(Q: “Why can’t parents see their children’s pain?”) I’ve had to ask myself the same thing. It’s because we haven’t seen our own. (p80) - Gabor Maté

Learn to read symptoms not only as problems to be overcome but as messages to be heeded.

Do I live my life according to my own deepest truths, or in order to fulfill someone else’s expectations? How much of what I have believed and done is actually my own and how much has been in service to a self-image I originally created in the belief it was necessary to please my parents? (p256)

As materialism promises satisfaction but, instead, yields hollow dissatisfaction, it creates more craving. This massive and self-perpetuating addictive spiral is one of the mechanisms by which consumer society preserves itself by exploiting the very insecurities it generates. (p298)