Elyn Saks Famous Quotes & Sayings
32 Elyn Saks Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
My experience is that when one is in psychosis, you're on a mission and nothing is going to stop you. At some level your brain is telling you you probably shouldn't be doing this, but you're on a mission.— Elyn Saks
Don't focus on it," she said. "Don't define yourself in terms of something which even many highly trained and gifted professionals do not fully understand.— Elyn R. Saks
The humanity we all share is more important than the mental illnesses we may not— Elyn R. Saks
Some truths that were too difficult and frightening to know.— Elyn R. Saks
The schizophrenic mind is not so much split as shattered. I like to say schizophrenia is like a waking nightmare.— Elyn Saks
In a way, I had a very good and normal childhood. I had loving and caring parents. But I had a lot of quirks or problems when I was growing up. I had phobias and obsessions.— Elyn Saks
In my experience, the words "now just calm down" almost inevitably have the opposite effect on the person you are speaking to.— Elyn R. Saks
No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental illness.— Elyn R. Saks
I was afraid the staff would laugh at me - and as frightened as I was, the thought of derision frightened me even more. In retrospect, it was a life-threatening deception, somewhat along the lines of hiding recurrent chest pains from one's cardiologist from embarrassment. Nearly— Elyn R. Saks
Nothing I can do. There will be raging fires, and hundreds, maybe thousands of people lying dead in the streets. And it will all - all of it - be my fault.— Elyn R. Saks
There's a tremendous need to implode the myths of mental illness, to put a face on it, to show people that a diagnosis does not have to lead to a painful and oblique life ... We who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources.— Elyn R. Saks
All my life, books had been the life raft, the safe haven, the place I ran to when nothing else worked.— Elyn R. Saks
If you are walking on a path thick with brambles and rocks, a path that abruptly twists and turns, it's easy to get lost, or tired, or discouraged. You might be tempted to give up entirely. But if a kind and patient person comes along and takes your hand, saying, "I see you're having a hard time- here, follow me, I'll help you find your way," the path becomes manageable, the journey less frightening.— Elyn R. Saks
Stigma against mental illness is a scourge with many faces, and the medical community wears a number of those faces.— Elyn R. Saks
Everyone becomes psychotic in his or her own ways.— Elyn Saks
We must stop criminalizing mental illness. It's a national tragedy and scandal that the L.A. County Jail is the biggest psychiatric facility in the United States.— Elyn Saks
I am a woman with chronic schizophrenia. I have spent hundreds of days in psychiatric hospitals. I could have ended up living most of my life on a back ward, but things turned out quite differently.— Elyn Saks
Occupying my mind with complex problems has been my best and most powerful and most reliable defense against my mental illness.— Elyn Saks
There are forces of nature and circumstance that are beyond our control, let alone our understanding, and to insist on victory in the face of this, to accept nothing less, is just asking for a soul-pummeling. The simple truth is, not every fight can be won.— Elyn R. Saks
Dropping in and out of your own life (for psychotic breaks, or treatment in a hospital) isn't like getting off a train at one stop and later getting back on at another. Even if you can get back on (and the odds are not in your favor), you're lonely there. The people you boarded with originally are far, far ahead of you, and now you're stuck playing catch-up.— Elyn R. Saks
But explaining what I've come to call "disorganization" is a different challenge altogether. Consciousness gradually loses its coherence. One's center gives way. The center cannot hold. The "me" becomes a haze, and the solid center from which one experiences reality breaks up like a bad radio signal.— Elyn R. Saks
My mind has been both my best friend and my worst enemy.— Elyn Saks
Mental illness is among the most stigmatized of categories.' People are ashamed of being mentally ill. They fear disclosing their condition to their friends and confidants-and certainly to their employers.— Elyn R. Saks
Even with all that - excellent treatment, wonderful family and friends, supportive work environment - I did not make my illness public until relatively late in life, and that's because the stigma against mental illness is so powerful that I didn't feel safe with people knowing. If you hear nothing else today, please hear this: There are not 'schizophrenics'. There are people with schizophrenia, and these people may be your spouse, they may be your child, they may be your neighbor, they may be your friend, they may be your coworker.— Elyn Saks
One of the reasons the doctors gave for hospitalizing me against my will was that I was 'gravely disabled.' To support this view, they wrote in my chart that I was unable to do my Yale Law School homework. I wondered what that meant about much of the rest of New Haven.— Elyn Saks
Please hear this: There are not 'schizophrenics.' There are people with schizophrenia.— Elyn Saks
Portray [people with mental illness] sympathetically, and portray them in all the richness and depth of their experience as people, and not as diagnoses.— Elyn Saks
![Elyn Saks Sayings By Elyn Saks: Portray [people with mental illness] sympathetically, and portray them in all the richness and depth](https://www.greatsayings.net/images/elyn-saks-sayings-by-elyn-saks-1707623.jpg "Elyn Saks Sayings By Elyn Saks: Portray [people with mental illness] sympathetically, and portray them in all the richness and depth")
The human brain comprises about 2 percent of a person's body weight, but it consumes upward of 20 pcent of that body's oxygen intake, and it controls 100 percent of that body's actions.— Elyn R. Saks
Some people say I'm unique, that there aren't other people with schizophrenia like me. Well, there are people like me out there, but the stigma is so great that they don't come forward.— Elyn Saks
Choose your friends wisely, and also choose friends that you can trust.— Elyn Saks
Some people still hold [the] view that restraints help psychiatric patients feel safe. I've never met a psychiatric patient who agreed.— Elyn Saks
![Elyn Saks Sayings By Elyn Saks: Some people still hold [the] view that restraints help psychiatric patients feel safe. I've never](https://www.greatsayings.net/images/elyn-saks-sayings-by-elyn-saks-2052206.jpg "Elyn Saks Sayings By Elyn Saks: Some people still hold [the] view that restraints help psychiatric patients feel safe. I've never")
My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.— Elyn R. Saks
