“We've created lives where we can watch other people crash into the wall but still hope that somehow we're going to pass straight through it. The closer we get, more confidently we believe that some unlikely solution is miraculously going to save us, while everyone watching us is just waiting for the crash.” PeopleWorldLifeDepressionAnxiety Book:Anxious People Source: Anxious People
“We're just strangers passing each other, your anxieties briefly brushing against mine as the fibers of our coats touch momentarily on a crowded sidewalk somewhere. We never really know what to do to each other, with each other, for each other.” CompassionAnxietyEmpathyStrangers Book:Anxious People Source: Anxious People
“She isn't traumatized, she isn't weighed down by any obvious grief. She's just sad, all the time. An evil little creature that wouldn't have shown up on any X-rays was living in her chest, rushing through her blood and filling her head with whispers, saying she wasn't good enough, that she was weak and ugly and would never be anything but broken. You can get it into your head to do some unbelievably stupid things when you run out of tears, when you can't silence the voices no one else can hear, when you've never been in a room where you felt normal. In the end you get exhausted from always tensing the skin around your ribs, never letting your shoulders sink, brushing along walls all your life with white knuckles, always afraid that someone will notice you, because no one's supposed to do that. All Nadia knew was that she had never felt like someone who had anything in common with anyone else. She had always been entirely alone in every emotion. She sat in a classroom full of her contemporaries, looking like everything was the same as usual, but inside she was standing in a forest screaming until her heart burst. The trees grew until one day the sunlight could no longer break through the foliage, and the darkness in here became impenetrable.” LonelinessDepressionAnxietyMental Illness Book:Anxious People Source: Anxious People
“It helps to know that you're not alone when you've been left behind. You can't carry the guilt and shame and the unbearable silence on your own, and you don't have to.” LonelinessAnxietyHelping Others Book:Anxious People Source: Anxious People
“He still has the same nightmares, ten years on. After Police College, exams, shift after shift, late nights, all his work at the station that's garnered so much praise from everyone but his dad, even more late nights, so much work that he's come to hate not working, unsteady walks home at dawn to the piles of bills in the hall and an empty bed, sleeping pills, alcohol. On nights when everything has been completely unbearable he's gone out running, mile after mile through darkness and cold and silence, his feet drumming against the pavement faster and faster, but never with the intention of getting anywhere, of accomplishing anything. Some men run like hunters, but he ran like their prey. Drained with exhaustion he would finally stagger home, then head off to work and start all over again. Sometimes a few whiskies were enough to get him to sleep, and on good mornings ice-cold showers were enough to wake him up, and in between he did whatever he could to take the edge off the hypersensitivity of his skin, stifle the tears when he felt them in his chest, long before they reached his throat and eyes. But all the while: still those same nightmares.” GriefAnxietyNightmares Book:Anxious People Source: Anxious People
“This book is dedicated to the voices inside my head, the most remarkable of my friends. And to my wife, who lives with us.” HumorAnxiety Book:Anxious People Source: Anxious People