Best 925 quotes in «recovery quotes» category

To change one's field of influence is to change the course of one's life.

To permit it to give away and move on, one needs to utter it out first, face it and work on it and this isn’t possible by silencing the act of abuse.

Transform your pain of Child sexual abuse into strength to defend children who cannot voice up.

Trauma does not have to occur by abuse alone...

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...

Treatment for dependency at substance abuse treatment centers must change if alcoholism and addiction are to be overcome in our society.

trust God when he says no

Trust yourself. Trust your story. All you can do is tell it true.

Try never to abandon hope for if you do, hope will surely try to abandon you.

Underlying the attack on psychotherapy, I believe, is a recognition of the potential power of any relationship of witnessing. The consulting room is a privileged space dedicated to memory. Within that space, survivors gain the freedom to know and tell their stories. Even the most private and confidential disclosure of past abuses increases the likelihood of eventual public disclosure. And public disclosure is something that perpetrators are determined to prevent. As in the case of more overtly political crimes, perpetrators will fight tenaciously to ensure that their abuses remain unseen, unacknowledged, and consigned to oblivion. The dialectic of trauma is playing itself out once again. It is worth remembering that this is not the first time in history that those who have listened closely to trauma survivors have been subject to challenge. Nor will it be the last. In the past few years, many clinicians have had to learn to deal with the same tactics of harassment and intimidation that grassroots advocates for women, children and other oppressed groups have long endured. We, the bystanders, have had to look within ourselves to find some small portion of the courage that victims of violence must muster every day. Some attacks have been downright silly; many have been quite ugly. Though frightening, these attacks are an implicit tribute to the power of the healing relationship. They remind us that creating a protected space where survivors can speak their truth is an act of liberation. They remind us that bearing witness, even within the confines of that sanctuary, is an act of solidarity. They remind us also that moral neutrality in the conflict between victim and perpetrator is not an option. Like all other bystanders, therapists are sometimes forced to take sides. Those who stand with the victim will inevitably have to face the perpetrator's unmasked fury. For many of us, there can be no greater honor. p.246 - 247 Judith Lewis Herman, M.D. February, 1997

Turn off your phone, and your computer and your mind. Find your heart center and send it compassion. See the holiness in everyone you meet. Honor it. Know your worth. Know your worth. Know your worth. Accept no less. Become familiar with the space where compromise is unkind. Nurture your exquisite loneliness. Let it teach you. Light candles at every opportunity. Always wear perfume, it helps you remember yourself. Touch your inked ribs lightly when you forget who you are.

Understanding what the narcissist finds threatening, entertaining and complimentary can be extremely helpful when deciding how best to “repackage” yourself- if this is what you want to do.

Under the heading of "defense mechanisms,” psychoanalysis describes a number of ways in which a person becomes alienated from himself. For example, repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection. These "mechanisms" are often described in psychoanalytic terms as themselves "unconscious,” that is, the person himself appears to be unaware that he is doing this to himself. Even when a person develops sufficient insight to see that "splitting", for example, is going on, he usually experiences this splitting as indeed a mechanism, an impersonal process, so to speak, which has taken over and which he can observe but cannot control or stop. There is thus some phenomenological validity in referring to such "defenses" by the term "mechanism.” But we must not stop there. They have this mechanical quality because the person as he experiences himself is dissociated from them. He appears to himself and to others to suffer from them. They seem to be processes he undergoes, and as such he experiences himself as a patient, with a particular psychopathology. But this is so only from the perspective of his own alienated experience. As he becomes de-alienated he is able first of all to become aware of them, if he has not already done so, and then to take the second, even more crucial, step of progressively realizing that these are things he does or has done to himself. Process becomes converted back to praxis, the patient becomes an agent.

Unless your sober life is more meaningful than your drunk life, you’re going to relapse. YOU create the life that matters.

Update your version of me because I’m not the same person I was before. If you don’t get that, you don’t get me.

Violence is compelling and ineffective, it can be ascertained, as one becomes an expert at it.

Vulnerability scares most of us because we've been taught that FEELING our feelings is a sign of "over-sensitivity and weakness". We've taught ourselves to "numb" our feelings because they are too painful. We arrive at vulnerability when we allow ourselves to FEEL rather than think our feelings. It's an inside job of excavating away all the "stuff" that is in the way of reaching our heart, where love and vulnerability live.

We are all addicted to something whether we admit it or not.

Waiting to be 'better' is the wrong approach. It's learning to live with it.

We, as a society, have arbitrarily differentiated between acceptable and unacceptable drug addictions.

We are more than our trauma We are not our diagnosis We are more than the worst things that have ever happened to us

We are more than survivors, more than victors!

Wear whatever mask you must wear to deal with a situation, but beware that when the masks come off you may not recognize the real you underneath.

We are in this together. None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles. Even in the worst of our desolation. Even during our coldest 3am breakdown. Even when we shut out the world and spin in circles until we collapse. Even then the light still gets in. Even then the heart still opens and reaches, tendrils of hope curling and bending toward slivers of light. Upward, outward, in all directions – seeking light at all cost. One way or another, we all grow toward the light.

We are not the only ones affected by our recovery. The spiritual awakening heals the world one person at a time.

We can all take what once hurt us and turn it into what heals us.

We don’t necessarily need to know each other’s name, age, profession, drug of choice, childhood trauma or recent tragedy to understand what pain feels like and offer comfort. We are strangers drawn together by a shared desire for lasting peace.

We don't really see much of London; we're too busy watching Londoners. And that's when I get it. All these people. We aren't broken. We're just alive.

We can't calm waves, but we can steer the ship.

We don’t choose to become addicts but we do let addition choose us.

We had both moved on. We could both be okay at the same time. We weren't on a seesaw, for Pete's sake! There was plenty of okay to go around.

We judge ourselves by our intentions; the world judges us by our actions

We know that you don't want to be a drunk and you don't want to be hooked on addictive drugs. You do it because you can't cope with your life without some sort of support, even if that support is damaging.

Welcome to my world of dreams Where I live by the rivers and streams As tranquillity flows by And no fear is seen in the eye This is the most peaceful place to be Where you will fall in love with the word “ME” As you learn the art of being free

We measures our life's worth in our wins but it is the recovery from failures that ultimately matters.

We measures our life's worth in our wins but it is the recovery from failures that ultimate indicator.

We must be content to grow slowly. Most of us will still barely be at the beginning of our recovery by the time we die. But that is better than killing ourselves pretending to be healthy.

We may have been deceived, forsaken and abandon, lead only to be broken beyond repair but not broken forever.

We require to get out of our own built up Cocoons, these need to be worn, softened and freed through.

We're saying the story doesn't end here, that the air in your lungs is there for a reason.

What life means, it came to him (or he seemed to overhear it), it means all the time, not just at isolated dramatic moments that never happened. If life means anything at all, it means whatever it means every hour, every minute, through any episode big or small, if only one has the awareness to sense it … each step, the dramatic and the humdrum alike — every fleeting second of the way.

We take action when we have the honesty to admit that things are still broken, despite our best efforts otherwise. We take action when we hold ourselves continually open to new techniques, remaining resolutely receptive to new sources of support and new feeds of information. We take action when we are willing, in each new moment, to try again.

What makes a successful relationship? . . . Research shows that when a partner dominates another through the abuse of power, it is a prime deterrent to a successful relationship (Greenberg and Goldman 2008). When a controlling partner uses coercive tactics to overpower you, it is a setup for the relationship to fail - without exception. Research about marital relationships in general reveals that husbands are likely to receive more support from their spouse and this fair far better, while women tend to receive less support and experience greater stress from giving support. These are among the conditions that contribute to the higher rates of depression in women.

What a lucky girl you are to have found this place and with it your story, Alice. What a lucky girl you are to get the chance to learn and know where you come from and who you belong to.

whatever happened to me in my formative years – my past – it basically shaped who I am today.

What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. Not everyone gets to have a whole new shiny-but-messy life like I have, and I've never come up with a satisfying explanation for why that is.

When Clients say they're wrestling with depression, what I choose to hear is that they're in a state of decompression -- in a deserved limbo, taking a little time to recover from a something that set them back... I don't see the hopelessness of the here-and-now. I see the hope in what's to come.

When addiction steals a loved one, it takes with it a piece of your soul.

When I deny the seriousness of my abuse I agree with my abuser and those who wouldn't acknowledge it. When I am in denial, I have the tendency to minimize my abuse, believe the lies others have said, as well as deny it ever happened. It is important for me to remember as much detail as I can so I can trust my own perceptions of what really happened and not depend on the validations from others.

When I was around Sunny, there was no time to dream about some easier, prettier, more comprehensible, less fucked-up existence. Now was all we had: Sunny lifting her eyes to meet mine. Cupping water in my own hands to rinse the blood off her head. Sunny’s tongue on my nose, her tail thudding on my leg. The reach of my hand across her spine. The words of comfort and rage and fear and sadness and hope that I spoke only in her presence.