Bipolar Quotes

I am a pretty good actor. Most of my friendships are based on the fact that I pretend to be outgoing and funny in social situations, but when I get home, I tend to isolate myself because I am actually somewhat bipolar and introverted. ~ Reese Roper

I wanted to cry. I wanted to hide. I wanted to drink. I wanted to... wrap my arms around him and never let go. My pulse felt erratic, and my thoughts jumbled around in my brain. I felt like a hyperactive, bipolar schizophrenic on crack. ~ Sibylla Matilde

It doesn't occur to me that alcohol might be unhinging me, that drinking at the rate I am can induce depression, impulsive behaviour, and symptoms of bipolar and borderline personality disorder. ~ Koren Zailckas

Sexual excitability is increased and leads to hasty engagements, marriages by the newspaper, improper love-adventures, conspicuous behavior, fondness for dress, on the other hand to jealousy and matrimonial discord. ~ Emil Kraepelin

Do not be blind in love and try not to suffer in silence. -Alba Castillo ~ Alba Castillo

Because of my bipolar disorder, I tend to these mixed states, which are depressed but loud and agitated. So I can be terribly irritable. I go to cognitive behavioral therapy in order not to yell at my children. ~ Ayelet Waldman

I know that without treatment I would not have never been able to harness my creativity in such a successful way. ~ Patty Duke

Why Does He Do That?
That's the number one question, isn't it? Maybe it's his drinking, you say. Maybe it's his learning disabilities. It's his job; he hates it. He's stressed. I think he's bipolar. It's his mother's fault; she spoiled him rotten. It's the drugs. If only he didn't use. It's his temper. He's selfish. It's the pornography; he's obsessed.
The list could go on and on. You could spend many years trying to pinpoint it and never get a definite answer. The fact is, many people have these problems and they aren't abusive. Just because someone is an alcoholic doesn't mean he is abusive. Men hate their jobs all the time and aren't abusive. Bipolar? Okay. Stressed? Who isn't! Do you see where I am going with this?
Off the subject a bit, when someone commits a violent crime, they always report in the news about his possible motive. As human beings, we need to somehow make sense of things. If someone murders someone, do you think it makes the family of the victim feel better to know the murderer's motive? No. Except for self-defense, there really is no excuse for murder. Motive, if there is any, is irrelevant.
The same is true of abuse. You could spend your whole life going round and round trying to figure out why. The truth is, the why doesn't matter. There are only two reasons why men commit abuse - because they want to do so and because they can.
You want to know why. In many ways, you might feel like you need to know. But, if you could com ~ Beth Praed

If the only time a child looks as if he has bipolar disorder is when he's frustrated, that's not bipolar disorder; that's a learning disability in the domains of flexibility and frustration tolerance. ~ Ross W. Greene

I contemplated suicide. My main concern was that I would not make the New York Times obituary page. ~ Art Buchwald

What was that bit about fish sticks?" he asked, climbing back into the SUV.
"Oh, pretty clever of her actually, though I thought it ridiculous at the time. Sometimes Mom gets paranoid, thinks people might be out to get her, out to get me." I laughed nervously at how close that hit to home. "Anyway, one night she was really freaked out and came up with a code. If I was ever
kidnapped or something, she would say something about me liking fish sticks. If I said I wanted fish sticks, that meant I was in danger and needed help, no matter what else I'd said to her that I was fine." "So by you saying you hate fish sticks…""She knows I'm fine and she doesn't need to further involve the police. Who says bipolar disorder can't be useful? ~ Christina Garner

I met a bipolar bear. He laughed, cried, then wanted a threesome. ~ Bo Burnham

The idea to go West just fell into my lap from the sky. Go west, young man. That's how the best ideas happen. Just out of nowhere. When you're not even thinking. Like they've been created for you and you just have to reach out and grab them before someone else does. ~ Shannon Mullen

Fiction writers are fully ten times more likely to be bipolar than the general population, and poets are an amazing forty times more likely to struggle with the disorder. Based on statistics like these, psychologist Daniel Nettle writes, "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that most of the canon of Western culture was produced by people with a touch of madness." Essayist Brooke Allen does Nettle one better: "The Western literary tradition, it seems, has been dominated by a sorry collection of alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, manic-depressives, sexual predators, and various unfortunate combinations of two, three, or even all of the above. ~ Jonathan Gottschall

Toby liked to say he chose not to be impulsive. As if being impulsive were something you consciously decide. When I look at Starling, with her turquoise turban and wet knot of hair, and at Rowan, with his stack of cheap string anklets, I think: Impulsive isn't something you choose. It's something you are. Like gay, or freckled or bipolar. Something I pretend to be but am not. Not really. Not deep down. ~ Kirsten Hubbard

Did you know PTSD is the only mental illness you can give someone? A person gave it to me. A man actually drove me crazy. He transmitted this condition. Like the man who gave my gay cousin HIV, or like my grandfather, who gave my grandmother the clap. You can "get" schizophrenia or bipolar in the genetic sense. You might inherit genes that predispose you toward hearing voices or intense fluctuation of mood. In that sense, these conditions are "given" to you. But they aren't given to you in the same way watching your father cut off your mother's head on Christmas gives you PTSD. ~ Myriam Gurba

Want to do something noble and courageous while you're on this Earth treat the mentally ill like they have some worth. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Crazy isn't a condition it's a place and it exists somewhere between Love and Oblivion ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

I occasionally laugh and tell him that his imperturbability is worth three hundred milligrams of lithium a day to me, and it is probably true. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

There had been a subtle realignment of the spheres. The world was somehow a place I could endure again. If life was a grey corridor lined with doors, it was now within my power to open some of them. ~ Alexis Hall

I want to show that the dividing lines between sanity and mental illness have been drawn in the wrong place. ~ Anthony Storr

I didn't realize I actually had post-traumatic stress disorder at the time, but why would I think I had that? Anyway, how would I know which was post-traumatic stress, which is addiction, which is bipolar, which is Libra? ~ Carrie Fisher

The bright light of brilliance keeps the darkness away, but it can be so very exhausting. ~ Fennel Hudson

Manic depression's touching my soul. I know what I want, but I just don't know how to go about getting it. ~ Jimi Hendrix

Sometimes it seems like "pain" is too obvious a place to turn for inspiration. Pain isn't always deep, anyway. Sometimes it's awful and that's it. Or boring. Surely other things can be as profound as pain. ~ Ellen Forney

The buildings, covered by red tiled roofs, undulate over the hillsides like a drift of wildflowers. ~ Jane Thompson

My story is not a sad story; it's a real one. It's a story about a girl who fought through a storm she thought would never end. ~ Hannah Blum

We of the craft are all crazy. ~ Lord Byron

Some of our fiercest battles are fought and won in silence. ~ Kianu Starr

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed. ~ Mason Cooley

Bipolar illness, manic depression, manic-depressive illness, manic-depressive psychosis. That's a nice way of saying you will feel so high that no street drug can compete and you will feel so low that you wish you had been hit by a Mack truck instead. ~ Christine F. Anderson

Suicide is what the death certificate says when one dies of depression. ~ Peter D. Kramer

When you are cursed with a bipolar mind racing thoughts are the ones that you find ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar. I was a real American. ~ Ben Lerner

Blizzards, floods, volcanos, hurricanes, earthquakes: They fascinate because they nakedly reveal that Mother Nature, afflicted with bipolar disorder, is as likely to snuff us as she is to succor us. ~ Dean Koontz

An estimated 3.5 million people with serious mental illnesses are going without treatment (Kessler et al. 2001). That is scandalous. But mentally ill people are not the cause of the violence problem. If schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression were cured, our society's problem of violence would diminish by only about 4% (Swanson 1994). ~ Daniel W. Webster

May 18, 2018

Some days I could fly and feel very happy. I record those days in my journal for I know that I will feel very sad again. And I need proof that I will be very happy again. Thankfully, I feel very happy tonight. Goodnight. ~ Juansen Dizon

Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent and keep away from other people; the green balls told her that she should start multiplying by three. Every few days a silver ball would make its way through the pins of the machine. At this point her head turned and she stared at me; I assumed she was checking to see if I was still listening. I was, of course. How could one not? The whole thing was bizarre but riveting. I asked her, What does the silver ball mean? She looked at me intently, and then everything went dead in her eyes. She stared off into space, caught up in some internal world. I never found out what the silver ball meant. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

His mind betrayed him and now we were all victims of the horrible deception. ~ Maddy Kobar

Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than
bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral. ~ Frans De Waal

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

I'm open about having bipolar disorder. I'm open about being of mixed race. I'm open about being bisexual, and I have this wantingness to talk about it, and for me, it's about more than being a role model for any specific community. ~ Halsey

Women who put on a few pounds after starting lithium sometimes say the cure is worse than the disease. The weight gain shoots them straight into depression. ~ Patty Duke

I know the empathy borne of despair; I know the fluidity of thought, the expansive, even beautiful, mind that hypomania brings, and I know this is quicksilver and precious and often it's poison. There has always existed a sort of psychic butcher who works the scales of transcendence, who weighs out the bloody cost of true art. ~ David Lovelace

Being bisexual, being bipolar, being biracial - it's been used to define me, but I am desperate to be indefinable. ~ Halsey

I said just let me try one more time and she said, "THAT'S ENOUGH, ISABEL," again, and she could just say it over and over and it would never get through my thick skull because I'm always wanting and wanting because nothing is ever enough you are never enough I am never enough I am never enough I AM NEVER ENOUGH. ~ Amy Reed

If they think you are too much; maybe it's because they are not enough. ~ Hannah Blum

I don't find anything upsetting or gross or degrading about fighting with a mental illness: Bipolar or Schizophrenia. ~ Kangana Ranaut

As far as I was concerned children had bipolar disorder. They were angry, unpredictable, emotional ambulance-sirens with pigtails, grubby hands and food-crusted mouths that twisted from smiles to frowns and back again as quick as a breath. No, thank you very much. If I wanted a three-foot warlord as my master, I'd hire a rabid monkey to do the job. ~ Tarryn Fisher

There are scientists all around the world looking for the genes responsible for bipolar illness and major depression. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Mania's premonitory signs are unusual acts of extravagance, manifested by the purchase of houses, and certain expensive and unnecessary articles of furniture. ~ Benjamin Rush

I thought I would inaugurate a Bipolar Pride Day. You know, with floats and parades and stuff! On the floats we would get the depressives, and they wouldn't even have to leave their beds - we'd just roll their beds out of their houses, and they could continue staring off miserably into space. And then for the manics, we'd have the manic marching band, with manics laughing and talking and shopping and fucking and making bad judgment calls. ~ Carrie Fisher

Even though I'm sleeping again, everything still feels a little rickety, like I'm here but not quite here, like I'm just a stand-in for my real self, like someone could just reach over and pinch me and I'd deflate. I thought I was feeling better, but I don't know anymore. ~ Amy Reed

But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

She was a victim of her own brain chemistry, and as her daughter my role was to accept and love her for who she was, not who I wanted her to to be. ~ Amra Pajalic

Psychiatric diagnoses are getting closer and closer to the boundary of normal," said Allen Frances. "That boundary is very populous. The most crowded boundary is the boundary with normal."
"Why?" I asked.
"There's a societal push for conformity in all ways," he said. "There's less tolerance of difference. And so maybe for some people having a label is better. It can confer a sense of hope and direction. 'Previously I was laughed at, I was picked on, no one liked me, but now I can talk to fellow bipolar sufferers on the Internet and no longer feel alone.'" He paused. "In the old days some of them may have been given a more stigmatizing label like conduct disorder or personality disorder or oppositional defiant disorder. Childhood bipolar takes the edge of guilt away from parents that maybe they created an oppositional child. ~ Jon Ronson

The black devil and the blue devil: that was how he'd come to think of the two opposing sides of his nature. Since his early adolescence, the bloodthirsty pair had staked his mind as their battleground, and even now he could feel their presence, lurking, waiting to make their next move. ~ Grace Callaway

I'm not bipolar, I've just had a bipolar life foisted upon me. ~ Daniel O'Malley

My psychiatrist said "you're BI Polar. I said "tell us something we don't already know". ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Been under treatment for PTSD and bipolar since 1992. I'm not ashamed of my illness. I've been shunned by many and I feel for those shunned, too. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

The doctor's words made me understand what happened to me was a dark, evil, and shameful secret, and by association I too was dark, evil, and shameful. While it may not have been their intention, this was the message my clouded mind received. To escape the confines of the hospital, I once again disassociated myself from my emotions and numbed myself to the pain ravaging my body and mind. I acted as if nothing was wrong and went back to performing the necessary motions to get me from one day to the next. I existed but I did not live. ~ Alyssa Reyans

I think Hell exists on Earth. It's a psychological state, or it can be a physical state. People who have severe mental illness are in Hell. People who have lost a loved one are in Hell. I think there are all kinds of different hells. It's not a place you go to after you die. ~ Al Franken

Now, why is it that most of us can talk openly about the illnesses of our bodies, but when it comes to our brain and illnesses of the mind we clam up and because we clam up, people with emotional disorders feel ashamed, stigmatized, and don't seek the help that can make the difference. ~ Kirk Douglas

Perception plays a vital role in the diagnosis of bipolar illness. Symptoms are perceived through the categories of psychiatric medicine at a given moment in history, categories which are continually shifting and being named or renamed. ~ Siri Hustvedt

Game is bipolar. One day he's this way, the next day he's the next. ~ Tony Yayo

What most people call talent is our way to vent, and if we're not discovered it will never pay the rent. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Telling someone who is manic that she's manic is like telling a dictator that he's a dick. Neither is going to admit it, and both are willing to torture you to prove their points. ~ Melody Moezzi

It's almost like it's my alter ego when I get on stage ... I turn into this different person, seriously. Bipolar disorder. I'm tired of everybody touching me and things being plugged into my head. ~ Britney Spears

St. Andrews provided a gentle forgetfulness over the preceding painful years of my life. It remains a haunting and lovely time to me, a marrow experience. For one who during her undergraduate years was trying to escape an inexplicable weariness and despair, St. Andrews was an amulet against all manner of longing and loss, a year of gravely held but joyous remembrances. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

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. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence
whether much that is glorious
whether all that is profound
does not spring from disease of thought
from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi".
We will say then, that I am mad. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I found my way home, stripped naked, and lay on the bathroom floor, the cool tiles pushing up. Keeping me from falling. I didn't know how long the floor would hold me. I prayed Ellen would come home ... ~ Juliann Garey

If knowledge and wisdom keep the same pace in development, the adept is enabled to grasp all the laws of the microcosm and the microcosm, not only from the point of view of wisdom, but also from the intellectual side, that is, in a bipolar way, to perceive and utilize them for his own development. ~ Franz Bardon

Sometimes writing is pure hell. I'll write something and look at it in a few hours and say, "This is crap. What will I do with my life? I'll never write again." It's a bipolar business, and you bounce back. You become gripped with some new insight that shows the way. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Bipolar and its accompanying symptoms and behavior presentations are a medical condition, not a moral or character flaw! This is the most difficult thing for people to understand. ~ Aspen Morrow

When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce ... in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. ~ Neel Burton

If I ever get rid of my Bi Polar condition we'll be so happy. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

People with personal experience of bipolar disorder will often state the importance of routine and structure as a way of preventing relapse. Routine, in this context, does not mean boring and repetitive so much as relatively predictable and stable. This appears to have many beneficial physical effects, one of which is sleep. ~ Jerry Kennard

Because you're bipolar. ~ Whitney G.

I Hate Being Bipolar. It's Awesome! ~ L.J. Shen

These people all thought they knew him. They believed he was a whore, and sometimes he thought he was too. But he really wasn't. Every partner he'd ever had broken it off with him when they couldn't handle him at his worst points. A lot of partners won't stick around when they hear the phrase "I have bipolar disorder" come out of someone's mouth, so he didn't tell them, just telling them he was moody. Of course, they all liked him when he was happy. It was when he wasn't that things went bad. ~ Beverly L. Anderson

It's rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether it's Hemingway, Van Gogh ... Robert Schumann has been mentioned ... Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath ... some of them with rather grim ends. ~ Stephen Fry

Bipolar disorder, manic depression, depression, black dog, whatever you want to call it, is inherent in our society. It's a product of stress and in my case over-work. ~ Adam Ant

I'm Bipolar with PTSD without medication my mind wouldn't be free ... Medication works for me but not for everyone ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Almost every sane person is at least two different people. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

He loved the idea that he was mentally ill," said his daughter Monica, "and hated the idea he was an alcoholic" - that is, bipolar disorder was a bona fide illness, while alcoholism smacked of a shameful personal failing. ~ Blake Bailey

I have a type of bipolar that swings up and down all day long. There are significant mood swings within a day, within a week, within a month. I go through at least four major episodes a year. That's really the definition of bipolar rapid cycle. But I have ultra-rapid, so I have tiny little episodes all day long. ~ Marya Hornbacher

What is actually observed in so-called 'biplar children'? If you read the research reports carefully, they describe broad and persistent emotional dysregulation. Although these children have mood swings, they do not develop manic or hypomanic episodes. They are moody, irritable, oppositional and likely to misbehave - like all children with disruptive behavior disorders. Their grandiose thinking usually consists of little beyond boastfulness. No evidence from genetics, neurobiology, follow-up studies or treatment response shows that this syndrome has anything in common with classical bipolarity. ~ Joel Paris

My feelings are all over the place. Can you be bipolar in love? ~ Nicole Reed

Logan looked at her and wondered how someone so beautiful could be so oblivious to their own beauty, how someone so smart could be so foolish to the extent of their own intellect and how someone so loving and compassionate could ever think she wasn't worthy of love?

It was like watching a blind man trapped and wandering aimlessly and helplessly in a scorching hot desert unable to see the small puddle of water that lay just a foot away. The only difference was that she had eyes. Two beautiful ones, yet she could not see. Is that what madness was? Was it to be able to view and appreciate every form of beauty but to be blind to the value and exquisiteness of one's own? Logan believed in many forms of insanity but he knew in that instant watching her trembling frame on the train tracks that hers, that her illness, surpassed any clinical or psychological term known. Maybe she did suffer from depression or bipolar or schizophrenia. Who knew? All he was certain of in that moment that she suffered from no greater illness than the blindness of the heart. ~ Ali Harper

I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

To me, Hollywood seems a little bipolar. Things happen; things don't happen. Someone's in a movie; someone's not in a movie. I've learned not to build my expectations. ~ Joel Edgerton

My personal style is bipolar. Sometimes I feel like dressing in a boyish leather jacket; other times I want to dress more elegantly. Most of the time it's what I like to call 'comfortable chic': Giuseppe Zanotti flat sandals, Rag & Bone jeans, slouchy Isabel Marant shirts. ~ Joan Smalls

The world is essentially bipolar: driven to extremes but defined by flux. Saints are always just a stumble away from sinners. Nothing is absolute, not even death ~ Terri Cheney

I want to apologize for plaguing you with so many telephone calls last November and December. When the 'enthusiasm' is coming on me it is accompanied by a feverish reaching out to my friends. After its over I wince and wither. ~ Robert Lowell

Maybe there's a galaxy with a planet that's just a little more tilted, with a sun that shines just a little bit darker, and that's where I'm supposed to be, where it somehow makes sense to feel this broken. ~ Amy Reed

A vivid Imagination is awesome a Manic Imagination is a curse. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Before I die I'd love to see my name on the Famous Bi Polar list I'm not ashamed of my Illness I believe most of my talent comes from it. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Sometimes, like when she got sick, the edge comes to me. Sometimes that happens for no reason. The chasm widens inexplicably even as I run from it-run for my life-until the ground beneath me evaporates and I am lost again despite my best, but futile efforts. ~ Ka Hancock

Manic depression - or bipolar disorder - is like racing up to a clifftop before diving headfirst into a cavity. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the psychic equivalent of an extreme sport. The manic highs - that exhilarating rush to the top of the cliff - make you feel bionic in your hyper-energized capacity for generosity, sexiness and soulfulness. You feel like you have ingested stars and are now glowing from within. It's unearned confidence-in-extremis - with an emphasis on the con, because you feel cheated once you inevitably crash into that cavity. I sometimes joke that mania is the worst kind of pyramid scheme, one that the bipolar individual doesn't even know they're building, only to find out, too late, that they're also its biggest casualty. ~ Diriye Osman