How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration

I live by personal standards and at the same time—in self-forgiveness—I make allowances for my occasional lapses.

The negative Shadow is composed of our own unacceptable and disowned defects that we strongly condemn in others. What we are unconscious of in ourselves, we become emphatically conscious of in others. The positive Shadow is composed of the good qualities hidden in us that we strongly admire or envy in others. We consciously respect in them what we

Before making any serious or lasting decision, test yourself at wanting it consistently each day for one to six months; “I have to want to marry you for six months before I agree to set the date.”

Grieving occurs best in the gap that opens in your life once you are alone. It cannot proceed while you are involved with someone new. When a relationship has ended, the healthy adult allows adequate time alone for working through grief and for processing what has been learned. Time elapses and then readiness for a new relationship occurs. One neit

“I am powerless in the face of this fear” changes to “I found a choice where I thought there was only a dead end.”

Guilt is not a feeling but a belief or judgment. Appropriate guilt is a judgment that is self-confronting and leads to resolution. Neurotic guilt is a judgment that is self-defeating and leads to unproductive pain. Appropriate guilt is resolved in reconciliation and restitution. Neurotic guilt seeks to be resolved by punishment. In appropriate guil

The acrobat who swings from one trapeze to the next knows just when he must let go. He gauges his release exquisitely and for a moment he has nothing going for him but his own momentum. Our hearts follow his arc and we love him for risking the unsupported moment. —Ewing and Miriam Polster, Gestalt Therapy Integrated

What was missed can never be made up for, only mourned and let go of.

You can be informed by others’ behavior rather than affected by it. You can observe the behavior of others without having to react to it or to be controlled by it. You operate from your own repertory of responses that uphold you no matter what others do, say, or mean to you.