Guy Winch > Quotes

“Indeed, insight is the true hallmark of empathy. The power of true empathy is its ability to give us a fresh understanding of the other person's emotions and thoughts to illuminate an aspect of their experience that would not have been apparent to us had we not stepped into their shoes.”
― Guy Winch

“Failure is so common a human experience that what distinguishes us from one another is not that we fail but rather how we respond when we do.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“The most frequent reasons we get turned down as romantic prospects (or as job applicants) are because of a lack of general chemistry, because we don’t match the person’s or company’s specific needs at that time, or because we don’t fit the narrow definition of who they’re looking for—not because of any critical missteps we might have made nor because we have any fatal character flaws.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“we often neglect our psychological wounds until they become severe enough to impair our functioning.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“Recovering from heartbreak always starts with a decision, a determination to move on when our mind is fighting to keep us stuck.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“Emotional pain should not and need not be a constant companion. Do not let it become one.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“When places and people become too tightly associated with our broken heart, we need to “cleanse” our associations and reclaim them. The best way to do so is by revisiting these places under different and specific circumstances so we can create new associations for them.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“The more distractions we have from which to choose, the more effectively we will be able to derail the ruminative train of thoughts that plague us.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“Intense ruminations can often make us so focused on our own emotional needs that we become blind to those of the people around us and our relationships often suffer as a result.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“Many of us get anxious in test-taking situations regardless of our intelligence, preparation, or familiarity with the material. One of the reasons test anxiety is so common is that it is relatively easy to trigger. Even one episode of heightened anxiety is sufficient for us to feel intensely anxious when facing a similar situation in the future. Test anxiety is especially problematic because it causes massive disruptions to our concentration, our focus, and our ability to think clearly, all of which have a huge impact on our performance. As a rule, anxiety tends to be extremely greedy when it comes to our concentration and attention. The visceral discomfort it creates can be so distracting, and the intellectual resources it hogs so critical, that we might struggle to comprehend the nuances of questions, retrieve the relevant information from our memory, formulate answers coherently, or choose the best option from a multiple-choice list. As an illustration of how dramatic its effects are, anxiety can cause us to score fifteen points lower than we would otherwise on a basic IQ test—a hugely significant margin that can drop a score from the Superior to the Average range.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“Unlike real hurricanes, heartbreak has no eye—it offers no reprieve and it leaves no place to take shelter. We thus remain exposed, drenched, and miserable until it passes.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“Much as we would like to believe we are an enlightened society, our track record when it comes to accepting those who are different from ourselves argues otherwise.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“What makes letting go so challenging is that we need to let go of far more than mere emotional pain—we need to let go of hope, of the fantasy in which we undo what went wrong, of the psychological presence the person or pet has in our daily thoughts, and thus, in our lives. We need to truly say good-bye—to turn away from love, even when there is no longer a person or animal there to receive it. And we need to let go of a part of ourselves, of the person we were when our love still mattered.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“In 2001 the office of the surgeon general of the United States issued a report that found social rejection to be a greater risk factor for adolescent violence than gang membership, poverty, or drug use.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“The battle ahead requires courage and determination but also knowledge and awareness: • We have to understand the ways our mind is working against us and take steps to counter the unhealthy urges and habits that are setting us back. • We have to fight the addictive tendency to keep those whom we have lost in our lives, whether via memories or reminders. • We have to rebuild our self-esteem by practicing self-compassion. • We have to adopt mindfulness to battle obsessive thoughts of our loss. • We have to recognize the voids that have been created in our lives and take steps to fill them. • We have to reconnect to our core so we can get back in touch with the essence of what makes us who we are.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“Creating mysteries and conspiracies where none exist is a common response to romantic breakups. Our mind unconsciously assumes that if the emotional pain we feel is so dramatic, it must have an equally dramatic cause, even when it does not.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“Real heartbreak is unmistakable, from the intensity of the emotional pain it causes, to the totality with which it takes over our mind and even our body. We think of nothing else. We feel nothing else. We care about nothing else. And often, we feel as if we can do nothing else except sit with the immense pain, grief, and loss.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“When our heart is broken, what determines others’ compassion is not how much emotional pain we actually feel but how much emotional pain they believe we should feel.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“Rumination involves a repetitious focus on negative thoughts and memories of all kinds (not just related to heartbreak) that can easily become habitual and lead to elevated risk of clinical depression. They key to breaking free of rumination is to counteract its negative pull by fostering ways of thinking that are strictly nonjudgmental. The most potent and successful of these techniques is called mindfulness meditation.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“If emotional pain were visible we would all conduct ourselves very differently. We would find kinder ways to break up with the person we were dating and we would be less cruel when rejecting people who expressed interest in us. We would show more concern when we saw someone sitting alone, an anguished look on their face. We would be more patient and less judgmental when a friend or loved one fails to get over a broken heart in what we consider a timely manner. And when our own heart gets broken we would be more self-compassionate, feel less shameful about our distress, and more open to asking for the help we need.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“For example, if a college student fails a midterm exam, she might view herself as less capable and view the class as more difficult, making her more worried and less confident about doing well on the final. While some students might knuckle down and work harder as a result, others might become so intimidated they begin to question whether they can pass the class at all.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“To fully heal when our heart is broken, we have to look in the mirror (metaphorically and perhaps literally) and tell ourselves it’s time to let go.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“But what if that failed midterm also happened to be the first exam they ever took in college? What if they perceive not just the class but college as a whole as being a greater challenge than they’re able to meet? Since they’re unaware that failing the midterm has distorted their perceptions (such that the class and college appear harder than they actually are), they might reach premature and inappropriate decisions as a result. Indeed, many students drop out early in their freshman year for this exact reason”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“Most of us only put in as much effort as a situation requires from us. If we can 'get away' with being less considerate or less reciprocal, and various other forms of 'getting without giving,' many of us will, not because we're evil, but simply because we can. If people demanded or expected more of us we would do more, but when they don't, we don't make the effort. This dynamic is true in practically every relationship we have. When our self-esteem is low and we expect very little of others, we are likely to get very little from them as well.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“As an illustration of how directly loneliness impacts our physical health, one study found that in otherwise healthy college students, lonely students had a significantly poorer response to flu shots than nonlonely students did. Loneliness”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“We often fail to consider accurate information that could potentially provide insight into another person's point of view (such as his or her facial expressions) but happily consider inaccurate information (such s broad stereotypes or gossip). For example, when evaluating preferences of people we perceive as similar to us, we tend to use ourselves as reference points. But when we perceive others as less similar, we are more likely to resort to stereotypes to assess their preferences. Once we consider how this dynamic might play out in gift-giving scenarios, it becomes clear why Grandpa ended up with twenty-three pairs of woolen socks for Christmas but without the Kindle he'd been hinting at since Thanksgiving.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“We skip the voting booth because we don’t believe the candidate of our choice can win.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“She believed her only chance for happiness depended on finding a partner yet she was too terrified and pessimistic to try dating again. In an effort to protect herself from further heartache, Lauren’s mind convinced her she was too unattractive to ever find love, so there was no point to trying.”
― Guy Winch, How to Fix a Broken Heart

“No one wakes up screaming in the middle of the night consumed with guilt about the chocolate cheesecake they wolfed down last Christmas.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries

“Empathy involves stepping into another person's shoes in order to gain an understanding of their emotional experience and then conveying our insights to them accordingly.”
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries