I felt like we had stories about family loyalty; I didn't feel like we had stories about what to do when you felt that loyalty to your family was in conflict with loyalty to yourself.
Tara WestoverRead
I had a mental breakdown while doing my Ph.D. at Cambridge, soon after I cut off contact with my parents, and I started seeing the university counsellor, one of the best decisions I ever made. There's something very nourishing in setting aside an hour a week to talk.
Interpretation
The importance of seeking help during challenging times can lead to personal growth and healing.
In this quote, Tara Westover reflects on her experience of facing a mental breakdown during her Ph.D. studies and highlights the significance of seeking support from a counselor. She emphasizes that dedicating time to discuss one's thoughts and feelings can be a vital step toward healing and personal development, illustrating the nourishing effect of open communication about mental health.
In practice
In a mental health awareness campaign, this quote could highlight the importance of seeking help.
I felt like we had stories about family loyalty; I didn't feel like we had stories about what to do when you felt that loyalty to your family was in conflict with loyalty to yourself.
I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley, and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring.
We think love is noble, and in some ways, it is. But in some ways, it isn't. Love is just love. And sometimes people do terrible things because of it.
I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with a Ph.D. 'Educated' is the story of how I came by my education. It is also the story of how I lost my family.
I think that when memoir goes wrong, it goes wrong from too much memory, too much detail. It's about clearing all that away and just getting to the story.
Although my family attended the same church as everyone in our town, our religion was not the same. I could stand with my family or with the gentiles... but there was no foothold in between.
I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.
... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.
Mania starts off fun, not sleeping for days, keeping company with your brain, which has become a wonderful computer, showing 24 TV channels all about you. That goes horribly wrong after awhile.
I never felt like that before. Maybe it could be depression, like you get. I can understand how you suffer now when you're depressed; I always thought you liked it and I thought you could have snapped yourself out any time, if not alone then my means of the mood organ. But when you get that depressed you don't care. Apathy, because you've lose a sense of worth. It doesn't matter whether you feel better because you have no worth.
Many politicians, celebrities, businessmen and women, and community leaders now are open about their struggles with mental illnesses, something almost unheard of when I began. Together, we are spreading the word that mental health affects all of us and deserves our support and attention.
Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.
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