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Trauma Quotes

Browse 1903 quotes about Trauma.

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Trauma Quotes

“Thus, unless we actively seek out this information, it can remain below our radar. Or perhaps we conceal the truth because we want to protect our children from the harsh realities of gender-based violence. One could argue that protecting children in this way as a means of instilling in them a robust sense of security is an important aspect of early childhood development. But at some point, sticking to this story becomes counterproductive, for as long as we are taught that the world is a benign place for women, when harm comes to us the most reasonable conclusion to draw is that it is our fault.”

TraumaVictimhoodGender Based Violence GbvVictimcultureSense Of Security
Book:One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery
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“That is the problem with repressed memory and dissociative identity disorder. Your mind represses certain traumas for reasons of pure survival. And then you learn that to survive as an adult, you must uncover the memories, find the parts, and relieve the traumas. The contradiction is almost too much for the mind to comprehend and for the heart and soul to endure.”

MindSoulMemoriesPersonalityAbuseEndureTraumaDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiplicityDissociativeTraumaticRepressed MemoryMultiple PersonalityRecovered Memory
Book:Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse
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“And then it struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so firmly planted: the ominous rumbling of the deepest darkness, secret rivers that transported desire, slimy creatures writhing, the lair of earthquakes ready to transform whole cities into mounds of rubble. These, too, were helping to create the rhythm of the earth. He stopped dancing and, catching his breath, stared at the ground beneath his feet as though peering into a bottomless hole.”

FearTraumaDisasterUncertaintyMortalityUnconscious MindCollective ConsciousnessUndergroundPost Catastrophe
Book:After the Quake
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“Strong, broad hands rubbed down my spine, and I opened my eyes to find the room wholly black, Rhysand perched on the mattress beside me. 'Do you want anything to eat?' His voice was soft- tentative. I didn't raise my head from the pillow. 'I feel... heavy again,' I breathed, voice breaking. Rhys said nothing as he gathered me up into his arms. He was still in his jacket, as if he'd just come in from wherever he'd been talking with Cassian. In the dark, I breathed in his scent, savoured his warmth. 'Are you all right?' Rhys was quiet for a long minute. 'No.' I slid my arms around him, holding him tightly. 'I should have found another way,' he said. I stroked my fingers through his silken hair. Rhys murmured, 'If she...' His swallow was audible. 'If she showed up at this house...' I knew who he meant. 'I would kill her. Without even letting her speak. I would kill her.' 'I know.' I would, too. 'You asked me at the library,' he whispered. 'Why I... Why I'd rather take all of this upon myself. Tonight is why. Seeing Mor cry is why. I made a bad call. Tried to find some other way around this shithole we're in.' And had lost something- Mor had lost something- in the process. We held each other in silence for minutes. Hours. Two souls, twining in the dark. I lowered my shields, let him in fully. His mind curled around mine. 'Would you risk looking into it- the Ouroboros?' I asked. 'Not yet,' was all Rhys said, holding me tighter. 'Not yet.”

HeavyTraumaSarah J MaasFeyreFeyre ArcheronRhysandRhysComfortingA Court Of Wings And RuinHolding
Book:A Court of Wings and Ruin
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“In 1973, Jan Erik Olsson walked into a small bank in Stockholm, Sweden, brandishing a gun, wounding a police officer, and taking three women and one man hostage. During negotiations, Olsson demanded money, a getaway vehicle, and that his friend Clark Olofsson, a man with a long criminal history, be brought to the bank. The police allowed Olofsson to join his friend and together they held the four hostages captive in a bank vault for six days. During their captivity, the hostages at times were attached to snare traps around their necks, likely to kill them in the event that the police attempted to storm the bank. The hostages grew increasingly afraid and hostile toward the authorities trying to win their release and even actively resisted various rescue attempts. Afterward they refused to testify against their captors, and several continued to stay in contact with the hostage takers, who were sent to prison. Their resistance to outside help and their loyalty toward their captors was puzzling, and psychologists began to study the phenomenon in this and other hostage situations. The expression of positive feelings toward the captor and negative feelings toward those on the outside trying to win their release became known as Stockholm syndrome.”

TraumaTraumatizedStockholm SyndromeTrauma BondingHostage Situation
Author:Rachel Lloyd
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“What happens when you hit your daughter. First, she will bond to you out of fear, mistakenly thinking she has done something wrong, and if she can just manage to not do it again or somehow please you, you might not hit her or anyone else anymore. She will even think you will love her properly if she can earn your approval. She won't realize this is impossible. Then she will either do that with every man she comes within 100 feet of for the rest of her life or until she learns not to - this will take much doing - or she will despise them with such vehemence that she can barely stomach one around. Sometimes she will do a combination of both of those things, working herself into a pattern of push and pull - I love you, I hate you, I need you, I don't need anyone - that will drive her a little crazy. She won't understand at first, if ever, why she only attracts other masochists. Whatever numbing agent she's picked for herself - she will probably try drugs, drink too much alcohol, starve herself or binge and purge, maybe cut herself, act out sexually - in fact, she may do all of those things - that continues to help kill her spirit and dulls her enough to keep her participating in living like a maniac will be consumed to varying degrees depending on need. She will be more likely to commit suicide than if you hadn't abused her. She will give herself away and will mistake admiration and infatuation and sometimes even abuse for love.”

TraumaMemoirCodependencyTrauma HealingChild Abuse SurvivorTrauma Bonding
Book:Blood: A Memoir
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“Re-enacting trauma means putting yourself in similar situations or places to the original trauma, or finding similar people, and to create a new narrative in an attempt, this time, to be in control, to write a new ending, one in which you are in charge, not victimised. The sex trade is the perfect place for the sexually traumatised to try unconsciously to resolve former hurt because an unending number of men want to use your body. This is one of the reasons those who have suffered sexual abuse are so prevalent in the sex trade.”

TraumaSexual AbuseRapeProstitutionSex WorkSex Trade
Book:Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery
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“Je n'allume plus jamais ce poste recouvert d'un plastique jaune que l'on m'apporté avec une fausse magnanimité. J'ai trop peur de saisir cette voix chaude et tendre, trop peur de l'imaginer derrière les murs gris de cet hôpital sinistre. [I will never again turn on this yellow plastic-covered radio that was given to me with fake generosity. I'm too afraid of encountering that warm, gentle voice, too afraid of imagining it behind the grey walls of this sinister hospital.]”

AbuseTraumaHospitalMental Health System
Book:Le Pavillon des enfants fous
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“Something profound happens when you wake up in a calm green pasture on the other side of the treacherous storm that you thought would end you. You discover who you are beyond the unimaginable. You discover what you are made of. Suddenly, the thing that may have broken you becomes the very thing that empowers and emboldens you.”

InspirationGriefHealingTraumaResilienceMendingInfertilityPregnancy LossSubfertilityEctopic
Book:Mending Softly: Finding Hope & Healing After Ectopic Pregnancy Loss
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“I wish I’d fallen softly. Light and graceful like a feather drifting slowly to the earth on a warm and dreamy summer’s day. I wish that I’d landed softly too. But there is nothing soft or graceful about that devastating moment when the worst has come to pass. The unavoidable truth is that it is hard, cold and brutal. All that you know to be true and good in life shatters in an instant. You feel like a delicate pottery bowl violently tossed from your place of rest, watching yourself crash and scatter across the hostile dark earth. The sound is deafening. Time stops. Inside, the quiet ache of shock and heartbreak slowly makes its grip known. They cut deep, these jagged edges of broken sherds. You gasp for air hungrily, yet somehow forget how to breathe.”

TraumaGrief And LossInfertilityPregnancy LossSubfertilityEctopic
Book:Mending Softly: Finding Hope & Healing After Ectopic Pregnancy Loss
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“Is there any point in breathing if this is what the world is asking me to face?’ You think to yourself. Somehow though, whether through madness or magic, you find a way to. You keep breathing even when you don’t think you can. You surprise yourself.”

HealingTraumaInfertilityPregnancy LossSubfertilityEctopic
Book:Mending Softly: Finding Hope & Healing After Ectopic Pregnancy Loss
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“Specific parts of you personality may be angry and are usually easily evoked. because these parts are dissociated, anger remains an emotion that is not integrated for you as a whole person. Even though individuals with dissociative disorder are responsible for their behavior, just like everyone else, regardless of which part may be acting, they may feel little control of these raging parts of themselves. Some dissociative parts may avoid or even be phobic of anger. They may influence you as a whole person to avoid conflict with others at any cost or to avoid setting healthy boundaries out of fear of someone else’s anger; or they may urge you to withdraw from others almost completely.”

WholePiecesBrokenConflictBehaviorAngerAngryTraumaBoundariesDisorderCopingDissociationPhobiaDissociativeInner ConflictPartsHealthy BoundariesHealthy Coping
Book:Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists
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“There is healing in telling. There is healing in exposing abuse. There is healing in being truthful. There is healing in knowing you are not to blame. There is healing in standing up for yourself. There is healing in setting boundaries. There is healing in self-love. Hold onto hope that you will recover.”

HealingTraumaChild AbuseSpeak UpVictim BlamingHealthy BoundariesToxic FamilySexual AssaultsRape RecoveryExpose Abuse
Book:Soul Cry: Releasing & Healing the Wounds of Trauma
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“Every painful memory you have which keeps recurring is simply your unconscious mind trying to protect you by reminding you of experiences which caused you pain and which it does not wish you to experience in the future. This is a protection mechanism which keeps you alive. Fortunately it is possible to preserve the learnings of the memory and turn off the disturbing memory itself. When one does that they are no longer the slave to their past memories but enjoy a mastery of their life and ability to live and respond authentically in the present.”

AnxietyTraumaPtsdRogerRoger Roger
Author:Roger Roger
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“I expect nothing from Psychoanalysis or therapy, whose rudimentary conclusions became clear to me a long time ago--- a domineering mother, a father whose submissiveness is shattered by a murderous gesture... To state "it's a childhood trauma" or "that day the idols were knocked off their pedestal" does nothing to explain a scene which could only be conveyed by the expression that came to me at the time: to breathe disaster. Here abstract speech fails to reach me.”

TraumaTherapyLanguage Barrier
Book:Shame
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“Mortality on the Atlantic produced a crisis of enormous proportions, as Africans labored under the cumulative weight of these deaths that remained unresolved. . . . Entrapped, Africans confronted a dual crisis: the trauma of death, and the inability to respond appropriately to death. This indirect violence, arguably, was the most abject experience of the captives’ Atlantic crossing.”

DeathSlaveryTraumaMiddle PassageResponse To Death
Book:Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora
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“Stuck In One's Craw by Stewart Stafford Nobody's beeswax,' still, you nosily ask: 'Is it the last supper to eat that fast?' Try blackened potato skin's bitter taste, A heritage of hunger's grim, gaunt waste. From Celtic mist, this heir apparent, My grandparent's grandparent(s), Survived Ireland's holocaust famine, As a local catch, not New World salmon. Crop blight drove their starving plea, With lots cast bleak to die or flee Genetic appetite fed the strongest, Those who eat fastest live longest. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

Social JusticeTraumaDark HumorCultural IdentityElegyIrish HistoryIrish LiteraturePotato FamineHistorical PoetryIrish Famine
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“I recently consulted to a therapist who felt he had accomplished something by getting his dissociative client to remain in her ANP throughout her sessions with him. His view reflects the fundamental mistake that untrained therapists tend to make with DID and DDNOS. Although his client was properly diagnosed, he assumed that the ANP should be encouraged to take charge of the other parts at all times. He also expected her to speak for them—in other words, to do their therapy. This denied the other parts the opportunity to reveal their secrets, heal their pain, or correct their childhood-based beliefs about the world. If you were doing family therapy, would it be a good idea to only meet with the father, especially if he had not talked with his children or his spouse in years? Would the other family members feel as if their experiences and feelings mattered? Would they be able to improve their relationships? You must work with the parts who are inside of the system. Directly.”

FeelingsHealingMistakeFamilyPsychologyCommunicationAbuseErrorsTraumaTherapyTeamworkSecretsPsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisPsychotherapyMultiple Personality DisorderRitual AbuseTherapistMpdDdnos
Book:Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
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“Most people doing transformative justice work didn't get into it because we thought it would be a random, fun thing to do. We do it because we're survivors, or the people closest to us are. We care about survivors; we know what it's like to survive brutal shit, often alone. We want to change the world so this stuff never happens again.”

TraumaTransformative JusticeSurvivorship
Book:Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement
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“What’d you mean when you said it would never be enough?” The sudden change in topics made me nauseous. “It’s…nothing,” I lied. “You can tell me,” he urged. “I…I just…” Gods, those damn brown eyes made it hard to think straight. “I have a lot of blood on my hands.” He frowned. “I have this…this power to heal…but I keep…I keep hurting people. I don’t know…I don’t know if I can heal enough…to make up for it.” “Are you keeping score?” he asked, but not in a mocking way. He studied my face, his brow furrowed as though he wanted to understand. “No. I don’t know. I just…I want to…I need to balance the scales.” “What scales?” “The…scales.” I gestured vaguely with one hand, my face heating. “Do you feel responsible every time you can’t heal someone?” “I've watched so many people die," I whispered. "People I could've saved with my powers."”

ForgivenessTraumaAtonementTrauma HealingMagic PowersHealing Power
Book:Bones
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“It’s hard to feel supported when you can’t tell people everything. People haven’t really got a clue what it’s like. It’s hard to trust anyone. It’s hard to believe people won’t let you down. I’m feeling like I want to cry. My body feels hollow. Empty. I don’t feel like I’m 17. I feel young. I’m not sure how old, maybe about 10 yrs. It’s hard to accept that I can’t get all the support I need from one person. From any person. It’s hard that no one can fully understand. It’s hard for me to admit that inside I feel a really lonely person. What do I need to do to take care of myself right now? Well I need to cuddle my teddies — it sounds silly, but I need some comfort... I was still cuddling teddies when I should have been cuddling boys. The sick imagery in my mind, rather than making me sexually active, had closed that door completely.”

AbuseMental HealthTraumaSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMultiple Personality DisorderIncestDissociativeSplit PersonalityAlterAlter PersonalityIdentity Alteration
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Another patient, Janet, was repeatedly abused by a grandfather who forced her cousin to sexually molest her and put sticks into her vagina. The patient dissociated at the time into a child alter personality, Susie, who remembered the abuse. Susie decided if she had no body, her cousin would not hurt her. Susie imagined she had no body but only her head. The fantasy she had no body to hurt, led to a dissociation of all perceptions of her body and the belief that she avoided pain and her cousin could not hurt her. This mechanism shows the interplay of reality and fantasy in a dissociative defense. Through fantasy, Susie has no body and no pain. Simultaneously, the reality of her torture was recognized as the source of this adaptation. Dissociative defenses adopted her wishful fantasy to solve a brutal experience and its memory.”

FantasyTraumaChild AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderTraumatic ExperiencesDissociative PartsTrauma MemoryAlter Personality
Author:Walter C. Young
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“The narcissist is a master of manipulation. To maintain the illusion of power over you, they employ the use of third parties to gaslight you, manipulate you, and to bully you. They try to groom your friends, family, children, spouse, or intimate partner from the moment they meet them. Initially, the narcissist is testing them. To see how strong your other relationship bonds are in effort to triangulate them.”

Mental HealthTraumaManipulationAlienationNarcissistic AbuseGroomingCoercive ControlToxic SiblingsTriangulation Of RelationshipsIntent To Harm
Book:Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma
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“The term 'flying monkey' is called 'abuse by proxy.' The flying monkeys do the bidding for a narcissist. The term flying monkey was coined in the movie The Wizard of Oz. The flying monkeys were under the wicked witches spell to gang up on poor Dorothy and her friends.”

TraumaNarcissistic AbusePsychological AbuseCoercive ControlSibling AbuseFlying MonkeysGang StalkingThe Wizard Of OzFamily MobbingAbuse By Proxy
Book:Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma
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“This gives a whole new meaning to ‘family mobbing.’ According to author and survivor, Stephanie A. Sellers, Ph.D, who wrote the book, Daughters Healing from Family Mobbing: Stories and Approaches to Recovery from Shunning, Aggression, and Family Violence, “Family Mobbing is a group act of aggression that targets a family member. It can be typified by a single act of violence or a pattern of abuse over years. Whether isolated or long-term, mobbing enforces the family’s domination and control over another. As family members continue to tyrannize their target, the aggressive group may expand to include friends, neighbors, business associates, and clergy. Family Mobbing encompasses varied acts of aggression that cannot be understood by examining one motivation or cause. The pattern of behavior always isolates one family member and inflicts as much emotional pain as possible. Unlike sibling rivalry, the intention is to establish superiority or to provoke fear and distress. Factors to consider include the motives, the degree of severity, a power of imbalance, victimization element, physical injuries, and trauma.”

Mental HealthTraumaIsolationIntimidationPsychological AbuseTrue Crime StoryCoercive ControlSibling AbuseGang StalkingFamily Mogging
Book:Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma
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