86 Quotes About Traumatized

Now and again there occur alterations of the 'emotional' and the 'apparently normal' personalities, the return of the former often heralded by severe headache, dizziness or by a hysterical convulsion. On its return, the 'apparently normal' personality may recall, as in a dream, the distressing experiences revived during the temporary intrusion of the 'emotional' personality.

I must stop remembering... The more I remember, the greater my agony. These thoughts stuttered in my mind...I must be more watchful, I told myself. I must shut them out. I couldn't always keep this up.

I find that I cannot be in the here and now.

Without trauma-informed treatment, traumatized clients may not respond optimally and they may even be re-traumatized by the mental health system if they are labeled as “treatment resistant” because the treatment does not address the core issue of trauma; some may be misunderstood as fabricating or exaggerating their trauma history or symptoms.

People keep talking at me, talking, talking, talking

This [June's] account poignantly illustrates many of the multi- faceted, complex, and contradictory processes contained in participants' stories.

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

Sometimes, PTSD sufferers will shut out memories of painful periods in their lives and experience amnesia. Thus, a traumatized individual might not remember when his spouse died in a car accident. Another person who was abused might have gaps in her memory of childhood.

Trauma destroys the fabric of time. In normal time you move from one moment to the next, sunrise to sunset, birth to death. After trauma, you may move in circles, find yourself being sucked backwards into an eddy or bouncing like a rubber ball from now to then to back again. ... In the traumatic universe the basic laws of matter are suspended: ceiling fans can be helicopters, car exhaust can be mustard gas.