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The Science of Happiness

Can You Predict What Will Make You Happy?

The Science of Happiness

PRX and Greater Good Science Center

Social Sciences, Science

4.52K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2018

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Do memories of your past affect your happiness today? Susannah Cahalan was young and healthy when she was stricken with a mysterious illness. Learn how writing about her “month of madness” in the bestselling book Brain on Fire helped her reclaim her life.

Link to Episode Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/xeyehswt

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:44.0

I just didn't feel right.

0:46.0

It kind of resembled feelings of depression and mono kind of mixed together.

0:51.0

I kept saying to my friends I just don't feel like myself.

0:55.0

But from there, I basically experienced an unraveling.

1:00.0

I lost any sense of myself. I was paranoid, I was hallucinating, I was violent, I hit and punched nurses, I tried to escape the hospital.

1:11.0

In many ways I resembled kind of a cage animal. I was very

1:14.8

frightened and angry. It received many different diagnoses. Bipolar one,

1:20.6

schizoaffective disorder, and then it changed in the really, really wrong direction.

1:27.8

I stopped speaking and then started just grunting, smacking my lips repeatedly,

1:33.5

absence of any reaction, absence of any emotion.

1:37.1

I had blood tests, I had MRIs, I had hat scans,

1:41.6

and everything was coming back negative. A doctor named Dr.

...

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