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Feeling angry signals a problem, venting anger does not solve it. Venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur.

By Harriet Lerner
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Harriet Lerner is an American psychologist and preeminent voice on the psychology of women, family, and relationships. She is the author of several books on these subjects, including the New York Times bestseller The Dance of Anger.

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FindCenter Quotes ImageAnger is inevitable when our lives consist of giving in and going along; when we assume responsibility for other people’s feelings and reactions; when we relinquish our primary responsibility to proceed with our own growth and ensure the quality of our own lives; when we behave as if having a...

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Harriet Lerner
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FindCenter Quotes ImageNo matter how simplified or complicated life gets, it can make us miserable or it can wake us up.

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Pema Chödrön
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FindCenter Quotes ImageEmpathetic listening is an awesome medication for the hurting heart.

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Gary Chapman
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FindCenter Quotes ImageIf only our passion to understand others were as great as our passion to be understood. Were this so, all our apologies would be truly meaningful and healing.

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Harriet Lerner
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FindCenter Quotes ImageWhen forgiveness experts talk in binary language (’You either forgive the wrongdoer or you are a prisoner of your own anger and hate’), they are collapsing the messy complexity of human emotions into a simplistic dichotomous equation.

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Harriet Lerner
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FindCenter Quotes ImagePeople’s sense of self-worth is pivotal to their ability to look clearly at the hurt they’ve caused. The more solid one’s sense of self regard, the more likely that that person can feel empathy and compassion for the hurt party, and apologize from an authentic center.

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Harriet Lerner
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FindCenter Quotes ImageAnger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.

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Harriet Lerner
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FindCenter Quotes ImageAvoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.

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Harriet Lerner
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FindCenter Quotes ImageThe best apologies are short, and don’t go on to include explanations that run the risk of undoing them. An apology isn’t the only chance you ever get to address the underlying issue. The apology is the chance you get to establish the ground for future communication.

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Harriet Lerner
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FindCenter Quotes ImageLetting go of anger and hate requires us to give up the hope for a different past, along with the hope of a fantasized future. What we gain is a life more in the present, where we are not mired in prolonged anger and resentment that doesn’t serve us.

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Harriet Lerner
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Anger