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Traumatic Experiences Quotes

Browse 129 quotes about Traumatic Experiences.

Traumatic Experiences Quotes

“I wish I could go back in time to my life before The News. Before my eyes would seek the arms on the clock like a tic just to calculate: A few minutes ago, my life was different. An hour ago, I didn’t know. Twenty-four hours ago, I had no idea my life was about to change forever. Friday, one week later, I have a moment of normality when I first wake up. Just a moment. A single moment before remembering. At this time a week ago, I still didn’t know. For the rest of my life, I will never not know.”

KnowingTragedyTraumaDiagnosisTraumatic Experiences
Book:Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems
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“I need to ask, are you afraid of spiders?" Nicholas blinked, suddenly caught off guard, "Yes, I'm afraid of spiders." "Were you always?" "What are you, a psychiatrist?" Pritam took a breath. He could feel Laine's eyes on him, appraising his line of questioning. "Is it possible that the trauma of losing your best friend as a child and the trauma of losing your wife as an adult and the trauma of seeing Laine's husband take his life in front of you just recently..." Pritam shrugged and raised his palms, "You see where I'm going?" Nicholas looked at Laine. She watched back. Her gray eyes missed nothing. "Sure," agreed Nicholas, standing. "And my sister's nuts, too, and we both like imagining that little white dogs are big nasty spiders because our daddy died and we never got enough cuddles." "Your father died?" asked Laine. "When?" "Who cares?" Pritam sighed. "You must see this from our point of - " "I'd love to!" snapped Nicholas. "I'd love to see it from your point of view, because mine is not that much fun! It's insane! It's insane that I see dead people, Pritam! It's insane that this," he flicked out the sardonyx necklace,"stopped me from kidnapping a little girl!" "That's what you believe," Pritam said carefully. "That's what I fucking believe!" Nicholas stabbed his finger through the air at the dead bird talisman lying slack on the coffee table.”

MindDeathLossGriefAngerMurderSuicideSarcasmSanityQuestioningInsultedChildhood TraumaAnalyzingTraumatic ExperiencesDefensiveRationalizing
Book:The Dead Path
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“A life of hardship and personal suffering is unavoidable. A person must endure many humiliations of the mind and body, and expect persons whom they trusted to someday betray them. People inevitably witness the death of their loved ones. We also witness acts of depravity committed by criminals that lurk in every society and rouge acts of scandal committed by government officials in charge of the public welfare. A person must nonetheless resist personal discouragement, sadness, dejection, and despondency. I must reach an accord with pain, suffering, and anguish, or forevermore be tortured by reality while constantly seeking to escape from the inescapable agony of being.”

SufferingExistenceCrimeStressTraumaBetrayalAgonyAnguishHumiliationDiscouragementDepravityTraumatic ExperiencesEnlightenment PrinciplesBetrayal QuotesSuffering QuoteSuffering Of HumanityExistential AngstSuffering LifeDejectionAgony Quotes
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“I thought maybe if I looked ugly and less pleasant, the men would not look at me and I'd be safe. I wouldn't wash my face for days. I didn't want to look attractive in any way, at all, lest it invited undue attention and that indescribable guilt. I wanted to somehow become invisible.”

BeautyFeminismGuiltTraumaTraumatic ExperiencesKashmirGirlhoodFemale Experiences
Book:Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir
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“Her face, made pastel by the light of her computer monitor, reflected in the window. She failed to recognize the girl, thought seeing her now was like a dream belonging to someone else, and that she had been asleep all her life. She didn’t want to see herself, looked beyond the image to the ancient oak tree in the yard. Massive with a crook in the center that looked like a twisted smile, it reached for her with branches that curled like a stranger’s hands.”

Growing UpTraumatic ExperiencesParanormal Urban Fiction
Book:Falls the Breath
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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—pale 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.”

GrowthPsychologyTraumaEmotional IntelligenceTraumatic ExperiencesPsychology Spirituality
Author:Carl R. Rogers
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“But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.”

WarSelf RespectCaptivityTraumatic ExperiencesTraumatizedDehumanizationInhumaneWorthlessnessComplex PtsdNo Longer HumanDehumanizePrisoners Of WarHeld CaptiveSurvivors Of War
Book:Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
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“The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness, trapped in a sort of spiritual solitary confinement, looking back at the rest of the world from beyond the barrier of what happened. They find themselves unable to communicate their condition to those who remained at home, resenting civilians for their blind innocence. The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015”

WarMilitaryMoralityShameGuiltTraumaMoralsPtsdAlienationSoldiersTraumatic ExperiencesTaintedTraumatizedMoral ResponsibilityOutsiderVeteransPost Traumatic Stress DisorderCombat PtsdAlienatedVeterans Survivor Guilt
Author:David Brooks
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“Traumatic events destroy the sustaining bonds between individual and community. Those who have survived learn that their sense of self, of worth, of humanity, depends upon a feeling of connection with others. The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience. Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms. Trauma degrades the victim; the group exalts her. Trauma dehumanizes the victim; the group restores her humanity. Repeatedly in the testimony of survivors there comes a moment when a sense of connection is restored by another person’s unaffected display of generosity. Something in herself that the victim believes to be irretrievably destroyed---faith, decency, courage---is reawakened by an example of common altruism. Mirrored in the actions of others, the survivor recognizes and reclaims a lost part of herself. At that moment, the survivor begins to rejoin the human commonality...”

FaithHumanityCommunityHealingCourageSocietyAbuseVictimAffectionRecoveryGenerosityConnectionBelongingSurvivorIsolatedRejectedAltruismPtsdDecencyAbuse SurvivorsOutcastInhumanSurvivorsBondingInhumanityBondHealing InsightsTraumatic ExperiencesBondsTraumatizedDehumanizationInhumaneRecovery From AbuseHealing AbuseConnection With PeopleDehumanisationLoss Of SelfVictimizedNo Longer HumanDehumanizeDehumanizedInhumane TreatmentFeeling HumanLoss Of Social InteractionReclaiming DignityReclaiming Your Life
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“Traumatic events, by definition, overwhelm our ability to cope. When the mind becomes flooded with emotion, a circuit breaker is thrown that allows us to survive the experience fairly intact, that is, without becoming psychotic or frying out one of the brain centers. The cost of this blown circuit is emotion frozen within the body. In other words, we often unconsciously stop feeling our trauma partway into it, like a movie that is still going after the sound has been turned off. We cannot heal until we move fully through that trauma, including all the feelings of the event.”

FeelingsHealingBrainPsychologySurvivalEmotionsMetaphorTraumaHealUnconsciousElectricPtsdFrozenOverwhelmedCopyingPsychosisTraumatic ExperiencesFloodingTraumatizedPosttraumatic Stress DisorderTraumaticPosttraumatic StressPtssAnaolgyCircuit Breaker
Book:The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD from the Inside Out
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“There is something about being loved and protected by a parent (or guardian) knowing that I can be loved for who I am, not what I can do, or might one day become. Unfortunately it’s not usually like this in every single situation. From time to time, my parents made mistakes during my childhood. Possibly I was the mistake, or unwanted. But I don’t know. I had every material thing that I could have ever wanted, but there was still something missing, as if I felt distanced from my parents, or misunderstood, in the ways that they treated me. At times, I had felt completely loved and accepted by my parents, but for one reason or another, they were unable to care for me, provide for me, in some ways that would have been very important. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to make up for the experiences in life that were absent when I was a child.”

ParentChildhoodMental HealthParentingTraumaMental IllnessParentsInnocenceParenthoodChildIntrospectionParents And ChildrenIntrospectiveChild Sexual AbuseParenting QuotesParenting AdviceTraumatic ExperiencesParenting ChildrenChildhood AbuseChild RapeParental LoveParenting TeensMental Illness DiscriminationIntrospective Quote
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia
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“Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion... Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being "just like" the past and "emergency" emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.”

FearDangerAnxietyTerrorTraumaRageFlightDecisionsFightAnxiousFearfulCollapsePanicTerrifiedThreatenedPtsdOverwhelmedTriggersDissociative Identity DisorderFreezeSelf DefenseDissociationHealing InsightsTraumatic ExperiencesGroundingMultiple PersonalitiesTraumatizedDissociative DisorderDdnosDissociatedEffects Of Child AbuseOsddDissociative IdentitiesRisk AversionHypervigilanceGroundednessTraumatizationTriggeredDissociative StatesRe Enact TraumaTriggeres Traumatized
Book:Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists
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“She's terrified that all these sensations and images are coming out of her — but I think she's even more terrified to find out why." Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing.”

HealingAbuseDenialChild AbuseSubconsciousPtsdAvoidanceAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsSubconscious MindIncestHealing InsightsTraumatic ExperiencesChildhood AbuseTraumatizedChild RapePost Traumatic Stress DisorderDissociative AmnesiaHealing From AbuseMinimizingFlashbackAbusive ParentsHealing AbusePosttraumatic Stress DisorderDefense MechanismFlashbacksParental AbuseMinimizationDenial Of AbuseTrauma MemoriesDenial Of Child AbuseTraumatic MemoriesIntrusiveSadistic AbuseDenial Of IncestReliving The PastPsychological DefenceAbusive ChildhoodMinimizing IssuesDissociated AmnesiaFear Of Truth
Author:David L. Calof
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“The damage and invisible scars of emotional abuse are very difficult to heal, because memories are imprinted on our minds and hearts and it takes time to be restored. Imprints of past traumas do not mean a person cannot change their future beliefs and behaviors. as people, we do not easily forget. However, as we heal, grieve, and let go, we become clear-minded and focused to live restore and emotionally healthy.”

HealingRecoveryEmotional AbuseEmotional PainAbuse SurvivorsHealing The PastHealing JourneyEmotional HealthTraumatic ExperiencesHope For The FutureHealing The Emotional SelfTrauma SurvivorsHealing ProcessEmotional WoundsTrauma MemoriesScars Of The PastHearts And MindsRestoring HappinessInvisible Wounds
Book:Breaking Passive-Aggressive Cycles
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“... sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.”

BetrayalAttachmentChild Sexual AbuseIncestTraumatic ExperiencesSociety DenialPedophileChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChildhood Sexual AbusePedophilesBetrayal TraumaAbusive MotherParental AbuseAttachment TraumaAbusive WomenMale Survivor
Book:First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
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“Yolanda Gampel utilizes an expanded concept of the "uncanny" to outline the results of violence: Those who experience such traumas are faced with an unbelievable and unreal reality that is incompatible with anything they knew previously. As a result, they can no longer fully believe what they see with their own eyes; they have difficulty distinguishing between the unreal reality they have survived and the fears that spring from their own imagination.”

DenialPtsdDisbeliefUnrealSelf DoubtTraumatic ExperiencesTraumatizedDerealizationTrauma Memories
Book:Contradictory Violence: Revolution and Subversion in the Caribbean
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“Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing. So they fragment the memories into hundreds of shards, leaving only acceptable traces in their conscious minds. Rationalizations like "my childhood was rough," "he only did it to me once or twice," and "it wasn't so bad" are common, masking the fact that the abuse was devastating and chronic. But while the knowledge, body sensations, and feelings are shattered, they are not forgotten. They intrude in unexpected ways: through panic attacks and insomnia, through dreams and artwork, through seemingly inexplicable compulsions, and through the shadowy dread of the abusive parent. They live just outside of consciousness like noisy neighbors who bang on the pipes and occasionally show up at the door.”

HealingAbuseMental HealthAddictionMental IllnessDenialSurvivorChild AbuseDreadSubconsciousPtsdAlcoholismInsomniaAvoidanceDissociationAbuse SurvivorsNightmaresSurvivorsIncestHealing InsightsFragmentedTraumatic ExperiencesChildhood AbuseConscious AwarenessRationalizationMental DisorderTraumatizedPanic AttacksDissociative DisorderAlcohol AddictionSelf ProtectionChild RapeDissociative AmnesiaHealing From AbuseMinimizingFlashbackAbusive ParentsHealing AbuseTrauma MemoryDefense MechanismFlashbacksParental AbuseEffects Of Child AbuseMinimizationDenial Of AbuseTrauma MemoriesDenial Of Child AbuseTraumatic MemoriesAbusive ParentIntrusiveSadistic AbuseDenial Of IncestIncestuousPsychological DefenceBad ChildhoodIrrational FearsAbusive ChildhoodIntrusionsMinimizing IssuesDissociated AmnesiaCompulsionsCompulsive EatingFear Of TruthBody MemoriesCompulsive BehaviorCompulsive OvereatingSeemingly Inexplicable BehaviorSex Addition
Book:The Couple Who Became Each Other: Stories of Healing and Transformation from a Leading Hypnotherapist
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“In the course of therapy, we often witness clients’ capacities to report abuse stories with intellectualized, detached demeanors. And they are quick to add disclaimers that minimize their experiences such as “It wasn’t so bad,” “I probably deserved it anyway,” “I know my parents did the best they could,” “It didn’t have any negative effect on me,” or “That was a long time ago, and it can’t be relevant to my life now.” Many clients expend tremendous amounts of energy disavowing traumatic or abusive histories, believing that revisiting old feelings and thoughts will keep them stuck or are irrelevant to who they are today.”

DetachedAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsTraumatic ExperiencesTraumatizedSurvivors Of AbuseMinimization
Book:Treating Self-Destructive Behaviors in Trauma Survivors: A Clinician's Guide
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“When preparing for Book One, I talked to a couple of psychiatrists about psychosomatic phenomena, neuroses and dissociative conditions, for example the so—called hysterical blindness suffered by many who saw the Killing Fields in Pol Pot’s Cambodia: their eyes objectively see, but they are not aware of it and are blind because they believe they can’t see. One specialist told me that among modern Western people, ’metaphorical’ symptoms such as Fredy or those Cambodians evince are much rarer now than earlier in the twentieth century or before. Nowadays most people are better equipped by education to verbalise their neuroses, and have lots of jargon in which to do so. For most of the dissociative dimension, I could draw on things I knew from within myself.”

TraumaMental IllnessBlindnessDissociationNeurosisHysteriaTraumatic ExperiencesMental DisorderTraumatizedDissociativeTrauma SurvivorsTraumatic StressPsychosomaticConversion DisorderHysterical DissociationNeuroticismPol PotNeuorosesPsychogenic
Book:Fredy Neptune
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“When experiences or emotions become too overwhlming, the mind clevely encapsulates the material and stores it for safe-keeping. Many people respond this way in the face of trauma, but the additional step that occurs in this process, in the case of DID, is the formation of distinct ego states that carry the experience.”

TraumaPtsdDissociative Identity DisorderCopingDissociationTraumatic ExperiencesMultiple PersonalitiesTraumatizedAlter PersonalitiesDissociativeDissociative PartsCompartmentalizationMemory Fragmentation
Book:The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook
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“When a personality is created out of a trauma situation, the personality can watch and learn by looking and hearing out of your eyes and ears. The personality doesn't have to be the one in charge of the body to know what is going on. If the personality is created while you are of a very young age that personality can remain at that age, even though you are growing and maturing. A personality can also be hidden within the memory that created them and they don't realize time has moved on.”

Mental IllnessChild AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderMultiple Personality DisorderTraumatic ExperiencesMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisorderDissociative Amnesia
Book:Who Am I? Dissociative Identity Disorder Survivor
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“Several psychologists (L. Armstrong, 1994; Enns, McNeilly, Corkery, & Gilbert, 1995; Herman, 1992; McFarlane & van der Kolk, 1996; Pope & Brown, 1996) contend that the controversy of delayed recall for traumatic events is likely to be influenced by sexism. Kristiansen, Gareau, Mittleholt, DeCourville, and Hovdestad (1995) found that people who were more authoritarian and who had less favorable attitudes toward women were less likely to believe in the veracity of women’s recovered memories for sexual abuse. Those who challenged the truthfulness of recovered memories were more likely to endorse negative statements about women, including the idea that battered women enjoy being abused. McFarlane and van der Kolk (1996) have noted that delayed recall in male combat veterans reported by Myers (1940) and Kardiner (1941) did not generate controversy, whereas delayed recall in female survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse has provoked considerable debate.”

TraumaDenialSexismBiasSexual AbuseControversyCredibilityChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsIncestTraumatic ExperiencesSociety DenialDoubting MindRecovered MemoriesTrauma MemoryAuthoritarianPsychological TraumaRecovered MemoryDelayed Reaction
Author:Rachel E. Goldsmith
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“In this climate of profoundly disrupted relationships the child faces a formidable developmental task. She must find a way to form primary attachments to caretakers who are either dangerous or, from her perspective, negligent. She must find a way to develop a sense of basic trust and safely with caretakers who are untrustworthy and unsafe. She must develop a sense of self in relation to others who are helpless, uncaring or cruel. She must develop a capacity for bodily self-regulation in an environinent in which her body is at the disposal of others' needs as well as a capacity for self-soothing in an environment without solace. She must develop the capacity for initiative in an environment which demands that she bring her will into complete conformity with that of her abuser. And ultimately, she must develop a capacity for intimacy out of an environment where all intimate relationships are corrupt, and an identity out of an environment which defines her as a whore and a slave.”

Child Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsTraumatic ExperiencesTraumatizedComplex PtsdAbusive ParentsAbused ChildrenAbused ChildDouble BindDisorganized Attachment
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“When I first started to remember specific memories of abuse, I felt like I had a storm cloud over me for about two or three days beforehand. When the memory finally surfaced, I felt like I was alone in a dark cave. I stayed in bed just thinking and crying and eating chocolate. I wrote in my healing journal and talked it out with a friend. I examined what I thought and how I felt and cried some more. It was agonizing. The more issues I faced, the stronger I got. It wasn’t a pleasant process, but I knew it would be over in a few days and I would feel alive again. With each memory, I recovered faster and I had longer and longer breaks in between them. Facing them made me stronger. I was able to see more and more of the truth without it overwhelming me. Even though the memories increased in intensity, it was easier to deal with them.”

Child Sexual AbuseSurvivorsIncestTraumatic ExperiencesRepressed MemoriesAbuse SurvivorRecovered MemoriesFlashbacks
Book:The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal
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“While focus has been on child exploitation and sexual abuse at a global, I cannot stop expressing the importance of having conversations within our very own families. Conversations of actions. Conversations of awareness. Conversations of safety. Conversations of protection. Conversations of transparency. Conversations of accountability. Conversations of consequences. Conversations of support. Kids grow into adults and are often left to tackIe the effects of trauma on their own. When someone comes out, stop asking them why they waited. Or, call them a liar. Or, say they are crazy. Or, treat them like they are the abuser. Or, keep them ostracized as the outcast. These familial defense mechanisms only continue to add to the trauma and abuse. We need to create a culture within our families where our children - and children turned adults - don't feel so voiceless and unprotected when confiding in their truth. It's never too late to have these difficult conversations. Please have them.”

FamilyChild AbuseSexual AbuseChildhood TraumaTraumatic ExperiencesPedophileDifficult ConversationsSave Our Children
Author:Jamie A. Triplin
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