Kay Redfield Jamison > Quotes

“هناك موسمّ لكل شيء ، هناك وقتٌ للبناء .. وهناك وقتٌ للريح لتكسر الطوبة المرتخية”
― Kay Redfield Jamison

“It is not an illness that lends itself to easy empathy. Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than as being willful, angry, irrational, or simply tiresome.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

“But it has been precisely that persevering steadiness of my mother, her belief in seeing things through, and her great ability to love and learn, listen and change, that helped keep me alive through all of the years of pain and nightmare that were to come.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

“So we would get together at some ungodly hour, I would be secretly and inexpressibly grateful, and he somehow would have finessed it so that I didn't feel like I was too huge a burden to him. It was a rare gift of friendship.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“- character building, no doubt, but I was beginning to tire of all the opportunities to build character at the expense of peace, predictability, and a normal life.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Eventually, the depression went away of its own accord, but only long enough for it to regroup and mobilize for the next attack.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

“I remain acutely and painfully aware of how difficult it is to control or understand such behaviors, much less explain them to others. I have, in my psychotic, seizure-like attacks—my black, agitated manias—destroyed things I cherish, pushed to the utter edge people I love, and survived to think I could never recover from the shame.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“فضولي ومزاجي أخذاني إلى أماكن لم أكن قادرةً على وصولها بمشاعري.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“الجامعة بالنسبة لأكثر الناس الذين عرفتهم كانت أفضل سنوات حياتهم، لم يكن ذلك هو الحال معي. الجامعة في معظمها بالنسبة لي كانت كفاحًا فضيعًا ، وكوابيس متكررة من الأمزجة العنيفة والمُفزعة، تتناوب لمدة أسابيع وأحيانًا أشهر، مع مرحٍ صاخب وعاكفة متّقدة، وحماس شديد، وجولات طويلة من العمل الشاق ولكن الممتع.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and been more loved; laughed more often for having cried more often; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters; worn death “as close as dungarees,” appreciated it—and life—more; seen the finest and the most terrible in people, and slowly learned the values of caring, loyalty, and seeing things through. I have seen the breadth and depth and width of my mind and heart and seen how frail they both are, and how ultimately unknowable they both are. Depressed, I have crawled on my hands and knees in order to get across a room and have done it for month after month. But, normal or manic, I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know. And I think much of this is related to my illness—the intensity it gives to things and the perspective it forces on me.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

“من المزعج أحيانًا رؤية المشاعر والسلوكيات القوية والمعقدة يتم اختزالها في عبارات تشخيصية هامدة وبليدة.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“لقد تعلمت كيف يمكن أن يُشفى العقل بأعجوبة بواسطة نصف فُرصة، وكيف أن الصبر والنبل يمكنهما أن يعيدا تركيب قطع روح مبعثرة بصورة رهيبة.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

“he slowly put down the hamburger he was eating, stared straight into my eyes, and, without missing a beat, said rather dryly, “That explains a lot.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

“The great imaginative artists have always sailed "in the wind's eye," and brought back with them words or sounds or images to "counterbalance human woes." That they themselves were subject to more than their fair share of these woes deserves our appreciation, understanding, and very careful thought.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament

“Others would say to me, "It is only temporary, it will pass, you will get over it," but of course they had no idea how I felt, although they were certain that they did. Over and over and over I would say to myself, If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?”
― Kay Redfield Jamison

“My mind was flying high that day, courtesy of whatever witches' brew of neurotransmitters God had programmed into my genes...”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“I focused on the questions and stopped seeing the body. As has been true a thousand times since, my curiosity and temperament had taken me to places I was not really able to handle emotionally, but the same curiosity, and the scientific side of my mind, generated enough distance and structure to allow me to manage, deflect, reflect, and move on.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

“... somewhere in my heart, however, I continued to believe that intense and lasting love was possible only in a climate of somewhat tumultuous passions. This, I felt, consigned me to being with a man whose temperament was largely similar to my own. I was late to understand that chaos and intensity are no substitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life. Normal people are not aways boring. On the contrary. It has been with pleasure, and not inconsiderable pain, that I have learned about the possibilities of love - its steadiness and its growth...”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“الاكتئاب مُرَوِّع بما لا تصفه الكلمات والأصوات أو الصور، ولا أريد أن أعاني نوبةً مطولةً منه مرةً أخرى. إنه يدمي العلاقات من خلال الشك، وفقدان الثقة واحترام الذات، ويسبب: الإنهاك، والذعر الليلي، والرعب النهاري. بالإضافة إلى أنه يؤدي إلى عدم القدرة على: الاستمتاع بالحياة، والمشي، والكلام، والتفكير بصورةٍ طبيعيةٍ. ليس ثمة شيءٌ جيدٌ يمكن أن يقال عنه سوى أنه يعطيك خبرةً عن كيفية أن تكون عجوزاً.. عجوزاً ومريضاً، ومشرفاً على الموت، وبطيء التفكير، ونَكِداً، ومفتقداً: النعمة الإلهية، والتهذيب، وتناسق حركات العضلات. كما أنه لا يمنحك القدرة على الإيمانٌ في مستقبل الحياة، والاستمتاع بالجنس، وتذوق روعة الموسيقى، أو على أن تضحك وتجعل غيرك يضحك.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“لقد كنت معتادة على كون عقلي هو أحسن صديق لي , وعلى إدارة حوارات لانهائية لها داخل رأسي , وعلى ما بنيته داخل عقلي من مصدر للضحك والفكر التحليلي لإنقاذي من البيئة المملة.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“لقد كانت الأشياء الغبية، والمتفائلة بيأس، والمتواضعة التي لم يقلها، هي التي جعلتني على قيد الحياة.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“الزمن ساعدني على النسيان، ولكنه بمرارةٍ رهيبة أخذ وقته من أجل ذلك.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“It has been said that grief is a kind of madness. I disagree. There is a sanity to grief, in its just proportion of emotion to cause, that madness does not have. I know madness well, but I understood little of grief and I was not always certain which was grief and which was madness. Grief, as it transpires has its own territory.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, Nothing Was the Same

“Circadian rhythms are implicated in some of the symptoms of depression, such as early awakening and diurnal variation in mood. The possible importance of the circadian system in its pathogenesis is suggested by the capacity of experimental alterations in the timing of sleep and wakefulness to alter clinical state." Biological rhythms range in frequency from milliseconds to months or years. Most rhythmic disturbances identified in the symptoms of manic-depressive illness occur over the course of a day-that is, they are circadian rhythms-and are most apparent in the daily rest-activity cycle. The episodic recurrences of the illness, on the other hand, are usually infradian, oscillating over periods of months or years. Episodic mania and depression may also reflect disturbances in ultradian rhythms, those that oscillate more than once a day, which are common at the cellular level and in hormone secretion, as well as in such autonomic functions as circulation, blood pressure, respiration, heart rate, and in the cycles of sleep.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament

“What in the hell are you doing running around the parking lot at this hour?” he asked. A not unreasonable question.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

“Psychologist J.P. Guilford, who carried out a long series of systematic psychological studies into the nature of creativity, found that several factors were involved in creative thinking; many of these, as we shall see, relate directly to the cognitive changes that take place during mild manias as well. Fluency of thinking, as defined by Guilford, is made up of several related and empirically derived concepts, measured by specific tasks: word fluency, the ability to produce words each, for example, containing a specific letter or combination of letters; associational fluency, the production of as many synonyms as possible for a given word in a limited amount of time; expressional fluency, the production and rapid juxtaposition of phrases or sentences; and ideational fluency, the ability to produce ideas to fulfill certain requirements in a limited amount of time. In addition to fluency of thinking, Guilford developed two other important concepts for the study of creative thought: spontaneous flexibility, the ability and disposition to produce a great variety of ideas, with freedom to switch from category to category; and adaptive flexibility, the ability to come up with unusual types of solutions to set problems.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament

“Pills cannot, do not, ease one back into reality; they only bring one back headlong, careening, and faster than can be endured at times. Psychotherapy is a sanctuary; it is a battleground; it is a place I have been psychotic, neurotic, elated, confused, and despairing beyond belief.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

“I continue to have concerns about my decision to be public about my illness, but one of the advantages of having had manic-depressive illness for more than thirty years is that very little seems insurmountably difficult. Much like crossing the Bay Bridge when there is a storm over the Chesapeake, one may be terrified to go forward, but there is no question of going back.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“My mind was flying high that day, courtesy of whatever witches’ brew of neurotransmitters God had programmed into my genes, and I filled page after page with what I am sure, thinking back on it, were very strange responses.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind