Mental Disengagement Quotes

Apathy is the self-defense of the powerless.

Sometimes when things are way too big and I can't control it, I do sort of a weird thing where I kind of check out a little bit. It's all about self-preservation for me.

Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension.

I've read that under trauma, that you have this ability to kind of disconnect from the experience.

I feel like Mills and Boon saved my life. It was a way of not living. I read a lot of other books as well, but they were definitely the best for just switching my brain off, not having to deal with reality.

The homeless person or the schizophrenic person talking to themselves are disassociated from their immediate environment. They're off in a fantasy, and it's very similar to what happens on a cell phone.

What bothers me about TV is that it tends to take our minds off our minds.

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.

Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.

Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.

With acting, when you're reading a script, you're regurgitating someone else's words. There's a whole part of your brain that's off duty.

As a viewer, the minute I start getting confused, I check out of the movie. Emotionally, I'm severed.

And by endlessly sanitizing our feelings, we actually feed a disgruntled nation.

Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there's nothing to be done about them.

and just like that, I shut off the switch to my brain.

Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.