Temple Grandin Quotes

Anti-depressants helped me get up in the morning and stopped me from being sad, but what they also do is stop you from being happy. So I was just in this numb state. I stopped laughing at jokes, and that's just not me.

I was interested in Prozac from a personal point of view because I can be a bit moody - things do get on top of me sometimes - so I was quite keen to find out what it would do to my personality.

I was on various anti-depressants, but not for long - I didn't function very well on them. I felt sort of flattened out.

The reason you take antidepressants is to feel calm. And romantic love is not calm - it's elation, it's mood swings, and you're killing all that when you take the drug.

Oh, I've always been very... Emotional. 'Hypersensitive' is what they call it, I think.

My brain is so anxiety-prone, like a pinball machine. If I don't get up in the morning and focus my thinking, my breathing, and my being for about 12 minutes, I'm just a screwball all day long.

I'm generally known as a happy person, but years ago, I suffered from panic and anxiety. I've learned to manage the fear and pain.

I get frustrated but never depressed.

For me, I kind of just follow my passions and follow what I love to do and use my free time to kind of answer those questions and go through my bad moods and maybe a little light case of depression.

I still have difficult days when I lose hours to anxiety, feeling my throat swell and my mind race with paranoid thoughts. But - thanks in part to ongoing therapy - they're happening less and less.

I think the biggest thing is knowing that those thoughts of panic are probably going to go into your brain, and just accepting it... So that's been the biggest thing. Not fighting it and trying to think I'm going to have the perfect mentality the entire time. That's not going to happen.

I'm very anti-antidepressants. It's not the chemicals of my brain that's a problem; it's reality. I don't think tricking my brain into reinterpreting reality is going to help.

I am on medication - I've talked about that before - just to help my anxiety, so I'm not depressed all the time.

I've done specific work to take care of anxiety. I believe that the psychological side can work for you just as it can against you. The better your command is over the psychological aspect, the better your physical performance. There's no other way.

When I have to be in public, I can't be in a bad mood.

Nobody's angry all the time, unless you're a psycho.

I think that even at my most anxious, if I have a job to do or a role to fill, I know on some level I can step up and complete it. I mean, I'm probably not going to go bungee jumping anytime soon... but pushing myself to weather some discomfort now and then feels healthy.

I never even think of the mental side of things because I never had any issues.

I'm learning what triggers me. What to stay away from. What I do like and what I don't like. To me, I've learned so much about myself that now I'm a stronger person. But I still deal with anxiety. Anxiety doesn't go away.

The power I would like is to be able to turn off negative emotions and bad moods with the flick of a switch.

My medications make me easier to deal with. They don't interfere with my creativity or turn me into a zombie or dull my real personality. They help me connect with people, allow me to stay calm when situations seem overwhelming, and help keep my thoughts from racing out of control. They help me leave the house when I'm scared to. They help.

I remember that in the past I was overwhelmed with the mystery of anxiety, or the mystery of depression, but now when you feel that feeling coming on you no longer go into fight-or-flight mode. You go: 'Oh, I know what this is' and you ride it out.

You have to deal with your emotions and not spike too much on the graph - not get too elated with the highs or too down with the lows.

Have a good sense of perspective and be able to snap yourself out of bad moods, as we often wind ourselves up about the silliest things.

Instead of silencing artists, is it possible that antidepressants can actually help them vocalize their creative ambitions?