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There is always a part of my mind that is preparing for the worst, and another part of my mind that believes if I prepare enough for it, the worst won’t happen.

Kay Redfield Jamison

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Kay Redfield Jamison
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: June 22
Essayist
Psychologist
Another
Happens
Part
Enough
Preparing
Mind
Prepare
Believe
Believes
Always
Worst
Happen

More quotes by Kay Redfield Jamison

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Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting
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Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither.
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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.
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I am reminded of the importance of small kindnesses.
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Look to the living, love them, and hold on.
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Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it. (74)
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The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension.
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Curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers...Restlessness and discontent are vital things... Intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do.
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Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name it is a tragedy
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Looking at suicide—the sheer numbers, the pain leading up to it, and the suffering left behind—is harrowing. For every moment of exuberance in the science, or in the success of governments, there is a matching and terrible reality of the deaths themselves: the young deaths, the violent deaths, the unnecessary deaths
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The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.
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I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on
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In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief and they really need to be treated for depression.
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Manic depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live.
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Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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In depression, your capacity to feel just flattens and disappears and what you feel is pain and a kind of pain that you can't describe to anybody. So it's an isolating pain, a completely isolating pain.
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Confidentiality is an ancient and well-warranted social value.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Others would say to me, 'It is only temporary, it will pass, you will get over it,' but of course they had no idea how I felt, although they were certain that they did. Over and over and over I would say to myself, If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?
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We all move uneasily within our restraints.
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Exuberance is a gift of grace that allows us to move on, to seek, to love again.
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