Overcoming Stigma Quotes

I was very ashamed of seeing a therapist because I thought only crazy people went, and then, after about nine years, I asked him, 'Well, was I really crazy?' And he nodded and said, 'You were but not any more.'

Rather than spend so much time wondering if I'm going to get hired, or is it a problem that I've got this black-tar history, I've just got to keep doing what I'm doing and try to be decent.

I used to think that if someone asked for help, they were weak. But the toughest thing I ever did was reach out and ask for help. And that was when I started to heal.

My presence and my voice on stage, it sends a clear message that you can do whatever you want in your life, break barriers, stigmas - be the new standard.

Some people are embarrassed to say they came from East St. Louis, Ill., but now more people want to claim it. I grew up in a community center and I knew what it gave me. I always knew I wanted to give back and help people because people helped me.

It is horrible to say, but I was stigmatized by being a bridal designer for a long time. I am amazed I have been able to move beyond it. I had really all but given up trying, but I did it because it was my lifelong dream.

Although there's a stigma that you learn only until a certain point, and then you just maintain, for me to learn the triple axel at 24 goes to show that anything's possible.

It's something my mother believed in: If you are in a position of privilege, if you can put your name to something that you genuinely believe in, you can smash any stigma you want, and you can encourage anybody to do anything.

My movie now, to me, is going to help so many people to realize that it is okay to ask for help. It took me so long to be able to ask for somebody to help me.

I just hope by how I live my life every day that people can see there is another side to addiction. You can live with it and have a successful life.

A lot of the time, when people meet someone in a wheelchair, or with some disability, it's the first thing they notice, but they don't know how to react.

You either hear the story and you're curious, and you're sort of sympathetic, or you think, "Ugh, how horrible." That's dehumanizing. How about we take that and turn Christine Chubbuck into a person and it's not about the final act, it's about her life. I felt that really strongly, and I felt a sort of deep sympathy with her. It's also why I do what I do. I want to try to make difficult people somehow relatable.

I had gotten pregnant and decided make this - what people might have thought as a wrong - of course, my greatest gifts in life.

I needed to find my own worth and shake the image after having done 'Showgirls' at age 21.

And we have come so far like that. I mean, the advances on the medication side have been enormous, and the advances on the human side have been enormous. But we still have this stigma to get rid of, and then we really will be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.