Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish with the right line, the right bait, at the right time of day, at the right sort of spot, and if he has the right recreational or commercial licence he may, with practise and experience...
I wasn't going to have enough money to pay for a Good Lifestyle, which meant I'd feel ashamed, which meant I'd get depressed, and that was the big one because I knew what that did to me: it made it so I wouldn't get out of bed, which led to the ultim...
He was a simple honest man. He never strayed, He never drank, he never smoked, and he never kissed a maid. And when he passed away his insurance was denied, Because he never lived, they claimed he never died.
What rent do you pay here?" I inquired. "I don’t know,—what is it, Sam?" "All we make," answered Sam. It is a depressing place,—bare, unshaded, with no charm of past association, only a memory of forced human toil,—now, then, and before the w...
People who are contented and serene sleep well. They fall asleep easily, stay asleep, and wake refreshed. Conversely, people who are anxious, stressed, or depressed do not sleep well, and chronic insomnia is strongly associated with mood disorders. T...
If your body is screaming in pain, whether the pain is muscular contractions, anxiety, depression, asthma or arthritis, a first step in releasing the pain may be making the connection between your body pain and the cause. “Beliefs are physical. A t...
Rape and war, she explained are among the most common causes of post-traumatic stress disorder, and survivors of sexual assault frequently exhibit many of the same symptoms and behaviors as survivors of combat: flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, hyper...
I don’t have the heart to tell my sons that the older one gets, the less funny literature becomes—and they would refuse to believe me if I tried to explain that some people don’t think jokes even belong in proper books. I won’t bother breakin...
New Rule: If you married a manic-depressive, three of your children died, and while you were president civil war broke out and someone shot you in the head, your coin really shouldn't say, "In God We Trust.
While people argue with one another about the specifics of Freud's work and blame him for the prejudices of his time, they overlook the fundamental truth of his writing, his grand humility: that we frequently do not know our own motivations in life a...
Because that’s the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don’t to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It’s mine. I ...
In these pages, and in my memories, she reminds me that a short life can also be a good and rich life, that it is possible to live with depression without being consumed by it, and that meaning in life is found together, in family and friendship that...
I had depressing thoughts that the theme, even though I had thought of it, was better than I was as a writer. Henry James or Thomas Mann could easily write it, but not I. 'I'm thinking of writing it from the point of view of someone at the hotel who ...
At that moment, sitting on that park bench, The Writer was overcome by an indefinable sadness not completely ascribable to the state in which The Mother was now, nor the desperation of his decades-long creative crisis, a sadness so strong he could ha...
Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological i...
Oddly enough I never used to suffer from depression on cold, gray, cloudy days like this. I feel as if nature is in harmony with me, that it reflected my soul. On the other hand, when the sun appeared, the children would come out to play in the stree...
Schooling that children are forced to endure—in which the subject matter is imposed by others and the “learning” is motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments rather than by the children’s true interests—turns learning from a joyful act...
Day zero, the disaster, the serious shock, the near self-destruction. Day two, the suffering, the repentance, the depression, and the promises. Day three, the recovery, the wall, some light, and the joy. Day four, the strength, the resolution, the ce...
I recently read in the book My Stroke of Insight by brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor that the natural life span of an emotion—the average time it takes for it to move through the nervous system and body—is only a minute and a half. After that we...
Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditio...
I get depressed with these fluffy dragons and noble elves. Elves were never noble. They were cruel bastards. And I dislike heroes. You can’t trust the buggers. They always let you down. I don’t believe in the natural nobility of kings, because a ...
