Samuel Kinch

“Even when I have been most psychotic, I have been aware of finding new corners in my mind and heart. Some of those corners were incredible and beautiful, and made me feel as if I could die right then and the images would sustain me. Some of them were grotesque and ugly, and I never wanted to see them again. But, always, there were those new corners, and when feeling my normal self, beholden for that self of medicine and love, I cannot imagine becoming jaded to life, because I know of those limitless corners, with their limitless views.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“It is not possible to eliminate suffering by eliminating pain. Human existence contains inevitable challenges. People we love will be injured, and people close to us will die—indeed, we are aware from an early age that in time we all will die. We will also be sick. Functions will diminish. Friends and lovers will betray us. Pain is unavoidable, and (owing to our symbolic inclinations) we readily remember this pain and can bring it into consciousness at any given moment. This progression means that human beings consciously expose themselves to inordinate amounts of pain—despite our considerable abilities to control its sources in the external environment. Even so, great pain is not in itself a sufficient cause for true human suffering. For that to occur, symbolic behavior needs to be taken a bit further.”
― Steven C. Hayes, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change

“Better to feel the pain of writing than the pain of not writing”
― Phoebe Waller-Bridge

“Suffering occurs when people so strongly believe the literal contents of their mind that they become fused with their cognitions. In this fused state, the person cannot distinguish awareness from cognitive narratives since each thought and its referents are so tightly bound together. This combination means that the person is more likely to follow blindly the instructions that are socially transmitted through language. In some circumstances, this result can be adaptive; but in other cases, people may engage repeatedly in ineffective sets of strategies because to them they appear to be “right” or “fair” despite negative real-world consequences.”
― Steven C. Hayes, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change