Quotes About Trauma

The horror of her incarceration in the Tower was a defining event Elizabeth could never forget. It made a passionate heart more circumspect, a complex nature more contradictory and a fine intelligence sharp as a blade.

You discover something so awful, so life-changing, the only way you can cope is to jump straight into denial.

I'm drawn to emotionally damaged characters because there is more to unlock.

I believe most people don't go into show business unless they've been majorly unloved as a child.

If I didn't forgive the people who took me into the barracks and beat me unconscious over a period of days during the period when the British state was indicted for inhuman and degrading treatment in 1971-72, or even the guys who shot me, if you don't forgive them, you end up with unnecessary baggage.

For some people, it is easier to command a nation, to send thousands to their deaths in unnecessary wars, to separate children from their families and inflict terrible suffering, than to process their own trauma and pain.

There's this idea that many of the attitudes and personality developments in black folks in the diaspora are a consequence of this unresolved trauma. There have been attempts by black artists to try and figure out how to represent that in some kind of way.

The effects of unresolved trauma can be devastating. It can affect our habits and outlook on life, leading to addictions and poor decision-making. It can take a toll on our family life and interpersonal relationships. It can trigger real physical pain, symptoms, and disease. And it can lead to a range of self-destructive behaviors.

Until the legacy of remembered and reenacted trauma is taken seriously, black America cannot heal.

At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.

My dad has been in the military for 35 years. My brother's in the Air Force. I'm familiar with what it's like being in a military family - the unusual traumas you carry around with you.

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

I had a very difficult upbringing.

I am often asked how I can work with a subject as morbid as trauma without becoming burned out or depressed. My answer to this question is that witnessing the transformation that takes place in people when they master their traumas has proven to be a deeply sustaining and uplifting experience in my life.

I grew up in southern Africa but was born in England, so my family was afflicted with the stiff upper lip of the British. When coupled with the violence we saw as children, that can be a fatal combination. Fortunately, I have an outlet for trauma in my writing.

There's a certain kind of insular, old-fashioned, upper-class Britishness that gives me the spooks. I am sure that comes from a boarding-school trauma.

When I was little I was always getting hit. Kids would take my hat and throw it around, and it upset me. So I got to be very revengeful.

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 stopped breathing when I was a baby. I had a seizure because I was severely epileptic and my grandad had to hang me upside down and give me the kiss of life.

My childhood was safe and sane. No abuse and no traumas. I was surrounded by a large and loving family who taught me the importance of hard work and a meaningful education.

I know from my own clinical work that when people are beaten and hurt, they numb out so that they cant feel anymore.

Some images stick with you forever, images that you can't unsee.

After 1929, so many people had been traumatized by the stock market crash that there was a lost generation.

I got it tough, but I can't even imagine what the Stolen Generation went through.