Best 646 quotes in «trauma quotes» category

Postpartum depression makes a woman feel like she is in the grip of something dreaded and dark, and it's scary. . . but she's likely ashamed to admit it because she can't explain it!

Prison left me with some strange little tics.' She has taken all the door off their hinges in all the apartments she has lived in since. It's not that she has anxiety attacks about small spaces, she says, it's just that she starts to sweat and go cold. 'This apartment is perfect for me,' she says, looking around the open space. 'How about elevators?' I ask, recalling the schlepp up the stairs. 'Exactly,' she replies, 'I don't like them much either.' One day, years later, her husband Charlie was fooling around at home, playing the guitar. Miriam said something provocative and he stood up suddenly, lifting his arm to take off the guitar strap. He was probably just going to say 'That's outrageous', or tickle her or tackle her. But she was gone. She was already down in the courtyard of the building. She does not remember getting down the stairs-it was an automatic flight reaction.

Psychoanalysis has suffered the accusation of being “unscientific” from its very beginnings (Schwartz, 1999). In recent years, the Berkeley literary critic Frederick Crews has renewed the assault on the talking cure in verbose, unreadable articles in the New York Review of Books (Crews, 1990), inevitably concluding, because nothing else really persuades, that psychoanalysis fails because it is unscientific. The chorus was joined by philosopher of science, Adolf Grunbaum (1985), who played both ends against the middle: to the philosophers he professed specialist knowledge of psychoanalysis; to the psychoanalysts he professed specialist knowledge of science, particularly physics. Neither was true (Schwartz, 1995a,b, 1996a,b, 2000). The problem that mental health clinicians always face is that we deal with human subjectivity in a culture that is deeply invested in denying the importance of human subjectivity. Freud’s great invention of the analytic hour allows us to explore, with our clients, their inner worlds. Can such a subjective instrument be trusted? Not by very many. It is so dangerously close to women’s intuition. Socalled objectivity is the name of the game in our culture. Nevertheless, 100 years of clinical practice have shown psychoanalysis and psychotherapy not only to be effective, but to yield real understandings of the dynamics of human relationships, particularly the reality of transference–countertransference re-enactments now reformulated by our neuroscientists as right brain to right brain communication (Schore, 1999).

PTSD is curable when one realises how the unconscious mind works and that the symptoms of PTSD are actually the unconscious mind attempting to protect the person experiencing them. With the right therapies it is possible to take a person with extreme PTSD and help them to neutralise all their painful memories and emotions permanently.

Rage that has nowhere to go is redirected against the self, in the form of depression, self-hatred, and self-destructive actions. One of my patients told me, ‘It is like hating your home, your kitchen and pots and pans, your bed, your chairs, your table, your rugs.’ Nothing feels safe – least of all your own body.

Rape is so particularly traumatic and so meaningful in so many ways, that there’s something about using the word in other contexts that diminishes the reality of it, and the impact it has on women’s lives.

Reason to live, they repeat like a pop song, The bones of a beloved emperor, and I, the motionless chariot trying to drag them home with forced hope.

Recovery can take place only within then context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connection with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological facilities that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic operations of trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy. Just as these capabilities are formed in relationships with other people, they must be reformed in such relationships. The first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure. Many benevolent and well-intentioned attempts to assist the survivor founder because this basic principle of empowerment is not observed. No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster her recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in her immediate best interest.

Recovery can take place only within then context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation.

Recovery unfolds in three stages. The central task of the first stage is the establishment of safety. The central task of the second stage is remembrance and mourning. The central focus of the third stage is reconnection with ordinary life.

...repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.

Revolted and offended, this child was fighting her mother in her head and did not even blink.

Resiliency is not gender-, age-, or intellectually specific...

Resiliency is the body's internal response to a stressful situation.

Ritual abuse diagnosis research – excerpt from a chapter in: Lacter, E. & Lehman, K. (2008).Guidelines to Differential Diagnosis between Schizophrenia and Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Traumatic Stress. In J.R. Noblitt & P. Perskin(Eds.), Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-first Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social and Political Considerations, pp. 85-154. Bandon, Oregon: Robert D. Reed Publishers. quotes: A second study revealed that these results were unrelated to patients’ degree of media and hospital milieu exposure to the subject of Satanic ritual abuse. “In fact, less media exposure was associated with production of more Satanic content in patients reporting ritual abuse, evidence that reports of ritual abuse are not primarily the product of exposure contagion.” Responses are consistent with the devastating and pervasive abuse these victims have experienced, so often including immediate family members.

Resiliency is the essence of a global positive framework...

Secure attachment has been linked to a child's ability to successfully recover and prove resilient in the presence of a traumatic event.

Secondary structural dissociation involves one ANP and more than one EP. Examples of secondary structural dissociation are complex PTSD, complex forms of acute stress disorder, complex dissociative amnesia, complex somatoform disorders, some forms of trauma-relayed personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, and dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS).. Secondary structural dissociation is characterized by divideness of two or more defensive subsystems. For example, there may be different EPs that are devoted to flight, fight or freeze, total submission, and so on. (Van der Hart et al., 2004). Gail, a patient of mine, does not have a personality disorder, but describes herself as a "changed person." She survived a horrific car accident that killed several others, and in which she was the driver. Someone not knowing her history might see her as a relatively normal, somewhat anxious and stiff person (ANP). It would not occur to this observer that only a year before, Gail had been a different person: fun-loving, spontaneous, flexible, and untroubled by frightening nightmares and constant anxiety. Fortunately, Gail has been willing to pay attention to her EPs; she has been able to put the process of integration in motion; and she has been able to heal. p134

Secret, smug believers! God never gives you more than you can bear, they like to say, as if the strong should be punished for their strength: We can bear it. So we got it. But what about my baby? How weak does a newborn have to be to escape God's burdens?

Secret ceremonies in which malevolent men and women cloaked in hooded robes, hiding behind painted faces and chanting demonic incantations while inflicting sadistic wounds on innocent children lying on makeshift alters, or tied to inverted crosses, sounds like the stuff of which B-grade horror movies are made. Some think amoral religious cults only populate the world of Rosemary's Baby, but don't exist in real life. Or, do they? Ask Jenny Hill.

SE Self Execution the act will always be greater than the pain.

Several psychologists (L. Armstrong, 1994; Enns, McNeilly, Corkery, & Gilbert, 1995; Herman, 1992; McFarlane & van der Kolk, 1996; Pope & Brown, 1996) contend that the controversy of delayed recall for traumatic events is likely to be influenced by sexism. Kristiansen, Gareau, Mittleholt, DeCourville, and Hovdestad (1995) found that people who were more authoritarian and who had less favorable attitudes toward women were less likely to believe in the veracity of women’s recovered memories for sexual abuse. Those who challenged the truthfulness of recovered memories were more likely to endorse negative statements about women, including the idea that battered women enjoy being abused. McFarlane and van der Kolk (1996) have noted that delayed recall in male combat veterans reported by Myers (1940) and Kardiner (1941) did not generate controversy, whereas delayed recall in female survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse has provoked considerable debate.

Several researchers demonstrate the ways people fail to label trauma as such or underreport traumatic experiences. In a sample of 1,526 university students, Rausch and Knutson (1991) found that although participants reported receiving punitive treatment similar to that of their siblings, they were more than twice as likely to identify their siblings’ experiences as abusive as they were to label their own in this way. The authors reported that participants were likely to interpret parental treatment toward themselves but not parental treatment toward their siblings as deserved and therefore not abusive. Other studies similarly indicate that those reporting abuse experiences often do not demonstrate a metaconsciousness of having been abused (Goldsmith & Freyd, in press; Koss, 1998; Varia & Abidin, 1999; Weinbach & Curtiss, 1986)." KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING ABOUT TRAUMA: IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPY (2004)

Shame attacks can be triggered by the most unremarkable events. We might smell a scent that subconsciously reminds the body of a shameful or traumatic event.

She could taste her children on her tongue, the colors they wore. Jacqueline was yellow. Gunnar was blue. Gabriela had always been red. All their weight. Their history inside of her. And she remembered her mother's synesthesia and was startled as guilt crept up her throat.

She can’t move forward or backward. She is stuck in time. A constant.

She doesn’t mean to make me feel like a freak, not on purpose. It’s when she says I’m drawn to you, because you’re a strong man, like Caleb. When she says I kissed you because sex is the way I’ve been conditioned to get my way, that it’s all psychological, and it’s all because Caleb fucked with my head. I can’t stand it. I can’t have everything I feel, reduced to a textbook description that fits me, and millions of other broken idiots. More than that, I can’t stand thinking that maybe…she’s right. Maybe I don’t really love Caleb, maybe my brain made it up so I wouldn’t kill myself or feel so scared and alone. Maybe I’ll accept that one day and I won’t be able to stop having nightmares. Maybe I’ll never trust another emotion I ever have again. Who’s going to love a girl like that, Reed? Who’s ever going to love a freak like me?” She collapsed onto her bed and rolled into a ball, crying and rocking.

She fought the urge to scream, feeling desperately like she needed to run, that she needed to go as far away from Manhattan as possible and never even give it so much as a backwards glance, but she was frozen to the spot like a wind-up toy that had finally given out. “This city is falling apart!” she shouted in cheerful trauma, her voice shaky and muddled by anxious, messy laughter as it resounded in her head. In a coping sort of euphoria she skipped lithely through the dust and debris as though it were falling snow on a winter day.

She had performed as a shape-shifter with no sense of identity.

She kept her eyes on Channing when she could; saw the wounded blankness of all who are ruined young.

She knew those horrid words were addressed to her. They felt like the icy tip of an arrow meant to conjure up destruction, coming from the most venomous abyss imaginable, rammed right into her chest with the utmost authority, entitlement, and pleasure.

She knew, now, why her father had not spoken of the last war, nor Alistair of his. It was hardly fair on the living.

She pored over the books. Paused to name every sketched and pressed flower aloud, and speak its meaning; an incantation to end the burden of carrying an untold story inside her.

She was keeping it together. Coping. Coping with the disapproval of her parents towards the choices she'd made.

She’s thinking about grief and trauma, how they can hide out inside a woman, how they can come back. The playwright follows her eyes, until he sees what she sees. The photographer’s framed image, the orphan girl lit up by the explosion, a girl blowing forward, a girl coming out of fire, a girl who looks as if she might blast right through image and time into the world “I know what’s happened,” the poet says.

She won't forget or recover, she is inconsolable.

Shhh,” Mr. Winston whispered into her hair. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.” He said it over and over again, just as the boy had done when she was at her most helpless. He rocked her with each stanza of the hypnotic prayer, and she melted into his arms, letting him be her strength as she cried into his chest. “I couldn’t keep her,” she finally mustered, wiping her nose against his scratchy flannel. “Shhh…” he repeated. He kissed the top of her head and then stood. With surprising strength, the elderly man lifted her as if she weighed nothing, bringing her to the car. He opened the car door with one hand, sat her in the front seat, and then buckled her in like she was a child. Exhausted, Maddie didn’t fight him or try to do it on her own. She needed someone else to be in charge for a while. She needed to be taken care of.

Since her time in the necromancer’s clutches, she was still recovering lost memories from the quicksand of her mind. They’d drop like nuclear bombs, freezing her at the worst time as visuals which should’ve stayed forever buried bubbled to the surface.

Shut up and do not think. All the theorists agree: shut up and keep the words from being said. And all of the scars will remain invisible; and all of the scars will remain under the skin. Where they belong.

Since the 1980s, therapists have reported encountering clients or patients who had experienced extreme abuses featuring physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive aspects, along with a premeditated structure of torture-enforced lessons. The phenomena was first labeled "ritual abuse," and, later, as our understanding developed, "mind control.

Sitting on my bed with all these things I used to love but not loving them anymore, I just wanted to set them on fire. That's when I knew I was never going to be all right again.

Snow girl was glad she had left her own feelings behind.

Somatic Symptoms: People with Complex PTSD often have medical unexplained physical symptoms such as abdominal pains, headaches, joint and muscle pain, stomach problems, and elimination problems. These people are sometimes most unfortunately mislabeled as hypochondriacs or as exaggerating their physical problems. But these problems are real, even though they may not be related to a specific physical diagnosis. Some dissociative parts are stuck in the past experiences that involved pain may intrude such that a person experiences unexplained pain or other physical symptoms. And more generally, chronic stress affects the body in all kinds of ways, just as it does the mind. In fact, the mind and body cannot be separated. Unfortunately, the connection between current physical symptoms and past traumatizing events is not always so clear to either the individual or the physician, at least for a while. At the same time we know that people who have suffered from serious medical, problems. It is therefore very important that you have physical problems checked out, to make sure you do not have a problem from which you need medical help.

“So how’d you do it? How did you get to where you aren’t scared all the freaking time?” Erin’s smile drooped a little, tired with the effort.  “You’re making an assumption,” she said. “Just hang in there. It’ll get easier.”  “But not better,” Alexander said.  “But not better.

Some dissociative parts of the personality, living in trauma time, may experience the same emotion no matter the situation, such as fear, rage, shame, sadness, yearning and even some positive ones just as joy. * Other parts have a broader range of feeling. Because emotions are often held in certain parts of the personality, different parts can have highly contradictory perceptions, emotions, and reactions to the same situation.” * This explains many feelings, emotions, and doubts about the unknown haunting us at times. * Awareness and discovering the inner world may help, tremendously.

society has an embarrassing history of denial

Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as 'fragments', which are 'relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory or carry out a limited task in the person's life. A fragment might be a frightened child who holds the memory of one particular abuse incident.' In complex multiples, Dr Ross continues, the `personalities are relatively full-bodied, complete states capable of a rang of emotions and behaviours.' The alters will have `executive control some substantial amount of time over the person life'. He stresses, and I repeat his emphasis, 'Complex MPD with over 15 alter personalities and complicated amnesic barriers are associated with 100 percent frequency of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

Some dissociative parts of the personality, living in trauma time, may experience the same emotion no matter the situation, such as fear, rage, shame, sadness, yearning and even some positive ones just as joy.

Some flowers need flames to find their way into this world.

Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.