Jeanette Winterson Quotes

If we didn't desensitize ourselves in some way, every day would feel like its own tragedy.

I know from my own clinical work that when people are beaten and hurt, they numb out so that they can't feel anymore.

I don't react to a tragic happening any more. I took so many bad things as a kid and some people think I don't care about anything. It's just too hard for me to get emotional. I can't cry no more.

I've read that under trauma, that you have this ability to kind of disconnect from the experience.

My natural response to a stressful situation is to shut down. I do weird things, like, I don't cry, I get really cold.

When you're on the battlefield, you switch off your soul; otherwise, you would die of terror - you would die of fear. You switch off your soul, and you act like an animal or a machine.

You can only get hurt so much before you get numb.

If someone has gone through a lot of emotional pain, including the loss of loved ones, that person may try to build a shell around his or her feelings to protect him- or herself from the pain.

Blessed be shock. Blessed be the part of us that protects us from too much pain and sorrow. At the heart of life is a fusebox.

After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.

We build a shell around it, like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function , day in, day out. Immune to others’ pain and loss.

I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.

Children can only take so much, and they deal with it however they can.

When I did 'Bumble-ardy,' I was so intensely aware of death. Eugene, my friend and partner, was dying here in the house when I did 'Bumble-ardy'. I did 'Bumble-ardy' to save myself. I did not want to die with him. I wanted to live, as any human being does.

We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn't, we'd go crazy.

I don't know if I actually am good at the sight of blood. An accident on the street gets me very, very upset.

I come from a violent background. So I became hard. I realised that I had made myself that way to deal with a feeling of abandonment and shame.

Under so much pressure and the situation that I was in, that was the personality that came across with me.

I don't want to be thought of as a survivor because you have to continue getting involved in difficult situations to show off that particular gift, and I'm not interested in doing that anymore.

When I'm photographing, I think - like any rescue worker who deals with tragedy - you have to have some protective barrier around your heart so you can do your job. You tend to have a delayed reaction to things. I feel things more deeply after I put the camera down.

In 'The Darkest Minds,' Zu's trauma manifests in her choosing to remain silent. It's her one small way she can feel in control of her otherwise uncontrollable situation.

I've always been a person who wanted to withdraw from the world, because the changes I've been through, I just don't want to go through anymore.

In real life, I don't cry too easily. I go numb.

I had a lot of frustrations, and I was drinking far too much, and I was just trying to survive and this is what came out of it.

This behavior may...counteract feelings of'numbness'and depersonalization that aries duriing periods of extreme stress.-153 Girl,Interrupted