Best 95 quotes in «childhood trauma quotes» category

...the child cries because they need something. If the child had the ability to take care of the problem themselves, they wouldn’t cry. And if their crying is ignored, they start to feel helpless and frustrated because they can’t get what they need. They may even fear abandonment—or feel that their life is in danger because no one is coming to help them. Failing to meet a crying child’s needs also teaches the child that their needs and feelings are unimportant and even dangerous, and that they are bad and unworthy of love.

The child of a controlling caregiver believes that there are always winners and losers in life, and that the winners have all the power and the losers must neglect their own senses, needs, and wants. The result is that they gain a deformed and inaccurate picture of the world—the only world they know.

The child is right," she announced firmly. Arrietty's eyes grew big. "Oh, no-" she began. It shocked her to be right. Parents were right, not children. Children could say anything, Arrietty knew, and enjoy saying it-knowing always they were safe and wrong.

The fetus is biochemically connected to the mother, and her external, internal, physical, and mental health affect the overall development of the fetus. Stress and depression during pregnancy have been proven to have long-term and even permanent effects on the offspring. Such effects include a vulnerability to chronic anxiety, elevated fear, propensity to addictions, and poor impulse control.

The mental health system is filled with survivors of prolonged, repeated childhood trauma. This is true even though most people who have been abused in childhood never come to psychiatric attention. To the extent that these people recover, they do so on their own.[21] While only a small minority of survivors, usually those with the most severe abuse histories, eventually become psychiatric patients, many or even most psychiatric patients are survivors of childhood abuse.[22] The data on this point are beyond contention. On careful questioning, 50-60 percent of psychiatric inpatients and 40-60 percent of outpatients report childhood histories of physical or sexual abuse or both.[23] In one study of psychiatric emergency room patients, 70 percent had abuse histories.[24] Thus abuse in childhood appears to be one of the main factors that lead a person to seek psychiatric treatment as an adult.[25]

The government researchers,aware of the information in the professional journals, decided to reverse the process (of healing from hysteric dissociation). They decided to use selective trauma on healthy children to create personalities capable of committing acts desired for national security and defense.” p. 53 – 54

The house smelled like fireplace kindling, and hot water in old brass pipes - like metal melting into wood and becoming something all its own. It smelled like his childhood. Like chaos and terror and oatmeal cookies and lamb stew, and nighttime in front of that drafty front window. And the smell of it brought back thoughts, long past, about escaping from inside the walls and evoked the helplessness of every board that kept the place upright.

The initial trauma of a young child may go underground but it will return to haunt us.

The thing is, if you're an ugly goon when you're 15, you're an ugly goon for the rest of your life — until the day you die. You're always a goon, even if lots of years go by, even if you get married and have a kid, even if you're more successful than you ever thought you'd be in your wildest dreams. You're still that same goon who everybody laughed at. It never changes.

The primary driver to pathological dissociation is attachment disorganization in early life: when that is followed by severe and repeated trauma, then a major disorder of structural dissociation is created (Lyons-Ruth, Dutra, Schuder, & Bianchi, 2006).

The second factor helping to bring the dissociative disorders back into the mainstream was the Vietnam War. For sociological reasons originating outside psychology and psychiatry, the Vietnam War and the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that arose from it were not forgotten when the veterans returned home, as had been the case in the two world wars and the Korean War. The realization that real, severe trauma could have serious long-term psychopathological consequences was forced on society as a whole by Vietnam. Once this principle was accepted, it as a short leap to the conclusion that severe childhood trauma might have serious sequelae lasting into adulthood.

There are some DID clients whose pathological dissociation was triggered by accidents or natural disasters. For example, I treated one client whose first alter was created after the young host accidentally fell off a raft and was pulled under by a strong wave. In sheer terror, she utilized her innate capacity to dissociate before she was rescued.

the taste of fine-tuned rage spilling out of a mouth turned up in painted smiles pretend smiles faked smiles

Unresolved trauma can take a significant toll on your physical health. Unresolved childhood trauma is particularly insidious, with effects that are both gradual and cumulative.

Trauma can have a masking effect.

Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive.

We are all damaged goods. We mourn when we are victims and rejoice at our enemies' misery. We pray for the victory of our fighters and the demise of the enemies. We don't do anything in between. No one talks to anyone. We just shoot or cry. By playing both parts we are winning the pity of the dumb Western countries and rich Arab leaders." "What parts?" Mona asked. "Victims and perpetrators.

We already live on the planet of war, we already live on the red planet, and it's a war against children. All the other wars are just the shadows of the war on children.

When I am saying all of this, she is just looking at me and I am seeing water in her eye. So I am saying to her, if I am telling this to you it will be making you to think that I am some sort of beast or devil. Amy is never saying anything when I am saying this, but the water is just shining in her eye. And I am saying to her, fine. I am all of this thing. I am all of this thing, but I am also having mother once, and she is loving me.

When we first arrived at the school we received an extended introduction detailing what a wonderful place it was and how lucky we were to be there. But no one explained exactly why we were to be there. Yes, we understood the general objective was to accumulate knowledge, although learning Shakespeare and algebra did not strike us as particularly helpful to our future lives. I've yet to meet a single person who found a use for algebra in later life. The excuse proffered was that it developed intelligence. It struck me as extremely unintelligent not to give us the opportunity to study subjects that would be of practical use as well as develop our intelligence. I learned Boyle's law and Ohm's law parrot fashion without having a clue as to their meaning, yet left the school five years later incapable of changing a fuse or wiring a three-pin plug. Understandably, we formed the general impression that we were there for the same reason we were sent to Sunday school – to keep us out of mischief until we were old enough to work.

When people encounter the free market and they recoil or react negatively to it, they're merely confessing that voluntaryism, trade and negotiation are foreign and threatening to them, which tells you everything about how tragically they were raised.

when traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering.

When people look at a dangerous violent criminal at the beginning of his developmental process rather than at the very end of it, they will see, perhaps unexpectedly, that the dangerous violent criminal began as a relatively benign human being for whom they would probably have more sympathy than antipathy.

Your Mom's Car. Think about that. Try to wrap your brain around the supernatural and spiritual implications that the name bears down you. Your Mom's Car, holding its hand out straight, fingers curled, a zombie reaching for your neck.

When you feel at sea in an abyss of emotions, reconnecting to the beauty of your soul can be difficult, but it is never impossible.

When you study the wrongs you have committed before you study the wrongs done to you, you have no choice but to label yourself inherently evil, and be forced to dissociate emotionally to avoid the horrible pain in this lie.

Abuse is never contained to a present moment, it lingers across a person’s lifetime and has pervasive long-term ramifications.

You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by.

Abuse is never deserved, it is an exploitation of innocence and physical disadvantage, which is perceived as an opportunity by the abuser.

A child needs to feel safe and protected, which means that their body, psyche, and belongings are safe and secure from violation. Because a child is helpless and dependent on their caregiver, they need a guardian in this predominantly unknown and sometimes scary and dangerous world. A child’s caregiver is responsible to fit the roles of safe haven and protector.

A controlled child also learns that the default human approach to interaction is forcing, threatening, or manipulating others. Alternatively, they may come to believe that they are “destined” to be a giver who never receives anything back.

After researching, reviewing, considering, and contemplating with continued attention; I have concluded that the beast is among us.

Adulthood is an attempt to become the antithesis of the wounded child within us.

A four-year-old has so little past, and he remembers almost none of it, neither the father he once had nor the house where he once lived. But he can feel the absences – and feel them as sensation, like a texture that was once at his fingers every day but now is gone and no matter how he gropes or reaches his hand he cannot touch what’s no longer there.

A man who suffers can lessen his anguish by knowing whence it comes. By thought he can locate it in a certain portion of his body which can be cured, or, if necessary, torn away. He fixes the bounds of it, and separates it from himself. A child has no such illusive resource. His first encounter with suffering is more tragic and more true. Like his own being, it seems infinite. He feels that it is seated in his bosom, housed in his heart, and is mistress of his flesh. And it is so. It will not leave his body until it has eaten it away.

A silence absorbed them both – a lack of sound so potent it blackened the place with something richer than hate.

... as Herman (1992b) cogently noted two decades ago, these personality disorders can be iatrogenic, causing harm to individuals as an inadvertent result of the social stigma they carry and the widespread (but not entirely accurate) belief among professionals and insurers that those with Cluster B personality disorders (especially borderline personality disorder[BPD]) cannot be treated successfully, cannot recover, and are a headache to practitioners. For example, the BPD diagnosis continues to be applied predominantly to women often, but not always, in a negative way, usually signifying that they are irrational and beyond help. Describing posttraumatic symptoms as a personality disorder not only can be demoralizing for the client due to its connotation that something is defective with his or her core self (i.e., personality) but also may misdirect the therapist by implying that the patient's core personality should be the focus of treatment rather than trauma-related adaptations that affect but are distinct from the core self. In this way, both therapists and their clients may overlook personality strengths and capacities that are healthy and sources of resilience that can be a basis for building on and enhancing (rather than "fixing" or remaking) the patient's core self and personality.

Attachment. A secure attachment is the ability to bond; to develop a secure and safe base; an unbreakable or perceivable inability to shatter to bond between primary parental caregiver(s) and child; a quest for familiarity; an unspoken language and knowledge that a caregiver will be a permanent fixture.

By the time Cheryl Hersha came to the facility, knowledge of multiple personality was so complete that doctors understood how the mind separated into distinct ego states, each unaware of the other. First, the person traumatized had to be both extremely intelligent and under the age of seven, two conditions not yet understood though remaining consistent as factors. The trauma was almost always of a sexual nature… (p52)

But I wanted to cook. I needed to cook. Mom had raised me with the implicit understanding that cooking is the answer to all life’s vicissitudes – not just the antidote to boredom, but also a way to ward off the darker realities of grief, separation, and loneliness.

Children need their caregiver’s presence, interaction, connection, and emotional availability. Not only are these fundamental elements closely related to feelings of safety and security, they are also vital for a child’s healthy development. Since the child’s well-being depends on the bond between themselves and their caregiver, it is their caregiver’s responsibility to be very attentive both to their own selves and to their child.

Childhood trauma can range from having faces extreme violence and neglect to having confronted feelings of not belonging, being unwanted, or being chronically misunderstood. You may have grown up in an environment where your curiosity and enthusiasm were constantly devalued. Perhaps you were brought up in a family where your parents had unresolved traumas of their own, which impaired their ability to attend to your emotional needs. Or, you may have faced vicious sexual or physical attacks. In all such situations, you learn to compensate by developing defenses around your most vulnerabe parts.

Childhood trauma does not come in one single package.

Complexly traumatized children need to be helped to engage their attention in pursuits that do not remind them of trauma-related triggers and that give them a sense of pleasure and mastery. Safety, predictability, and "fun" are essential for the establishment of the capacity to observe what is going on, put it into a larger context, and initiate physiological and motoric self-regulation.

Crying is the primary way by which infants and small children convey their needs. Their cries can be from hunger, pain, fear, neglect, and many other things. It is the caregiver’s responsibility to correctly decipher these needs and then meet them. It is tragically common, however, that the child’s cries are so often ignored, misunderstood, and even taken as an "attack" on the caregiver, which may result in an active and brutal punishment of the child.

Dissociation (being split-off from one’s deepest truth) mimics enlightenment – but it isn’t enlightenment. People who are dissociated live in great peace. But this is only because they have blocked their negative feelings. The enlightened person resolves his negatives feelings, and thus his peace is not false. People who are dissociated do not suffer. But this is only because they have abandoned their healing process and numbed their pain. Enlightenment grows from the fertilized soil of suffering. People who are dissociated call themselves enlightened. But this is only because they have they have no conception of what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is the polar opposite of dissociation. People who are dissociated feel they have mastered forgiveness. But this is only because they completely deny the harm done to them – and the damage remaining. The enlightened forgive spontaneously and without effort because they have fully embraced their damaged parts and grieved every honest ounce of their misery.

For no real reason – well, perhaps because of the seriousness under the trees or Nader’s hair, which was very messy and covered in little grass seeds – Katie began to giggle. She knew it was wrong, yet it was also natural. She covered her mouth with both hands, but Nader was already pale with revulsion. He turned and marched away into unwanted sunlight, leaving her to wonder why bad things happened and why no good person prevented them.

Dissociation is the common response of children to repetitive, overwhelming trauma and holds the untenable knowledge out of awareness. The losses and the emotions engendered by the assaults on soul and body cannot, however be held indefinitely. In the absence of effective restorative experiences, the reactions to trauma will find expression. As the child gets older, he will turn the rage in upon himself or act it out on others, else it all will turn into madness.

FËDOR Mikhailovich Dostoevski, the Russian novelist, said one time that, "One sacred memory from childhood is perhaps the best education." I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic.

First memory: a man at the back door is saying, I have real bad news, sweat is dripping off his face, Garbert's been shot, noise from my mother, I run to her room behind her, I'm jumping on the canopied bed while she cries, she's pulling out drawers looking for a handkerchief, Now, he's all right, the man say, they think, patting her shoulder, I'm jumping higher, I'm not allowed, they think he saved old man Mayes, the bed slats dislodge and the mattress collapses. My mother lunges for me. Many traveled to Reidsville for the event, but my family did not witness Willis Barnes's electrocution, From kindergarten through high school, Donette, the murderer's daughter, was in my class. We played together at recess. Sometimes she'd spit on me.