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Mental-health Quotes
"We are sometimes depressed by our failure to convince people who strongly believe that we are that we are definitely not depressed."
31
"When you are insane, you are busy being insane - all the time."
30
"If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air."
30
"No, I mean earlier. Where'd you go? You weren't here with me because no, nothing happened. I could see on your face that something was wrong, so I didn't do it. But now you need to think long and hard about where you were inside that head of yours, because you were panicked. You were hysterical and I need to know what it was that took you there so I can make sure you never go back."
29
"Anxiety swarms in the heart like worms infect the whole body."
29
"I didn't sleep well last night because one of my ghosts came back, haunting with his presence, and when I woke up, the others weren't here, haunting with their memory."
29
"It's not my fault I can't be like you, okay? I don't get up in the morning thinking the world is one big, shiny, happy place, okay? That's just not how I work. I don't think I can be fixed."
29
"Depression lives and grows in the swamp of need."
28
"Oddly enough I never used to suffer from depression on cold, gray, cloudy days like this. I feel as if nature is in harmony with me, that it reflected my soul. On the other hand, when the sun appeared, the children would come out to play in the streets, and everyone was happy that it was such a lovely day, and then I would feel terrible, as if that display of exuberance in which i could not participate was somehow unfair."
27
"The ability to "fantasize" is the ability to survive. It's wonderful to speak about this subject because there have been so many wrong-headed people dealing with it.... The so-called realists are trying to drive us insane, and I refuse to be driven insane.... We survive by fantasizing. Take that away from us and the whole damned human race goes down the drain."
27
"If the context is lost and merely bits and pieces remain from a scattered existence, only the connection of anchor points may reinstate a distorted mental balance in an upset life story. ['Lost the global story.']"
26
"Each positive thought is your refuge and your sanctuary, where in that thoughtful moment, you are safe."
25
"I think the idea of a 'mental health day' is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it's like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying 'i don't want to deal with things today' and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide."
24
"God knows I often retire to my bed wishing (at times even hoping) that I might never wake up; and in the morning I open my eyes, see the sun once again, and am miserable."
24
"Depression is a reality with everyone. What's important is the ability to move on."
24
"This is a very bad book you're writing, I said to myself behind my leaks. "I know, I said. "You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did, I said. "I know, I said. There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia. The sound and appearance of the word had fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes."
23
"I wonder how long it would take him to realize I'm right as sin - it's the rest of the world that's wrong. I'm not even sure how I qualify for admission to Aspen Springs. Does wanting to die equal losing your mind?"
23
"Insane people give me hope.""What!!!!" I almost dropped my beer."The insane have decided to stay on," Crumley said. "They love life so much that, rather than destroy it, they go behind a self-made wall to hide. Pretend not to hear, but the do hear. Pretend not to see, but see. Insanity says: I hate living but love life. Hate the rules but do like me. So, rather than drop in graves, I hide out. Not in liquor, nor in bed under sheets, nor in a needle's prick or snuffs of white powder, but in madness. On my own shelf, in my own rafters, under my own silent roof. So, yeah, insane people give me hope. Courage to go on being sand and alive, always with the cure at hand, should I ever tire and need it: madness."
23
"When people call it that I always get pissed off because I always think depression sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the window sighing or just lying around. A state of not caring about anything. A kind of blue kind of peaceful state."
23
"So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit."
22
"Illusions can and do create PHYSICAL Dis-Ease within our bodies. So it's most important to master our thoughts, to become cognizant of what we are spending our precious mental energy on each moment of every day."
22
"I have nightmares about hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you."
22
"Depression has been likened to both a black cloud and a black dog. For someone like Kelsea, the black cloud is the right metaphor. She is surrounded by it, immersed within it, and there is no obvious way out. What she needs to do is try to contain it, get it into the form of the black dog. It will still follow her around wherever she goes; it will always be there. But at least it will be separate, and will follow her lead."
22
"No one sees your strength, do they? No one sees the silent battle you fight against your overprotective mind that's trying to keep you safe from harm by keeping you safe from risk, safe from connection, safe from honesty. Maybe others don't see, but you see it sometimes, don't you? In the mirror, in those eyes, begging for someone to notice. You have noticed. It is real. You are strong. You are fighting for something incredible. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise-especially not your thoughts."
21
"Going mad is the beginning of a process. It is not supposed to be the end result."
21
"A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety."
21
"In this world where too many are willing to see only the light that is visible, never the Light Invisible, we have a daily darkness that is night, and we encounter another darkness from time to time that is death, the deaths of those we love, but the third and most constant darkness is with us everyday, at all hours of every day, is the darkness of the mind, the pettiness and meanness and hatred, which we have invited into ourselves, and which we pay out with generous interest."
20
"I think we all keep irritating situations in our head to long, until we finally realize it's taking up valuable space."
20
"I know that things get worse before they get better because that's what my psychiatrist says, but this is a worse that feels too big."
20
"So, yeah, insane people give me hope. Courage to go on being sane and alive, always with the cure at hand, should I ever tire and need it: madness."
20
"But Hey, Guess What Crazy means I'm not liablefor my actions. So screw it, I'll go home, propped up on Prozac against distractions."
19
"Whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off-then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
19
"It was as if the main screw in his head, which held his whole life together, had become stripped. The screw would not go in, would not come out, but turned in the same groove without catching hold, and it was impossible to stop turning it."
19
"I'm too much of a coward to kill myself. And too much of a coward to live."
19
"A depressed person doesn't want you to try and cheer them up. It makes us sick."
19
"But laugh, laugh, laugh, because if you ever stop laughing, it might just tear you apart."
19
"You're insane!""I won't argue that point."
19
"There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics."
19
"It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary."
19
"We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use."
19
"Solitude sometimes is best society."
18
"He: What's the matter with you?Me: Nothing.Nothing was slowly clotting my arteries. Nothing slowly numbing my soul. Caught by nothing, saying nothing, nothingness becomes me. When I am nothing they will say surprised in the way that they are forever surprised, "but there was nothing the matter with her."
18
"She's a sickness in my head.Then get well.What you feel is self-made and attended to over time. You want to let go but are unwilling to let go because you are getting something from it; An escape? An excuse? Bondage?You are idealizing another person, building up the idea of them, and making them a legend in your own mind.Is it really a sickness or something you can control?The question is: do you even want to?Each time a thought creeps into your mind, you choose whether to give it freedom to remain or to wander. You can rebuke it or replace it. After all, it's your mind."
18
"Madness is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you, but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there." 'We've all felt that.' 'And all of us, one way or another, are mad."
18
"Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed."
18
"A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they've all let him down."
18
"One either cares what others think about him, or cares what others think he thinks about them. If you want to find someone who doesn't care in the slightest what anyone thinks, try a lunatic asylum."
18
"Taking your own life could become the ultimate failure, because you will be killing and closing the existing door to a chance that might have been waiting to lead you into another path."
18
"To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death."
18
"Anxiety and stress derive from fear and self-doubt."
18
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