Tom Rosshirt > Quotes

“From early childhood, I started trying on identities for the buzz they gave me, and I held on to the ones that worked— good reader, gifted writer, strong chess player. At some regrettable point, I took on the identity of being super- reliable. It’s not that I “was” those things but that I got high if others saw me that way, and I got hurt if they didn’t. …
And it’s surprising to me how people and events can still affect my mood by affirming or challenging my story and the beliefs that make it up. Without ever planning it or consciously choosing it, I tied my happiness to a story of who I am. If someone contradicts my story, I get angry. If someone honors and affirms my story, I respond with the false grace of an addict who just got a fix.
I believe that most of our struggles for happiness can be seen inside this frame, which, for this book, I’m going to call the self-image model of happiness. This is the implicit model of most self-improvement literature—you achieve happiness by deciding who you want to be and becoming that.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Illness can come with any of these states—either because I’m fighting so hard to be my self-image that I exhaust myself and get sick or I get sick from other causes, which threatens my self-image because I can’t do what I used to do.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“That’s when crisis can turn into breakthrough. What makes it a crisis is the pain I can’t bear. What makes it a breakthrough is that I don’t try to salvage the story. I drop it.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“If we pay attention, we can see that the more pressure that’s put on the self-image, the more certain it is to break down.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Many of us, often without knowing it, live our lives in narrow corridors, hemmed in by fear. It’s as if there were walls of electrified fencing on the right and left of us, and we’re wearing a shock collar. If we veer too close to one side, we start feeling the fear, and we move back toward the center, often without noticing it. The challenge of change is not to get better at withstanding electric shocks, but to somehow reduce the voltage or remove the shock collar. It’s not about becoming more courageous; it’s about becoming more fearless. When the fear subsides, the walls come down, and we can go anywhere.

This is not learning a new coping skill; it’s becoming a new person. We do things we’ve never done before because the fear that hemmed us in is gone, or reduced. The loss of fear is the mark of change, and the proof of change is what’s happening when we’re not trying.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Dissolving the self-image means surrendering our secrets— and this means secret-keeping can give us a tool for assessing a spiritual practice and asking the question, What works?
The answer, to be helpful, should come not in the form of a single technique or approach but in the insights and principles that underlie numerous approaches. A successful practice will help us lose the secrets, including the secrets we keep from ourselves. Some people don’t feel comfortable talking about the unconscious. But whether we use the words unconscious or nonconscious, or subconscious, or semiconscious— whether we talk about repressing our feelings, or suppressing them, or shoving them down, or holding them in— it doesn’t really matter. In any language, in any approach, bringing out the things we’re hiding is healing.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“The deepest way out of addiction is to ease our addiction to the story we think we have to live.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Underneath our addictions are the lies we tell about ourselves—both positive lies and negative lies. Surrendering our self-image means surrendering both.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Despair is just a story we tell ourselves when we want to give up.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Peace is wanting what we get. Happiness is becoming who we want to be. Peace is becoming who we are.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“It wasn’t until I was suffering the depression that led me to move out of my family home and into an apartment that I responded to the breakdown with a breakthrough.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“The role of fear is especially relevant in neuroplastic healing. If the brain comes to believe that something harmless is dangerous, that belief causes fear that can create or contribute to pain and illness. The healing insight of neuroplasticity is that this association can be reversed: the false sense of danger that causes the fear— and the baseless fear that causes the pain— can be unlearned, and the pain can ease and the body can heal.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“We can’t sleep forever because reality will never leave our false views alone. It will play havoc with them until, for the sake of peace, we give them up and seek happiness, not through fulfilling the self-image but in losing it.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“We break through only after we break down, and we break down only after we’ve spent years building up.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“The feelings of peace and wholeness we seek through ‘success’ are hiding in the death of dreams that are too small.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Looking back, I can see that I was telling myself a terrifying story about my symptoms, what they meant, and what would happen to me if I didn’t do something dramatic.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“The self- image model of happiness … is an approach to happiness that consists of three actions: (1) cultivating a self- image or story that gives us feelings of love and belonging and meaning and purpose, (2) getting the important people in our lives to tell that story about us, and (3) trying to embody that story more fully. When we’re able to manage these three tasks, we’re happy. When we’re struggling to manage them, we’re anxious. When we fail to manage them, we fall into depression or addiction or illness.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Depression slithers in when the shadow overturns our self-image and we feel defeated.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Unlike with past depressions, though, my way out wasn’t to protect my story by going home. I couldn’t go home. So this time I didn’t change my environment to support my story. I changed my story. That is what self-directed neuroplasticity makes possible. We don’t have to fulfill the story, prove the story, insist on the story, or be a servant of the story: we can edit the story— and not just by adding new thoughts to outshout the old thoughts but by editing, even deleting, the old thoughts that tell us “This is who I am. This is what I need to have. This is how things have to be.”
No matter who we are or what stage of life we’re in, reality will at some point cause depression in us, making us suffer by defeating our self-image. The pain will get our attention and force us to act. If the pain is great enough, we might see the role of our story in our suffering and start to break through.
If we don’t see the role of our story, we will think the action is all external, and we will try to make a change in our surroundings, or blame someone for the defeat of our self-image, or double down on our false stories, which will only make the pain grow.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Our addiction to the story of ourselves is the addiction that underlies and sets in motion all other addictions.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“That’s why the breakdown is good news—because the pain makes us pay attention to what’s going on.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“The voice in my head—the one that criticizes me, scares me, shuts me up, puts me down—has only one tactic that gives it power, and that is to frighten me with my own shadow.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Peace is different from happiness. Happiness is a material pursuit. Peace is a spiritual state.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“The message is ‘Your story can’t go on.’ Yet the crisis doesn’t always lead to breakdown.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“I hate it when life tells me I’m not who I think I am. And it’s the best thing that ever happens to me.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“We all break down. But we don’t always break through.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“No matter who we are or what stage of life we’re in, reality will at some point cause depression in us, making us suffer by defeating our self-image.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Grace comes in when we let go. Letting go is the thing.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Anxiety is often the first call to wake us. It’s like an alarm clock that beeps softly at first, steadily getting louder, begging us to wake up and see what’s going on.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience

“Breaking down was a blessing—because it was not ‘me’ who was breaking down; it was the self-image strategy for happiness that was breaking down, and that breakdown cleared a path to peace.”
― Tom Rosshirt, Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience