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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 Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one?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.

Kay Redfield Jamison

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Kay Redfield Jamison
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: June 22
Essayist
Psychologist
Much
Hopefully
Impulsive
Neither
Suicidal
Tired
Energetic
Crazy
Chaotic
Bits
Shy
Probably
Doomed
Feelings
Desperate
Real
Wild
Withdrawn

More quotes by Kay Redfield Jamison

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Who would not want an illness that has among its symptoms elevated and expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, abundance of energy, less need for sleep, intensified sexuality, and- most germane to our argument here-sharpened and unusually creative thinking and increased productivity?
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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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The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension.
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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.
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Anyone who suggests that coming back from suicidal despair is a straightforward journey has never taken it.
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An ardent temperament makes one very vulnerable to dreamkillers.
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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I am by temperament an optimist, and I thought from the beginning that there was much to be written about suicide that was strangely heartening.
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Confidentiality is an ancient and well-warranted social value.
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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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We all move uneasily within our restraints.
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Look to the living, love them, and hold on.
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Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.
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Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.
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I had a terrible temper, after all, and though it rarely erupted, when it did it frightened me and anyone near its epicenter. It was the only crack, but a disturbing one, in the otherwise vacuum-sealed casing of my behavior.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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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.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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I am reminded of the importance of small kindnesses.
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting
Kay Redfield Jamison