Quotes & Sayings About Impairments

I want kids to think that reading can be just as much fun and more so than TV or video games or whatever else they do. I think any other kind of message or morals that I might teach is secondary to first just enjoying a book. — Louis Sachar

The Faustian trade of the 20th century was, we got 30 years of additional life, but in return we got heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's and sensory impairments. The question is: What Faustian trade are we making now, as we go after heart disease, cancer, stroke and Alzheimer's? — S. Jay Olshansky

The closest term to sociopath is antisocial personality disorder. The criteria for diagnosis include impairments in self-esteem, self-direction, empathy, intimacy, plus the use of manipulation and deceit, and the presence of hostility, callousness, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and a lack of concern for one's limitations: risk-taking. — A.J. Rich

I hate actual newspapers. In my opinion, they are only good for wrapping up presents or cleaning mirrors. Or packing boxes. Or stuffing into knee-high boots to help retain their shape. Or using for fun crafts. Okay, I don't hate actual newspapers, I guess. — Jasika Nicole

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke

Everything is quiet, peaceful, and against it all there is only the silent protest of statistics; so many go mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children die of starvation ... And such a state of things is obviously what we want; apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear their burden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible. — Anton Chekhov

The mere suggestion that not speaking for a day can give you an appreciation of the social isolation that comes with the experience of disability, particularly those whose impairments prohibit them from communicating verbally, is insensitive at best. — Stella Young

Art for me is like breathing. — Yoko Ono

You can certainly go to war about it, but to me it seems pointless. — Joy Browne

Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity and love. What seems nonadapative and self-harming in the present was, at some point in our lives, an adaptation to help us endure what we then had to go through. If people are addicted to self-soothing behaviours, it's only because in their formative years they did not receive the soothing they needed. Such understanding helps delete toxic self-judgment on the past and supports responsibility for the now. Hence the need for compassionate self-inquiry. — Gabor Mate

I got interested in the emotions after studying patients who had lost the ability to emote and feel under certain circumstances. Many of those patients also had major impairments in their ability to make decisions. — Antonio Damasio

Punishment symptoms Many of the other types of programming produce psychiatric symptoms, usually administered as punishments by insiders who are trained to administer them, if the survivor has breached security or disobeyed the abusers' instructions in other ways. These symptoms serve a variety of purposes, such as disrupting therapy, getting the survivor into hospital, or getting the survivor to return to the perpetrators to have the programming reinforced.
p126 — Alison Miller

I felt permanently exiled from 'normality.' Whether imposed by self or society, this outsider status - and not the disability itself - constitutes the most daunting barrier for most people with physical impairments, because it, even more than flights of steps or elevators without braille, prevents them from participating fully in the ordinary world, where most of life's satisfactions dwell. — Nancy Mairs

The seriousness of emotional deprivation:
It is not difficult to understand how children who have suffered from malnutrition or starvation need food and plenty of care in their bodies are to recover so they can go on to lead normal lives. If, however, the starvation is severe enough, the damage will be permanent and they will suffer physical impairments for the rest of their lives. Likewise, children who are deprived of emotional nurturing require care and love if their sense of security and self-confidence is to be restored. However, if love is minimal and abuse high, the damage will be permanent and the children will suffer emotional impairments for the rest of their lives. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Autism reaches out in many different directions. It can be associated with language delays. It can be associated with epilepsy. It can be associated with some degree of intellectual disability, but the two core features of autism, I see, is impairments and social cognition, understanding and in restricted interests and repetitive behaviors. — Gerald Fischbach

Researchers consistently find that most older volunteers, when compared to older nonvolunteers, have fewer functional and physical impairments, overall better health, higher life satisfaction and less depression. In addition, they attend religious services more frequently and belong to more social organizations. — Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

Having worked as a clinician for almost 40 years, I have seen some young adults, who had the classic, clear and conspicuous signs of Asperger's syndrome in early childhood, achieve over decades a range of social abilities and improvements in behaviour such that the diagnostic characteristics became sub-clinical; that is, the person no longer has a clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important area of functioning. There may still be very subtle signs of Asperger's syndrome, but when the diagnostic tests are re-administered, the person achieves a score below the threshold to maintain the diagnosis. There is now longitudinal research that is starting to confirm clinical experience that about 10 per cent of those who originally had an accurate diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome in childhood no longer have sufficient impairments to justify the diagnosis (Cederlund et al. 2008; Farley et al. 2009). — Tony Attwood

There was a succession of roommates, never chosen with her input and all with cognitive impairments. Some were quiet. One kept her up at night. She felt incarcerated, like she was in prison for being old. The — Atul Gawande

Genetics, accidents of birth or events in early childhood have left criminals' brains and bodies with measurable flaws predisposing them to committing assault, murder and other antisocial acts ...
Many offenders also have impairments in their autonomic nervous system, the system responsible for the edgy, nervous feeling that can come with emotional arousal. This leads to a fearless, risk-taking personality, perhaps to compensate for chronic under-arousal.
Many convicted criminals, like the Unabomber, have slow heartbeats.
It also gives them lower heart rates, which explains why heart rate is such a good predictor of criminal tendencies. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, for example, had a resting heart rate of just 54 beats per minute, which put him in the bottom 3 per cent of the population. — Adrian Raine

What ever happened to mental hygiene?" he asked rhetorically. "It doesn't exist - and never did. When you went through high school, you were never taught how to deal with stress, how to deal with trauma, how to deal with tension and anxiety - with the whole list of mood impairments. There's no preventive maintenance. We know how to prevent cavities. But we don't teach children how to be resilient, how to cope with stress on a daily basis. — William J. Broad

Some artists are normal people who just happen to make things because we can't figure out how in the hell to communicate with people. — Scott Nicholson

The good part about having a mental disorder is having a valid reason for all the stupid things we do because of a damaged prefrontal cortex. However, the best part is seeing someone completely sane do the exact same things, without a valid excuse. This is the great equalizer of God and his little gift for all us crazy people to enjoy. — Shannon L. Alder