Pamela Stephenson Quotes

I have respect for therapists in general, because they hear so many stories. It's a lot to hold and take in.

I'd love to have a program like 'Dr. Laura.' I studied psychology at the University of Miami, and when I rode the bus home from school, perfect strangers would strike up conversations with me and end up telling me their life stories. I think they could sense that I was studying to help people. That, or I have a face like a priest.

I think that every therapist that I know, including my dad and my sister, have their own issues. But that empathy is what makes them good at their job.

Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.

I am convinced that people with such wounds will be quite ready to co-operate in a safe and painless experiment in the interests of humanity as a whole.

You take so much on as a therapist: you just sit there and listen to people talk with you, and you're trying to help people, and it can be draining.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. I know other people have it a lot worse. I do know that, but it's crashing in anyway, and I just can't stop thinking that the little kid eating french fries with his mom in the shopping mall is going to grow up and my sister.

My time in the arena made me realize how I needed to stop punishing [my mother] for something she couldn't help, specifically the crushing depression she fell into after my father's death. Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.

I know how hard it is to live your life with your wounds exposed to heal other people

In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?

I majored in psychology, and I still love listening to people's problems.

I would ask my dad what he did, and he'd say, 'I listen to people's problems.' In some way what he did for a living is in my genes.

There are people who have benefited from therapy without being confronted with the past at all.

When you overcome a profound loss, or there's some catalyst in your life that shifts everything, if you're able to take it in stride and heal, it can make for much more three-dimensional and empathetic people.

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

There are so many ways to heal. Arrogance may have a place in technology, but not in healing. I need to get out of my own way if I am to heal.

Therapists need to give a depressed patient support and direction.

Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.

We live in an emotionally fragile culture. We are in touch with every hurt past, present, and perceived. We are the walking wounded, and we want everyone to know.

I cry a lot when I feel empathy. I can feel heartbroken by life, and I cry quite easily, sometimes for no reason. It's healthy, I think.

It's often difficult to get perspective on your own stories, on your own experiences, without talking them through with someone who is genuinely interested in thinking about them. And that's the key.

Learning about all those different things psychologically - about grief and my own addictions and problems and stuff like that, and really getting an education on it, I think it was part of the process of it, learning about it and trying to lick it.

Medicine is probably one of the best backgrounds for a writer to find stories. I always think cops and docs have the best background because we see so much of human behavior, such a range of human emotions.

So, without being cold, you really have to try to retain the capacity to help people without becoming too emotional or allowing your own emotions to have full rein.

I've never bought this idea of taking a therapeutic distance. If I see a student or house staff cry, I take great faith in that. That's a great person; they're going to be a great doctor.