“Dissociation is the essence of trauma. The overwhelming experience is split off and fragmented, so that the emotions, sounds, images, thoughts, and physical sensations related to the trauma take on a life of their own.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“It is enormously difficult to organize one’s traumatic experiences into a coherent account—a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“There’s lots of online information about sexual violence, but there’s not a lot of information about how you as an individual can start dealing with the trauma.”— Tarana Burke, glamour.com
“I cannot define how you or your body responds to things. I can’t tell you that’s not trauma.”— Tarana Burke, theguardian.com
“In its longest silence, trauma is ever more present. Trauma is the unsaid, the uncertain, that prolongs feelings of loss.”— Loren Kleinman, blog.pshares.org
“When people are behaving in apparently self-destructive ways, it’s time to stop asking what’s wrong with them, and time to start asking what happened to them.”— Dr. Robert Anda, huffingtonpost.com
“When trauma is compounded by other traumas in a very short period of time, during an extremely vulnerable stage of development, the effects can literally rewire the brain.”— Shahida Arabi, thoughtcatalog.com
“Perhaps meeting one predator in one lifetime is traumatizing enough. However, when there are a chain of traumas that shape your early development, this complex trauma is enough to send anyone over the edge.”— Shahida Arabi, thoughtcatalog.com
“Yet it was in that vale that her sorrow had taken shape, and she did not love it as formerly. Beauty to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.”— Thomas Hardy, amazon.com
“To me, the trauma is very important—we wouldn’t be having these conversations without acknowledging that trauma. But everywhere, too, we’re constantly reading about the burnout of interrogating that trauma, of trying to initiate change, of self-care, of taking social media breaks, etc. which has me…”— Daniel Peña, blog.pshares.org
“Trauma is not mutually exclusive. That because one generation faced incredible trauma, it does not mean that subsequent generations’ trauma doesn’t matter. The definition of trauma does not drift to fit the most extreme version of that word.”— Daniel Peña, blog.pshares.org
“Who would you be without trauma? How much of you was created out of survival?”— Sex Therapist, twitter.com
“Look at her. This is a lonely woman looking for companionship....Spinster...Maybe a virgin....Maybe she got hurt a long time ago. She was a schoolgirl. There was a boy. It didn't work out. Now she needs a little tenderness. She needs a little understanding. She needs a little Kramer.”— Larry Charles, Cosmo Kramer, Michael Richards, imdb.com
“Individuals high on the dark triad traits appear to exhibit an empathic profile that allows them to retain their ability to read and assess others’ emotions, and subsequently utilize this sensitive information to formulate strategies with which they can acquire what they want, while their lack of af…”— Michael Wai, Niko Tiliopoulos, sciencedirect.com
“When you spend some time single, you become confident that you can fulfill your own emotional needs and manage your emotions without the need for anyone to validate your self-worth. This is an exquisite life skill to have that will serve you well throughout your entire life, whether single or with a…”— Shahida Arabi, blogs.psychcentral.com
“Remember: toxic people don’t argue with you, they essentially argue with themselves and you become privy to their long, draining monologues. They thrive off the drama and they live for it.”— Shahida Arabi, thoughtcatalog.com
“The drive to complete and heal trauma is as powerful and tenacious as the symptoms it creates. The urge to resolve trauma through re-enactment can be severe and compulsive. We are inextricably drawn into situations that replicate the original trauma in both obvious and nonobvious ways…Re-enactments…”— Peter A. Levine, amazon.com
“Ego will try to convince you that because your trauma is deeper than others, you cannot be healed. In reality, ego knows it will be destroyed in the healing process & so it tells this story in an attempt to save itself. Perpetual victims thrive off the feeling of otherness. They would rather their t…”— Ebonee Davis, twitter.com
“When trauma becomes a part of your identity, it can be terrifying to consider who you are outside of that. The idea of living a life without dysfunction may even seem impossible. Often, you will engage in self sabotaging behavior simply because the pain is familiar.”— Ebonee Davis, twitter.com
“please know, you are more than your trauma, and the circumstances surrounding it.”— Joel L. Daniels, twitter.com