Best 1014 quotes in «mental health quotes» category

We are doing it, me and you. We are doing it with heart. And with art. And with soul and blind faith and ancient knowing. Because we have to. Because there are people who need us to. Because WE need us to most of all. No matter how discouraged you’ve been. No matter how the destructive old patterns have been returning, knocking loudly at your door. No matter the moments of utter freeze or massive resistance or sheer exhaustion. Go out today and make something. Something brave and defiant and determined and true. And then muster up your last bit of moxie and hold out your arms and offer it to the world. Say “I made this. For me and for you”. Say “ This is what keeps me from the rabbit hole”. Say “This is how I go on”. Say “I see you, too and I know how hard it is and I want you to have this to make it a little bit better” I promise. It changes things. For all of us.

We are manipulating machine intelligence, and in the process, we have forgotten to effectively utilize the true potential of our own mind, let alone focus on improving the mind. We are developing artificial intelligence and have forgotten to develop our own psyche.

We are more than our trauma We are not our diagnosis We are more than the worst things that have ever happened to us

We are particularly concerned with the question to what degree approval and implementation of an explanatory model minimising collective or institutional responsibility for certain problems and emphasising individual responsibility promotes detrimental perceptions and behaviours amongst individuals, who adopt and adapt similar explanations to justify their own lack of responsibility. For instance, admissibility of diminished responsibility arguments in criminal sentencing can be viewed as a direct consequence of a broader public acceptance of explanatory models purporting to prove a direct causal relationship between pharmacology, mental health and/or diminished ability to function.

We are so used to our own history, we do not see it as remarkable or out of the ordinary, whereas others might see it as horrendous. Further, we tend to minimize that which we feel shameful about.

We can all take what once hurt us and turn it into what heals us.

We can only experience the true beauty of vulnerability when we're courageous enough to crack open the fractures in our mask and allow the light to shine in.

We cannot incarcerate ourselves out of addiction. Addiction is a medical crisis that—when it comes to nonviolent offenders—warrants medical interventions, not incarceration. Decades later, data unequivocally illustrates that this war has been a massive failure. It has not only failed to reduce violent crime, but arrest rates—throughout its tenure—have continuously ascended even when crime rates have descended.

We can’t deny our journey. We can’t pretend we’re fine when we’re not. All we can do is own it—own our suffering.

We don’t go in for that psychodynamic stuff around here. Those guys will talk you to death, clean out your bank account while they are doing it, and then invite you to come back and express your innermost feelings about being broke.

We have a mental health system that is dominated by political and hidden forces that keep us stagnated and unable to see real, lasting change.

Weird? Absurd? That’s how it seemed to me. I had these forces, these compunctions, these alternative personalities inside me, driving me. It was like being a jack-in-the-box and I was unsure which personality was going to jump out next: Billy, who thought of himself as a cowboy or a terrorist; Kato the cutter; anorexic Shirley, whose only self-indulgence was binge drinking and the occasional salad sandwich. I didn’t dislike Shirley. I was afraid of her. Shirley knew things I didn’t.

Well, I totally understand why people take huge drugs. Like heroin, or cocaine. I can understand why you would want to be literally out of your own head, because being in your own head is unbearable. In fact, the reason I haven't taken drugs like that is because I know that it would be so good to be out of my own head that I wouldn't be able to stop

We misfits are the ones with the ability to enter grief. Death. Trauma. And emerge.

We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self. At this point in time there are people who question the validity of the DID diagnosis. The fact is that DID has its own category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because, as with all psychiatric conditions, a portion of society experiences a cluster of recognizable symptoms that are not better accounted for by any other diagnosis.

What do you want to do with this? she whispered tightly. Honestly? I intoned. Burn it.

We speak about losing our minds as if it is a bad thing. I say, lose your mind. Do it purposefully. Find out who you really are beyond your thoughts and beliefs. Lose your mind, find your soul.

We were taught to share at the expense of our own well-being. We came to associate self-care and self-love with selfishness.

What brought you here isn't your fault. We human beings have to live each day to its fullest and do our best in whatever environment we find ourselves in. There's no need to feel any shame just because your "fullest" and "best" look different from those of others.

What do you fear when you fear everything? Time passing and not passing. Death and life. I could say my lungs never filled with enough air, no matter how many puffs of my inhaler I took. Or that my thoughts moved too quickly to complete, severed by a perpetual vigilance. But even to say this would abet the lie that terror can be described, when anyone who's ever known it knows that it has no components but is instead everywhere inside you all the time, until you recognize yourself only by the tensions that string one minute to the next. And yet I keep lying, by describing, because how else can I avoid this second, and the one after it? This being the condition itself: the relentless need to escape a moment that never ends.

What good is your reality, when justice fails and dishonesty is glossed over and the ones who keep faith suffer .... What good is your reality then?" " .... I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you perfect justice .... and I never promised you peace or happiness .... The only reality I offer is challenge, and being well is being free to accept it or not at whatever level you are capable. I never promise lies, and the rose-garden world of perfection is a lie...and a bore, too!

What happens is my mind starts to go in circles, thinking and thinking, and then I can't sleep. And once a couple of days go by, if you haven't slept, you start to get sick. You can't eat. You start to cry. It just feeds on itself.

What if fighting was no longer your first answer but change is?

We're saying the story doesn't end here, that the air in your lungs is there for a reason.

What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but it empties today of its strength. It does not make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it comes.

What goes on in our heads solely determines the level at which we function in society, our physical health, and the degree of our mental and emotional stability and maturity.

What I learned from that intensely educational period of my life is that one kind of misfit is the person who suffers abuse or trauma and doesn't transcend it in the socially hoped-for way. We take a wrong turn or go deeper down. That's often looked at like a failure, but sometimes I wonder. I've learned things by taking the wrong turn or going down deeper that I could not have learned any other way.

What people never understand is that depression isn't about the outside; it's about the inside. Something inside me is wrong. Sure, there are things in my life that make me feel alone, but nothing makes me feel more isolated and terrified than my own voice inside my head.

What Love Are You That Causes Sorrow? Love is joy; It is not supposed to hurt; Then why pain Is part of it? Love is delight; It is not supposed to harm; Then why hate Is part of it? What joy are you That causes pain? What delight are you That causes hate? What love are you That causes sorrow?

What people don't understand about depression is how much it hurts. It's like your brain is convinced that it's dying and produces an acid that eats away at you from the inside, until all that's less is a scary hollowness. Your mind fills with dark thoughts; you become convinced that your friends secretly hate you, you're worthless, and then there's no hope. I never got so low as to consider ending it all, but I understand how that can happen to some people. Depression simply hurts too much.

What is the date? What is the time? … Great, that’s what Now is. And every second, your ‘Now’ changes. Because all we have is Now. We are continuously living in the Now. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but Now. Today. The present. And I need you to live in it. To truly appreciate it. To breathe and feel yourself breathing.

What's a triumph is that you woke up this morning and decided to live. That's a triumph.

What people never understand is that depression isn't about the outside; it's about the inside.

What’s more insane? Hearing imaginary voices? Or not hearing the real ones?

What still frightens me is that society is fickle. There was a time when nobody believed in the reality of abuse, and now it seems that just about everyone does, and yet, I realize we could still move backwards. It is important to stay firm: It took many years for the truth about sexual abuse to come to the fore. It is still fragile, and must be constantly nourished by research, reflection and above all, listening with empathy and an open heart to the stories of people who have been the victims of child abuse in its many forms and are now survivors. They have much to teach.

What's the difference between sanity and madness anyway? We all play headgames with ourselves. We all have baggage. We all cope somehow. I'm not sure if I'm mad or sane. I mean, I hold my life together, I pay my bills, I raise my kids. But the world is so polarized and bizarre now that for some people, none of these these things matter if they're not wearing the right shoes or don't have the right credit score or a fancy family car. Some people think the most important things to worry about are handbags and tan lines. Meanwhile, war and crime and poverty unfold all around us, and we ignore it. In that environment, how can we even begin to talk about sanity and madness?

What super powers are hiding behind your insanities?

What was wrong with me? Why could I not just flip the switch and see all the brightness ahead if only I chose the correct path? Or rather, why could I see the correct path but not choose to tread upon it?

When a client enters therapy with a prior diagnosis, it might be difficult for the therapist to think outside of the box presented. One reason a dissociative individual might have several different diagnoses, however, is that as different parts present, they may also be presenting with diagnostic issues that are different from the host. Such differences especially make sense given the nature of DID.

When emotions are expressed...all systems are united and made whole. When emotions are repressed, denied, not allowed to be whatever they may be, our network pathways get blocked, stopping the flow of the vital feel-good, unifying chemicals that run both our biology and our behavior.

When anxiety gets out-of-control, it can create a nasty feedback loop that keeps us trapped in our heads, thinking and worrying about “what if…, what if…, what if…

When anxiety is in balance, it helps us to think ahead to the future, make plans, and get organized.

When are we going to stop being afraid to push for change and begin putting into action the things we have discussed for centuries? Mental health cannot wait any longer. Lets get to work!

When emotions are long held and extremely complex, it sometimes takes years for them to enter fully into awareness.

When I came to you A butterfly came too And feelings started anew... ...Do you remember it? But most of all: Do you believe in signs?

When it comes to our minds, awareness is very often the solution itself.

When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain rather than left, or left rather than right. In my mind there were many rooms and, just as I still got lost in the labyrinth of corridors at college, I often found myself lost, with a sense of déjà vu, in some obscure part of my cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that plays a key role in perceptual awareness, attention and memory. Everything I had lived through or imagined or dreamed appeared to have been backed up on a video clip and then scattered among those alien rooms. I could stumble into any number of scenes, from the horrifically sexual, horror-movie sequences that were crude and painful, to visualizing Grandpa polishing his shoes.

When looking at triggers for mental health problems, therapists often identify an intense change in someone’s life as a major factor.

When someone says you've changed, it's because you are no longer willing to live your life their way

When someone needs something in order to feel better, that something returns her love.