What is most personal is most universal. - Carl Rogers

When someone expresses some feeling or attitude or belief, our tendency is, almost immediately, to feel “That’s right”; or “That’s stupid”; “That’s abnormal”; “That’s unreasonable”; “That’s incorrect”; “That’s not nice.” Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand precisely what the meaning of his statement is to him. I believe this is because understanding is risky. If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual, to enter thoroughly and completely and empathically into his frame of reference. It is also a rare thing.

I am isolated. I sit in a glass ball, I see people through a glass wall. I scream, but they do not hear me.

- Ellen West

It is so obvious when a person is not hiding behind a facade but is speaking from deep within himself.