Mental Health Inspirational Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Mental Health Inspirational. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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It's up to you today to start making healthy choices. Not choices that are just healthy for your body, but healthy for your mind.
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Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
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It’s never overreacting to ask for what you want and need.
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Amy Poehler
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I lied and said I was busy. I was busy; but not in a way most people understand. I was busy taking deeper breaths. I was busy silencing irrational thoughts. I was busy calming a racing heart. I was busy telling myself I am okay. Sometimes, this is my busy - and I will not apologize for it.
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Brittin Oakman
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It’s a humbling realization that sometimes what we think we want may not align with what God knows we truly need.
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Gregory S. Works (Triumph: Life on the Other Side of Trials, Transplants, Transition and Transformation)
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Don't take my devils away, because my angels may flee too.
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Rainer Maria Rilke
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Don't live the same day over and over again and call that a life. Life is about evolving mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.
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Germany Kent
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Self-pity is spiritual suicide. It is an indefensible self-mutilation of the soul.
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Anthon St. Maarten
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If we keep going in a straight line we'll get out of here. Walking one foot in front of the other, in the same direction, will always get you further than running around in circles. It's about the determination to keep walking forward.
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Matt Haig (The Comfort Book)
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Usually, we believe that our pain is a misfortune that needs to be fixed, but in fact, all pain (physical, mental, and emotional) is a necessary step towards becoming conscious.
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Mada Eliza Dalian
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I thought to myself, time was never on my sideβ€”after all of this, it was, because it led me to the right place at the right time.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
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Yesteryear, you will never be forgotten. I am healing, and it is a beautiful thing.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
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You're going to make it; You're going to be at peace; You're going to create, and love, and laugh, and live; You're going to do great things.
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Germany Kent
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It can be a good thing, too, to learn to sit in your own weirdness.
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Sarah Wilson (First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety)
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Your Monday morning thoughts set the tone for your whole week. See yourself getting stronger, and living a fulfilling, happier & healthier life.
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Germany Kent
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A question that always makes me hazy is it me or are the others crazy' Albert Einstein
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Victoria Ward (The Unconventional Life of Jenna Jaghe)
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Hating our bodies is something that we learn, and it sure as hell is something that we can unlearn.
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Megan Jayne Crabbe (Body Positive Power)
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Recovery is full of ups and downs. There is no such thing as a linear life. But you can always turn your setbacks into setups to come back stronger.
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Brittany Burgunder
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You’ve got to reach bedrock to become depressed enough before you are forced to accept the reality and enormity of the problem.
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Jonathan Harnisch (Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography)
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My story is not a sad story; it's a real one. It's a story about a girl who fought through a storm she thought would never end.
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Hannah Blum (The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love)
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Everyone kept asking me if I wanted to die, Well, no. No I didn't want to die. But no one ever asked me if I wanted to live.
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Brittany Burgunder
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Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration... Existential frustration is neither pathological or pathogenic.
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Viktor E. Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)
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A huge part of recovery and life -is slowing down and accepting the unKNOWN. This is how you get to KNOW –yourself.
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Brittany Burgunder
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Your words control your life, your progress, your results, even your mental and physical health. You cannot talk like a failure and expect to be successful.
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Germany Kent
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It takes bravery to cry out, to release what is in your heart.
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Christy Lefteri (The Beekeeper of Aleppo)
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When things go dark, we can't see what we have. That doesn't mean that we don't have those things. Those things remain, right in front of us. All we need is to light a candle, or ignite some hope, and we can see that what we thought was lost was merely hidden.
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Matt Haig (The Comfort Book)
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If people would only listen to themselves, they would realize how naïve and ignorant they sound. Just because the term was created doesn’t mean it should be used.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Why Are You Obsessed with My Race?)
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I said earlier that making decisions is a key anxiety trigger, If we drill down a bit we can see that this happens because we work to the belief there's a perfect decision out there to be made. But such a thing doesn't exist. And clutching at something that doesn't exist is enough to send anyone into a drowning panic.
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Sarah Wilson (First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety)
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You were never created to live depressed, defeated, guilty, condemned, ashamed or unworthy. We were created to be victorious.
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Joel Osteen
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You own all of yourself, Charlie. Every last bit.
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Kathleen Glasgow (Girl in Pieces)
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Society is collapsing, and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they’re mentally ill is that they’re living in a system that’s not designed to suit the human spirit.
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Russell Brand
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There are scars on my heart, just as thick, as disfiguring as those on my face. I know they're there. I hope some undamaged tissue remains, a patch through which love can come in and flow out. I hope.
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Gail Honeyman
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You want to be happy? You want to be well? Then put your boots on.
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Norah Vincent (Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin)
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Peace can only survive when fed peace.
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Kierra C.T. Banks
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...the problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health.
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Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive approach to Living a Good Life)
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Be the complex elegance of a melting candle. Be a map with 10,000 roads. Be the orange at sunset that outclasses the pink of sunrise. Be the self that dares to be true.
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Matt Haig (Notes on a Nervous Planet)
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I Am More Than My Race: So why put me in a category? Is it because you do not want me to tell my story? Despite my exotic face, I am human, and I am a part of the human race.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Why Are You Obsessed with My Race?)
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I feel sorry for people who maintain relationships and friendships detrimental to their mental health. Everyone is guilty of it at one time or another- but the idea is to strive to be your best; right? So, meanwhile why are so many people faking it? Security? Fear of loneliness? Fears of independence? Fears of being self ? Or just the idea that you can make someone change? Regardless of the justifications you give & treat yourself to... , I hope all of you - "new year -new me types" strive for self care , honest and pure friendships and relationships based of love- and not based off the fake realities of your mind. These delusions of what you hope for instead of what's there, where you and your puppet show master focus more on everyone else and less on self. To change the world you must start within. But you must first BE HONEST with yourself. My new year started a few months ago-- and it was the best choice I ever made- and I hope your recreations are progressive and successful in THE NEW YEAR
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Tiffany Luard
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We're saying the story doesn't end here, that the air in your lungs is there for a reason.
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Jamie Tworkowski
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Self-hatred is only ever a seed planted from outside in.
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Hannah Gadsby
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No one had ever wanted me. And for some reason I didn't even want me anymore. I wished I could have stepped out of my body and given it back, like you do with a shirt that doesn't fit properly.
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Stefanie Sybens (Letters from the What-Went-Before)
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It's feeling full of everything and empty of it all at the same time. This is mental illness.
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Hannah Blum (The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love)
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If you want to see the stars, you must be willing to travel through the dark.
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Hannah Blum (The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love)
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You shouldn't talk to people about the future if you don't believe in one for yourself.
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Francisco X. Stork (The Memory of Light)
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Why is race always a factor?
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Charlena E. Jackson (Why Are You Obsessed with My Race?)
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It doesn't really matter how you look in [family holiday] pictures, it just matters that you're there.
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Megan Jayne Crabbe (Body Positive Power)
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Why is race always a factor? Nowadays, people are so quick to categorize one another and put each other in a stereotypical bubble that they do not take time to know the authentic person. It is sad, and they are quick to judge by looking at someone’s skin.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Why Are You Obsessed with My Race?)
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One of the dear, dear things about getting older, is that it does eventually dawn on you that there is no guidebook. One day it suddenly emerges: No one bloody gets it! None of us knows what we're doing. Thing is, we all put a lot of effort into looking like we did get the guide, that of course we know how to do this caper called life. We put on a smile rather than tell friends we are desperately lonely. And we make loud, verbose claims at dinner parties to make everyone certain of our certainty. We're funny like that.
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Sarah Wilson (First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety)
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We all have problems, but let's not kid ourselves: it's how we deal with them that makes the difference.
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Jonathan Harnisch (Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia)
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I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been, who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details, the way a planet looks smooth, from orbit.
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Ursula K. Le Guin
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Tell me, just how many lives need to be lost until someone realises the impact that their words can have on another individual?
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Isha Barlas (Unspoken Words)
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Hate pulls so much negative energy from the soul. I guess the saying is true; misery loves company.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Why Are You Obsessed with My Race?)
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People were so quick to point at all those inspiring stories of catharsis, completely ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the broken never beat their demons, that the drunkard’s son stayed with the bottle, the war widow never conquered her loneliness, and the defiled child never wiped that imagined black stain from their soul. Because in a world that worshipped the victorious, who the hell wanted to hear about the defeated?
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Nicolas Lietzau (Dreams of the Dying (The Twelfth World, #1))
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You hear a lot about the benefits of insanity or whatever - like, Dr. Karen Singh had once told me this Edgar Allan Poe quote: "The question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence." I guess she was trying to make me feel better, but I find mental disorders to be vastly overrated. Madness, in my admittedly limited experience, is accompanied by no superpowers; being mentally unwell doesn't make you loftily intelligent any more than having the flu does.
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John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
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The way of the world is full of judgmental people. People size me up and down with their eyes. I am told that my hair is too curly to be white and too straight to be black. People ask me questions as if I owe them an answerβ€”what does my race have anything to do with youβ€”and why do you care. The fact is, race shouldn’t existβ€”it is not real. It is made up, but race does matter.” Race shouldn’t matter, but it does. In society's eyes, race is stubbornly real.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Why Are You Obsessed with My Race?)
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During the day, my mood is cloudy, uncertain, blurred, depressing, and there is so much fog I can’t see the sun, nor do I have a head's up that the rain is coming. I wish just one day my mood could at least be fair skies.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
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Be present and aware of the privilege of living.
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Ann Marie Frohoff
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Love me, hate me, hurt me or kill me. I keep fighting.
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Jonathan Harnisch (The Brutal Truth)
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There is no right or wrong way to recover. There is only the decision to do so.
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Brittany Burgunder
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Sometimes I am high; sometimes I am low, but I love myself even when I hate myself.
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Hannah Blum (The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love)
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People who have stepped fully into their power know they don't have to push or force things; they know that real power comes from surrender.
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Renae A. Sauter (An Empowered Life: Mind/Body/Spirit Empowerment)
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There's no shame in getting help. There's no shame in being a work in progress.
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Jacquelyn Middleton (London, Can You Wait?)
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I believe there are a lot of devils who walk on this earth. They just look like human beings.
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Charlena E. Jackson (The Stars Choose Our Lovers)
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~Pinwheels and Dandelions~
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Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
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Healing requires you to be vulnerable and strong at the same time.
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Brittany Burgunder
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I started crying because this would all disappear including me and no one seemed to realise it. Did no one feel what I was feeling.
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Stefanie Sybens (Letters from the What-Went-Before)
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The bird carried me inside his song. It was so beautiful that I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and tried to embrace it, the bird, and when I did, I put my arms around you.
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Aberjhani (Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player : (eBook Edition 2023))
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Broken bones take a long time to heal. Why shouldn't brains?
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Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (Fighting Words)
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When we have graciously endured every adversity, we become like a shining diamond.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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The only time it's hopeless is when you're dead! Long as you're alive, you can get better - you can make it better.
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RoAnna Sylver (Chameleon Moon (Chameleon Moon, #1))
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Counting calories is not the answer, because eating is not the problem.
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Anita Johnston (Eating in the Light of the Moon)
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I am focusing on my breathing. These thoughts exist, and I am letting them pass me by.
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Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Silver Flames
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Happiness is a state of mental,physical and spiritual well-being. Think pleasantly,engaged sport and read daily to enhance your well-being.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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Ironic, isn't it? The moment you decide to kill yourself, you have never felt more alive.
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Stefanie Sybens (Letters from the What-Went-Before)
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I believe with all my heart that just understanding the metapurpose of the anxious struggle helps to make it beautiful. Purposeful, creative, bold, rich, deep things are always beautiful.
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Sarah Wilson (First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety)
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If only you could command your brain to actually do that. It would be cool to have some kind of remote control to switch off your thoughts. Thoughts off, Siri. Or, more positive thoughts, Siri. Forget about this thought, Siri. if only.
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Stefanie Sybens (Letters from the What-Went-Before)
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Free your mind of that which you have no control. It is not only good to do so for your mental, but your overall health. Some people must learn from experience. You can convey knowledge to them and offer to show them the way. But, that doesn't mean your wisdom will be accepted or appreciated.
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Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Sweet Destiny)
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Conscious Parenting on Children's Happiness and matrix of influences: 'We live surrounded by an increasingly complex matrix of impulses allowing strangers of all sorts (TV, media, Internet) interfere in our children’s mental, emotional and spiritual development. Understanding this intricate network and how does the human brain interacts with it is increasingly becoming our door to happiness and health.
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Nataőa Pantović (Conscious Parenting: Mindful Living Course for Parents (AoL Mindfulness #5))
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Dear Yesteryear, I do not feel alone anymore. I have found love. Maybe I should say love has found me. Well, to be fair, we found each other. Yesterday, I didn’t have a home. Yesterday, I didn’t have a pillow where I could lay my head. Yesterday, it was hard to find peace. Yesterday, I wondered if morning would ever come. Yesterday, I was unable to love, dream, and trust. Yesterday, I didn’t understand life. Yesterday, I was walking in my shadow. I didn’t know if I had meaning or a purpose. I am healing from my yesteryears. However, I am still rough around the edges and still have a lot to learn. I used to be so empty inside, but now I have lovely people to fill my no-longer-empty arms. Yesterday, my path was different. I was confused, not knowing if I should go right or leftβ€” move forward or turn around. I do not know what life has in store, but I know for a fact that I do not have to worry about the deadly and narrow path anymore. Yesterday, my sun was blocked by my shadows and everything thing else that came along that didn’t serve me. However, today, the sun is shining brighter than it ever has in my entire life. Yesterday, I will never forget you. You’ve taught me many lessons. I was taught lessons that a young person should never experience or even know about. Some lessons in life leave permitted marks. There have been many lessons I’ve learned that have left so many scars on my heart, but life goes on. I use to be overwhelmed by hate, disbelief, and not knowing if I was going to make it. Now, I am surrounded by warm hugs, smiles, love, and peace. Yesteryear, you will never be forgotten. I am healing, and it is a beautiful thing.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
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Fabulous and fucked up. Absolutely right. That’s what we all are. It’s called being human. Let’s celebrate that, not fear it. And let’s never, ever feel ashamed when the challenges of life become too overwhelming and the fucked-up part gets into the driving seat. That is called being normal.
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Scarlett Curtis (It's Not OK to Feel Blue (and other lies): Inspirational people open up about their mental health)
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Guilt can interfere with our desires to move forward, to heal properly and to become a person who has the mental health and means of proper recompense.
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Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
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Forging fake smiles to hide painful truths doesn't take away the hurt, but sometimes safeguards our emotions from those adamant not to understand.
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Aisha Mirza
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If it tries to take you," Wren said, "I wont' let go.
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Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
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Needing help doesn't have a look, but asking for it always looks beautiful.
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Brittany Burgunder
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Beautiful soul, do not give up. What we believe to be the end is usually just the beginning.
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Hannah Blum
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The light you are searching for can be found in your reflection.
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Hannah Blum (The Truth About Broken: The Unfixed Version of Self-love)
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A really important and underestimated part of recovery is allowing yourself to fall apart without rushing in to fix it.
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Brittany Burgunder
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Helpers carry a heavy load, they listen, love, cry, and often go into the depths of others’ pain. They sometimes enter darkness that no person should have to step into: the darkness of the abuse of a child, of mental health, of our cultural propensity to sit back and do nothing about it. They bear this each day.
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Jenn Bruer (Helping Effortlessly: A Book of Inspiration and Healing)
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There is a type of courage that cannot always be seen. It's a bravery that you have to choose for yourself. You use it in the little, seemingly insignificant choices and decisions you make each day. Keep making these tiny, good choices over and over until you realize your whole life is different and the hero who saved you is yourself.
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Brittany Burgunder
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You’re not fine. You’re not. And that’s OK. The first thing I want you to do is to finally tell yourself that it’s OK not to be OK. To accept that you’re feeling badly and that something isn’t right. Too many of us are in denial because we think that to admit there’s something wrong means we’re weak or broken or odd. I don’t know if it’s society, or just who we associate with, but we need to change our way of thinking. We are not weak. We are not broken. We are not odd.
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S.R. Crawford (From My Suffering: 25 Ways to Break the Chains of Anxiety, Depression & Stress)
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Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud, but I walked numbly through the park, round and round, 40 times for 4 hours just wanting to make it through the day. There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through and the sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways but you can not let it. I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use. the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Meβ€”little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again. It will always be spring again. And there will always be a new day.
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Charlotte Eriksson
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these negative emotions are not simply something to endure and erase. They are purposeful. Beneficial. They tell us what we need. Anger inspires action. Sadness is necessary to process grief. Fear helps keep us safe. Completely eradicating these emotions is not just impossibleβ€”it’s unhealthy. These negative emotions only become toxic when they block out all the other emotions. When we feel so much sadness that we can’t let any joy in. When we feel so much anger that we cannot soften around others. True mental health looks like a balance of these good and bad feelings. As Lori Gottlieb says in her book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, β€œMany people come to therapy seeking closure. Help me not to feel. What they eventually discover is that you can’t mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You’ll also mute the joy.
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Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
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Dear Future Daughter: 1) When you’re at some party, chain smoking on the roof with some strange girl with blue hair and exorbitant large dark eyes, ask her about her day. I promise you, you won’t regret it. Often times you’ll find the strangest of people have the most captivating of stories to tell. 2) Please, never mistake desire for love. Love will engulf your soul, whilst desire will emerge as acid, slowly making it’s way through your veins, gradually burning you from the inside out. 3) No one is going to fucking save you, anything you’ve read or heard otherwise is bullshit. 4) One day a boy is going to come along who’s touch feels like fire and who’s words taste like vanilla, when he leaves you, you will want to die. If you know anything at all, know that it is only temporary. 5) Your mental health comes before school baby, always. If its midnight, and you have an exam the next day but your hands have been shaking for the past hour and a half and you’re not so sure you want to be alive anymore, pull out that carton of Ben and Jerry’s and afterwards, go the fuck to bed. So what if you get a 68% on the exam the next day? You took care of yourself and at the end of the day that will always come before a high test score. To hell with anyone who tells you differently.
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Abbie Nielsen
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The most important thing I've learned is: be kind to yourself. Don't get angry because you feel a certain way and can't help it. Instead sit with what you're feeling. Try to understand where it's coming from and try to reason with it. Everything passes. Eventually.
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Scarlett Curtis (It's Not OK to Feel Blue (and other lies): Inspirational people open up about their mental health)
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What I aim to do here is to deliver in plain English the inspiring science connecting exercise and the brain and to demonstrate how it plays out in the lives of real people. I want to cement the idea that exercise has a profound impact on cognitive abilities and mental health. It is simply one of the best treatments we have for most psychiatric problems.
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John J. Ratey (Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain)
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A lot of self-help methods are based on mental discipline or on working through emotional issues. What these approaches lack in an awareness of how the body is an integral part of the equation. The health of your body influences what you experience in your mind. There is no split. If you can engage your whole spirit in the pursuit of fitness--not just your intellect, not just your emotions-- but instead everything inside you that is truly you, you'll discover what it is to be a whole person.
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David Patchell-Evans (The Real Sexy, Smart and Strong: 30 Tips to Boost Confidence, Get Fit and Feel Great, Inside and Out)
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There may not be any romance to mental illness but who needs romance when the preferable route is agency? The prevailing conversation around mental health issues is agency and the lack thereof on the part of the mentally ill. But what do you do if you’re a paid-up member of the mentally ill populace in question? Do you curl up into a ball and give up? No, you look for solutions. Ultimately, it’s about keeping despair at bay and sometimes simple things like running, taking up a hobby, doing charity work, painting or, in my case, writing can be a galvanizing part of the recovery process. Keeping the brain and the body active can give life a semblance of pleasure and hope. This is what writing has done for me. I took every traumatic element of my condition and channelled it into something useful.
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Diriye Osman
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Right there in that room, listening to the tape Laura gave me, I decided that I wanted something more than what I’d allowed myself to become. Listening to the voices and piano notes fade in and out, I decided that I wanted to be happy. If I had to fight for things in life, I wanted to fight for something bigger than the right to eat with a fork. I wanted to love and be loved and feel alive. I had no idea how to find my way, but listening to that music wash over me, I felt, for the first time, that the struggle I faced would be worth it.
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Eric Nuzum (Giving Up the Ghost: A Story About Friendship, 80s Rock, a Lost Scrap of Paper, and What It Means to Be Haunted)
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Ordinary psyches often react to bad news with a momentary thrill, seeing the world, for once, in jagged clarity, as if lightning has just struck. But then darkness and dysfunction rush in. A mind such as Beethoven's remains illumined, or sees in the darkness shapes it never saw before, which inspire rather than terrify. This altered shape (raptus, he would say) makes art of the shapes, while holding in counterpoise such dualities as intellect and intuition, the conscious and the unconscious, mental health and mental disorder, the conventional and the unconventional, complexity and simplicity.
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Edmund Morris (Beethoven: The Universal Composer (Eminent Lives))
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Strap on those wings and close your eyes and take a step off that ledge with your arms spread and let the faith in yourself be enough to have the wind whip underneath your entire body and lift it back up into the air like a firework or a bird of paradise or a shooting star. It doesn't matter what heights you reach or what storms might set you back or how often you want to yank the feathers from your body and let them burn. You've already done it. Bask in the pride for a moment and soak in the fact that you are amazing.
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Kate Isabel Foley (Instructions For Flight)
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I have to believe that if we didn't need to protect ourselves, we wouldn't be so prone to avoiding rest. When fear enters the story, something changes. In response to the risk and need around us, we have constructed systems around labor that leave even the hardest workers vulnerable, in deficit. Labor is no longer a gift. How could it be when one is withering from hunger? Labor instead becomes a means to an end, not an avenue for flourishing but a transaction for survival. This is a grim human development, for no one wants to spend their days merely surviving. And this transaction is nearly always incongruent with the amount of labor one does. You can work, as my gramma did in California, for a full month just to be able to finally move from the shelter into low-income housing. Meanwhile, the powerful convince us that there is not enough while their pocket spill out in the open. They distract us from this by dangling opportunity in the opposite direction. They appear as rescuers, demanding ceaseless labor from us but presenting it as a gift. We are expected to feel deeply lucky and even indebted to a society that allows us to work, even if that work cannot satisfy our most basic needs.
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Cole Arthur Riley (This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us)