quotations about depression
Depression is like a flag being hoisted by the unconscious, making a statement: Look, there is something inside that needs to be felt and experienced and you are not dealing with it so here is a flag, a depression. Pay attention to it instead of running away from it. Go into it, find out what is inside it. Sit with your fantasies and try to paint them or write about them. What pictures does the depression make, what colour is it? If one allows fantasy activity into a depression, it comes alive. Otherwise the container is sealed and nothing can move it. It just remains the same.
LIZ GREENE & HOWARD SASPORTAS
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Dynamics of the Unconscious
Some authors have conceptualized depression as a "depletion syndrome" because of the prominence of fatigability; they postulate that the patient exhausts his available energy during the period prior to the onset of the depression and that the depressed state represents a kind of hibernation, during which the patient gradually builds up a new story of energy.
AARON T. BECK
Depression
She married her sadness and slept with happiness on the weekends.
CHRISTOPHER POINDEXTER
Remington Typewriter Poetry
My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Either/Or
The difference between common sadness and clinical depression is like the difference between breathing hard after a fast sprint and being chronically short-of-breath. The former is expected and normal, given the stress of the sprint; the latter is an abnormal condition.
WALTER F. MCDERMOTT
Understanding Combat Related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Something crucial about depression ... the smarter you were, the worse it was. The sharper your brain, the more it cut you up.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Marriage Plot
Like those rare conditions which causes a person's own immune system to assault itself, depression is a disorder wherein the self attacks the self.
TERRENCE REAL
I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
DODIE SMITH
I Capture the Castle
A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self -- a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn't shake off a sense of melodrama -- a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-murder, was both the solitary actor and lone member of the audience.
WILLIAM STYRON
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
The sun stopped shining for me is all. The whole story is: I am sad. I am sad all the time and the sadness is so heavy that I can't get away from it. Not ever.
NINA LACOUR
Hold Still
I'll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.
HENRY ROLLINS
The Portable Henry Rollins
I was depressed ... I was suicidal. As a matter of fact, I would have killed myself but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian and if you kill yourself they make you pay for the sessions you miss.
WOODY ALLEN
Annie Hall
Depression is nature's way of telling you that you've got complex social problems that the mind is intent on solving. Therapies should try to encourage depressive rumination rather than try to stop it, and they should focus on trying to help people solve the problems that trigger their bouts of depression.
PAUL W. ANDREWS
"Depression's Evolutionary Roots", Scientific American, August 25, 2009
There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Mistral's Kiss
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 with them 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, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't.
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON
An Unquiet Mind
Depression is worse than the grave
Better to die for a noble cause
Than to live and die a slave
NENEH CHERRY
"Poem Daddy (Interlude)", Broken Politics
Depression is a choice.
A.B. CURTISS
Depression Is a Choice
Anyone who has actually been that sad can tell you that there's nothing beautiful or literary or mysterious about depression.
JASMINE WARGA
My Heart and Other Black Holes
People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.
ANN LANDERS
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Zingers
Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It's a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.
J. K. ROWLING
interview, The Times, June 30, 2000