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e5b5e3f
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Depression, somehow, is much more in line with society's notions of what women are all about: passive, sensitive, hopeless, helpless, stricken, dependent, confused, rather tiresome, and with limited aspirations. Manic states, on the other hand, seem to be more the provenance of men: restless, fiery, aggressive, volatile, energetic, risk taking, grandiose and visionary, and impatient with the status quo. Anger or irritability in men, under s..
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depression
manic-depressive-illness
gender-roles
mania
misdiagnosis
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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5e2f971
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The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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4ed83f2
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The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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b061aa0
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You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're 'not at all like yourself but you will be soon,' but you know you won't.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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7cdb624
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Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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3e9e16a
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Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person (nor are they incompatible). These are beliefs, of course, that one has intuitively about friendships and family; they become less obvious when caught up in a romantic life that mirrors, magnifies, and perpetuates one's own mer..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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8533a5d
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I remember sitting in his office a hundred times during those grim months and each time thinking, What on earth can he say that will make me feel better or keep me alive? Well, there never was anything he could say, that's the funny thing. It was all the stupid, desperately optimistic, condescending things he didn't say that kept me alive; all the compassion and wamrth I felt from him that could not have been said; all the intelligence, com..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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afd2309
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I am reminded of the importance of small kindnesses.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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81a327e
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Conditions of thought, memory, and desire, persuaded by impulse and irrationality, are influenced as well by personal aesthetics and private meanings.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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26d54df
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Who would not want an illness that has among its symptoms elevated and expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, abundance of energy, less need for sleep, intensified sexuality, and- most germane to our argument here-"sharpened and unusually creative thinking" and "increased productivity"?"
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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b553796
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The assumption that rigidly rejecting words and phrases that have existed for centuries will have much impact on public attitudes is rather dubious.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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02958b8
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It is true that I had wanted to die , but that is peculiarly different from regretting having been born. Overwhelmingly, I was enormously glad to have been born, grateful for life, and I couldn't imagine not wanting to pass on life to someone else.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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9b3a009
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Thank you for a lovely weekend. They tell me it rained.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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0f348f8
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I was bitterly resentful, but somehow greatly relieved. And I respected him enormously for his clarity of thought, his obvious caring, and his unwillingness to equivocate in delivering bad news.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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aaa9390
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Often, people want both to live and to die; ambivalence saturates the suicidal act.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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e702f3d
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I was late to understand that chaos and intensity are no subsitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life. Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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c488828
|
Some part of me instinctively reached out, and in an odd way understood this pain, never imagining that I would someday look in the mirror and see their sadness and insanity in my own eyes.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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c943e6a
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Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it. (74)
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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baf385a
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It never occurred to her to give up.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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7a2636b
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It was as if my father had given me, by way of temperament, an impossibly wild, dark, and unbroken horse. It was a horse without a name, and a horse with no experience of a bit between its teeth. My mother taught me to gentle it; gave me the discipline and love to break it; and- as Alexander had known so intuitively with Bucephalus- she understood, and taught me, that the beast was best handled by turning it toward the sun.
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manic-depression
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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79b02c9
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knt qd nsyt T`m lHss blHy@ `ndm tnftH lrwH `l~ lryH w lmTr w ljml, wbd't 'sh`r btsrb lHy@ mjdd l~ ltSd`t lmwjwd@ fy jsmy w `qly lldhyn knt qd shTbthm tmm b`tbrhm mstnzfyn 'w hmdyn. lqd stGrq l'mr sn@ kml@ lj`ly 'drk 'nny knt fym mDy 'mshy `l~ lm mktfy@ bmjrd mHwl@ lbq `ly qyd lHy@ wtjnb l'lm bdl mn lndmj lHqyqy fy lHy@. lfrS@ llhrb mn bqy lmrD w lmwt, mn lHy@ lqlq@, wmn msw'wlyt ltdrys w l`yd@. lqd '`Ttny hdhh lfrS@ shkl mn lslm ldhy kn yrw..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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40b4b81
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Now I had no choice but to live in the broken world that my mind had forced upon me.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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81f9f59
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The] persevering steadiness of my mother, her belief in seeing things through, and her great ability to love and learn, listen and change, helped keep me alive through all the years of pain and nightmare that were to come. She could not have known how difficult it would be to deal with madness; had no preparation for what to do with madness--none of us did--but consistent with her ability to love, and her native will, she handled it with em..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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6aff1b3
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It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered, that damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again, and that freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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3a455ca
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Feeling normal for any extended period of time raises hopes that turn out, almost invariably, to be writ on water.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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bda8d7a
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One of the advantages of science is that one's work, ultimately, is either replicated or it is not.
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science
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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e635081
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lqd tsbb ly l'lm w lkhwf mn lmjhwl lldhn trkm `lyW thr wf@ dyfyd blDf@ ly mrDy fy twD` w tDyyq amly fy lHy@ lsnwt `dyd@. nsHbt ly nfsy , w 'Glqt, btSmym, qlby `n 'y Htkk Gyr Drwry m` l`lm. nhmkt fy l`ml. lm tkn kl hdhh lnshTt bdyl@ llHb, w lknh knt mthyr@ w khlqt qym@ w m`ny lHyty lt`ys@. ftrt Twyl@ mn lt'ml m` dhty mnHt kl mn `qly w qlby lfrS@ lky y`yd bbT trmym m`Zm 'jz rwHy lmmzq@
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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0e8468b
|
Slowly the darkness began to weave its way into my mind, and before long I was hopelessly out of control. I could not follow the path of my own thoughts. Sentences flew around in my head and fragmented first into phrases and then words; finally, only sounds remained.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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9417752
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Violence, especially if you are a woman, is not something spoken about with ease.
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mood-disorder
mood-disordersmood-disorders
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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3abdf49
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There is an assumption, in attaching Puritan concepts such as "succesful" and "unsuccesful" to the awful, final act of suicide, that those who "fail" at killing themselves not only are weak, but incompeent incapable even of getting their dying quite right."
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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1981554
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I lost a great innocence when I understood that I and my mind were not going to be on good terms for the rest of my life. I can't tell you how tired I am of character-building experiences. But I treasure this part of me; whoever loves me loves me with this in it.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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ad125e9
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I never again looked at the sky and saw only vastness and beauty. From that afternoon on I saw that death was also and always there.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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0a0aa59
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lqd knt Hy@ Gryb@ l'Twr: mdhsh@ , wrhyb@, w bGyD@, w `syr@ bm yfwq lwSf, w shl@ bSwr@ `Zym@ w Gyr mtwq`@, w m`qd@, w tsly@ `Zym@, wkbws bl mkhrj!
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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e685f53
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Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and best of bad possibilities, and any attempt by the living to chart this final terrain of a life can be only a sketch, maddeningly incomplete. (73)
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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81ee74e
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As best I could make out, having never heard the term until I arrived in California, being a WASP meant being mossbacked, lockjawed, rigid, humorless, cold, charmless, insipid, less than penetratingly bright, but otherwise---and inexplicably---to be envied.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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08b3f02
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The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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1bb1787
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Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry feelings. Depression, instead, is flat,hollow and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid ..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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2bd1ee6
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Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome.
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mental-illness
mental-health
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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6c071cb
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I had a horrible sense of loss for who I had been and where I had been. It was difficult to give up the high flights of mind and mood, even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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7a1bd31
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The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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63f6672
|
We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds... But love is, to me, the ultimately more extraordinary part of the breakwater wall: it helps to shut out the terror and awfulness, while, at the same time, allowing in life and beauty and vitality.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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5aa9c94
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Without science, there would be no such hope.
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science
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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f8ec6a5
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An ardent temperament makes one very vulnerable to dreamkillers.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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976ec05
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I avoided situations that might otherwise trip or jangle my hypersensitive wiring, and I learned to pretend I was paying attention or following a logical point when my mind qas off chasing rabbits in a thousand directions.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |