Tempting as it may be to draw one conclusion or another from my story and universalize it to apply to another’s experience, it is not my intention for my book to be seen as some...

It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to...

People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different, and then the organism starts to produce Vitriol, or bitterness, as this poison is more commonly known.

I’ve always told people that for each person there is a sentence–a series of words–which has the power to destroy him. When Fat told me about Leon Stone I realized (this came years after the...

Then the weeks rolled by in a sinister psych ward haze filled with white-coated orderlies and rocking whack-job patients torn straight from some old Jack Nicholson film, all anti-psychotic meds and padded lonely cells…

The word is dissociate. There is no ‘a’ before the invariably say dis-a-ssociate, which, if you’re suffering Disso-ciative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder, can be irritating. People then want to know how many personalities I have...

Do you still have any delusions? For instance, does the furniture threaten you like you said the bureau did at home?” “No, not really. That bureau at the end of my bed here got a...

I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control.

My good fortune is not that I’ve recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.

Etta, it could be everything, it could be nothing, what you’re making up. You shouldn’t let that bother you.

Happiness is not a reward. It’s a consequence. You have to work at it every day.

You’re right, Ruth. You did screw up my career. You screwed it up good. Best thing you ever did, matter of fact. But you know something? It’s okay. Because if it was between the church...

My brain sometimes departs from the agreed-upon reality, and my private reality is a very lonely place. But in the end, I’m not sure I wish I’d never gone there.

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you...

It’s an unfortunate word, ‘depression’, because the illness has nothing to do with feeling sad, sadness is on the human palette. Depression is a whole other beast. It’s when your old personality has left town...

Always remember, if you have been diagnosed with PTSD, it is not a sign of weakness; rather, it is proof of your strength, because you have survived!

A significant number of people diagnosed with mental illness have psychic abilities not yet under control. They may have true mental illness as well, including faulty neurological wiring and chemical imbalance. However, some people have...

Now his work-mates pitied him, although they tried not to show it, and it was generally arranged that he was given jobs which allowed him to work alone. The smell of ink, and the steady...

behind the scenes.” Ironically, such efforts purport to cure some dissociative phenomena by encouraging others, such as Dissociative Amnesia.

A child’s death isn’t always necessary for a mother to grieve.

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...

If you can still wipe your own backside then life’s not that bad!

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

Successful writing is a slow, daily, meticulous form of mental illness.

It is my understanding that when you receive a Autism diagnosis for your child you have to accept it. If you don’t you are only condemning yourself and your child to a life of frustrating...

I want to talk about the difference between living and existing, and what it was like to be kept on an acute psychiatric ward for day after day after day after day after day after...

me.”As if we could scrape the color off the iris and still see.

An inner ease spreads inside me. Such is the power of acceptance and understanding from other people, the power of validation

Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to...

In the terms of ‘Mental Illness’ Isn’t stable a place they put horses that wish to run free?

When he first said my diagnosis, I couldn’t believe it. There must be another PTSD than post-traumatic stress disorder, I thought. I have only heard of war veterans who have served on the front lines...

Blame is a Defense Against PowerlessnessBetrayal trauma changes you. You have endured a life-altering shock, and are likely living with PTSD symptoms— hypervigilance, flashbacks and bewilderment—with broken trust, with the inability to cope with many...

Pictures … flashed on her in sudden color, too much color, shocking color, the color that leaps out of black when lightning strikes at night.

A disruption of the circadian cycle—the metabolic and glandular rhythms that are central to our workaday life—seems to be involved in many, if not most, cases of depression; this is why brutal insomnia so often...

Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.

They’re the perfect loving fam’ly, so adoring…And I love them ev’ry day of ev’ry week.So my son’s a little shit, my husband’s boring,And my daughter, though a genius, is a freak.

I’m the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave,...

Cheryl was aided in her search by the Internet. Each time she remembered a name that seemed to be important in her life, she tried to look up that person on the World Wide Web....

Guidance counselors always love to say, ‘Just think positively,’ but that’s impossible when you have this thing inside of you, strangling every ounce of happiness you can muster. My body is an efficient happy-though-killing machine.

When I was a little girl everyone made fun of me and calling me awful names.Also saying i’m ugly and now i’m starting to believe it,because I can’t seem to find a man that wants...

My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She’d set her coffee down, making a noise that made me look her way. I’d begun to notice her less and less often, like her colors were...

Depression: the healthy suspicion that modern life has no meaning and that modern society is absurd and alienating.

A string of thoughts run through my head like a song I can’t get rid of, over and over in the same order: I am broken. I am a fraud. I am impossible to love.

I couldn’t trust my own emotions. Which emotional reactions were justified, if any? And which ones were tainted by the mental illness of BPD? I found myself fiercely guarding and limiting my emotional reactions, chastising...

Genius by birth, Bipolar by design

The problem with having problems is that ‘someone’ always has it worse.

News came of Beni Beni, the madman of Wimbe, who’d always made us laugh in better times. He’d run up to merchants in the trading center with his raving eyes and snatch cakes and Fantas...

Am I a mindless fool? My life is a fragment, a disconnected dream that has no continuity. I am so tired of senselessness. I am tired of the music that my feelings sing, the dream...

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.