Traumatic Events Quotes

Those very traumatic events in our lives give us a privileged opportunity to let God's love become concrete for us. What the psychoanaylyst strives to do by bringing traumatic experiences to consciousness often comes about much quicker and more completely by the action of the Holy Spirit. "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his inermost parts" (Prov. 20:27) We can ask him to illuminate our past and lead us to those incidents that we have still not accepted wholeheartedly. We can save a lot of time if we go into analysis with the Holy Spirit...who is our true and ultimate therapist. Nothing is hidden from him. ~ Wilfrid Stinissen

Traumatic events always happen exactly two years before I reach the maturity level to deal with them. ~ Tim Sandlin

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

Traumatic events challenge an individual's view of the world as a just, safe and predictable place. Traumas that are caused by human behavior. . . commonly have more psychological impact than those caused by nature. ~ American Psychological Association

Every single time I get sent to her, she asks me questions that sound like they came from some "How to Talk to Statistical Black Children Who Come to Your Office Often" handbook.

How is your home life? (None of your business.)

Have you witnessed any traumatic events lately, such as shootings? (Just because I live in the "ghetto" doesn't mean I dodge bullets every day.)

Are you struggling to come to terms with your father's murder? (It was twelve years ago. I barely remember him or it.)

Are you struggling to come to terms with your mother's addiction? (She's been clean for eight years. She's only addicted to soap operas these days.)

What's good with you, homegirl, nah'mean? (Okay, she hasn't said that, but give her time.) ~ Angie Thomas

Nick tugged her head back, his tormented gaze raking over her face. His trembling fingertips traced the line of her cheek and jaw. "My God. Lottie…" As his panicked exploration continued, he discovered the bruises on her throat, and he uttered a cry of fury. "Holy hell! Your neck. He dared to… I'm going to slaughter that bastard - "
Lottie placed her fingers over his mouth. "I'm all right," she said gently. Feeling the way his large body shook, she drew her hand over his chest in a calming stroke. After the traumatic events of the past hours, it was so wonderful to be with him that her lips curved in a wobbly smile. She gazed into his dusty, sweat-streaked face with concern. "In fact, I believe I may be in better condition than you, my darling."
A primitive groan came from his throat, and he clutched her with his right arm, bending over her hungrily. "I love you," he said in a low, shaken voice. "I love you so much, Lottie." His lips covered hers in a fiercely ardent kiss.
Clearly he was too unsettled to recall that there were others in the room. Lottie turned her face away with a muffled laugh. "I love you, too," she whispered. "Not here, darling. Later, with more privacy, we can - " She was silenced as Nick seized her mouth once more. Suddenly she found herself pushed up against the wall by six feet of aroused, overwrought male. Realizing that there was no hope of subduing him, Lottie stroked his broad back in an effort to soothe him. He possessed her with ~ Lisa Kleypas

A phobia is an excessive or unreasonable fear of an object, situation or place. Phobias are quite common and often take root in childhood for no apparent reason. Other times they spring from traumatic events or develop from an attempt to make sense of unexpected and intense feelings of anxiety or panic.

Simple phobias are fears of specific things such as insects, infections, or even flying. Agoraphobia is a fear of being in places where one feels trapped or unable to get help, such as in crowds, on a bus or in a car, or standing in a line. It is basically an anxiety that ignites from being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult (or embarrassing). A social phobia is a marked fear of social or performance situations.

When the phobic person actually encounters, or even anticipates, being in the presence of the feared object or situation, immediate anxiety can be triggered. The physical symptoms of anxiety may include shortness of breath, sweating, a racing heart, chest or abdominal discomfort, trembling, and similar reactions. The emotional component involves an intense fear and may include feelings of losing control, embarrassing oneself, or passing out.

Most people who experience phobias try to escape or avoid the feared situation wherever possible. This may be fairly easy if the feared object is rarely encountered (such as snakes) and avoidance will not greatly restrict the person's life. At other times, avoiding the fear ~ Sahar Abdulaziz

One of the central elements of resilience, Bonanno has found, is perception: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as an opportunity to learn and grow? "Events are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic," Bonanno told me, in December. "To call something a 'traumatic event' belies that fact." He has coined a different term: PTE, or potentially traumatic event, which he argues is more accurate.

The theory is straightforward. Every frightening event, no matter how negative it might seem from the sidelines, has the potential to be traumatic or not to the person experiencing it. Take something as terrible as the surprising death of a close friend: you might be sad, but if you can find a way to construe that event as filled with meaning - perhaps it leads to greater awareness of a certain disease, say, or to closer ties with the community - then it may not be seen as a trauma. The experience isn't inherent in the event; it resides in the event's psychological construal.

It's for this reason, Bonanno told me, that "stressful" or "traumatic" events in and of themselves don't have much predictive power when it comes to life outcomes. "The prospective epidemiological data shows that exposure to potentially traumatic events does not predict later functioning," he said. "It's only predictive if there's a negative response." In other words, living through adversity, be it endemic to your environment or an acute negative event, doesn't guarant ~ Maria Konnikova

I have learned that some of the nicest people you'll ever meet are those who have suffered a traumatic event or loss. I admire them for their strength, but most especially for their life gratitude - a gift often taken for granted by the average person in society. ~ Sasha Azevedo

These kinds of comments throughout early sessions establish the therapist as someone who knows about the past, is not afraid to talk about it, and understands how the current environment is filled with reminders of past traumatic events. ~ Joyanna L. Silberg

The net that catches me when I confront traumatic events is that 10,000 years from now, they will be a reason for rejoicing. ~ Matt Chandler

What fascinates me - and what serves as a central theme of this book - is why we make the choices we do. What separates us from the world we have and the kind of ethical universe envisioned by someone like Havel? What prompts one person to act boldly in a moment of crisis and a second to seek shelter in the crowd? Why do some people become stronger in the face of adversity while others quickly lose heart? What separates the bully from the protector? Is it education, spiritual belief, our parents, our friends, the circumstances of our birth, traumatic events, or more likely some combination that spells the difference? More succinctly, do our hopes for the future hinge on a desirable unfolding of external events or some mysterious process within? ~ Madeleine K. Albright

Traumatic events can be compared to facing a demon pitcher on the baseball diamond. Life tells us we have to take a swing at the ball, but engaging this demon comes with consequences. If you make first base, you'll feel the need to sleep. Not so bad. Second, you'll want to forget it all happened. Don't we all? But third base brings the onset of madness and if you step off the plate there's only death. In the great game of life, sometimes it's better to strike out than hit a home run. After all, you can relax in the Dugout with friends until you're ready to knock the demon out of the park."

Alexander Rollins, Keystrokes ~ Michael Gardner

In order to stay healthy, our nervous systems and psyches need to face challenges and to succeed in meeting those challenges. When this need is not met, or when we are challenged and cannot triumph, we end up lacking vitality and are unable to fully engage in life. Those of us who have been defeated by war, abuse, accidents, and other traumatic events suffer far more severe consequences. ~ Peter A. Levine

Coping with any death is traumatic; suicide compounds the anguish because we are forced to deal with two traumatic events at the same time. According to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the level of stress resulting from the suicide of a loved one is ranked as catastrophic–equivalent to that of a concentration camp experience. ~ Carla Fine

Sometimes family doesn't always consist of your relatives or by blood. Sometimes your best friends can feel more like family than your cousins. I think everybody kind of has that same feeling. When you go through an accident together, when you go through a traumatic event, sometimes that brings you closer together. ~ Michael B. Jordan

Each of our lives' is a separate and precious journey. No matter how happy, sad, painful, tragic or confusing it may by, it is unique and beautiful. No matter if we hurt others or if we ourselves were hurt, it happened and it is part of our story.

If we think we can have complete control over this journey, our journey will wake us up… usually with a very unpleasant surprise.

More than genetics, money or education, it is our journey who defines who we are. It defines what kind of person you are. Not the experiences you encountered nor the happy or traumatic events you may have endured. But rather how we dealt with those events and how we continue to deal with those events; when we evaluate ourselves and how we treat others.

Your journey is part of your story. But it is not the complete story of who and how you are. You are a soul, a spirit, who has traveled through this life and along the way; you learned and gathered bits and pieces from here and there. And you, yourself, have woven together a soul, a spirit. And that is who you are today. You define… you.

Oh, and just in case you thought your journey, your story was over… surprise, its not. So keep weaving. You are not finished yet. It is never to late to define who you are. ~ Jose N Harris

They may surprise you. Traumatic events change people. Makes them say and do unexpected things. So ~ Harper Bliss

Is it really over?" Kurlansky lamented over the dry-docked Massachusetts cod fishermen at the conclusion of his moving, epic book. "Are these the last gatherers of food from the wild to be phased out? Is this the last of wild food? Is our last physical tie to untamed nature to become an obscure delicacy like the occasional pheasant?"
These words stayed with me over the years to come. But histories of environmental wrong doing have a strange way of putting traumatic events in the past, sealing off bad human behavior of former times from the unwritten pages of the present and the future. ~ Paul Greenberg

The more traumatic events you endure with the city, the more of a New Yorker you become. ~ Trevor Moore

Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness, while heptapods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness. We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all. A minimizing, maximizing purpose. I ~ Ted Chiang

Behind their eyes the hope was sickening and in many, dead. They lived from event to event with a subtle terror of the gap between, filling up their lives with distractions to avoid the emptiness where curiosity should have been. ~ Clive Barker

Christmas is not just a day, an event to be observed and speedily forgotten. It is a spirit which should permeate every part of our lives. ~ William Parks

Pleasure and pain are immediate; knowledge, retrospective. A steel ball, suspended on a string, smacks into its brothers and nothing happens: no shock of recognition, no sudden epiphany. We go about our business, buttering the toast, choosing gray socks over brown. But here's the thing: just because we haven't understood something doesn't mean we haven't been shaped by it. ~ Mark Slouka

Not everything that happens in a life can be digested. Some events stay forever whole. Some images never leave the mind. ~ Karen Thompson Walker

[T]he problem was too much information. The population was being inundated with conflicting versions of increasingly complex events. People were giving up on understanding anything. The glut of information was dulling awareness, not aiding it. Overload. It encouraged passivity, not involvement. ~ Jerry Mander

FEMALE VOICE: 'The truth is people are pushed around by two men who move all the bodies on earth into patterns that please them.'

MALE VOICE: 'I love my mind when it is fucking the cracks of events.'

MALE VOICE: 'What I give to all the people who do not want to live with me is arithmetic.'

FEMALE VOICE: 'Everyday, I do nothing important because I am scared blank and lazy. But then the men come. I put my mouth on them. I spit and write with the wet.'

MALE VOICE: 'I was not born live. This body grew but I did not feel cells split. ~ Jenny Holzer

You cannot help the world by focusing on the negative things. As you focus on the world's negative events, you not only add to them, but you also bring more negative things into your own life. ~ Rhonda Byrne

It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment ~ Francis Bacon

... We can't control the turn of events. All we can do is ask God for power in your life to go through whatever may be ahead. He has not promised us easy ways out of our problems, but He has promised His strength when we need it to go through adversity ~ Gordon McLean

We do have our finger on the pulse of the marketplace, if for no other reasons than having all these live events and listening to our audience all the time. ~ Vince McMahon

I used to work for a catering company - I waitressed for Harry Winston events. I remember being so hungry, I would eat when I was supposed to be catering to other people. ~ Karla Souza

Working at the scene of the action, I have adopted Robert Capa's saying: 'If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough.' But in retrospect I add a corollary: if you're too close to events, you lose perspective. ~ Micha Bar-Am

But the more I reflect on events recent and past, the more I am struck by the element of the absurd in everything humans do. ~ Tacitus

How far they came to perish here, these soldiers and these machines! What bizarre train of events brought youngsters from the Rhineland and Prussia, from the Scottish Highlands and London, from Australia and New Zealand, to butt at each other to the death with flame-spitting machinery in faraway Africa, in a setting as dry and lonesome as the moon?

But that is the hallmark of this war. No other war has ever been like it. This war rings the world.... Men fight as far from home as they can be transported, with courage and endurance that makes one proud of the human race, in horrible contrivances that make one ashamed of the human race. ~ Herman Wouk

Rituals bring people together, allowing them to focus on what is important and to acknowledge significant events or accomplishments. ~ Luis Goncalves

Cognitive psychology considers successive mediating events between the outer world of the organism (environmental input) and the behavior of the organism (response output). The gap between these two endpoints is reputed to be filled by various components (e.g., a complex memory system comprising several constituent parts, an information processing system also comprising several constituent parts, a "cognitive map," or a symbol manipulation machine. ~ Mecca Chiesa

I value peace, and I should unwillingly see any event take place which would render war a necessary resource. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The temple is a sacred edifice, a holy place, where essential saving ceremonies and ordinances are performed to prepare us for exaltation. It is important that we gain a sure knowledge that our preparation to enter the holy house and that our participation in these ceremonies and covenants are some of the most significant events we will experience in our mortal lives. ~ Robert D. Hales

Yes", she said her voice dripping with sarcasm. "That's exactly what I'm saying, in fact let's try sex again." She leaped to her feet and torn open her jeans. "Maybe my magic vagina will cure you of all the traumatic acts my family has inflected on you. ~ Larissa Ione

Jesus does not respond to our worry-filled way of living by saying that we should not be so busy with worldly affairs. He does not try to pull us away from the many events, activities, and people that make up our lives ... He asks us to shift the point of gravity, to relocate the center of our attention, to change our priorities. Jesus does not speak about a change of activities, a change in contacts, or even a change of pace. He speaks about a change of heart. ~ Henri Nouwen

If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century. ~ John Thorn

If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that sometimes our assumptions and preconceived notions are wrong, and therefore, our interpretation of events is incorrect. This causes us to overreact, to take things personally, or to judge people unfairly. ~ Elizabeth Thornton

Duties are ours; events are God's. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only, can he securely lay down his head, and close his eyes. ~ Richard Cecil

When you're on your own you have control over most of the variables involved in the preparation and the race itself, whilst in a team event you are only a part of the overall picture. The real upside of being part of a team is the fact that when you're successful in a race you can share the celebrations together. ~ Chris Hoy

Training is bad for you! Training followed by rest and proper nutrition is good for you and will make you better prepared for the event you are training for. ~ Graeme Obree

We jumped for joy. After the awful events of yesterday, finally something good happens and brings us ... hope! Hope for an end to the war, hope for peace. ~ Anne Frank

He so tempers the outcome of events according to his incomprehensible plan that the prayers of the saints, which are a mixture of faith and error, are not nullified."185 ~ Timothy J. Keller

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me. ~ Carl Sandburg

I'm thinking about past events. I'm interested in recall, exact recall, of what was said, who said it and to whom. I want to know the truth, undistorted by time and revision and wishes and regrets. ~ Dana Spiotta

The perfect knowledge of events cannot be acquired without divine inspiration, since all prophetic inspiration receives its prime motivating force from God the creator, then from good fortune and nature. ~ Nostradamus

Multilevel multitasking multiplied multiple times is Event Management. ~ Rehan Waris

Although we are necessarily concerned, in a chronicle of events, with physical action by the light of day, history suggests that the human spirit wanders farthest in the silent hours between midnight and dawn. Those dark fruitful hours, seldom recorded, whose secret flowerings breed peace and war, loves and hates, the crowning or uncrowning of heads. ~ Joan Lindsay

But in order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any rate, should be settled for us without our permission. If we wish life to be a system, this may be a nuisance; but if we wish it to be a drama, it is an essential. It may often happen, no doubt, that a drama may be written by somebody else which we like very little. But we should like it still less if the author came before the curtain every hour or so, and forced on us the whole trouble of inventing the next act.

A man has control over many things in his life; he has control over enough things to be the hero of a novel. But if he had control over everything, there would be so much hero that there would be no novel.

And the reason why the lives of the rich are at bottom so tame and uneventful is simply that they can choose the events. They are dull because they are omnipotent. They fail to feel adventures because they can make the adventures. The thing which keeps life romantic and full of fiery possibilities is the existence of these great plain limitations which force all of us to meet the things we do not like or do not expect. ~ G.K. Chesterton

To talk of probability is to suggest that events might happen differently from the way they do, whereas events themselves will unfold according to an inevitable path. ~ Johnny Rich

I realized that my book readings were boring me. I was going to go up there and read a passage and sleepwalk through the whole event and I needed to make it more interesting. I wanted to be running and jumping and do something so that the event would be so exciting. I had to trick myself into having fun every time. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The G7 and former G8 group has always viewed itself as a community of values, the annexation of Crimea, which is a blatant violation of the principles of international law, and the events in eastern Ukraine are serious violations of these common values. ~ Angela Merkel

This is sacred space.
Libation . . . instead of pouring water on the ground, I pour words on the page.
I begin with this libation in honor of all of those unknown and known spirits who surround us. I acknowledge the origins of this land where I am seated while writing this introduction. This land was inhabited by Indigenous people, the very first people to inhabit this land, who lived here for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived and were unfortunately unable to cohabitate without dominating, enslaving, raping, terrorizing, stealing from, relocating, and murder- ing the millions of members of Indigenous nations throughout Turtle Island, which is now known as North America. I write libation to those millions of Indigenous women, men, and children; and those millions of kidnapped and enslaved African women, men, and children whose genocide, confiscated land, centuries of free labor, forced migration, traumatic memories of rape, and sweat, tears, and blood make up the very fiber and foundation of all of the Americas and the Caribbean. ~ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

These conversations went on and on with person after person. I stood literally amazed by the grace of God, not just upon one Christian passionate about sharing the gospel, but upon an entire community passionate about sharing the gospel. As I looked around, I observed a contagious culture of evangelism across the church. It is a culture of evangelism that is not ultimately dependent on events, projects, programs, and ministry professionals. Instead, it is a culture of evangelism that is built on people filled with the power of God's Spirit proclaiming the gospel of God's grace in the context of their everyday lives and relationships. ~ J. Mack Stiles

It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control. Nothing is by its own nature calamitous
even death is terrible only if we fear it. ~ Epictetus

We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events. ~ Gerda Lerner

To mourn is to be extraordinarily vulnerable. It is to be at the mercy of inside feelings and outside events in a way most of us have not been since early childhood. ~ Christian McEwen

I didn't mean to scare you. I'm not suicidal if that's what's freaking you out. I'm not fucked up in the head. I'm not deranged. I'm not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I'm just a brother who loved his sister more than life itself, so I get a little intense when I think about her. ~ Colleen Hoover

Just like a person has five senses, the Scripture also has Five Senses. First, there is the historical sense of Scripture. Second, there is a doctrinal sense of Scripture. Third, there is a prophetic sense of Scripture, fourth, there is a philosophical sense to Scripture, fifth, and there is a mystical sense to Scripture where events and persons symbolize truth. The Common Man is incapable of coming to the Scriptures and perceiving what is in it. We must have Grace given to us by Christ in order to understand the Bible. ~ Anya VonderLuft

They do everything in their power to make fortune favor them in this life, but nevertheless they think so little of it, in relation to eternity, that they view the events of the world as we do those of a play. ~ Rene Descartes

Neither is a memoir the same as a biography, which aims for the most objective, factual account of a life. A memoir, as I understand it, makes no pretense of denying its subjectivity. Its matter is one person's memory, and memory by nature is selective and colored by emotion. Others who participated in the events I describe will no doubt remember some details differently, though I hope we would agree on the essential truths. I have taken no liberties with the past as I remember it, used no fictional devices beyond reconstructing conversations from memory. I have not blended characters, or bent chronology to convenience. And yet I have tried to tell a good story. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

For me, working in the fashion industry is about getting to meet the minds behind the brands. Sure, there are nice dinners, events and shows - even the occasional freebie - but the best part is getting to sit down with and talk to people that have done great things. You quickly realize that no matter who you're talking to, how famous, brilliant or wealthy they are, they are just "people." ~ Ben Clymer

It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable. ~ Frank Herbert

To gain a true understanding of human experience, we must understand both our conscious and our unconscious selves, and how they interact. Our subliminal brain is invisible to us, yet it influences our conscious experience of the world in the most fundamental of ways: how we view ourselves and others, the meanings we attach to the everyday events of our lives, our ability to make the quick judgment calls and decisions that can sometimes mean the difference between life and death, and the actions we engage in as a result of all these instinctual experiences. ~ Leonard Mlodinow