Quotes About Coping

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.

How would you deal with it if you're 9 years old, people are telling you, 'You suck,' and they don't give sympathy? They don't feel bad for you because of who your dad is.

Everyone always told me that I had the symptoms of a P.O.W.

Oh, my goodness, when you're a mother and you just give birth to a child with spina bifida and - or Down's Syndrome or cerebral palsy, there's a bit of a shock you're going to have to go through, a bit of an adjustment curve.

I think people would be suprised at how much we curse when we screw up. I'm like somebody with Tourette's Syndrome.

Em: I'm falling apart. That's what I'm trying to tell you Bridge: You're not falling apart. You're scared. Em: Isn't that the same thing? Bridge: No

One of the first things Miriam told me about was how to worry. She wanted me to worry for five minutes straight, two times a day. She said I should sit quietly somewhere, maybe with a piece of paper and some colored pencils, and just worry, one time in the morning and once at night (but not right before bed). And if my worry showed up at any other time, like during school or at Angus's house, Miriam said I should tell it, "Go away, and I'll see you later". -Bea

I'll make some tea' she said, without consultation. The tears had not fully abated, and there were times when tea was the only thing.

When you feel the stitches holding the illusion of yourself together begin to stretch and pop, and you can't sew fast enough to keep the stuffing in.

Just because you expect something doesn't make it any easier to bear.

Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out on the thing that has caused it, they unconsciously search for substitutes, and more often than not they find them.

We all struggle. It's just that some of us struggle out loud and some of us don't

Most survivors are cope-aholics, people who cope with whatever is thrown at them without reliance on others. They do not seek sympathy for their pain and feel undeserving if it is offered. They are especially adverse to sympathy from others.

Sometimes buried memories of abuse emerge spontaneously. A triggering event or catalyst starts the memories flowing. The survivor then experiences the memories as a barrage of images about the abuse and related details. Memories that are retrieved in this manner are relatively easy to understand and believe because the person remembering is so flooded with coherent, consistent information.

That's right," he said, "I must remember that, not to get excited. Everybody is very thoughtful. They put you in uniform and teach you what every young man ought to know, and take you across the ocean into the middle of hell, bombs, bullets, shells, flame-throwers, your friends die right against you and bleed down your neck, and after two years of that they bring you home and turn you loose and tell you now remember don't get excited.

The worst thing in the world can happen, but the next day the sun will come up. And you will eat your toast. And you will drink your tea.

Lewis could feel something swelling inside him, at his sinuses and in his chest. He had worked hard to keep this ghost at bay, but now it was pressing in, coming to claim its dues. The tears were coming, and he had to swallow to hold them. He stood up.

Sure. Why not?" he said. "A cup of tea. That's what everyone drank all through the war. A bomb was dropped and everyone said, 'It's all right. Have a cup of tea.'" And he laughed.

Estoy convencido de que nunca nos sucede nada que no hayamos previsto, nada para lo que no estemos preparados. Nos han tocado malos tiempos, como a todos los hombres, y hay que aprender a vivir sin ilusiones

If doing something once makes you have fear, doing it over and over and over again is only going to reinforce that fear.

Literature offered a safe circumscribed outlet for sadness.

Just as police and fire sirens reminded New Yorkers they were home, the sound of car bombs reminded me I was in Baghdad, which had become home for me. I was like a battered wife who can't leave the man abusing her. I had moved into stage four and assumed, as a matter of math, that I was going to die in Baghdad. But still I wanted to stay.

It had to be U. U. was the only town I could still bear, the one spot in the atlas I'd already absorbed head-on. When you take too many of your critical hits in one place, that place can no longer hurt you.

but I do believe that the only way out of deep sadness is to go with it and through it.