Adjustment Difficulties Quotes

The first time I moved to L.A., I was there for five months, and my health got so bad because of how depressed I was.

I just felt from personal observation that there is nothing more dislocated or alienated than a lifelong military person trying to cope in civilian life. It's like two completely separate planets.

We are at war, and it's ongoing, and there's no end in sight. More and more guys are coming back from it, and the transition back to civilian life is almost too big a mountain to climb.

I'm tired and nervous and I'm in America. Here you don't know that you live.

When I left the military, I thought I would not have any problems with the transition - I'm very adaptable and very versatile - but I was wrong.

I remembered what it was like: the weirdness, being the odd man out, trying to make my way around campus, and trying to figure out who my friends would be, who to steer clear of. I wrote it all down in a fanciful way - the feelings of alienation, the feelings of uncertainty, of being away from home for the first time.

I didn't feel ready to leave home, because it went from no freedom to all freedom. And I was like, 'Oh, my God, I don't know what I'm doing in college.' There seemed to be no like-minded people where I was... I didn't have a clan. I didn't have a choir... There was no safety net.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

To have your parents get divorced at a young age, there's a lot of turbulence. We all grew up together, in some way. It was not idyllic. It was intense, vibrant, sometimes oppressive. I felt I was very much in a world of my own. I didn't meld much in school. I was kind of a loner.

I don't even know how to speak up for myself, because I don't really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice. And if you're always the new kid, you never get a chance to adapt, so your confidence is just zilch.

When I first came back from Iraq, I of course found myself thinking a lot about it. Not just my experiences, but those of people I talked to, friends, and colleagues.

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.

I was very affected as a foreigner coming from Copenhagen, which is the safest, most liberal town in the entire galaxy. I was like an alien stranded in a strange land for the first time in the U.S.

Retiring was hard. I'd spent 15 years doing something I loved, but when you get older everything seems to go. When I started spending too long with the physio and the doctor, I knew it was time to call it a day. But I had no preparation for being retired and I didn't know what to do.

You can't underestimate how traumatic divorce is for the children.

I do feel like I've missed out a bit because I was really close with my sisters when I was at home. It must be weird for them but they cope really well.

My very identity as a soldier came to an abrupt end. I'd been soldiering as long as I'd been shaving. Suddenly I'd been told I could no longer soldier, and it felt as though no one really cared if I ever shaved again.

When I came back from Vietnam in 1965, I just had the greatest brainwashing anybody could get…

My upbringing has given me sympathy for the idea of isolation and what it is to be a new person in the room, where everyone else has some amount of familiarity and comfort.

When I was seven my parents divorced. My father went to Dallas. My mom fled to the shelter of my grandparents in a strange central Ohio town of 22,000, Wooster. When it looked like I was growing up to be a wimp I was forced to live with my father, which I did not want to do.

I do go through a mini depression because one minute there are people yelling and screaming for me on stage and the next I'm at home and it's dead quiet. So it takes a while to come down.

I did not enjoy Cambridge. But I shouldn't blame Cambridge alone. I wasn't ready for university or for the wrench of leaving home. It was a big cultural shock.

There was a lot of pressure on me when I was 18, 19 to move to America. I went out for a couple of weeks and hated it. I thought I could go out my mind. You could really see how people could go off the rails.

I was six when my parents divorced, and that was tough for me.

When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn't over for the veterans, or the family. It's just starting.