The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

by Elyn R. Saks

In fact, it is not necessarily true that everything can be conquered with willpower. There are forces of nature and circumstance that are beyond our control, let alone our understanding, and to insist on victory in the face of this, to accept nothing less, is just asking for a soul-pummeling. The simple truth is, not every fight can be won.

Philosophy and psychosis have more in common than many people (philosophers especially) might care to admit.

And, while the line between creativity and madness can be razor thin (a fact that has been unfortunately romanticized), examining and experiencing the world in a different way can lead to sharp and fruitful insights.

When you’re really crazy, respect is like a lifeline someone’s throwing you. Catch this and maybe you won’t drown.

It was her theory that psychotic individuals are filled with (even driven by) great anxiety, and that the way to provide relief is to focus directly on the deepest sources of that anxiety.

Psychotic people who are paranoid do scary things because they are scared.

That was when I learned that for all my good intentions, I could be simultaneously on the receiving and the giving end of the stigma that goes along with mental illness.

Well, now, this is pretty interesting, I thought. If I fear dying so much, maybe that means that I don’t want to die anymore. Maybe it means that I actually want to stay alive, and find out what happens next.

It’s sometimes easier to feel attacked than to feel angry or sad.”

One of the worst aspects of schizophrenia is the profound isolation—the constant awareness that you’re different, some sort of alien, not really human. Other people have flesh and bones, and insides made of organs and healthy living tissue. You are only a machine, with insides made of metal. Medication and talk therapy allay this terrible feeling, but friendship can be as powerful as either.

Stigma against mental illness is a scourge with many faces, and the medical community wears a number of those faces.

I felt fragile for a while; I knew that what had happened had been genuinely frightening, even threatening. But the fact is, I didn’t die; I survived, and I told myself that fact every single day. It’s a little like having a meteor land in your backyard without hitting the house. You can either focus on the meteor, and what almost happened, or you can focus on the fortunate miss and what didn’t happen. I decided to do my best to focus on the miss.

It was my argument that many people (more than we might think) should be allowed to refuse medication. As someone who benefits from medication, I know that the question of when one should be allowed to refuse is a complicated one. But I also believe that individual autonomy is vitally important, even precious—after all, it’s central to who we are as humans on the planet, with free will and self-ownership.

When you’re worried about falling, you grab hold of whatever you can.

A friend used the riptide analogy: You get sucked in, and your first instinct is to fight it. The harder you fight, the more energy you spend. But the simple truth is, a riptide is stronger than you; you cannot outmuscle it, and if you continue to try (if you exercise, as I continually did, “maladaptive stubbornness”), you drown. The simple lesson (as California surfers learn over and over every year) is to stop fighting and go with it. Save your strength, stop fighting, and the riptide itself will quickly propel you out of harm’s way, into calmer waters. At that point, if you’ve preserved your energy, you can make it back to shore on your own. But first, you have to give in.

While medication had kept me alive, it had been psychoanalysis that had helped me find a life worth living.

Ironically, the more I accepted I had a mental illness, the less the illness defined me—at which point the riptide set me free.

When you have cancer, people send flowers; when you lose your mind, they don’t.

I was desperately afraid, even sad; had I come this far, fought this hard, only to be defeated again by my unreliable body?

In any case, whatever schizophrenia is, it’s not “split personality,” although the two are often confused by the public; the schizophrenic mind is not split, but shattered.

“Don’t take my devils away because my angels may flee too.”

My psychosis is a waking nightmare, in which my demons are so terrifying that all my angels have already fled. So would I take the pill? In a heartbeat.

If you are a person with mental illness, the challenge is to find the life that’s right for you. But in truth, isn’t that the challenge for all of us, mentally ill or not? My good fortune is not that I’ve recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.