mental-health-activists

"February 15th, 2014, I remember waking up that morning with a strange pittish feeling in my stomach. I had no idea what I was feeling. Life all of a sudden just felt meaningless"

"Understand what you are going through. Share it with people you trust. Even if they judge you, so what"

"It is important for you to realise that it is okay to go through what you are going through"

"There is hope. We’re all in this together"

"Depression is not the same as sadness. Depression is an illness like any other illness such as cancer and diabetes"

"Fear is not rooted in fact. Fear is rooted in negative thoughts and the story lines in our heads."

"Burnout is a response to unhealthy boundaries."

"It’s okay for a small child to set limits like not eating meat or feeling uncomfortable around certain people. Parents who respect those boundaries make space for their children to feel safe and loved, and they reinforce the positive habit of articulating needs. When parents ignore these preferences, children feel lonely, neglected, and like their needs don’t matter—and they will likely struggle with boundaries as adults."

"Remember: there is no such thing as guilt-free boundary setting. If you want to minimize (not eliminate) guilt, change the way you think about the process. Stop thinking about boundaries as mean or wrong; start to believe that they’re a nonnegotiable part of healthy relationships, as well as a self-care and wellness practice."

"Avoidance is a passive-aggressive way of expressing that you are tired of showing up. Hoping the problem will go away feels like the safest option, but avoidance is a fear-based response. Avoiding a discussion of our expectations doesn’t prevent conflict. It prolongs the inevitable task of setting boundaries."

"Resilience is the ability to embrace what happened."

"We can't stop others from neglecting us, but we can stop ignoring ourselves."

"The most important question you need to answer is What do you want for your life? Bear in mind that what you want might not currently exist in your family."

"understanding breeds grace."

"You aren't what happened to you."

"Be the person you would have looked up to in childhood."

"What you're searching for in others lies within you."

"Honesty isn’t betrayal; it’s courage. Stop sugarcoating your experiences and allow the truth to free you. People often misrepresent their relationships and experiences because they’re too afraid to admit what’s true. But denial will keep you from breaking free from your past."

"Critical thinking is a threat to unhealthy systems, and questions make people think."

"Visit the past, but don't stay there."

"We simply can’t have a healthy relationship with another person without communicating what’s acceptable and unacceptable to us."

"It may be hard to just listen without offering advice as people share their problems, but this is often the best support we can give."

"we victimize ourselves further when we let our fear prevent us from doing what we need to do."

"It’s true that setting boundaries isn’t easy. Paralyzing fear about how someone might respond can easily hold us back. You might play out awkward interactions in your mind and prepare yourself for the worst possible outcome. But trust me: short-term discomfort for a long-term healthy relationship is worth it every time!"

"Discomfort is a part of the process."

"healthy people appreciate honesty and don’t abandon us if we say no."

"People don’t know what you want. It’s your job to make it clear. Clarity saves relationships."

"The hardest thing about implementing boundaries is accepting that some people won’t like, understand, or agree with yours. Once you grow beyond pleasing others, setting your standards becomes easier. Not being liked by everyone is a small consequence when you consider the overall reward of healthier relationships."

"How they treat you is about who they are, not who you are."

"We don't naturally fall into perfect relationship; we create them"

"Tell people what you need."

"The ability to say no to yourself is a gift. If you can resist your urges, change your habits, and say yes to only what you deem truly meaningful, you’ll be practicing healthy self-boundaries. It’s your responsibility to care for yourself without excuses."

"Boundaries will set you free. (Introduction)"

"I always felt pressure as a child to perform, but again that came from the people who were managing my career. There was no such thing as halfway, I had to do it to the hilt."

"All that hitting out and pulling and tugging every performance for two years was probably a kind of therapy for me, a release. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened to me if I adjust had to hold it all in."

"That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. But then, things often don’t turn out the way you plan."

"Whatever this thing is that takes over you, that says that you are worthless, that really the only answer is to kill yourself, is so much more powerful that that's... the calling you relate to."

"You know sometimes when you act, you work through some things as if you would in a therapy session."

"I’ve had trouble sleeping for a good part of my life, And what I would always do is start at the very beginning of ‘The Miracle Worker’ and say all of the lines, all the way through."

"She’s much more together and mature. She’s raised two kids and five stepchildren, and she’s a grandmother. I can’t get over that."

"I think maybe the most important part of her legacy is her acting. Above and beyond anything, the reason any of the other stuff is possible in terms of the scope of the impact that she was able to have with people was her talent and her work and her work ethic, her discipline. She worked extremely hard."

"There was so much suffering, She really, really suffered in a way that — we were desperate to help relieve her suffering, and so it's just a blessing that she's not suffering anymore."

"I wrote the book not to have a catharsis, because I was under the impression that I already have had many catharses as one could have."

"Poetry has been an instrument of change and revolution since it existed. It is protest and defiance and celebration and a love anthem. It is how we communicate so of course it is also how we enact change."

"....The talent is here. The opportunities aren't. And it is the opportunities that foster growth."

"It is the poets who tell the stories in a rhythm that forces the masses and the aristocracy to listen."

"Poetry, and art in general, allows us to take what is around us and set it on fire. It is the tool we use to enact and document change."

"I don’t profess to be any one religion, I think all religions are flawed because people are flawed. But we have the potential and capacity to be bigger than our flaws."

"I found, near Boston, in the jails and asylums for the poor, a numerous class brought into unsuitable connection with criminals and the general mass of paupers. I refer to idiots and insane persons, dwelling in circumstances not only adverse to their own physical and moral improvement, but productive of extreme disadvantages to all other persons brought into association with them. I applied myself diligently to trace the causes of these evils, and sought to supply remedies. As one obstacle was surmounted, fresh difficulties appeared. Every new investigation has given depth to the conviction that it is only by decided, prompt, and vigorous legislation the evils to which I refer, and which I shall proceed more fully to illustrate, can be remedied. I shall be obliged to speak with great plainness, and to reveal many things revolting to the taste, and from which my woman’s nature shrinks with peculiar sensitiveness. But truth is the highest consideration. I tell what I have seen — painful and shocking as the details often are — that from them you may feel more deeply the imperative obligation which lies upon you to prevent the possibility of a repetition or continuance of such outrages upon humanity. If I inflict pain upon you, and move you to horror, it is to acquaint you with sufferings which you have the power to alleviate, and make you hasten to the relief of the victims of legalized barbarity."

"Did Elizabeth Fry, of England, neglect her family? No! After rearing her eight or ten children, she went forth and did the things that Howard did, and greater. See Dorothea Dix, and what a ministering angel she has been! Look at the licentiousness of our own city of Penn, and see how Myra Townsend went forth and established a reformatory house for her sisters; see how she gathered them there and improved their situations, and awakened in them a desire for a better life."