Quotes About Trauma

One more drink and we're sharing our rape stories. Nearly every woman I know has one. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard one of these stories I could buy an enormous, plush pillow with which to smother my tear-stained face.

In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.

Fatalistic Outlook The powerlessness and helplessness of experiencing cumulative trauma is often experienced as a belief that bad times or even death are right around the corner, that one is living on borrowed time, or that feelings of security and success cannot last.

Children from healthy families may work out childhood traumas in the playroom, while children of addicted families find themselves working out the painful traumas of the past in real life.

first, the repeated experience of the trauma itself; second, the effects of the trauma on personality development; and third, the need to re-experience the feelings and/or memories of the original trauma in order to integrate it and work it through.

When the time capsule from the past bursts open, flooding her with feelings, she will confuse her traumatic memory from the past with her experience in the present. Painful experiences from the past, if not understood, validated, processed, and integrated with a compassionate and trusted other, will continue to intrude on our present and form our beliefs and expectations of others and life experiences.

no-one would want to go through a traumatic experience but when you've survived something life-shattering and risen above it, you achieve a kind of serenity.

For every survivor there is also a rapist.

I want to empasize that rape is about human beings, not statistics.

The ultimate rape is murder. Sometime during the rape, they cosider killing the victim.

Rape is a crime of violence and sex is the weapon.

Half a lifetime ago, I was forced at knifepoint to a grabage dump and gang-raped.

1 in 4 women will be raped in their lifefime, less than 10% will report the assault, and less than 5% of the rapists will go to jail.

Adult Children of Alcoholics was largely based on the premise that for the ACoA there is a lack of data base: ACoAs do not learn what other children learn in the process of growing up. Although they do wonderfully well in crisis, they do not learn the day-to-day process of "doing life.

When you feel that you aren't like everyone else or feel tainted by what has happened to you, it's hard to be optimistic about the future. In fact, for many survivors, it's nearly impossible to imagine the future at all. Many of us are caught in a state where we're still just trying to survive (our sole focus during trauma) and can't think much beyond that. Time for us is frozen and the future feels hazy at best.

Children who are emotionally abused and neglected face similar and sometimes worse mental health problems as children who are physically or sexually abused.

You could even say it was the trauma that was the call for help, and of course if there are any spiritual beings who respond to such need, it is angels.

When consciousness is dissociated, you may find yourself feeling as if you or the world around you isn't fully real. This is most often a reaction to severe stress and trauma. The main difference between these two conditions is that depersonalization relates to your experience of yourself as a person, whereas derealization relates to your perception of the environment as amplified below.

The outcome—today's technological civilization with its massive psychopathologies and unending ecological disasters—is a collective reflection of the traumatized personality."1

He had not felt loved by his mother and had experienced difficulty in receiving love since, so he didn't have some of the healing vectors that can counteract traumatic events. He had resources to help others but not the resources to save himself.

To make matters worse, they are often further traumatized by their present circumstances (for example, prisoners are raped, street people are attacked, mental health patients may experience helplessness during forms of treatment perceived as violent, and so on).

As Babette Rothschild says, "Often talking about what happened will be important for the survivor in the immediate aftermath of the event. Telling and re-telling the story to caring individuals may help prevent dissociation, and aid in integrating the experience."20

As it relates to healing the wounds of trauma, it is a journey from helplessness (which is the essence of trauma) to mastery.

The surrender was a turning point for me. That summer I cried nearly every day. It was part of letting up the emotional component that had been only partially present in much of my earlier recovery of memories, and the beginning of a deeper grieving for my losses. The crying itself did not resolve things for me, but it was part of what prepared me for what came later, when the opportunity presented itself to really cleanse the wounds with a qualified trauma therapist.