“
It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative - which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
“
We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.
”
”
Dorianne Laux (The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry)
“
I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town.
”
”
T. Coraghessan Boyle
“
And while a bald head and a looped ribbon were seen as badges of courage and hope, her reluctant vocabulary and vanishing memories advertised mental instability and impending insanity. Those with cancer could expect to be supported by their community. Alice expected to be an outcast.
”
”
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
“
God judges men from the inside out; men judge men from the outside in. Perhaps to God, an extreme mental patient is doing quite well in going a month without murder, for he fought his chemical imbalance and succeeded; oppositely, perhaps the healthy, able and stable man who has never murdered in his life yet went a lifetime consciously, willingly never loving anyone but himself may then be subject to harsher judgment than the extreme mental patient. It might be so that God will stand for the weak and question the strong.
”
”
Criss Jami (Healology)
“
Too evident sorrow does not inspire pity but repugnance, it is the sign of mental instability or of bad manners: it is morbid.
”
”
Philippe Ariès (Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History))
“
Children with multiple ACEs are more likely to struggle with anxiety and depression, to suffer from heart disease and obesity, and to contract certain types of cancers. They’re also more likely to underperform in school and suffer from relationship instability as adults. Even excessive shouting can damage a kid’s sense of security and contribute to mental health and behavioral issues down the road. Harvard
”
”
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
“
I've never enjoyed being fully present, a muted reality has been the landscape I've preferred and mainly inhabited forever. Sure, feeling is good, but not too much, and if someone is able to get away with suffering devastating loss, massive regret, heartache, physical agony, mental instability, isolation, humiliation, abuse, incarceration, depression, tragedy etc. with a blanket of chemical protection, then who can say it's wrong?
”
”
Mark Lanegan (Devil in a Coma)
“
Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly
natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, most
of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or
incivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections);
obstinacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal to
believe what all sensible people know is true); childishness (an
apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness
for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper
respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying
over nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation
or both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking,
smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and
neatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes);
remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual
feature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strange
admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness,
the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelings
for or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of
cunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness,
and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurable
addiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good.
”
”
John Gardner (On Becoming a Novelist)
“
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
November 29, 2016
Dear President Obama,
We are writing to express our grave concern regarding the mental stability of our President-Elect. Professional standards do not permit us to venture a diagnosis for a public figure whom we have not evaluated personally. Nevertheless, his widely reported symptoms of mental instability — including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality — lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office.
We strongly recommend that, in preparation for assuming these responsibilities, he receive a full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation by an impartial team of investigators.
Sincerely,
Judith Herman, M.D. Professor of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School
Nanette Gartrell, M.D.
Dee Mosbacher, M.D.
”
”
Judith Lewis Herman
“
...it is my belief that all of us suffer from some kind of mental instability. What would you say if I told you we all are a little crazy?
”
”
C.S. Servigna (Home by the Sea)
“
Yes, somehow I'd reached the point of mental instability where I was making up excuses to justify my actions to my own brain.
”
”
Jeff Strand (Blister)
“
Another piano falls, but this time it’s me— or my lascivious loneliness, or my grab bag of mental instabilities and emotional shortcomings, or whatever.
”
”
Kris Kidd (Split Lips: Stories About Love & Sex)
“
There is no other credible explanation. Failure to accept a conclusion supported by evidence is a fundamentally irrational position and indicative of mental instability.
”
”
Anthony Ryan (The Legion of Flame (The Draconis Memoria #2))
“
Conviction rates in the military are pathetic, with most offenders going free AND THERE IS NO RECOURSE FOR APPEAL! The military believes the Emperor has his clothes on, even when they are down around his ankles and he is coming in the woman's window with a knife! Military juries give low sentences or clear offender's altogether. Women can be heard to say “it's not just me” over and over. Men may get an Article 15, which is just a slap on the wrist, and doesn't even follow them in their career. This is hardly a deterrent. The perpetrator frequently stays in place to continue to intimidate their female victims, who are then treated like mental cases, who need to be discharged. Women find the tables turned, letters in their files, trumped up Women find the tables turned, letters in their files, trumped up charges; isolation and transfer are common, as are court ordered psychiatric referrals that label the women as lying or incompatible with military service because they are “Borderline Personality Disorders” or mentally unbalanced. I attended many of these women, after they were discharged, or were wives of abusers, from xxx Air Force Base, when I was a psychotherapist working in the private sector. That was always their diagnosis, yet retesting tended to show something different after stabilization, like PTSD.
”
”
Diane Chamberlain (Conduct Unbecoming: Rape, Torture, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Military Commanders)
“
Everyone watches television and decides they'll roleplay their favorite sociopath or their favorite mental invalid. Many of the people around today aspire to be deranged or something, it's embarrassing. It's like they want an escape from the mundane so badly that they'd induce (or act out) mental instability to get there.
”
”
Mike Ma (Harassment Architecture)
“
... everything based on arguments involving the ''is'' of identidy and the older el (elementalistic) 'logic' and 'psychology', such as the prevailing doctrines, laws, institutions, systems. , cannot possibly be in full accordance with the structure of our nervous system. This, in turn, affects the latter and results in the prevailing private and public un-sanity. Hence, the unrest, unhappines, nervous strain, irritability, lack of wisdom and absence of balance, the instability of our instituitions, the wars and revolutions, the increase of ''mental ills, prostitution, criminality, commercialism as a creed, the inadequate standards of education, the low professional standards of lawyers, priests, politicians, physicians, teachers, parents, and even of scientists - which in the last-named field often lead to dogmatic and antisocial attitudes and lack of creativeness.
”
”
Alfred Korzybski (Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics)
“
Children did not evolve to handle the virality, anonymity, instability, and potential for large-scale public shaming of the virtual world. Even adults have trouble with it.
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness)
“
They are all in the same category, both those who are afflicted with fickleness, boredom and a ceaseless change of purpose, and who always yearn for what they left behind, and those who just yawn from apathy. There are those too who toss around like insomniacs, and keep changing their position until they find rest through sheer weariness. They keep altering the condition of their lives, and eventually stick to that one in which they are trapped not by weariness with further change but by old age which is too sluggish for novelty. There are those too who suffer not from moral steadfastness but from inertia, and so lack the fickleness to live as they wish, and just live as they have begun. In fact there are innumerable characteristics of the malady, but one effect - dissatisfaction with oneself. This arises from mental instability and from fearful and unfulfilled desires, when men do not dare or do not achieve all they long for, and all they grasp at is hope: they are always unbalanced and fickle, an inevitable consequence of living in suspense. They struggle to gain their prayers by every path, and they teach and force themselves to do dishonourable and difficult things; and when their efforts are unrewarded the fruitless disgrace tortures them, and they regret not the wickedness but the frustration of their desires. Then they are gripped by repentance for their attempt and fear of trying again, and they are undermined by the restlessness of a mind that can discover no outlet, because they can neither control nor obey their desires, by the dithering of life that cannot see its way ahead, and by the lethargy of a soul stagnating amid its abandoned hopes.
”
”
Seneca (On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (Penguin Great Ideas))
“
Transient states of depersonalisation are appreciably commoner during migraine auras. Freud reminds us that “… the ego is first and foremost a body-ego … the mental projection of the surface of the body.” The sense of “self” appears to be based, fundamentally, on a continuous inference from the stability of body-image, the stability of outward perceptions, and the stability of time-perception. Feelings of ego-dissolution readily and promptly occur if there is serious disorder or instability of body-image, external perception, or time-perception, and all of these, as we have seen, may occur during the course of a migraine aura.
”
”
Oliver Sacks (Migraine)
“
When he disappeared again, I texted Agent de Cabrera for emergency positivity. I got socked by a poltergeist. I wanna give up. Elian texted: Winston Churchill said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” He ended with a smiley face. I texted back: Probably, Churchill wasn’t being punched in the gob by eldritch spirits. Then, to add that pinch of positivity, I added, I’m positive his enthusiasm was a sign of mental instability. There was a thud from somewhere beyond the hall, and a shout of alarm.
”
”
A.J. Aalto (Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files #3))
“
Tyler, I can recommend a good therapist. There's absolutely no shame in seeking help for mental
instability."
"I'll keep it in mind. God knows I haven't been clear in the head since I got tangled up with you.
We can make an appointment together, after you move in."
"I'm not moving in with you."
"Yes, you are.
”
”
Nora Roberts (The Villa)
“
Children with multiple ACEs are more likely to struggle with anxiety and depression, to suffer from heart disease and obesity, and to contract certain types of cancers. They’re also more likely to underperform in school and suffer from relationship instability as adults. Even excessive shouting can damage a kid’s sense of security and contribute to mental health and behavioral issues down the road.
”
”
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
“
We’re at this really unique time, I think, in trans representation in popular culture where homelessness, depression, mental health issues, instability-in-general are still so very real and need to be talked about, but we’re aware that they’ve dominated “trans” stories for years and years.
And we’re now finally at a place where we’re seeing some really positive representations of trans folks in pop culture, and there’s this new pressure -- at least, I feel it, within trans and trans-ally communities -- to only focus on the positive. Because we’re trying, in some sense, to overcompensate for the years and years of too much negativity. As a writer, you might feel a pressure to push the negative stuff away. But there are consequences for that too. Anyone who’s working with trans characters right now is going to have to reconcile that tension.
”
”
Mitch Ellis
“
Imagine yourself having a fight with your romantic partner. The tension of the situation makes your limbic system run at full throttle and you become flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenalin. The high levels of these chemicals suddenly make you so damn angry, that you burst out in front of your partner saying, “I wish you die, so that I can have some peace in my life”. Given the stress of the situation through highly active limbic system, your PFC loses its freedom to take the right decision and you burst out with foul language in front of your partner, that may ruin your relationship. In simple terms due to your mental instability, you lost your free will to make the right decision.
But when the conversation is over, and you relax for a while, your stress hormone levels come down to normal, and you regain your usual cheerful state of mind. Immediately, your PFC starts analyzing the explosive conversation you had with your partner. Healthy activity of the entire frontal lobes, especially the PFC suddenly overwhelms you with a feeling of guilt. Your brain makes you realize, that you have done something devilish. As a result, now you find yourself making the willful decision of apologizing to your partner and making up to him or her, no matter how much effort it takes, because your PFC comes up the solution that it is the healthiest thing to do for your personal life.
From this you can see, that what you call free will is something that is not consistent. It changes based on your mental health. Mental instability or illness, truly cripples your free will. And the healthier your frontal lobes are, the better you can take good decisions. And the most effective way to keep your frontal lobes healthy is to practice some kind of meditation.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (What is Mind?)
“
Facebook Sonnet
Facebook is not just injurious to health,
It's now a full-on humanitarian crisis.
If you think it's just a harmless bad habit,
You're fanning the flames of social necrosis.
Social media ought to make people social,
Not make pavlov's dogs out of humanity.
Yet all that facebook actually does today,
Is drive society towards clinical insanity.
Social media is not necessarily bad,
So long as it doesn't feed on our stability.
Yet facebook has devised the perfect algorithm,
To learn, pump and monetize human instability.
Facebook is the definition of what AI must be not.
Algorithm without humanity is mental holocaust.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World)
“
76. Two men, one heart – one widow?! It was over the news around the end of 2010s – a man called Sonny Graham, 57 at the time, had received a heart transplantation which saved his life. The heart had belonged to Terry Cottle, an adopted father of two, and a husband of a woman named Cheryl, who had taken his life at the age of 33. Here is where things got creepy. Mr. Graham suddenly changed some of his life habits, including his food and drink preferences, which now strangely matched Mr. Cottle's. On top of that – he fell in love with Cheryl, Mr. Cottle's widow. Soon after, they married. However, there was no happy ending to this story. 13 years later, Sonny Graham, who had previously never displayed any signs of mental or emotional instability, took his life as well – in much the same way as late mr. Cottle did. So who says our brain is our only thing responsible for our thoughts and emotions?
”
”
Tyler Backhause (101 Creepy, Weird, Scary, Interesting, and Outright Cool Facts: A collection of 101 facts that are sure to leave you creeped out and entertained at the same time)
“
In studies of first-episode bipolar patients, investigators at McLean Hospital, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Cincinnati Hospital found that at least one-third had used marijuana or some other illegal drug prior to their first manic or psychotic episode.10 This substance abuse, the University of Cincinnati investigators concluded, may “initiate progressively more severe affective responses, culminating in manic or depressive episodes, that then become self-perpetuating.”11 Even the one-third figure may be low; in 2008, researchers at Mt. Sinai Medical School reported that nearly two-thirds of the bipolar patients hospitalized at Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut in 2005 and 2006 experienced their first bout of “mood instability” after they had abused illicit drugs.12 Stimulants, cocaine, marijuana, and hallucinogens were common culprits. In 2007, Dutch investigators reported that marijuana use “is associated with a fivefold increase in the risk of a first diagnosis of bipolar disorder” and that one-third of new bipolar cases in the Netherlands resulted from it.13
”
”
Robert Whitaker (Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America)
“
tried to go to a counselor, but it was just too weird. Talking to some stranger about my feelings made me want to vomit. I did go to the library, and I learned that behavior I considered commonplace was the subject of pretty intense academic study. Psychologists call the everyday occurrences of my and Lindsay’s life “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs. ACEs are traumatic childhood events, and their consequences reach far into adulthood. The trauma need not be physical. The following events or feelings are some of the most common ACEs: •being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parents •being pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at you •feeling that your family didn’t support each other •having parents who were separated or divorced •living with an alcoholic or a drug user •living with someone who was depressed or attempted suicide •watching a loved one be physically abused. ACEs happen everywhere, in every community. But studies have shown that ACEs are far more common in my corner of the demographic world. A report by the Wisconsin Children’s Trust Fund showed that among those with a college degree or more (the non–working class), fewer than half had experienced an ACE. Among the working class, well over half had at least one ACE, while about 40 percent had multiple ACEs. This is really striking—four in every ten working-class people had faced multiple instances of childhood trauma. For the non–working class, that number was 29 percent. I gave a quiz to Aunt Wee, Uncle Dan, Lindsay, and Usha that psychologists use to measure the number of ACEs a person has faced. Aunt Wee scored a seven—higher even than Lindsay and me, who each scored a six. Dan and Usha—the two people whose families seemed nice to the point of oddity—each scored a zero. The weird people were the ones who hadn’t faced any childhood trauma. Children with multiple ACEs are more likely to struggle with anxiety and depression, to suffer from heart disease and obesity, and to contract certain types of cancers. They’re also more likely to underperform in school and suffer from relationship instability as adults. Even excessive shouting can damage a kid’s sense of security and contribute to mental health and behavioral issues down the road. Harvard pediatricians have studied the effect that childhood trauma has on the mind. In addition to later negative
”
”
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
“
Cannabis, the sensation that had reignited in America and helped bring hemp’s recreational usage back to prominence in a quiet, steady British counter-culture, had helped dispel much of the prejudice, entitlement and arrogance that had eluded the careful eye of Simon’s mother, undermining her care during the once-restlessly energetic yet gentle soul’s dedicated mothering of the studious boy. It took root in his thoughts and expectations. Bravado and projection replaced genuine yet understated confidence; much of that which had been endearing in him ceased to be seen, to his mother’s despondency. A bachelor of the arts, the blissfully apathetic raconteur left university, having renounced his faith and openly claiming to feel no connection, either socially or intellectually with the student life and further study. Personal failures and parental despair combined to sober the-21yr old frustrated essayist and tentative poet. Cannabis, ironically sought following the conclusion of his stimulant-fuelled student years, had finally levelled him out, and provided the introspection needed to dispel the lesser demons of his nature. Reefer Madness, such insanity – freely distributed for the mass-consumer audience of the west! Curiosity pushed the wealthy young man’s interest in the plant to an isolated purchase, and thence to regular use. Wracked by introspection, the young man struggled through several months of instability and self-doubt before readjusting his focus to chase goals. Once humorous, Reefer Madness no longer amused him, and he dedicated an entire afternoon to writing an ultimately unpublished critique of the film, that descended into an impassioned defence of the plant. He began to watch with keen interest, as the critically-panned debacle of sheer slapstick silliness successfully struck terror into the hearts of a large section of non-marijuana smoking people in the west. The dichotomy of his own understanding and perception only increased the profound sense of gratitude Simon felt for the directional change in which his life was heading. It helped him escape from earlier attachments to the advantage of his upbringing, and destroyed the arrogance that, he realised with shock, had served to cloud years of his judgement. Thus, positive energy led to forward momentum; the mental readjustment silenced doubts, which in turn brought peace, and hope.
”
”
Daniel S. Fletcher (Jackboot Britain)
“
Head people, those in the intellectual center, have highly developed mental faculties they use to assess and address everything in life that is experienced as a threat or an assault on their inner state. Head people believe in competency as the cure for instability. Through mastering their environment, head people think they’re able to secure their own self-preservation.
”
”
Christopher L. Heuertz (The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth)
“
Another piano falls, but this time it's me— or my lascivious loneliness, or my grab bag of mental instabilities and emotional shortcomings, or whatever.
”
”
Kris Kidd
“
The effects of the war going on in the unseen world manifests in our strained and damaged relationships, emotional instability, mental fatigue, physical exhaustion, and other stuff.
”
”
Unoma Nwankwor (Mended With Love (Sons of Ishmael, #3))
“
Other times, belief works against humanity’s best interests. When mental instability, substance abuse, and unresolved trauma mix themselves into our belief systems, our view of the world can become warped, and the actions of individuals with strange beliefs become a threat to everyone unlucky enough to cross their path. The strange, delusional things humans believe, or can convince others to believe, are infectious—and in terrible cases, deadly.
”
”
Kelly Gaines (Murderous Minds Volume 4: Stories of Real Life Murderers That Escaped the Headlines)
“
Karlen and her colleagues had expected that hostile/intrusive behavior on the part of the mothers would be the most powerful predictor of mental instability in their adult children, but they discovered otherwise. Emotional withdrawal had the most profound and long-lasting impact. Emotional distance and role reversal (in which mothers expected the kids to look after them) were specifically linked to aggressive behavior against self and others in the young adults.
”
”
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
“
God, you trash a few hotel rooms in a fit of grief, and suddenly you’re the poster child for mental instability.
”
”
Sav R. Miller (Vipers and Virtuosos (Monsters & Muses, #2))
“
Despite the fierce determination of my obstinance, I was ignoring the law of causes and effects. The effects of drugs were addiction, broken relationships, incarceration, shattered integrity, marred character, deceit, homelessness, laziness, depression, mental health disorders, instability, dependency, etc. Even if the police weren’t there to enforce the law and hold me to a higher standard, the inherent consequences of drugs would degrade my quality of life.
”
”
Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
“
It wasn’t something I had expected her to say. The bars, yes, I could understand. There were more than a few times I’d woken up in an ally to the beeping of a garbage truck, the dawn light like needles in my eyes, no idea how I’d gotten on that pile of musty cardboard, those memories permanently blotted from my brain. I knew how close I’d come to losing it all, to joining Billie on the other side, but I was better now. Or at least better enough to get through the day. But the asylum? That was a whole other level of mental instability, a level I’d been at only once in my life. It was a low blow.
”
”
Scott William Carter (Ghost Detective (Myron Vale Investigations, #1))
“
Similar to the crystals, a person occupying a wounded theme of consciousness, such as distrust, will create a life that looks and feels like distrust. They will experience thoughts of worry and doubt. Terror will surround them. They will experience feelings of paranoia and distrust. They will perceive enemies, whether physically or mentally. They will feel anxious around other people. Their choice of words will often be full of pessimism or panic. When they look at the world, they will see fearful concerns, instability,
”
”
Mathew Micheletti (The Inner Work: An Invitation to True Freedom and Lasting Happiness)
“
We were forever one earthquake away from losing it all.
”
”
Alison Singh Gee (Where the Peacocks Sing: A Palace, a Prince, and the Search for Home)
“
I definitely thought about touching it to satisfy my curiosity, but luckily for me my mental instability kicked in and I left it alone.
”
”
Mark Tufo (Atlantis (A Shrouded World #2))
“
I think I was afraid that if people saw that I have a mental illness, that I’m not composed a hundred percent of the time, and that I have times of instability, I’d lose everything -- their friendship, my job - everything. I would catastrophize and then create the very situations I feared by acting out in destructive ways.
”
”
Debbie Corso (Stop Sabotaging: A 31-Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life)
“
On January 25, 1995, Russian president Boris Yeltsin came within minutes of initiating a full nuclear strike on the United States because of an unidentified Norwegian scientific rocket. Concern has been raised over a U.S. project to replace the nuclear warheads on two of the twenty-four D5 ICBMs carried by Trident submarines with conventional warheads, for possible use against Iran or North Korea: Russian early-warning systems would be unable to distinguish them from nuclear missiles, expanding the possibilities for unfortunate misunderstandings. Other worrisome scenarios include deliberate malfeasance by military commanders triggered by mental instability and/or fringe political/religious agendas.
But why worry? Surely, if push came to shove, reasonable people would step in and do the right thing, just as they have in the past? Nuclear nations do indeed have elaborate countermeasures in place, just as our body does against cancer. Our body can normally deal with isolated deleterious mutations, and it appears that fluke coincidences of as many as four mutations may be required to trigger certain cancers. Yet if we roll the dice enough times, shit happens-Stanley Kubrick's dark nuclear war comedy Dr. Strangelove illustrates this with a triple coincidence.
”
”
Max Tegmark (Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality)
“
Pitt the Elder, had been prime minister a generation before (1766-68). He was a manic-depressive, had had a mental breakdown in 1751 while a Cabinet minister (Paymaster General) and had withdrawn from public office for three years. While serving in the highest office, clear signs of mental instability were evident. He spent most of his prime ministership sequestered away in a small room in his house at Hampstead, trying to avoid his ministers and the pressures of governing. During his time, his Chancellor was doing his own thing, unwisely levying the taxes on the North American colonies that would eventually ignite the War of Independence.
”
”
Phil Mason (Napoleon's Hemorrhoids: ... and Other Small Events That Changed History)
“
I’d say our suspect has all the signs of mental instability combined with a psychopathic personality disorder.’ ‘Hmmm,’ said Malcolm, scratching his head. ‘Could be anybody.
”
”
Mervyn S. Whyte ('No Plan B, Malcolm!')
“
In addition to the implications for terrorism, it is also important to understand multiple victim shootings from a purely theoretical perspective. Many criminals who shoot into crowds of people are diagnosed as being mentally instable. But the evidence in this book shows that even these supposedly “insane” criminals generally respond to the deterrent effect of guns the way a sane person would.
”
”
John R. Lott Jr. (The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong)
“
I can relate to the instability, hunger, raging mental illness and its fallout. These are all old friends of mine, and my family’s.
”
”
Rose McGowan (Brave)
“
In studies of first-episode bipolar patients, investigators at McLean Hospital, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Cincinnati Hospital found that at least one-third had used marijuana or some other illegal drug prior to their first manic or psychotic episode.10 This substance abuse, the University of Cincinnati investigators concluded, may “initiate progressively more severe affective responses, culminating in manic or depressive episodes, that then become self-perpetuating.”11 Even the one-third figure may be low; in 2008, researchers at Mt. Sinai Medical School reported that nearly two-thirds of the bipolar patients hospitalized at Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut in 2005 and 2006 experienced their first bout of “mood instability” after they had abused illicit drugs.12 Stimulants, cocaine, marijuana, and hallucinogens were common culprits. In 2007, Dutch investigators reported that marijuana use “is associated with a fivefold increase in the risk of a first diagnosis of bipolar disorder” and that one-third of new bipolar cases in the Netherlands resulted from it.13 Antidepressants have also led many people into the bipolar camp, and to understand why, all we have to do is return to the discovery of this class of drugs. We see tuberculosis patients treated with iproniazid dancing in the wards, and while that magazine report was probably a bit exaggerated, it told of lethargic patients suddenly behaving in a manic way. In 1956, George Crane published the first report of antidepressant-induced mania, and this problem has remained present in the scientific literature ever since.14 In 1985, Swiss investigators tracking changes in the patient mix at Burghölzli psychiatric hospital in Zurich reported that the percentage with manic symptoms jumped dramatically following the introduction of antidepressants. “Bipolar disorders increased; more patients were admitted with frequent episodes,” they wrote.15 In a 1993 practice guide to depression, the APA confessed that “all anti-depressant treatments, including ECT [electroconvulsive therapy], may provoke manic or hypomanic episodes.”16
”
”
Robert Whitaker (Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America)
“
Notably, the term estrogen itself was derived from the Greek oistros, which means frenzy or mad desire—further reinforcing a historical trend to frame female physiology through the lens of mental instability.
”
”
Lisa Mosconi (The Menopause Brain)
“
Struggling relationships, never-ending dark nights of the soul, ungodly delays, anxiety, depression, mental exhaustion, physical fatigue, and emotional instability are all symptoms of spiritual battles occurring in the unseen world.
”
”
Kimberly Fosu (Who Am I?: The Journey From Unworthy to Called)
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Attachment theory is not about parent blaming. Disruptions in attachment can occur for various reasons outside of the attachment figures’ control: physical or mental illness, hospitalizations, accidents, the needs of other children or family members in the home, death, poverty, housing instability, war and other social factors. I give a more in-depth analysis of the different levels of potential attachment ruptures in Chapter Three.
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Jessica Fern (Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy)
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However, despite this stability, we assembled a list of the difficulties and pressures of modern life that we particularly recognised. Deadlines, travel, the stress of flying, the lure of money, a fear of dying, and the problems of mental instability spilling over into madness . . . Armed with this list Roger went off to continue working on the lyrics. Compared to the rather piecemeal approach of our previous albums, which had often been conceived in an air of desperation rather than inspiration, this felt like a considerably more constructive way of working. Continuing band discussions about the aims and aspirations of the record helped to fuel the process.
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Nick Mason (Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition): (Rock and Roll Book, Biography of Pink Floyd, Music Book))
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Only then did scientists realize the rather profound conclusions of the experiment: REM sleep is what stands between rationality and insanity. Describe these symptoms to a psychiatrist without informing them of the REM-sleep deprivation context, and the clinician will give clear diagnoses of depression, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia. But these were all healthy young individuals just days before. They were not depressed, weren’t suffering from anxiety disorders or schizophrenia, nor did they have any history of such conditions, self or familial. Read of any attempts to break sleep-deprivation world records throughout early history, and you will discover this same universal signature of emotional instability and psychosis of one sort or another. It is the lack of REM sleep—that critical stage occurring in the final hours of sleep that we strip from our children and teenagers by way of early school start times—that creates the difference between a stable and unstable mental state.
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Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
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If you make a composite of these symptoms (unable to maintain focus and attention, deficient learning, behaviorally difficult, with mental health instability), and then strip away the label of ADHD, these symptoms are strongly overlapping with those caused by a lack of sleep. Take an under-slept child to a doctor and describe these symptoms without mentioning the lack of sleep, which is not uncommon, and what would you imagine the doctor is diagnosing the child with, and medicating them for? Not deficient sleep, but ADHD.
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Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
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Since the Roswell Incident in 1947, our government has been willing to ruin the reputation of many professional observers such as airline pilots, police officers, etc., by circulating false reports of their drunkenness or mental instability. It’s only prudent to assume that it’s ready to use such tactics to discredit abductees, as well. (p.60 )
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Chuck Weiss (Abducted By Aliens)
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Ministry" or "spirituality" cannot conceal instability, brokenness, or wounds. These things bleed out. We can talk spiritually, read the Bible, and pray all day, but it won't make trauma, hurt or toxic thinking and behavior disappear.
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Elena Huggins (Untwist Me: Uncomplicated Life-Hacks for Mental & Emotional Liberation)
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For instance, if a person practices tapas in order to acquire paranormal abilities (siddhi) that will impress or overpower others, he or she consolidates rather than transcends the ego and thus becomes diverted from the path. If, again, a practitioner confuses the balanced self-challenge of genuine tapas with merely painful penance, springing from sheer ignorance and a subconscious masochism, he or she is bound to reap only pain and suffering that will undermine his or her physical health, possibly contributing to emotional instability or even mental illness. Two and a half thousand years ago, Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, learned the important difference between genuine (i.e., self-transcending) tapas and misconceived penance. For six long years he pushed himself until his bodily frame became emaciated and was close to collapse, but still without yielding the longed-for spiritual freedom. Then his inner wisdom led him to take the middle path (madhya-mārga) beyond damaging extremes. Gautama abandoned his severe, self-destructive tapas and nourished his body properly. His fellow ascetics, who had always looked to him for inspiration, thought he had returned to a worldly life and shunned him. Later, after Gautama’s spiritual awakening, their paths crossed again and his radiance was so impressive that they could not help but bow to him with utmost respect. Genuine tapas makes us shine like the Sun. Then we can be a source of warmth, comfort, and strength for others.
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Georg Feuerstein (The Deeper Dimension of Yoga: Theory and Practice)
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When Parker first started separating the young monkeys from their moms, she predicted that the early life stress would lead to emotional instability. But instead, the stress led to resilience. As they grew up, the monkeys who had experienced early life stress were less anxious than the more sheltered monkeys. They explored more in new environments and showed greater curiosity toward new objects—a young monkey’s version of courage. They were quicker to solve new mental challenges that the experimenters gave them. As juveniles—the equivalent of teenagers—the previously stressed monkeys even showed greater self-control. All of these effects lasted into adulthood. The early life stress had set the young monkeys on
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Kelly McGonigal (The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It)
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This is me just going on a rant about self harm and my experience started when I was 7 through 10 I was always getting raped my my cousin I had told my brother and after he said "well so u wanna have sex with me" i kept telling him no then he force me to I was 7 he was 9 and the thing with him lasted until i was fucking 12 mothers day weekend of 2022 i was scared, alone so I went to my last resort, cutting i was always in the care of my father fast forward to about 2 months later so in july i went 4 months without seeing my father so iwas heart broken i couldent see him so now my father was in a motorcycling accident i mean he was mentally abusive so i kinda laughed then i realized that he night not make it
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Sarai Hawkins
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Children with multiple ACEs are more likely to struggle with anxiety and depression, suffer from heart disease and obesity, and contract certain types of cancers. They're also more likely to underperform in school and suffer from relationship instability as adults. Even excessive shouting can damage a kid's sense of security and contribute to mental health and behavioral issues down the road.
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J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
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dating question
-What do you want from this world?
-To have a wardrobe.
In his first meeting with Katrina, she asked him a dating question, and his answer was unconventional, he wished he could buy a wardrobe, in which he put his belongings, a metaphor for the instability in his life, so how does he do this, while he is without a homeland, without a home, moving from place to another, carrying a bag containing a few of his personal belongings.
About to cheat on Khadija, the curiosity in the intelligence man’s mind overpowered him, the desire for knowledge, exploration, information, and a thirst for more details, the smallest details.
Plan the process with the mentality of a computer programmer, “I will leave them a loophole in the system, they will hack me through it, and to do this they have to open their doors to send their code, and at this very moment, I am sending my code in the opposite direction.
The most vulnerable account devices to hack are the hackers themselves. They enter the systems through special ports, which are opened to them by the so-called Trojan horse, a type of virus, with which they target the victim, open loopholes for them, infiltrate through them, and in both cases, they, in turn, have to open ports on their devices to complete the connection, from which they can be hacked backward.
Katrina is a Trojan horse, he will not close the ports in front of her, she must succeed in penetrating him, and she will be his bridge connecting them, he will sneak through her, to the most secret and terrifying place in the world, a journey that leads him to the island of Malta, to enter the inevitable den.
This is how the minds of investigators and intelligence men work, they must open the outlets of their minds to the fullest, to collect information, receive it, and deal with it, and that is why their minds are the most vulnerable to penetration, manipulation, and passing misleading information to them.
It is almost impossible to convince a simple man, that there is life outside the planet, the outlets of his mind are closed, he is not interested in knowledge, nor is he collecting information, and the task of entering him is difficult, they call him the mind of the crocodile, a mind that is solid, closed, does not affect anything and is not affected by anything, He has his own convictions, he never changes them.
While scientists, curious, intellectuals, investigators, and intelligence men, the ports of their minds are always open.
And just as hackers can penetrate websites by injecting their URL addresses with programming phrases, they can implant their code into the website’s database, and pull information from it. The minds of such people can also be injected, with special codes, some of them have their minds ready for injection, and one or two injections are sufficient to prepare for the next stage, and for some, dozens of injections are not enough, and some of them injected their minds themselves, by meditation, thinking, and focusing on details, as Ruslan did.
Khadija did not need more than three injections, but he trusted the love that brought them together, there is no need, she knew a lot about him in advance, and she will trust him and believe him. Her mind would not be able to get her away, or so he wished, the woman’s madness had not been given its due.
What he is about to do now, and the revenge videos that she is going to receive will remain in her head forever, and will be her brain’s weapon to escape, when he tries to get her out of the box.
From an early age, he did not enjoy safety and stability, he lived in the midst of hurricanes of chaos, and the heart of randomness. He became the son of shadows and their master.
He deserved the nickname he called himself “Son of Chaos.
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Ahmad I. AlKhalel (Zero Moment: Do not be afraid, this is only a passing novel and will end (Son of Chaos Book 1))
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What if she had continually and honestly risked conflict in the present, in the service of longer-term truth and peace? What if she had treated the micro-collapses of her marriage as evidence of an underlying instability, eminently worthy of attention, instead of ignoring them, putting up with them, or smiling through them, in such a nice, agreeable manner? Maybe she would be different, and her husband, different too. Maybe they would still be married, formally and in spirit. Maybe they would both be much younger, physically and mentally, than they are now. Maybe her house would have been founded more on rock and less on sand.
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Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
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expected that hostile/intrusive behavior on the part of the mothers would be the most powerful predictor of mental instability in their adult children, but they discovered otherwise. Emotional withdrawal had the most profound and long-lasting impact. Emotional distance and role reversal (in which mothers expected the kids to look after them) were specifically linked to aggressive behavior against self and others in the young adults.
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
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When there is no true balance there are bound to be repercussions.” He paused. “I hinted once that the human body was out of tune. The same, with due respect, applies to the mental state. A man’s mind should be precisely balanced between emotion and reason. In true order a man would consult reason before being swept away by emotion. The emotion itself should be the force to vitalize and empower his considered action. Bluntly, the race is unstable and out of balance. You consider this instability normal because you have met and experienced no other.”
“I get your point, but I’m not sure I care for it.” Gaynor was frowning. “Hell, you’re telling me politely we’re all nut cases.” Duncan looked at him directly and without smiling. “Mr. Gaynor, you’re demonstrating my point admirably. You’re allowing pride and resentment to overrule your intellect.
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Philip E. High (The Prodigal Sun)
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Sometimes the darkness seems too much, the weight you carry threatens to crush you, and optimism becomes a foggy abstraction.
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Topher Edwards (The BPD Journals III: Stable Instability)
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Personality disorders. A personality disorder involves a lasting pattern of emotional instability and unhealthy behavior that causes problems in your life and relationships. Examples include borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder.
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John Ellsworth (The Mental Case (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thrillers #7))
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So what can be done about dangerousness? How can we intervene in cases of mental instability or character defect before it’s too late?
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John E. Douglas (Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit (Mindhunter #1))
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Sometimes I wish teachers would treat us like inferiors the way they do the rest of the students. Special treatment makes me feel in debt, but then again, Smuttley is a guidance counselor, so he'd probably cause mental instability or something if he went around yelling at kids.
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Julie Cross (On Thin Ice (Juniper Falls #3))
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The prototypical borderline patient is almost always coded as feminine.
Consider again the symptoms of borderline personality disorder. An unstable sense of self, fears of abandonment, difficulties maintaining relationships, self-harm behaviors, mood instability, feeling empty, dissociation, outbursts of anger, impulsivity: if you remove the concept of mental disorder, does this not sound like every patriarchal stereotype of women that you have ever heard? If they are women we don't like, they are crazy, manipulative "bitches"; if these traits are portrayed in a positive light, they are manic pixie dream girls, a term first coined by the film critic Nathan Rabin.
Borderline personality disorder is the most egregious example of a gendered personality disorder, but most of them demonstrate some degree of gender bias. As our understanding of the construction of gender has increased, it has become further evident that traits stereotypically associated with femininity are far more likely to be categorized as a disorder.
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Jonathan Foiles ((Mis)Diagnosed: How Bias Distorts Our Perception of Mental Health)