Posttraumatic Quotes & Sayings

It is indeed the truth of the traumatic experience that forms the center of its psychopathology; it is not a pathology of falsehood or displacement of meaning, but of history itself (p. 5) — Cathy Caruth

Instead of showing visibly distinct alternate identities, the typical DID patient presents a polysymptomatic mixture of dissociative and posttraumatic stressdisorder (PTSD) symptoms that are embedded in a matrix of ostensibly non-trauma-related symptoms (e.g., depression, panic attacks, substance abuse,somatoform symptoms, eating-disordered symptoms). The prominence of these latter, highly familiar symptoms often leads clinicians to diagnose only these comorbid conditions. When this happens, the undiagnosed DID patient may undergo a long and frequently unsuccessful treatment for these other conditions.
- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p5 — James A. Chu

After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment. — Judith Lewis Herman

Traumas produce their disintegrating effects in proportion to their intensity, duration and repetition. (1909) — Pierre Janet

...man becomes a soft, flabby, weak creature. This is especially true in a privileged society like that found in the United States, where a metrosexual will squeal like a little bitch if the Vietnamese lady giving him his manicure cuts too close to his cuticle. Not only will such a pathetic creature be unable to stand even the mildest rite of passage, but if he even witnesses one, he will have to undergo years of therapy to cure his posttraumatic stress. — Dave Nichols

Childhood trauma does not come in one single package. — Asa Don Brown

However, if you do not believe your clients, they may sense your doubt and never fully trust you. As Bruce Goderez (1986), director of a PTSD inpatient unit says, "It is important for the clinician and counselor to be willing to be made a fool." In other words, it is better that you believe a client who is lying or distorting the truth than to disbelieve a hurting trauma survivor who may never seek help again if your attitude is one of disbelief or disdain. Even if that client were to continue in therapy, they would never fully trust you. — Aphrodite Matsakis

A scar had been beaten into his mind which would only heal by experience. — Ian Fleming

It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps. — Peter Straub

As modern neurobiologists point out, the repetition of the traumatic experience in the flashbacks can be itself re-traumatizing; if not life-threatening, it is at least threatening to the chemical structure of the brain and can ultimately lead to deterioration. And this would also seem to explain the high suicide rate of survivor, for example, survivors of Vietnam. — Cathy Caruth

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

In talking with people that have experienced it, I learned that PTSD is something that a person in a position of authority sometimes thinks they're not supposed to have. They don't always have an avenue to personally address it or even discuss it. — Stana Katic

Because of media portrayals, clinicians may believe that dissociative identity disorder presents with dramatic, florid alternate identities with obvious state transitions (switching). These florid presentations occur in only about 5% of patients with dissociative identity disorder.(20) How ever, the vast majority of these patients have subtle presentations characterized by a mixture of dissociative and PTSD symptoms embedded with other symptoms, such as post-traumatic depression, substance abuse, somatoform symptoms, eating disorders, and self-destructive and impulsive behaviors.(2,10) — Bethany L. Brand

Always remember, if you have been diagnosed with PTSD, it is not a sign of weakness; rather, it is proof of your strength, because you have survived! — Michel Templet

In 1989, Eugene Peniston and Paul Kulkosky used a specific neurofeedback protocol for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They facilitated twilight states of learning by rewarding both alpha and theta. Their protocol has come to be called deep-states training (Robbins, 2000a). Guided visualizations and skin temperature (ST) training were also part of the protocol design. The first landmark study included a small population of Vietnam veterans. Two years later Peniston and Kulkosky studied the effect of neurofeedback training with veterans who had dual diagnoses of alcoholism and PTSD. Both studies had positive outcomes (Peniston & Kulkosky, 1999). They — John N. Demos

Acknowledgement of the prevalence and impact of trauma challenges psychological theories that localize dysfunction within the individual while ignoring the contribution of social forces on adjustment (Brett, 1996; Ross, 2000). — Rachel E. Goldsmith

Years ago I had realized I was blaming myself for it. People and doctors would tell me it wasn't my fault, but I couldn't "BELIEVE" it! Then I was talking to my friend Kieran and he explained to me in a way that I could PERCEIVE that I was not at fault. No one else could ever do that before, though many tried. Many, many people had tried to tell me it wasn't my fault, but I was convinced it was my fault because I was trying to cheer up my dad. — Robert Anthony

Unlike other forms of psychological disorders, the core issue in trauma is reality. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

If you're working, it's the best therapy for posttraumatic stress, Juan says. Studies have shown that the gravity of posttraumatic stress is directly proportional to the length of time one lives with the threat of death, and Juan slowly unwinds the trauma of the sixty-nine days he lived inside a thundering mountain by going to work, fixing machines, then going back home, and then returning to work again. — Hector Tobar

The most common emotional defense is avoidance (an ineffective coping skill for any stressor) as expressed through denial (e.g., "That wasn't really bad, I barely remember it"). — Brian Luke Seaward

Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world - "Life is good," "I'm safe," "People are kind," "I can trust others," "The future is likely to be good" - and replaces them with feelings like "The world is dangerous," "I can't win," "I can't trust other people," or "There's no hope. — Mark Goulston

It was difficult to find information because Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was called shell shock during W.W.II, and when Vietnam Vets were found to suffer from the same symptoms after exposure to traumatic war scenes, a study was embarked upon that ended with the new, more appropriate name in 1980. Thomas was diagnosed with P.T.S.D. shortly afterwards, before the term P.T.S.D. was common. — Sara Niles

I went to a psychiatrist (NBC insisted we all go) and told her I had been through traumatic experiences before and understood that the kidnapping would leave "fingerprints" on me for a while. The key was knowing what to expect. If you get blind drunk, you know you're going to wake up with a hangover. By the same token, I expected post-traumatic stress symptoms - anger, irritability, a sense of isolation - and I experienced those feelings, off and on, for several months. It's like having the monkey on your back again, and being self-aware helps shake him off. — Richard Engel

Victims are members of society whose problems represent the memory of suffering, rage, and pain in a world that longs to forget. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years. — Khaled Hosseini

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

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

Memories of traumatic experiences may not be primarily retrieved as narratives. Our own and others' research has suggested that PTSD traumatized people's difficulties with putting memories into words are reflected in actual changes in brain activity.
(van der Kolk, Hopper & Osterman, 2001)
Trauma and Cognitive Science, Chapter 1 — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The brave men and women, who serve their country and as a result, live constantly with the war inside them, exist in a world of chaos. But the turmoil they experience isn't who they are; the PTSD invades their minds and bodies. — Robert Koger

The power we discover inside ourselves as we survive a life-threatening experience can be utilized equally well outside of crisis, too. I am, in every moment, capable of mustering the strength to survive again - or of tapping that strength in other good, productive, healthy ways. — Michele Rosenthal

Our work calls on us to confront, with our patients and within ourselves, extraordinary human experiences. This confrontation is profoundly humbling in that at all times these experiences challenge the limits of our humanity and our view of the world... — John P. Wilson

The central mechanism of the avoidance mechanism of PTSD is the ego defense of denial — Frank M. Ochberg

Often it isn't the initiating trauma that creates seemingly insurmountable pain, but the lack of support after. — S. Kelley Harrell

July 15, 1991

Nita: My mother was a paragon of our neighborhood, People always come up to us with hugs, saying "You have the most wonderful mother." l'd think. "Don't you see what's going on in this house?" To this day, if somehow even in jest raises their hand to me, I will do this (raises hands to protect face and cowers) I cringe. Then they look at me like, what's your probem? You don't get that from a great childhood. — Sarah E. Olson

It has become clear that, as Janet observed one hundred years ago, dissociation lies at the heart of the traumatic stress disorders. Studies of survivors of disasters, terrorist attacks, and combat have demonstrated that people who enter a dissociative state at the time of the traumatic event are among most likely to develop long-lasting PTSD. — Judith Lewis Herman

Trauma is any stressor that occurs in a sudden and forceful way and is experienced as overwhelming. — Stephanie S. Covington

We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our body, which is doomed to decay ... , from the external world which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless force of destruction, and finally from our relations with other men ... This last source is perhaps more painful to use than any other. (p77) — Sigmund Freud

The second factor helping to bring the dissociative disorders back into the mainstream was the Vietnam War. For sociological reasons originating outside psychology and psychiatry, the Vietnam War and the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that arose from it were not forgotten when the veterans returned home, as had been the case in the two world wars and the Korean War. The realization that real, severe trauma could have serious long-term psychopathological consequences was forced on society as a whole by Vietnam. Once this principle was accepted, it as a short leap to the conclusion that severe childhood trauma might have serious sequelae lasting into adulthood. — Colin A. Ross

In order to believe clients' accounts of trauma, you need to suspend any pre-conceived notions that you have about what is possible and impossible in human experience. As simple as they may sound, it may be difficult to do so. — Aphrodite Matsakis

In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder. — Jan Karon

We've all seen the headlines implying that people with PTSD are dangerous. We must not resort to thinking, due to fear, that a person with PTSD equals a ticking time bomb. The stigma surrounding PTSD is so negative. It arouses concerns and provokes whispers and worried glances. People don't understand it at all. They assume I'm a potential powder keg just waiting for a spark to set me off into a rage, and that's just not true, about me or any person with PTSD. I have never physically assaulted anyone out of anger or rage. I'm suffering with it and people are afraid to ask me about it. — James Meuer

Posttraumatic stress is something that's always existed. I think that the earliest recording was during the Trojan War, but it's only recently that we're beginning to be aware of it. — Janine Di Giovanni