Severe Depression Quotes

Severe depression, put simply, is an overwhelming and unmanageable onslaught of every normal, human fear and difficult emotion. It is a loss of and lack of perspective and proportion. ~ Sally Brampton

The loss of innocence is inevitable, but the death of innocence disturbs the natural order. The death of innocence causes an imbalance and initiates an internal war that manifests differently in each individual, but almost always includes anger, withdrawal and severe depression. ~ B.G. Bowers

Wanting to die (or 'suicidal ideation'as the experts would have it) goes hand in hand with the illness. It is a symptom of severe depression, not a character failing or moral flaw. Nor is it, truly, a desire to die so much as a fervent wish not to go on living. All depressives understand that distinction. ~ Sally Brampton

Severe depression feels like being a wingless bird in a dark,closed box with no way out. Hopeless!! ~ Michelle Lawson

Waking up breaks my heart.
Getting dressed breaks my arms.
Joining the crowd breaks my legs.
Letting someone in ... does me in. ~ Casey Renee Kiser

Neurotics, proceed with delusions of grandeur. Napoleon Bonaparte, take the lead. Jesus Christ, bring up the rear. Simulate severe depression. Non-communicative with repressed hostility. ~ Samuel R. Delany

Let us, just for a moment, look at the implications of that 'distress'. Severe depression affects more than 120 million people worldwide and more than 5 million in the UK. By 2020, according to the World Health Organisation, it will be one of the world's most debilitating conditions, second only to heart disease. Is that distress? Or is it a major illness? The danger in polite euphemisms is that they drive the condition underground. I constantly see people struggling with severe depression, clamping down on the pain so as not to bother anyone. I know how they minimise both themselves and the severity of their struggle. Mute, pale shadows, they are gagged by polite euphemisms and by misunderstanding. ~ Sally Brampton

I might look successful and happy being in front of you today, but I once suffered from severe depression and was in total despair. ~ Ji-Hae Park

Once severe depression has a hold, it is unshakeable until it has run its course or that course has been diverted by treatment. ~ Sally Brampton

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

Guilt is not merely a concern with the past; it is a present-moment immobilization about a past event. And the degree of immobilization can run from mild upset to severe depression. If you are simply learning from your past, and vowing to avoid the repetition of some specific behavior, this is not guilt. You experience guilt only when you are prevented from taking action now as a result of having behaved in a certain way previously. Learning from your mistakes is healthy and a necessary part of growth. Guilt is unhealthy because you are ineffectively using up your energy in the present feeling hurt, upset and depressed about a historical happening. And it's futile as well as unhealthy. No amount of guilt can ever undo anything. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

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

[If there was] certainty that an acute episode [of depression] will last only a week, a month, even a year, it would change everything. It would still be a ghastly ordeal, but the worst thing about it - the incessant yearning for death, the compulsion toward suicide - would drop away. But no, a limited depression, a depression with hope, is a contradiction. The experience of convulsive pain, along with the conviction that it will never end except in death - that is the definition of a severe depression. ~ George Scialabba

This book is also not intended to be a substitute or replacement for competent medical or psychological treatment when these may be needed. If you suffer from very severe anxiety, severe phobias, severe depression or any other serious mental health condition, the advice in this book may not be appropriate or sufficient for you. You are advised to consult and work with an experienced mental health professional, if you are not already doing so. Also, if you believe that your symptoms or your problems are beginning to get worse as you read this book, you should stop reading it immediately and consult a trained health professional. ~ Doc Orman

I suffered from severe depression for over a decade. My condition deteriorated steadily. I was suicidal. ~ Byron Katie

There is some evidence that chronic severe depression causes some atrophy or shrinkage in the hippocampus. Depressive illness could therefore be seen as a very subtle form of degeneration in some nerve cells. ~ Stefan Cembrowicz

I think that when you look at the great politicians, the two greatest in my view were George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, they certainly had character traits. You also know Abraham Lincoln overcame severe depression problems that he had when he was younger, which gave him the strength and the character later on. ~ John McCain

I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that "normal" people also might never understand, and that's what FURIOUSLY HAPPY is all about. It's about taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life." It ~ Jenny Lawson

The terrible truth about depression, and the part of its nature that terrifies me the most, is that it appears to operate beyond reason; feelings happen to you for no apparent cause. Or rather, there is usually an initial cause, a 'trigger'as they say in therapeutic circles, but in severe depression the feelings of sadness, grief, loneliness and despair continue long after the situation has resolved itself. It is as if depression has a life of its own, which is perhaps why so many sufferers refer to it as a living thing, as some sort of demon or beast. ~ Sally Brampton

I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money, and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression. ~ Milton Friedman

Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over. I know how wrong this is. ~ David Levithan

If [Sean] doesn't see me a few days or if I'm really, really busy, and I just sort of get a glimpse of him, or if I'm feeling depressed without him even seeing me, he sort of picks up on it. And he starts getting that way. So I can no longer afford to have artistic depressions. If I start wallowing in a depression, he'll start coming down with stuff, so I'm sort of obligated to keep up. And sometimes I can't, because something will make me depressed and sure as hell he'll get a cold or trap his finger in a door or something, and so now I have sort of more reason to stay healthy or bright ... ~ John Lennon

Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and severe hemorrhaging. ~ Jhonen Vasquez

Depression occurs when you are not being yourself. ~ Dennis Wholey

Sometimes when we go through transitions, we aren't aware of the impact they have on us. Stress, doubt, and even depression commonly result from being moved or thrown out of your comfort zone, however easy the transition is. You may have a strong sense of purpose, high hopes, strong faith, a powerful sense of self-worth, a positive attitude, the courage to face your fears, and the ability to bounce back from failures. But if you fall apart when faced with the inevitable changes that life brings, you will never move forward. We ~ Nick Vujicic

You have no idea how grief will take you. The same with severe illness, motherhood, any profound experience. You don't know yourself. Others don't know you. These events show who you are. And you'll be surprised, shocked even. You'll feel the way you feel when you've done a particularly offensive-smelling shit – That couldn't possibly have come out of me – and start to rationalize it – Must be that bag of pistachios I ate earlier, or perhaps I am unwell. You can't believe you could do something so foul and unrecognizable. Something so outside yourself. ~ Viv Albertine

Get up and make notes on the books that you have, reflect on these notes and order more books, get up again, revise the hypothesis, and figure out a new plan of action. Repeat, making sure to leave no cracks open through which the gray fog of depression can penetrate. I ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Harrowing
The plow has savaged this sweet field
Misshapen clods of earth kicked up
Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view
Last year's growth demolished by the blade.
I have plowed my life this way
Turned over a whole history
Looking for the roots of what went wrong
Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scared.
Enough. The job is done.
Whatever's been uprooted, let it be
Seedbed for the growing that's to come
I plowed to unearth last year's reasons
The farmer plows to plant a greening season. ~ Parker J. Palmer

If the expansion of a global legal regime for communication technologies gains traction, the effects to the global economy as well as our individual liberties will be severe. ~ Marsha Blackburn

He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go;
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offences weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking!
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice and let his grow!
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
How may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times,
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
Craft against vice I must apply:
With Angelo to-night shall lie
His old betrothed but despised;
So disguise shall, by the disguised,
Pay with falsehood false exacting,
And perform an old contracting. ~ William Shakespeare

In that moment, Liz Emerson felt that she was forever looking up at people who were much, much better than she could ever be, and the only thing she was really good at was pulling them down to her level. ~ Amy Zhang

We have all lost our possessions and many of us our homes," he said. "But these losses, severe though they may seem, remind us of what no person can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations. ~ Lloyd Jones

Mabel stops looking murderous and assumes an expression of severe truculence. How the hell, I imagine her thinking, am I supposed to catch things with this idiot in tow? ~ Helen Macdonald

We have hit bottom and are on the upswing. ~ James J. Davis

She was tranquil, but it was with the quietness of exhausted grief, not of resignation; and she looked back upon the past, and awaited the future, with a kind of out-breathed despair. ~ Ann Radcliffe

Stories come and go. The challenge is to frame the questions that voters will be asking on polling day, such as who has avoided a global depression and worked here to deliver jobs. ~ Douglas Alexander

Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me. ~ Stephen Fry

Knowledge causes depression and a lot of pressure. ~ Deyth Banger

Love me
get lost in me
but beware
side effects include
a lot of shivering, baby
a lot of drinking, maybe
a lot of sinking, baby ~ Casey Renee Kiser

Poppies in July
Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?
You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.
And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.
A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!
There are fumes that I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?
If I could bleed, or sleep!
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!
Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.
But colorless. Colorless. ~ Sylvia Plath

The journey to health and wealth consists of continual praise and gratitude. ~ Kierra C.T. Banks

Who Suffers?

If you have social anxiety, you are not alone. The National Comorbidity Study found social phobia to be the third most common psychiatric disorder, after major depression and alcohol dependence. Experts believe that millions of people suffer from it. It is difficult to get exact numbers because the nature of social anxiety often makes it difficult for people to seek help. Many people who appear confident and strong suffer silently for years before telling anyone how they feel.
In the general population, social anxiety appears to affect more women than men. This may be due in part to the social norms that determine that women should be less aggressive and more reserved than men. However, more men seek treatment, possibly because social anxiety has more of an impact on the jobs traditionally held by men. As gender roles in society continue to shift, these statistics will probably change. ~ Heather Moehn

your ego is nothing but a mean and cruel deceptive little freak living inside your head that will never bring joy and happiness to your life. What that ego will bring is frustration, depression, manipulation, and fear. ~ Tony Horton

Talking to a therapist, I thought, was like taking your clothes off and then taking your skin off, and then having the other person say, Would you mind opening up your rib cage so that we can start? ~ Julie Schumacher

Life itself seemed so alarmingly exigent, to require so much of the self. It was too difficult to remember and think and express and understand - all things I needed to be able to do to talk. To keep my face animated at the same time was insult added to injury. It was like trying to cook and roller-skate and sing and type all at once. ~ Andrew Solomon

His spirits were too elastic to know the meaning of depression, and the setback had intriguing angles to it which he was broad-minded enough to appreciate as an artist. ~ Leslie Charteris

Like the shadow of death
The residue of heartbreak
Always lingers in the background
With its darkness threatening to consume you ~ Nomzamo Nhlumayo

Sometimes, people meant it when they smiled. Other times, they smiled because they wanted to mean it. ~ Shannon A. Thompson

I wonder, with all the flowers in the garden, how many of them ever think of hanging themselves with the garden hose, if ever they can. ~ Anthony Liccione

Nonetheless, that order has now been destabilized, which means that the rest of us are going to have to quickly figure out how to turn "managed degrowth" into something that looks a lot less like the Great Depression and a lot more like what some innovative economic thinkers have taken to calling "The Great Transition."56 ~ Naomi Klein

So we went to the Zoo; & I daresay I could write something interesting about that
a pale stone desert given over to charwomen & decorators: a few bears, a mandrill, & a fox or two
all in the desolation of depression. ~ Virginia Woolf

The reason so many intelligent and creative people suffer from depression is that when you take the risk of being fully conscious, you open Pandora's box, and you can't close it again. ~ Michael Redhill

Depression starts slow. ~ Ned Vizzini

Hiding my migraines on the set may have been my toughest challenge as an actor. There were times when the pain from migraine headaches was so severe that I literally had to crawl across my dressing room floor. But I couldn't let anyone know. If they thought I might slow production, I figured that would end my career. ~ Morgan Fairchild

Do young people have the moral stamina to carry through in case of economic depression? ... The real tests of the [younger] generations have not yet come, but they are on their way! ~ Billy Graham

Sometimes healthy and whole people make you long for your old, 'undepressed' self, and it is hard to smile when you just feel like sobbing your heart out. People are going out, you aren't. People are vacationing, you aren't. They are getting ahead in their careers, you aren't. They are partying, you aren't. Socializing reminds you of everything you have lost to depression. ~ Shubhrata Prakash

I knew then that I would have to be careful. I would have to wear gloves, to leave no trace when I burgled the crammed house of feeling and took for my own use exuberance depression suspicion terror. ~ Janet Frame

Unfortunately, it hurts all three of my feelings. ~ Carrie Fisher