101+ Best Counseling Quotes: Exclusive Selection

Profoundly inspirational counseling quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.

Famous Counseling Quotes

Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all. Erik Erikson

When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.  Jean Shinoda Bolen

Once you start making the effort to ‘wake yourself up that is, be more mindful in your activities, you suddenly start appreciating life a lot more. Robert Biswas Diener

Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.  Nathaniel Branden

We are what we are because we have been what we have been, and what is needed for solving the problems of human life and motives is not moral estimates but more knowledge. Sigmund Freud

Self compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others. Christopher Germer

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society. Jean Piaget

We all have the tendency to believe in self doubt and self criticism, but listening to this voice never gets us closer to our goals. Instead, try from the point of view of a mentor or good friend who believes in you, wants the best for your, and will encourage you when you feel discouraged. Kelly McGonigal

If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life. Abraham Maslow

People who love themselves come across as very loving, generous and kind; they express their self confidence through humility, forgiveness and inclusiveness. SanayaRoman

Everything can be taken from a man, but the last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitudes in any given set of circumstances. Viktor Frankl

The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself. Steve Maraboli

We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement. B.F. Skinner

Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it. Buddha

Probably the biggest insight is that happiness is not just a place, but also a process. Happiness is an ongoing process of fresh challenges, and it takes the right attitudes and activities to continue to be happy. Ed Diener

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect

and beginning the work of becoming yourself. Anna Quindlen

It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us but rather our mindset about our physical limits. Ellen J. Langer

Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort. Deborah Day

For happy people, time is ‘filled and planned.’ For unhappy people, time is unfilled, open and uncommitted; they postpone things and are inefficient. Michael Argyle

Your breathing is your greatest friend. Return to it in all your troubles and you will find comfort and guidance.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived. Soren Kierkegaard

There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by my self. Brian Andreas

We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth. Virginia Satir

Nothing external to you has any power over you.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best way to find out whether you’re on the right path? Stop looking at the path. Marcus Buckingham

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.  Dr. Seuss

Every person on this earth is full of great possibilities that can be realized through imagination, effort, and perseverance. Scott Barry Kaufmann

Give your stress wings, and let it fly away.  Terri Guillemets

Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not our there is that it’s inside us. Sonja Lyubomirsky

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.  William James

When we encounter an unexpected challenge of threat, the only way to save ourselves is to hold on tight to the people around us and not let go. Shawn Achor

Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.  Lucille Ball

The truth is, bad things don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That’s true of good things, too. We adapt very quickly to either. Daniel Gilbert

You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy. 

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. Carl G. Jung

There is a spirit in all music, the spirit has the ability to conjure up thoughts even pictures of something that happened or you wished would happen or you anticipate happening. Music has the ability to create ideas in you and me. It has the ability to encourage us to be creative.

Be content with what you have. Rejoice in how things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. Lao Tzu

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

Compassion does not render people tearful idlers, moral weaklings, or passive onlookers; but individuals who will take on the pain of others, even when given the chance to skip out on such difficult action or in anonymous conditions. Dacher Keltner

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

When we are open to new possibilities, we find them. Be open and skeptical of everything.Todd Kashdan

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly light hearted. Yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. Gretchen Rubin

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.

Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it. Albert Schweitzer

Encouragement to all women is  let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let’s see if we can’t prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before the illness. Maya Angelou

Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated the body sticks to the facts. Alice Miller

Everybody who cares about me wants me to do therapy, but I just can’t do therapy. Lil Peep

Becoming is better than being. Carol S. Dweck

I think if I took therapy, the doctor would quit. He’d just pick up the couch and walk out of the room. Don Rickles

I don’t know what’s worse: to now know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be and feel alone. Daniel Keyes

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You mold the experience the way you want. It’s therapy. Erykah Badu

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. Charles Dickens

I’ve tried everything. I’ve done therapy, I’ve done colonics. I went to a psychic who had me running around town buying pieces of ribbon to fill in the colors of my aura. Did the Prozac thing. Jim Carey

Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us. David Richo

Using no control and using humor will build a relationship and make a dent to where the client puts the counselor in their quality world and then begins to relate and seek out the counselor. Effective therapy begins with the acceptance of the therapist into the client’s quality world. William Glasser

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. Carl Gustav Jung

I used music as therapy and embraced being a cry baby. Melanie Martinez

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. William Shakespeare

In therapy, I have learned the importance of keeping spiritual life and professional life balanced. I need to regain my balance. Tiger Woods

The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Positive psychology is not remotely intended to replace therapy or pharmacology. So when depressed, anxious, or in panic or post-traumatic stress disorder, I am all for therapies that will work. Positive psychology is another arrow in the quiver of public policy and psychology through which we can raise wellbeing above zero. Martin Seligman

How hurtful it can be to deny one’s true self and live a life of lies just to appease others. June Ahern

For whatever reason, I tend to get reporters who are maybe in the middle of intense therapy, and they turn what’s supposed to be a professional interview into therapy for themselves. Douglas Coupland

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. Viktor E. Frankl

Psychoanalysis and any good therapy is a method of increasing one’s awareness of destiny to increase one’s experience of freedom. Rollo May

The human mind is not a terribly logical or consistent place. Jim Butcher

Therapy and counseling can do wonderful things for people. But they have emerged so far as what is sometimes called ‘cottage industries’  that is, as individuals or small groups offering generally quite expensive services to a few clients. Alain de Botton

Reality denied comes back to haunt. Philip K. Dick

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic, and fear which is inherent in a human situation. Graham Greene

A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment. Douglas Adams

I’ve never found therapy to be a sign of weakness; I’ve found the opposite to be true. The willingness to have a mirror held up to you requires strength. Brooke Shields

But the human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will turn wild and cause you grief. Robert Greene

I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it. Albert Ellis

People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around. Douglas Adams

I go to therapy a lot. And I’m open about that, and I try to get help so that I can cope and make my way in life and with my family. Howie Mandel

We forget very easily what gives us pain. Graham Greene

I would say that I began with a very edgy, very driven personality, and after a sufficient amount of therapy over many, many years, I managed to become rather relaxed and happy. John Cleese

Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need. Marshall Rosenberg

Since I began my practice of Forgiveness Therapy, it’s now instinctual for me to choose to eat as I love myself – instead of eating like I wanted to punish myself. Plus I’ve not only lost weight, but I’ve also lost the anger and anxiety I was feeling, and so I feel happier and calmer within. Karen Salmansohn

I consistently go to therapy and work on this one issue. I’ve devoted an hour every two weeks to ask, ‘How do I be a workaholic, do what we love to do, and not die of a heart attack, destroy myself and my family, and keep my friends? Mark Duplass

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Eckhart Tolle

I used to be pretty hard on myself, like, if I didn’t like a haircut I did on someone, I would think about it a lot and second guess myself. But after therapy and a lot of work, I know how to dust myself off a lot faster, and those things don’t knock me down as much as they used to. Jonathan Van Ness

When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together. John Berger

The best therapy is the more aggressive kind when they break you open; they unleash you. Cara Delevinge

The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works. Daniel Kahneman

I think therapy is a helpful thing. I think everyone knows it. You do it for your life, you do it for yourself because you want to explore some things, and get at the bottom of some things. It’s about your life, the quality of your life. Philip Seymour Hoffman

Whole life is a search for beauty. But, when the beauty is found inside, the search ends and a beautiful journey begins. Harshit Walia

I’m a massive scaredy cat. I’m scared of being in a fast car, I’m scared of being on a rollercoaster, I would never go skiing, I would never do anything that had the possibility of endangering my life in any way. I should get some therapy, really. Sharon Horgan

We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection  which we have ourselves created. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I was going mad. One day, I just started writing, and it was like therapy because I was in a position where I couldn’t rage. I never expected to be a writer; it’s a different world than I ever expected to be in. John Trudell

Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s all in. Brene Brown

As a child, I was not allowed to express my feelings, so I had to go back through therapy and express the child’s pain. John Bradshaw

It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it. Sigmund Freud

I think everybody I’ve seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably, it’s very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They’re not really interested in the person; he doesn’t relate to the person. Irvin D. Yalom

To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is. C.G. Jung

This is really America in therapy, people trying to get themselves together and be whole. David Viscott

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.Thomas Szasz

I got problems. I freak out, go to a shrink, go through all kinds of therapy and stuff, but I’m learning how to deal with it. That’s why I’ve chosen one hour a night to get all of my aggression out. to really tell the world the way I feel. Jonathan Davis