Depression And Anxiety Quotes

That's the odd thing about depression and anxiety. It acts like an intense fear of happiness, even as you yourself consciously want that happiness more than anything. So if it catches you smiling, even fake smiling, then - well, that stuff's just not allowed and you know it, so here comes ten tons of counterbalance. ~ Matt Haig

To me, curiosity is married to optimism. And that's where a lot of my motivation comes from. A lot of my way out of depression and anxiety is that intersection between optimism and curiosity. Because it means taking a step forward with the hope that there will be discovery. ~ Carrie Brownstein

As a child actor, you experience a lot of depression and anxiety ... Yes, I went through depression, and it was not comfortable. Yes, I struggle with anxiety and being paranoid, trying to figure out who I am. ~ Keke Palmer

Depression and anxiety are two of the body's first reactions to stockpiles of hurt. Of course, there are organic and biochemical reasons we experience clinical depression and debilitating anxiety - causes over which we have no control - but unrecognized pain and unprocessed hurt can also lead there. ~ Brene Brown

Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance. When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce. ~ Steven Pressfield

...Every one of the social and psychological causes of depression and anxiety they have discovered has something in common. They are all forms of disconnection. They are all ways in which we have been cut off from something we innately need but seem to have lost along the way. ~ Johann Hari

I actually did go through severe depression and anxiety attacks where I couldn't sleep for weeks. It was definitely several months of being not myself. ~ Felicia Day

Without healthy avenues to process loss, people fragment their experiences, neglect their real stories, numb out, and try to cope on their own, which often results in anger, depression, and anxiety. ~ Kathy Escobar

I wondered if I was like a drug addict going through withdrawal. I had all the symptoms, my physical dependence on Lila showing its ugly self.
My depression and anxiety spiked, and I craved her more than I ever had before. I needed her. ~ K.I. Lynn

Synchronize each breath with the present moment and become intertwined with happiness. Breathing in, we are grateful for the opportunities that are given to us; breathing out, we let go of the depression and anxiety that hold us back. ~ Forrest Curran

Robert Kohlenberg, a professor of psychology, once thought that depression and anxiety were different things. But as he studied it, he discovered that "the data are indicating they're not that distinct." Depression and anxiety overlap. I started to see depression and anxiety as cover versions of the same song by different bands. Depression is a cover version by a downbeat emo band, and anxiety is a cover version by a screaming heavy metal group, but the underlying sheet music is the same. They're not identical, but they are twinned. ~ Johann Hari

If mindfulness is the cure to wayward thought, which can be responsible for a lot of the stress, depression and anxiety in society, then this mindfulness needs to be constant. ~ Brittany Hallison

Here was a man who was trapped in a thicket of fear and confusion, powerless to escape. Dante's verse captured the feeling of my own depression and anxiety precisely. Wild animals blocked the man's path at every turn. Suddenly the shade of a great poet of antiquity, Virgil, appears before the man and promises to show him the hard road to a good place - but first the man has to trust him. ~ Rod Dreher

The mental health conversation is very important to me. I have friends that struggle with various mental illnesses. I've struggled with depression and anxiety. I'm very interested in how we deal with that. ~ Matthew Quick

Since the Second World War, rates of common mental illness (depression and anxiety) have been increasing in the industrialized nations, whereas rates of recovery from severe mental illness have not improved despite the availability of apparently effective therapies such as antipsychotic drugs. ~ Richard Bentall

Many physical illnesses are associated with depression and anxiety, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, stroke, kidney disease, lung disease, dementia and cancer. ~ Liz Miller

Given the conflicting messages we receive about what it takes to be "good enough," it's not surprising that Christians are as plagued by depression and anxiety as the general population. ~ Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

I have a thin skin.

I think this is part and parcel of depression and anxiety - to be precise - being a person quite likely to get depression and anxiety … I don't fight it. I accept things more. This is who I am. And besides, fighting it actually makes it worse. The trick is to befriend depression and anxiety. To be thankful for them, because you can deal with them a lot better. And the way I have befriended them is by thanking them for my thin skin.

Sure, without a thin skin I would have never known those terrible days of nothingness. Those days of either panic, or intense, bone-scorching lethargy. The days of self-hate, or drowning under invisible waves. I sometimes felt, in my self-pity, too fragile for a world of speed and right angles and noise. (I love Jonathan Rottenberg's evolutionary theory of depression, that is to do with the being unable to adapt to the pendent: 'An ancient mood system has collided with a highly novel operating environment created by a remarkable species.')

But would I go along to a magical mind spa and ask for a skin-thickening treatment? Probably not. You need to feel life's terror to feel its wonder. ~ Matt Haig

Depression and anxiety can't fit in your head if you're cultivating feelings of joy and inspiration. ~ Austin Butler

For many years I had been deeply identified with thinking and the painful, heavy emotions that had accumulated inside. My thought activity was mostly negative, and my sense of identity was also mostly negative, although I tried hard to prove to myself and to the world that I was good enough by working very hard academically. But even after I had achieved academic success, I was happy for two weeks or three and then the depression and anxiety came back. ~ Eckhart Tolle

This particularly tends to happen with depression and anxiety. With anxiety you tend to get hooked by stories about the future, about things that might go wrong and how badly you're sure to handle them. ~ Russ Harris

Both depression and anxiety disorders, for example, are repeatedly described in the media as 'chemical imbalances in the brain,' as if spontaneous neural events with no relation to anything outside a person's brain cause depression and anxiety. ~ Siri Hustvedt

My eyes are wide open
I will not squash the pain I feel
I will not succumb to my disbelief
I will not hide from my depression
I will not disavow my anger
I will not turn away
I will expand the love I feel within
And if I don't yet feel the love within
I will expand my sense of connection
I will be a bridge to hope
I will let humanity sing
-I am a Magnificent Woman ~ Melanie Lutz

I'm a walking economy. My hairline's in recession,my waist is a victim of inflation, and together they're putting me in a deep depression! ~ Anonymous

Everything feels like a badly designed computer game in which you fall into a pit that doesn't kill you but from which there's absolutely no escape. For a while you kick against the walls, but the walls get higher no matter how hard and fast you press all the buttons you can find. And sooner or later you'll realize there's one you haven't tried yet. The power switch.[ ... ] So she began reaching for the button herself, but she never tried quite hard enough, because some part of her was still alive. She didn't want to throw the machine away. She just wanted to start again. ~ Michael Marshall Smith

But the Christian also knows that he not only cannot and dare not be anxious, but that there is no need for him to be so. Neither anxiety now work can secure his daily bread, for bread is the gift of the Father. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. ~ William Styron

It wasn't that she was sad - sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired. ~ Nenia Campbell

Maybe if we love ourselves healthy we will all heal? ~ Nikki Rowe

It can hit at any time [anxiety/panic attack]. You feel like you're in an open field, and there's a tornado coming at you. And you're just consumed by it. ~ Kim Basinger

Yet this chirpy insistence on positivity has a strange way of enhancing the dread and anxiety and melancholy that lie just beneath the surface of things. ~ Heather Havrilesky

Evolutionarily, the function of attachment has been to protect the organism from danger. The attachment figure, an older, kinder, stronger, wiser other (Bowlby, 1982), functions as a safe base (Ainsworth et al., 1978), and is a presence that obviates fear and engenders a feeling of safety for the younger organism. The greater the feeling of safety, the wider the range of exploration and the more exuberant the exploratory drive (i.e., the higher the threshold before novelty turns into anxiety and fear). Thus, the fundamental tenet of attachment theory: security of attachment leads to an expanded range of exploration. Whereas fear constricts, safety expands the range of exploration. In the absence of dyadically constructed safety, the child has to contend with fear-potentiating aloneness. The child will devote energy to conservative, safety enhancing measures, that is, defense mechanisms, to compensate for what's missing. The focus on maintaining safety and managing fear drains energy from learning and exploration, stunts growth, and distorts personality development. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

I think about [ ... ] black holes and blue holes and bottomless bodies of water and exploding stars and event horizons, and a place so dark that light can't get out once it's in ~ Jennifer Niven

I love working with people who experience social anxiety because they are invariably brave and amazing, and I am privileged to help them discover exactly that ~ Ellen Hendriksen

All I wanted was to be left alone. They abhor a vacuum, other people. You find a quiet corner where you can hunker down in peace, and the next minute there they are, crowding around you in their party hats, tooting their paper whistles in your face and insisting you get up and join in the knees-up. ~ John Banville

Stress and anxiety are your mind trying to use logic to meet the expectations of what you think your life should be. ~ Shanna Star

It's an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind. ~ Sinclair Ross

Freud was of the opinion that in fear a person is responding to a specific and immediate threat to physical safety while in anxiety a person is responding to a threat that is objectless, directionless, and located somewhere far off in the future - ruination, for example, or humiliation, or decay. ~ Daniel Smith

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is well adapted to our weakness as our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis. ~ Henry David Thoreau

When assaulted by sexual knowledge for the first time, a girl plunges into a period of blackness, which is required in order to let her emotions catch up with her body.
Sleeping Beauty sleeps. Cinderella waits, and while she waits she works her way through the darkness of depression. Snow White both works and sleeps before she is ready to open her eyes and find a Prince leaning over her. ~ Joan Gould

Perhaps, the answer is that my ravaged mind rails against the idea of God, but something deeper in me calls out as if God might answer. 'There are not foxholes,' I guess, and depression is the deepest and deadliest foxhole I've been in. It may be the 'dark night of the soul' that the mystics talk about but in depression it is not so much that one becomes lost in the dark as one becomes the dark. ~ Parker J. Palmer

I was really inspired by photos of the "Forgotten Man" during the Depression, when men were wearing the last suit that they had at the time, just trying not to starve to death. It's the kind of suit that is worn in the rain and shrinks on the body and becomes a second skin, which is different than someone who willfully dropped out. ~ Autumn De Wilde

No reason to feel depressed about being depressed. A depression can be a golden opportunity to collect the pieces and build ourselves anew. Global Souls are always on the move, nomads at heart, connected to various cities, commuters between cultures, both from here and everywhere. ~ Elif Shafak

I am obsessed with the Great Depression and with former showgirls - and the Victorians - the idea of wistful, dark romance. ~ Karen Elson

Reactions can be gratifyingly mature at one time but distressingly immature at another. If some deeply unconscious anxiety is triggered, a person may respond with the lack of emotional self-regulation characteristic of an infant. A fully grown adult exhibiting the rage of an infant is terrifying and potentially dangerous. ~ Gabor Mate

Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he should be twenty-five or thirty, a beautiful young man naked in a bathtub. Enjoying the pleasures of life. How dreadful if someone came upon naked Less today: pink to his middle, gray to his scalp, like those old double erasers for pencil and ink. He has never seen another gay man age past fifty, none except Robert. He met them all at forty or so but never saw them make it much beyond; they died of AIDS, that generation. Less's generation often feels like the first to explore the land beyond fifty. How are they meant to do it? Do you stay a boy forever, and dye your hair and diet to stay lean and wear tight shirts and jeans and go out dancing until you drop dead at eighty? Or do you do the opposite - do you forswear all that, and let your hair go gray, and wear elegant sweaters that cover your belly, and smile on past pleasures that will never come again? Do you marry and adopt a child? In a couple, do you each take a lover, like matching nightstands by the bed, so that sex will not vanish entirely? Or do you let sex vanish entirely, as heterosexuals do? Do you experience the relief of letting go of all that vanity, anxiety, desire, and pain? ~ Andrew Sean Greer

Before, my anxiety was singing solo. Now all this weird anticipation and jumbled excitement has added some strange harmonies into the mix. I'm a barbershop quartet basket case. ~ Jenn Bennett

If you feel that you have too much worry in your life and want to have less, you can probably learn to shrink the role of worry plays in your life. ~ David A. Carbonell

This is the difference between depression and sorrow - sorrowful, you are in great trouble because something matters so much; depressed, you are miserable because nothing really matters. ~ J. E. Buckrose

Nobody would commit suicide if the pain of being inside herself, the agony of the sleepless, tortured hours spent watching the world get smaller and uglier, were bearable or could be relieved by other people telling her how they wanted her to feel. A depressed person is selfish because her self, the very core of who she is, will not leave her alone, and she can no more stop thinking about this self and how to escape it than a prisoner held captive by a sadistic serial killer can forget about the person who comes in to torture her everyday. Her body is brutalized by her mind. It hurts to breathe, eat, walk, think. The gross maneuverings of her limbs are so overwhelming, so wearying, that the fine muscle movements or quickness of wit necessary to write, to actually say something, are completely out of the question. ~ Stacy Pershall

The ambition to establish a reputation worthy of the esteem of his fellows so that his story could be told after his death had carried Lincoln through his bleak childhood, his laborious efforts to educate himself, his string of political failures, and a depression so profound that he declared himself more than willing to die, except that he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom. ~ Alain De Botton

Recovering from the suicide of a loved one, you need all the help you can get, so I very much recommend a meditation program. The whole picture of how to recover from this has to do with body, mind, and spirit. That's applicable to any kind of depression. ~ Judy Collins

I do go through a mini depression because one minute there are people yelling and screaming for me on stage and the next I'm at home and it's dead quiet. So it takes a while to come down. ~ Carrot Top

At times it may seem as though you and your past are one. Sometimes we fail to differentiate between what has happened to us and who we are today. If you have a hard time getting beyond that damaging mind-set let me encourage you right now. You are not your past Although you are changed and shaped by past experiences who you were yesterday does not control the person you have the potential to become tomorrow. ~ Sue Augustine

I want to feel the rush of death, the high of utter nothingness, the fragility of my own mortality. Let it slip through my fingers like sand and when it's gone for good, I'll be none the wiser. ~ Kayla Krantz

Alcohol's been keeping depression alive and well for over ten thousand years. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

The Great Depression had taken a physical toll on American manhood; even though the Army would accept just about anyone sane over 5 feet tall, 105 pounds in weight, possessing twelve or more of his own teeth, and free of flat feet, venereal disease and hernias, no fewer than 40 per cent of citizens failed these basic criteria. ~ Andrew Roberts

Here's the thing about being depressed: you lose all the little joys that make life worth the effort. Laughter becomes a memory and, in some ways, a painful reminder of all you've lost. ~ Tammy L. Gray

Work is an antidote for anxiety, and ointment for sorrow, and a doorway to possibility. Whatever our circumstances in life, my dear brethren, let us do the best we can and cultivate a reputation for excellence in all that we do. Let us set our minds and bodies to the glorious opportunity for work that each new day presents. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

To disguise nothing, to conceal nothing, to write about those things that are closest to our pain, our happiness; to write about our sexual clumsiness, the agonies of Tantalus, the depth of our discouragement-what we glimpse in our dreams-our despair. To write about the foolish agonies of anxiety, the refreshment of our strength when these are ended; to write about our painful search for self, jeopardized by a stranger in the post office, a half-seen face in a train window, to write about the continents and populations of our dreams, about love and death, good and evil, the end of the world. ~ John Cheever