109 Nervous Breakdown Quotes

Following is our list of nervous breakdown quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about having a breakdown.

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Famous Nervous Breakdown Quotes

One of the signs of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. — Bertrand Russell

We often hear of people breaking down from overwork, but in nine out of ten they are really suffering from worry or anxiety. — Sir John Lubbock

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. — R. D. Laing

Sometimes a breakdown can be the beginning of a kind of breakthrough, a way of living in advance through a trauma that prepares you for a future of radical transformation. — Cherrie Moraga

Instead of me having a breakdown, I'm focusing on me having a breakthrough. — Terrell Owens

Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together. — Unknown

Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness. — Richard Carlson

Under Adverse conditions - some people break down,some break records - Shiv Khera

Under Adverse conditions - some people break down,some break records — Shiv Khera

I told the doctor I was overtired, anxiety-ridden, compulsively active, constantly depressed, with recurring fits of paranoia. Turns out I'm normal. — Jules Feiffer

This is what I am. I have periods of enormous self-destructive depression, where I go completely off my trolley and lose all sight of reality and reason. — Siobhan Fahey

Catastrophe is the essence of the spiritual path, a series of breakdowns allowing us to discover the threads that weave all of life into a whole cloth. — Joan Halifax

There was a time when I was 19 when I really, really, really thought I was going crazy. I was exhausted and going through a terrible depression. — Winona Ryder

Crazy isn't being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me, amplified. — Winona Ryder

Pressure and stress is the common cold of the psyche. - Andrew Denton

Pressure and stress is the common cold of the psyche. — Andrew Denton

Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long. — Michael Gungor

Short Nervous Breakdown Quotes

  • Neurosis is just a high-class word for whining. — Albert Ellis
  • Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity. — Sigmund Freud
  • Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  • An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. — Viktor E. Frankl
  • What appears to be a breakdown can often be a breakthrough.... IF you understand God's grace — Carl Lentz
  • It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane. — Philip K. Dick
  • A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping. — Kenneth Tynan
  • [Neurotics are] torn by inner conflicts ... Every neurotic ... is at war with himself. — Karen Horney
  • Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. — Soren Kierkegaard
  • The neurotic has problems; the psychotic has solutions. — Thomas Szasz

Nervous Breakdown Image Quotes

Having A Nervous Breakdown Quotes

Always remember that, nine times out of ten, you probably aren’t having a full-on nervous breakdown – you just need a cup of tea and a biscuit. You’d be amazed how easily and repeatedly you can confuse the two. Get a big biscuit tin. — Caitlin Moran

It's unthinkable not to love --you'd have a severe nervous breakdown. Or you'd have to be Philip Larkin. — Lawrence Durrell

I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isn't much of a stretch. — Emma Thompson

There are so many rules about play writing. I'd have a nervous breakdown if I followed them. — Terrence McNally

I'm f**king pathetic when it comes to being an entertainer. People come because they want to see me have a nervous breakdown. — Mark Linkous

I have been to hell and back. I had a very, very bad nervous breakdown. — Andy Gibb

I've read a couple of things that I was sort of close to having a nervous breakdown. But I don't think I was. I was very, very tired. It was a really difficult time. — Kate Bush

The last thing we need is yet another makeup company. Even I have a nervous breakdown when I go through the department store makeup floor. — Lauren Hutton

Peter Dinklage doesn't care. He's so cool so you can laugh at it. Most actors, if you laugh they'd just have a nervous breakdown. But he's just, "Yeah, I know. I know." — Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

When you're a first time director, you're often considered what's called a "deadly attachment" in the eyes of financiers, because they're trusting you with a lot of money to bring something home, to get great performances, to not have a nervous breakdown in the process. — John Krokidas

Having A Breakdown Quotes

The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labor. Denied the right to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown of collective bargaining-it is the indispensable cornerstone of that process. — Paul Clark

My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it but not take part in it.That's how I became a writer. But when you have kids, suddenly you have to be part of things. It leads almost to a breakdown because your whole defense mechanism is now really destructive. — Judd Apatow

When there is breakdown in a relationship, you must have the hard conversation. It may not be pretty and it may not feel good. But if you are willing to listen and tell the truth, it will open up. — Iyanla Vanzant

Yippee! I can't believe I made it. It feels like a long haul to get here. I'm so fine with it. People want you to have some sort of breakdown, but I'm relieved to be 40 years old, and I've lived a life. — Nicole Kidman

Thinking very hard about the same problem for several hours can produce a severe fatigue, close to a breakdown. I never really experienced a breakdown, but have felt "strange inside" two or three times during my life. — Stanislaw Ulam

Your best is whatever you can do comfortably without having a breakdown. — J. R. Moehringer

Coach John Wooden used seven players at UCLA. Coach Denny Crum used to say, 'The more moving parts you have, the greater the chance you have for a breakdown.' I think there's a lot of veracity to that. — Skip Prosser

There are rituals not structures for being a poet, drinking too much, taking too many drugs, being a lady chaser, having your nervous breakdown, being irresponsible about money. — Diane Wakoski

I'm a neurotic Jew who doesn't want loans. I can't even carry a balance on my credit card without having a nervous breakdown. — Duff Goldman

You don't learn how to say 'hey, I have a problem,' but you also don't learn how to hear it. There's a total breakdown of how females talk to one another. It's very disconcerting for leadership because it means you don't talk to each other; you talk about each other. — Rachel Simmons

Mental Breakdown Quotes

My mom had the breakdown for the family, and I went into therapy for all of us. — Carrie Fisher

The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown. — Adrienne Rich

MID-TWENTIES BREAKDOWN: A period of mental collapse occurring in one's twenties, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments coupled with a realization of one's essential aloneness in the world. Often marks induction into the ritual of pharmaceutical usage. — Douglas Coupland

Whether the guys are nervous or just had mental breakdowns, it happens. The game is a game of mistakes. And how you deal with them and correct them and all the things like that is what makes this game great and makes hockey the sport it is. — Chris Pronger

Any breakdown is a breakthrough. — Marshall McLuhan

I had this producer who became a friend, named Lou [Stellato]. Maybe it was a budget thing, but he never wanted to do any retakes. The more I would have a mental breakdown on the air. — Jancee Dunn

Those moments of solitude and exhibiting a mental breakdown, and how you do that physically and without it being too obvious, but being relatively settled but relatively intense. There are some intense moments in there that sort of pepper his breakdown. — Elijah Wood

Nervous breakdowns can be highly underrated methods of spiritual transformation. — Marianne Williamson

If you say you've had a nervous breakdown or things aren't right mentally, people run away from you. They think you're from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest,' you know. — Frank Bruno

Anxiety Attacks Quotes

When you look at a person, any person, everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed their life. Anxiety, depression and panic attacks are not signs of weakness. They are signs of trying to remain strong for way too long. — Deepika Padukone

I try not to worry about the future - so I take each day just one anxiety attack at a time. — Tom Wilson

You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. — David Foster Wallace

No wonder women have achieved a more equal footing with men in areas they never fought for -- ulcers, hypertension, and heart attacks. We're racing around trying to be all things to all people, burdened by a brutal mix of ambition, anxiety, and guilt. — Kathie Lee Gifford

It can hit at any time [anxiety/panic attack]. You feel like you're in an open field, and there's a tornado coming at you. And you're just consumed by it. — Kim Basinger

I remember being onstage once when I didn't have fear: I got so scared I didn't have fear that it brought on an anxiety attack. — Carly Simon

I was about to meet Beyonce, and I had a full-blown anxiety attack. Then she popped in looking gorgeous, and said, "You're amazing! When I listen to you I feel like I'm listening to God." — Adele

If I ignore my work, I start having anxiety attacks. — Rosanne Cash

I often thought I was in the wrong business. I was pretty seriously thinking of tossing it in before I shot Shine. I do not know why. I was pretty restless, I had been through a bad period of stress induced anxiety - panic attacks - and I was not sure of what I wanted to do. — Geoffrey Rush

When you realize that you are an eternal being, you will laugh at things that used to give you anxiety attacks. — Stephen Baxter

People Writing About Nervous Breakdown

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Read quotes by Winona Ryder

Winona Ryder
quotes on johnny depp

147 691
Read quotes by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell
quotes on happiness, life and war

1131 8798
Read quotes by Sir John Lubbock

Sir John Lubbock
quotes on life, slavery and education

14 1950
Read quotes by R. D. Laing

R. D. Laing
quotes on friendship, education and love

114 1045
Read quotes by Cherrie Moraga

Cherrie Moraga
quotes on education, love and friendship

18 310
Read quotes by Terrell Owens

Terrell Owens
quotes on sports, football and success

102 166

More Nervous Breakdown Quotes

Once asked what action he would recommend if a person were to feel a nervous breakdown coming on: Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, and find someone in need and do something for him. — Karl A. Menninger

Women's struggle for equality worldwide is about more than equality between men and women. Our struggle is about reversing the trends of social, economic, political, and ecological crisis - a global nervous breakdown! Our struggle is about creating sustainable lives and attainable dreams. — Bella Abzug

I had a nervous breakdown at 17 when my first love left me, and he was a typical bad boy, albeit a charismatic one, with a string of broken hearts trailing behind him. — Caroline Leavitt

I don't mean that creative people are somehow finer, or more sensitive, and thus have finer, more sensitive nervous breakdowns - you can save that horseshit for the Sylvia Plath worshipers. It's just that creative people have creative breakdowns. — Stephen King

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings. — Earl Wilson

If you want to give the devil a nervous breakdown, just get up every day and see how much good you can do. — Joyce Meyer

A nervous breakdown waits around the corner for anyone who lets himself wallow in bitterness. Little by little, it takes over your whole being. — Mariama Bâ

I'm doing good. I've had a slight nervous breakdown in the '60s. I got through that. And I got through the '70s. And I was in a doctor's program during the '80s and then I met Melinda and we've been together ever since. I've got a happy life. — Brian Wilson

The girls in California were probably prettier in a standard sense than the New York girls--blonder and in better health, I guess; but I still preferred the way the girls in New York looked--stranger and more neurotic (a girl always looked more beautiful and fragile when she was about to have a nervous breakdown). — Andy Warhol

I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sexuality. I was gay. — Lionel Blue

The biggest trouble with success is that its formula is just about the same as that for a nervous breakdown. — John Holmes

A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it. — Art Buchwald

I had low blood sugar, a chemical imbalance, plus the normal nervous breakdown everyone goes through from adolescence to adulthood. — Mel Brooks

Our media, which is like a planetary nervous system, are far more sensitive to breakdowns than to breakthroughs. They filter out our creativity and successes, considering them less newsworthy than violence, war, and dissent. When we read newspapers and watch television news, we feel closer to a death in the social body than to an awakening. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset. — Roald Dahl

If you're born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown. — Isaac Asimov

I'm taking one thing at a time. With the children and launching my solo career it would drive me to a nervous breakdown if I tried to organise a wedding on top of that. — Natasha Hamilton

The boarding-school experience in Paris was very hard, I didn't put up with it very well. I was sick all the time, or in any case frail, on the edge of a nervous breakdown. — Jacques Derrida

Even after several hospitalizations for alcohol and drug-related nervous breakdowns, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay defined sobriety as restricting her daily intake of liquor to a liter and a half of wine. — Judith Thurman

Medically speaking, there is no such thing as a nervous breakdown. Which is very annoying to discover when you're right in the middle of one. — Marian Keyes

I understand why creative people like dark, but American audiences dont like dark. They like story. They do not respond to nervous breakdowns and unhappy episodes that lead nowhere. They like their characters to be a part of the action. They like strength, not weakness, a chance to work out any dilemma. — Leslie Moonves

If I had a nervous breakdown every time something awful happened in the world, I'd be crazier than a shithouse rat. — John Green

I was born with a nervous breakdown. — Yves Saint Laurent

One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important. — Bertrand Russell

Dear Isabelle, Alec is about to have a nervous breakdown. If you do not immediately desist planing my wedding to your brother, I will come back to Manhattan and blow up the Institute. I will turn Church into a man-eating beast who will rampage through the streets of Manhattan, stepping on mundanes. And I will make you fat. Love, Magnus — Cassandra Clare

Most of you guys can't see the potential in a nervous breakdown. A real collapse. There's more chance of finding yourself in a major depression than there is in a bottle Prozac. — Keith Ablow

From time to time, life as a leader can look hopeless. To help you, consider a man who lived through this: Failed in business at age 31. Defeated for the legislature at 32. Again failed in business at 34. Sweetheart died at 35. Had a nervous breakdown at 36. Defeated in election at 38. Defeated for Congress at 43. Defeated for Congress at 46. Defeated for Congress at 48. Defeated for Senate at 55. Defeated for Vice President at 56. Defeated for Senate at 58. Elected President at age 60. This man was Abraham Lincoln. — Unknown

Coaching in the NBA is not easy. It's like a nervous breakdown with a paycheck. — Pat Williams

For the parents of a Little Leaguer, a baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown into innings. — Earl Wilson

Barry and I were in the middle of building a house, and I was in the midst of having a nervous breakdown, because that's what you do when you build a house. — Cynthia Weil

A quick glance at the American left reveals a movement in the midst of a nervous breakdown, displaying behavior that goes beyond inconsistency into the realm of bipolar moods and multiple personality disorders. — Michael Medved

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