Emotional Damage Quotes

You don't have to access the physical details to address the emotional damage within yourself. You can't escape your own experience. ~ Tami Hoag

It's a TV show. Only the emotional damage is real. ~ Steven Moffat

Some children are threatened with loss of privileges such as money, cell phones, cars or even eviction from home if they do not 'toe-the-line' and 'act straight'. I don't think parents who do such things consider for a moment the kind of emotional damage they are doing to their children - or thinking beyond their own feelings about the situation - which will not change or go away simply because of their denial. ~ Christina Engela

It takes a cat to heal a woman's wounded heart." I say this knowing it takes a full range of other factors to resolve emotional damage issues and restore personal equilibrium. I've had a heaping share of therapy, familial support, friendships and rescue. What I craved now, however, was the privacy, closeness, and unconditional love of a cat to bring my healing process full cycle. I needed CiCi. ~ EsthersChild

Emotional damage is never easy to measure, but mothers who are alive but psychically absent impose filial burdens which knot their children's feelings in a way biologic orphans are spared. ~ Eileen Simpson

Why do you suppose the poets talk about hearts?' he asked me suddenly. 'When they discuss emotional damage? The tissue of hearts is tough as a shoe. Did you ever sew up a heart?'
I shook my head. 'No, but I've watched. I know what you mean.' The walls of a heart are thick and strong, and the surgeons use heavy needles. It takes a good bit of strength, but it pulls together neatly. As much as anything it's like binding a book.
The seat of human emotion should be the liver,' Doc Homer said. 'That would be an appropriate metaphor: we don't hold love in our hearts, we hold it in our livers.'
I understood exactly. Once in ER I saw a woman who'd been stabbed everywhere, most severely in the liver. It's an organ with the consistency of layer upon layer of wet Kleenex. Every attempt at repair just opens new holes that tear and bleed. You try to close the wound with fresh wounds, and you try and you try and you don't give up until there's nothing left. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I find some small, twisted comfort in thinking that perhaps we used each other. Him, for a glimpse into what it would be like to live a life entirely different from the one he'd been raised to desire, and me for the steady diet of angst and emotional damage that seemed to make me better, sharper, like a sword against a whetstone.
I was his intellectual escape from a long parade of pretty, empty girls... and he was my drug of choice -- unhealthy, probably lethal, but ultimately so addictive it was hard to turn away.
The problem, of course, with this theory of mutual exploitation, is that it is the deepest of lies. There was nothing equal or mutual about the way we used each other. I barely scratched his surface while he sliced me limb from limb.
There's no comfort in that. None at all. ~ Julie Johnson

I know you're in a world of pain, but that pain will lessen. At the beginning you can't see that. You can only see your pain and you think it will never go away.
But the nature of pain is that it changes - it changes like a sunset. At first, it's this intense red-orange in the sky, and then it starts getting softer and soften. The texture of pain changes as you work through it. And then one day, you wake up and realize that life isn't just about working through your incest; it's about living, too.
- survivor of child sexual abuse ~ Ellen Bass

The Islamic Revolution, as it turned out, did more damage to Islam by using it as an instrument of oppression than any alien ever could have done. ~ Azar Nafisi

Tuesday night I reorganized my record collection. I often do this at periods of emotional stress. There are some people who would find this a pretty dull way to spend an evening, but I'm not one of them. This is my life, and it's nice to be able to wade in it, immerse your arms in it, touch it. ~ Nick Hornby

Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values. ~ Joshua L. Liebman

What did I get in return? Coldness and emotional detachment. You are selfish and bitter and you wouldn't know a good thing if it fell out of the sky at your feet. ~ Tarryn Fisher

We have no way to quantify the damage done by telling tens of millions of children that masturbation will make them blind, or that impure thoughts will lead to an eternity of torment, or that members of other faiths including members of their own families will burn, or that venereal disease will result from kisses. Nor can we hope to quantify the damage done by holy instructors who rammed home these lies and accompanied them with floggings and rapes and public humiliations. Some of those who "rest in unvisited tombs" may have contributed to the good of the world, but tho who preached hatred and fear and guilt and who ruined innumerable childhoods should have been thankful that the hell they preached was only one among their wicked falsifications, and that they were not sent to rot there. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Beautiful but defeated and damaged. Damaged for the rest of her life and no amount of emotional mutilation will ever fully give her back her innocence. The girl is a ticking time bomb, a danger to herself and very possibly to others. I wasn't sure before, but now I know that she is more unstable than I ever could have imagined. And because she is so skilled at hiding it, not only from me but also from herself, she is more dangerous than I am. ~ J.A. Redmerski

Our lives are full of separations that shake us up, force us to attend to our emotional selves and to learn new ways of being in the world. Although many of our losses are painful, they encourage our gains. The lesson life is trying to teach us is that, regardless of the challenges and changes in the physical world, we will abide in peace by aligning ourselves with our inner changelessness. The power of God in us is more than equal to any moment-no matter what it brings. We live in a loving, supportive universe that is always saying yes to us. ~ Susan L. Taylor

and you will realize
that fear is a welcome
friend at this table
it has been waiting
to tell its story
for such a long time
and for those who choose
to listen, I promise
that it will be
the most wonderful of tales
you will have ever heard ~ M.M. Van Der Reijden

Forget the past! Look straight ahead with great hope. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I suffered my own battles. I suffer still. ~ Carla H. Krueger

Home is an emotional state, a place in the imagination where feelings of security, belonging, placement, family, protection, memory and personal history abide. -Thomas Moore ~ Louisa Thomsen Brits

Love, real love, is not simply a state of bliss. It is an ever-changing state, the result of time and emotional development, of trust and commitment. ~ Joyce Brothers

He never knew what hit him, and that would have comforted me, except ... just for one second, he would have had to know, wouldn't he? There must have been a blur, a sense of the world exploding, a flashpoint of receiving more damage than a human body could endure. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Indian sages avoided the written word as they realized ideas were never definitive; they were transformed depending on the intellectual and emotional abilities of the giver as well as the receiver. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik

To shy away from human extremes and human sensuality makes for bone-dry fiction. A world parched of our sexual releases and our tumultuous daily emotional lives is deeply impoverished. It is not lifelike, at least life as I remember living it. ~ Allan Gurganus

At that promise, and him calling me "gorgeous", an electric spasm went straight through my lower belly and he kissed me and that was it. I'm a slut. I don't know what to say, even with the emotional scene, I gave in. ~ Kristen Ashley

Learning to "just say no" to emotional reactions isn't repression. Saying no means not engaging the frustration, anger, judgment, or blame. Without engagement, you won't have anything to repress. ~ Doc Childre

The idea being that if I was so incredibly small, then I could do almost anything, because what impact would I have, really? What damage could be done, being so puny in the big scheme? ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul. ~ Francis Weller

Be strong. Overflow with emotional and intellectual energy, and you will spread your intelligence, your love, your energy of action broadcast among others! This is what all moral teaching comes to. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

I always tend to remember the funny moments. When I lost my shoe (even though it was funny) there was something motivating about it, I just ended in this spastic emotional way. I tend to remember the more extreme moments. ~ Laura Bell Bundy

There are humans versus humans in a jungle of predators; humans full of judgment, full of blame, full of guilt, full of emotional poison - envy, anger, hate, sadness, suffering. We create all these little demons in our mind because we have learned to dream hell in our own life. ~ Miguel Ruiz

The writer of this passage, David, was a veritable emotional volcano constantly threatening to erupt and a man after God's own heart. ~ Beth Moore

At its heart, all intellectual and emotional life is a conversation, and the conversation begins at birth. ~ Susan Jacoby

Donnelley was lifting his shirt away from the torn flesh in his side. He was cranked around, trying to assess the damage in the muck-spotted mirror. To Vero, he looked like an expressionist painting in which all the objects were the same color of too-vivid red: the shirt, the hands holding the shirt, the belt bassing through pant loops. At the center of it all was the thing that corrupted its surroundings with its own gruesome color - a wound. ~ Robert Liparulo

There are lot memories to take home but the most emotional moment has been when I was touching down in New Delhi. Tears rolled down when I saw the red soil in Delhi from the plane. ~ Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Nobody can control their emotional reactions, we can only control our actions, and my current action was to slap my jealousy in the face and shove her in a vat of shut the fuck up. ~ Abigail Barnette

You're right, Jen, of course," she capitulated. "I'm sorry. You're going through hell, and I'm pontificating instead of being compassionate," Lynne admitted.
"Pontificating? Interesting choice of words for a nonbeliever," Jennifer chuckled. ~ Mark M. Bello

Emotional baggage is like the dead skin of a snake. If you don't shed it, how can you grow emotionally? ~ Khang Kijarro Nguyen

It's a truism that denials never quite catch up with charges. Honest journalists who may have mistakenly printed false information know that the most prominent retraction never quite undoes the damage done by the original publication. ~ Tom Wicker

Comfortable? Don't be. I believe in those moments where we grow comfortable is where we stop growing, and in order to keep evolving, God slips the rug from beneath our feet and makes us look up. ~ Christy Aldridge

You know, I think my biggest concern [if Mitt is elected], obviously, would just be for his mental well-being. I have all the confidence in the world in his ability, in his decisiveness and his leadership skills, in his understanding of the economy, in his understanding of what's missing right now in the economy - you know, pieces that are missing to get this jump-started. So for me I think it would just be the emotional part of it. ~ Ann Romney

I don't think there's any topic a writer should feel afraid of tackling just because it has already been discussed. If you feel you have a fresh perspective and an understanding of a certain emotional truth, it's always worth writing. ~ Jami Attenberg

Reading, writing, listening to music, skipping rope, flying kites, taking long walks along the sea, hiking in the crisp mountain air, all serve a joint purpose: these self-initiated acts free us from the drudgery of life. These forms of physical and mental exercises release the mind to roam uninhibited, such collaborative types of mind and body actions take people away from their physical pains and emotional grievances. A reprieve from the crippling grind of sameness allows personal imagination to soar. Imagination, a form of dreaming, is inherently pleasant and restorative. It is within these moments of personal introspection stolen from the industry of surviving that humankind touches upon the absolute truth of life: that there must be something more to living then merely getting by; the fundamental human condition thirsts for a way to improve upon the vestment that shelters our self-absorbed lives. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana. ~ Ronald Reagan

It dropped ice to the bottom of his stomach. He thought of the ruined bodies he'd seen, including the ones he himself had ruined. He realized that he had somehow expected that he'd never have to think again about the way people damage other people.
The night of the invasion. Kestrel's back. His own. Roshar's scarred face. His own. ~ Marie Rutkoski

The neurotic doesn't know how to cope with his emotional bills; some he keeps paying over and over, others he never pays at all. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

People are reluctant to talk about old age and death because they are afraid of emotion, and they willingly avoid the things they feel most emotional about, though these are the very things they most need to talk about. ~ Paul Tournier

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining. ~ Joni Mitchell

I'm very interested in cinema that explores emotional journeys and where you can use everything at your disposal cinematically to locate you inside someone's head and their emotional landscape. ~ Sarah Gavron

It's tricky to mix friends and business, and I've learned this lesson the hard way a few times (you'd think I'd learn after the first time!). This one particular friend and I had a solid friendship when we started working together. Everything seemed to click, and I felt like I could trust and rely on this person. Then, we had a miscommunication and a bit of an argument. If you've ever worked with a friend or family member, you probably know that these arguments feel 100 times more emotional. ~ Jason SurfrApp

It's piles and piles of emotional homework forever if you ever want to qualify as a grown-up ~ Mary H.K. Choi