Emotional Detachment Quotes

It isn't so much life's problems that challenge us but the emotional turbulence stirred up while trying to deal with them. People possessing the gift of emotional detachment are lucky in that their personal problems seem far less problematic. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Expressing intense feelings usually portends better results than emotional detachment does. ~ Mark Murphy

I don't really identify with America, I don't really feel like an American or part of the American experience, and I don't really feel like a member of the human race, to tell you the truth. I know I am, but I really don't. All the definitions are there, but I don't really feel a part of it. I think I have found a detached point of view, an ideal emotional detachment from the American experience and culture and the human experience and culture and human choices. ~ George Carlin

People who are drawn to journalism are usually people who, because of their cynicism or emotional detachment or reserve or whatever, are incapable of being anything but witnesses to events. Something prevents them from becoming involved, committed, and allows them to remain separate. ~ Nora Ephron

the despair displayed by young children on loss of their mother is a normal response to frustration of their absolute need for her presence ... children usually manage to survive, it is true, but at the cost of developing a defensive attitude to emotional detachment, and by becoming self-absorbed and self-reliant to an unusual degree. Typically, they are left with lasting doubts about their capacity to elicit care and affection. ~ Anthony Stevens

Despite the illusion of giving understanding, what seeing through photographs really invites is an acquisitive relation to the world that nourishes aesthetic awareness and promotes emotional detachment. ~ Susan Sontag

For most people, attaining the intellectual clarity and emotional detachment that investing requires is tough. ~ Guy Spier

Staying loyal to your journey means you never abandon yourself by compromising your integrity or discounting your intuition or the signals that come from your body - the knot in the gut, emotional detachment, or loss of energy that signals something is amiss. ~ Charlotte Kasl

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

Your personality is so convinced that the habit thoughts running along with your body are you that it comes up with any number of reasons why replacing those thoughts is impossible. Even if those reasons can be addressed rationally, there is still an emotional component that is often reticent to admit that it is already talking to itself all the time. Repeating the same thoughts over and over, reacting to events in the same habitual way day in and day out, entertaining the same memories, most of which are based on pain and loss – the personality keeps the moment-to-moment awareness overwhelmed with the sense of a personal history in order to maintain the continuity of its artificial identity. ~ William Douglas Horden

If friendship is to transpire between two people, it is important that both be in a state of availability. I have often been in the company of those who complain that they have no friends. Inevitably, I have observed that this condition was due to their own lack of availability; they were too encumbered to be able to welcome another. Such unavailability may be exterior in nature; that is, people may lack the time or the emotional energy necessary for friendship. ~ Ignace Lepp

Drink from my emotional offerings. ~ Truth Devour

This is the part where I should fall asunder, consumed with shock, rage, indignation, terror, horror and any number of other emotions. But I'm as cool as a cucumber. It's hard to admit to myself that I'm not overly surprised. Because, deep down, I've always known I was different, that something wasn't quite right. ~ Siobhan Davis

It was his detachment that saved us. Another man would have reacted with force to the Soviet treachery. He would have shared the righteousness of the cause, been stirred to attack by the saber rattling. Jack resisted. He was not moved by the emotion of other around him. He knew his course and stayed to it. Thank God. The boy who had read alone of history's heroes was now safely on of them. He had done it not winning a war, but by averting one far more horrible than any leader in the past could have imagined." - p.373 ~ Chris Matthews

Charles Darwin himself had written a whole tome about the parallels between human and animal emotional expressions. ~ Frans De Waal

The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country - a border culture.
Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. ~ Gloria E Anzaldua

Maybe emotional blows are like physical blows. You stand to gain something if you sustain them from time to time. You might build up some inner strength you wouldn't otherwise have. ~ Muffy Mead-Ferro

My own emotional health issues were bullying me during the time I was drafting that poem. It was a pressure I couldn't pin down or diagnose. And like many, if not most, writers I had the self-consciousness to recognize it made great conditions for writing. ~ Gregory Pardlo

The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem. ~ Antonio R Damasio

Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the mellowness of full achievement. One can even tell the nature of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this side than of that. ~ John Galsworthy

Consciousness is, among other things, a spontaneous exercise in creativity. You are learning now, in a three-dimensional context, the ways in which your emotional and psychic existence can create varieties of physical form. You manipulate within the psychic environment, and these manipulations are then automatically impressed upon the physical mold. ~ Seth

And as we walked into the house, I smiled contentedly, realizing that the stress of the previous twenty-four hours had all but disappeared from view. And I knew it, even then: Marlboro Man, not only that night but in the months to come, would prove to be my savior, my distraction, my escape in the midst of troubles, my strength in the face of upheaval, my beauty in times of terrible, heartbreaking ugliness. He held my heart entirely in his hands, this cowboy, and for the first time in my life, despite everything I'd ever believed about independence and feminism and emotional autonomy, I knew I'd be utterly incomplete without him.
Talk about a terrifying moment. ~ Ree Drummond

I experience what it is to exist in perpetual fear, afraid, totally controlled, manipulated, ashamed at all times and many more things one can't still think to talk around. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Once beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation. ~ Michael Shermer

Still, through a complex combination of optimism and longing and bravado, you would round it up. While a cruder name for this process is lying , one could make a case that delusion is a variant of generosity. After all, you practiced rounding up on Kevin from the day he was born.

Me, I'm a stickler. I prefer my photographs in focus. At the risk of tautology, I like people only as much as I like them. I lead an emotional life of such arithmetic precision, carried to two or three digits after the decimal, that I am even willing to allow for degrees of agreeableness in my own son. In other words, Franklin: I leave the $17. ~ Lionel Shriver

Sometimes all you can do is hug a friend tightly and wish that their pain could be transferred by touch to your own emotional hard drive. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Even though she wasn't thrilled they were en route to exterminate bugs, Alex couldn't deny how amazing it was to be gliding between a massive spaceship and the atmosphere of an alien planet.
"I'll have to admit, this is pretty cool," she said.
Conner didn't respond. Alex turned to check on him and saw tears glistening in his eyes. He had seen so many things from his imagination come to life, but seeing an actual planet was surprisingly emotional.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"I'm fine," Conner said. "Just allergies."
"In space?"
"Yeah, I think there might have been a cat in here before us."
Alex just smiled and didn't press it further. "Well, whatever you're reacting to, thanks for sharing it with me. This is an experience I would never have had without you. ~ Chris Colfer

Deal first with whatever is causing you the greatest emotional distress. Often this will break the logjam in your work and free you up mentally to complete (the) other tasks. ~ Brian Tracy

There's folly in her stride
that's the rumor
justified by lies
I've seen her up close
beneath the sheets
and sometime during the summer
she was mine for a few sweet months in the fall
and parts of December

((( To get to the heart of this unsolvable equation, one must first become familiar with the physical, emotional, and immaterial makeup as to what constitutes both war and peace. )))

I found her looking through a window
the same window I'd been looking through
She smiled and her eyes never faltered
this folly was a crime

((( The very essence of war is destructive, though throughout the years utilized as a means of creating peace, such an equation might seem paradoxical to the untrained eye. Some might say using evil to defeat evil is counterproductive, and gives more meaning to the word "futile". Others, like Edmund Burke, would argue that "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing." )))

She had an identity I could identify with
something my fingertips could caress in the night

((( There is such a limitless landscape within the mind, no two minds are alike. And this is why as a race we will forever be at war with each other.
What constitutes peace is in the mind of the beholder. )))

Have you heard the argument?
This displacement of men and women
and women and men
the minds we all have
Dave Matthes

Deeply affecting and compulsively readable, The Fifty-First State displays Lisa Borders' emotional acuity, first-rate skills as a storyteller, and profound empathy not only for her two compelling main characters but for an oft-neglected region and a disappearing way of life. ~ Christopher Castellani

Well, guys are better at mechanical stuff and women are better at emotional stuff. ~ Adam Carolla

Food like love is a deeply emotional matter. ~ Julia Child

A full accounting of adoption as an option would not underestimate its emotional challenges - the grief and loss for birth mothers, the uncertainties for adoptive parents operating under a patchwork of state laws. ~ Nina Easton

As you follow the escapades or the journey of the hero through a story, it evokes some kind of emotion in the viewers. The director's job is to make sure that the audience goes through the journey and has an emotional reaction. ~ Don Bluth

A hug is a display of love that begins on the physical end of the spectrum but bleeds into the emotional end of the spectrum if you let it, if you give into it. It's the most innocent, pure form of physical human connection there is. It only takes two willing people, who don't even have to know each other, to participate. Two willing people who want that exchange. It's so easy, but there are people who never get them. People who never get them," she repeats softly, it's a confession. ~ Kim Holden

It is an emotional and an enchanted place. If the study of the conscious mind highlights the importance of reason and analysis, study of the unconscious mind highlights the importance of passions and perception. ~ David Brooks

The sensation that allows you to experience the physical reality, when detached from the physical body allows you to realize life beyond the physical reality. ~ Roshan Sharma

Compulsive eating is an emotional problem, and we use an emotional approach to its solution. ~ Jean Nidetch

Our truest nature to fully connect, heal, and grow is to be mirrored by something that reflects our full essence. I believe the natural world is that ideal mirror. ~ Regina M. Powers

Those were lean years for emotional charity... ~ Ann Patchett

I guess that's the problem when you really get to know someone. You learn all their triggers and emotional buttons, and unfortunately, in times of war, you press them. ~ Samantha Young

.....everything unexpectedly made sense as to where some of the traits passed on inside me came from. ~ Patricia Dsouza

It is often assumed that the chief reason for making things - furniture, clothing, toys, a garden - is to save money. There are other factors that may be of equal or greater importance: making what we need for life is a way of expressing creativity and of gaining greater confidence. Emotional security comes from providing the necessities of life in personal, meaningful ways, by our own hands or those of friends and loved ones. Another value in studying how things are made is to increase our appreciation for them as we better understand what makes them work. The knowledge that comes from shaping the things around us helps us build relationships with the world that are more intimate. ~ William Coperthwaite

Mind thinks in images but, to communicate with another, must transform image into thought and then thought into language. That march, from image to thought to language, is treacherous. Casualties occur: the rich, fleecy texture of image, its extraordinary plasticity and flexibility, its private nostalgic emotional hues - all are lost when image is crammed into language. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

When a certain kind of psychic detachment occurs, I retrieve my ribbon; I tie it around my ankle. I tell myself that should delusion come to call, or hallucinations crowd my senses again, I might be able to wrangle some sense out of the senseless. I tell myself that if I must live with a slippery mind, I want to know how to tether it too. ~ Esmé Weijun Wang

No one expects the rug to be yanked out from underneath them; life-changing events usually don't announce themselves. While instinct and intuition can help provide some warning signs, they can do little to prepare you for the feeling of rootlessness that follows when fate flips your world upside down. Anger, confusion, sadness, and frustration are shaken up together inside you like a snow globe. It takes years for the emotional dust to settle as you do your best to see through the storm. ~ Slash

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations. ~ Kahlil Gibran