Childhood Trauma Quotes

“But what happens to the girl with no positive parental examples?
What happens to the girl with the cold mother who
conditioned herself to bury her emotions?
And what happens to the girl with the father who
is an example of who not to marry?”
― LaTasha “Tacha B.” Braxton

“Rigidity or inflexibility can be the result of a previous history of abuse or trauma, or of an upbringing that offered a child no permission to experiment or to deviate from the family norms. Flexibility can come from the freedom of having been allowed to make one’s own choices as one was growing up.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“My mother was already an abandoned soul,
a misguided young woman who would subconsciously put herself into situations
that starved her soul. The worst feeling in the world is to love someone who cannot love you back, to care about someone who can only care about themselves.”
― LaTasha “Tacha B.” Braxton

“If a child’s emotional and intellectual freedom is restricted, their development and well-being suffer, which leads to complex problems in later life. Deprivation of thought and emotion results in an irrationality of cognition, feeling, and communication.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“Only when a child’s authenticity is threatened do they develop unhealthy behaviors, distorted reality perceptions, and emotional difficulties. When you force a child to do what they don’t want to do, feel what they don’t feel, and think what they don’t think, their authentic self becomes damaged.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“Persons in dysfunctional families characteristically do not feel because they learned from a young age that not feeling is necessary for psychic survival. Family members generally learn it is too painful to feel the hurt or to experience the fear that comes from feelings of rage, abandonment, moments of terror, and memories of horror.”
― Kathleen Heide

“In spite of everything she did that she shouldn't have done, and everything she didn't do that she should have, something that felt like love was in her and she would take it out at times like this and show it to us and make us hunger for more. All of us, each in our own way.”
― Wendy Walker, Emma in the Night

“His wife killed him. Too simple. His childhood, his mother, his father, his siblings? Even if the scars of childhood heal, you never grow out of being vulnerable. Age is no shield against trauma.”
― Mario Puzo, Fools Die

“One of the most common corruptions of childrearing remains the controlling caregiver’s propensity to shape the child into an object aligned with the caregiver’s own unprocessed trauma. Controlling caregivers have a variety of methods at their disposal to accomplish this, including such “civilized” approaches as manipulating, conditionally loving, withdrawing attention, threatening, isolating, shaming, guilt-tripping, humiliating, and withdrawing resources.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“Sometimes our parents are full of love and sometimes they are full of anger. This love and anger comes not only from them, but from all previous generations. When we can see this, we no longer blame our parents for our suffering.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child

“A controlled child also learns that the default human approach to interaction is forcing, threatening, or manipulating others. Alternatively, they may come to believe that they are “destined” to be a giver who never receives anything back.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“The house smelled like fireplace kindling, and hot water in old brass pipes - like metal melting into wood and becoming something all its own. It smelled like his childhood. Like chaos and terror and oatmeal cookies and lamb stew, and nighttime in front of that drafty front window. And the smell of it brought back thoughts, long past, about escaping from inside the walls and evoked the helplessness of every board that kept the place upright.”
― Melodie Ramone, Lights of Polaris

“Furthermore, the controlling caregiver possesses poor boundaries, if they have any at all. These poor boundaries set the child up for numerous failures in adult life. The controlled child is like a chess piece or toy soldier who is constantly moved around, picked up, put down, ordered to do this, ordered not to do that, commanded to feel this, and commanded not to feel that.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“Meanwhile, infants and small children are exceptionally authentic beings because their emotional reactions and their thoughts are raw and honest. If they are happy, they smile, giggle, exclaim in pure joy, and feel excited, motivated, curious, and creative. If they are hurt, they cry, disengage, get angry, seek help and protection, and feel betrayed, sad, scared, lonely, and helpless. They don’t hide behind a mask.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“She had had such an unhappy childhood and she had only to picture some poor child suffering in a similar way for her heart to sink. Of course, she knew that she would never punish her child for poor academic performance. She would not comment on her child’s lack of good looks either. Nor would she ever tell her son or daughter as her mother had once told her that she was only staying in a bad, destructive relationship for their sake.”
― Lynne Graham, The Italian Boss's Mistress

“After researching, reviewing, considering, and contemplating with continued attention; I have concluded that the beast is among us.”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“...the child cries because they need something. If the child had the ability to take care of the problem themselves, they wouldn’t cry. And if their crying is ignored, they start to feel helpless and frustrated because they can’t get what they need. They may even fear abandonment—or feel that their life is in danger because no one is coming to help them. Failing to meet a crying child’s needs also teaches the child that their needs and feelings are unimportant and even dangerous, and that they are bad and unworthy of love.”
― Darius Cikanavicius

“The child of a controlling caregiver believes that there are always winners and losers in life, and that the winners have all the power and the losers must neglect their own senses, needs, and wants. The result is that they gain a deformed and inaccurate picture of the world—the only world they know.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“Adulthood is an attempt to become the antithesis of the wounded child within us.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Crying is the primary way by which infants and small children convey their needs. Their cries can be from hunger, pain, fear, neglect, and many other things. It is the caregiver’s responsibility to correctly decipher these needs and then meet them. It is tragically common, however, that the child’s cries are so often ignored, misunderstood, and even taken as an "attack" on the caregiver, which may result in an active and brutal punishment of the child.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“Children need their caregiver’s presence, interaction, connection, and emotional availability. Not only are these fundamental elements closely related to feelings of safety and security, they are also vital for a child’s healthy development. Since the child’s well-being depends on the bond between themselves and their caregiver, it is their caregiver’s responsibility to be very attentive both to their own selves and to their child.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“Pedophiles the world over. If you want to do that insufferable thing you do without care, concern, and/or worry; become a Catholic priest. Birds of a feather.”
― A.K. Kuykendall, The Confessional

“Having known my parents for a little over eleven years, I began to wonder why either of them ever had children. As an almost twelve-year-old, I was clear that this was not the normal pondering of a child. I began to have doubts that I was loved. I began to see a pattern of me being the one who always seemed to be in the way. I began to believe that I really was a burden. I was the problem.”
― Lockey Maisonneuve, A Girl Raised by Wolves: An inspiring memoir of one woman's journey through sex trafficking, cancer, murder and more.

“Dad held Mama as if she were made of glass. So careful, so concerned for her well-being. It filled Leni with an impotent rage.
And then she'd get a glimpse of him with tears in his eyes and the rage would turn soft and slide into something like forgiveness. She didn't know how to corral or change either of these emotions; her love for him was all tangled up in hate. Right now she felt both emotions crowding in on her, each jostling for the lead.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Great Alone

“Ignoring a baby’s cries without addressing their needs can permanently harm them. All of these failures may lead a child to have post-traumatic stress disorder or any of the forms of panic disorder in their adulthood.”
― Darius Cikanavicius

“There are some DID clients whose pathological dissociation was triggered by accidents or natural disasters. For example, I treated one client whose first alter was created after the young host accidentally fell off a raft and was pulled under by a strong wave. In sheer terror, she utilized her innate capacity to dissociate before she was rescued.”
― Sarah Y. Krakauer, Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder: The Power of the Collective Heart

“I tell Ceri, this is most likely when I developed an utter love of literature.
The Adventures of Tom Sayer.
David Copperfield.
The Little Prince.
Then Cervantes.
Balzac.
Nabokov.
Capote.
Some of Miller – but my folks found out and said I was too young for that.
I tell Ceri, most likely this is when I developed my inner fears.
But that would be an oversimplification.
Some-times he used to come around when my mum wasn't there, and Dad was always tired and angry cause he couldn't find a job.
And when they had done drinking and Dad was resting, sometimes he would come to my room and we'd read together.
He would pull me out of my bed, put me on his knees and hold me tight and read Verne or Rimbaud or Carroll.
In candlelight, we would read Dickens and Doyle.
Salinger as well.
I tell Ceri, this is most likely when my brain started to repress memories and wounds.
Then one day they had an argument, Mum was crying a lot that day and at one point came to my room and hugged me till night.
We moved out of there shortly after, we moved to a smaller house and I never saw him again.


The first time I meet her, I tell Ceri this is just another story now.
No need to worry about anything, really.
I tell her, I don't even read Rimbaud or Cervantes anymore, you know.”
― Gian Andrea, Connections

“I don't know if they ever knew how uncomfortable it was to hear over and over again that my parents were bad people. Eventually, I could only draw the conclusion that bad people came from bad people, so I must be a bad person, too.”
― Lockey Maisonneuve, A Girl Raised by Wolves: An inspiring memoir of one woman's journey through sex trafficking, cancer, murder and more.

“Unresolved trauma can take a significant toll on your physical health. Unresolved childhood trauma is particularly insidious, with effects that are both gradual and cumulative.”
― Arielle Schwartz, The Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach to Regaining Emotional Control and Becoming Whole

“the taste of fine-tuned rage spilling out of a mouth turned up in painted smiles pretend smiles faked smiles”
― Sumaiya Ahmed, Lost and Found