Quotes About Trauma

Sometimes the only thing you need for madness is a memory burned into your eyes.

In the face of severe trauma, the brain could conjure entire worlds that didn't exist as a way of blocking out reality. Hallucinations of people and places. Delusions that the mind refused to give up.

It doesn't matter who started it or what it's really about...war usually ends up sucking most for women. Even when we're not fighting the battles ourselves, we somehow always end up with the lion's share of the suffering.

Have you ever been shot by one? Because I have and it hurt like the day my dog died...

The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.

What I've learned from talking to so many victims of traumatic events, abuse, or neglect is that after absorbing these painful experiences, the child begins to ache. A deep longing to feel needed, validated, and valued begins to take hold. As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.

Fire can warm or consume, water can quench or drown, wind can caress or cut. And so it is with human relationshps; we can both create and destroy, nurture and terrorize, traumatize and heal each other

The echoes of childhood torments have great power, even when not brought to mind in such an inexplicable and horrifying way.

Blood erupted in great throbbing gouts from a severed artery at the side of his neck. His open windpipe blew clouds of red mist as he struggled to breathe.

Seeing things a human shouldn't have to see makes us human.

By taking the womb, he defeminizes his victim. He steals her power.

Picquerism is the act of stabbing or cutting, any repeated penetration of the skin with a sharp object.

MARY: Hysterical mutism is most often associated with trauma, such as an assault of some sort. I learned that in Vienna, when we were discussing symptoms of madness before Diana was— CATHERINE: Could you please not spoil the plot for our readers? You can talk about researching symptoms of madness all you want when I get to Vienna. I mean when you get to Vienna, later in the narrative.

the past was so painful at any point. It seared and burned.

I've always been more interested in what happens after the bad thing has happened - the fallout of the bad thing, when people are already damaged. I'm less interested in seeing people when they're fine and following their journey to becoming damaged.

My father is sure that Israel keeps the Holocaust from happening again. I worry that it might hasten its recurrence.

She just kept hitting me in the head with her fists, over, and over and over.

You kick a dog long enough, that dog is going to bite you or die.

For me, my awakening came when I was kidnapped.

And when 9/11 came, that was open season to violate human rights. And that's how I was kidnapped.

My daughters have grown up knowing all about my kidnapping and the case and what happened.

My name is Kim Phuc, though you likely know me by another name. It is one I never asked for, a name I have spent a lifetime trying to escape: 'Napalm Girl.'

The fathers, if they got me alone, would try to kiss and fondle me. I hated it.

I got used to certain things that normal kids don't get used to, like, when my mother went into the kitchen for things other than just cooking. I could hear the bottle open up and I could hear the chugs. Then the next morning, none of it was discussed. You grow up feeling crazy.