Childhood Trauma Quotes

“The sad thing that many of us empaths don’t realize is that often our desire to heal others is a disguised cry for help for our own healing. Because many of us weren’t taught how to value or nurture ourselves at a young age, we tend to unconsciously seek out our own healing in the healing of others.”
― Mateo Sol, Awakened Empath: The Ultimate Guide to Emotional, Psychological and Spiritual Healing

“Since there was nothing at all I was certain of, since I needed to be provided at every instant with a new confirmation of my existence, since nothing was in my very own, undoubted, sole possession, determined unequivocally only by me — in sober truth a disinherited son — naturally I became unsure even of the thing nearest to me, my own body.”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“It makes perfect sense that if human beings are raised in warm, loving households; if they are brought up to believe that the world is a secure and decent place, then they will grow up with a healthy relationship toward themselves and other people. - able to give love freely and receive it in return. Conversely, if a person is severely mistreated from his earliest years, subjected to constant psychological and physical abuse, he or she will grow up with a malignant view of life. To such a person, the world is a hateful place where all human relationships are based, not on love and respect, but on power, suffering, and humiliation.”
― Harold Schechter, The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers

“No matter what else people may steal from you, they will never be able to take away your knowledge.”
― Adeline Yen Mah, Falling Leaves

“Keep your heart wide open and you’ll be received with open hearts — not by everyone, but to be received by one open heart is more than worth the journey.”
― Marnie Grundman, Missing A True Story Of A Childhood Lost

“Childhood trauma can range from having faces extreme violence and neglect to having confronted feelings of not belonging, being unwanted, or being chronically misunderstood. You may have grown up in an environment where your curiosity and enthusiasm were constantly devalued. Perhaps you were brought up in a family where your parents had unresolved traumas of their own, which impaired their ability to attend to your emotional needs. Or, you may have faced vicious sexual or physical attacks. In all such situations, you learn to compensate by developing defenses around your most vulnerabe parts.”
― Arielle Schwartz, The Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach to Regaining Emotional Control and Becoming Whole

“When you study the wrongs you have committed before you study the wrongs done to you, you have no choice but to label yourself inherently evil, and be forced to dissociate emotionally to avoid the horrible pain in this lie.”
― Daniel Mackler, Toward truth: A psychological guide to enlightenment

“The primary driver to pathological dissociation is attachment disorganization in early life: when that is followed by severe and repeated trauma, then a major disorder of structural dissociation is created (Lyons-Ruth, Dutra, Schuder, & Bianchi, 2006).”
― Frank M. Corrigan, Neurobiology and Treatment of Traumatic Dissociation: Towards an Embodied Self

“When you can identify the insecurities inside the person that is hurting you then you can begin to heal. It isn't about you. It is about their past.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“It never really ends...
Children surviving through the cold winds of neglect, and all kinds of misfortune and vile treatment.We see them everyday, with broken smiles that endure the painful kicking of their malnourished bellies protruded with dreams that may never see the light of conception...
But with just a little kind word,
A handful of promise,
A heart of compassion,
A smile full of hope,
We would hold hands together in helping them conceive their dreams...
Because they are the little bits and pieces that make us whole...”
― Chinonye J. Chidolue

“Complexly traumatized children need to be helped to engage their attention in pursuits that do not remind them of trauma-related triggers and that give them a sense of pleasure and mastery. Safety, predictability, and "fun" are essential for the establishment of the capacity to observe what is going on, put it into a larger context, and initiate physiological and motoric self-regulation.”
― Sarah Benamer, Trauma and Attachment

“Perhaps this was the wisdom with which a child in her position survived: by minimizing her wounds—staying as small as possible, as nearly transparent as possible.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“She is at a crossroads: a child’s violent will to survive lodged in her chest where her heart should be, but an utter indifference along with it.”
― Lidia Yuknavitch, The Small Backs of Children

“I knew that I was the least-loved child because I was a girl and because my mother had died giving birth to me.”
― Adeline Yen Mah , Falling Leaves

“There’s a weight in the room now, a remembrance of childhood. It sinks like a stone, or a heart, or my weight on a good day.”
― Kris Kidd, Split Lips: Stories About Love & Sex

“When people look at a dangerous violent criminal at the beginning of his developmental process rather than at the very end of it, they will see, perhaps unexpectedly, that the dangerous violent criminal began as a relatively benign human being for whom they would probably have more sympathy than antipathy.”
― Richard Rhodes, Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist

“Childhood introduces children to the wounds of the world.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“I also often ask my guests about what they consider to be their invisible weaknesses and shortcomings. I do this because these are the characteristics that define us no less than our strengths. What we feel sets us apart from other people is often the thing that shapes us as individuals. This may be especially true of writers and actors, many of whom first started to develop their observational skills as a result of being sidelined from typical childhood or adolescent activities because of an infirmity or a feeling of not fitting in. Or so I’ve come to believe from talking to so many writers and actors over the years.”
― Terry Gross, All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists

“I wonder how much- or how little- they remember. I am somehow convinced that they don't remember any of it, because they don't need to remember. I'm the only one that hears the voice of the Turtle, the only one who remembers, because I'm the only one who stayed here in Derry. And because they're scattered to the four winds, they have no way of knowing the identical patterns their lives have taken. To bring them back, to show them that pattern....yes, it might kill some of them. It might kill all of them.”
― Stephen King, It

“A child needs to feel safe and protected, which means that their body, psyche, and belongings are safe and secure from violation. Because a child is helpless and dependent on their caregiver, they need a guardian in this predominantly unknown and sometimes scary and dangerous world. A child’s caregiver is responsible to fit the roles of safe haven and protector.”
― Darius Cikanavicius, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults

“We are all damaged goods. We mourn when we are victims and rejoice at our enemies' misery. We pray for the victory of our fighters and the demise of the enemies. We don't do anything in between. No one talks to anyone. We just shoot or cry. By playing both parts we are winning the pity of the dumb Western countries and rich Arab leaders."
"What parts?" Mona asked.
"Victims and perpetrators.”
― Sam Wazan, Trapped in Four Square Miles

“In the early 1970s, racial and gender discrimination was still prevalent. The easy camaraderie prevailing in the operating room evaporated at the completion of surgical procedures. There was an unspoken pecking order of seating arrangements at lunch among my fellow physicians. At the top were the white male 'primary producers' in prestigious surgical specialties. They were followed by the internists. Next came the general practitioners. Last on the list were the hospital-based physicians: the radiologists, pathologists and anaesthesiologists - especially non-white, female ones like me. Apart from colour, we were shunned because we did not bring in patients ourselves but, like vultures, lived off the patients generated by other doctors. We were also resented because being hospital-based and not having to rent office space or hire nursing staff, we had low overheads. Since a physician's number of admissions to the hospital and referral pattern determined the degree of attention and regard accorded by colleagues, it was safe for our peers to ignore us and target those in position to send over income-producing referrals. This attitude was mirrored from the board of directors all the way down to the orderlies.”
― Adeline Yen Mah, Falling Leaves

“... as Herman (1992b) cogently noted two decades ago, these personality disorders can be iatrogenic, causing harm to individuals as an inadvertent result of the social stigma they carry and the widespread (but not entirely accurate) belief among professionals and insurers that those with Cluster B personality disorders (especially borderline personality disorder[BPD]) cannot be treated successfully, cannot recover, and are a headache to practitioners. For example, the BPD diagnosis continues to be applied predominantly to women often, but not always, in a negative way, usually signifying that they are irrational and beyond help. Describing posttraumatic symptoms as a personality disorder not only can be demoralizing for the client due to its connotation that something is defective with his or her core self (i.e., personality) but also may misdirect the therapist by implying that the patient's core personality should be the focus of treatment rather than trauma-related adaptations that affect but are distinct from the core self. In this way, both therapists and their clients may overlook personality strengths and capacities that are healthy and sources of resilience that can be a basis for building on and enhancing (rather than "fixing" or remaking) the patient's core self and personality.”
― Christine A. Courtois, Treatment of Complex Trauma: A Sequenced, Relationship-Based Approach

“When I am saying all of this, she is just looking at me and I am seeing water in her eye. So I am saying to her, if I am telling this to you it will be making you to think that I am some sort of beast or devil. Amy is never saying anything when I am saying this, but the water is just shining in her eye. And I am saying to her, fine. I am all of this thing. I am all of this thing, but I am also having mother once, and she is loving me.”
― Uzodinma Iweala

“But I wanted to cook. I needed to cook. Mom had raised me with the implicit understanding that cooking is the answer to all life’s vicissitudes – not just the antidote to boredom, but also a way to ward off the darker realities of grief, separation, and loneliness.”
― Sasha Martin, Life from Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness

“My mother is a certainty. I can count on the watercolour pain in her voice when she calls to say she hasn't heard from me in months. The precarious laughter as she comes from the kitchen, when I finally do appear on her doorstep, the laughter that says I might be a chickadee that's alighted unexpectedly on her thumb.”
― Trevor Cole, Hope Makes Love

“When we first arrived at the school we received an extended introduction detailing what a wonderful place it was and how lucky we were to be there. But no one explained exactly why we were to be there. Yes, we understood the general objective was to accumulate knowledge, although learning Shakespeare and algebra did not strike us as particularly helpful to our future lives. I've yet to meet a single person who found a use for algebra in later life. The excuse proffered was that it developed intelligence. It struck me as extremely unintelligent not to give us the opportunity to study subjects that would be of practical use as well as develop our intelligence. I learned Boyle's law and Ohm's law parrot fashion without having a clue as to their meaning, yet left the school five years later incapable of changing a fuse or wiring a three-pin plug. Understandably, we formed the general impression that we were there for the same reason we were sent to Sunday school – to keep us out of mischief until we were old enough to work.”
― Allen Carr

“Your Mom's Car. Think about that. Try to wrap your brain around the supernatural and spiritual implications that the name bears down you. Your Mom's Car, holding its hand out straight, fingers curled, a zombie reaching for your neck.”
― Dan Chaon, Ill Will

“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

“Primal Therapy simply means bringing their childhood back to them. They will relive it in imagination and whatsoever has remained incomplete will have to be completed in imagination. Then those problems will disappear. It is sometimes very hard to go back to the old wounds and to let them again overpower you; to again suffer those things which you have been thinking had completely disappeared. For example someone has insulted you when you were a small child. That wound is there. You have forgotten it but it continues to function inside your unconscious, and it has to be healed.”
― Osho, Beloved of my heart: A Darshan diary