Reliving Quotes

There is a distinction I am beginning to make in my living between pain and suffering. Pain is an event, an experience that must be recognized, named and then used in some way in order for the experience to change, to be transformed into something else, strength or knowledge or action.

Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain. When I live through pain without recognizing it self-consciously, I rob myself of the power that can come from using that pain, the power to fuel some movement beyond it. I condemn myself to reliving that pain over and over and over whenever something close triggers it. And that is suffering, a seemingly inescapable cycle. ~ Audre Lorde

Teachers knew every one of the students, their secrets, their grades, their home situations. And all the students knew the teachers. It was like teachers were people who finally were the most popular at school. ~ Victoria Kahler

If there's anything worse than being 16, it's having parents visibly reliving their own teenage years in your anguished presence. ~ Rachel Johnson

Don't be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then to maintain our sanity. ~ Barry Hughart

It's easy to pinpoint when it all started, that moment of walking into his sun-soaked classroom and feeling his eyes drink me in for the first time, but it's harder to know when it ended, if it really ended at all. I think it stopped when I was twenty-two, when he said he needed to get himself together and couldn't live a decent life while I was within reach, but for the past decade there have been late-night calls, him and me reliving the past, worrying the wound we both refuse to let heal. ~ Kate Elizabeth Russell

Cade stood midfield, waiting for Zach to take his place at the line of scrimmage.

"When's the last time you threw a football?" Zach asked worriedly.

Aside from the few times Cade had tossed one around casually with friends, a long time. "About twelve years."

Zach threw him a panicked look.

"I won't push it," Cade said. It wasn't as if his shoulder was entirely unusable; in fact, on a daily basis it didn't bother him at all. His rotator cuff simply couldn't withstand the repetitive stress of competitive football. "I just want to see what I can do." He pointed emphatically. "And if the answer is 'not much,' you better not tell a soul. I've got a reputation to uphold here."

Zach smiled, loosening up. "All right. I don't want to stand in the way of you reliving your glory days or whatever."

"Good. But in case this all goes south, my car keys are in the outside pocket of my duffle bag. When you drive me to the emergency room, if I'm too busy mumbling incoherently from the pain, just tell them I've got Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance."

Zach's eyes went wide.

"I'm kidding, Zach. Now get moving. ~ Julie James

In my mind, I was reliving my whole life again-slowly, taking my time. Delaying.
Because I knew, sooner or later, I'd get to her.
And then ... Well, I'd already died once. I couldn't live through it again. ~ Lauren Oliver

We can forget our past but our past never forgets us. This is the reason we keep reliving it. ~ Paul Sveen

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also has dissociative symptoms as an essential feature. PTSD has been classically seen as a biphasic disorder, with persons alternately experiencing phases of intrusion and numbing... [T]he intrusive phase is associated with recurrent and distressing recollections in thoughts or dreams and reliving the events in flashbacks. The avoidant/numbing phase is associated with efforts to avoid thoughts or feelings associated with the trauma, emotional constriction, and social withdrawal. This biphasic pattern is the result of dissociation; traumatic events are distanced and dissociated from usual conscious awareness in the numbing phase, only to return in the intrusive phase. ~ James A. Chu

I didn't want to be like a punch-drunk fighter, going around and reliving the big moment ... ~ Greg Noll

By late August, I'm on my second sublet, and I've been working as a copywriter long enough to know I'm not good at it. I seem to be reliving the life I had when I was twenty-two, but I'm about to run twenty-eight, which feels like the opposite of twenty-two. ~ Melissa Bank

Somewhere, a dark car raced along a night road. A hand gripped the wheel, leather bands looped over the wrist bone. The Greywaren. Ronan. In this dreamplace, all times were the same time, and so Adam had a strange, lucid beat of reliving the moment Ronan had offered his hand to help Adam up from the asphalt. Stripped of context, the physical sensations exploded: the surprising shock of heat from that skin-to-skin grip; the soft hiss of the bracelets against Adam's wrist; the sudden bite of possibility - ~ Maggie Stiefvater

You wake up one morning to realize life has, literally, passed you by. Even though the living felt long and filled with happiness beyond measure, the reliving brings to mind how fleeting time is compared to the stars in the sky above us. ~ Tymber Dalton

It is strange which events leave those deep scars we carry with us over a lifetime. When Heloise talked about that night, even years later, it was with a bitter seriousness, a complete inability to see the events other than as they occurred to her as a seven-year-old. It became a foundation myth, a lasting symbol of the troubled nature of Heloise's childhood, the real sufferings she endured, but also the way she experienced these sufferings, reliving them over and over until they wore away their own caged-animal paths within her. ~ Emily Bitto

What most women live in, is fear of the next contraction, or they're reliving the pain of the one they just had. And nature really builds in these breaks, if you can be in the present and not feel the pain and not sort of anticipate the pain to come. ~ Lauren Bowles

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

I often think to myself, at the end of an interesting life it's maybe not such a bad thing to spend your last days with your friends sitting by the blue, blue ocean reliving the story of your life while sitting in the dangerous sun. ~ Baz Luhrmann

What am I supposed to do with this memory now? I know that the wise answer is that I should let it be, but there's so much shame in having a bright, hopeful start and a heavy, lead-footed, choked-up end. I want to put this moment forth like a picture that you slide across the table and you say, "This was this. I was here." When your life breaks apart it's hard to know if you are allowed to keep little pieces that are still nice-looking, or if you have to crush them up in order to move on. Do I have to ruin everything that survived the blast in order to accept that the blast occurred? That seems like a bit too much. Do we have to live with shards, carry them around, have new little cuts all the time? Or can these moments be rounded and just left floating in the attic of a nice old beach house, the one I don't live in yet, the one where I will live when I am old, the oldest person on the planet, the softest crone. When I asked my father this question, "What am I supposed to do with this moment now?" he told me to be unashamed while mentioning it, and to consider the idea that some people stay with you in a group, while others drift away. But the reliving of that moment causes me sharp pain, and I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it and my guess is that I'm not, because of the damage I will do or reveal within myself. ~ Jenny Slate

Esteban fell face downward upon the floor. "I am alone, alone, alone," he cried. The Captain stood above him, his great plain face ridged and gray with pain; it was his own old hours he was reliving. He was the awkwardest speaker in the world apart from the lore of the sea, but there are times when it requires a high courage to speak the banal. He could not be sure the figure on the floor was listening, but he said, "We do what we can. We push on, Esteban, as best we can. It isn't for long, you know. Time keeps going by. You'll be surprised at the way time passes. ~ Thornton Wilder

As my body lay dead on that stretcher (he later recovered from being struck by lightning attracted by his cell phone), I was reliving every moment of my life, including my emotions, attitudes, and motivations. The depth of emotion I experienced during this life review was astonishing. Not only could I feel the way both I and the other person had felt when an incident took place, I could also feel the feelings of the next person they reacted to. I was in a chain reaction of emotion, one that showed how deeply we affect one another. ~ Dannion Brinkley

It often happens with grown-ups that their tears are misunderstood. (Who can know which time in their lives they are reliving?) ~ John Irving

They say that when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. They never tell you that when you watch someone you once loved dying, hovering between this life and the next, it's twice as painful, because you're reliving two lives that traveled one road together. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

The events of the past cannot be fully understood when you are the only element of the past actively engaged in reliving it. ~ Augusten Burroughs

I woke in bed, sweating and breathing heavily. It was the third time I'd had this nightmare: reliving that horrible feeling of falling, out of control, toward the ground.
I was now on month two of just lying there prone, supposedly recovering. But I wasn't getting any better.
In fact, if anything, my back felt worse.
I couldn't move and was getting angrier and angrier inside. Angry at myself; angry at everything.
I was angry because I was shit-scared.
My plans, my dreams for the future hung in shreds. Nothing was certain any more. I didn't know if I'd be able to stay with the SAS. I didn't even know if I'd recover at all.
Lying unable to move, sweating with frustration, my way of escaping was in my mind.
I still had so much that I dreamt of doing.
I looked around my bedroom, and the old picture I had of Mount Everest seemed to peer down.
Dad's and my crazy dream.
It had become what so many dreams become--just that--nothing more, nothing less.
Covered in dust. Never a reality.
And Everest felt further beyond the realms of possibility than ever.
Weeks later, and still in my brace, I struggled over to the picture and took it down.
People often say to me that I must have been so positive to recover from a broken back, but that would be a lie. It was the darkest, most horrible time I can remember.
I had lost my sparkle and spirit, and that is so much of who I am.
And once you lost that spirit, it is ha ~ Bear Grylls

SHOCK ABSORBERS
Veterans scream in their dreams, reliving nightmares so that we can sleep peacefully ~ Kamil Ali

Reliving his degradation had struck some spark in him and it was glowing now like a blown-on coal. ~ Walter Kirn

Minho had gotten to his feet, and he came over to help Thomas stand. "My shuck brain can't spend one more second thinking. Just let her do whatever she wants. Come one."
"Good that," Thomas said. The two of them then looked at each other for a long moment, catching their breath, somehow reliving in those few seconds all the things they'd gone through, all the death, all the pain. And mixed in there was relief, that maybe – just maybe – it was all over.
But mostly Thomas felt the pain of loss. Watching Teresa die – to save his life – had been almost too much to bear. Now, staring at the person who'd become his true best friend, he had to fight back the tears. In that moment, he swore to never tell Minho about what he'd done to Newt.
"Good that for sure, shuck-face," Minho finally replied. But his trademark smirk was missing. Instead was a look that said to Thomas he understood. And that they'd both carry the sorrow of their loss for the rest of their lives. ~ James Dashner

She was tired of hugging pillows, counting on blankets for warmth, and reliving romantic moments only in her dreams. She was tired of hoping that every day would hurry so she could get on to the next. Hoping that it would be a better day, an easier day. But it never was. Worked, paid the bills, and went to bed but never slept. Each morning the weight on her shoulders got heavier and heavier and each morning she wished for night to fall quickly so she could return to her bed to hug her pillows and wrap herself in the warmth of her blankets. ~ Cecelia Ahern

I crossed oceans for you,
Turned over every rock,
Climbed the highest mountains,
Holding on to the words you said,
Reliving your touch inside my head,
The taste of you on the tip of my tongue,
Only to be left with you as only a fantasy inside my head. ~ LeAnne Mechelle

She frowned, thinking of going down there and explaining herself all over again, reliving the horror of finding Mimi's body and trying not to think of how she'd looked when they'd dragged her up and out of the ravine. No sooner had she thought it than she heard Mimi's voice, chastising her over a year ago.

"You hide from life, Catherine. Even when you're in the middle of it, standing toe to toe with all the bad guys you bring in, you manage to keep an emotional distance. I understand why you do it, but ultimately, you're the one who will suffer. You're the one who's going to grow old alone."

Cat blinked back tears, remembering what she'd told her.

I won't be alone, Mimi. I'll always have you.

Obviously she had been wrong. ~ Sharon Sala

Babe, how can you can be so blind when your eyes are wide open? Even if he wasn't the coolest kid I have ever met, even if I didn't enjoy the hell out of my time reliving my childhood with the little guy, he is part of you. No, he isn't yours and I understand that, but he is part of you, and Beauty, how can I not love that ~ Harper Sloan

We have a choice. We can live in the past and be miserable and unhappy, or we can pick ourselves up and move ahead in life. When we choose to focus forward, we can find the energy and ability to remove any obstacles that may appear to be hindering our smooth progression. If you take stock of yourself and find you may be spending time frequently reliving unhappy experiences of the past, make the decision to rid yourself of the ties that bind you to a former way of life. ~ John Templeton

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

Tiger Mother felt like reliving a childhood trauma; The Drama of the Gifted Child felt like going through the therapy to cure it. ~ William Deresiewicz

It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice. ~ Jodi Picoult

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

One of the reasons I love Murder is that victims are, as a general rule, dead ... I don't make a habit of sharing this, in case people take me fore a sicko or- worse-a wimp, but give me a dead child, any day, over a child sobbing his heart out while you make him tell you what the bad man did next. Dead victims don't show up outside HQ to beg for answers, you never have to nudge them into reliving every hideous moment, and you never have to worry, and you never have to worry about what it'll do to their lives if you fuck up. They stay put in the morgue, light-years beyond anything I can do right or wrong, and leave me free to focus on the people who sent them there. ~ Tana French

This may sound cavalier, but it is true: If I had to choose between reliving the rape or the grand jury testimony, I would choose the rape. ~ Samantha Geimer

She couldn't let the fear of reliving past disappointments keep her from the chance of discovering a joy she'd never known. ~ Melissa Jagears

I live in an apocalyptic dream. My steps fit into it so precisely that I fear most of all I will grow bored reliving the thing so exactly. ~ Frank Herbert

It's the memories that we yearn for & cherish – not the relationship or person when sadness engulfs our heart and makes us go through the whole storyline again and again and again and again. Those memories are not even real. They are an idea of the memory formed that day – gorgeous and heartwarming – but it wasn't always that. Was it? ~ Sijdah Hussain

If the point of the inner-child movement is to cure adult problems, it doesn't work. Reliving childhood traumas gives you a nice afterglow, but it lasts only for hours or days. There is no evidence it changes adult problems. ~ Martin Seligman

She was tired hugging pillows, counting on blankets for warmth, and reliving romantic moments only in her dreams. She was tired of hoping that everyday would hurry so she could get on to the next. Hoping that it would be a better day, an easier day. But it never was. ~ Cecilia Ahern

I understand how people can get caught up in moments like that. How you want to keep reliving one small fraction of time when you felt invincible. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg

Among the most valuable but least appreciated experiences parenthood can provide are the opportunities it offers for exploring, reliving, and resolving one's own childhood problems in the context of one's relation to one's child. ~ Bruno Bettelheim

I've had a pretty crazy life. It's colorful ... reliving some of those closets that I had shut, locked and thrown away the key intentionally because it was painful to revisit a lot of those places - especially the loss of my buddy Robbie Tooley, the divorce of my parents, some of the things I went through as a kid, a lot of that stuff was locked up for a reason - it was painful. But at the same time, there was some therapy in revisiting some of those spots. ~ Billy Ray Cyrus

By lunchtime, the rest of the school was still talking about last night's epic howler at Hell Hall, but Mal had no interest. The party was the past; she'd moved on. She had bigger things to worry about now. All she could think about was how her mother wanted the Dragon's Eye back. And how Maleficent wouldn't see her as anything other than her father's daughter - in other words, a pathetic, soft human - until Mal could prove her wrong. Mal kept reliving last night's conversation over and over, so that she missed her first few classes and sleepwalked through the rest. She arrived for her one-on-one after-school seminar with Lady ~ Melissa De La Cruz

Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown
but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. You must see these opportunities; they must be real for you. The catch is that they can't seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. Fight your way above the many inevitable Traumatizations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present. I don't mean some vague moment in the present
next week or next month, perhaps. I mean today, this minute. ~ Maxwell Maltz

Post traumatic stress disorder starts out with nightmares, flashbacks and actually reliving the event. And this happens over and over and over and over in your mind. If you let it go on, it can become chronic and become hard if not impossible to treat. ~ Dale Archer

Or a saint who had spent all his years preparing for his grand entry into heaven, only to discover on his deathbed that heaven was not some blue expanse full of angelic string quartets and opalescent clouds, but an eternity granted for reliving one's happiest moments, and that he had none to remember; ~ Olga Grushin

He didn't go down to dinner at all that night, didn't eat, didn't drink, simply thought of his wife, trying to decide what to do with her. He'd wanted her to suffer, and she'd suffered. He'd wanted her to pay for her deceits, and she'd saved his life. He'd wanted to torment her with the knowledge that she would never see him again and had instead created his own private hell. He wanted her to come to him again, giving herself to him as she had that night before her attempted escape, and he wanted to hear words she would never speak. He'd even started lying to himself as he lay sleepless in his bed, reliving each moment of their last night together, telling himself it was real, that she'd meant every word. He was going mad. ~ Elizabeth Elliott

It's like spending 6 months just trying to inhale. It's like forgetting how to move your muscles and reliving every nauseous moment in your life and struggling to get all the splinters out from underneath your skin. It's like that one time you woke up and tripped down a rabbit hole and a blond girl in a blue dress kept asking you for directions but you couldn't tell her, you had no idea, you kept trying to speak but your throat was full of rain clouds and it's like someone has taken the ocean and filled it with silence and dumped it all over this room.
It's like this. ~ Tahereh Mafi

The exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment for we will be reliving John Paul's life for many days and weeks and even years and decades and centuries to come. ~ Shepard Smith

When a person reaches the end of a book and says, 'I want to read that again,' what he's actually saying is that he wants to mentally merge with his favorite character and stroll among all the other creative personalities, feeding a hungry imagination through the vicarious reliving of each and every wild chapter that stirred his emotions, the whole while surrendering to a safe yet daring existence where any crazy, hopeful thing can and does happen. That's all. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

If we spend too much time reliving the past, it gets us nowhere."
"That's where I am, Rafe. Nowhere. ~ Mary E. Pearson

Repressing is a natural instinct, but it doesn't allow for healing. Coming out of repression can be very similar to reliving the original fear. I'm sure not everyone who needs help gets help they need, and that may not necessarily mean they won't be okay. ~ Gwen Hayes

I believe I was afraid…of not being worthy of you. I have spent weeks writing, scribbling my thoughts, reliving every moment we shared, and I saw…the happiness we shared when we were together. The gleam in your dark eyes when you saw me. And I realized…that is what it's about, is it not? Those pieces of happiness are what matters. Not title or name. I write stories and poems of love and dreams coming true, but I did not allow myself to see it as something that could be real…not for me…but it was true…what we shared, and not only am I better for it, the world could be too."
"I am a better man because of you, Cas. Imagine what we could do together?"
Cassius gasped…hoped. "Do you still want me, my prince?"
"I have never wanted another the way I want you. There will never be another I love the way I love you."
Merrick raised his hand, cupped Cassius's cheek. Cas nuzzled into him, closed his eyes, trembled when he felt Merrick's lips touch his. They kissed slowly, deeply, reexploring each other.
Cassius swallowed down Merrick's moans and then fed him his own.
And it was…perfect.
When they pulled apart, Cassius led Merrick back to the rock. The sun kept the chill off as they climbed on together ~ Riley Hart

Young Bride had a scratch on her neck from the knife, but no other external injuries. It seemed she was killed by the shock the drunks gave her.

After sixty-odd years, reliving the trauma of that fateful night was too much to bear.

There was no funeral procession. She was buried on the unlucky hill on the outskirts of the village.

The crickets, however, remained around her shack and continued to sing until the first snow fell. ~ Susumu Katsumata

You'd know all about the process - the tests, the interviews with the police, the counselors, the lawyers. It's horrible, that reliving of it, and I was angry to be viewed as a victim. ~ Nora Roberts

We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost. ~ Gaston Bachelard

I don't talk about who I'm dating because when you break up, you wind up reliving it in the media. ~ Bridget Fonda

While reliving trauma is dramatic, frightening, and potentially self-destructive, over time a lack of presence can be even more damaging. This is a particular problem with traumatized children. The acting-out kids tend to get attention; the blanked-out ones don't bother anybody and are left to lose their future bit by bit. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

When you fall in love with someone, you're not really changing at all. You're really just reliving something that already happened at some point. ~ Cate Blanchett

All my shrinks have told me I need to find a hobby. Something to focus on other than the torture and the pain, something to keep me grounded to the here and now and not stuck in the past, reliving every moment of hell. It's probably not healthy that I've decided finding Shelby and convincing her to love me again is the perfect hobby for me, but that's too damn bad.
I'm broken and scarred and half the man I used to be, but if she'll let me explain, I hope to God she can put me back together again. ~ Tara Sivec

What was toughest for me in writing "Trust," was reliving it, turning and facing this. We move on and we don't move on, you know? She's still there - and by "she" I mean me - caught in that windowless room, that bad bargain and that violation. No one can touch me, sexually, without activating that memory. But I had walled, I thought, that time off. I say that and then want to say "and I got off lightly"! ~ Laura Mullen

Sometimes when I am writing, I feel as though I were not reliving the events I describe here, but rather living them. That there is no distance at all, and that I do not know how my story will end. It is an extraordinary sensation, since, of course, I know only too well how it will all end. ~ Anita Shreve

It has happened. It is over.
They fled. They mourned. Until grief had turned stony, too, and they came back. Awed by the completeness of the erasure, they gazed upon the fattened ground below which their world lay entombed. The ash under their feet, still warm, no longer seared their shoes. It cooled further. Hesitations vaporized ... most of those who had survived set about rebuilding, reliving; there. Their mountain now had an ugly hole at the top. The forests had been incinerated. But they, too, would grow again. ~ Susan Sontag

I didn't think you were real for a long time," I confess. "I thought you were someone I'd dreamed up."
"A dream worth reliving every night for ten years?" he asks, chuckling and slowly loosening his hold.
"For eternity," I whisper, winding my arms around his neck to keep him close.
"Good." He leans down and brushes his lips against mine. "That is exactly how long I plan on keeping you. ~ Erica Cameron

It is difficult for me to talk about some of these things without reliving the extreme emotions and loss one always feels for the untimely deaths of acquaintances, family and friends, all because they stood up against the unlawful tyranny of non-Indian America. ~ Leonard Peltier

This is the nightmare I have always dreaded. It's as if we've learned nothing from the last war and we are reliving August 1914. One by one the countries of the world will be dragged in - and for what? ~ Robert Harris

And then came months of memories connected to nothing and telling me nothing, and in this ambiguous atmosphere I stopped thinking of him as doomed. The memories themselves were generally pleasant. For at least a week I kept reliving the time he removed a splinter from my foot using surgical tweezers. Strangely, during this same week, a black Labrador retriever was accompanying me around town, appearing out of nowhere and trotting alongside me to the subway or or the grocery store. As with the splinter memory, I had a sense of information being conveyed but through a medium too opaque to be grasped. ~ Barbara Gowdy

Sometimes I wonder if we live life by reliving life, rather than by living life. ~ Michael Landon

If certain songs become popular enough to the point where I'll be playing them the rest of my life, I don't want them all to dwell on the same down moment that I'll have to keep reliving. ~ Chantal Kreviazuk

It felt like we were reliving the first day of the school year, when students and teachers do the get-to-know-you dance - teachers tell students something about who they are, students pretend to care, and then vice-versa. ~ Tucker Elliot

Nor would I even begin to try to describe what she looks like as she's telling the story, reliving it, she's naked, hair spilling all down her back, sitting meditatively cross-legged amid the wrecked bedding and smoking ultralight Merits from which she keeps removing the filters because she claims they're full of additives and unsafe - unsafe as she's sitting there chain-smoking, which was so patently irrational that I couldn't even bring - yes and some kind of blister on her Achilles tendon, from the sandals, leaning with her upper body to follow the oscillation of the fan so she's moving in and out of a wash of moon from the window whose angle of incidence itself alters as the moon moves up and across the window - all I can tell you is she was lovely. The bottoms of her feet dirty, almost black. The moon so full it looks engorged. ~ David Foster Wallace

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving the dreams of past glory

I see the old men all twisted and torn
The forgotten heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask me, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all ~ Eric Bogle

The elementary self system in the brain stem and limbic system is massively activated when people are faced with the threat of annihilation, which results in an overwhelming sense of fear and terror accompanied by intense physiological arousal. To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Reliving your painful past will poison your heart and your tomorrow. ~ Bryant McGill

There's something simmering inside of me. Something I've never dared to tap into, something I'm afraid to acknowledge. There's a part of me clawing to break free from the cage I've trapped it in, banging on the doors of my heart, begging to be free. Begging to let go. Every day I feel like I'm reliving the same nightmare. I open my mouth to shout, to fight, to swing my fists, but my vocal cords are cut, my arms are heavy and weighted down as if trapped in wet cement and I'm screaming but no one can hear me, no one can reach me and I'm caught. And it's killing me. I've always had to make myself submissive, subservient, twisted into a pleading, passive mop just to make everyone else feel safe and comfortable. My existence has become a fight to prove I'm harmless, and I'm not a threat, that I'm capable of living among other human beings without hurting them. And I'm so tired I'm so tire I'm so tired I'm so tired and sometimes I get so angry. I don't know what's happening to me. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Asking a person what scares them is not reliving an event, it's giving them control over their own lives. ~ Renae Kaye