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

If the mind fits, shrink it.

The tattoo artist inflicts pain and I take it. With each breath I count to one again. Each inhale, each exhale, time passes in the smallest of pieces, and pieces still smaller than those.This is...

PART 2 I felt doomed to death,But in a flash, Before I could reduce my thoughts To an emotion, I felt a mass leave my body:Departing. Then my mind becomes anonymous As is each night....

The pain will always be in you — but you will not always be in pain.

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...

Stigma against mental illness is a scourge with many faces, and the medical community wears a number of those faces.

So ask me if I am alright.’I’m fine; I’m always fine.’You see this look in my eyes.’No, I’m fine. I am always fine.’There is a corpse behind my smile.’Listen, I am fine. Always, always fine...

Psychosis can happen out of the blue, to anyone, and no one knows why. Not even the best doctors on the planet.And that’s why Mom is always so afraid. If we don’t know what made...

He had the feeling that there was something physically behind his eyes, blocking the light.

I can’t describe the feeling when I go down – it’s down down down and there’s never going to be an up again. And whatever was good isn’t good any more; white becomes grey, music...

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When...

It’s so common, it could be anyone. The trouble is, nobody wants to talk about it. And that makes everything worse.

All mental unhappiness is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.

There are such things as delusions, but not every unlikely vision that the mentally ill have is imaginary.

Mental illness is not in the business of making sense of itself.

The fault in our stars is the inability to see that the world falls in love with fantasy, fairytales and magic in movies. Even religion asks us to believe in the most unlikely of situations....

I was lost in a void of perpetual darkness. Disconnected from myself. Turned inside out. No sign of life. Eventually, the darkness was my light and the void a haven – a quiet place where...

Janna knew – Rikki knew — and I knew, too — that becoming Dr Cameron West wouldn’t make me feel a damn bit better about myself than I did about being Citizen West. Citizen West,...

Cousin Mary hoped her journey through periods of dark and light was like that of a Swiss train toiling up the mountainside, in and out of tunnels but always a little farther up the hill...

For eight years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. During those years I passed through such unbearable terror that I deteriorated into a wild, frightened creature intent only on survival....

There’s an inherent thing in me where, if things are going too smooth, I’ll sabotage the hell out of them just to make the music more of a sanctuary.

Its not the label of autism we need for our children, its the help and understanding that comes with that label that we need.

I rehearsed Foucault’s argument that the presence of madness on our doorstep is good for us, for it reminds us the life we live is only one among several human possibilities.

For those of us with BPD, entering into a shared experience means passing through the ring of fire that leaves us feeling even more burned—and in this case branded with a label no one would...

What is society but an individual? […] The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This was how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror at the illusion of the ocean...

When my mind plays tricks on me I can deal. But when my mind plays tricks on my mind I can not tell what’s real

There is clear evidence from internal investigations in the past that some raters actually see themselves as adversaries to veterans. If a claim can be minimized, then the government has saved money, regardless of the...

The thesis that DID is merely a North American phenomenon has been refuted in the past decade by research reports based on standardized assessment from diverse countries, such as from The Netherlands, Turkey, and Germany...

God’s creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.

my brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unnameable tide that obliterated any enjoyable response to the...

Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am...

Life wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Eternal beauty could not exist if it were not for the face of a fatal flaw.

You aren’t falling apart. You’re well beyond that. You’re just rattling along now. Elven dolls doing what little you can to gather the pieces as they fall away. But you don’t know how to properly...

There were other strange signals and signs. Another day, suddenly felt an almost overwhelming urge to travel to Balitmore. I wanted to ‘kidnap’ a helicoper fly it there if I didn’t drive the there’, she...

Anyone who has actually been that sad can tell you that there’s nothing beautiful or literary or mysterious about depression.

Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about...

With a damp palm, I turned the knob and cracked open the door. She was asleep in her freshly made bed. I can’t explain how relieved I felt for this simple mercy. She was here...

You see, people in the depressive position are often stigmatised as ‘failures’ or ‘losers’. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. If these people are in the depressive position, it is most probably...

The Parents, as my mother and father refer to Mr. Finch and Mrs. Finch, are insisting it was an accident, which, I guess, means we’re free to mourn him out in the open in a...

You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find...

If every Genius has a touch of Madness, does every Normal person have a touch of Ignorance ?

If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but...

Librarians are trained to be polite, patient, and helpful, no matter who stands across the reference desk.The most important thing is that we look them in the eye and take them seriously. Our work demands...

Episodes is about discovery of one’s psyche and true personality while being completely absorbed in one’s one Mind and thoughts. A story of coping and finding an unsure contentment. Finding the Rational Soul in all...

Once I had found the courage to tell Rebecca about the children in my head, it wasn’t so hard in the coming months to tell Roberta. On the train from Huddersfield one day in May...

If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.

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

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest...

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...