Diana

“Medical students are taught to imagine a binary: doctor and patient, science and faith, objective truth and superstitious fallacy, us and them. Our morning rounds are an exercise in telling and retelling patients’ stories in a way that explains their illnesses, cloaked in the sense of objectivity offered by a white coat. But the stories told on these rounds are just as prone to false truths as the reports of an amnesia patient, subconsciously shaped by our priors, our communities, our own narratives. On rounds, a woman’s pain might be recast as anxiety, for instance, while a vitamin deficiency born of alcohol use might be regarded as a deserved punishment.”
― Pria Anand, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains

“I’ve suffered from anxiety and depression since I was twelve years old. The pain is a fanged beast that I’ve battled a hundred times throughout the years, and every time I think I’ve cut it down for good, it reanimates and launches itself at my throat again.”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

“Beliefs are assumptions or conclusions; values are the parts of life that bring a person meaning. Beliefs reflect what you think of the world; values reveal more about yourself. Confusing these two can be dangerous business. When someone attaches their self-worth to a belief—political, personal, or otherwise—they desperately need to be right. Challenges to what they think feel like threats to how they think—evidence they aren’t smart or good enough. The person screaming loudest is often most fearful of being wrong.”
― Jamil Zaki, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness

“whether I liked it or not, whether I chose to stifle it or shout it from the rooftops, I saw everything through the lens of rape. It’s still the case today: Even though now there are lulls when I can think about other things, even though it’s not always about that, often it still is. In that sense he won and there’s nothing I can do about it. Damaged for life.”
― Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger