I learned two of my most important phrases in any therapeutic encounter: I hear you say… and Tell me more. I also learned how to read my patients’ body language and how to use my own body to communicate my unconditional love and acceptance. I don’t cross my arms or my legs—I open myself. I make eye contact, I lean forward, I create a bridge between

When you have something to prove, you aren’t free. Even though I didn’t yet know anything about his childhood during our first visit, I could tell that Emma’s father was living in a prison of his own making—he was living within a limited image of who he should be.

in your pocket you already hold the key: the willingness to take absolute responsibility for your life; the willingness to risk; the willingness to release yourself from judgment and reclaim your innocence, accepting and loving yourself for who you really are—human, imperfect, and whole.

Time doesn’t heal. It’s what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility, when we choose to take risks, and finally, when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief.

These are lost children looking for an identity, looking for a way to feel strength, to feel like they matter.

Maybe to heal isn’t to erase the scar, or even to make the scar. To heal is to cherish the wound.

‘We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind.’ ”

good definition of being a victim is when you keep the focus outside yourself, when you look outside yourself for someone to blame for your present circumstances, or to determine your purpose, fate, or worth.

And to be free is to live in the present. If we are stuck in the past, saying, “If only I had gone there instead of here…” or “If only I had married someone else….” we are living in a prison of our own making. Likewise if we spend our time in the future, saying, “I won’t be happy until I graduate…” or “I won’t be happy until I find the right person