Traumatic Quotes

“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” (p.97)”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“Unlike other forms of psychological disorders, the core issue in trauma is reality.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society

“Attitude Is Everything

We live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happened—as if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations.

The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), “there are no victims.” How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances?

When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability.”
― Sandra Lee Dennis

“There are edges around the black and every now and then a flash of color streaks out of the gray. But I can never really grasp any of the slivers of memories that emerge.”
― Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits

“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.”
― Susan Pease Banitt, The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD from the Inside Out

“Blame is a Defense Against Powerlessness

Betrayal 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.”
― Sandra Lee Dennis

“The inability to get something out of your head is a signal that shouts, “Don’t forget to deal with this!” As long as you experience fear or pain with a memory or flashback, there is a lie attached that needs to be confronted. In each healing step, there is a truth to be gathered and a lie to discard.”
― Christina Enevoldsen

“Some people with DID present their narratives of sadistic abuse in a quite matter-of-fact way, without perceptible affect. This may sometimes be done as a way of protecting themselves, and the listener, from the emotional impact of their experience. We have found that people describing trauma in a flat way, without feeling, are usually those who have been more chronically abused, while those with affect still have a sense of self that can observe the tragedy of betrayal and have feelings about it. In some cases, this deadpan presentation can also be the result of cult training and brainwashing. Unfortunately, when a patient describes a traumatic experience without showing any apparent emotion, it can make the listener doubt whether the patient is telling the truth.
(page 119, Chapter 9, Some clinical implications of believing or not believing the patient)”
― Graeme Galton, Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Some of your childhood traumas may be remembered with incredible clarity, while others are so frightening or incomprehensible that your conscious mind buries the memory in your unconscious.”
― Renee Fredrickson, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse

“The symptomatology of PTSD.
In PTSD a traumatic event is not remembered and relegated to one's past in the same way as other life events. Trauma continues to intrude with visual, auditory, and/or other somatic reality on the lives of its victims. Again and again they relieve the life-threatening experiences they suffered, reacting in mind and body as though such events were still occurring. PTSD is a complex psychobiological condition.”
― Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment

“He loves me so he hurts me
To try and make me good.
It doesn't work. I'm just too bad
And don't do what I should.

My memory has so many different sections and, like all survivors, there are so many compartments with so many triggers. I'll remember a smell which reminds me of a man which reminds me of a place which reminds me of another man who I think was with a woman who had a certain smell — and I'm back to square one. This is the case for most survivors, I believe. When we try to put together our pasts, the triggers are many and varied, the memories are disjointed — and why wouldn't they be? We were children. Even someone with an idyllic childhood who is only trying to remember the lovely things which happened to them will scratch their head and wonder who gave them that doll and was it for Christmas or their third birthday? Did they have a party when they were four or five? When did they go on a plane for the first time? You see, even happy memories are hard to piece together — so imagine how hard it is to collate all of the trauma, to pull together all of the things I've been trying to push away for so many years.”
― Laurie Matthew, Groomed

“This vacillation between assertion and denial in discussions about organised abuse can be understood as functional, in that it serves to contain the traumatic kernel at the heart of allegations of organised abuse. In his influential ‘just world’ theory, Lerner (1980) argued that emotional wellbeing is predicated on the assumption that the world is an orderly, predictable and just place in which people get what they deserve. Whilst such assumptions are objectively false, Lerner argued that individuals have considerable investment in maintaining them since they are conducive to feelings of self—efficacy and trust in others. When they encounter evidence contradicting the view that the world is just, individuals are motivated to defend this belief either by helping the victim (and thus restoring a sense of justice) or by persuading themselves that no injustice has occurred. Lerner (1980) focused on the ways in which the ‘just world’ fallacy motivates victim-blaming, but there are other defences available to bystanders who seek to dispel troubling knowledge. Organised abuse highlights the severity of sexual violence in the lives of some children and the desire of some adults to inflict considerable, and sometimes irreversible, harm upon the powerless. Such knowledge is so toxic to common presumptions about the orderly nature of society, and the generally benevolent motivations of others, that it seems as though a defensive scaffold of disbelief, minimisation and scorn has been erected to inhibit a full understanding of organised abuse.
Despite these efforts, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in organised abuse and particularly ritualistic abuse (eg Sachs and Galton 2008, Epstein et al. 2011, Miller 2012).”
― Michael Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse

“In cases of organized and multi-perpetrator abuse when the abuse occurs in the context of rituals and ceremonies, some elements of the experience may have been staged specifically with the intention of encouraging the disbelief of others if the victim were to report the crime. For example, someone reporting such a crime may mention that the devil was present, or that someone well-known was there, or that acts of magic were performed. These were tricks and deceptions by the abusers-often experienced by the victims after being given medication or hallucinogenic drugs - that render the account unbelievable, make the witness sound unreliable, and protect the perpetrators.
(page 120, Chapter 9, Some clinical implications of believing or not believing the patient)”
― Graeme Galton, Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Miriam is upset. Her voice is stretched and I can't look at her. Perhaps they beat something out of her she didn't get back.”
― Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

“Some readers may find it a curious or even unscientific endeavour to craft a criminological model of organised abuse based on the testimony of survivors. One of the standard objections to qualitative research is that participants may lie or fantasise in interview, it has been suggested that adults who report severe child sexual abuse are particularly prone to such confabulation. Whilst all forms of research, whether qualitative or quantitative, may be impacted upon by memory error or false reporting. there is no evidence that qualitative research is particularly vulnerable to this, nor is there any evidence that a fantasy— or lie—prone individual would be particularly likely to volunteer for research into child sexual abuse. Research has consistently found that child abuse histories, including severe and sadistic abuse, are accurate and can be corroborated (Ross 2009, Otnow et al. 1997, Chu et al. 1999). Survivors of child abuse may struggle with amnesia and other forms of memory disturbance but the notion that they are particularly prone to suggestion and confabulation has yet to find a scientific basis. It is interesting to note that questions about the veracity of eyewitness evidence appear to be asked far more frequently in relation to sexual abuse and rape than in relation to other crimes. The research on which this book is based has been conducted with an ethical commitment to taking the lives and voices of survivors of organised abuse seriously.”
― Michael Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse

“Our work calls on us to confront, with our patients and within ourselves, extraordinary human experiences. This confrontation is profoundly humbling in that at all times these experiences challenge the limits of our humanity and our view of the world...”
― John P. Wilson, Countertransference in the Treatment of PTSD

“This book is dedicated to all who have been affected by sexual violence.”
― Robert Uttaro, To the Survivors: One Man's Journey as a Rape Crisis Counselor with True Stories of Sexual Violence

“It would cut into him at unpredictable moments, like a gutting knife made of colored light.”
― David Baldacci, Memory Man

“Recognizing the early onset of burnout is of the utmost importance.”
― Asa Don Brown

“Most of us outgrow the religion of our childhood just like we outgrow children’s clothing. Both experiences are traumatic. Both experiences are necessary.”
― J. Earp

“I studied the stable behind him instead. At least it was big, open, the stable hands now off in another wing. I usually had little issue with being inside, which was mostly whenever I was bored enough to visit the horses housed within. Plenty of space to move, to escape. the walls didn't feel too... permanent.

Not like the kitchens, which were too low, the walls too thick, the windows not big enough to climb through. Not like the study, with not enough natural light or easy exits. I had a long list in my head of what places I could and couldn't endure at the manor, ranked by precisely how much they made my body luck up and sweat.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“Trauma can be defined in terms of the relationship you establish with what happened to you.
It involves the way you integrate the experience into your life story, the beliefs you hold about yourself and the world, and the internal dynamics you develop in response to the circumstances.
Happiness could be defined exactly the same way!”
― Antonieta Contreras, Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders

“Traumatic is whatever action, event, or circumstance has the potential to jeopardize one's life or physical/mental/social unity. An appraisal that depends on the subjectivity of each one of us.”
― Antonieta Contreras, Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders

“Anything, be it an action, event, or circumstance, is considered traumatic if it has the potential to jeopardize one's life or physical, mental, and social well-being. This assessment relies on the subjectivity of each individual.”
― Antonieta Contreras, Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders

“An event only becomes 'traumatizing' at a specific point: when we are personally affected by it—whether in actuality or perception.”
― Antonieta Contreras, Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders

“It's the person's subjective perception of danger that determines whether an incident is traumatizing or not.”
― Antonieta Contreras, Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders

“Being traumatized means operating under a new program, a maladaptive one that keeps the body anticipating danger in a very subjective way, malfunctioning, with a lack of internal equilibrium, and focused on survival.”
― Antonieta Contreras, Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders

“Traumatization can be prevented early in the process, or resolved at any point during the struggle if the one encountering or experiencing the traumatic event intervenes and regains confidence.”
― Antonieta Contreras, Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders

“Traumatization can be prevented early in the process or resolved at any point during the struggle if the individual encountering or experiencing the traumatic event intervenes and regains confidence in surviving or feeling safe.”
― Antonieta Contreras, Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders

“What came up mostly to the newsmen was the speechlessness of this vast caravan of misery and the persistent sound, like rain, of children crying.”
― Christopher Hudson, The Killing Fields