Ellen Vora > Quotes

“When someone is telling you their story over and over again, they're trying to figure something out, processing aloud the jumble of emotions we carry, and then feeling witnessed and held in this way can be deeply therapeutic to our nervous system.”
― Ellen Vora, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response

“As Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler put it, “The more you learn, the harder the lessons get.”
― Ellen Vora, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response

“I have found that giving a diagnostic label—though it can offer immediate relief as a succinct interpretation of a fairly messy circumstance—can soon become a straitjacket of sorts, narrowly defining people and profoundly shaping their life narratives. Patients sometimes begin to conform their stories toward a diagnosis, making themselves smaller as opposed to opening to the more expansive lives they could be leading.”
― Ellen Vora, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response

“Here’s a better strategy: accept how things are right now, and work from there, recognizing that people can’t read our minds, and everybody thinks they’re the good guy.”
― Ellen Vora, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response

“Burnout exists because we’ve made rest a reward rather than a right. —Juliet C. Obodo”
― Ellen Vora, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response

“Perfectionism is internalized oppression. —Gloria Steinem”
― Ellen Vora, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response

“We, the highly strung, are the advance party who flag to the troops that consumerism is hurting our hearts,” as Sarah Wilson writes in First, We Make the Beast Beautiful.3”
― Ellen Vora, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response

“Under the right circumstances, I tend to think that cannabis is a safer sleep aid than Ambien, and psilocybin is a more effective antidepressant than Prozac.”
― Ellen Vora, The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response