Mental Illness Quotes Quotes & Sayings

Slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself recovering. After a few weeks, the darkness began to recede; my appetite for life returned. Haven was wonderful; she understood and nursed me through these weeks until I felt strong enough to go out in public, to get on my bike again. — Tyler Hamilton

When it comes to mental illness most of the diagnoses are similar or the same yet they can never display how we individually go through our pain. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Can you revive wilted tulips? — Shannon Mullen

Depression is real. It happens. We go through it. Hold onto yourself in those moments. — Avijeet Das

Too often the mentally ill are marginalized as people who just can't pull up their socks. If only it were that simple. — Suzanne F. Kingsmill

The idea to go West just fell into my lap from the sky. Go west, young man. That's how the best ideas happen. Just out of nowhere. When you're not even thinking. Like they've been created for you and you just have to reach out and grab them before someone else does. — Shannon Mullen

You'll never see my books on Vanity Fair I'm not the type of author they would want there — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Many call it the 1000 yard stare and can't realize the pain when PTSD takes us there — Stanley Victor Paskavich

There is a dead space between most people and those afflicted with Mental Illness and it's called Understanding — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Sleeping is much safer than the nightmare I'm living.
When I sleep I feel nothing and I do nothing and I see nothing and nothing matters and no one cares. There's no one to hurt or disappoint or notice when I'm low and I don't need to face anyone not anyone in the world or not even myself. — Shannon Mullen

You're surrounded by people and voices and noises, but there you are, alone and trembling inside. And you want to be invisible. (thinking) Please, don't notice me. — Kellie Elmore

Light existed all along. Of course it did. Who says it didn't because I couldn't see it? — Gillian Marchenko

Who am I fooling? Bad dreams never end. We just pretend they aren't there. — Shannon Mullen

When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker ... but as survivors. Survivors who don't get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like. — Jenny Lawson

Daisy doesn't even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking with racist Tom ... you can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset, because there's no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you.
I do see why Nikki likes the novel, as it's written so well. But her liking it makes me worry now that Nikki really doesn't believe in silver linings, because she says The Great Gatsby is the greatest novel ever written by an American, and yet it ends so sadly. One thing's for sure, Nikki is going to be very proud of me when I tell her I finally read her favorite book. -Silver Linings Playbook, p. 9 — Matthew Quick

PTSD in its rawest form is a death sentence which causes many veterans and others to execute themselves in hope to be free. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Even the tiniest of flowers can have the toughest roots. — Shannon Mullen

Want to do something noble and courageous while you're on this Earth treat the mentally ill like they have some worth. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

I'm Bipolar but as normal as you except for the times my mind thinks like two — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Bipolar is an illness not a hopeless destination it can be maintained with proper medication — Stanley Victor Paskavich

We got through it. Haven made excuses for me to friends, and made an appointment with a terrific doctor, who put me on Effexor, 150 milligrams a day, enough to get my brain straightened out. — Tyler Hamilton

I've accepted the fact I have mental illness but when my imaginary friends start calling me crazy that's where I draw the line — Stanley Victor Paskavich

When you have mental illness it's common to be shunned by your family or friends it wouldn't happen if they knew the pain you were in. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

When you read my poems or quotes remember you're stepping into the mind that steps outside of me — Stanley Victor Paskavich

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

The forest is blanketed by the greenest ferns and moss and bonsai-like trees, a wild majesty that beckons hobbits and pixies and elves and dreamers. — Shannon Mullen

Some of us will experience some form of mental illness in their lifetime... I rather have depression that can be treated with a pill and my free will to conquer it; than have a physical illness that results in my demise because no matter what I did I could not conquer it. — Brian Michael Good

She can't worry. She can't 'fix.' She can't love. — Shannon Mullen

Every one wants to be a Genius. But only the brave choose to go mad to get there ... — Stanley Victor Paskavich

The vision I see in the mirror is me, who I am, supposedly, but that vision does not express the way my mind works or the way I feel inside. A realization creeps over me, the words tumbling into my head quietly like falling leaves.
I.
Am.
Crazy.
This is my new shameful truth. Something changed yesterday. A door has been opened that I can never close again. I touch my reflection, the glass smooth and cold, not really believing that the girl I see is me. — Victoria Sawyer

You do not need to be temperamental or upset to be a novelist. Don't embrace the tortured artist rhetoric that any life difficulties might serve to benefit and enhance your writing. That's damaging. Counterintuitive. Writing can be so incredibly lonely, and when you're alone with your thoughts for long enough to produce a hundred thousand words of your own headspace, it can be scary. Suffering is not good for your art. Mental health care is. So talk to someone other than your future readers about the problems you are facing. Someone you know and trust. There is no shame in asking for help. — Bryant A. Loney

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. — Jennifer Givhan

Yes I'm Bipolar but I'm as normal as you except the times when my mind thinks like two — Stanley Victor Paskavich

On the ward there was hurt and pain so big and so deep that speech could not express it. I had been interested in philosophy, and suddenly philosophy came alive for me, for here the basic questions of human existence were not abstractions: they were embodied in human suffering — Frank X. Barron

The word "depressed" is spoken phonetically as "deep rest". We can view depression not as a mental illness, but on a deeper level, as a profound, and very misunderstood, state of deep rest, entered into when we are completely exhausted by the weight of our own identity. — Jeff Foster

I'll say it again - mental illness is a physical illness. You wouldn't consider going up to someone suffering from Alzheimers to yell, "Come on, get with it, you remember where you left your keys?" Let us shout it from the rooftops until everyone gets the message; depression has and nothing to do with having a bad day or being sad, it's a killer if not taken seriously. — Ruby Wax

Suddenly, I'm lighter, only half of who I was. — Shannon Mullen

Just as I'm about to continue walking along the shoreline, the left third of the iceberg breaks off suddenly and crashes violently, like a high-rise apartment building imploding in the heart of the city. Tears roll down my face uncontrollably as I watch the two distinct halves of the iceberg drift further and further apart from each other. It's devastating to watch something that seems so strong and unbreakable crumble in an instant. Even more devastating is the feeling that there's nothing I can do about it. — Shannon Mullen

When you are cursed with a bipolar mind racing thoughts are the ones that you find — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Interestingly, the patients who presented to me self-diagnosed [with Dissociative Identity Disorder had tried to tell previous therapists of their plight, but had been disbelieved. These therapists had used fallacious "capricious criteria" (KIuft, 1988) to discredit the diagnosis; e.g., that the patient could not possibly have MPD because she was aware of the other alters [sic!]. — Richard P. Kluft

We mistake our mistakes as being damaged. — Taylor Swift

It takes all my strength to do daily tasks. To some people, I'm just a number. I'm a projected food stamps debit card lifetime member. I'm seen as crazy or insane, but it doesn't matter. I know I am bigger than my suffering. — Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

Starving artist: starving for affection, starving for attention — Jessica-Lynn Barbour

Because of my bipolar condition I will have to take anti psychotics until I die but hopefully a handful of them won't be the last thing I taste — Stanley Victor Paskavich

It is not the darkness of shadows: one that follows you, haunts you, terrifies you.
Instead, it consumes you, becomes you, weighs you down.
It IS you.
It is comforting. Familiar.
I have walked with it. Eaten with it. Loved with it. Smiled with it.
Yet I feel it destroying me.
Like cancer.
But I can't remove it. It stays inside of me, taunting me to kill it, myself, but it does not realize that this seduction keeps me alive. — Shannon Mullen

The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of the world but those who fight and win battles that others do not know anything about. — Jonathan Harnisch

I finally understood what could drive kids to show up with guns and shoot up their schools. — Nenia Campbell

Most people can only sleep with a nice soft pillow I can only sleep with heavy anti psychotics — Stanley Victor Paskavich

With thousands of years of history frozen in time, it's no wonder that many southerners like me romanticize the north as a place where we can freeze our former selves, thaw, and then bloom anew. Here it's just you, the land, and your thoughts, and you can't leave until you've wrestled with yourself and emerged a survivor. But then again, the light is much more intense up here and everything looks different because of it. The sun hasn't set in a couple of months, and you can see things much more clearly when it is light all of the time. — Shannon Mullen

There may not be any romance to mental illness but who needs romance when the preferable route is agency? The prevailing conversation around mental health issues is agency and the lack thereof on the part of the mentally ill. But what do you do if you're a paid-up member of the mentally ill populace in question? Do you curl up into a ball and give up? No, you look for solutions. Ultimately, it's about keeping despair at bay and sometimes simple things like running, taking up a hobby, doing charity work, painting or, in my case, writing can be a galvanizing part of the recovery process. Keeping the brain and the body active can give life a semblance of pleasure and hope. This is what writing has done for me. I took every traumatic element of my condition and channelled it into something useful. — Diriye Osman

The west coast is a mecca for wild hearts, wild minds, wild spirits and I'm a WMD - I've got so much energy I'm about to explode. — Shannon Mullen

We all have problems, but let's not kid ourselves: it's how we deal with them that makes the difference. — Jonathan Harnisch