Virginia Satir Quotes

We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us.

Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.

I want to love you without clutching, appreciate you without judging, join you without invading, invite you without demanding, leave you without guilt, criticize you without blaming, and help you without insulting. If I can have the same from you, then we can truly meet and enrich each other.

We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.

Life is not the way it's supposed to be, it's the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.

The Problem is never the problem! It is only a symptom of something much deeper.

Life is not what it’s supposed to be. It’s what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference. —Virginia Satir

Problems are not the problem: coping is the problem.

So much is asked of parents, and so little is given.

I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it -- I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know -- but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.

Over the years I have developed a picture of what a human being living humanely is like. She is a person who understand, values and develops her body, finding it beautiful and useful; a person who is real and is willing to take risks, to be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it, and to find ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part of the old that is still useful and discarding what is not.

Life is not the way it's supposed to be, it's the way it is. The way you cope with that is what makes the difference.

I suppose because we have no ruins and no curiosities,” said Virginia satirically.

As the family therapist Virginia Satir famously said, “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.” Hug your child first thing every morning, every time you say good-bye or hello, and as often as you can in between.

We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us

Life is not what it's supposed to be.It's what it is.The way you cope with it is what makes the difference

A famous citation from the American psychotherapist Virginia Satir (1916-1988) reads: 'We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. And we need twelve hugs a day for growth.

Each morning when you wake up, bow three times before the mirror and say, “The world is a better place because I am here.

3. Blame. Whenever things don’t turn out as planned, blame yourself or others. Blame is another defensive cover-up for shame. Blame maintains the balance in a dysfunctional system when control has broken down. 4. Denial of the Five Freedoms. The five freedoms, first enunciated by Virginia Satir, describe full personal functionality. Each freedom has to do with a basic human power: the power to perceive, to think and interpret, to feel, to want and choose, and the power to imagine. In shame-based families, the perfectionist rule prohibits the full expression of these powers. It says you shouldn’t perceive, think, feel, desire or imagine the way you do. You should do these the way the perfec-tionistic ideal demands.

I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and to touch another person. When this is done I feel contact has been made.

To see and hear what is here, instead of what should be, was, or will be. To say what I feel and think instead of what I should. To feel what I feel instead of what I ought. To ask for what I want instead of always waiting for permission. To take risks on my behalf, instead of choosing to be safe and not rock the boat.

the whole of Victorian literature done up in grey paper & neatly tied with string

We tend to prefer the "certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty" (Virginia Satir)

Virginia Satir has suggested that we need from four to twelve hugs a day as part of our health maintenance.

The most destabilizing thing for anyone is to have their core beliefs challenged. As psychologist Virginia Satir puts it, we feel better with the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty. Good or bad, we are attracted to things that are familiar.

A mature person is one who, having attained his majority, is able to make choices and decisions based on accurate perceptions about himself, others, and the context in which he finds himself; who acknowledges these choices and decisions as being his; and who accepts responsibility for their outcomes.

We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us.

Los niños necesitan que sus padres sean sus amigos tanto como un balazo.

Massage (A Very Special Type of Attention) Lavish your toddler with loving touch! Touch is a rich “food” for growth. Your toddler could easily live without milk, but he’d be scarred for life without loving touch. (I agree with the noted psychologist Virginia Satir, who said we all need four hugs a day for survival, eight to stay calm, and twelve to grow stronger.)

James felt most comfortable when the world was in line with his worldview. Being rejected or treated poorly validated this view. The most destabilizing thing for anyone is to have their core beliefs challenged. As psychologist Virginia Satir puts it, we feel better with the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty. Good or bad, we are attracted to things that are familiar.

Write then, now that you are young, nonsense by the ream. Be silly, be sentimental, imitate Shelley, imitate Samuel Smiles; give the rein to every impulse; commit every fault of style, grammar, taste, and syntax; pour out; tumble over; loose anger, love, satire, in whatever words you can catch, coerce or create, in whatever metre, prose, poetry, or gibberish that comes to hand. Thus you will learn to write.

Because virtually all of us are omnivores, our cruelty is invisible and unmentionable, like an enormous family secret. John Bradshaw, Virginia Satir, and others who have been attempting to illuminate the psychological repercussions of dysfunctional families over the last twenty-five years have emphasized that the more dysfunctional a family is, the more secrets it has.1 The secrets are the ongoing addictive and abusive behaviors that are never discussed. Child abuse, sexual abuse, drug addiction, and alcoholism have been cultural secrets that, in order to be healed, must be brought into the light, fully acknowledged, and then worked through in open discussion. In dysfunctional families, the secrets and shadows stay buried and painfully unresolved, manifesting as shame, suicidal behavior, aggression, violence, emotional distancing, and psychological numbing.

I am me In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me Everything that comes out of me is authentically me Because I alone chose it – I own everything about me My body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, Whether they be to others or to myself – I own my fantasies, My dreams, my hopes, my fears – I own all my triumphs and Successes, all my failures and mistakes Because I own all of Me, I can become intimately acquainted with me – by so doing I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts – I know There are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other Aspects that I do not know – but as long as I am Friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously And hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles And for ways to find out more about me – However I Look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically Me – If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought And felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is Unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that Which I discarded – I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be Productive to make sense and order out of the world of People and things outside of me – I own me, and therefore I can engineer me – I am me and I AM OKAY

At length the colour on her cheeks resumed its stability and it seemed as if the spirit of the age—if such indeed it were—lay dormant for a time. Then Orlando felt in the bosom of her shirt as if for some locket or relic of lost affection, and drew out no such thing, but a roll of paper, sea-stained, blood-stained, travel-stained—the manuscript of her poem, 'The Oak Tree'. She had carried this about with her for so many years now, and in such hazardous circumstances, that many of the pages were stained, some were torn, while the straits she had been in for writing paper when with the gipsies, had forced her to overscore the margins and cross the lines till the manuscript looked like a piece of darning most conscientiously carried out. She turned back to the first page and read the date, 1586, written in her own boyish hand. She had been working at it for close three hundred years now. It was time to make an end. Meanwhile she began turning and dipping and reading and skipping and thinking as she read, how very little she had changed all these years. She had been a gloomy boy, in love with death, as boys are; and then she had been amorous and florid; and then she had been sprightly and satirical; and sometimes she had tried prose and sometimes she had tried drama. Yet through all these changes she had remained, she reflected, fundamentally the same.

David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word “meritocracy” is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin’s. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy (New York: Viking Press) as a dismissive term to satirize a society that misguidedly created a new elite class based on the “narrow band of values” of IQ and educational credentials. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 106, used it more broadly to mean a “social order [that] follows the principle of careers open to talents.” The best description of the idea is in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), a history of educational aptitude tests and their effect on American society. In Franklin’s time, Enlightenment thinkers (such as Jefferson in his proposals for creating the University of Virginia) advocated replacing the hereditary aristocracy with a “natural aristocracy,” whose members would be plucked from the masses at an early age based on “virtues and talents” and groomed for leadership. Franklin’s idea was more expansive. He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed as best they could based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and talent. As we shall see, his proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men. Franklin was propounding a more egalitarian and democratic approach than Jefferson by proposing a system that would, as Rawls (p. 107) would later prescribe, assure that “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens.” (Translation: He cared not simply about making society as a whole more productive, but also about making each individual more enriched.)

Virginia Satir speaks of the five freedoms that accrue when one is loved unconditionally. These freedoms involve our basic powers. These are the power to perceive, the power to love (choose and want), the power to emote, the power to think and express, and the power to envision or imagine.

Cred că cel mai mare dar pe care l-aş putea primi de la cineva este să fiu văzută, ascultată, inţeleasă şi atinsă.

As we do so, our Child Within begins to awaken and eventually to flourish, grow and create. Virginia Satir said, “We need to see ourselves as basic miracles and worthy of love.

The strongest instinct in human beings is not survival. Virginia Satir said something to me that has resonated with me for forty years. She asked, “What do you think is the strongest instinct?” Like a robot I responded, “Survival.” For me, it had always been the strongest instinct. She said, “No, Richard. The strongest instinct in human beings is the need to look at the familiar.” People are terrified of the unknown. In fact, sometimes people will rather kill themselves than look at new things.

Una famosa cita de la psicoterapeuta estadounidense Virginia Satir (1916-1988) dice así: «We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. And we need twelve hugs a day for growth.»

But if as a child you’ve experienced chaos, threat, or trauma, your brain organizes according to a view that the world is not safe and people cannot be trusted. Think about James. He didn’t feel “safe” when he was close to people. Intimacy made him feel threatened. Here is the confusing part: James felt most comfortable when the world was in line with his worldview. Being rejected or treated poorly validated this view. The most destabilizing thing for anyone is to have their core beliefs challenged. As psychologist Virginia Satir puts it, we feel better with the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty. Good or bad, we are attracted to things that are familiar.

The operative word here is “intimate.”We have to get on a core, gut level because shame is core, gut level stuff. Toxic shame masks our deepest secrets about ourselves; it embodies our belief that we are essentially defective. We feel so awful, we dare not look at it ourselves, much less tell anyone. The only way we can find out we were wrong about ourselves is to risk exposing ourselves to someone else’s scrutiny. When we trust someone else and experience their love and acceptance, we begin to change our beliefs about ourselves. We learn that we are not bad; we learn that we are lovable and acceptable. True love heals and affects spiritual growth. If we do not grow because of someone else’s love, it’s generally because it is a counterfeit form of love. True love is unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard allows us to be whole and accept all the parts of ourselves. To be whole we must reunite all the shamed and split-off aspects of ourselves. Virginia Satir speaks of the five freedoms that accrue when one is loved unconditionally. These freedoms involve our basic powers. These are the power to perceive, the power to love (choose and want), the power to emote, the power to think and express, and the power to envision or imagine.

Virginia Satir, one of our most famous family therapists, said, “Families are people factories.

Virginia Satir, one of our most famous family therapists, said, “Families are people factories.” She meant that we learn how to relate to others during our early experiences of our families. The patterns of interacting that we use today were set up early on in our lives and were reinforced over and over again until they became automatic and part of our unconscious. Our peers and others influence us as well, but the basics are learned very early on and inform much of how we think about ourselves and others later on in life.

Modul în care adulții își folosesc puterea sau influența depinde în mare măsură de ceea ce au învățat în familie, pe când erau copii.

Nicio persoană care simte că provine din oameni răi, diabolici nu poate avea o părere bună despre sine.

We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us. Virginia Satir, psychotherapist (1916-1988)

We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth,’ says author and psychotherapist, Virginia Satir,

The rain dripping, a wing flashing, some one passing—the commonest sounds and sights have power to fling one, as I seem to remember, from the heights of rapture to the depths of despair. And if the actual life is thus extreme, the visionary life should be free to follow. Write then, now that you are young, nonsense by the ream. Be silly, be sentimental, imitate Shelley, imitate Samuel Smiles, give the rein to every impulse; commit every fault of style, grammar, taste, and syntax; pour out; tumble over; loose anger, love, satire, in whatever words you can catch, coerce or create, in whatever metre, prose, poetry, or gibberish that comes to hand. Thus you will learn to write.

Because touch may be the first of our five senses to develop, it makes sense that touch plays such an integral role in health. How many hugs should you get a day? Take this advice from American psychologist and family therapist, Virginia Satir, to heart: “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.” Just make sure those hugs are firm or else that oxytocin may not be released.

Here is the confusing part: James felt most comfortable when the world was in line with his worldview. Being rejected or treated poorly validated this view. The most destabilizing thing for anyone is to have their core beliefs challenged. As psychologist Virginia Satir puts it, we feel better with the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty. Good or bad, we are attracted to things that are familiar.

Life is not the way it’s supposed to be, it’s the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference. —Virginia Satir

Virginia Satir, una de las grandes psicoterapeutas del s. XX, decía que el instinto más fuerte en los seres humanos no es el de supervivencia sino el de familiaridad. Y es que lo familiar, aquello que podemos reconocer, entender y predecir nos ayuda a vivir más tranquilos, ya que nos aleja de la incertidumbre. Pero ese instinto humano, a su vez, nos vuelve más conservadores, menos espontáneos, reacios al cambio: nos aletarga.

Los pájaros cantaron al hacerse de día. Empieza de nuevo, oí que decían. No pierdas el tiempo pensando en lo que ya pasó, o en lo que aún no ha pasado. (...) Tañe las campanas que aún pueden repicar, olvídate de tu ofrecimiento perfecto; todo tiene una grieta, así es como entra la luz. Es importante saber que, tanto si cruzamos las puertas de la izquierda como las de la derecha, tanto si nos expandimos como si nos contraemos, los pájaros siguen cantando y su sencillo y preciso mensaje es: «Empieza de nuevo». Siempre empieza un nuevo día, constantemente hay un nuevo ahora. Vivimos ahora, siempre ahora, en exclusiva el ahora. E importa lo nuevo, el ahora sorprendente y creativo que nos llena a cada momento. Importa siempre lo posible, y lo posible es el presente. Como afirma Virginia Satir: «Eres libre de saber que todo lo que ha pasado permanece en el pasado».

Bandler and Grinder’s work with Virginia Satir and their exploration of parts also led to the principle of positive intention. Simply put, the principle states that at some level all behavior is (or at one time was) “positively intended.” Another way to say it is that all behavior serves (or at one time served) a “positive purpose” – i.e., every “neuro-linguistic program” emerges and lasts because it serves some type of adaptive function. While I liked the principle, at first it seemed mostly like a nice philosophical idea. Like everything else in NLP, however, it eventually became a very personal experience that changed my life. It did not come in a flash of blinding light as to St. Paul on the road to Damascus. It was subtler. But the moment that I deeply realized all of my behaviors had some type of positive intention, even if I did not immediately recognize what it was, something shifted inside of me that led to a deep trust in my own being; that somehow, as Einstein proposed, “the universe is a friendly place” at its core. Even today the principle of positive intention seems to me to be the most spiritual principle in NLP.

Die Freiheit, zu sehen und zu hören, was ist, anstatt was sein soll, was war oder was sein wird. Die Freiheit zu sagen, was du fühlst und denkst, anstatt was man fühlen und denken sollte. Die Freiheit zu fühlen, was du fühlst, anstatt was man fühlen müsste. Die Freiheit, um das zu bitten, was du möchtest, anstatt immer auf Erlaubnis zu warten. Die Freiheit, auf eigene Faust etwas zu riskieren, anstatt nur die Sicherheit zu wählen und das Boot nicht zum Schaukeln zu bringen. (Virginia Satir)

Zu lachen bedeutet, zu riskieren, als Trottel dazustehen. Zu weinen bedeutet, zu riskieren, sentimental zu erscheinen. Nach jemandem zu greifen, bedeutet, Beteiligtsein zu riskieren. Gefühle zu zeigen bedeutet, zu riskieren, dein wahres Selbst zu zeigen. Deine Ideen und Träume einer Menschenmenge vorzustellen bedeutet, Ihren Verlust zu riskieren. Zu lieben bedeutet, zu riskieren, nicht wiedergeliebt zu werden. Zu hoffen bedeutet, das Scheitern zu riskieren. Zu leben bedeutet, den Tod zu riskieren. Aber die größte Gefahr im Leben ist, nichts zu riskieren. Der Mensch, der nichts riskiert, mag einiges Leid, Bedauern, einige Zweifel vermeiden, wird aber weniger lernen, weniger fühlen, (sich) weniger verändern, weniger wachsen, weniger lieben und weniger leben. Gekettet durch Gewissheiten ist er ein Sklave, der Freiheit verwirkt hat. Nur ein Mensch, der riskiert, ist frei. (Virginia Satir)