Quotes About Trauma

Cleaning the wound is often more painful than the cut itself.

One can cut the body, and it will heal—but do it over and over again in the same spot, and you will scar.

Worrying about scarcity is our culture's version of post-traumatic stress. It happens when we've been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability) we're angry and scared and at each other's throats.

In his book The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk, a professor of psychiatry at Boston University, explores how trauma literally reshapes the brain and the body, and how interventions that enable adults to reclaim their lives must address the relationship between our emotional well-being and our bodies.

Of all the things trauma takes away from us, the worst is our willingness, or even our ability, to be vulnerable. There's a reclaiming that has to happen.

Depression and anxiety are two of the body's first reactions to stockpiles of hurt. Of course, there are organic and biochemical reasons we experience clinical depression and debilitating anxiety—causes over which we have no control—but unrecognized pain and unprocessed hurt can also lead there.

We feel love and we know pain. We feel hope and we know struggle. We see beauty and we survive trauma. We don't all have the protection of privilege and the luxury of anonymity. We're trying to build connected and loving lives while we pack lunches, drive carpools, go to jobs, and push into as many moments of joy as we can.

In some situations we had to self-protect to stay physically or emotionally safe. Vulnerability is the greatest casualty of trauma. When we're raised in unsafe environments, confronted with racism, violence, poverty, sexism, homophobia, and pervasive shaming, vulnerability can be life-threatening and armor is safety.

Living, growing up, working, or worshipping on eggshells creates huge cracks in our sense of safety and self-worth. Over time, these cracks can be experienced as trauma, whether this happens at work or at home.

The research team found that the act of not discussing a traumatic event or confiding it to another person could be more damaging than the actual event.

For soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming home is more lethal than being in combat. From the invasion of Afghanistan to the summer of 2009, the US military lost 761 soldiers in combat in that country. Compare that to the 817 who took their own lives over the same period, and this number does account for deaths related to violence, high-risk behaviors, and addiction.

We are all responsible for creating… brave, safe spaces and dismantling the systems that perpetuate trauma

Anguish is an almost unbearable and traumatic swirl of shock, incredulity, grief, and powerlessness. Shock and incredulity can take our breath away, and grief and powerlessness often come for our hearts and our minds. But anguish, the combination of these experiences, not only takes away our ability to breathe, feel, and think—it comes for our bones.

most of the time when we recall a memory, we are conscious that we are in the present, recalling something from the past. However, when we experience something in the present that triggers an old trauma memory, we reexperience the sense of the original trauma.

Shame is so painful for children because it is inextricably linked to the fear of being unlovable. For young children who are still dependent on their parents for survival—for food, shelter, and safety—feeling unlovable is a threat to survival. It's trauma.

we've survived and are surviving events that have torn at our sense of safety with such force that we've experienced them as trauma even if we weren't directly involved.

The element of powerlessness is what makes anguish traumatic.

Whether we're overcoming adversity, surviving trauma, or dealing with stress and anxiety, having a sense of purpose, meaning, and perspective in our lives allows us to develop understanding and move forward. Without purpose, meaning, and perspective, it is easy to lose hope, numb our emotions, or become overwhelmed by our circumstances.

Most of the time we approach life with an armored front for two reasons: 1) We're not comfortable with emotions and equate vulnerability with weakness, and/or 2) Our experiences of trauma have taught us that vulnerability is actually dangerous. Violence and oppression have made our soft front a liability, and we struggle to find a place emotionally and physically safe enough to be vulnerable.

Worrying about scarcity is our culture's version of post-traumatic stress.

Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies.

If your parents ignored you, or if they are just not emotionally available, or if they yell a lot, that is a type of trauma.

My father was one of the first six guys ashore on Iwo Jima. He's 86 years old now, and every single night of his life, he has nightmares, and he wakes yelling.

I started practicing yoga. I started learning some hands-on healing stuff. And I found really good chiropractors, really good massage therapists, and what I found is I've been able to actually peel off layers of trauma on my body and actually move better now than I did.