Yufa

Seeking social support, deflating the situation with humour, better planning our workload, accepting our emotional and psychological struggle, focusing on solving the problem, and positively reinterpreting our challenges are all constructive coping mechanisms. On the other hand, drowning our emotions in alcohol, disengaging, venting, and denying... See more

There’s a real tension in love — at the beginning of love, particularly — between the desire to be honest about who one is and the desire to win the affection of another person. Of course, ideally, we can both be honest and loved for being honest. That’s the dream.

Exhaustion is a status symbol because we desperately want to be seen, we desperately want to belong. We want to believe we’re lovable. In the absence of connection, there is always suffering, so we want to feel connected.

Gay’s greatest feat is precisely the ability — the willingness — to tune in what we as a culture chronically tune out, to expand the constantly constricting boundaries of our bubbles as we struggle to navigate an increasingly peopled world of growing complexity.

When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins.

After the death of a loved one, the incoming messages seem scrambled for a while. At times, closeness with our deceased loved one feels incredibly visceral, as though they are present in the room, here and now. At other times, the string seems to have fallen off the board — not shorter or longer than it was before, but simply stolen from us... See more

The brain devotes lots of effort to mapping where our loved ones are while they are alive, so that we can find them when we need them. And the brain often prefers habits and predictions over new information. But it struggles to learn new information that cannot be ignored, like the absence of our loved one.[…]Grief is a heart-wrenchingly painful... See more