Adam Phillips Needs Quotations

Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.

There is always a ..belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our needs

The wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as asults, to our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need. Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.