Browse 1903 quotes about Trauma.
“The emotional intricacy and urgency of human life expresses itself most fiercely in contradiction. If any feeling makes a sunny interminable sky, the feeling is a lie and the sky is a lie. If at a moment of sun a part of the landscape collapses in earthquake, then feeling may establish itself.”
Source: A Carnival Of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety
“Regardless of who’s holding the gun, only you can pull the trigger.”
Source: The Unfolding: A Journey of Involution
“We all have soft spots hidden behind a cover. Once in a while they get exposed and make us cry. But if you're always in victim mode, you're deliberately keeping your soft spots exposed to get a twisted kind of pain and pleasure out of them.”
“We've got this idea that there are only two options in grief: you're either going to be stuck in your pain, doomed to spend the rest of your life rocking in a corner in your basement wearing sackcloth, or you're going to triumph over grief, be transformed, and come back even better than you were before.
Just two options. On, off. Eternally broken or completely healed.
It doesn't seem to matter that nothing else in life is like that. Somehow when it comes to grief, the entire breadth of human experience goes out the window.”
Source: It's OK That You're Not OK
“The fear and the excitement responses in our brains are exactly the same.”
Source: Your Journey To Success: How to Accept the Answers You Discover Along the Way
“Hours into the night, sleepless Elijah sat up
in his bed and rubbed his face trying to put his
thoughts and feelings together. He went into the
kitchen, turned on the light, and poured himself a
cup of milk. He gulped it after taking a deep breath
trying to ease the perturbed feeling in his stomach
and the weight in his chest.”
Source: Death's Rattle
“It's like being numb most of the time,” she tried to explain, tried to calm herself down by putting words to feelings. “Everything feels gray, but when I do feel something, it's like I feel it more than most people and it hurts—it hurts me, personally, like the pain was made for me in mind. And suddenly—numb doesn't feel so bad.”
Source: Through a Glass, Darkly
“Feelings are not to be suppressed or fixed — they’re to be acknowledged.”
Source: Spiked
“Generally the rational brain can override the emotional brain, as long as our fears don’t hijack us. (For example, your fear at being flagged down by the police can turn instantly to gratitude when the cop warns you that there’s an accident ahead.) But the moment we feel trapped, enraged, or rejected, we are vulnerable to activating old maps and to follow their directions. Change begins when we learn to "own" our emotional brains. That means learning to observe and tolerate the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations that register misery and humiliation. Only after learning to bear what is going on inside can we start to befriend, rather than obliterate, the emotions that keep our maps fixed and immutable.”
Source: The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
“We don't heal in isolation, but in community.”
Source: Gift of the Dreamtime - Reader's Companion
“First, the physiological symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder have been brought within manageable limits. Second, the person is able to bear the feelings associated with traumatic memories. Third, the person has authority over her memories; she can elect both to remember the trauma and to put memory aside. Fourth, the memory of the traumatic event is a coherent narrative, linked with feeling. Fifth, the person's damaged self-esteem has been restored. Sixth, the person's important relationships have been reestablished. Seventh and finally, the person has reconstructed a coherent system of meaning and belief that encompasses the story of trauma.”
Source: Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
“In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.”
Source: Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
“Avoiding triggers is a symptom of PTSD, not a treatment for it.”
Source: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure
“Shame is internalized when one is abandoned. Abandonment is the precise term to describe how one loses one’s authentic self and ceases to exist psychologically.”
Source: Healing the Shame that Binds You
“All mental unhappiness is the avoidance of legitimate suffering”
“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.”
Source: The Covenant of Water
“I’ve known what it’s like to sit somewhere loud so you don’t have to hear yourself think.”
Source: Silentwhisper
“We don’t measure one pain against another. We recognize that all of it hurts and aim to soothe the hurt. That’s what defines us, as people.”
“Sometimes survival is not the end of the story but the beginning of learning how to live again.”
Source: When the sky forgot my name
“Movement is how the body remembers itself. It is how
survival shifts into recovery. It is how safety is relearned,
one step, one stretch, one breath at a time.”
Source: When the Body Whispers: Reclaiming Energy, Balance, and Wellbeing
“Victims will never process and heal from extreme childhood abuse unless therapy focusses on the actual abuse memories, including the thoughts and feelings experienced during the childhood trauma incident, instead of what the adult victim presently thinks and feels about their memories of Extreme Abuse.”
Source: Eyes Wide Open
“Iftaħ il-ferita u erġa’ iftaħha, u meta taraha se tagħlaq, erġa’ ħaqq l-ostja iftaħha, u agħmel mezz li ma tagħlaqx. Ma tarax! Ara li ħaqqalla ma tagħlaqx dil-qaħba ferita! Għax dan-nies ordinarji ħaqqhom biss l-istmerrija ta’ min jaf u jifhem u studja l-liġi tal-allat kiefra.”
Source: Eħlisna mid-deni
“Sometimes the quiet isn’t peaceful. Sometimes it’s the warning before everything breaks.”
Source: The Quieting
“When she did, he took them to his
room. He helped her shower and wipe the makeup off her face. He did her
skincare for her after having memorized it from watching her get ready all
those times. He brushed her hair and found her favorite pair of pajamas. He
helped her into bed and then ordered her favorite pasta from a place in the
city. He watched the stupid vampire romance movies she was obsessed with
and rubbed her back until she fell asleep.”
Source: Heir of Fire
“You are not what happened to you. You are what you do next.”
“Neuroscience supports collective healing: research on neuroplasticity and polyvagal theory shows that as individuals heal from trauma, they become more resilient, connected, & capable of problem solving - all skills for building a flourishing society.”
“Identity is not a destination. It is the ritual of becoming – again and again – through what is broken, buried, and brought into the light.”
Source: The Kintsugi Poet: A Memoir—Blood Memory, Secrets, and Identity
“The miracle you so desperately need is just beyond the walls your wounded self built to keep you safe.”
Source: Dandelion Ch;ld: An Autistic Life Shattered and Reforged
“My scars prove your wounds can heal too.”
Source: Dandelion Ch;ld: An Autistic Life Shattered and Reforged
“I wear my story like flame on bare skin.”
Source: Her Fire Touched the Sky: Poems of Trauma, Survival, Healing, and the Quiet Rebuilding of a Soul
“Your willingness to heal transforms warning signs into guidance systems.”
Source: How Deep Is the Wound?: A Guide to Investigating, Understanding, and Resolving Your Emotional Pain
“The heart that opens wide is the same heart that bleeds profusely.”
Source: How Deep Is the Wound?: A Guide to Investigating, Understanding, and Resolving Your Emotional Pain
“Narcissistic harm is a theft of clarity—it turns love into confusion and loyalty into self-doubt.”
Source: How Deep Is the Wound?: A Guide to Investigating, Understanding, and Resolving Your Emotional Pain
“Safety isn’t a fortress you live in—it’s a resting place you learn to return to.”
Source: How Deep Is the Wound?: A Guide to Investigating, Understanding, and Resolving Your Emotional Pain
“It's one thing to understand what you need and mentally process the trauma you've endured. It's another thing to embody it.”
Source: Black Girls Breathing: Heal from Trauma, Combat Chronic Stress, and Find Your Freedom
“A common theme for heterosexual Black women participating in our healing circles and communal dialogue is that when they begin to unpack long-unaddressed trauma, they often find the root of that trauma in a man—either her father / father figure growing up or a man with whom she had a romantic relationship. That realization is both enlightening and deeply painful, as many of us have wanted nothing more in our quest for love and security than to be seen, heard, and protected by our Black men.”
“An important part of the unlearning phase is to affirm your own truths. Seek deeper understanding and solace for your own healing by creating emotional distance from your parents' response, acknowledging your different perspectives, and offering them forgiveness and understanding that they truly may have done the best they could with the tools they had.”
Source: Black Girls Breathing: Heal from Trauma, Combat Chronic Stress, and Find Your Freedom
“Kink is inherently somatic: it involves touch, breath, voice, eye contact, movement, power, and ritual. All of these elements interface directly with the nervous system. They can soothe it, or trigger it.”
Source: Dom(me) the Darkness Within: Ritual Shadow Work for the Neurodivergent & Kink-Aligned
“The body remembers what the mind avoids.
Trauma, repression, shame, unmet needs, these often emerge erotically. Not because we’re broken, but because eroticism is a powerful site of truth.”
Source: Dom(me) the Darkness Within: Ritual Shadow Work for the Neurodivergent & Kink-Aligned
“The same immense energies that create the symptoms of trauma, when properly engaged and mobilized, can transform the trauma and propel us into new heights of healing, mastery, and even wisdom. Trauma resolved is a great gift, returning us to the natural world of ebb and flow, harmony, love and compassion.”
Source: Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
“You owe nothing to the people who would enslave you.”
Source: Tears of the Wolf
“You weren’t broken. You were surviving.”
Source: Breaking Free: A Journey from Chaos to Clarity
“Clarity doesn’t come from thinking—it comes from healing.”
Source: Breaking Free: A Journey from Chaos to Clarity
“If someone isn’t listening, stop talking. Protect your energy.”
Source: Breaking Free: A Journey from Chaos to Clarity
“One decision can change everything. I’m living proof.”
Source: Breaking Free: A Journey from Chaos to Clarity
“...for as long as I could remember, something hadn't felt quite right in my body, like a drawer that's off kilter inside its desk, refusing to slide smoothly in and out, catching as it opens and closes.”
Source: Dissonance
“Healing from toxic relationship trauma
is like realizing you spent your entire life
eating and having allergic reactions to
rotten tomatoes when life is a buffet and you’re in the wrong restaurant.”
“Some people aren’t a cure. They’re the reason you want to heal.”
Source: The Whisper Between Us
“Healing doesn’t always sound like a breakthrough. Sometimes it whispers in small, quiet choices no one else will ever notice.”
Source: Whispers from the therapy room: What therapists think but don’t always say – and what they hope clients realize.
“I might live in chaos, but love still anchors me.”
Source: Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia