The Center for Creative Healing » Health

Jung on Writing

admin — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:53:31 +0000

It has become a necessity for me to write down my early memories. If I neglect to do so for a single day, unpleasant physical symptoms immediately follow. As soon as I set to work they vanish and my head feels perfectly clear.... Something within me has been touched. A gradient has formed, and I must write. -Carl Jung, from Memories, Dreams, and Reflections

On Not Getting Better

admin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:42:40 +0000

In 1998, a full decade after getting sick....I was not getting any better. Memory, abstract reasoning, word finding and other vital cognitive functions remained gravely problematic.... Since I could not presume that I would remember anything, I must live fully in the present. Since I could not presume that I would understand anything, I must feel and experience my life in the moment and not always press to formulate ideas about it. Since I could not escape my body and the limits it had imposed on me, I must learn to be at home in it. Since I could do so little, it was good to live in a place where there is so little to do. And since I could not presume that I would master anything I did, I must relinquish mastery as a goal and seek harmony instead.... Of this necessity had come a [Read More …]

Diagnosis

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:39:48 +0000

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has. -Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)

Illness of the Mind

admin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:10:35 +0000

Illness of the mind is real illness....As organs go, the brain is quite an important one, and its malfunctions should be addressed accordingly. -Andrew Solomon The Noonday Demon

Illness, Disconnection, and Writing

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:00:09 +0000

"Because psychic affliction often involves a withdrawal from the objects of the world, a dissatisfaction with ordinary things, writing helps writers pay attention to objects outside of their own suffering." -Judith Harris Signifying Pain

In spite of illness

admin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:17:49 +0000

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.” -Edith Wharton, author of The Age of Innocence

Driven by some demon

admin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:15:59 +0000

“Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” -George Orwell

To belong

admin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:14:00 +0000

“…the biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of not belonging. In our society this disease has reached epidemic proportions. We long to belong and feel as if we don’t deserve to.” -Mother Theresa, in Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance, p. 11.