How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
Vincent Van GoghRead
I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me; now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the deep and often inexplicable struggles with anxiety and a feeling of emptiness that can arise unexpectedly.
Vincent Van Gogh's quote reflects on the complex and often invisible nature of mental health issues, particularly anxiety and fatigue. He articulates the frustration of being unable to precisely define one's emotional turmoil, highlighting how such feelings can sometimes emerge without any clear cause, leading to a sense of exhaustion and a struggle to find meaning or clarity.
In practice
During a mental health awareness event, this quote can be used to illustrate the complexity of anxiety disorders.
How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
Describing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.
To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
Great things do not just happen by impulse, _x000D_ but as a succession of small things linked together.
The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.
To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.
Depression isn't just being a bit sad. It's feeling nothing. It's not wanting to be alive anymore.
When we are depressed, our thinking blocks us from being aware of our needs, and then being able to take action to meet our needs.
There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
You can't fix yourself out of a mental health issue. You can't wake up and say, 'Today I'm not being depressed!' It's a process to get well, but there is recovery.
Mood disorders are terribly painful illnesses, and they are isolating illnesses. And they make people feel terrible about themselves when, in fact, they can be treated.
That's what stress management is about, that's what psychotherapy is about, finding religion, or finding your loved one or your hobby - any of those, they give you more outlets, more of a sense of control, more of a sense of predictability, of social support. They give you the means to psychologically finesse ambiguous outside reality.
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