Mark Goulston Quotes

I have a very highly developed sense of denial.

We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn't, we'd go crazy.

Sometimes when things are way too big and I can't control it, I do sort of a weird thing where I kind of check out a little bit. It's all about self-preservation for me.

If we didn't desensitize ourselves in some way, every day would feel like its own tragedy.

I'm a natural compartmentalizer.

Fear is like fire; it can be helpful if you know how to use. If not, you'll get burned.

Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.

There is less danger in fearing too much than too little.

I have a hot memory, but I know I've forgotten many things, too, just squashed things in favor of survival.

If people can't deal with their problems, they numb themselves a little bit.

Once you just tell yourself, 'OK, I'm going to have a breakdown right now, and I'm going to cry for an hour, put my phone away. I'm going to go swimming, and then I'm gonna make my family dinner and lay on the couch and watch 'Ru Paul's Drag Race,'' once you accept that it's not the day and you can just have a breakdown, you're over it.

When I decided to stay in Iraq, I decided to take the fear out of my body and put it into a freezer.

I know from my own clinical work that when people are beaten and hurt, they numb out so that they can't feel anymore.

Focusing on one mildly disturbing, semi-controllable issue allows the mind to stuff much greater terrors in relatively tidy packages.

I got problems. I freak out, go to a shrink, go through all kinds of therapy and stuff, but I'm learning how to deal with it. That's why I've chosen one hour a night to get all of my aggressions out. to really tell the world the way I feel.

I try to cope with everything through humor.

Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

Why pay $100 on a therapy session when you can spend $25 on a cigar? Whatever it is will come back; so what, smoke another one.

Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium.

I had bad days on the field. But I didn't take them home with me. I left them in a bar along the way home.

When I'm photographing, I think - like any rescue worker who deals with tragedy - you have to have some protective barrier around your heart so you can do your job. You tend to have a delayed reaction to things. I feel things more deeply after I put the camera down.

Sometimes I yell at my cancer cells, sometimes I make myself laugh.

I think I'm lucky in that I can park things. I don't dwell. I've got a selective memory. I only remember the good things. I don't know what a psychologist or a psychiatrist would say about that.

I'm very good at denial.

There are a whole host of psychological phenomenon humans have developed to protect ourselves from the sting of failure, from holding ourselves less accountable for our failures than we do other people, to letting our fear paralyze us and keep us from even trying.