Trauma Quotes - Page 9

Survivors create survival mechanisms. Mine is pushing through. I push everything to the side, out of my line of vision, out of my mind and I focus relentlessly on my goal. Not sure what you’d call it, but who cares? I’m a fighter and that’s enough. I live each day happy to wake up each morning to my children’s bright eyes and warm cheeks. If pushing through gives me more days with the family I’ve created, with my writing, with my loves— fine by me. Call it what you want. I call it living. -Broken Places

Life is stress by definition.

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.

How do we find words for describing levels of betrayal and emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual torture that fragment and destroy a child or cast and case traumatic shadows over the whole of adult life? We might, as a society, slowly find it possible to accept that one in four citizens are likely to have experience some form of emotional, psychical, sexual or spiritual abuse (McQueen, Itzin, Kennedy, Sinason, & Maxted, 2008), in itself a figure unimaginable and hidden twenty years ago. However, accepting the way a hurt and hurting parent or stranger re-enacts their disturbance with a vulnerable child or children remains far easier to digest than to consider the intellectually planned, scientific, methodical, procedures of organized child-abusing perpetrators-in other words, torture.

The traumatic moment becomes encoded in an abnormal form of memory, which breaks spontaneously into consciouness, both as flashbacks during waking states and as traumatic nightmares during sleep. Small, seemingly insignificant reminders can also evoke these memories, which often return with all the vividness and emotional force of the original event. Thus, even normally safe environments may come to feel dangerous, for the survivor can never be assured that she will not encounter some reminder of the trauma.

no-one would want to go through a traumatic experience but when you’ve survived something life-shattering and risen above it, you achieve a kind of serenity.

Anyone who shames survivors of trauma and abuse for not healing, is a person who has no compassion for life's suffering

A woman in combat? Yes. Since when? Since Native American warrior Buffalo Calf Road Woman knocked that prick General George Custer off of his horse. Since Pantea Arteshbod propelled herself to become one of the greatest Persian commanders during the reign of Cyrus the Great. Since Hua Mulan disguised herself as a male to engage in combat and became one of China’s most respected heroines.

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

Whether it’s an Iraqi widow mourning her dead loved ones standing helplessly in the rubble of her former home or a dying soldier in an Iraqi city street asking, “Why, God? Why is this happening? Where are you?” I can’t help but wonder the same. You realize that there is no justice, no karmic retribution swift enough, and that happy endings are a terrible, terrible lie. We are all subject to the same blind boot stomp and our luck is merely where we happen to be standing when death inevitably comes roaring down upon us.

Social anxiety results from being around people who are resolutely opposed to who you are.

I believe that we belittle survivors by assuming that they will fail.

Blame is a Defense Against PowerlessnessBetrayal trauma changes you. You have endured a life-altering shock, and are likely living with PTSD symptoms— hypervigilance, flashbacks and bewilderment—with broken trust, with the inability to cope with many situations, and with the complete shut down of parts of your mind, including your ability to focus and regulate your emotions.Nevertheless, if you are unable to recognize the higher purpose in your pain, to forgive and forget and move on, you clearly have chosen to be addicted to your pain and must enjoy playing the victim.And the worst is, we are only too ready to agree with this assessment! Trauma victims commonly blame themselves. Blaming oneself for the shame of being a victim is recognized by trauma specialists as a defense against the extreme powerlessness we feel in the wake of a traumatic event. Self-blame continues the illusion of control shock destroys, but prevents us from the necessary working through of the traumatic feelings and memories to heal and recover.

It had started to drizzle. The lamp poles cast a kaleidoscope of light dancing across the puddles in the road. The rain made Sam feel even more lost now, as if these shadowy events were invisible to the world. As if the night was cloaked in anonymity. This wasn’t a peaceful rain - it was a sad one. A drizzle, which wept for the inevitable. Sam knew even if she got Alison out of this alive, the cuts on their lives had already been made, pooling the blood of consequence beneath their feet as the night dragged on. Whichever way this went, they’d have scars from this night. Scars and scabs and things which could not be spoken. And that made her feel utterly hopeless.

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.

All emotions, even those that are suppressed and unexpressed, have physical effects. Unexpressed emotions tend to stay in the body like small ticking time bombs—they are illnesses in incubation.

To take a specific example, a researcher in the Journal of Traumatic Stress interviewed 129 women with documented histories of child sexual abuse that occurred between the ages of 10 months and 12 years. Of those, 38 percent had forgotten the abuse. Of the remaining women who remembered, 16 percent reported that they had for a period of time forgotten but subsequently recovered their memories. [46] Thus, during that time a "false negative" recorded for those women. These are the sort of distinctions for which Elaine Showalter in Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media fails to account.