Doug Stanton Quotes

I know people with PTSD, and it's very real and very hard. But it doesn't change your core character.

Trust me, I know what self loathing is. But to kill myself? That would put a damper on my search for answers. Not at all productive.

The minds of human beings are not always entirely at one with the world in which they live, some people have trouble adjusting to reality, basically they're just weak, confused spirits who use words, sometimes very skillfully, to justify their cowardice.

I have a skill set that often helps me get through hurtful moments or experiences. However, sometimes when the pain cuts really deep, my normal go-to exercises just won't work.

To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It happened to us; we are its victim, and we have no control over it.

I ran into an extraordinary doctor. He got up inside my head and figured out how my brain processed things, what my core values were, what my inner dialogue was.

In your twenties, if you have any amount of complexity in your childhood, or any trauma that you haven't dealt with, it comes out. That's why you have a lot of artists that don't make it through.

I, at the age of 17 or 18 as a medical student, suddenly came up against a problem: 'What am I? What is the meaning of my existence as I experience it?'

I am not a therapy person, but I understand what therapy does. It's a way of translating dark thoughts into something manageable.

I want to know why we exist and what I can do while I'm existing. Basically. it's learning how to exist, wholely, consciously. Growing up on fast food and television shows, you can easily forget to exist. You can even be treated as if you don't.

Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed.

I think it's really important for your mental health to think about the big questions, to discuss them and open your mind, in order to prepare you for both life and death.

That's the way I try to live. I think it's the only way for human beings at this point in our evolution as souls, where everyone in their lifetime is going through stuff.

I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy.

Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use.

You can't embrace your whole life if you're shut down. I found out that I can't just run away and shut down. I'm losing the rest of my life doing that.

I kind of like being depressed.

In 1973, I broke off from the therapy and decided I could go through one of those episodes on my own, in my house. I found there is no real need to be locked up. I found that I was able to use that kind of awake dreaming that you go into during insanity and look at it and live with it and relate to it and become friends with it.

I personally don't live a nihilistic life, I don't have any use for it.

It took me a long time, but I don't feel as anxious about stupid things anymore - or perhaps they've just been replaced by more complicated stupid things.

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?

I've had my share of dark days of the soul. I try not to focus on it too much so it doesn't get to me.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to.