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Recovery Quotes

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Recovery Quotes

“At its worst, the purpose of a psych ward is to normalize you back into a community that is anything but. Its purpose is not to heal you, but to make you stay sick so that you can function alongside the lies of a country steeped in them, so you can function alongside the lies you are forced to tell about yourself. We are all doubling in order to live, and the psych ward tells you to squash that inner knowing. It's simply not useful if you hope to thrive. At its best, psychiatric care gives you tools to let your inner knowing walk alongside the insanity of the world and create survival tools to trust what you know and survive the gaslighting and discrimination that seeks to burn down your house.”

“Let me tell you. Before anything, what you need to do next is talk to these people. Hear their story. Tell yours, and understand you're not the only one who tried to do something good, and ended up doing something horrible. You're not the only one who's been hurt so bad that the hurt becomes part of you, as much as you hate it, that the hurt is you. You're not the only one who was betrayed by a friend, who's had the person they thought they could trust forever end their life. You're not the only one who has felt the madness creep in. Who wants to turn away from it all and keeps turning toward it. You're not the only one who has done some terrible things who will now forever try to make up for that harm. You understand. Don't kill. Don't run. Do what I did. Talk. Listen. And know. As bad as it is, we're in it together.”

“I learned to be silent but strong. I made myself invisible and never questioned my ability to survive alone. In the end, that was most damaging. Doing it alone. Believing it was all my responsibility. Not the assault. But the healing. The justice. The protection of nameless other girls. I leaned heavily into the skills I learned as a child, over responsibility, independence, sharp analysis, and self-sacrifice. Which meant I never asked for the support I was so desperate for. Because what I needed, maybe more than his apology, was a community of people who could help me hold and honor all the stories that led to this one, who could help me uproot the layers of silence learned through too much violence.”

“Healing is not just a quick fix. It's more like a lifelong journey. Every stumble and every setback is part of the growth process. And here's the beautiful thing: along this journey, you'll organically meet uplifting souls who'll walk beside you, offering support, encouragement, & love. They'll remind you that you're not alone, that you're stronger than you think, & that every step forward is a victory in itself. So, take your time, be kind to yourself, and trust in the process.”

“The illness that you have isn't the illness of a single body part, something you can think outside of. If you have a bad back you can say 'my back is killing me', and there will be a kind of separation between the pain and the self. The pain is something other. It attacks and annoys and even eats away at the self but it is still not the self. But with depression and anxiety the pain isn't something you think about because it is thought. You are not your back but you are your thoughts.”

“There comes a time for healing no matter how broken you are right now; no matter how heavy your heart is right now. There comes a time when you will go outside and let the sun shine on your face and let the wind touch your hair and you will not be tired by just simply being awake. There comes a time when you will be happy to be alive again and that day you will appreciate your own being because now you know the other side. Now you know the opposite. Now you know what it’s like to not be sure if you really are; who you really are; if you simply are, anymore. And that day will be the beginning of everything.”

“Depression weighs you down like a rock in a river. You don't stand a chance. You can fight and pray and hope you have the strength to swim, but sometimes, you have to let yourself sink. Because you'll never know true happiness until someone or something pulls you back out of that river--and you'll never believe it until you realize it was you, yourself who saved you.”

“The Bible warns about religious transformations that may appear good and therefore deceive many: 'For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.' (2 Corinthians 11:13-14)”

“With "anything people do but shouldn't" labeled "disease," those who oppose Christianity may very well call prayer, worship, reading the Bible, faith in Jesus Christ, and obeying the Lord 'diseases" or symptoms of a religious "disease." The organization Fundamentalists Anonymous is based upon the idea that conservative Christianity (believing that Jesus is the only way and that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God) is a serious, debilitating addiction. Unfortunately, the three Christian authors of 'Love Is a Choice' have listed this anti-Christian organization at the end of their book with this recommendation: "Seek them out locally.”

“She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. in that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung had never occurred to him.”

“Underlying the attack on psychotherapy, I believe, is a recognition of the potential power of any relationship of witnessing. The consulting room is a privileged space dedicated to memory. Within that space, survivors gain the freedom to know and tell their stories. Even the most private and confidential disclosure of past abuses increases the likelihood of eventual public disclosure. And public disclosure is something that perpetrators are determined to prevent. As in the case of more overtly political crimes, perpetrators will fight tenaciously to ensure that their abuses remain unseen, unacknowledged, and consigned to oblivion. The dialectic of trauma is playing itself out once again. It is worth remembering that this is not the first time in history that those who have listened closely to trauma survivors have been subject to challenge. Nor will it be the last. In the past few years, many clinicians have had to learn to deal with the same tactics of harassment and intimidation that grassroots advocates for women, children and other oppressed groups have long endured. We, the bystanders, have had to look within ourselves to find some small portion of the courage that victims of violence must muster every day. Some attacks have been downright silly; many have been quite ugly. Though frightening, these attacks are an implicit tribute to the power of the healing relationship. They remind us that creating a protected space where survivors can speak their truth is an act of liberation. They remind us that bearing witness, even within the confines of that sanctuary, is an act of solidarity. They remind us also that moral neutrality in the conflict between victim and perpetrator is not an option. Like all other bystanders, therapists are sometimes forced to take sides. Those who stand with the victim will inevitably have to face the perpetrator's unmasked fury. For many of us, there can be no greater honor. p.246 - 247 Judith Lewis Herman, M.D. February, 1997”

“Do you have any idea why you might be feeling better?” “No, not really,” I said curtly. Better wasn’t even the word for how I felt. There wasn’t a word for it. It was more that things too small to mention—laughter in the hall at school, a live gecko scurrying in a tank in the science lab—made me feel happy one moment and the next like crying. Sometimes, in the evenings, a damp, gritty wind blew in the windows from Park Avenue, just as the rush hour traffic was thinning and the city was emptying for the night; it was rainy, trees leafing out, spring deepening into summer; and the forlorn cry of horns on the street, the dank smell of the wet pavement had an electricity about it, a sense of crowds and static, lonely secretaries and fat guys with bags of carry-out, everywhere the ungainly sadness of creatures pushing and struggling to live. For weeks, I’d been frozen, sealed-off; now, in the shower, I would turn up the water as hard as it would go and howl, silently. Everything was raw and painful and confusing and wrong and yet it was as if I’d been dragged from freezing water through a break in the ice, into sun and blazing cold.”

“Many of us learned that keeping busy…kept us at a distance from our feelings...Some of us took the ways we busied ourselves—becoming overachievers & workaholics—as self esteem…But whenever our inner feeling did not match our outer surface, we were doing ourselves a disservice…If stopping to rest meant being barraged with this discrepancy, no wonder we were reluctant to cease our obsessive activity.”

“The key problem I encounter working with wounded, depressed, and unhappy people is a lack of connection…starting from a disconnection from themselves and then with others. This is why love often becomes so distorted and destructive. When people experience a disconnection from themselves, they feel it but do not realize the problem.”