Tara Brach Quotes

We must become acquainted with our emotional household: we must see our feelings as they actually are, not as we assume they are. This breaks their hypnotic and damaging hold on us.

I'm very emotional. I do feel stuff, for better or worse.

You externalise extreme emotions, and you look at them objectively and understand them from a different standpoint.

I always say that I don't want to be sentimental, that the photographs shouldn't be sentimental, and yet, I am conscious of my sentimentality.

I don't know - sometimes I catch myself being dark, and it's annoying. I think, 'Get over it.' I bore myself. But sometimes, like everybody, I'm sure I am obsessive.

I was raised in an atmosphere of 'everything's fine.' But as I got older, I was like, 'Well no, everything's not fine. There is stuff that's sad.' I am a really sensitive person. I think I am too sensitive sometimes.

I always call myself an emotionalist. I feel.

I've gotten to a place where I'm better at curbing your ego, which usually happens when you're feeling super small and scared about whatever you're seeing, and you want to go read, 'Oh, I hear there's a really good article about me.' I've gotten better about knowing that's not going to end well, usually.

I'm going to try to put less pressure on myself, but I know how easy it is to say that rather than to feel it, but that's how it is.

I am an emotional person, but I am not embarrassed by that.

When I stuff things down and avoid it or try to work too hard through something that needs to be addressed, that's when life slaps me in the face, and I get told. I got told to slow down.

It is your attachment that creates hell.

A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there's work to be done.

When I watch that attachment happening, I see the beliefs that I have around it. If somebody's not paying attention to me in a certain way, in my mind, it means they don't love me or they don't respect me. Bringing awareness to the beliefs that are underneath the attachment and bringing awareness to the way my body and heart are tightening, helps me wake up and re-inhabit a larger space of being. Holding on and pushing away might be going on but I'm freer to respond in a healthy way.

We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time.

As an introvert, you can be your own best friend or your worst enemy. The good news is we generally like our own company, a quality that extroverts often envy. We find comfort in solitude and know how to soothe ourselves. Even our willingness to look at ourselves critically is often helpful.But, we can go too far. We can hoard responsibility and overlook the role others play. We can kick ourselves when we're down. How many times have you felt lousy about something, only to get mad at yourself for feeling lousy?

I'm afraid if I listen to my heart once, I'll never figure out how to ignore it again.

Your feelings are none of your business.

Unless, of course, you insist on identifying yourself with the people and things you love; and thereby seriously disturb yourself.

And then she frowned, and shook her head, then put her arms around him once more, pressing her face into his shoulder, making a noise that sounded almost like rage. 'What's up?' he asked. 'Nothing. Oh, nothing. Just...' She looked up at him. 'I thought I'd finally got rid of you.' 'I don't think you can.' he said

Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes.

If I can forgive the attachment in myself and open to the vulnerability that's underneath it, then rather than fixating on another person to satisfy my need, I'm actually going right to where the needs come from and able to bring a real healing.

I think it's very hard if you love someone to walk away from a relationship that isn't healthy.

Some things are hard to let go of.

I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it.