Traumatized Quotes

“It’s strange how easy it was, once we tried, to just spend time being broken together.”
― Rasmenia Massoud, Tied Within

“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.”
― Sonali Deraniyagala, Wave

“I look around and think: Good God, what kind of hell is this?”
― Chil Rajchman, The Last Jew of Treblinka

“I become almost wild and shout at them: - To whom are you reciting Kaddish? Do you still believe? And what do you believe, whom are you thinking? Are you thanking the Lord for his mercy and taking away our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers? No, no! It is not true; there is no God. If there were a God, he would not allow such misfortune, such transgression, where innocent small children, only just born, or killed, by people who want only to to honest work and make themselves useful to the world are killed! and you, living witnesses of the great misfortune, remain thankful. Whom are you thanking?”
― Chil Rajchman, The Last Jew of Treblinka

“All were expecting to die, and every day of their life was a day of suffering and torment. All had witnessed terrible crimes, and the Germans would have spared none of them; the gas chambers awaited them. Most, in fact, were sent to the gas chambers after only a few days of work, and were replaced by people from new contingents. Only a few dozen people lived for weeks and months, rather than for days and hours; these were skilled workers, carpenters and stonemasons, and the bakers, tailors and barbers who ministered to the Germans' everyday needs. These people created an Organizing Committee for an uprising. It was of course, only the already-condemned, only people possessed by an all-consuming hatred and a fierce thirst for revenge, who could have conceived such an insane plan. They did not want to escape until they had destroyed Treblinka. And they destroyed it.”
― Chil Rajchman, The Last Jew of Treblinka

“the reality of being here eludes me, I can’t focus, I am dazed. And I want to stay this way. If I have too much clarity, I will be undone, I fear.”
― Sonali Deraniyagala, Wave

“Once the individual has learned to dissociate in the context of trauma, he or she may subsequently transfer this response to other situations and it may be repeated thereafter arbitrarily in a wide variety of circumstances. The dissociation therefore “destabilizes adaptation and becomes pathological.”[6] It is important for the psychiatrist to accurately diagnose DDs and also to place the symptoms in perspective with regard to trauma history.”
― Julie P. Gentile

“He cannot forgive himself for having saved himself when his wife and child went to their deaths we are all as if drugged. Yesterday all of my family were living and now - all are dead. Each of us stands as if turn to stone. I weep for my fate, for what I have left to see.”
― Chil Rajchman, The Last Jew of Treblinka

“You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion that define you as a person.
There is no feeling any more, because to feel any emotion would also be to beckon the overwhelming blackness from you. My mind has now locked all this down. And without any control of this self-defence mechanism my subconscious has operated. I do not feel any more.”
― Jake Wood, Among You: The Extraordinary True Story of a Soldier Broken By War

“Scientists, doctors, and trained ordinary citizens use drugs and torture to render children machines that do others' bidding. The commands these perpetrators put in the victims are called "programming".
They take an isolated, barricaded piece from one stream in the mind and another and another and sometimes tie them together at the bottom and twist them together and tell them to act but not remember.”
― Wendy Hoffman, White Witch in a Black Robe: A True Story About Criminal Mind Control

“It was as if her life had been brought to a full stop: she couldn't look forward, couldn't picture what tomorrow night bring.”
― Ragnar Jónasson, The Darkness

“Feeling must have rendered her numb.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“It’s the way people look at you when they know you’re damaged, but don’t know how to react to knowing a thing like that.”
― Rasmenia Massoud, Tied Within

“This reorienting is not an attempt to avoid or discount clients' pain and ongoing suffering. Rather, it is a means to help them observe, firsthand, how their chronic orienting tendencies toward reminders of the past recreate the trauma-related experience of danger and powerlessness, whereas choosing to orient to a good feeling can result in an experience of safety and mastery. As clients become able to do so the new objects of orientation often become more defined and & Goodman 1951). Rather than attention being drawn repeatedly to physical pain or traumatic activation, the good feeling becomes more prominent in the client's awareness. This exercise of reorienting toward a positive stimulus can surprise and reassure clients that they are not imprisoned indefinitely in an inner world of chronic traumatic reexperiencing, and that they have more possibilities and control than they had imagined. These orienting exercises need to be practiced again and again for mastery.”
― Pat Ogden, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy

“To psychotherapists, I say, don't just leave us abandoned because you think you don't know enough to help us, or because the world doesn't believe in what we went through, or because our trauma is too awful to hear about.”
― Wendy Hoffman, White Witch in a Black Robe: A True Story About Criminal Mind Control

“The more I remember, the more inconsolable I will be, I've told myself. But now increasingly I don't tussle with my memories. I want to remember. I want to know. Perhaps I can better tolerate being inconsolable now. Perhaps I suspect that remembering won't make me any more inconsolable. Or less.”
― Sonali Deraniyagala, Wave

“It isn't fair the way memory twists up the things it shows you.”
― Rasmenia Massoud, Tied Within

“There needs to be a nationwide awareness programme for all NHS staff, to educate them about dissociative disorders. Diagnoses need to be more obtainable within the NHS; people's lives should be placed ahead of funding restraints and bureaucratic red tape. We need minimum standards of care and treatment agreed and implemented within the NHS to end the current nightmare of the postcode lottery—not just guidelines that can be ignored but actual regulations.”
― carol broad , Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“We are at once put to work sorting. My friend Leybl stands next to me. We inspect every garment as carefully as possible. On the other side of me stands a worker who has already been here for several days. I want to find out from him what happened here, since, despite the fact that I can see the clothes left behind by the victims, I still cannot grasp what is going on.”
― Chil Rajchman, The Last Jew of Treblinka

“First night in the barracks. Moyshe Ettinger tells us how he saved himself and cannot forgive himself. The evening prayer is recited and Kaddish is set for the dead.”
― Chil Rajchman, The Last Jew of Treblinka

“In contrast to ordinary memories both good and bad, which are mutable and dynamically changing over time, traumatic memories are fixed and static. They’re imprints, engrams from past overwhelming experiences. Deep impressions carved into the sufferer’s brain body and psyche. These harsh and frozen imprints do not yield to change, nor do they readily update with current information. The fixity of imprints prevents us from forming new strategies and extracting new meanings. There is no fresh ever-changing now, and no real flow in life. In this way, the past lives on in the present.”
― Peter A. Levine Ph.D.

“The shrinks call it Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. I call it hell. The demons are waiting in each corner, ready to drag me back to the battlefield.
- Puncture Wounds (2014)”
― James Coyne

“Trauma is a rude awakening, but also an opportunity to edit the script from believing to knowing. Self define for destiny's shine!”
― T.F. Hodge

“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.”
― Charles S. Myers, Shell Shock in France, 1914-1918: Based on a War Diary

“Once, when I straighten up, I am beaten till I bleed.
I no longer know where I am in the world.”
― Chil Rajchman, The Last Jew of Treblinka

“And I know only too well how time can cast a sort of skin over an event—a membrane that gets thicker until a point where broaching the subject is all but impossible, even when you think you can face the grief and terror once more.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, To Die But Once

“She kept her eyes on Channing when she could; saw the wounded blankness of all who are ruined young.”
― John Hart, Redemption Road

“With my newfound sense of safety came strange thoughts and fragments of scenes flashing in my head. They came slowly enough for me to see them clearly, but out of context, and I didn't understand what they meant. More and more often, I woke up drenched in sweat.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Joshua levered himself out of bed. He’d shave, get dressed, and take a walk with Major before frying himself some breakfast.

As a boy, if he could have even imagined himself so old as thirty-three, he’d have assumed he’d be leaving a wife behind staying warm in bed or making breakfast, or better yet, accompanying him on his morning amble. But things change. War changes them. And solitude suited him, these days.”
― Karen A. Wyle, What Heals the Heart

“Some people equate trauma to something big like war, death, extreme acts of violence, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or natural disasters. While those are all examples of trauma, trauma doesn’t have to be big like that.”
― Kenny Weiss, Your Journey To Success: How to Accept the Answers You Discover Along the Way