“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”— Brené Brown, amazon.com
“There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away.”— Sherman Alexie, amazon.com
“When someone gives you their heart, they’re also giving you permission to destroy them. It’s never articulated but it’s understood that the possibility is always there.”— Ryan O'Connell, thoughtcatalog.com
“You will do things that hurt you just because you’re not ready to feel good yet.”— Ryan O'Connell, thoughtcatalog.com
“You’ll treat someone terribly. Whether it be to a lover or your friend, there’ll be someone whose feelings you take for granted. We focus too much on whether or not someone is hurting us. The reality is that we might actually be the one who’s hurting someone.”— Ryan O'Connell, Ryan O'Connell, thoughtcatalog.com
“It’s so painful to have loved someone once and then never again. Sometimes you’ll wish it never happened just so you didn’t know how good it felt. Then you remember that quote ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than to have ever loved at all’ and you’re like, ‘okay, fine.'”— Ryan O'Connell, thoughtcatalog.com
“For the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com
“This life. This night. Your story. Your pain. Your hope. It matters. All of it matters.”— Jamie Tworkowski, twloha.com
“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”— Thomas Merton, amazon.com
“Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and…”— Ally Condie, amazon.com
“Forgetting lets you live without the pain for a moment but remembering hits hard.”— Ally Condie, amazon.com
“Then we fucked so that we could pretend that nothing hurtful had just happened.”— Junot Dìaz, amazon.com
“Highly sensitive people are too often perceived as weaklings or damaged goods. To feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the trademark of the truly alive and compassionate. It is not the empath who is broken, it is society that has become dysfunctional and emotionally disabled. There is…”— Anthon St. Maarten, orchidrecoverycenter.com
“Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”— Andrew Boyd, amazon.com
“For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”— Milan Kundera, amazon.com
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of…”— Henri J.M. Nouwen, amazon.com