Best Mental Health Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“I never thought I’d need to teach myself how to nap, but here I am, an adult who finally figured it out.”

“Peace is not the absence of chaos — it’s learning what deserves your reaction”

“Life contracts before it expands, and pulls back before it leaps forward. This balancing act is not something we should resist, but rather, embrace.”

“Recovery is full of ups and downs.”

“You can’t be beaten by something you laugh at.”

“If we keep going in a straight line we'll get out of here. Walking one foot in front of the other, in the same direction, will always get you further than running around in circles. It's about the determination to keep walking forward.”

“how silly of me”

“Anxiety is a living body,”

“I am strange;”

“Diabolical. You’re a scoundrel in tasteful athleisure wear.”

“Truth and justice are commonly found in the personality of the paranoid delusional”

“You aren't doing "nothing" when you choose to put your well-being first. In fact, this is the key to having everything.”

“Perception is reality to the one in the experience.”

“What people never understand is that depression isn't about the outside; it's about the inside. Something inside me is wrong. Sure, there are things in my life that make me feel alone, but nothing makes me feel more isolated and terrified than my own voice inside my head.”

“You cannot rush a tree into bloom. And you cannot force a soul to heal. Time is not a threat—it’s a companion.”

“We are taught to fear being forgotten, but some things deserve to be let go. That’s not erasure—it’s release.”

“You are not alone in your ache. The ocean knows. The mountains know. So do we.”

“I reckon anger is the cigarette smoking of emotions. It's toxic, self-destructive, offensive, socially unacceptable, and harmful to others; it costs a lot and always leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It's also a mongrel to try to quit.”

“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

“We can no longer postpone the challenging question, How does one know that among the bedlam of voices which beset us all, one is really hearing his daimon? Inner 'voices'—experienced as actual or metaphorical ones—are notoriously untrustworthy; they can tell one anything. Many people hear voices, but there are few Joans of Arc. How about our schizophrenic patients who are instructed by their voices to bomb New York?”

“But partly it was my own professional background, my training in psychology, that rather than helping me—made it almost impossible for me to face what was happening. Back when I studied psychology in the 1950s, there was only one cause for all mental illnesses, even the most severe: a faulty upbringing. Everything was tied to the way you were raised. There were different schools of thought, of course. Some practitioners followed a Freudian model where understanding the id, the ego and the superego gave the answer to everything. Some followed Jung, with his emphasis on unconscious myths. But everyone believed that it was early life experiences that were behind mental disorders. A patient with serious mental problems had been subject at an early age to unacceptable pressures, to confusing messages, or to some destructive behavior on the part of the parents.”

“Healing doesn’t begin when the cup is finally full, but when it is finally set down.”

“Emotions don’t vanish just because we ignore them; they accumulate. And what’s buried alive eventually comes back louder.”

“Suffering happens in the gap we hold between the expectations we have and reality. Flexing and finding the gifts in the gap resolves the pain.”

“If that’s the case, I understand why emotions are hard for you. You’ve numbed yourself to make room for the grief you carry.”

“The greater the gap between self perception and reality, the more aggression is unleashed on those who point out the discrepancy.”

“I lied and said I was busy.”

“But no matter how much evil I see, I think it’s important for everyone to understand that there is much more light than darkness.”

“Religion and mental health have always overlapped in their attempts to understand troubled minds. Is that voice divine revelation or auditory hallucination? Is ego dissolution mystical or pathological?”

“What good is your reality, when justice fails and dishonesty is glossed over and the ones who keep faith suffer .... What good is your reality then?”