10 Stephen Grosz Quotes From The Examined Life on Pain, Change, and Loss

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Excerpt: Stephen Grosz has been a psychoanalyst for 25+ years. These quotes from The Examined Life give you access to 50,000+ hours of his distilled insight.

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Introduction: Pain is a signal to be addressed; not a problem to be ignored

Imagine the chaos that would ensue if we didn’t follow the signals of the world. If we ignored traffic signals; disregarded conversational signals; paid no mind to vehicular signals. The world would be a much scarier, dangerous, and erratic place. It would skyrocket fear, confusion, and anxiety—and rightfully so! The signals of our world are in place to serve as an antidote to chaos. To provide a sense of order, certainty, and security. And what most people don’t realize is that our inner worlds have a signal system in place all the same and for the very same reasons.

Our body is the vehicle through which we interact with the world. Our body needs to communicate with our mind if our mind is ever going to understand how to properly move the body. Without feedback, the mind would lead the body to peril. Pain is an obvious signal that points out issues that need to be addressed. Just as a car’s ‘Check Engine’ light would signal. The signal that’s sent from touching a hot stove is rapid, clear, and definitive: Stop touching and don’t touch it again! But, not all signals are created equal.

Some signals are subtle, quiet, and lingering. They don’t flash “Red Alerts” so much as they slowly bubble. It’s here that we must become aware. For longevity sake. For the sake of understanding. So that we can maintain order inside of ourselves. We must proactively scan our interiors—as we would our car for rust. Even when (precisely when) there are no “Red Alerts.” We have to listen to what the quiet whispers of our bodies are trying to tell us. The irritations; annoyances; frustrations; anxieties; pains that all bubble up—the faint signals that warn us of erosion—are signals that can all be sourced, confronted, and addressed. If we but take the time to follow them.

On our path to understanding the signals of our body and the motives that shape our lives, it almost always helps to seek outside guidance and insight. A compassionate ear; an inquisitive, trained mind; an experienced, patient, person of wisdom—may be precisely what’s needed to sort through the complicated, confounding, human experiences we face daily. Stephen Grosz has been that person for others for over twenty-five years.

As a practicing psychoanalyst, Grosz investigates the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and works to bring repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind so that the patient can better understand why they think and act the way they do. His book, The Examined Life, distills more than fifty thousand hours of conversation into pure psychological insight—without the jargon—and offers the reader a front row seat to some of his most poignant patient interactions.

Below, you will get a sample of some of what Grosz shares throughout his book and an opportunity to start reflecting on your own reasons for thinking and acting the way you do. If that sounds like something that might scare you, remember, pain is a signal to be addressed; not a problem to be ignored. For as long as the signals are ignored; problems will continue to worsen. Chaos will continue to ensue. Disconnects between you and your actions will continue to broaden. It is only through the careful examination of life—ours and others’—that we’re able to find better ways forward. Hopefully, these 10 quotes from The Examined Life will send you on your way.

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The List: 10 Stephen Grosz Quotes From The Examined Life on Change, Pain, and Loss

“Experience has taught me that our childhoods leave in us stories like this—stories we never found a way to voice, because no one helped us to find the words. When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us—we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don’t understand.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 10)

“We are vehemently faithful to our own view of the world, our story. We want to know what new story we’re stepping into before we exit the old one. We don’t want an exit if we don’t know exactly where it is going to take us, even—or perhaps especially—in an emergency. This is so, I hasten to add, whether we are patients or psychoanalysts.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 123)

“Change and loss are deeply connected—there cannot be change without loss.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page xii)

“We can sometimes exploit a disaster to block internal change. Like Elizabeth, we can take on a catastrophe to stop ourselves feeling and thinking—and to avoid responsibility for our own intimate acts of destruction.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 145)

“‘Success has ruined many a man,’ Benjamin Franklin once said. This is true enough, but what Franklin didn’t mention is that we often work the ruin upon ourselves.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 132)

“At one time or another, we all try to silence painful emotions. But when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us, and why.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 27)

“Psychoanalysts are fond of pointing out that the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we’re going to, but an idea in our mind now. It is something we’re creating, that in turn creates us. The future is a fantasy that shapes our present.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 157)

“My experience is that closure is an extraordinarily compelling fantasy of mourning. It is the fiction that we can love, lose, suffer and then do something to permanently end our sorrow. We want to believe we can reach closure because grief can surprise and disorder us—even years after our loss.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 209)

“It is less painful, it turns out, to feel betrayed than to feel forgotten.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 83)

“[Closure] is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 210)

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If you enjoyed these quotes from The Examined Life, you should consider reading Stephen Grosz’s book in full. It comes highly recommended.

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