Emotional Engagement Quotes

The score, which comes often quite later in a film, can help reinvigorate your emotional engagement with it. ~ James Marsh

What determines what we remember and what we forget? The key to memory consolidation is attentiveness. Storing explicit memories and, equally important, forming connections between them requires strong mental concentration, amplified by repetition or by intense intellectual or emotional engagement. The sharper the attention, the sharper the memory. "For a memory to persist," writes Kandel, "the incoming information must be thoroughly and deeply processed. This is accomplished by attending to the information and associating it meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well established in memory."35 If we're unable to attend to the information in our working memory, the information lasts only as long as the neurons that hold it maintain their electric charge - a few seconds at best. Then it's gone, leaving little or no trace in the mind. ~ Nicholas Carr

What is empathy, after all, if not an act of concentrated emotional engagement? And is that emotional engagement, however briefly expressed, not a potential step toward a lasting bond? ~ Naomi Leite

Since we began with a felt sense of safety this day, several neural streams are initially supporting the renewal of our connection.

In our midbrain, the energies of the SEEKING system are animating the CARE system, which can both foster the good feelings between us and support offers of repair should we have a rupture (Panksepp & Biven, 2012).

Once in connection, our ventral vagal parasympathetic system is affecting the prosody of our voices, our facial mobility, and the attentiveness of our listening, maintaining social engagement (Porges, 2011). Since ventral lateralizes to the right hemisphere, we more easily stay rooted in the right-centric way of attending that keeps us in connection with this moment and with each other (McGilchrist, 2009).

In this intimacy, our brains are coupling in many regions, so there is an experience of social emotional engagement and embodied communication as we become a single system in two bodies (Hasson, 2010).

Because we are trustworthy partners in this healing process, social baseline theory tells us that our amygdalae are calming just because we are together (Beckes & Coan, 2011).

All of this is happening without doing anything, even without saying anything, in microseconds below conscious awareness because of the safe space we have cultivated over time.

We can more clearly understand why Porges says, "Safety IS the treatment". ~ Bonnie Badenoch

It isn't just the physical presence of the father that matters- it's his engagement and involvement. An emotionally remote or rejecting or actively punitive father leads to girls' feeling pretty apprehensive around men. ~ Victoria Secunda

A lack of emotional engagement in the affair affirms higher credibility. ~ Pawan Mishra

People who lacked emotional engagement in childhood, men and women alike, often can't believe that someone would want to have a relationship with them just because of who they are. They believe that if they want closeness, they must play a role that always puts the other person first. ~ Lindsay C. Gibson

When I consider the men (like my father) I have treated in psychotherapy, I recognize the challenge I face as a counselor. These men are in counseling due to an insistent wife, troubled child or their own addiction. They suffer a lack of connection with the people they say they love most. Chronically accused of being over controlling or emotionally absent, they feel at sea when their wives and children claim to be lonely in their presence. How can these people feel "un-loved" when (from his perspective) he has dedicated his life to their welfare?

Some of these men will express their lack of vitality and emotional engagement though endless service. They are hyperaware of the moods, needs and prefer-ences of loved ones, yet their self-neglect can be profound. This text examines how a lack of secure early attachment with caregivers can result in the tendency to self-abandon while managing connections with significant others. Their anxiety and distrust of the connection of others will manifest in anxious monitoring, over-giving, passive aggressive approaches to anger and chronic worry. For them, failure to anticipate and meet the needs of others equals abandonment. ~ Mary Crocker Cook

One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness. Such men make this cosmos and its construction the pivot of their emotional life, in order to find the peace and security which they cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience. ~ Walter Isaacson

White is associated with purity because the entire spectrum is functioning in unity. White is a healing color. White is appropriate for weddings because the unity of male and female symbolizes the unity of allness. ~ Tae Yun Kim

It is not only negative feelings that become blocked. The repression extends to more and more of his emotional capacity.When one is given an anesthetic in preparation for surgery, it is not merely the capacity to experience pain that is suspended; the capacity to experience pleasure goes also - because what is blocked is the capacity to experience *feeling*. The same principle applies to the repression of emotions.
Chapter 1: Discovering the Unknown Self, pg. 9, Bantam Edition, 1984 ~ Nathaniel Branden

The trick is not to get hooked on the highs and lows and mistake an activated attachment system for passion or love. Don't let emotional unavailability turn you on. ~ Amir Levine

My kids say if there's any family dinner that doesn't result in somebody crying, it's not a good dinner. They cry because it helps relieve them of a guilt or some onerous emotional burden. It's like a family tradition. ~ William Shatner

When you touch the pain of the world as real, there is a solidarity, an engagement with the Gospel, a living faith that blossoms forth. ~ Simone Campbell

As a woman, I've had to choose between ignoring the full effect of my carnal instincts and exploring them with a man who will abandon me. Both result in emotional isolation. It wasn't until tapping into the forbidden grounds of the male anatomy that I realized that men are locked in their own prison. Their vulnerability frightens them as much as my confidence. ~ Maggie Young

The spirit within each human being is a small fragment of the Divine and Eternal, and if we give it the opportunity to speak, it will do so - but only when we keep our engagement to dismiss everyday difficulties, be quiet, and listen. ~ Faith Baldwin

The problem is that most people, most of the time, are desperate to believe ridiculous and divisive ideas for patently emotional reasons,and while rarely explicit what they're really worried about is death ~ Sam Harris

I will try to live up to expectations of people; will present report card to people in 2019. ~ Narendra Modi

The problem may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower - and wither - all around us.
Even those who live out the best version of the familiar story line might not find happiness as their reward. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long, meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I wouldn't call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent worldview. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person - honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. ~ Rebecca Solnit

I'm so uncomfortable, especially in emotional situations, having to say sentences that don't feel right. As an actor - or really, as any kind of person sensitive to it. ~ Franka Potente

Shame can be an incredible burden, making us feel not good enough no matter what we do. But shame is also the emotion that makes us honorable and kind, and motivates us to constantly improve ourselves. ~ Jessica Moore

The absolute easiest thing to do is spend time, as often as one can, in tranquil or majestic nature. Look at butterflies. Walk barefoot in the sand. Put your feet in a clean, bubbling stream. Walk in a city park and feed the pigeons. Anything. Get out and take a walk. ~ Gary K. Smith

As an empath, it's vital that you learn how to hold space for your emotions, even the most painful ones. By anchoring yourself in your breath, you can learn how to witness the emotional energy of others within you, without attaching yourself to these sensations. ~ Mateo Sol

A sane man is at his sanest just after he has orgasmed. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The show is like an Edwardian play - emotional life gets stepped on for the sake of accepted manners, and that's terrific for actors to play in. ~ Jason Alexander

When I was with my mother, I sometimes thought of myself of a trophy - something to be flaunted before friends. When out of public view, I sat on the shelf ignored and forgotten. ~ Joan Frances Casey

The study of modern mindfulness meditation and emotional intelligence is deeply rooted in the ancient Vipassana meditation techniques. ~ Amit Ray

I'm quite British in the sense of not expressing my emotions much. I save it for my songs. If you ask about a death in the family, or a lover, I will not be emotional. I'd probably answer with a smile. Because that's what we British blokes do. ~ James Blunt

I would rather have young people settle on a small income at once, and have to struggle with a few difficulties together, than be involved in a long engagement. ~ Jane Austen

Panksepp is emphatic on this point, arguing that his neural studies as well as those of his colleagues show that the prime, fundamental emotions of humans and all mammals do not emerge from the cerebral cortex, as was commonly believed in the twentieth century and as some leading neuroscientists still claim, but come from deep, ancient brain structures, including the hypothalamus and amygdala. It is why, he notes, that "drugs used to treat emotional and psychiatric disorders in humans were first developed and found effective in animals - rats and mice. This kind of research would obviously have no value if animals were incapable of experiencing these emotional states, or if we did not share them. ~ Virginia Morell

Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along. ~ Harry Stack Sullivan

All oppression starts with the experience of Lack. A lack of ideas, creativity, money, investors, health, friends, love, or kindness. Lack creates the emotional effect of Depression. ~ Deborah Bravandt

This was one of those moments when I realized that my emotional baggage, once a few neatly packed pieces, was now like the Joads' truck, stacked high with old clothes, half a rocking chair, a mule, all barely secured with twine. ~ Amy Cohen

I lose it when I can't write. I feel sad and confused and fucked off. ~ Carla H. Krueger

The world will benefit significantly from talents such as empathy, emotional intensity, certitude, sensitivity, ability to detect details, depth of thought, will to embrace, and many other things that we need in a time where alienation, coldness, superficiality, and emotional hardness are predominating. ~ Jenara Nerenberg

It was unaccountable not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to have any occasion to be tormenting myself about her, not to have to write to her, not to be scheming and devising opportunities of being alone with her. Sometimes, of an evening, when I looked up from my writing, and saw her seated opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and think how queer it was that there we were, alone together as a matter of course - nobody's business any more - all the romance of our engagement put away on a shelf, to rust - no one to please but one another - one another to please, for life. ~ Charles Dickens

I mean that some people have a light inside them, a facility for inquiry and interest and engagement, that cannot be fabricated and cannot be counterfeited by the artist, no matter his or her skill. ~ Kate Morton

I expect that Calvin would evaluate our worship today not as too emotional, but as too narrow in its emotional repertoire. ~ Michael S. Horton

In a capitalist society a man is expected to be an aggressive, uncompromising, factual, lusty, intelligent provider of goods,and the woman, a retiring, gracious, emotional, intuitive, attractive consumer of goods. ~ Toni Cade Bambara

I've always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read. ~ Liu Cixin

Did you not hear the part about this being his fiancé?" Owen asked the girl.
"She said she wasn't."
"She is. It's just a game we're playing. ~ Alyssa Rose Ivy

An adventure is never an adventure when it happens. An adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility. ~ Tim Cahill

I didn't know what I wanted. Maybe I never had. The emotional distance was never worth the togetherness, and yet I didn't learn. Nothing had changed. Had he reached for me, I would have forgotten to behave sensibly. Desire has no reason, and the need for intimacy had never stopped. I had not conjured up the images in years, his lips on mine, his hands, the urgency of our hunger. Now I was tormented by the memories. ~ Patricia Cornwell

To lose yourself in the mystery of such emphatic questions
trying to discover their unbearable answers
about your deceived identity,
that is the greatest challenge of your existence.

(Excerpted from Acceptance, chapter Resilience) ~ Claudia Pavel

Im sorry it's just a little case of PMS that's all ... Im just one big emotional wreck ... Could you guys go get me some Midol and a Snicker ~ Shawn Wayans

The porn films are not about sex. Sex is airbrushed and digitally washed out of the films. There is no acting because none of the women are permitted to have what amounts to a personality. The one emotion they are allowed to display is an unquenchable desire to satisfy men, especially if that desire involves the women's physical and emotional degradation. The lightning in the films is harsh and clinical. Pubic hair is shaved off to give the women the look of young girls or rubber dolls. Porn, which advertises itself as sex, is a bizarre, bleached pantomime of sex. The acts onscreen are beyond human endurance. The scenarios are absurd. The manicured and groomed bodies, the huge artificial breasts, the pouting oversized lips, the erections that never go down, and the sculpted bodies are unreal. Makeup and production mask blemishes. There are no beads of sweat, no wrinkle lines, no human imperfections. Sex is reduced to a narrow spectrum of sterilized dimensions. It does not include the dank smell of human bodies, the thump of a pulse, taste, breath - or tenderness. Those in films are puppets, packaged female commodities. They have no honest emotion, are devoid of authentic human beauty, and resemble plastic. Pornography does not promote sex, if one defines sex as a shared act between two partners. It promotes masturbation. It promotes the solitary auto-arousal that precludes intimacy and love. Pornography is about getting yourself off at someone else's expense. ~ Chris Hedges

I believe we all heal differently, it is a process, and many like me are here to help you as you heal, as you recover. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Thus far, our responsibility for how we treat chickens and allow them to be treated in our culture is dismissed with blistering rhetoric designed to silence objection: "How the hell can you compare the feelings of a hen with those of a human being?" One answer is, by looking at her. It does not take special insight or credentials to see that a hen confined in a battery cage is suffering, or to imagine what her feelings must be compared with those of a hen ranging outside in the grass and sunlight. We are told that we humans are capable of knowing just about anything that we want to know - except, ironically, what it feels like to be one of our victims. We are told we are being "emotional" if we care about a chicken and grieve over a chicken's plight. However, it is not "emotion" that is really under attack, but the vicarious emotions of pity, sympathy, compassion, sorrow, and indignity on behalf of the victim, a fellow creature - emotions that undermine business as usual. By contrast, such "manly" emotions as patriotism, pride, conquest, and mastery are encouraged. ~ Karen Davis

Though sometimes you need to explain yourself with bitter or better words, he who knows how to speak how matured he is with silence in his most tempting moment is truly a matured person. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I'm in emotional purgatory, the up and the down, the right and the wrong. I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying not to ... touch him ~ Tarryn Fisher

My mother's work has been an enormous influence on me, but not literally. By that I mean, my photographs don't look like hers. That makes it difficult to compare them. What they do share is an emotional intensity. ~ Amy Arbus

There's a double standard to protest in America. Something is different for black people who should dare to ask questions, and further, for those who protest in blackness. Protest in and by black bodies is never deemed legitimate, never deemed worthy of engagement. It seems that we have simply have not earned our grievance, our grievance is illegitimate – we do not deserve sympathy or, ultimately, justice. ~ DeRay Mckesson

An example of perfection in nature is the cockroach. It was living six million years before us and it may outlast us by that long. The brain of a cockroach is a splendid little engine. It doesn't evolve and it doesn't need to. The human brain is a disaster from the point of view of perfection
great intellectual power combined with primitive emotional reactions. Human beings today are living with terrible risks of their own creation
nuclear weapons, the exploitation of natural resources, the great disparity between the wealthy and the poor. Our brains will probably bring us to destruction, but we also have the possibility of growth, evolution. I prefer being a human. We shouldn't always look for perfection, in nature or our lives. ~ Rita Levi-Montalcini

The few remaining men can exist out their puny days dropped out on drugs or
strutting around in drag or passively watching the high-powered female in action,
fulfilling themselves as spectators, vicarious liver*, or breeding in the cow pasture
with the toadies, or they can go off to the nearest friendly suicide center where
they will be quietly, quickly, and painlessly gassed to death.
Prior to the institution of automation, to the replacement of males by machines,
the male should be of use to the female, wait on her, cater to her slightest whim,
obey her every command, be totally subservient to her, exist in perfect obedience
to her will, as opposed to the completely warped, degenerate situation we have
now of men, not only not only not existing at all, cluttering up the world with their
ignominious presence, but being pandered to and groveled before by the mass of
females, millions of women piously worshiping the Golden Calf, the dog leading
the master on a leash, when in fact the male, short of being a drag queen, is least
miserable when his dogginess is recognized – no unrealistic emotional demands are
made of him and the completely together female is calling the shots. Rational men
want to be squashed, stepped on, crushed and crunched, treated as the curs, the
filth that they are, have their repulsiveness confirmed.
The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against ~ Valerie Solanas