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Stigma Quotes

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Stigma Quotes

“Laziness can be a value on its own for those who want to show supremacy through contempt for work and wish to be free individuals by fighting the enslavement to labor. While they don’t want to become dependent on ‘wage slavery’ and their livelihood only hinges on salaries, they feel confined to a social stratification, causing a collective stigma that results in poverty and underfeeding. (The daily job)”

WorkPovertyValueContemptLazinessStigmaEnslavementWage SlaverySocial StratificationSupremecy
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“I'm often asked why I got out when so many didn't. I've mentioned the high school teacher who stopped me in the hall for my assistance in a school performance. Before that man, whose name is Stan Asher, no one had ever looked at me or spoken to me as though I had value. For me, that's the key. Otherwise, I probably would have gone on believing that I was intrinsically bad, with nothing to offer. I believe that many in that house were never offered a positive image of themselves.”

PovertySupportMental IllnessRecoveryStigmaWorthiness
Book:Upstairs In The Crazy House: The Life Of A Psychiatric Survivor
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“The first person to really speak to me was Andy, which was lucky, since he was the least crazy. He stank, but I suspected I did too. I never took off my clothes, always ready for fight or flight, needing to feel a little armoured. Deodorant was a luxury I couldn't afford, and I wasn't about to attempt a bath in a room that didn't lock, and which was always in high demand. Not to mention that there was no plug for the tub, or hand soap, or towels, or curtain, or mat.”

PovertyMental HealthStigma
Book:Upstairs In The Crazy House: The Life Of A Psychiatric Survivor
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“When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.”

FearDepressionShameMental HealthMental IllnessRecoveryStigmaDepressedSurvivorsMental Health StigmaRecovery QuotesStigmatized
Book:Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
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“Mental illness" is among the most stigmatized of categories.' People are ashamed of being mentally ill. They fear disclosing their condition to their friends and confidants-and certainly to their employers.”

FearPsychologyDiscriminationMental IllnessBiasDiagnosisStigmaDisclosureMental Health StigmaMental DisorderEmployee RelationsEmployment ContractEmployment RightsEmployment Law
Book:Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Rights of the Mentally Ill
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“Here I want to stress that perception of losing one’s mind is based on culturally derived and socially ingrained stereotypes as to the significance of symptoms such as hearing voices, losing temporal and spatial orientation, and sensing that one is being followed, and that many of the most spectacular and convincing of these symptoms in some instances psychiatrically signify merely a temporary emotional upset in a stressful situation, however terrifying to the person at the time. Similarly, the anxiety consequent upon this perception of oneself, and the strategies devised to reduce this anxiety, are not a product of abnormal psychology, but would be exhibited by any person socialized into our culture who came to conceive of himself as someone losing his mind.”

MadnessStigmaStereotypesMental Health StigmaAsylumMental HospitalStigmatizationStigmatized
Book:Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
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“A more fundamental problem with labelling human distress and deviance as mental disorder is that it reduces a complex, important, and distinct part of human life to nothing more than a biological illness or defect, not to be processed or understood, or in some cases even embraced, but to be ‘treated’ and ‘cured’ by any means possible—often with drugs that may be doing much more harm than good. This biological reductiveness, along with the stigma that it attracts, shapes the person’s interpretation and experience of his distress or deviance, and, ultimately, his relation to himself, to others, and to the world. Moreover, to call out every difference and deviance as mental disorder is also to circumscribe normality and define sanity, not as tranquillity or possibility, which are the products of the wisdom that is being denied, but as conformity, placidity, and a kind of mediocrity.”

WisdomMadnessMental HealthMental IllnessMeaningConformitySanityPsychiatryStigmaMental DisorderDevianceBiological Reductiveness
Book:The Meaning of Madness
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“There comes a point in time when we must acknowledge that we are more than our nationality, and we are bigger than our ethnicity. There comes a time when we have an aha moment. What is that aha moment? It's sort of like a revelation. A revelation is when we put all the pieces together to see the bigger picture. When we see the bigger picture, we can see ourselves through the realm of reality and truth. The truth is we belong to a blood family that is connected to a tribal community, and this community is big and bright and bold with life, and we should be proud of the ties to blood that each of us has. We should not play small and reduce our human nature—for we are all connected. We belong to something bigger and more expansive. We belong to life itself. Always remember that you are more than an American (as wonderfully dramatic as that can be). Together, we make up the collective of great. ...And this is good.”

TruthStigmaAdoption And Attitude
Book:Adoption Stories
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“Attitude Is Everything We live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happened—as if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations. The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), “there are no victims.” How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances? When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability.”

SufferingAttitudeResponsibilityShameGuiltMental HealthTraumaBetrayalPositive AttitudeIntolerancePtsdStigmaEmotional PainInsidiousVictimsBelief In SelfVictimhoodTraumatizedDemoralizingVictim BlamingBad AdviceTraumaticInvalidationStigmatizationHalf TruthsTraumatizationUnsupportiveLoss Of BeliefBlind To BetrayalFalse Perspective
Author:Sandra Lee Dennis
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“Mental illness People assume you aren’t sick unless they see the sickness on your skin like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting. My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better? Have you tried not being sad, not being sick? Have you tried being more like me? Have you tried shutting up? Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying, and yes, I am still sick. Sometimes monsters are invisible, and sometimes demons attack you from the inside. Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth does not mean they aren’t ripping through me. Pain does not need to be seen to be felt. Telling me there is no problem won’t solve the problem. This is not how miracles are born. This is not how sickness works.”

PainPoemPrejudiceMental HealthMental IllnessMisunderstoodStigmaEmotional PainChronic IllnessChronic PainMental DisorderInvisible Illness
Book:The First Step
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“. . . PTSD, and other illness terms as well, have become a way of claiming a right to legitimate pain and misfortune. It is as if, without the illness label, their anguish wouldn't be valid, and they wouldn't be granted a passport to what Susan Sontag once called citizenship in 'the kingdom of the sick.' [However, it is] only some realms in that kingdom [that] offer a refuge from the stigma of mental illnesses: the diseases that come to us from the outside, apparently through no fault of our own, like PTSD and the enigmatic Gulf War syndrome (GWS).”

PainMental HealthIllnessTraumaLabelsSicknessPtsdStigma
Book:Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness
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“People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can’t answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It’s easy. And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.… …In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended. What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at rest; and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction. Time, too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks; faces, flowers. These are facts you find out later, though. Another odd feature of the parallel universe is that although it is invisible from this side, once you are in it you can easily see the world you came from. Sometimes the world you came from looks huge and menacing, quivering like a vast pile of jelly; at other times it is miniaturized and alluring, a-spin and shining in its orbit. Either way, it can’t be discounted. Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.”

EmpathyStigmaMental Illness StigmaAll Human Experience Is ValidEthos Material Bich
Book:Girl, Interrupted
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“Some disabled people spend a significant amount of their energy on trying to come across as abled or as not that disabled.”

HumorAbleFunnyEnergyAbilityActingHumourJokesHumorousShameReputationAshamedSatirePretendingDisabilityAphorismJokeHumiliationHilariousDisgraceDisabledActPretenseAphorismsStigmaLameParalyzedCrippledPretendDishonorWheelchairsHandicappedAphoristAphoristsBad ReputationShamingEnergiesIgnominyWheelchairCrippleShamedStigmasDifferently AbledDisableBedriddenQuadriplegicParaplegicIncapacitatedNot BadNot That BadAbledImmobilizedDebilitatedIn A WheelchairInfirmOpprobriumOut Of Action
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“I’ve gotten really good at reading Kara’s face over the years. and I know what that expression means. It’s disappointment. Here she is trying to find me a perfect boyfriend, yet I can’t keep my neuroses in check long enough to keep them from running away. I can’t bring myself to care. If a guy runs from something as small as this, they are in no way, shape, or form able to handle me anyway.”

RomanceEmpowermentLonelyMental IllnessStigmaOcd
Book:The OCD Games
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“With regard to character and reward, society has its priorities completely backward. We who enjoy experiencing and sharing physical pleasure are stigmatized and criminalized. Meanwhile those who enjoy controlling, punishing, and otherwise exercising power over non-consenting others are paid large salaries at the public's expense. Often they are given special uniforms and called heroes.”

CharacterPowerSocietyPrioritiesPunishmentControlFairnessStigmaRewardPhysical Pleasure
Author:Starchild
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“The age-old, seemingly inexorable process whereby diseases acquire meanings (by coming to stand for the deepest fears) and inflict stigma is always worth challenging, and it does seem to have more limited credibility in the modern world, among people willing to be modern - the process is under surveillance now. With this illness, one that elicits so much guilt and shame, the effort to detach it from these meanings, these metaphors, seems particularly liberating, even consoling. But the metaphors cannot be distanced just by abstaining from them. They have to be exposed, criticized, belabored, used up.”

DiseaseMetaphorAidsStigma
Book:Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
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“Survivors are damaged to different degrees by their experiences. This does not depend on what happened physically. A Survivor who has been raped will not necessarily be more damaged than a Survivor who has been touched. The degree of damage depend on the degree of traumatic sexualization, stigmatization, betrayal and powerlessness, the child has experienced. This in turn depends on a number of factors such as: * who the abuser was; * how many abusers were involved; * if the abuser was same-sex or opposite sex; * what took place; * what was said; * how long the abuse went on for; * How the child felt and how she interpreted what was happening; * if the child was otherwise happy and supported; * how other people reacted to the disclosure or discovery of the abuse; * how old the child was”

DiscoveryAbuseTraumaBetrayalDamageSurvivorChild AbusePtsdSexual AbuseRapeStigmaSurvivorsChild RapeTraumatization
Book:Breaking Free: Help for survivors of child sexual abuse
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“In this chapter I restrict myself to exploring the nature of the amnesia which is reported between personality states in most people who are diagnosed with DID. Note that this is not an explicit diagnostic criterion, although such amnesia features strongly in the public view of DID, particularly in the form of the fugue-like conditions depicted in films of the condition, such as The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Typically, when one personality state, or ‘alter’, takes over from another, they have no idea what happened just before. They report having lost time, and often will have no idea where they are or how they got there. However, this is not a universal feature of DID. It happens that with certain individuals with DID, one personality state can retrieve what happened when another was in control. In other cases we have what is described as ‘co-consciousness’ where one personality state can apparently monitor what is happening when another personality state is in control and, in certain circumstances, can take over the conversation.”

ConsciousnessPrejudiceMemoryMental IllnessMisunderstandingDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisForgetfulnessStigmaDissociationStereotypesAmnesiaMultiplicityMultiple Personality DisorderStates Of ConsciousnessMultiple PersonalitiesSwitchingAlter PersonalitiesMemory LossDissociative DisorderDissociative AmnesiaMpdMisdiagnosisFugueException To The RuleAltersDidDsmAmnesiacDiagnosingPersonality SystemDiagnostic CriteriaFugue StatePersonality SwitchDsm5
Book:Trauma, Dissociation and Multiplicity: Working on Identity and Selves
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“Like a lot of people with mental illness, I spend a lot of time fronting. It’s really important to me to not appear crazy, to fit in, to seem normal, to do the things “normal people” do, to blend in. As a defense mechanism, fronting makes a lot of sense, and you hone that mechanism after years of being crazy. Fronting is what allows you to hold down a job and maintain relationships with people, it’s the thing that sometimes keeps you from falling apart. It’s the thing that allows you to have a burst of tears in the shower or behind the front seat of your car and then coolly collect yourself and stroll into a social engagement… We are rewarded for hiding ourselves. We become the poster children for “productive” mentally ill people, because we are so organized and together. The fact that we can function, at great cost to ourselves, is used to beat up the people who cannot function. Because unlike the people who cannot front, or who fronted too hard and fell off the cliff, we are able to “keep it together,” whatever it takes.”

CrazyMental IllnessStigmaEmotional PainFitting InDefense MechanismHiding FeelingsMental Illness StigmaPsychological DefenseFaking NormalPretending To Be OkFaking WellPutting On A Brave FaceKeeping It Together
Author:S.E. Smith
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