Depersonalized Quotes

“Trapped within the confines of his mind, he is too aware of every thought passing through it, as if he were outside, looking in. At night he often lies awake ruminating endlessly about what’s wrong with him, about death, and about the meaning of existence itself. At times his arms and legs feel like they don’t belong with his body. But most of the time, his mind feels like it is operating apart from the body that contains it.”
― Daphne Simeon, Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self

“While he can interact with others who have no idea that anything is wrong, Ron lives without spontaneity, going through the motions, doing what he thinks people expect him to do, glad that he is able to at least appear normal throughout the day and maintain a job. He studied drama briefly while in college, and remains enamored of Shakespeare and literature, but an emerging self-consciousness eventually robbed him of his ability to act. Now he feels as if all of his life is an act—just an attempt to maintain the status quo.

Recalling literature he once loved, he sometimes pictures himself as Camus’s Meursault, in The Stranger: an emotionless character who plods through life in a meaningless universe with apathy and indifference. He’s tired of living
this way but terrified of death.”
― Daphne Simeon, Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self

“It isn't depression, or anxiety, though it can sometimes appear as a symptom of these better—known conditions. Often, it emerges with cruel ferocity as a chronic disorder completely unto itself.
Its destructive impact on an individual’s sense of self is implied in its very name—depersonalization.”
― Daphne Simeon, Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self

“You’re in shock.

You can’t afford to be in shock.

Two parts of himself were having a conversation.

You were probably meant to think of yourself as ‘I’ when talking to yourself.”
― Jack Grimwood, Moskva

“Sometimes I look older than I feel. Sometimes my hands seem bigger than they should be or I feel taller than I think I should be.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“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.”
― Jake Wood, Among You: The Extraordinary True Story of a Soldier Broken By War

“... in some sense, she ignored her physical self, as if her body were merely something impersonal vehicle for moving around in. She seemed not to notice or care much what she wore or what she looked like.”
― Carol Lee, To Die For

“when evoking personal recollections, patients with depersonalization often complain that memories feel as if they really didn't happen to them”
― Mauricio Sierra, Depersonalization: A New Look at a Neglected Syndrome (Cambridge Medicine