#an unquiet mind – @anenlighteningellipsis on Tumblr

I was confused and frightened and terribly shattered in all of my notions of myself; my self-confidence, which had permeated every aspect of my life for as long as I could remember, had taken a very long and disquieting holiday.

Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

#lit #kay redfield jamison #an unquiet mind #quotes #self confidence #memoirs #mental illnes #depression #***#to see if there's a pub #personal

anenlighteningellipsis

For as long as I can remember I was frighteningly, although often wonderfully, beholden to moods. Intensely emotional as a child, mercurial as a young girl, first severely depressed as an adolescent, and then unrelentingly caught up in the cycles of manic-depressive illness by the time I began my professional life, I became, both by necessity and intellectual inclination, a student of moods. It has been the only way I know to understand, indeed to accept, the illness that I have... Because my illness seemed at first simply to be an extension of myself--that is to say, of my ordinarily changeable moods, energies, enthusiasms--I perhaps gave it too much quarter... It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered, that damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again, and that freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.

Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

anenlighteningellipsis reblogged

fyp-psychology

We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this—through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime.

Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

#***#'damaged people are dangerous... they know they can survive'#survival techniques #kay redfield jamison #an unquiet mind #i need to get my hands on this again #quotes

anenlighteningellipsis reblogged

days-of-reading

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one’s marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends’ faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against– you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

#uuughg #i need to read this again #it would hit home particularly hard #but the catharsis is necessary #***#kay redfield jamison #mental illness #an unquiet mind #quotes #pain #loneliness #depression #etc etc ad infinitum