Best 925 quotes in «recovery quotes» category

The traumatized person is often relieved simply to learn the true name of her condition. By ascertaining her diagnosis, she begins the process of mastery. No longer imprisoned in the wordlessness of the trauma, she discovers that there is a language for her experience. She discovers that she is not alone; others have suffered in similar ways. She discovers further that she is not crazy; the traumatic syndromes are normal human responses to extreme circumstances. And she discovers, finally, that she is not doomed to suffer this condition indefinitely; she can expect to recover, as others have recovered...

The truth is misrepresented, distorted, altered, tampered and changed in the mind of the child.

The truth is, the experience of forgiveness is a momentary release. We don't and can't forgive forever. Instead, we forgive only for the present moment. This is both good news and bad. The good part is that you can stop judging yourself for your inability to completely and absolutely let go of resentments once and for all. We forgive one moment and get resentful in the next. It is not a failure to forgive; it is just a failure to understand impermanence. The bad news is that forgiveness is not something that will ever be done with; it is an ongoing aspect of our lives and it necessitates a vigilant practice of learning to let go and living in the present.

The unavoidable has touched the life of every human being on the face of the earth. Some have rebounded, others have given up--but all of us have felt the wings of tragedy brushing against us.

The way in which the child is manipulated pulls them into considering the lies.

The wellness remembers the deep living of the wound, & so is happier than any easy health.

The winds of tribulation blow out some men's candles of commitment.(Maxwell) Our job in recovery is to protect our candle from those winds.

The worst part ever is discoursing about the abuse to anyone you trust in the family or friends and when they prefer not to believe in you, that feeling of being deserted by people you trusted and spoke to is even more painful than the whole trauma of the abuse and insult.

They got drunk and high on a regular basis, but this is a vestige of youth that you either quit while you're young or you become an addict if you don't die. If you are the Old Guy In The Punk House, move out. You have a substance abuse problem.

They illustrate that since no one really loves or cares for them, why should they love or care for themselves?

They say you can’t build Rome in a day, but I’m pretty sure you could destroy it in even less.

Thinking about your problem is like watering your house plant. You only make it grow.

This is the part they don’t tell you about in the movies. Or in On the Road. This is not rock ’n’ roll. You are not William Burroughs, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if Kurt Cobain was slumped over in an alleyway in Seattle the day Bleach came out. There is no junkie chic. This is not Soho and you are not Sid Vicious. You are not a drugstore cowboy and you are not spotting trains. You are not a part of anything—no underground sect, no counter-culture movement, no music scene, nothing. You have just been released from jail and are walking down Mission Street, alternating between taking a hit off a cigarette and puking, looking for coins on the ground so you can catch a bus as you shit yourself.

This book is dedicated to those who have died as a result of mind control and/or ritual abuse, and those who have lived when they would rather have died.

This is my life and I am the expert of my life, nobody else is.

Think of recovery as Double D’s: deciding and doing. Deciding to recover is only a mindset. Doing the recovery is the real miracle.

This will sound strange, and yet I'm sure it was the point: it was a bit like being high. That, for me, anyway, had always been the attraction of drugs, to stop the brutal round of hypercritical thinking, to escape the ravages of an unoccupied mind cannibalizing itself.

Though, the type of abuse differs from each individual, all survivors of child abuse deal with a certain extent of trauma, consciously or unconsciously.

Those who support such survivors of abuse often find it difficult to hear the reality of those survivors' lives and experience and are often unsupported themselves. Rather than being supported, workers are often ridiculed, castigated or accused of being gullible or of giving the survivor false memories. Many workers work in isolation and a climate of hostility and are unable to talk about the work they do. Yes, despite all the odds, survivors of ritual abuse are beginning to speak out about their experiences, and some people, mainly in voluntary organisations, are beginning to listen to them and support them. [Published 2001]

Threatening an addict is like threatening the wind. Your words get blown away.

Through my willpower and strength, I can make a difference to the world because I am a Survivor.

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.

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

trust God when he says no

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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.