Communicating Trauma Quotes

For children who depend on mentally escaping into their minds to survive, imagination can become both refuge and desert island. ~ Na'ama Yehuda

This book is a memoir - not of specific life events, but of the processes of dissociation, and of re-enlivening emotions that are shameful to admit or even to feel. It is an account of the altered states that trauma induces, which make it possible to survive a life-threatening event but impair the capacity to feel fear, and worse still, impair the ability to love. (292) ~ Jessica Stern

Consider these traditional theories of domestic abuse:
-Learned helplessness suggest that abused women learn to become helpless under abusive conditions; they are powerless to extricate themselves from such relationships and/or unable to make adaptive choices
-The cycle of violence describes a pattern that includes a contrition or honeymoon phase. The abusive husband becomes contrite and apologetic after a violent episode, making concerted efforts to get back in his wife's good graces.
-Traumatic bonding attempts to explain the inexplicable bond that is formed between a woman and her abusive partner
-The theory of past reenactments posits that women in abusive relationships are reliving unconscious feelings from early childhood scenarios.
My research results and experience with patients do not conform to these concepts. I have found that the upscale abused wife is not a victim of learned helplessness. Rather, she makes specific decisions along the path to be involved in the abusive marriage, including silent strategizing as she chooses to stay or leave the marriage. Nor does the upscale abused wife experience the classic cycle of violence, replete with the honeymoon stage, in which the husband courts his wife to seek her forgiveness. As in the case of Sally and Ray, the man of means actually does little to seek his wife's forgiveness after a violent episode.
Further, the upscale abused wife voices more attachment to her lifestyle than the trauma ~ Susan Weitzman

Ideas are cheap. Always be passionate about ideas and communicating those ideas and discoveries to others in the things you make. ~ Charles Eames

I draw a distinction between traditional Islam and Islamism. Islamism emerged in its modern form in the 1920s and is driven by a belief that Muslims can be strong and rich again if they follow the Islamic law severely and in its entirety. This is a response to the trauma of modern Islam. ~ Daniel Pipes

The non-disclosure of emotional pain can be deeply traumatic. It leads to depression. In such situations of vulnerability, one must choose to speak to a person you trust. Someone who could care for you and heal you. ~ Avijeet Das

Anyone who says that they're great at communicating but 'people are bad at listening' is confused about how communication works. ~ Randall Munroe

Anger is the immune system of the soul. ~ Stefan Molyneux

I had built such a wall between my experiences and how I felt about those experiences that I was incapable of reliving both simultaneously. I could talk about my traumas, even walk through them, but I couldn't feel them. When I tried to bring it all together, when I tried to remember how I had felt, I disappeared in my own head. My to-do list took on grave importance. The book I read the night before filled my thoughts. Yesterday's article suddenly called out to be rewritten. I couldn't get inside myself. ~ Sarah Hackley

In the culture people talk about trauma as an event that happened a long time ago. But what trauma is, is the imprints that event has left on your mind and in your sensations... the discomfort you feel and the agitation you feel and the rage and the helplessness you feel right now. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Do not apologise, I needed that lesson.
Without it, I wouldn't be free from you. ~ Nikki Rowe

God wants you to be delivered from what you have done and from what has been done to you - Both are equally imporant to Him. ~ Joyce Meyer

The explosion in access to mobile phones and digital services means that people everywhere are contributing vast amounts of information to the global knowledge warehouse. Moreover, they are doing so for free, just by communicating, buying and selling goods and going about their daily lives. ~ Ban Ki-moon

The rabbits mingled naturally. They did not talk for talking's sake, in the artificial manner that human beings - and sometimes even their dogs and cats - do. But this did not mean that they were not communicating; merely that they were not communicating by talking. ~ Richard Adams

Freshman year was really great, actually. Pretty easy transition. We both made some new friends. No emotional trauma that wasn't solved with a Buggy and Floyd marathon. And then you had to get a boyfriend. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg

Fixing the system without fixing people that work in it would be a huge trauma for them; they will do everything they can to prevent it from happening. ~ Yegor Bugayenko

We are changing all the time and this never changes.
It is not whether we change, it is how much and in what direction we change. These choices are ours can only be made by us ~ Ted Agon

You're surrounded by other people all the time. And you have to take responsibility if you're the eldest or one of the older siblings, and you're constantly communicating in a way that perhaps you aren't if you're in a smaller family. ~ Harry West

No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers - but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Where would we be without our painful childhoods? ~ Rebecca McNutt

The hostility and venomous response the topic of sexual trauma and rape in the military brings up, especially with men from my Era, is revealing. This opposition speaks to their guilt and toward the truth that stays hidden. ~ Diane Chamberlain

When you've had a bad experience, you sometimes feel compelled to recreate it in a way that allows you to control it. ~ Todd Hido

I've always thought photography is not so much of an art form but a way of communicating and passing on information. ~ Don McCullin

I've always lived a life where what you see if what you get. I've never wanted to live two different lifestyles. The initial transition for me was perhaps the most difficult. It wasn't easy communicating what I believed and what my values were. Establishing that as a young adult was interesting. I was 20 years old when I got saved. ~ Kelly Clark

To thoughtful natures, events are like depth charges: the surface is calm, but the shock spreads further. ~ Amanda Craig

Without direction, the respiratory technician goes to the head of the bed. She takes the tubing, attaches it to the oxygen, and turns it on as high as it will go. She provides a seal with her hand cupped over the plastic mask, over the nose and mouth of the toddler, and methodically provides oxygenated air. Doyle's tiny chest rises and falls while I listen with my stethoscope. I am reaching for another breathing tube.
"Fib!" Dr. Pedras feels for a pulse while another places gelled pads on her chest. ~ Ruth McLeod-Kearns

As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas. ~ Harvey Pekar

We don't really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples - almost a third, as it turns out - engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge? ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The more a child is abused, the more the child uses his abilities to anticipate, manage, prevent, dismantle, and challenge the abusing ways of his parents. ~ Steven Franssen

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. ~ Mary Norton

She can't move forward or backward. She is stuck in time. A constant. ~ Mina Rehman

Trauma fractures comprehension as a pebble shatters a windshield. The wound at the site of impact spreads across the field of vision, obscuring reality and challenging belief. ~ Jane Leavy

Communicating is the biggest thing I struggle with. People either totally misunderstand what I am saying or just don't get it. It's tiring trying to explain what you want to say over and over. Even when I rephrase it, I still find it's not how it is in my head. ~ Tina J. Richardson

Hyperarousal causes traumatized people to become easily distressed by unexpected stimuli. Their tendency to be triggered into reliving traumatic memories illustrates how their perceptions have become excessively focused on the involuntary search for the similarities between the present and their traumatic past. As a consequence, many neutral experiences become reinterpreted as being associated with the traumatic past. ~ Marion F. Solomon

Closed head trauma is about as much fun as nude paintballing. ~ D.C. Farmer

I love to speak to five people at the same time and make them pay attention to me while not allowing them to say a word. I answer them before they have a chance to speak. They then change their thoughts and I do it again. They feel both frustrated and hooked to the conversation. I feel both entertained and amused at their disbelief on what is occurring before their eyes. They cannot see that I'm communicating in three ways at the same time, while they're focused in one. And they think I'm smart because I talk too fast, while the truth is that they are not intelligent because they cannot see the obvious in front of their eyes. ~ Robin Sacredfire