Rachel

“[Y]ou can't make anyone love you. You just have to reveal who you are and take your chances. Oh, sure, you can give a pleasing impression to others, flatter and appease them. Or, you can intimidate other people, threaten and menace them. But whether by cajoling or by coercing, you cannot elicit a gift of love. Instead, you may call forth a reward for good behavior. But then you are stuck with living with the aching feeling in your chest that, if people really knew what you were like, no one would really care about you. Or, if you succeed in getting your own way by bullying other people, then you must live with the dread of retaliation, if ever you should drop your menacing guard.”
― Sheldon B. Kopp, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“This wish to satisfy someone greater than the Self, to be found acceptable, to belong at last, is a struggle familiar to many psychotherapy patients. In their lives they waste themselves on wondering how they are doing, on trying to figure out the expectations of others so that they can become someone in the eyes of others. They try to be practical, to be reasonable, to figure it all out in their heads. It is as though if only they could get the words straight in their heads, if only they could find the correct formula, then everything else in their lives would be magically straightened out. They are sure there is a right way to do things, though they have not yet found it. Someone in authority must know...It is as thought if it were discovered that two and two really did not equal four (but five), then at that moment all over the world every machine would stop operating, all of the lights would go out. (110)”
― Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients