“Silence about trauma also leads to death—the death of the soul. Silence reinforces the godforsaken isolation of trauma. Being able to say aloud to another human being, “I was raped” or “I was battered by my husband” or “My parents called it discipline, but it was abuse” or “I’m not making it since I…”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“The best way to overcome ingrained patterns of submission is to restore a physical capacity to engage and defend.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“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
“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
“A final scenario describes the incipient codependent toddler who largely bypasses the fight, flight and freeze responses and instead learns to fawn her way into the relative safety of becoming helpful. She may be one of the gifted children of Alice Miller’s Drama Of The Gifted Child, who discovers t…”— Pete Walker, pete-walker.com