Quotes About Trauma

How can something still feel so painful after twenty-eight years, I asked myself. Is there no recovery from the traumas of our youth?

The shared secret and the shared denial are the most horrible aspects of incest.

I can simply tell you that all of us need to be aware that trauma has a twofold potential: it can be the catalyst for creative change or the cause of self-destruction.

According to Pia Mellody, when "one parent has a relationship with the child that is more important than the relationship he or she has with the spouse, and that parent has unresolved sexual issues, a strong possibility exists that the child will be emotionally sexually abused.

When emotional energy blocks the resolution of trauma, the mind itself becomes diminished in its ability to function.

The wounded inner child is filled with unresolved energy resulting from the sadness of childhood trauma. One of the reasons we have sadness is to complete painful events of the past, so that our energy can be available for the present.

This transformation involves three dynamics: 1. The identification with shame-based models and the carrying of their unexpressed shame. 2. The trauma of abandonment and the shame binding all one's feelings, needs and drives. 3. The interconnection and magnification of visual memories or scenes, and the retaining of shaming auditory and kinesthetic imprints.

Any time a new experience resembles the earlier traumatic experience, the original emotions are triggered and the original anchor is fired.

The frustration of a child's desire to be loved as a person and to have his love accepted is the greatest trauma that a child can experience.

You have no memories of painful events of your childhood; you have a split personality; you depersonalize; you can't remember people's names or even the people you were with two years ago. You are out of touch with your body and your feelings.

Feelings of excitement and curiosity become bound in shame, and the child's courage and enthusiasm are severely limited. Toxic shame takes on the face of apathy or cowardice at this stage. Describing the impact of her father's incest, the poet Mary Oliver writes in her poem "Rage": "And you see how the child grows—timidly, crouching in corners.

You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a...very brutal disciplinarian.

When the memories hit you...that sh.. hurts.

He broke promises, was abusive physically and mentally, never was around and caused my life to be a living hell.

Since PTSD is being exposed to death and the death of someone close, I felt really close to [the soldiers].

I remembered screaming then, screaming until my voice stopped.

Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard.'Sethe shook her head. 'Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part.

I don't know why I can't let the insults go, but I can't. I'm the product of every hurt that's ever been laid on me.

But, without meaning to exactly, one still tends to conjure up scary scenarios, their pathos or salvation, as if one could endure a trauma before it occurred, in small manageable doses, as a sort of inoculation. Are there homeopathic degrees of anguish?

There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

What if the child's dependence on her twin is so great that the separation causes a mental trauma such that the damaged mind provides solace by the creation of an imaginary twin, a fantasy companion? We arrived at no satisfactory conclusion but parted with the satisfaction of having located another area of future study: linguistics.

I remember a story I read once, a soldier, was it at Shiloh? He was talking to me but not with his whole attention. Gettysburg? a soldier so mad with shock that he started burying birds and squirrels on the battlefield. You had lot of little things killed too, in the crossfire, little animals. Many tiny graves. p128

Just because one person's problem is less traumatic than another's doesn't mean they're required to hurt less