Selective Mutism Quotes

I was a prisoner inside my own body. I felt desperate, angry, stupid, confused, ashamed, hopeless and absolutely alone... and that this was of my own making. I could speak at home, how come I couldn't outside it? I have never been able to find the right words to describe what it was like. Imagine that for one day you are unable to speak to anyone you meet outside your own family, particularly at school/college, or out shopping, etc., have no sign language, no gestures, no facial expression. Then imagine that for eight years, but no one really understands. It was like torture, and I was the only person that knew it was happening. My body and face were frozen most of the time. I became hyperconscious of myself when outside the home and it was a relief to get back as I was always exhausted. I attempted to hide it (an impossible task) because I felt so ashamed that I couldn't do what other people seemed to find so natural and easy - to speak. At times I felt suicidal. ~ Carl Sutton

As a teenager and young adult, I found being mute intensely isolating and dehumanizing. I felt truly like I was just a pair of eyes and ears - an entity without a body, without a face, and without a mouth. I felt as though I was barely a physical being. ~ Carl Sutton

Aloneness – that is what SM feels like to me. Isolated, alone, separated, left out as I silently stand by watching others experience life while the words freeze inside me, afraid to speak up or join in a conversation. Actually feeling the anxiety shaking inside my chest as I try to get up the courage to speak to someone or call or text a friend. SM feels like the child standing alone behind the door watching the other kids in the playground – afraid to ask, 'may I play?' It feels like the teenager standing silently against the wall, listening to classmates laugh and chat, invisible to everyone and wondering what it would be like to have a friend. It feels like the 50-year-old office worker, alone in her cube while others chat and laugh in the aisle, still left out. I live inside a shell, a mask that looks like me, but isn't me. I am in here, but it is really hard to let others see. I'm so grateful for the few dear friends I have now. Most people, though, only see the shell and assume I'm aloof and uncaring because I am quiet. I feel very deeply. I feel others' joy and pain intensely, yet they rarely know. I'm not quiet because I am uncaring. I'm silent because I'm afraid. ~ Carl Sutton

Females with ASDs often develop 'coping mechanisms' that can cover up the intrinsic difficulties they experience. They may mimic their peers, watch from the sidelines, use their intellect to figure out the best ways to remain undetected, and they will study, practice, and learn appropriate approaches to social situations. Sounds easy enough, but in fact these strategies take a lot of work and can more often than not lead to exhaustion, withdrawal, anxiety, selective mutism, and depression. -Dr. Shana Nichols ~ Liane Holliday Willey

Myth is the practical metabolism of our soulish life, the logic of our obsessions and oversights for which we have no language or code. Myth is the "morality" that the ineffable puts upon us, our unaccountable imperatives, our inexplicably selective clarity and obscurity, the mortal one-sidedness of our talents and wits, the passion and apathy that make such a transient passage through our hapless minds; that weave a pattern of fatality others will see before we do. Myth is distinctively human or sublime higher-order instinct, the "reason" in culture that reason knows not of. ~ Kenny Smith

If as a family we must be selective listeners, then let us pay more attention to the words of the heart and less to the words of anger ~ Wes Fesler

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments. ~ Ayn Rand

Our big and good God is at work in the world, and we have been invited to participate fully - however God has gifted and equipped and called each of us. One needn't identify as a feminist to participate in the redemptive movement of God for women in the world. The gospel is more than enough. Of course it is! But as long as I know how important maternal health is to Haiti's future, and as long as I know that women are being abused and raped, as long as I know girls are being denied life itself through selective abortion, abandonment, and abuse, as long as brave little girls in Afghanistan are attacked with acid for the crime of going to school, and until being a Christian is synonymous with doing something about these things, you can also call me a feminist.23 ~ Sarah Bessey

Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze. ~ Garrison Keillor

...glimpses through the clouds of numerous and enormous Second Free Zone residential arks and barges lumbering through their selective tracks like a slow-motion game of hide and seek played by listless, blunt whales. ~ Kieran Shea

You can't be selective about freedom of speech. If you say you believe in freedom of speech you have to acknowledge the people whose views you disagree with, people whose views you may detest, nevertheless have the right to freedom of speech. ~ George Brandis

The thing about film is that your eye is selective. Film isn't. You have to make film do what you want. Simply photographing something doesn't do it. You have to know how to apply light and know what it does on film. ~ Gordon Willis

Composition is selective improvisation. ~ Igor Stravinsky

Did you just call me a mutt?":
"Yes! Fur, paws..selective deafness. Just like my aunt's lab. He always ignores me unless I have food for him. So ... mutt. ~ Mina Carter

Memory and motive are the two edges of the blade by which we slice experience out of events and carve out history - personal, political, civilizational - from the trunk of life. Both are highly selective - memory retrospectively so and motive prospectively. ~ Maria Popova

In reality, there are no biblical literalists, only selective literalists. By abolishing slavery and ordaining women, millions of Protestants have gone far beyond biblical literalism. It's time we did the same for homophobia. ~ William Sloane Coffin

I always set out to just work, as an actor, and try to do as many different things as I possibly could, and not be too selective or too careful. I think just working is fun. ~ Jason Lee

If you are selective about the things you choose to read, look at or listen to, then you are taking effective action against negative thinking. It's just like with a computer; if you change the input, you will change the output. ~ Zig Ziglar

The notion that better engineering can solve all our problems is rooted in an ignorance of non-linear systems and selective/wishful thinking. ~ Charles Hugh Smith

For the past few years, I've been more selective than I have any right to be, but I think that's finally starting to work in my favor. I think I get way too much credit for making what people consider to be smart choices, but it's only because I made a decision to stop worrying about making money. ~ Lizzy Caplan

The writer should have a comprehensive outlook. He should aim at a holistic understanding of the prevailing social, political and economic conditions.

He should evaluate all factors in a balanced way. To take a selective view will be erroneous. A realistic approach becomes necessary. This requires healthy literary criticism and exchange of views.

A writer should necessarily venture into his enterprise by touching on a single issue. But then he should relate it to other socially relevant issues. This is what we call the socio-spiritual approach.

You may begin your work dwelling upon the problems of an individual, but then as a writer you should be able to view it as part of the larger social reality. ~ Jayakanthan

from Hunter's Moon: Memories are deceptive and imperfect; selective and seductive. They have a way of sneaking up on you. A scent, a color, an idle phrase can trigger them and you're powerless to escape. ~ Ken Gilland

I'm still reading some scripts and I model as well, so I'm still doing that. But I don't want to do like just anything so we're being really selective about the stuff I'll do. ~ Kim Smith

There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships and missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective, that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time - we've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Emery nodded. "But I'm afraid you're now a week behind in your studies." "You told me I was two months ahead!" Ceony frowned. "A week behind," he repeated, as though not hearing her. And perhaps he didn't. Emery Thane had a talent for selective hearing, she'd learned. "I've determined it's best for you to study the roots of Folding. ~ Charlie N. Holmberg

an organism's selective environment is constantly crumbling beneath its evolutionary feet ~ Russell Powell Allen Buchanan

The fundamental problem is that there's no credibility in the judicial system, which is a system that's been completely politicized. This is retaliation and selective repression. ~ Leopoldo Lopez

Life isn't memorable enough to remember everything. It's not like there are explosions all the time, or dog smoking cigarettes. ~ Donald Miller

Knowledge is a commodity to be shared. For knowledge to pay dividends, it should not remain the monopoly of the selected few. ~ Moutasem Algharati

Selective Biblical quotation is a favorite of leftists who interpret the Bible the same way they do the Constitution: as a Chinese menu designed to allow picking and choosing. That's because when many Democrats take the Bible as a whole, they realize how much they despise it. ~ Ben Shapiro

Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. It is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying. ~ Octavia E. Butler

If you want to create something that's worth doing you have to self-edit from the get-go. You really must be careful and selective with whom you work, you must constantly ask yourself the hard questions about your art, and you must set a nearly unattainable standard for yourself. ~ John Dyer Baizley

There aren't any cobwebs on my dick. Besides, just because I don't stick it in every woman who walks by, doesn't mean I don't use it. I'm selective, where as you…you're just a man whore.

"I am not a whore! Just because I happen to love women, and they love me back – doesn't make me a whore." "Maybe it's your dusty penis that scares women away. ~ Jennifer Turner

Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence. Moreover, they and their organs of hearing were much older than man and his music. Their power of appreciating music is therefore an uncontemplated side-faculty of a hearing apparatus which has become on other grounds what we find it to be. So it is, I believe, with man. He has not acquired his musical hearing as such, but has received a highly developed organ of hearing by a process of selection, because it was necessary to him in the selective process ; and this organ of hearing happens also to be adapted to listening to music. ~ August Weismann

You can see that there is scarcely an observable fact unworthy of mention in your notes, and yet you could easily spend more time scribbling than watching, and that would defeat the purpose. So be selective, don't be compulsive, and enjoy your note-taking. ~ Robert Pyle

It's nice to be in a place where I can be a little more selective, and to be sought out for ideas that I have. ~ Will Ferrell

I am selective, but at the same time, I want to be out there as an actor and show people my range. ~ Sasha Grey

Narratives are subjective and selective. They frame and filter concepts, images, and information according to desirable beliefs, values, symbols, traditions, and preferences. They are motivational tools that reinforce existing social identities and uniqueness. They arouse deep passions and allegiance. ~ Padraig O'Malley

For such people, the ruling gods are progress, science, and development. They imagine that we know so much more about the world than those people of olden times, because "we" have science. Of course, they themselves do not have science, they have simply heard and believed that scientific knowledge is real knowledge. They know little about the goals and methods of science, and nothing about the Islamic Intellectual tradition. They are blind imitators in intellectual issues, that is, on the level where they should be striving for their own understanding. What is worse, this is a selective imitation, since they only accept the authority of the "scientists" and the "experts", not that of the great Muslim thinkers of the past. If Einstein said it, it must be true, but if Al-Ghazali or Mulla Sadra said it, then it can't be true, because it isn't scientific. ~ William C. Chittick

Traveling on, the shaft of his light reached now a great, dully shining oblong, and he stopped, surprised. Then, through the glass sides, he saw bright shapes of fish wheel in schools down the opaque water, startled by the illumination. Coming at last, and so suddenly, on life like his own, Mr. Lecky moved closer. The fixed flood of his light enveloped these small fish dimly, glowed back on him. They came sliding, drifting, mouths in motion, gills rippling, up the light, against the glass. Their senseless round eyes stared at Mr. Lecky. Idling with great grace, the extravagant products of selective breeding - fringetails, Korean, calico - passed, swayed about, came languidly back. Moving faster, stub-finned, crop-tailed danios from the Malabar coast appeared, hovered, taking the light on their fat flanks, now spotted, now iridescent pearl or opal.

Seeing so many of them, so eager and attentive, Mr. Lecky felt an unexpected compunction. He was their only proprietor; and soon, trapped unnaturally here in the big tank, they would starve to death. His light went back to a counter he had just passed, showing him again the half-noticed packages - food for birds and pet animals, food, too, for fish. Returning to the tank, his light found many of the fish still waiting, the rest rushing back. He went and took a package, tore the top off, and poured the contents onto the rectangle of open water. It would perhaps postpone the time when, having eaten each other, the sick rema ~ James Gould Cozzens

System 2 and the electrical circuits in your home both have limited capacity, but they respond differently to threatened overload. A breaker trips when the demand for current is excessive, causing all devices on that circuit to lose power at once. In contrast, the response to mental overload is selective and precise: System 2 protects the most important activity, so it receives the attention it needs; "spare capacity" is allocated second by second to other tasks. In our version of the gorilla experiment, we instructed the participants to assign priority to the digit task. We know that they followed that instruction, because the timing of the visual target had no effect on the main task. If the critical letter was presented at a time of high demand, the subjects simply did not see it. When the transformation task was less demanding, detection performance was better. ~ Daniel Kahneman

With increased self-awareness comes focus... We become selective. We refrain from jumping to grab every opportunity that comes on our way... ~ Assegid Habtewold

I suppose being the kind of creatures we [people] are, we like to censor the past, and are selective, or want to be selective about the things that we remember. If you want to destroy people, destroy their memory, destroy their history. ~ Desmond Tutu

Neither is a memoir the same as a biography, which aims for the most objective, factual account of a life. A memoir, as I understand it, makes no pretense of denying its subjectivity. Its matter is one person's memory, and memory by nature is selective and colored by emotion. Others who participated in the events I describe will no doubt remember some details differently, though I hope we would agree on the essential truths. I have taken no liberties with the past as I remember it, used no fictional devices beyond reconstructing conversations from memory. I have not blended characters, or bent chronology to convenience. And yet I have tried to tell a good story. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

I'm certainly not a person who spends their every waking moment soaking themselves in signs and signals of the sort that cult studies people study; and it's partly, I suppose, because some of those signs and signals aren't worth bothering about. You have to be selective about these things. ~ Peter York

One of the problems, and it's one which is obviously going to get worse, is that all the people at the party are either the children or the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of the people who wouldn't leave in the first place, and because of all the business about selective breeding and regressive genes and so on, it means that all the people now at the party are either absolutely fanatical partygoers, or gibbering idiots, or, more and more frequently, both. ~ Douglas Adams

I also realized it wasn't so much that people read the same Word of God differently, but that many weren't reading it at all - not the scripture itself - at least not in a manner that allowed them to fit every piece of it into one cohesive picture of the truth. Instead, people were reading materials their religions published for study. Often these were selective - preserving some threads of the truth while excluding others - so that the total picture was so incomplete it became a distortion. ~ Avraham Gileadi

There are times I turn off my Wi-Fi, and I'm selective about what I want to share with the world now. ~ Zoe Sugg

The artist ... standing in the position of mediator between the world of his experience and the world of his dreams - 'a mediator, consequently gifted with twin faculties, a selective faculty and a reproductive faculty.' To equate these faculties was the secret of artistic success. ~ James Joyce

For some reason that only a sociologist might be able to accurately explain, the Brazilian Press was extremely unkind to me, reporting only selective derogatory untruthful rumors (some of which are still around), harsh criticism, and unwarranted sarcasm. I was very hurt by this. It was such great disappointment ... When I came back from Brazil at that time, I made a promise to myself that I would never, ever again sing in Brazil. So far [as of 2002], I have kept this promise, having declined each and every invitation or proposals to perform in Brazil. Once was enough! ~ Astrud Gilberto

Christians in this country have found themselves under selective assault. God has, almost overnight, been removed from the educational, legal, and political institutions of the country. ~ Daniel Lapin

By identifying with a particular name that belongs to a particular body and mind, the self begins the process of creating a separate identity. Add in a complex jumble of ideas, beliefs, and opinions, along with some selective and often painful memories with which to create a past to identify with, as well as the raw emotional energy to hold it all together, and before you know it, you've got a very convincing - though divided - self. ~ Adyashanti