Trauma Quotes
Quotes tagged as "trauma"
Showing 121-150 of 2,492
“The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off.
Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people鈥檚 faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity.
When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes?
That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the fa莽ade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing.
(describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”
― Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people鈥檚 faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity.
When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes?
That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the fa莽ade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing.
(describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”
― Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“If you spend time with crazy and dangerous people, remember 鈥 their personalities are socially transmitted diseases; like water poured into a container, most of us eventually turn into 鈥 or remain 鈥 whoever we surround ourselves with. We can choose our tribe, but we cannot change that our tribe is our destiny.锘”
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“Whether we are speaking of a flower or an oak tree, of an earthworm or a beautiful bird, of an ape or a person, we will do well, I believe, to recognize that life is an active process, not a passive one. Whether the stimulus arises from within or without, whether the environment is favorable or unfavorable, the behaviors of an organism can be counted on to be in the direction of maintaining, enhancing, and reproducing itself. This is the very nature of the process we call life. This tendency is operative at all times. Indeed, only the presence or absence of this total directional process enables us to tell whether a given organism is alive or dead.
The actualizing tendency can, of course, be thwarted or warped, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter's supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout鈥攑ale white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behavior is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life's desperate attempt to become itself. This potent constructive tendency is an underlying basis of the person-centered approach.”
―
The actualizing tendency can, of course, be thwarted or warped, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter's supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout鈥攑ale white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behavior is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life's desperate attempt to become itself. This potent constructive tendency is an underlying basis of the person-centered approach.”
―
“Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.”
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“Imagine the infant who one day cries and gets fed, and the next day cries and goes hungry. One day smiles and is kissed and hugged. The next day smiles and is ignored. This is what psychologists called 'preoccupied or unresolved attachment' with the primary caregiver--usually the mother. There was love one minute and disdain the next. Affection that was given in abundance for no reason and then taken away without cause. The child has no ability to predict or influence the behavior of the parent. The narcissist loves a child only as an extension of herself at first, and then as a loyal subject. So she will tend to the child only when it makes her feel good.”
― Emma in the Night
― Emma in the Night

“It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides. It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing.
He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain.
The victim demands action, engagement and remembering...
In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened, the victim lies, the victim exaggerates, the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on.
The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain.
The victim demands action, engagement and remembering...
In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened, the victim lies, the victim exaggerates, the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on.
The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“[Author's Note:] When I was sixteen, two of my cousins were brutally raped by four strangers and thrown off a bridge in St. Louis, Missouri. My brother was beaten and also forced off the bridge. I wrote about that horrible crime in my first book, my memoir, A Rip in Heaven. Because that crime and the subsequent writing of the book were both formative experience in my life, I became a person who is always, automatically, more interested in stories about victims than perpetrators. I'm interested in characters who suffer inconceivable hardship, in people who manage to triumph over extraordinary trauma. Characters like Lydia and Soledad. I'm less interested in the violent, macho stories of gangsters and law enforcement. Or in any case, I think the world has enough stories like those. Some fiction set in the world of the cartels and narcotraficantes is compelling and important - I read much of it during my early research. Those novels provide readers with an understanding of the origins of the some of the violence to our south. But the depiction of that violence can feed into some of the worst stereotypes about Mexico. So I saw an opening for a novel that would press a little more intimately into those stories, to imagine people on the flip side of that prevailing narrative. Regular people like me. How would I manage if I lived in a place that began to collapse around me? If my children were in danger, how far would I go to save them? I wanted to write about women, whose stories are often overlooked.”
― American Dirt
― American Dirt

“Managing your terror all by yourself gives rise to another set of problems: dissociation, despair, addictions, a chronic sense of panic, and relationships that are marked by alienation, disconnections, and explosions. Patients with these histories rarely make the connection between what has happened to them a long time ago and how they currently feel and behave. Everything just seems unmanageable.”
― The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
― The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“The degree to which the psychiatric community is complicit with abusive parents in drugging non-compliant children is a war crime across the generations, and there will be a Nuremberg at some point in the future”
―
―

“No, Sky. You didn't tell her everything鈥ou told you everything. Those things happened to you, not to someone else. They happened to Hope. They happened to Sky. They happened to the best friend that I loved all those years ago, and they happened to the best friend I love who鈥檚 looking back at me right now.”
― Hopeless
― Hopeless

“There is tremendous trauma in the betrayal caused by a perpetual liar as they repeatedly commit psychological abuse.”
― The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts
― The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts
“Dr. Peter Levine, who has worked with trauma survivors for twenty-five years, says the single most important factor he has learned in uncovering the mystery of human trauma is what happens during and after the freezing response. He describes an impala being chased by a cheetah. The second the cheetah pounces on the young impala, the animal goes limp. The impala isn鈥檛 playing dead, she has 鈥渋nstinctively entered an altered state of consciousness, shared by all mammals when death appears imminent.鈥 (Levine and Frederick, Waking the Tiger, p. 16) The impala becomes instantly immobile. However, if the impala escapes, what she does immediately thereafter is vitally important. She shakes and quivers every part of her body, clearing the traumatic energy she has accumulated.”
― Miss America By Day: Lessons Learned From Ultimate Betrayals And Unconditional Love
― Miss America By Day: Lessons Learned From Ultimate Betrayals And Unconditional Love

“Success and failure can both make you lose appetite and concentration, don't let it bother or over-excite you, just think them away as a mere thing that had just happened, and get along with your life.”
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“The ruling classes use broken and smashed up childhoods as weaponised instruments of domination around the world. This is why the government has no incentive to end child abuse; because the government needs abuse victims as enforcers.”
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“TRAUMA STEALS YOUR VOICE
People get so tired of asking you what's wrong and you've run out of nothings to tell them.
You've tried and they've tried, but the words just turn to ashes every time they try to leave your mouth.
They start as fire in the pit of your stomach, but come out in a puff of smoke.
You are not you anymore.
And you don't know how to fix this.
The worst part is...you don't even know how to try.”
―
People get so tired of asking you what's wrong and you've run out of nothings to tell them.
You've tried and they've tried, but the words just turn to ashes every time they try to leave your mouth.
They start as fire in the pit of your stomach, but come out in a puff of smoke.
You are not you anymore.
And you don't know how to fix this.
The worst part is...you don't even know how to try.”
―

“People who suffer from alexithymia tend to feel physically uncomfortable but cannot describe exactly what the problem is. As a result they often have multiple vague and distressing physical complaints that doctors can't diagnose. In addition, they can't figure out for themselves what they're really feeling about any given situation or what makes them feel better or worse. This is the result of numbing, which keeps them from anticipating and responding to the ordinary demands of their bodies in quiet, mindful ways. If you are not aware of what your body needs, you can't take care of it. If you don't feel hunger, you can't nourish yourself. If you mistake anxiety for hunger, you may eat too much. And if you can't feel when you're satiated, you'll keep eating.”
― The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
― The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“When people are unable to integrate their traumatic memories, they seem to lose their capacity to assimilate new experiences as well. It is as if their personality stops at a certain points and cannot enlarge any more by the addition or assimilation of new elements. Unless they become aware of the split off elements and integrate them into a story that had happened in the past but was now over, they would experience a slow decline in their personal and professional functioning.”
― The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
― The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“There is a shock that comes so quickly and strikes so deep that the blow is internalized even before then skin feels it. The strike must first reach bone marrow, then ascend slowly to the brain where the slowpoke intellect records the deed.”
― Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
― Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

“Memories die as soon as they are plucked from their surroundings, they burst, lose color, lose suppleness, stiffen like corpses. All that remains are shells with translucent edges. Half-erased brain platelets are a slippery terrain, deceptive. One鈥檚 mental archive is locked, it languishes in the dark. The past is riddled with holes, souvenirs can鈥檛 help here. Everything must be thrown away. Everything. And perhaps everyone as well.”
― Belladonna
― Belladonna

“I had been fortified by trauma, the way a bone, once broken, grows back stronger than it had been.”
― Fire Shut Up in My Bones
― Fire Shut Up in My Bones
“some truths that were too difficult and frightening to know.”
― The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
― The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

“Trauma is a time traveller, an ouroboros that reaches back and devours everything that came before.”
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“What is the line between being vulnerable and prostrating yourself for a system that won't recognise you? The onus is never on the system to adjust its hardness, it's on you to shape-shift and acquiesce. Do I don vulnerability as a weapon against this culture? - If you require me to be hard and harder to fight you, I will rebel by being soft like a jelly-beaned being, but like anything, you need to be softer and softer to have the same impact. Do I weaponise my own pain and cause harm to myself by revelling in that pain, nurturing it, putting myself in danger to encourage it and then working it over by verbalising it for display, to show society, I am a human being and I feel pain just like you.”
― I'm a Fan
― I'm a Fan
“Janna knew - Rikki knew 鈥 and I knew, too 鈥 that becoming Dr Cameron West wouldn't make me feel a damn bit better about myself than I did about being Citizen West. Citizen West, Citizen Kane, Sugar Ray Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Robinson miso, miso soup, black bean soup, black sticky soup, black sticky me. Yeah. Inside I was still a fetid and festering corpse covered in sticky blackness, still mired in putrid shame and scorching self-hatred. I could write an 86-page essay comparing the features of Borderline Personality Disorder with those of Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I barely knew what day it was, or even what month, never knew where the car was parked when Dusty would come out of the grocery store, couldn't look in the mirror for fear of what鈥攐r whom鈥擨'd see.
~ Dr Cameron West describes living with DID whilst studying to be a psychologist.”
― First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
~ Dr Cameron West describes living with DID whilst studying to be a psychologist.”
― First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple

“Even if everyone knows her story, no one really knows how she feels. It pours out now: her rage, her shame, her guilt-- it still lingers. But with the telling comes a sense of empowerment. She has no culpability in the Brijee matter. None, other than being naive and being a woman. During the inquiry she had tapped into the righteousness that was her due; she slapped down the least suggestion that she might be a fault. She had learned a lesson: to show weakness, to be tearful or shattered didn't serve her. One shouldn't just hope to be treated well: one must insist on it.”
― The Covenant of Water
― The Covenant of Water
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