Trauma Quotes

And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.

Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.

Empathy means realizing no trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds.

the only way to get over a death is by seeing it as a life completed, instead of a life interrupted.

When you hold onto a script that doesn't serve you, you leave no space to write a new one that does.

When we are forced to endure what we cannot endure, something breaks inside our minds. That broken-mindedness is commonly called trauma.

You and I were meant to be together, even if we weren't meant to be happy.

A human being who trades away individuality for conformity is nothing but a slave.

Memories can be hard to forget and painful to remember that those who hate us now once loved us.

A broken soul doesn't invest in boundaries because the world has crossed them, without mercy.

No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free.

Our identities are tremendously warped and distorted by yesterday's trauma and tomorrow's expectations.

You as a whole person are thus unable to reconcile conflicts about anger and learn to tolerate and express anger in healthy ways. Inner turmoil and dissociation are maintained.

...and how is a man to know the habits of their God, whether He smites suddenly or withholds, if you mishandle the things set apart, the objects of His people He is jealous of.

He thought it disproportionate in its violence considering the fragility of us.

But how intolerable bright the morning is where we who are alive and remain, walk lifted up, carried forward by an effective word.

Would they be cheered by their recovery, or marked for life by their trauma?

There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their own path or stumbles across it.

Is the person I was before dead? Or will the worst things that happened to me eventually get diluted by the rest of my life, become just a part of the story that I've always been writing?

I want to just go back to being the person I was before, but you can't stop being the person you've become. You just have to keep going forward.

The counselor says that with more time and more surgeries, I will begin to feel normal again. She says this with a mouth that can still smile. It’s so easy to be reassuring when you have lips.

Snow girl was glad she had left her own feelings behind.

If I’m a monster, mademoiselle, it’s because man’s cruelty has made me so.

And I knew then that there would be no telling me what he saw. I understand somehow that certain images, certain sounds, could not be shared and could not be lost.

I think I broke Kerri, ” she said. “Go fix her, ” Al commanded, unfazed. “We’ve got enough broken parts.

This world isn’t a fair place, because we never know how much time we’ve really got.

Trauma, if it doesn't destroy us, wakes us up both to our own relational capacities and to the suffering of others. Not only does it makes us hurt, it makes us more human, caring, and wise.

a trauma that breaks you into brand new pieces.

Sometimes… we have a war in our hearts. We’re torn in two directions. The way we feel and the way we should feel. They rarely align. The battle goes on.

The holes are slowly filling up, and despite itself the brain will work until the job is completed.

To thoughtful natures, events are like depth charges: the surface is calm, but the shock spreads further.

Dissociation is adaptive: it allows relatively normal functioning for the duration of the traumatic event and then leaves a large part of the personality unaffected by the trauma.

My parents also had a tough time recognizing me at first. because my eyes were black and swollen shut and I had two tubes coming out of my head.

And so, now, she runs. In her running, her mind leaves her.And she can hear nothing but her heart, the blast making her deaf.There is a great white silent empty in her running.She runs.

Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.

This morning I was ten years old. Tonight I am older than the stars.

We distance ourselves for protection, Wear scarves when it’s cold. What seems most outlandish in our autobiography Is what really happened.

My God, what have they done to you? This isn't a man, it's a broken kite.

Understanding trauma and that we each respond to it differently will help us be supportive and nonjudgmental toward each other.

Past traumas are like old scars on tissue that never quite healed properly – they occasionally must be cut open, re-examined, and sutured anew.

Traumas produce their disintegrating effects in proportion to their intensity, duration and repetition. (1909)

The wounded are instruments, singing pain.

Flashlight beams danced crazily

Miriam is upset. Her voice is stretched and I can't look at her. Perhaps they beat something out of her she didn't get back.

...Things happenedwhen you were little. Things youdon't remember now, and don't wantto. But they need to escape, need to worm their way outof that dark place in your brainwhere you keep them stashed.

My sister don't talk much. When she does, it's only to me, in moth-winged whispers, and only when we're alone.

Look at us. One bleeding body, one corpse, and a husk who's been half dead for years. No one who took an objective look at this room could think it was anything but too late, Ruth. For all of us.

Phrases such as "I'm beside myself, " "I was frightened to pieces, " "I feel lost, " "I feel like part of me is missing, " originated from a sense of soul loss.

It's all fun and games until somebody dies.

There are no injuries that run so deep that one can't add insult to them and make them feel even worse.