American churches do look like the church in Acts 4 - there are “no needy persons” among us. We all appear to be doing just fine, thank you very much. But we know this to be a sham, a collective delusion driven by the fear of death. I’m really not fine and neither are you. But you are afraid of me and I’m afraid of you. We are neurotic about being vulnerable with each other. We fear exposing our need and failure to each other. And because of this fear - the fear of being needy within a community of neediness - the witness of the church is compromised. A collection of self-sustaining and self-reliant people - people who are all pretending to be fine - is not the Kingdom of God. It’s a church built upon the delusional anthropology we described earlier. Specifically, a church where everyone is “fine” is a group of humans refusing to be human beings and pretending to be gods. Such a “church” is comprised of fearful people working hard to keep up appearances and unable to trust each other to the point of loving self-sacrifice. In such a “church” each member is expected to be self-sufficient and self-sustaining, thus making no demands upon others. Unfortunately, where there is no need and no vulnerability, there can be no love.
Richard Beck (The Slavery of Death)
I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly un-likable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between
George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline)
He understood that every person has a weak and needy part of their soul that can be bought, and he knew that every individual also had a part of their soul that was resilient and could never be bought. It was only a question of which one was stronger.
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!)
We are all weak most of the time,” she said finally. “Look at the baby. Born to his mother, he learns how to eat from her, how to walk, talk, hunt, run. He does not invent new ways. He just continues with the old. This is how we all come to the world, James. Weak and needy, desperate to learn how to be a person.” She smiled at him. “But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way.
Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing)
If you start slipping into your fantasy that you may be able to get the other person to change, you’ll feel weak, vulnerable, apprehensive, and needy. This extremely unpleasant feeling of weakness is a signal that you need to shift out of responding emotionally and move back into observing mode.
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
In essence, schizoid personality disorder is overtly characterized by social withdrawal, interpersonal detachment, solitariness in vocational and recreational choices, asexuality, idiosyncratic morality, and absentmindedness. Covertly, however, the schizoid individual is exquisitely sensitive, emotionally needy, acutely observant, creative, often perverse, and vulnerable to corruption. The avoidance of and the need for others, the callous persona and the inner sensitivity, and the absent-mindedness and vigilance are various facets of the same condition. The tension between these extremes is the heart of the schizoid pathology.
Salman Akhtar (Quest for Answers: A Primer of Understanding and Treating Severe Personality Disorders)
So let us be clear once and for all that Jesus is not suggesting that certain classes of people are to be viewed as pigs or dogs. Nor is he saying that we should not give good things and do good deeds to people who might reject or misuse them. In fact, his teaching is precisely the opposite. We are to be like the Father in the heavens, “who is kind to the unthankful and the evil” (Luke 6:35). The problem with pearls for pigs is not that the pigs are not worthy. It is not worthiness that is in question here at all, but helpfulness. Pigs cannot digest pearls, cannot nourish themselves upon them. Likewise for a dog with a Bible or a crucifix. The dog cannot eat it. The reason these animals will finally “turn and rend you,” when you one day step up to them with another load of Bibles or pearls, is that you at least are edible. Anyone who has ever had serious responsibilities of caring for animals will understand immediately what Jesus is saying. And what a picture this is of our efforts to correct and control others by pouring our good things, often truly precious things, upon them—things that they nevertheless simply cannot ingest and use to nourish themselves. Often we do not even listen to them. We “know” without listening. Jesus saw it going on around him all the time, as we do today. And the outcome is usually exactly the same as with the pig and the dog. Our good intentions make little difference. The needy person will finally become angry and attack us. The point is not the waste of the “pearl” but that the person given the pearl is not helped.
Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God)
Every action is a losing, a letting go, a passing away from oneself of some bit of one’s own reality into the existence of others and of the world. In Jesus Christ, this character of action is not resisted, by trying to use our action to assert ourselves, extend ourselves, to impose our will and being upon situations. In Jesus Christ, this self-expending character of action is joyfully affirmed. I receive myself constantly from God’s Parenting love. But so far as some aspects of myself are at my disposal, these I receive to give away. Those who would live as Jesus did—who would act and purpose themselves as Jesus did—mean to love, i.e., they mean to expend themselves for others unto death. Their being is meant to pass away from them to others, and they make that meaning the conscious direction of their existence. Too often the love which is proclaimed in the churches suppresses this element of loss and need and death in activity. As a Christian, I often speak of love as helping others, but I ignore what this does to the person who loves. I ignore the fact that love is self-expenditure, a real expending and losing and deterioration of the self. I speak of love as if the person loving had no problems, no needs, no limits. In other words, I speak of love as if the affluent dream were true. This kind of proclamation is heard everywhere. We hear it said: 'Since you have no unanswered needs, why don’t you go out and help those other people who are in need?' But we never hear people go on and add: 'If you do this, you too will be driven into need.' And by not stating this conclusion, people give the childish impression that Christian love is some kind of cornucopia, where we can reach to everybody’s needs and problems and still have everything we need for ourselves. Believe me, there are grown-up persons who speak this kind of nonsense. And when people try to live out this illusory love, they become terrified when the self-expending begins to take its toll. Terror of relationship is [that] we eat each other. But note this very carefully: like Jesus, we too can only live to give our received selves away freely because we know our being is not thereby ended, but still and always lies in the Parenting of our God.... Those who love in the name of Jesus Christ... serve the needs of others willingly, even to the point of being exposed in their own neediness.... They do not cope with their own needs. They do not anguish over how their own needs may be met by the twists and turns of their circumstances, by the whims of their society, or by the strategies of their own egos. At the center of their life—the very innermost center—they are grateful to God, because... they do not fear neediness. That is what frees them to serve the needy, to companion the needy, to become and be one of the needy.
Arthur C. McGill (Dying Unto Life (Theological Fascinations))
The true bodhisattva spirit grows out of this personal sense of freedom. You discover that you don't feel so needy anymore. You don't crave another refueling - with shamatha or with other people's love and attention - because you know within yourself how to be free, how to be confident. With this sense of security and freedom, you begin to direct your attention to the needs of others. The compassion expands.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche (Fearless Simplicity: The Dzogchen Way of Living Freely in a Complex World)
Highly needy men will end up in relationships sometimes, but only with highly needy women. The highly needy man is constantly working to earn a woman’s approval, and a highly needy woman is constantly in need of a man’s approval. So the two conspire together, usually with one creating drama/emotional meltdowns and the other one endlessly fixing it. This relationship is toxic and can harm each person’s self-worth.
Mark Manson (Models: Attract Women Through Honesty)
the very notion of personality, which is what we are trying to get at here, seems to have very limited application to me and quite possibly to everyone else. Self is another dodgy concept, since I am, when I subject this 'I' to careful inspection, not much more than a flickering of affinities, habits, memories, and predilections that could go either way- towards neediness or independence for example courage or cowardice.
Barbara Ehrenreich (Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream)
It was this other side of Avery - the fact that he so visibly had an other side - that was helping me finally understand all three of the dimensions in Kafka: that a man could be a sweet, sympathetic, comically needy victim and a lascivious, self-aggrandizing, grudge-bearing bore, and also, crucially, a third thing: a flickering consciousness, a simultaneity of culpable urge and poignant self-reproach, a person in process.
Jonathan Franzen (The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History)
. . . I bet I'm beginning to make some parents nervous - here I am, bragging of being a dropout, and unemployable, and about to make a pitch for you to follow your creative dreams, when what parents want is for their children to do well in their field, to make them look good, and maybe also to assemble a tasteful fortune . . . But that is not your problem. Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to live it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it, and find out the truth about who you are . . . I do know you are not what you look like, or how much you weigh, or how you did in school, or whether you start a job next Monday or not. Spirit isn't what you do, it's . . . well, again, I don't actually know. They probably taught this junior year at Goucher; I should've stuck around. But I know that you feel best when you're not doing much - when you're in nature, when you're very quiet or, paradoxically, listening to music . . . We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another, especially when it's a really busy person, like you, taking care of the needy, annoying, neurotic person, like you. In fact, that's often when we see Spirit most brightly . . . In my twenties I devised a school of relaxation that has unfortunately fallen out of favor in the ensuing years - it was called Prone Yoga. You just lay around as much as possible. You could read, listen to music, you could space out or sleep. But you had to be lying down. Maintaining the prone. You've graduated. You have nothing left to prove, and besides, it's a fool's game. If you agree to play, you've already lost. It's Charlie Brown and Lucy, with the football. If you keep getting back on the field, they win. There are so many great things to do right now. Write. Sing. Rest. Eat cherries. Register voters. And - oh my God - I nearly forgot the most important thing: refuse to wear uncomfortable pants, even if they make you look really thin. Promise me you'll never wear pants that bind or tug or hurt, pants that have an opinion about how much you've just eaten. The pants may be lying! There is way too much lying and scolding going on politically right now without having your pants get in on the act, too. So bless you. You've done an amazing thing. And you are loved; you're capable of lives of great joy and meaning. It's what you are made of. And it's what you're here for. Take care of yourselves; take care of one another. And give thanks, like this: Thank you.
Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)
One final caution: Don’t be too quick to move past a “nice-but-boring” date. As Levine and Heller (2010) note, sometimes people equate their attachment-related anxiety with the feeling of being in love. When someone is comfortable to be with and seems accepting of you, your attachment-related anxiety might not be triggered. So it’s entirely possible that the “nice person” you met might be a great fit for you—despite the lack of immediate “excitement.
Leslie Becker-Phelps (Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It)
This then, good Sirs, is what it means to be a knight-errant, and that which I have spoken to you of is the order of chivalry which I, although a sinner, have made my profession. That which the aforementioned knights professed, I do profess. And, therefore, I travel through these lonely and desolate places seeking adventures, with full resolution to offer mine own arm and person against the greatest dangers that Fortune may present, in aid of the weak and the needy.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
The Kingdom of God has come upon you.’”30 The Kingdom became present whenever somebody had the compassion to admit a needy stranger to his home, when that stranger received food from another and then offered something in return. Peasants, Crossan explains, had two overriding anxieties: “Shall I eat today?” and “Shall I become ill and fall into debt?” In Jesus’s system, if one person had food then everybody could eat, and there would always be somebody to care for the sick.
Karen Armstrong (St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate (Icons))
I can almost imagine God feeling the same kind of joy when He’s hiding in places where He should be easy to find, the places where He told us from the beginning that He would be. He’s given lots of hints about where He can be found—in the Bible, in the person of Jesus, in creation, in the faces of the needy, in the pattern and timing of events. Those are the first places to go if we want to see the God who sees us. But I would suggest you pay close attention to your own experience as well. If you want to see God, why not deliberately put yourself in the places where you tend to notice Him?
Tammy Maltby (The God Who Sees You: Look to Him When You Feel Discouraged, Forgotten, or Invisible)
Codependents may: think and feel responsible for other people—for other people’s feelings, thoughts, actions, choices, wants, needs, well-being, lack of well-being, and ultimate destiny. feel anxiety, pity, and guilt when other people have a problem. feel compelled—almost forced—to help that person solve the problem, such as offering unwanted advice, giving a rapid-fire series of suggestions, or fixing feelings. feel angry when their help isn’t effective. anticipate other people’s needs. wonder why others don’t do the same for them. find themselves saying yes when they mean no, doing things they don’t really want to be doing, doing more than their fair share of the work, and doing things other people are capable of doing for themselves. not know what they want and need or, if they do, tell themselves what they want and need is not important. try to please others instead of themselves. find it easier to feel and express anger about injustices done to others, rather than injustices done to themselves. feel safest when giving. feel insecure and guilty when somebody gives to them. feel sad because they spend their whole lives giving to other people and nobody gives to them. find themselves attracted to needy people. find needy people attracted to them. feel bored, empty, and worthless if they don’t have a crisis in their lives, a problem to solve, or someone to help. abandon their routine to respond to or do something for somebody else. overcommit themselves. feel harried and pressured. believe deep inside other people are somehow responsible for them. blame others for the spot the codependents are in. say other people make the codependents feel the way they do. believe other people are making them crazy. feel angry, victimized, unappreciated, and used. find other people become impatient or angry with them for all the preceding characteristics. LOW
Melody Beattie (Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself)
If you have food or substance-related issues, you may be repressing or denying a different need, one connected to other people. If you feel little or no interest in sex, you almost certainly have repressed your desire. Likewise if you’re preoccupied with pornography, especially when you have a romantic partner or spouse, you may be denying your need for and dependence upon another person to gratify your sexual needs – you can do it alone! If you have a hard time reaching out to people, it may be that you find your own neediness unacceptable. People who tell themselves they don’t feel much need for friends, intimate relationships or sex are in denial.
Joseph Burgo (Why Do I Do That?)
I married him—despite all the very good reasons that no one should ever partner up for a third time—because early on, he reminded me of the best father figure of my life, my ninth-grade English teacher. When that man died, his friends (eighty-year-old poker buddies, pals from his teaching days, devoted former students of all ages and types) wept. He was old, fat, diabetic, and often brusque. Women desired him and my children loved him and most men liked his company a great deal. He was loyal, imperious, needy, charming, bighearted, and just about the most selfish, lovable, and foolishly fearless person I had ever known. And then I met Brian and found another.
Amy Bloom (In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss)
I suspect that many of us, if given the chance to make one person in our lives love us more, would have no trouble in choosing where to point a finger. We are all needy, all vulnerable, all terrified that perhaps that person has an excellent reason to withhold affection. We shape our purposes to make ourselves worthy and often do not see until much later how it was love—or perhaps the lack of it—that both picked us up and dropped us off at crossroads. Love can and does push the levers of power, yet there is no power that can force one to love another. It is a thing freely given and just as freely accepted or rejected. It is by degrees of love that we wither or blossom—and I suspect that this holds true in both the giving and receiving.
Kevin Hearne
One fairly common denominator was having a relationship, personally or professionally, with troubled, needy, or dependent people. But a second, more common denominator seemed to be the unwritten, silent rules that usually develop in the immediate family and set the pace for relationships.8 These rules prohibit discussion about problems; open expression of feelings; direct, honest communication; realistic expectations, such as being human, vulnerable, or imperfect; selfishness; trust in other people and one’s self; playing and having fun; and rocking the delicately balanced family canoe through growth or change—however healthy and beneficial that movement might be. These rules are common to alcoholic family systems but can emerge in other families, too.
Melody Beattie (Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself)
A group of women can constellate a Mother morphic field when we gather together in a sacred circle. We create a 'temenos,' which means 'sanctuary' in Greek. In a women's circle, every woman in the circle is herself and an aspect of every other woman there as well. There is no vertical hierarchy in a circle, and when a circle is a temenos, it is a safe place to tell the truth of our own feelings, perceptions, and experiences. For a women's circle to work as a spiritual and psychological cauldron for change and growth, we need to see every woman in the circle as a sister who mirrors back to us reflections of ourselves. This means that whatever happened to her could have happened to us, that whatever she has felt or done is a possibility for us, that she is someone toward whom we feel neither superior nor inferior nor indifferent. These are not just concepts but the emotional reality that comes from listening to women tell the truth about their lives. Additional depth comes from the psychological awareness that strong reactions to another woman may occur because she represents something in ourselves that is psychologically charged; our reactions are not just about her but about us. Perhaps we can't stand her because she expresses experiences we have repressed; maybe we find her difficult because we react to her like we did to our personal mother or some other significant figure; maybe we are drawn to her because she embodies a potential in ourselves and the positive qualities we so admire in her are growing in us; maybe we avoid her because we fear our own addictions, dependency, or neediness. In this way, we are symbolic figures for each other that we need to understand as we would symbols in a personal dream.
Jean Shinoda Bolen (Crossing to Avalon: A Woman's Midlife Quest for the Sacred Feminine)
are in men! When they are poor and needy, they seek riches, and when they have them, they do not enjoy them, but hide them under ground, or else wastefully spend them. O wise Hippocrates, I laugh at such things being done, but much more when no good comes of them, and when they are done to so ill purpose. There is no truth or justice found amongst them, for they daily plead one against another,{238} the son against the father and the mother, brother against brother, kindred and friends of the same quality; and all this for riches, whereof after death they cannot be possessors. And yet notwithstanding they will defame and kill one another, commit all unlawful actions, contemning God and men, friends and country. They make great account of many senseless things, esteeming them as a great part of their treasure, statues, pictures, and such like movables, dear bought, and so cunningly wrought, as nothing but speech wanteth in them,{239} and yet they hate living persons speaking to them.{240} Others affect difficult things; if they dwell on firm land they will remove to an island, and thence to land again, being no way constant to their desires. They commend courage and strength in wars, and let themselves be conquered by lust and avarice; they are, in brief, as disordered in their minds, as Thersites was in his body. And now, methinks, O most worthy Hippocrates, you should not reprehend my laughing, perceiving so many fooleries in men;{241} for no man will mock his own folly, but that which he seeth in a second, and so they justly mock one another. The drunkard calls him a glutton whom he knows to be sober. Many men love the sea, others husbandry; briefly, they cannot agree in their own trades and professions, much less in their lives and actions.
Robert Burton (The Anatomy of Melancholy (Complete))
[S]ociety often tends to make those of us in grief feel shame and embarrassment about our feelings of grief. "Shame can be described as feeling that something you are doing is bad. And you may feel that if you mourn, then you should be ashamed. If you are perceived as 'doing well' with your grief, you are considered 'strong' and 'under control.' The message is that the well-controlled person stays rational at all times. "Combined with this message is another one. Society erroneously implies that if you, as a grieving person, openly express your feelings of grief, you are immature. If your feelings are fairly intense, you may be labeled 'overly-emotional' or 'needy.' If your feelings are extremely intense, you may even be referred to as 'crazy' or a 'pathological mourner.' "As a professional grief counselor, I assure you that you are not immature, overly-emotional, or crazy.
Alan D. Wolfelt (Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart)
yet that person will often emerge victorious thanks to sheer tenacity and lack of scruples, by dint of stratagems and spleen and concentration, because his sole objective in life is to harm his enemy, to bleed him dry and undermine him and then finish him off, woe betide anyone who acquires an enemy with those characteristics, however weak and needy he may seem; if you don’t have the time or the will to direct the same passionate loathing at him and to respond with equal intensity, you will end up succumbing, because you can’t afford to be distracted when fighting a war, regardless of whether that war is open or hidden or secret, nor to underestimate your stubborn opponent, even if you believe him to be innocuous and incapable of harming you or inflicting so much as a scratch: the reality is that anyone can destroy us, just as anyone can conquer us, and that is our essential fragility.
Javier Marías (The Infatuations (Vintage International))
Lachlan frowned as he misjudged the distance and his forehead hit Cormag's head with a bump. He wrapped his arms around his neck to steady himself, two big hands reaching up to hold onto his arms as if to offer extra support. “You,” he began, talking quietly into his ear, “are so beautiful,” he confessed, resting his heavy skull against Cormag's for a moment. He meant it as well. Cormag was stunning. He was taller and broader than he was, very much the fine figure of hotness. His dark hair was well kept, but a little messy, he had amazing bone structure; the type that made him look more like a model than a museum manager. A chiselled jaw, nicely defined cheekbones and a rugged quality that made him so appealing. He had never noticed how handsome a male face could be until those eyes drew him in. “And so are you,” his companion chuckled, “but we discussed this…I've ruined every relationship I've ever had. I get needy, possessive and my baggage gets in the way. Besides,” he lowered his voice to a whisper and brushed his hand over his upper arm, “You're not gay,” he protested, reminding him yet again that they were different. “Nope. Not gay,” he agreed with that, nodding his head as he pulled back a little to see him better. “But that doesn't make you any less beautiful. Why is it wrong that I can see how special you are?” he asked, having difficulty understanding why part of his brain was telling him he was being a drunken idiot and that the man before him wasn't attractive. But the rest of his brain – about ninety-eight percent of it – was telling him that he was the most attractive person he'd ever seen. “It's not, Lachlan. It really isn't.” “But it's somehow wrong for me to tell you?” Lachlan wondered, glancing across the bar to see Matteo smiling at him. He didn't know what it meant. Cormag cupped his face, capturing his undivided attention again. “No. Not that either. But it makes it hard for me to keep my distance. You're stunning. Inside and out,” he claimed, with chocolatey eyes that said he meant every word.
Elaine White (Decadent (Decadent, #1))
CONFESSIONS OF A CLING-ON If a man is walking in a forest and makes a statement, but there is no woman around to hear it, is he still wrong? Or if a woman is walking in the forest and asks for something, and there is no man around to hear her, is she still needy? These Zen koans capture some of the frustrations people have with the opposite gender. And where is the dividing line between someone simply having a need, and someone being a needy person? Is it written in heaven somewhere what is too much need, too little need and just right amount of need for the “normal person?” Ask pop radio psychologists Dr. Laura, or Sally Jessie Rafael, or any number of experts who claim to know for sure, and you’ll get some very different answers. And isn’t it fun to see the new sophisticated ways our advanced culture is developing to make each other wrong? You better keep up with the latest technical terminology or you will be at the mercy of those who do. Whoever has read the latest most recent self-help book has the clear advantage. Example: Man: “Get real, would you! Your Venusian codependency has got you trapped in your learned helpless victim act, and indulging in your empowerment phobia again.” Woman: “When you call me codependent, I feel (notice the political correctness of the feeling word) that you are simply projecting your own disowned, unintegrated, emotionally unavailable Martian counterdependency to protect your inner ADD two year old from ever having to grow up. So there!” Speaking of diagnosis, remember the codependent. Worrying about codependency was like a virus that everyone had from about 1988 to 1994. Here’s a prayer to commemorate the codependent: The Codependent’s Prayer by Kelly Bryson Our Authority, which art in others, self-abandonment be thy name. Codependency comes when others’ will is done, At home, as it is in the workplace. give us this day our daily crumbs of love. And give us a sense of indebtedness, As we try to get others to feel indebted to us. And lead us not into freedom, but deliver us from awareness. For thine is the slavery and the weakness and the dependency, For ever and ever. Amen.
Kelly Bryson (Don't Be Nice, Be Real)
The unhealed daughter is searching for her Mother, a Mother whose magnitude fills every corner of her soul. By recognizing that the object of her hunger is much greater than what can possibly be provided by our personal mothers, we can pry the unhealed child loose from her fixation on one human being and teach her to spread out her needs. Becoming open to receiving Mother through more than one source enables a fuller range of healing for her wounds. We must teach the unhealed child to turn toward other women, toward nature, art, meditation, fantasy, and dreams to experience that greater whole. Even to imagine the Great Mother is to create a space for Her, a 'home' within us She can once again return to. We must actively cultivate our capacity for image. We must take the unhealed child beyond her insistence that everything be 'good' and help her make meaning of what is experienced as 'bad'—to honor the mixture of radiance and darkness that the Mother, both human and Goddess, embraces. Being held by this Mother, we may find ourselves able to perceive and receive the healing She brings that extends to our mothers as well, who are also Her needy daughters. Ultimately, the Goddess stands behind our personal mother experiences and carries us all.
Kathie Carlson (In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother)
The truth was that they did not really have a mature connection at all. They had a rescuing connection. When she was in pain or in need of help, they were close. Other times, things were stormy. As we worked together, Jerry realized that he was a rescuer. He picked people who couldn’t meet any of his needs because they were so needy themselves. He would then step in and rescue them. Jerry had learned the rescuing pattern early in life from a needy mother who was unable to be satisfied. No matter what he or his father did, it was never enough. And with all of his mother’s crises, he learned to feel the closest when he was stepping in and taking care of her. It was his deepest connection with her. And now he had found the same sort of connection with someone else who needed rescuing. So he was unable to leave. People who need rescuing are not taking responsibility for their life. And people who do not take responsibility for their life are not safe, even though they may be very nice. Ultimately, they are not growing, and they are not fostering growth in the people who are rescuing them. Their life has spurts of sentimentality, but not a lot of mature love. Because a rescuer needs an unsafe person to rescue, rescuing always leads to unsafe people in one’s life.
Henry Cloud (Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't)
The depressed person shared that she could remember, all too clearly, how at her third boarding school, she had once watched her roommate talk to some boy on their room's telephone as she (i.e., the roommate) made faces and gestures of entrapped repulsion and boredom with the call, this popular, attractive, and self-assured roommate finally directing at the depressed person an exaggerated pantomime of someone knocking on a door until the depressed person understood that she was to open their room's door and step outside and knock loudly on it so as to give the roommate an excuse to end the call. The depressed person had shared this traumatic memory with members of her Support System and had tried to articulate how bottomlessly horrible she had felt it would have been to have been that nameless pathetic boy on the phone and how now, as a legacy of that experience, she dreaded, more than almost anything, the thought of ever being someone you had to appeal silently to someone nearby to help you contrive an excuse to get off the phone with. The depressed person would implore each supportive friend to tell her the very moment she (i.e., the friend) was getting bored or frustrated or repelled or felt she (i.e., the friend) had other more urgent or interesting things to attend to, to please for God's sake be utterly candid and frank and not spend one moment longer on the phone than she was absolutely glad to spend. The depressed person knew perfectly well, of course, she assured the therapist;' how such a request could all too possibly be heard not as an invitation to get off the telephone at will but actually as a needy, manipulative plea not to get off-never to get off-the telephone.
David Foster Wallace (The Depressed Person)
Lord my God, ‘hear my prayer’ (Ps. 60: 2), may your mercy attend to my longing which burns not for my personal advantage but desires to be of use in love to the brethren. You see in my heart that this is the case. Let me offer you in sacrifice the service of my thinking and my tongue, and grant that which I am to offer, ‘for I am poor and needy’ (Ps. 65: 15; 85: 1). You are ‘rich to all who call upon you’ (Rom. 10: 12). You have no cares but take care of us. Circumcise my lips (cf. Exod. 6: 12), inwardly and outwardly, from all rashness and falsehood. May your scriptures be my pure delight, so that I am not deceived in them and do not lead others astray in interpreting them. ‘Lord, listen and have mercy’ (Ps. 26: 7; 85: 3), Lord my God, light of the blind and strength of the weak—and constantly also light of those who can see and strength of the mighty: Listen to my soul and hear it crying from the depth. For if your ears are not present also in the depth, where shall we go? To whom shall we cry? ‘The day is yours and the night is yours’ (Ps. 73: 16). At your nod the moments fly by. From them grant us space for our meditations on the secret recesses of your law, and do not close the gate to us as we knock. It is not for nothing that by your will so many pages of scripture are opaque and obscure. These forests are not without deer which recover their strength in them and restore themselves by walking and feeding, by resting and ruminating (Ps. 28: 9). 0 Lord, bring me to perfection (Ps. 16: 5) and reveal to me the meaning of these pages. See, your voice is my joy, your voice is better than a wealth of pleasures (Ps. 118: 22). Grant what I love; for I love it, and that love was your gift. Do not desert your gifts, and do not despise your plant as it thirsts. Let me confess to you what I find in your books. ‘Let me hear the voice of praise’ (Ps. 25: 7) and drink you, and let me consider ‘wonderful things out of your law’ (Ps. 118: 18)—from the beginning in which you made heaven and earth until the perpetual reign with you in your heavenly city (Rev. 5: 10; 21: 2).5
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
• No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable. We will talk about almost anyone about our physical health, even our sex lives, but bring depression, anxiety or grief , and the expression on the other person would probably be "get me out of this conversation" • We can distract our feelings with too much wine, food or surfing the internet, • Therapy is far from one-sided; it happens in a parallel process. Everyday patients are opening up questions that we have to think about for ourselves, • "The only way out is through" the only way to get out of the tunnel is to go through, not around it • Study after study shows that the most important factor in the success of your treatment is your relationship with the therapist, your experience of "feeling felt" • Attachment styles are formed early in childhood based on our interactions with our caregivers. Attachment styles are significant because they play out in peoples relationships too, influencing the kind of partners they pick, (stable or less stable), how they behave in a relationship (needy, distant, or volatile) and how the relationship tend to end (wistfully, amiably, or with an explosion) • The presenting problem, the issue somebody comes with, is often just one aspect of a larger problem, if not a red herring entirely. • "Help me understand more about the relationship" Here, here's trying to establish what’s known as a therapeutic alliance, trust that has to develop before any work can get done. • In early sessions is always more important for patients to feel understood than it is for them to gain any insight or make changes. • We can complain for free with a friend or family member, People make faulty narratives to make themselves feel better or look better in the moment, even thought it makes them feel worse over time, and that sometimes they need somebody else to read between the lines. • Here-and-now, it is when we work on what’s happening in the room, rather than focusing on patient's stories. • She didn't call him on his bullshit, which this makes patients feel unsafe, like children's whose parent's don’t hold them accountable • What is this going to feel like to the person I’m speaking to? • Neuroscientists discovered that humans have brain cells called mirror neurons, that cause them to mimic others, and when people are in a heightened state of emotion, a soothing voice can calm their nervous system and help them stay present • Don’t judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don’t be afraid of the truth. • The things we protest against the most are often the very things we need to look at • How easy it is, I thought, to break someone’s heart, even when you take great care not to. • The purpose on inquiring about people's parent s is not to join them in blaming, judging or criticizing their parents. In fact it is not about their parents at all. It is solely about understanding how their early experiences informed who they are as adults so that they can separate the past from the present (and not wear psychological clothing that no longer fits) • But personality disorders lie on a spectrum. People with borderline personality disorder are terrified of abandonment, but for some that might mean feeling anxious when their partners don’t respond to texts right away; for others that may mean choosing to stay in volatile, dysfunctional relationships rather than being alone. • In therapy we aim for self compassion (am I a human?) versus self esteem (Am I good or bad: a judgment) • The techniques we use are a bit like the type of brain surgery in which the patient remains awake throughout the procedure, as the surgeons operate, they keep checking in with the patient: can you feel this? can you say this words? They are constantly calibrating how close they are to sensitive regions of the brain, and if they hit one, they back up so as not to damage it.
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone)
I take in his smooth cheeks, his rough chin and jaw, the developing wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. 'We fall in love with somebody who maybe seems like a bad match,' Tully says, 'and our friends run around saying 'What does he see in her?' What he sees in her is what's hidden from everyone else. He's fallen in love with something invisible.' 'Or possibly he's made a common mistake,' I say, gazing at Tully. 'He was needy. He fell for outward appearances. He projected onto this person whatever it was he'd always longed for in a relationship, whatever he hungered for in life. He fell in love with the idea of love.' 'That's a pretty cynical point of view,' Tully says.
Jane Lotter (The Bette Davis Club)
along. I suspect that many of us, if given the chance to make one person in our lives love us more, would have no trouble in choosing where to point a finger. We are all needy, all vulnerable, all terrified that perhaps that person has an excellent reason to withhold affection. We shape our purposes to make ourselves worthy and often do not see until much later how it was love—or perhaps the lack of it—that both picked us up and dropped us off at crossroads.
Kevin Hearne (Shattered (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #7))