"You're Not What I Expected"

Some excerpts from the book "You're Not What I Expected" written by Polly Young-Elsendrath:

"If you want to understand, and not silence and inhibit another person, in order to befriend that person, we have to allow that person's claims and statements to overtake our prejudice.

"Intimacy is an achievement of hard work and understanding another from that person's point of view, while maintaining one's own.

"The darkness of illusionment follows the joys of early friendship and romance.

"A mature form of dependence is the ideal outcome of healthy development.

"Anger - a signal that an injustice or an unfairness has been (perceived to be) done.

"Aggression - an impulse to hurt, destroy or diminish.

"Rage - (hot or cold) - is fury and violence that is purely and simply destructive.

"We need to be especially conscious that we do not wound in ways we were wounded.

"Most of the time, expressing anger makes people angrier, solidifies an angry attitude, and establishes a hostile habit. If you keep quiet about momentary irritations and distract yourself with pleasant activity until your fury simmers down, chances are you will feel better, and feel better faster, than if you let yourself go in a shouting match.

"The impulsive expression of aggressive, hateful feelings is never good for increasing intimacy.

"In the gap between the imagined and the actual, people grow."