PTSD Quotes and Healing

PTSD Quotes

"Triggers can happen when you least expect them. When you think all the emotional wounds are healed something can happen that reminds you there is still a scar.' -Alexandra Eva May

"PTSD nightmares aren't always exact replays of the event. Sometimes they replay the emotions you felt during the event, such as fear, helplessness, and sadness." -Alice Cariv

"Alone with thoughts of what should have long been forgotten, I let myself be carried away into the silent screams of delirium." -Amanda Steele

"As you may already know, post-traumatic stress disorder is extremely complex. Each client has a unique, perhaps virtually unbelievable, set of experiences, and an almost equally set of reactions to those experiences." -Aphrodite Matsakis

"When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it." -Bessel van der Kolk, MD

"Memories of traumatic experiences may nor be primarily retrieved as narratives. Our own and others research has suggested that PTSD traumatized peoples difficulties with putting memories into words are reflected in actual changes in brain activity." -Bessel A. van der Kolk

"In 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

"There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape." -Brian Everson

"I have met many, many severely distressed people whose daily lives are filled with the agony of both remembered and unremembered trauma, who try so hard to heal and yet who are constantly being pushed down both by their symptoms and the oppressive circumstances of post traumatic life around them.' -Carolyn Spring

"The human need to be visible is countered by the need to be invisible to avoid further abuse and the need for intimacy and the dread of abuse; all pose insoluble dichotomies which promote further withdrawal from human contact, which reinforces the sense of dehumanization." -Christiane Sanderson

"When all you know is fight or flight, red flags and butterflies all feel the same." -Cindy Cherie

"You have to understand that PTSD has to be an event that you experience, a very traumatic event. And actually, there is evidence that brain chemistry changes during this event in certain individuals where it's imprinted indelibly forever and there's an emotion associated with this which triggers the condition." -Dale Archer

"The reason why you need emotional support is because it's important for survivors to be heard.To be understood. To be able to express yourself without fearing criticism or harsh judgement. To be validated for your pain, suffering, and loss. For others to be there for you to encourage you, especially if you're having a bad day or feeling triggered." -Dana Arcuri

"I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war." -Daniel Somers

"Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin." -Danielle Bernock

"The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness, trapped in a sort of spiritual solitary confinement, looking back at the rest of the world from beyond the barrier of what happened. They find themselves unable to communicate their condition to those who remained at home, resenting civilians from their blind innocence." -David Brooks