Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living. To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well-- here is the truth-- you have to talk yourself out of it.
Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the urgency of addressing fundamental issues rather than offering superficial solutions.
Chris Cleave uses the analogy of serving an in-flight meal during a plane crash to illustrate the inadequacy of traditional psychiatric care in moments of genuine crisis. Rather than providing mere comfort or temporary relief (like a sandwich), the focus should be on equipping individuals with essential tools for survival and healing, akin to giving them a parachute to escape a dire situation. This perspective advocates for a more proactive and impactful approach to mental health treatment.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a mental health conference discussing the importance of effective treatment strategies.
More from Chris Cleave
All quotes βStill shaking, in the pew, I understood that it isn't the dead we cry for. We cry for ourselves, and I didn't deserve my own pity.
Death, of course, is a refuge. It's where you go when a new name, or a mask and cape, can no longer hide you from yourself. It's where you run to when none of the principalities of your conscience will grant you asylum.
Is it my fault if I do not look like an English girl and I do not talk like a Nigerian? Well, who says an English girl must have skin as pale as the clouds that float across her summers? Who says a Nigerian girl must speak in fallen English...?
So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.
Similar quotes
The duty of holding a Neutral conduct may be inferred, without any thing more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of Peace and amity toward other Nations.
In the end, we are not the roles we play. We are the light that animates every soul in the dance we call life.
Let but the public mind become once thoroughly corrupt, and all attempts to secure property, liberty or life, by mere force of laws written on parchment, will be as vain as to put up printed notices in an orchard to keep off the canker-worms.
It is one of the greatest problems. It will appear very paradoxical, but this is true - before you can lose your ego, you must attain it. Only a ripe fruit falls to the ground. Ripeness is all. An unripe ego cannot be thrown, cannot be destroyed. And if you struggle with an unripe ego to destroy and dissolve it, the whole effort is going to be a failure. Rather than destroying it, you will find it more strengthened, in new and subtle ways.
It can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded not as the supreme expression of our profound belief, but merely as curiosities in glass cases.
So while I can't tell you if bringing a child into this world is the morally-responsible to do, I can say that the future, much like the present, is going to be a whole lot better than you think.