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796f13b
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I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse. Not just any horse, but an unrelentingly stubborn and blindingly neurotic one, a sort of equine Woody Allen, but ..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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dd5d3d7
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I understood very little of what was going on, and I felt as though only dying would release me from the overwhelming sense of inadequacy and blackness that surrounded me.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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c6e08be
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kl shy kn fy lsbq mtwhjan 'SbH lan mnTfy'an
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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9135209
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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;
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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33b7568
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It has been said that grief is a kind of madness. I disagree. There is a sanity to grief, in its just proportion of emotion to cause, that madness does not have. I know madness well, but I understood little of grief and I was not always certain which was grief and which was madness. Grief, as it transpires has its own territory.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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bd576c2
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Patient sees [lithium] medication as a promise of a cure, and a means of suicide if it doesn't work. She fears that by taking it she will risk her last resort
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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de9524f
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kntu 'styqZ fy lSbH m` sh`wr `myq blfz` lm s'mr bh mn m`n@ fy ywmin jdyd .
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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9ad87fd
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rGm Hjty lshdyd@ lstqllyty , knt '`lm 'nny s'njdhb nHw `lm mn ltqlyd kdhlk .
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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b33d09a
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We each move within the restraints of our temperament and live up only partially to its possibilities.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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533475b
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No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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d2c5631
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kn `l~W 'n 'Hwl 'n 'wfq byn fkrty `n nfsy knsn@ ttklm bhdw wmnDbT@ tmm, nsn@ `l~ l'ql Hss@ `mwm l'mzj@ wmsh`r lakhryn.. wbyn mr'@ skhT@ wmjnwn@ tmm wfqd@ lkl mnfdh lsyTr@ `l~ lnfs wltfkyr l`qlny
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depression
manic-depression
mania
mental-illness
psychology
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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9b921b9
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nHn jmy`an ntHrk bS`wb@ dkhl Hdwd qywdn
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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cda0a6c
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I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, a..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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a987c5e
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amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable..... But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a strong medicine. As John Donne has written, it is not so abstract as one might have thought and wished, but it does endure, and it does grow.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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d18b11c
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But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a very strong medicine.
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depression
love
mania
mental-illness
mental-health
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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1cd355e
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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 follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is perva..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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443a1b0
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There is no easy way to tell other people that you have manic-depressive illness; if there is, I haven't found it.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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2157799
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Because the privacy of my nightmare had been of my own designing, no one close to me had any real idea of the psychological company I had been keeping.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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aacb0c1
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Two aspects of thinking in particular are pronounced in both creative and hypomanic thought: fluency, rapidity, and flexibility of thought on the one hand, and the ability to combine ideas or categories of thought in order to form new and original connections on the other. The importance of rapid, fluid, and divergent thought in the creative process has been described by most psychologists and writers who have studied human imagination. The..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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3d2671c
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lns l yTyqwn 'n ykwnw Hwlk `ndm tkwn mkty'b, qd y`tqdwn 'nh wjb `lyhm wqd yHwlwn 'yD .. wlknk t`rf whm y`rfwn 'yD 'nk mDjr bdrj@ l ymkn tSwrh, 'nt sry` lnf`l wmtjhm wfqd llHywy@ wntqdy wkthyr lmTlb wl ymkn Tm'ntk mTlq, 'nt khy'f w'nt tkhyf, w'nt lst nfsk 'bd wlknk stkwn kdhlk sry`, w lknk t`lm 'nk ln tkwn. !
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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6cd7631
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Part of my stubbornness can be put down to human nature. It is hard for anyone with an illness, chronic or acute, to take medications absolutely as prescribed. Once symptoms of an illness go away, it becomes even more difficult.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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1ab6b2c
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lqd knt m`td@ `l~ kwn `qly hw 'Hsn Sdyq ly , w`l~ dr@ Hwrt lnhy'y@ lh dkhl r'sy , w `l~ m bnyth dkhl `qly mn mSdr llDHk w lfkr ltHlyly lnqdhy mn lbyy'@ lmml@ .
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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c07a0a8
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y's kml mn lmstqbl , khwf mn tkrr lalm w lm`n@ l~ lmlnhy@ .
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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a0b127d
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Then, suddenly, I was unpredictably and uncontrollably irrational and destructive. This was not something that could be overcome by protocol or etiquette. God, conspicuously, was nowhere to be found.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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83d33bb
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It was a tribute to my ability to present an image so at variance with what I felt that few noticed I was in any way different.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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6668135
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The clinical hallmark of manic-depressive illness is its recurrent, episodic nature. Byron had this in an almost textbook manner, showing frequent and pronounced fluctuations in mood, energy, sleep patterns, sexual behavior, alcohol and other drug use, and weight (Byron also exhibited extremes in dieting, obsession with his weight, eccentric eating patterns, and excessive use of epsom salts). Although these changes in mood and behavior were..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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cfb3739
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nHn jmy`an ntHrk bS`wb@ dkhl Hdwd qydwn.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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4ce0045
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It is not an illness that lends itself to easy empathy. 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 as being willful, angry, irrational, or simply tiresome.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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e14b1af
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seemed to myself to be dull, boring, inadequate, thick brained, unlit, unresponsive, chill skinned, bloodless, and sparrow drab.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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e2fdb5c
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There is, in Peanuts, an underlying and profound sadness which reflects not only Schulz's own struggles with depression but his sensitivity to the quiet terrors of human loneliness. "The most terrifying loneliness is not experienced by everyone and can be understood by only a few," Schulz said. "I compare the panic in this kind of loneliness to the dog we see running frantically down the road pursuing the family car. He is not really being ..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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7498dae
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I was not only very ill when I first called for an appointment, I was also terrified and deeply embarrassed. I had never been to a psychiatrist or a psychologist before. I had no choice. I had completely, but completely, lost my mind; if I didn't get professional help, I was quite likely to lose my job, my already precarious marriage, and my life as well. I drove from my office at UCLA to his office in the San Fernando Valley; it was an ear..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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f0f3f06
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somewhere in my heart, however, I continued to believe that intense and lasting love was possible only in a climate of somewhat tumultuous passions. This, I felt, consigned me to being with a man whose temperament was largely similar to my own. I was late to understand that chaos and intensity are no substitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life. Normal people are not aways boring. On the contrary. It has..
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madness
passion
love
normality
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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e45aaae
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Psychologist J.P. Guilford, who carried out a long series of systematic psychological studies into the nature of creativity, found that several factors were involved in creative thinking; many of these, as we shall see, relate directly to the cognitive changes that take place during mild manias as well. Fluency of thinking, as defined by Guilford, is made up of several related and empirically derived concepts, measured by specific tasks: wo..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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4263003
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Guilford concluded that creative individuals were also far more likely to exhibit "divergent" rather than "convergent" thinking: In tests of convergent thinking there is almost always one conclusion or answer that is regarded as unique, and thinking is to be channeled or controlled in the direction of that answer....In divergent thinking, on the other hand, there is much searching about or going off in various directions. This is most obvio..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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102b919
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lqd t`lmt kyf ymkn 'n yushf~ l`ql b'`jwb@ bwsT@ nSf furS@, w kyf 'n lSbr w lnbl ymknhm 'n y`yd trkyb qT` rwH mb`thr@ bSwr@ rhyb@.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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df6a8ee
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In fact, many features of hypomania--such as outgoingness, increased energy, intensified sexuality, increased risk-taking, persuasiveness, self-confidence, and heightened productivity--have been linked with increased achievement and accomplishment.
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bipolar
hypomania
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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96c69cf
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Mental exhaustion had taken a long, terrible toll, but, strangely, it was only in feeling well, energetic, and high-spirited again that I had any true sense of the toll taken.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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04b8c85
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Prolonged cocaine use, which diminishes dopamine functioning, gives support to the general rule that external sources of exuberance are ultimately overruled by the brain's inclination to seek out equilibrium.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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dbd2294
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The simultaneous existence and shared residence of such opposite moods and feelings is well-illustrated by Franz Schubert's assertion that whenever he sat down to write songs of love he wrote songs of pain, and whenever he sat down to write songs of pain he wrote songs of love.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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f2e9d68
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It is of no little interest and irony that Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and proponent of selective breeding in humans in order to obtain a "highly gifted race of man," was himself subject to "nervous breakdowns"; he was also appreciative of the "thin partitions" between greatness and psychopathology. Dr. Daniel Kevles, in his book In the Name of Eugenics, quotes Galton as saying that "men who leave their mark on the world are ..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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8ce7b20
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These qualities--independence, contrariness, ambition, toughness, receptiveness to experience--are the blood supply to a creative mind and temperament; they are wellspring to imagination. The ferocity and peculiarity that shadowed him when he was a boy later made their own contributions to the man and to his poetry. Lowell recognized that he could be remarkable. When he was eighteen he wrote in a school essay that "the accomplishments of ma..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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042e686
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Melancholic, although often sardonic, mixtures of emoitions-foreboding, aloneness, regret, and a dark sense of lost destiny and ill-used passions-are woven throughout Byron's most autobiographical poems, especially Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Lara, and Manfred. Perturbed and constant motion, coupled with a brooding awareness of life's impermanence, also mark the transient and often bleak nature of Byron's work.
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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16fe324
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The emphasis on shifting essences, uncertainty, and fiercely contrasting opposite states was, of course, neither new nor unique to Byron. He and the other Romantic poets, however, took the ideas and emotions to a particularly intense extreme. Shelley's belief that poetry "marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change," and that it "subdues to union, under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things," was in sympathy n..
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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7ac37b3
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As a child I had been quiet and invisible when troubled; as an adult, I had hidden my mental illness behind an elaborate construction of laughter and work and dissembling.
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dissembling
troubles
masks
mental-illness
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Kay Redfield Jamison |