Quotes About Depression

Previously, Woolf attributed her depressive states to her terrible, humiliating experiences of sexual molestation. But if she followed Freud's theories, then there had to be other explanations. Perhaps her memories were distorted, not to say false; perhaps they were a reflection not of actual experience but of the projection of her own desires. Perhaps, in short, the whole business had been a product of her imagination.2 I

An adult can be fully aware of his feelings only if he had caring parents or caregivers. People who were abused and neglected in childhood are missing this capacity and are therefore never overtaken by unexpected emotions. They will admit only those feelings that are accepted and approved by their inner censor, who is their parents' heir. Depression and a sense of inner emptiness are the price they must pay for this control.

He says the pills he's got her on will keep her from sinking too low. How low is too low, Roy thinks, and when can you tell?

When I had tried to stop previously there were weeks of dark depression. There would be odd days when I was comparatively cheerful but the next day I would invariably sink back into the misery and depression. It was like clawing your way out of a slippery pit—you feel that you are nearing the top; you can see the sunshine—and then find yourself sliding back down again.

In many instances nothing marked the spot where lay the vestiges of some poor mortal-who, leaving a large circle of sorrowing friends, had been left by them in turn-except a depression in the earth, more lasting than that in the spirits of the mourners.

ever deeper into jealous depression. They tell you drink makes you happy, but what they mean is it makes happy folk happier. They don't tell you that it makes unhappy folk more fucking unhappy than ever.

affective instability, emotional dysregulation, and interpersonal sensitivity has little resemblance to classical depression. It is also the key feature of BPD

At points of clarity, I realize that my life on earth is meaningless, and that I am merely a pawn in a bigger game. A game I cannot possible understand or have control of. Thankfully, before depression sets in, I drift back into my cloudy, bewildered daily routine.

Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.

What if depression is, in fact, a form of grief—for our own lives not being as they should? What if it is a form of grief for the connections we have lost, yet still need?

The more you think life is about having stuff and superiority and showing it off, the more unhappy, and the more depressed and anxious, you will be.

extremely depressed people have become disconnected from a sense of the future, in a way that other really distressed people have not.

It turned out that for every category of traumatic experience you went through as a kid, you were radically more likely to become depressed as an adult. If you had six categories of traumatic events in your childhood, you were five times more likely to become depressed as an adult than somebody who didn't have any. If you had seven categories of traumatic event as a child, you were 3,100 percent more likely to attempt to commit suicide as an adult.

Loneliness hangs over our culture today like a thick smog.

The primary explanation for depression offered in our culture starts to fall apart. The idea you feel terrible because of a "chemical imbalance" was built on a series of mistakes and errors. It has come as close to being proved wrong, he told me, as you ever get in science. It's lying broken on the floor, like a neurochemical Humpty Dumpty with a very sad smile.

We have been systematically misinformed about what depression and anxiety are.

Materialistic people, who think happiness comes from accumulating stuff and a superior status, had much higher levels of depression and anxiety.

One friend told me that she always knew her depression was lifting when she felt her sense of time expanding again

The scientific evidence is clear that exercise significantly reduces depression and anxiety.

It was only a long time into talking with these social scientists that I realized 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.

When the results came back and were all calculated out, Tim was struck by the results: materialistic people, who think happiness comes from accumulating stuff and a superior status, had much higher levels of depression and anxiety.

But I was going to learn that neither of these stories is true. The primary cause of all this rising depression and anxiety is not in our heads. It is, I discovered, largely in the world, and the way we are living in it. I learned there are at least nine proven causes of depression and anxiety (although nobody had brought them together like this before), and many of them are rising all around us—causing us to feel radically worse.

After twenty years researching this at the highest level, Irving has come to believe that the notion depression is caused by a chemical imbalance is just "an accident of history," produced by scientists initially misreading what they were seeing, and then drug companies selling that misperception to the world to cash in.

Depression is a kind of constricted consciousness," Bill Richards, who also led the experiments at Johns Hopkins, told me. "You could say people have forgotten who they are, what they're capable of, have gotten stuck … Many depressed people can only see their pains, and their hurts, and their resentments, and their failures. They can't see the blue sky and the yellow leaves, you know?