Quotes on Trauma & PTSD

[Daniel E.]

“Some of the experiences endured by human beings on this earth are virtually unbelievable.”

― Aphrodite Matsakis, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

 

[Daniel E.]

“Sometimes the worst part about trauma was not going through it. It was the aftermath, when you were free. And you obsessed about what would have happened if you hadn't gotten out.”

― J.R. Ward, Prisoner of Night

 

[Daniel E.]

“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.”

"Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves."

~ Bessel van der Kolk

 

[Daniel E.]

Although telling "the story" provides crucial information about the client's past and current life experience, treatment must address the here-and-now experience of the traumatic past, rather than its content or narrative, in order to challenge and transform procedural learning. Because the physical and mental tendencies of procedural learning manifest in present-moment time, in-the-moment trauma-related emotional reactions, thoughts, images, body sensations, and movements that emerge spontaneously in the therapy hour become the focal points of exploration and change.

― Pat Ogden, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy

 

[Daniel E.]

“This is why people who have experienced severe abuse and trauma often have difficulty explaining their experiences. They have a problem because clinicians, friends, and family often don’t have the concept of an immobilization defensive system in their vocabulary.”

― Stephen W. Porges, The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe

 

[Daniel E.]

“The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible.”

― Joseph Campbell

 

[Daniel E.]

"A person as complex as you are has all of the cognitive tools needed to be tormented."

~ Steven Hayes, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life

 

[Daniel E.]

"Trauma creates change you don't choose; healing creates change you do choose."

"You can try to change your thoughts and behaviors, actions and reactions with conscious effort -- but that will only take you so far...To create long-lasting and sustainable change you need 100% of your brain engaged in a clear and structured framework that rewires, reprograms and rescripts neural networks. Such an approach offers a full-system reboot that can restore and reset your experience for freedom, happiness and the expression of your true self."

~ Michele Rosenthal

 

[Daniel E.]

"Therapy supports or tries to jumpstart a rhythm of coming through injury, defeat, megalomania, a rhythm one goes through over and over, a rhythm of faith."

~ Michael Eigen

 

[Daniel E.]

“Deep lines cut by trauma provide access to depths that are otherwise unreachable. In such instances, nourishment follows trauma to new places. We wish things could be otherwise … easier. But we have little choice when illumination shines through injury.”

― Michael Eigen, Flames from the Unconscious: Trauma, Madness, and Faith

 

[Daniel E.]

“In bottom-up approaches [to processing trauma], the body's sensation and movement are the entry points and changes in sensorimotor experience are used to support self-regulation, memory processing, and success in daily life. Meaning and understanding emerge from new experiences rather than the other way around. Through bottom-up interventions, a shift in the somatic sense of self in turn affects the linguistic sense of self.”

― Pat Ogden, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy

 

[Daniel E.]

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”

― Gabor Mate, MD

 

[Daniel E.]

“Today, our survival depends increasingly on developing our ability to think rather than being able to physically respond. Consequently, most of us have become separated from our natural, instinctual selves—in particular, the part of us that can proudly, not disparagingly, be called animal. Regardless of how we view ourselves, in the most basic sense we literally are human animals. The fundamental challenges we face today have come about relatively quickly, but our nervous systems have been much slower to change. It is no coincidence that people who are more in touch with their natural selves tend to fare better when it comes to trauma. Without easy access to the resources of this primitive, instinctual self, humans alienate their bodies from their souls. Most of us don't think of or experience ourselves as animals. Yet, by not living through our instincts and natural reactions, we aren't fully human either. Existing in a limbo in which we are neither animal nor fully human can cause a number of problems, one of which is being susceptible to trauma.”

― Peter A. Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma

 

[Daniel E.]

Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — “Life is good,” “I’m safe,” “People are kind,” “I can trust others,” “The future is likely to be good” — and replaces them with feelings like “The world is dangerous,” “I can’t win,” “I can’t trust other people,” or “There’s no hope.”

― Mark Goulston MD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder For Dummies

 

[Daniel E.]

“Fear must be overcome again and again.”

― Abraham Maslow

 

[Daniel E.]

“We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb.”

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

 

[Daniel E.]

“Things don’t really get solved...The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

~ Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

 

[Daniel E.]

“One very important domain of our lives and experience that we tend to miss, ignore, abuse, or lose control of as a result of being in the automatic pilot mode is our own body.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition

 

[Daniel E.]

"After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment."

— Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery

 

[Daniel E.]

"Trauma is a part of the human condition! Healing is also a part of the human condition, and we have the capacity to transform difficult experiences into a wellspring of personal and spiritual power."

Every single human being on earth has trauma. It's an interruption of our ability to stay in the present moment, anything that lags or is not harmonized on the layers of body/mind/spirit/soul/psyche. Rachael Maddox has called it an" embodied interpersonal violation hangover." Ale Duarte called it "an open loop."

~ Kimberly Ann Johnson, author of Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use It For Good (2021)