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Depersonalization Quotes

Browse 31 quotes about Depersonalization.

Depersonalization Quotes

“Women have been programmed to view our bodies only in terms of how they look and feel to others, rather than how they feel to ourselves, and how we wish to use them. We are surrounded by media images portraying women as essentially decorative machines of consumer function, constantly doing battle with rampant decay. (Take your vitamins every day and he might keep you, if you don’t forget to whiten your teeth, cover up your smells, color your grey hair and iron out your wrinkles....) As women, we fight this depersonalization every day, this pressure toward the conversion of one’s own self-image into a media expectation of what might satisfy male demand.”

WomenExpectationsGenderGender RolesBodiesObjectificationDepersonalizationWomen S Bodies
Book:The Cancer Journals
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“... on the historical scale, the damages wrought by individual violence for selfish motives are insignificant compared to the holocausts resulting from self-transcending devotion to collectively shared belief-systems. It is derived from primitive identification instead of mature social integration; it entails the partial surrender of personal responsibility and produces the quasi-hypnotic phenomena of group-psychology.”

EvilViolenceDiseaseBelief SystemsDepersonalization
Book:The Ghost in the Machine
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“The ultimate form of dehumanization is not to reduce humans to the rank of animals, but to elevate animals to the rank of humans; the ultimate form of depersonalization is not to take away the personhood of subjects, but to give personhood to objects; and the ultimate form of demoralization is not to lower morality to the level of caprice, but to raise caprice to the level of morality.”

HumanityMoralityArtificial IntelligenceAnimal RightsOntologyPersonhoodDehumanizationDepersonalizationCritical TheoryDemoralization
Author:Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
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“The schizoid repression of feeling, and retreat from emotional relationships, may, however, go much further and produce a serious breakdown of constructive effort. Then the unhappy sufferer from incapacitating conflicts will succumb to real futility: nothing seems worth doing, interest dies, the world seems unreal, the ego feels depersonalized. Suicide may be attempted in a cold, calculated way to the accompaniment of such thoughts as 'I am useless, bad for everybody, I'll be best out of the way.' One patient who had never reached that point, said: 'I feel I love people in an impersonal way; it seems a false position, hypocritical. Perhaps I don't do any loving. I'm terrified when I see young people go off and being successful and I'm at a dead bottom, absolute dereliction, excommunicate.”

SufferingSuicideBreakdownFutilityDepersonalizationSchizoid
Book:Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self
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“Dissociative symptoms—primarily depersonalization and derealization—are elements in other DSM-IV disorders, including schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, and in the neurologic syndrome of temporal lobe epilepsy, also called complex partial seizures. In this latter disorder, there are often florid symptoms of depersonalization and realization, but most amnesia symptoms derive from difficulties with focused attention rather than forgetting previously learned information.”

AmnesiaSchizophreniaDissociativeBorderline Personality DisorderDissociative AmnesiaDissociative DisordersDepersonalizationDerealization
Book:Rebuilding Shattered Lives: Treating Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders
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“But I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell. Of course, you pretend to be the author. You have to. You think, I now choose to go to lunch, when that monotone beep rings from on high at 12:37. But really, the bell decides. You think you're the painter, but you're the canvas.”

ExistentialismPretendingJohn GreenDepersonalizationDerealizationSimulation Hypothesis
Book:Turtles All the Way Down
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“Dissociative Disorders have a high rate of responsiveness to therapy and that with proper treatment, their prognosis is quite good.”

Mental IllnessTherapyDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationAbuse SurvivorsPsychotherapyMental DisorderTraumatizedDissociative DisorderDissociative AmnesiaDissociative DisordersMpdDepersonalizationDdnosPrognosisDerealizationDepersonalization DisorderDissociative Fugue
Book:Interviewer's Guide to the Structured Clinical Interview for Dsm-IV Dissociative Disorders
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“In order satisfactorily to function, we depend, throughout our lives, on the presence of others who will accord us validity, identity, and reality. You cannot be anything if you are not recognized as something; in this way your being becomes dependent on the regard of somebody else. You may be confirmed, or you may be disconfirmed, and if the latter is the case, often enough and pervasively enough, you simply cease to exist as a person.”

AnxietyTraumaRejectionShynessValidationDepersonalizationDerealization
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“Research has also revealed that women who have developed PTSD in relation to early childhood sexual abuse often develop borderline personality disorder. Some severe cases will result in the development of dissociative identity disorder or depersonalization disorder. Patients who have been exposed to protracted and repeated sexual abuse may also develop schizophrenia simultaneously with PTSD.”

PtsdDissociative Identity DisorderChild Sexual AbuseSchizophreniaBorderline Personality DisorderDissociative DisordersDepersonalization
Book:Lessons Learned: The Anneliese Michel Exorcism: The Implementation of a Safe and Thorough Examination, Determination, and Exorcism of Demonic Possession
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“When I threw the stick at Jamie, I hadn't intended to hit him with it. But the moment it left my hand, I knew that's what was going to happen. I didn't yet know any calculus or geometry, but I was able to plot, with some degree of certainty, the trajectory of that stick. The initial velocity, the acceleration, the impact. The mathematical likelihood of Jamie's bloody cheek. It had good weight and heft, that stick. It felt nice to throw. And it looked damn fine in the overcast sky, too, flying end over end, spinning like a heavy, two-pronged pinwheel and (finally, indifferently, like math) connecting with Jamie's face. Jamie's older sister took me by the arm and she shook me. Why did you do that? What were you thinking? The anger I saw in her eyes. Heard in her voice. The kid I became to her then, who was not the kid I thought I was. The burdensome regret. I knew the word "accident" was wrong, but I used it anyway. If you throw a baseball at a wall and it goes through a window, that is an accident. If you throw a stick directly at your friend and it hits your friend in the face, that is something else. My throw had been something of a lob and there had been a good distance between us. There had been ample time for Jamie to move, but he hadn't moved. There had been time for him to lift a hand and protect his face from the stick, but he hadn't done that either. He just stood impotent and watched it hit him. And it made me angry: That he hadn't tried harder at a defense. That he hadn't made any effort to protect himself from me. What was I thinking? What was he thinking? I am not a kid who throws sticks at his friends. But sometimes, that's who I've been. And when I've been that kid, it's like I'm watching myself act in a movie, reciting somebody else's damaging lines. Like this morning, over breakfast. Your eyes asking mine to forget last night's exchange. You were holding your favorite tea mug. I don't remember what we were fighting about. It doesn't seem to matter any more. The words that came out of my mouth then, deliberate and measured, temporarily satisfying to throw at the bored space between us. The slow, beautiful arc. The spin and the calculated impact. The downward turn of your face. The heavy drop in my chest. The word "accident" was wrong. I used it anyway.”

Accident2016DepersonalizationBlame The VictimLovers QuarrelParabolic Path
Book:This Is Not a Confession
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“Dissociation gets you through a brutal experience, letting your basic survival skills operate unimpeded…Your ability to survive is enhanced as the ability to feel is diminished…All feeling are blocked; you ‘go away.’ You are disconnected from the act, the perpetrator & yourself…Viewing the scene from up above or some other out-of-body perspective is common among sexual abuse survivors.”

AbuseSexual AbuseRapeNumbDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsDisconnectedNumbnessIncestChild RapeChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorDepersonalizationDissociatedOut Of Body ExperienceOut Of Body
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
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“Dissociation, a form of hypnotic trance, helps children survive the abuse…The abuse takes on a dream-like, surreal quality and deadened feelings and altered perceptions add to the strangeness. The whole scene does not fit into the 'real world.' It is simple to forget, easy to believe nothing happened.”

Mental HealthMental IllnessChild AbuseSurrealUnrealNumbDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsNumbnessTrancePerception Of RealityUnrealityPerceptionsRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaTrauma MemoryDepersonalizationDissociatedTrauma MemoriesSurreal QuotesTrance StatesHypnotic TranceNumbness Quote
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
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“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.”

BodyIsolationEntityDepersonalizationSelective MutismDehumanizing
Book:Selective Mutism In Our Own Words: Experiences in Childhood and Adulthood
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“Much, much later. when I am back home and being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I will be enabled to see what was going on in my mind immediately after 11 August. I am still capable of operating mechanically as a soldier in these following days. But operating mechanically as a soldier is now all I am capable of. Martin says he is worried about me. He says I have the thousand-yard stare'. Of course, I cannot see this stare. But by now we both have more than an idea what it means. So, among all the soldiers here, this is nothing to be ashamed of. But as it really does just go with the territory we find ourselves in. it is just as equally not a badge of honour. Martin is seasoned enough to never even think this. but I know of young men back home, sitting in front of war films and war games, who idolise this condition as some kind of mark of a true warrior. But from where I sit, if indeed I do have this stare, this pathetically naive thinking is a crock of shit. Because only some pathetically naive soul who had never felt this nothingness would say something so fucking dumb. You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion that define you as a person. There is no feeling any more, because to feel any emotion would also be to beckon the overwhelming blackness from you. My mind has now locked all this down. And without any control of this self-defence mechanism my subconscious has operated. I do not feel any more. But when I close my eyes. I see the dead Taliban looking into this blackness. And I see the Afghan soldier's face staring into it, singing gently as he slips into another world. And I see Dave Hicks's face. shaking gently as he tries to stay awake in this one. With this, I lift myself up, sitting foetal and hugging my knees on my sleeping mat.”

MilitaryArmySoldierWarriorDumbNothingnessPtsdNaiveNumbDetachedTraumatizedDissociativePost Traumatic Stress DisorderFlashbackPosttraumatic Stress DisorderMilitary QuoteIdolizedDepersonalizationTraumatic StressFlashbacksUnemotionalStareTrue WarriorCombat PtsdMechanicalEmotionlessNo Longer HumanIdolisationWounded WarriorsWarrior QoutesPosttraumaticDead InsidePosttraumatic StressAutomatonRoboticDissociated StateCasualty Of WarMilitary PsychiatryDepersonalizedThousand Yard StareAcute Stress ReactionArmy In AfghanistanArmy QuoteCrock Of ShitDepersonalisedNaive Soul
Book:Among You: The Extraordinary True Story of a Soldier Broken By War
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“Girls are genius at getting through sexual abuse. Often the only way to get through is not to feel. And that is exactly what these fantasy worlds allow: They give girls a place to go so they don't have to be present in their violated bodies. Brilliant.”

FantasySexual AbuseNumbDissociationChild Sexual AbuseCoping MechanismDepersonalizationCoping StrategiesNumbing Emotions
Book:Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse
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“000-x02 Dissociative reaction This reaction represents a type of gross personality disorganization, the basis of which is a neurotic disturbance, although the diffuse dissociation seen in some casts may occasionally appear psychotic. The personality disorganization may result in aimless running or "freezing." The repressed impulse giving rise to the anxiety may be discharged by, or deflected into, various symptomatic expressions, such as depersonalization, dissociated personality, stupor, fugue, amnesia, dream state, somnambulism, etc. The diagnosis will specify symptomatic manifestations. These reactions must be differentiated from schizoid personality, from schizophrenic reaction, and from analogous symptoms in some other types of neurotic reactions. Formerly, this reaction has been classified as a type of "conversion hysteria.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderHysteriaMultiple Personality DisorderDissociativeDissociative DisordersDepersonalizationDdnosDsmHysterical Dissociation
Book:DSM I: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Mental Disorders
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“In the mirror, my eyes looked red and puffy from crying. That was as expected. But I was surprised to notice that I looked older than I should be. I didn't expect to be dressed up for work. I looked down at my shoes and feet, and they didn't look like mine. Alarmed, I splashed my face with cold water and looked again. The reflection didn't show who I thought I was. As I washed my hands, they didn't look like mine either. They looked too big. I was wearing rings. It was all very startling and confusing. I felt a little panicky and didn't want to think about it too hard. Disoriented, I banged into the doorway on my way out of the restroom and thought, Why is this door so small? Why am I taking up so much space in this hall? Whose hands are those? Whose eyes and face was I seeing? My thoughts began to race and I started having trouble catching my breath. Then I felt the fuzziness in my head, followed by calmness, and finally numbness.”

DissociationDissociative DisorderDepersonalizationDissociative Symptoms
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“Running removes us briefly from the fragmentation and depersonalization of the digital world”

WorldRunningDigitalRemoveFragmentationDigital WorldDepersonalization
Book:The Runner's Guide to the Meaning of Life: What 35 Years of Running Have Taught Me About Winning, Losing, Happiness, Humility, and the Human Heart
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“I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning”

FeelsMindHumansRealityHuman BeingsAbilityCompassionGoneBloodHairNormalSkinsVictimCornersFleshIntenseCharacteristicsRoughOf My MindResemblancePsychoImitatingDepersonalization
Author:Bret Easton Ellis
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