emotional distancing Quotes

The moment you put a mental label on another human being, you can no longer truly relate to that person. . . It then becomes possible to perpetrate any act of violence.

I'm not to the point where I need to shut myself off from people, unless I feel like I need to, but I don't force myself to deal with people.

It's a dynamic of grief within any family, and I found, after we lost Steve, his dad just began distancing himself. And I think it's a coping mechanism. I found it very confusing.

The truth about autobiographical songs, he realized, was that you had to make the present become the past, somehow: you had to take a feeling or a friend or a woman and turn whatever it was into something that was over, so that you could be definitive about it. You had to put it in a glass case and look at it and think about it until it gave up its meaning.

Maybe mothers - consciously or subconsciously - repelled their daughters in different ways.

To keeping silence I resigned My friends would think I was a nut Turning water into wine Open doors would soon be shut So I went from day to day Though my life was in a rut 'Til I thought of what I'd say Which connection I should cut

I make it easier for people to leave by making them hate me a little.

First I might say that when a person, when a man separates from his wife, at the out start it's a physical separation but it's not a psychological separation. He still thinks of her in, in probably warm terms. And, but after the physical separation has taken, existed for a period of time, it becomes a psychological separation as well as physical. And he can then look at her more objectively. My split or separation from the Black Muslim movement at first was only a physical separation, but my heart was still there and it was impossible for me to, for me to look at it objectively.

I think transitions are never that noticeable, but they are always on their way. It has to do with distance and accessibility. People call it mellowing, but I think it's how available you are toward other people, or how much you distance yourself.

Theatricality - that's where you get catharsis. The Greeks went to see drama because they felt like this wasn't happening to them.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

My sister died and my mum was really distant, as you do - you don't expect your offspring to die before you. I thought I was bulletproof up until that stage.

I don't tend to spend the whole day in the personality of the person I'm playing.

You really do think about it institutionally; this is your job, and to some extent you benefit from having a job to do at a moment like this. You have things that you have to make happen. And you don't have time for the emotional reaction that might otherwise occur if somebody was just sitting there watching these events unfold and had no responsibilities.

Whenever a woman would come too close, I would cut her off. Part of that was vindictive - but that was totally subconscious.

Women have an extraordinary ability to withdraw from the sexual relationship, to immunize themselves against it, in such a way that their men can be left feeling let down and insulted without having anything tangible to complain of.

The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.

I don't keep any copy of my books around... they would embarass me. When I finish writing my books, I kick them in the belly, and have done with them.

Like so many women, I was living out the unlived life of my mother - so I wouldn't be her. But the price I paid was that I distanced myself internally.

To envy is to draw circles that isolate us from others, to take small, bitter trips that diminish the traveler.

The more abhorrent a news item the more comforting it was to be the recipient, since the fact that it had happened elsewhere proved that it had not happened here, was not happening here, and would therefore never happen here.

I know that disavowal is an unusal form of betrayal. From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation. But you, who are doing the disowning, you know what you're doing. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal.

You can't always be pushing people away. Someday nobody'll come back.

I think of depression as the mechanism that pushes down the pain of that loss. It tries to distance us from the loss but it lowers our whole energy level. I think that's a pervasive way we end up responding to loss or the anticipation of loss. Natural but not necessary.

We do not hug our miracles close. We put them hastily away, preferring the commonplace to live with.