Marsha Linehan

"The person who never fails has never tried anything new."

"Attachment is inevitable. What matters is developing secure attachment."

"You cannot practice new skills and old habits at the same time."

"The goal of therapy is not happiness, but meaning."

"Crisis is not failure. Crisis is information that something needs to change."

"Self-harm is a communication. Listen to what it's saying without judgment."

"The mind-body connection is not metaphorical. Emotions live in the body."

"Building a life worth living takes time, intention, and repeated practice."

"You can be both broken and beautiful. These are not mutually exclusive."

"Validation is not agreeing. It's understanding."

"The antidote to hopelessness is purpose."

"Self-criticism can be a way of maintaining a familiar pain. Change requires new patterns."

"Wise mind integration means bringing together emotion mind and reasonable mind."

"Gratitude is not about denying pain. It's about also seeing what is good."

"The person with skills has power. The person without skills is at the mercy of their emotions."

"Distress tolerance is the ability to accept, in a non-evaluative way, both internal and external reality."

"You must be willing to die to save your life."

"The paradox is that we often cannot change what we cannot accept."

"Emotion regulation is not emotion suppression. It's finding the middle way."

"Dialectics are truths that seem contradictory but are both true."

"The pursuit of happiness often leads to misery. The pursuit of meaning leads to happiness."

"Therapist and client create a team against the disorder, not a battle of wills."

"You are not your diagnosis. You are a person with a diagnosis."

"Tolerance for distress increases with practice."

"The mind is like a bad neighborhood - you don't want to go there alone."

"Suicide is not chosen by broken people who want to die. It's chosen by people in unbearable pain who want the pain to stop."

"The opposite of depression is not happiness; it is engagement."

"Commitment is the decision to keep showing up, even when it's hard."

"You cannot think your way into a new way of acting. You must act your way into a new way of thinking."

"Behavior change precedes emotion change. Do the work first; the feelings will follow."