Trauma Quotes and Insights into PTSD and CPTSD

“In essence, the therapist’s role is to help engage the client in active meditation. It is that state of meditation, of non-attached observation, that processes emotional residue. The therapist helps to hold the space, contain emotions and gently curb attempts to escape.”

“When we are overwhelmed by emotion it either turns inward through suppression, or overflows outwardly. Think of blame and hatred as an overflowing response of anger, and self-reproach as anger acting on the sense of self.”

“Addictive behavior or addiction to substances has altered our relation to our pain-pleasure centers in the brain and creates an additional problem of craving. It masks and perpetuates the underlying Post-Traumatic Stress which is often at the origin of it all.”

“The emotional charge of trauma coupled to a coping habit (drink, drugs, shopping, sex, etc.) reinforces an unhealthy cyclic build up and release of energy in the nervous system.”

“Guilt, blame, shame, embarrassment, pride, and self-reproach are reactions people engage in to deal with an overwhelming emotion. They are an intrinsic part of a traumatic experience.”

“When states of disconnection and Post-Traumatic Stress persist, the dis-connective state becomes an identity in itself and thus it becomes very hard to move out of it. The fear of reconnecting, working through the trauma and addressing the helplessness also means death of the ‘trauma identity’. We thus tend to stay with the known, even if it is painful and destructive, rather than face the unknown and potential healing.”

“Holding the disconnection, feeling it, becoming intimate with it, starts to make it more fluid, less frozen; this paves the way for connecting again, for feeling the body, the sensations, the pains.”

“Realizing and bringing into awareness that the persisting coping emotion and ‘coping habit’ are part of an identity structure, prevents infusing past history with emotional rebuild-up. Furthermore, to look at the identity structure, you must also address the sense of control (and safety) the coping habits have had for you in order to deal with the traumatic overwhelm, and do a reality check to see if the need to control is still valid. This is a big one– to let go of control.”

“It’s that middle ground of neither indulging or drowning in emotion, nor holding it in or suppressing it, that starts to discharge and digest the high energy charge of the nervous system.”