Bipolar Quote by Kay Redfield Jamison

“I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.7 out of 5 (6 ratings)

Bipolar Compare Currents Former Identity Inspirational Intense Manic Normal Outgoing Productive Psychology Self

More by Kay Redfield Jamison

“...even though [my psychiatrist] understood mor than anyone how much I felt I was losing--in energy, vivacity, and originality--by taking medication, he never was seduced into losing sight of the overall perspective of how costly, damaging, and life threatening my illness was. He was at ease with ambiguity, had a comfort with complexity, and was able to be decisive in…

Kay Redfield Jamison

When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace. ‘This is my last experiment,’ wrote a young chemist in his suicide note. ‘If there is any eternal torment worse…

Kay Redfield Jamison

It's more common than not that bipolar illness will start in the teens. One of the reasons I spend a lot of time on…

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

I think that for thousands of years people have made the observation that there are certain kinds of extreme depressive states that seem to…

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

Every seventeen minutes in America, someone commits suicide. Mostly, I have been impressed by how little value our society puts on saving the lives…

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them,…

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

“I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a…

Kay Redfield Jamison

When I'm talking about depression, I'm talking about the more severe forms of depression, and I think that conceptualising as a form of grief…

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

An ardent temperament makes one very vulnerable to dreamkillers.

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the illness was one i should willingly give up…moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as…

Kay Redfield Jamison

I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just this heavy,…

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior…

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

Explore all 205 Kay Redfield Jamison quotes

More Bipolar quotes

Sometimes labeling is only useful, like with OCD. Once you're labeled you can be treated. On other occasions labeling leads to tyranny, like with…

Jon Ronson

Image

Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the…

Marcel Duchamp

It's more common than not that bipolar illness will start in the teens. One of the reasons I spend a lot of time on…

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

Every seventeen minutes in America, someone commits suicide. Mostly, I have been impressed by how little value our society puts on saving the lives…

Kay Redfield Jamison

Image

Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.

Voltaire

Image

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid

Heinrich Heine

Image

I was hoping that I could say stuff about mental illness that maybe people didn't know. You know, speak up for bipolar disorder and…

Eric Millegan

Image

I have never gone for a diagnosis and I don't consider myself to be bipolar, but I have extreme moods. I get heightened. I…

Caroline Quentin

Image

I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I…

Kevin Gates

Image

“Insomuch as the structure of this book parallels that of my own mind, it boasts about as much order and linearity as a hallucination.”

Melody Moezzi

Image

“In our family "whim-wham" is code, a defanged reference to any number of moods and psychological disorders, be they depressive, manic, or schizoaffective. Back in the 1970s and '80s - when they were all straight depression - we called them "dark nights of the soul." St. John of the Cross's phrase ennobled our sickness, spiritualized it. We cut God out…

David Lovelace