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Mental Health Quotes

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Mental Health Quotes

“Being known. This, of course, is the goal, the agenda so carefully hidden it may be unknown even to the self. The cutter cuts to make the pain at her center visible. The anorexic starves to make manifest her hunger and vulnerability. The extremes announce, This is who I am, this is what I feel, this is what happens when I don't get what I need. In quadraphonic sound, they give voice to the most central human hunger, which is the desire to be recognized, to be known and loved because of, and in spite of, who you are; they give voice to the sorrow that takes root when that hunger is unsatisfied.”

WomenVoiceMental HealthHungerWomanVulnerabilityBeing Known
Book:Appetites: Why Women Want
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“Working simultaneously, though seemingly without a conscience, was Dr. Ewen Cameron, whose base was a laboratory in Canada's McGill University, in Montreal. Since his death in 1967, the history of his work for both himself and the CIA has become known. He was interested in 'terminal' experiments and regularly received relatively small stipends (never more than $20,000) from the American CIA order to conduct his work. He explored electroshock in ways that offered such high risk of permanent brain damage that other researchers would not try them. He immersed subjects in sensory deprivation tanks for weeks at a time, though often claiming that they were immersed for only a matter of hours. He seemed to fancy himself a pure scientist, a man who would do anything to learn the outcome. The fact that some people died as a result of his research, while others went insane and still others, including the wife of a member of Canada's Parliament, had psychological problems for many years afterwards, was not a concern to the doctor or those who employed him. What mattered was that by the time Cheryl and Lynn Hersha were placed in the programme, the intelligence community had learned how to use electroshock techniques to control the mind. And so, like her sister, Lynn was strapped to a chair and wired for electric shock. The experience was different for Lynn, though the sexual component remained present to lesser degree...”

ConscienceAbuseMurderVictimMental HealthTraumaExperimentsMental IllnessPsychologicalTortureCanadaSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMind ControlMultiple Personality DisorderIncestDissociativeSplit PersonalityMkultraElectric ShockExtreme AbuseBrain DamageHuman ExperimentsDoctors Who KillMcgillEwen CameronMedical ExperimentSexual TortureElectricutedMcgill UniversityWithout A Conscience
Book:Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country
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“The clear message you should derive from the benefits of mental and physical exercise is that the worst thing you can do to your brain is to be content living a passive life. The habit of passivity is pervasive in our culture, from longing for miracle cures to watching television for hours to being politically apathetic. Physical and mental action is fundamental to maintaining mental health.”

CultureMental HealthPassivityA Users Guide To The BrainJohn J Ratey
Book:A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
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“Neurobiological differences have been demonstrated between dissociative identities within patients with DID and between patients with DID and controls. Given the current evidence, DID as a diagnostic entity cannot be explained as a phenomenon created by iatrogenic influences, suggestibility, malingering, or social role-taking. On the contrary, DID is an empirically robust chronic psychiatric disorder based on neurobiological, cognitive, and interpersonal non-integration as a response to unbearable stress. While current evidence is sufficient to firmly establish this etiological stance, given the wide opportunities for innovative research, the disorder is still understudied.”

Mental HealthNeuroscienceDissociative Identity DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisorderNeurobiologyDissociative PartsDissociative Identities
Author:Vedat Sar
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“So you really have the same conversations with two or or three people who look exactly like me?' She nodded. 'Don't you feel embarrassed repeating yourself like that?' 'Not at all,' Dr Laine said. 'Remember, I'm not saying the same thing three times to you. I'm saying it once to three different people.' That would take a while to sink in. At least it explained my history of people looking exasperated at work or school or even in shops when I sometimes asked questions. They'd obviously just gone through it with someone else who looked exactly like me!”

Mental HealthDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative AmnesiaLosing Time
Book:All of Me
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“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 I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone. So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach. In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.”

PainMemoriesHealingAttentionCuttingAbuseVictimMental HealthTraumaAlcoholMental IllnessPsychologicalSurvivorDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderIncestSelf HarmRitual AbusePsychiatricAlter PersonalitiesDissociativeOverdoseSplit PersonalityAlcoholicEmergencySuicide AttemptAlters
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off. Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity. When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes? That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing. (describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”

DepressionAbuseMental HealthTraumaSelf ConfidenceSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationHeadacheAnorexiaDisconnectedMultiple Personality DisorderIncestAlter PersonalitiesVoicesDissociativeMigraineAltersAnorexicChild Sex AbuseInternal VoicesAnoreticPorongraphic
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside. Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried. 'This is embarrassing,' I admitted. 'It doesn't have to be.' 'It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said. The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter. In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family. I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.”

PsychologyMental HealthMental IllnessTherapyEmbarrassmentDissociative Identity DisorderPsychologistStigmaDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociativeSplit PersonalityTherapistAltersSelf Stigma
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“In summary, the conclusion that having DID is generally rewarding is unfounded because the vast majority of the attention such patients receive is skeptical, critical, exploitative, or hostile; they are often ignored if they do present symptoms of DID. It is certainly possible that some individuals have attempted to feign the disorder. However, the hostile treatment that one would most likely receive would make feigning another disorder more rewarding.”

Mental HealthPretendingDissociative Identity DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesAttention SeekingAttention SeekersFakingMaking It UpFactitious Disorder
Author:David H. Gleaves
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“Prior to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder had been referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder. The renaming of this diagnosis has caused quite a bit of confusion among professionals and those who live with DID. Because dissociation describes the process by which DID begins to develop, rather than the actual outcome of this process (the formation of various personalities), this new term may be a bit unclear. We know that the diagnosis is DID and that DID is what people say we have. We’d just like to point out that words sometimes do not describe what we live with. For people like us, DID is just a step on the way to where we live—a place with many of us inside! We just want people who have little ones and bigger ones living inside to know that the title Dissociative Identity Disorder sounds like something other than how we see ourselves—we think it is about us having different personalities. Regardless of the term, it is clear that, in general, the different personalities develop as a reaction to severe trauma. When the person dissociates, they leave their body to get away from the pain or trauma. When this defense is not strong enough to protect the person, different personalities emerge to handle the experience. These personalities allow the child to survive: when the child is being harmed or experiencing traumatic episodes, the other personalities take the pain and/ or watch the bad things. This allows these children to return to their body after the bad things have happened without any awareness of what has occurred. They do this to create different ways to make sense of the harm inflicted upon them; it is their survival mechanism.”

Mental HealthMental IllnessPsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiplicityMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisorderAltersDsmDissociative Identities
Book:Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“Weird? Absurd? That’s how it seemed to me. I had these forces, these compunctions, these alternative personalities inside me, driving me. It was like being a jack-in-the-box and I was unsure which personality was going to jump out next: Billy, who thought of himself as a cowboy or a terrorist; Kato the cutter; anorexic Shirley, whose only self-indulgence was binge drinking and the occasional salad sandwich. I didn’t dislike Shirley. I was afraid of her. Shirley knew things I didn’t.”

AbuseMental HealthTraumaSurvivorSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationAnorexiaAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderIncestAlter PersonalitiesMemory LossDissociativePersonalitiesAltersIdentity AlterationSplit Personalities
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as 'fragments', which are 'relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory or carry out a limited task in the person's life. A fragment might be a frightened child who holds the memory of one particular abuse incident.' In complex multiples, Dr Ross continues, the `personalities are relatively full-bodied, complete states capable of a rang of emotions and behaviours.' The alters will have `executive control some substantial amount of time over the person life'. He stresses, and I repeat his emphasis, 'Complex MPD with over 15 alter personalities and complicated amnesic barriers are associated with 100 percent frequency of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse.”

AbuseVictimMental HealthTraumaMental IllnessSurvivorSexual AbuseEmotional AbuseFragmentsDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderAlter PersonalitiesPhysical AbuseDissociativeFragmentationSplit PersonalityMpdAltersChild Sex Abuse
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Did I imagine the castle, the dungeon, the ritual orgies and violations? Did Lucy, Billy, Samuel, Eliza, Shirley and Kato make it all up? I went back to the industrial estate and found the castle. It was an old factory that had burned to the ground, but the charred ruins of the basement remained. I closed my eyes and could see the black candles, the dancing shadows, the inverted pentagram, the people chanting through hooded robes. I could see myself among other children being abused in ways that defy imagination. I have no doubt now that the cult of devil worshippers was nothing more than a ring of paedophiles, the satanic paraphernalia a cover for their true lusts: the innocent bodies of young children.”

AbuseVictimMental HealthTraumaMental IllnessSurvivorSexual AbuseEmotional AbuseFragmentsDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderRitual AbuseAlter PersonalitiesPhysical AbuseSatanic Ritual AbuseDissociativeFragmentationSplit PersonalityPedophileMpdAltersPaedophilesPaedophile RingDevil WorshipChild Sex Abuse
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Put down your smartphone, smell the roses, and—as Gandalf instructs King Théoden when the latter emerges from Wormtongue’s hypnotic spell in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien—‘breathe the free air again, my friend.”

Mental HealthCell PhoneSocial Media AddictionTolkienThe Lord Of The RingsSmartphoneGandalfDigital DetoxThéodenWormtongue
Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
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“The primary problem with modern psychiatry is its reduction of mental illness to bodily dysfunction. Objectification of those identified as mentally ill, by insisting on the somatic nature of their illness, may apparently simplify matters and help protect those trying to provide care from the pain experienced by those needing support. But psychiatric assessment too often fails to appreciate personal and social precursors of mental illness by avoiding or not taking account of such psychosocial considerations. Mainstream psychiatry acts on the somatic hypothesis of mental illness to the detriment of understanding people's problems.”

MedicineMental HealthMental IllnessPsychiatryAnti Psychiatry
Book:The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct
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“Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration... Existential frustration is neither pathological or pathogenic. A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient’s existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs.”

Mental HealthExistentialismAnti Psychiatry
Book:Man's Search for Meaning
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“And if it’s not me, it’s someone else. There are a million ways in which the body is stolen from us—debt and interest and data and labour and literal tissue and blood that can be harvested, and affective, sexual, and emotional energy. Capitalists, which clutch and pry and feed, dreaming up ways in which they can make your body not your own, and when the last drop of blood is exhausted they’ll have the audacity to bill you for it.”

BodyDepressionCapitalismLaborMental HealthOppressionAnticapitalism
Book:Coup de Grâce
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“Perfectionism is the unparalleled defense for emotionally abandoned children. The existential unattainability of perfection saves the child from giving up, unless or until, scant success forces him to retreat into the depression of a dissociative disorder, or launches him hyperactively into an incipient conduct disorder. Perfectionism also provides a sense of meaning and direction for the powerless and unsupported child. In the guise of self-control, striving to be perfect offers a simulacrum of a sense of control. Self-control is also safer to pursue because abandoning parents typically reserve their severest punishment for children who are vocal about their negligence.”

Mental HealthPunishmentMental IllnessChild AbuseSelf ControlEmotional AbuseAbandonmentDissociative Identity DisorderPerfectionismDissociationSurvivorsPowerlessnessDissociative DisorderPsychological AbuseSurvivors Of AbuseAbusive ParentsDefense MechanismChild NeglectEmotionally UnavailableConduct Disorder
Author:Pete Walker
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“With gratitude, I have become a healing balm to thousands of people, if not more, who have suffered child abuse, sibling abuse, a dysfunctional family, narcissistic abuse, sexual assaults, and hellish traumatic events. Most importantly, other trauma survivors know they are not alone.”

Mental HealthTraumaNarcissistic AbuseDysfunctional FamilyIntergenerational TraumaTrue Crime StorySibling AbuseSexual AssaultsAbuse Advocate
Book:Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma
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“The dysfunctional family relationships are disastrous. Poisonous. There can't be reconciliation. We cannot restore a destructive relationship with abusive siblings when they won't repent. Repentance requires them to turn away from their transgressions and evil schemes. In most cases, toxic siblings won't repent.”

Mental HealthRepentanceDomestic ViolenceNarcissistic AbuseDysfunctional FamilyEstrangementIntergenerational TraumaCoercive ControlToxic SiblingsFamily Scapegoating
Book:Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma
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“SIX ROLES OF THE DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY: 1. The Narcissist 2. The Enabling Parent 3. The Golden Child 4. The Forgotten Child 5. The Bully Sibling 6. The Family Scapegoat”

Mental HealthIntergenerational TraumaToxic SiblingsFamily ScapegoatingDysfunctional Family RolesEnabler ParentSibling BullyingThe Forgotten ChildThe Golden Child
Book:Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma
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“Family mobbing is a strategic process of power and coercive control. What makes mobbing so insidious - and so underreported - is that here, the family is the site of violence, trauma, and shame.”

Mental HealthDomestic ViolenceNarcissistic AbuseDysfunctional FamilyIntergenerational TraumaToxic ShameCoercive ControlSibling AbuseFamily ScapegoatingFamily Mobbing
Book:Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma
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“If people have harmed us, that part is usually a protector whose need to cause injury comes from desperate attempts to not feel destroyed by the pain and fear they are carrying. Generally they are not conscious of this process, but it likely mirrors what has been passed down through the generations in the family.”

Mental HealthTherapyChild ProtectionIntergenerational TraumaHealing From TraumaFamily Violence PreventionInner Parts
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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