Best 923 quotes in «mental illness quotes» category

Social psychologist argued that even severe mental illness was the result of society labeling unusual behavior rather than of biochemical processes.

So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me.

So he lay there in the dark without them ever knowing he wasn't okay. Because he'd learned a long time ago that the better they thought he was, the longer he could live this way.

Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him—the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse.

Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as 'fragments', which are 'relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory or carry out a limited task in the person's life. A fragment might be a frightened child who holds the memory of one particular abuse incident.' In complex multiples, Dr Ross continues, the `personalities are relatively full-bodied, complete states capable of a rang of emotions and behaviours.' The alters will have `executive control some substantial amount of time over the person life'. He stresses, and I repeat his emphasis, 'Complex MPD with over 15 alter personalities and complicated amnesic barriers are associated with 100 percent frequency of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

Some days, she was pain incarnate. She would suffer all day and he would try to cheer her up and fail, and he felt like an irrelevant gnat.

Somehow this disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians.

Some of us are silent sufferers of a noisy disease.

Someone said once that they'd never heard of a crime they couldn't imagine committing, and I realized then that if I had a daughter and she had a rabbit and that rabbit was alone with me and I was feeling the way I felt right now and I had a way to kill that rabbit and the time to spend killing that rabbit then killing the rabbit was something I could imagine myself possibly doing or at least considering doing or being on the edge of doing. And smearing a husband with the blood wasn't such a far step after that if you had a desire to smear your husband with blood and smearing someone with blood was something I could imagine a situation calling for because there were at least a few people in this world that I wouldn't not like to see smeared with blood—one person being Werner for fucking my plans, for sending me back out into a life with my wildebeest, to figure out a way to live here and I didn't want to do that and I didn't know how to do that and I wasn't sure how I was going to do that—

...some patients resist the diagnosis of a post-traumatic disorder. They may feel stigmatized by any psychiatric diagnosis or wish to deny their condition out of a sense of pride. Some people feel that acknowledging psychological harm grants a moral victory to the perpetrator, in a way that acknowledging physical harm does not.

Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over. I know how wrong that is.

Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over. I know how wrong this is. When I was a child, I didn't understand. I would wake up in a new body and wouldn't comprehend why things felt muted, dimmer. Or the opposite--I'd be supercharged, unfocused, like a radio at top volume flipping quickly from station to station. Since I didn't have access to the body's emotions, I assumed the ones I was feeling were my own. Eventually, though, I realized these inclinations, these compulsions, were as much a part of the body as its eye color or its voice. Yes, the feelings themselves were intangible, amorphous, but the cause of the feelings was a matter of chemistry, biology. It is a hard cycle to conquer. The body is working against you. And because of this, you feel even more despair. Which only amplifies the imbalance. It takes uncommon strength to live with these things. But I have seen that strength over and over again.

Some people spend their whole lives in a fantasy world, and that’s not a good thing!

Some people, who never engaged in any research about DID, claim that there is no connection between child abuse and DID. Then they unwittingly contradict themselves by stating DID doesn’t even exist. DSM-5 concluded from the rigorous research into DID: “Interpersonal physical and sexual abuse is associated with an increased risk of dissociative identify disorder. Prevalence of childhood abuse and neglect in the United States, Canada and Europe among those with the disorder is close to 90%.

Some survivors can be wary of most people, yet blinded by compassion toward fellow survivors or others who suffer — or who pretend to suffer, or exaggerate their sufferings, in order to take advantage of the survivor. Some survivors overidentify with other survivors, not realizing that even if someone was traumatized or suffers in a similar way, it doesn’t necessarily mean that person is honest. Being either overly suspicious or overly trusting can create problems with a partner who is able to judge the sincerity of others more realistically.

Sometimes I feel dead," I told her, "and I hate everybody.

Sometimes I'm jealous of people with regular problems. At school I see the self-conscious girls worrying about their hair or if their legs look fat, and I just want to scream. Someone should tell them their problems are stupid. I get that I'm not supposed to say that. Everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle, right? But what if they're not? What if the biggest thing they have to worry about is homework and whether they get into a good college? Even if they've lost a family member or their parents are getting a divorce or they're missing someone far away. That is not worse than having to take medication to be in control of your own mind. It's just not.

Sometimes it's as if I can shrink away to nothing. Sometimes I feel as pure and perfect as a ghost. The hunger, the headaches, the dizziness—these are the only things that are real.

Sometimes the darkness beyond is not glorious at all, it truly is an absolute absence of light. A clawing, needy tar that pulls you down. You drown but you don't. It turns you to lead so you sink faster in its viscous embrace. It robs you of hope and even the memory of hope. It makes you think you've always felt like this, and there's no place to go but down, where it slowly, ravenously digests your will, distilling it into the ebony crude of nightmares. And you know the darkness beyond despair, just as intimately as you know the soaring heights. Because in this and all universes, there is balance. You can't have the one without facing the other. And sometimes you think you can take it because the joy is worth the despair, and sometimes you know you can't take it and how did you ever think you could? And there is the dance; strength and weakness, confidence and desolation.

Sometimes the cure for depression is not seeing more happiness around; rather, is in fact seeing how much happiness can exist in hell. From day one, we are fixated on attaining a state of envisioned "paradise"; both here in this life on Earth and in the "afterlife" in the form of "Heaven". Us humans are always reaching for this Heaven-state while still here on Earth, making anything and anybody that falls short feel like a less-acceptable living thing. We are making the Gargoyles feel unwanted because all we want are Angels. Those who are less than happy do have a place in this world, a place in this life. And it's time everyone stop reaching for illusions and start reaching in front of them and beside them and behind them, to hold the hands of those around them. We chase after illusions; we forget people.

Sometimes the people around you won't understand your journey. They don't need to, it's not for them.

Sometimes, when you want to help a broken person, your attempts only remind them of their missing pieces.

So part of you wanted to be kissing him and another part of you felt the intense worry that comes with being intimate with someone." "Right, but I wasn't worried about intimacy. I was worried about microbial exchange." "Well, your worry expressed itself as being about microbial exchange." I just groaned at the therapy bullshit. She asked me if I'd taken my Ativan. I told her I hadn't brought it to Davis's house. And then she asked me if I was taking the Lexapro every day, and I was, like, not every day. The conversation devolved into her telling me that medication only works if you take it, and that I had to treat my health problem with consistency and care, and me trying to explain that there is something intensely weird and upsetting about the notion that you can only become yourself by ingesting a medication that changes your self.

Sometimes you have to get lost before you can find yourself.

Soon I find myself squatting on the floor. I am still striking my face; not with my fists this time, but with wide-open hands. I am slapping myself. The sounds I make when my palms meet my cheeks are like an unrelenting round of applause. I am clapping myself. Or clapping for myself. I start to giggle. All the voices are receding now. I am no longer filled with rage or disappointment. I clap and clap and simply cannot stop.

Soon my sobs dulled to a whimper. Soon my breathing came back. Soon I was able to get off the carpet. Soon I'd meet my friends for college and pretend it hadn't happened.

Split is doing well at the box office around the world, but it misrepresents people with dissociative identity disorder (DID; previously called multiple personality disorder). The trailer is particularly gripping, luring in audiences by depicting a man with DID kidnapping and preparing to torture three teenage girls. Kevin (played by James McAvoy) juggles 24 personalities that are based on stereotypes: a cutesy 9-year-old infatuated with Kanye West, a flamboyant designer, and the “Beast,” a superhuman monster who sees the girls as “sacred food.” Kevin falsely represents people with DID through exaggerated symptoms, extreme violence, and unrealistic physical characteristics. The senior author, an expert in DID, has not seen any DID patient who is this violent in 25 years of clinical practice. Kevin’s ghastly personalities are so over-the-top that terrifying scenes are making audiences laugh.

Spike Lee was the voice depicting the ills of social issues. Joseph Strickland will depict the spiritual issues (or ills) from within. ("The Making of Dual Mania: Filmmaking Chicago Style," 2018)

Spring and Fall” …cannot be said to be about depression - but of course, to someone who is depressed, everything is about depression. …For some of us, the sadness running under the skin of things begins as a trickle and ends up a hemorrhage, staining everything.

Successful writing is a slow, daily, meticulous form of mental illness.

Starving artist: starving for affection, starving for attention

Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given year. That means millions of Americans are totally batshit. but having perused the various tests available that they use to determine whether you're manic depressive. OCD, schizo-affective, schizophrenic, or whatever, I'm surprised the number is that low. So I have gone through a bunch of the available tests, and I've taken questions from each of them, and assembled my own psychological evaluation screening which I thought I'd share with you. So, here are some of the things that they ask to determine if you're mentally disordered 1. In the last week, have you been feeling irritable? 2. In the last week, have you gained a little weight? 3. In the last week, have you felt like not talking to people? 4. Do you no longer get as much pleasure doing certain things as you used to? 5. In the last week, have you felt fatigued? 6. Do you think about sex a lot? If you don't say yes to any of these questions either you're lying, or you don't speak English, or you're illiterate, in which case, I have the distinct impression that I may have lost you a few chapters ago.

Suddenly, I’m lighter, only half of who I was.

Take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more. You’re doing just fine.

Suicide is a form of murder— premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind. It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance. The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself. In reality, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.

Take it from me, that kind of torment causes you to retreat to a place in your mind where you are so strong that nothing and no one can bother you. Or so you think! What you don't realize is that each time an incident occurs, you retreat inside of yourself a little bit at a time, until one day you might not recognize who YOU are.

Telling a person who is depressed to have positive thoughts is the same as telling a sick person not to be sick. It doesn’t work.

Tapi, aku tak ingin menjadi dekat dengan siapa pun, atau bahkan menpercayainya. Brutus pun bisa membunuh Julius Caesar, bukan? Dan kali ini, aku tak mau menjadi orang yang mengatakan 'et tu Brute?

That is what madness is, isn't it? All the wheels fly off the bus and things don't make sense any more. Or rather, they do, but it's not a kind of sense anyone else can understand.

That nervousness that makes your palms sweat and your heart race before you get up and make a speech in front of an audience? That's what I feel in a normal conversation at the dinner table. Or just thinking about having a conversation at the dinner table.

That’s what mountains do, they taunt you, lure you to the freedom of the wilderness, and it is fucking exhilarating.

That “teaching myself social behaviors” thing, for example, was a window into my entire childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. There were things I needed to learn differently from most of the people around me, and the amount of useful, appropriate support I received back then was exactly zero. At the same time, the criticism I received felt infinite, especially when I tried to articulate my struggles. A person who I probably shouldn’t have been friends with once told me I needed to stop “thinking things through” in social situations and just “let my instincts take over.” In retrospect, I wish I’d replied, “What the hell are you talking about, ‘let my instincts take over’?” He might as well have said, “Just try really hard to grow a third arm between your shoulder blades and eventually it’ll happen!” Nothing about those situations felt instinctive; I had to learn how to navigate them in other ways

That was the crux. You. Only you could work on you. Nobody could force you, and if you weren't ready, then you weren't ready, and no amount of open-armed encouragement was going to change that.

The 16 characteristics of psychopaths: 1. Intelligent 2. Rational 3. Calm 4. Unreliable 5. Insincere 6. Without shame or remorse 7. Having poor judgment 8. Without capacity for love 9. Unemotional 10. Poor insight 11. Indifferent to the trust or kindness of others 12. Overreactive to alcohol 13. Suicidal 14. Impersonal sex life 15. Lacking long-term goals 16. Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior

the capture the rapture the rupture of a soul a solo symphony

The anxiety of the sexual act is my sexual act: a love story.

The Bad-Moon Girls appear on days when Dad doesn't know what he is thinking, or even if he is thinking. Those days can weigh less than air or more than an ocean. He has blank thoughts without feelings, followed by heavy feelings without thoughts. Time means nothing. A minute ticks by in the same rhythm as an entire day. He can look at one thing for an hour without moving. He can see me or Victor without knowing we are in the room, peering at us as if we are underwater, moving in warped slow motion. After the nothingness, he wades through a stagnant lake with the moon reflected in it, waiting for the daylight to rinse it away. He almost drowns while time ticks on. The sky is filled with black milk. No stars. Two days can pass before he surfaces. Dad's brain-switch, the focusing thing the rest of us switch on to make things look better, is a bit buggered. Those are his words, not mine. The Bad-Moon Girls whisper evil in Dad's ear, the sort of women who would set their own mother on fire if there were no other way to light their cigarettes. The trouble is, they can follow. Just as we were setting off to Clacton last autumn, they hunted him down.

The balding headstones of the others—quarantined from their own mothers & sisters & daughters— I wondered if they, like us, were strange alloys of sadness & forgetting the words to the songs.

The boundaries were destroyed; it was all in the open, the rotting animal of her soul, the tickling sickness in the tumultuous cacophony in her mother's vibrating skull that spoke only to itself in everlasting distortions.

The cage of your pain is wide open. It’s time to fly free.