Quotes About Coping

How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use?

For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society.

I felt deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I also felt my default emotion: numbness.

Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.

In the opening to the Mary Tyler Moore Show Mary's in the supermarket, hurrying through the aisles. She pauses at the meat case, picks up a steak and checks the price. Then rolls her eyes, shrugs and tosses it in the cart. That's kind of how I feel. Sure I would have liked things to be different. But, 'roll of eyes' what can you do? 'shrug' I threw the meat in my cart and moved on.

If you believe suicide will bring you peace, or at the very least just an end to everything you hate- you are displaying self-caring behavior. You are still able to actively seek solutions to your problems. You are willing to go to great lengths to provide what you believe will be soothing to yourself. This strikes me as optimistic.

After I cut off his penis, I sautéed it in rosemary butter and ate it But did you go to a meeting afterwards? Yes I wouldn't worry about it, then.

The horrible thing about being sober is you lose your excuse for being so fucked up.

And then just as suddenly, I felt absolutely nothing. It was like a door quickly opened, showing me what horrible feelings I had inside, and then slammed shut again so I wouldn't have to actually face them. In many ways I felt I was living the life of a doctor in the ER. I was learning to block out all emotions in order to deal with the situation.

Instead of becoming depressed that I was in the locked ward of a mental hospital, I pretended I was playing a role in a movie, possibly on my way to an Emmy.

No matter how awful something is, you can always sell tickets.

You can never replace it. The good news is you do learn to live without it. You miss it. You want it. You hang out with a bunch of other crazy people who feel the same way and you live with it. And eventually, you start to sound like a cloying self-help book, like me.

You must never allow something that happened to you to become a morbidly treasured heirloom that you carry, show people, put back in its black velvet pouch and then tuck back into your jacket where you can keep it close to your heart.

When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it.

Don't think for a minute that bad publicity and endless criticism don't leave their claw marks on everyone concerned. Your friends try to cheer you up by saying lightly, I suppose you get used to it, and ignore it. You try. You try damned hard. But you never get used to it. It always wounds and hurts.

My first therapist was a psychiatric resident assigned to me by University Health Services when I was a third-year law student. I was looking for help dealing with a breakup that at the time felt tragic but that now seems like that moment when you look up from your phone just in time to avoid being plowed down by a city bus.

By fretting at unfortunate events we double the evil

The tides here are too rough. I sink here, happy only when I hoard my little blue sleeping pills, stash the blades of my razor. I accumulate a drawer of drop-out devices, so by December I can escape to a Merry Christmas.

It's the life force of angels. It's hope. It's faith. It's all those good things in life that give people the strength to get up each day and cope with what they have. It's the blood that flows through me.

I don't know what's wrong with me. It's like all I can do is keep writing this gibberish to keep from breaking apart.

It's like all I can do is keep writing this gibberish to keep from falling apart.

I know that things get worse before they get better because that's what my psychiatrist says, but this is a worse that feels too big.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. I know other people have it a lot worse. I do know that, but it's crashing in anyway…

I read the book again that night because I knew that if I didn't, I would probably start crying again.