Best 925 quotes in «recovery quotes» category

The beauty of being shattered is how the shards become our character and our marks of distinction. This is how we are refined by our pain. When the storm rips you to pieces, you get to decide how to put yourself back together again. The storm gives us the gift of our defining choices. You will be a different person after the storm, because the storm will heal you from your perfection. People who stay perfect and unblemished never really get to live fully or deeply. You will not be the same after the storms of life; you will be stronger, wiser and more alive than ever before!

The bridge out of shame is outrage. Suddenly the obvious becomes stunningly clear—we have been carrying shame for the crime of the offender…In a clear flash we may see ourselves standing in a fierce stance, grounded by our knowledge, ready to throw off any wrongdoer. Our outrage can be a fueling energy, capable of making us as steely as we need to be.

The child turns up still trusting these lies to be the truth.

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.

The darkness in me could not stand the light any longer. It wanted to escape, vanish without a trace to a place where it could not be seen. But I could not let it happen; I could not let it run, I’m giving it no choice. It was going to ride itself out and face the truth it doesn’t want to know. It was to face itself in the mirror of hope, of despair. I gave the darkness no choice. It was to turn back into the light.

The enabler will love the addict into darkness. The addict becomes a shadow of the person they once were. The enablers love is blind and selfish. Blind, because they cannot see the selfishness, when they cradle their own emotions over the addict’s recovery. It will always be tough love, support and lots of praying to keep an addict clean. The underlined reason for the substance abuse can only be found when the addict is thinking clearly.

The feeling you have that 'there's something else' is real. What happens when you don't follow the compulsion? What is on the other side of my need [...]? The only way to find out is to not do it, and that is a novel act of faith.

The fear of the drugs running out is manageable-the fear of time running down isn’t.

The fear of the drugs running out is managable-the fear of time running down isn't.

The frailty of those dark hours during the period of abuse persuades the child to think that they are incapable of causing any nature of impact to themselves or the world they live in.

The first week is the hardest. Then little by little the world opens up, and you realize there are all these people around you with their own needs that have nothing to do with you. Then you forget, and everything’s about you again. And maybe that cycle continues for the rest of your life. Maybe the world keeps expanding and contracting. Maybe you know you’re well when it finally stays the same size.

The good news, however, is that, also contrary to popular belief, full and lasting recovery from an eating disorder is possible.

The greatest human fear is not of going broke, getting sick, or even dying. It’s fear of the unknown, not seeing down the road, behind the door, or what tomorrow may bring.

Theirs was the eternal youth of an alternating self, a youth with the constant although unfulfilled promise of growing up

The healing process is best described as a spiral. Survivors go through the stages once, sometimes many times; sometimes in one order, sometimes in another. Each time they hit a stage again, they move up the spiral: they can integrate new information and a broader range of feelings, utilize more resources, take better care of themselves, and make deeper changes.” Allies in Healing by Laura Davis

The initial journey towards sobriety is a delicate balance between insight into one's desire for escape and abstinence from one's addiction.

The man who sins but wants to purify it is no more a sinner than the man who doesn't sin but wants to sin.

The main priority of everyone surrounding a highly narcissistic person is to ensure that they are looking after themselves, maintaining their own mental and physical health and wellbeing, before looking after the narcissist.

The more I connected with myself, I studied and found out more about myself, through help and on my own as well.

The mind fabricates and believes in whatever it wants to conclude is true because of what occurs on the spur of the moment to the child.

The more I focus my time and energy on withstanding a real life, I am able to overcome and come out victorious.

The most powerful energy on earth is the power of creation. Create a new life is you want to truly leave the old one behind.

The most important progress and success can't be seen. If you can validate yourself internally, then external validation becomes a byproduct.

The most important thing in defining child sexual abuse is the experience of the child. It takes very little for a child’s world to be devastated. A single experience can have a profound impact on a child’s life. A man sticks his hand in his daughter’s underpants, or strokes his son’s penis once, and for that child, the world is never the same again.

The most treasured gift you can present yourself today is a hand of assistance to liberate you from the prison of anxiety, fear, & stress so that you can set free.

The only person You shouldn't be able To live without Is you.

The novel had metabolized recovery with so much rigor that it had already asked all my questions and weathered all my intellectual discomforts. It documented what Wallace called the “grudging move toward maybe acknowledging that this unromantic, unhip, clichéd A.A. thing — so unlikely and unpromising … this goofy slapdash anarchic system of low-rent gatherings and corny slogans and saccharine grins and hideous coffee” might actually offer hope, in its simplicity and its slogans, in its church-basement coffee and its effusion of anonymous and unqualified love.

The only signs she would need to read would be in the sky, rather than the shadows and clouds that passed over her father's face, alerting her to whether he was the monster, or the man who turned a gum tree into a writing desk.

The only thing that gave me comfort in the attic was thinking about my family. Now I'm home, but it's not the home I imagined. Not the family I imagined. I'd convinced myself that they'd continued on with their happy, carefree lives without me, that they were doing it double, because I couldn't do it at all. I was wrong.

Then the long nights, that were also days, in the hospital. And the long blanks, that were also nights. Needles, and angled glass rods to suck water through. Needles, and curious enamel wedges slid under your middle. Needles, and - needles and needles and needles. Like swarms of persistent mosquitoes with unbreakable drills. The way a pincushion feels, if it could feel. Or the target of a porcupine. Or a case of not just momentary but permanently endured static electricity after you scuff across a woolen rug and then put your finger on a light switch. Even food was a needle - a jab into a vein... ("For The Rest Of Her Life")

The notion that life could be any different - that it could be better - becomes inconceivable. You forget how good it was to be normal. Worst of all, you come to believe that you prefer it this way.

The only way to move forward is to focus on the good in your life and the good that you are doing for others and yourself. My past has shown me things in life, others and myself that I wouldn't wish upon anyone, but I can choose to pick up the pieces and build a beautiful life for myself and help others to do the same.

The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims. The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom. The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .

The only way to get over the pain is to face it, embrace it, hug it and learn the lessons embedded within it.

The Pain is too much to bear She weeps within; As she grinds her teeth with a grin

The past of childhood abuse is not possible to forget; however, it is achievable to thrive

There are no happy faces above 15,000 feet. (From Robert's "Taking the 12 Steps Up-and Down-Kilimanjaro)

There are a lot of times the heart burrows deeper, goes tunnelling into itself for reasons only the heart itself seems to know.They are times of isolation, of hibernation, sometimes of desolation. There is a bareness that spreads out over the interior landscape of the self, a bareness like tundra, with no sign of life in any direction, no sign of anything beneath the frozen crust of ground, no sign that spring ever intends to come again.

There had been a subtle realignment of the spheres. The world was somehow a place I could endure again. If life was a grey corridor lined with doors, it was now within my power to open some of them.

There is a certain kind of darkness that seeps into our lives if we are not actively engaged in creating light.

There comes a time for healing no matter how broken you are right now; no matter how heavy your heart is right now. There comes a time when you will go outside and let the sun shine on your face and let the wind touch your hair and you will not be tired by just simply being awake. There comes a time when you will be happy to be alive again and that day you will appreciate your own being because now you know the other side. Now you know the opposite. Now you know what it’s like to not be sure if you really are; who you really are; if you simply are, anymore. And that day will be the beginning of everything.

There is a fine line between what’s the disease’s fault and what’s the drinker’s fault.

There is an intensified risk for a child living in a household experiencing domestic violence, because their basic childhood requirement is not being met, in addition to the demand for care and protection by their parents.

...there is a saying used in twelve-step programs and in most treatment centers that "Relapse is part of recovery." It's another dangerous slogan that is based on a myth, and it only gives people permission to relapse because that think that when they do, they are on the road to recovery.

There is a rise after every fall.

There is life after abuse. This is mine.

The responsibility to end Child sexual abuse is yours and mine!

There is no greater gift than realizing the constant presence of the Divine and His Absolute Power to create and restore all things.

There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their own path or stumbles across it.

There is no pillow, no comforter, no room for the night at rock bottom. Once you hit there, get up and get out!