In the culture people talk about trauma as an event that happened a long time ago. But what trauma is, is the imprints that event has left on your mind and in your sensations... the discomfort you fee...
If you cannot read Shakespeare, or Melville, or Toni Morrison because it will trigger something traumatic in you, and you'll be harmed by the read of the text because you are still defining yourself t...
Over the years, I learned to smile or laugh when I was supposed to. I kept my true self hidden; I did not need to unleash my pain on the world around me. Instead, I taught myself to ignore it. I did n...
There are edges around the black and every now and then a flash of color streaks out of the gray. But I can never really grasp any of the slivers of memories that emerge.
TRAUMA STEALS YOUR VOICE People get so tired of asking you what's wrong and you've run out of nothings to tell them. You've tried and they've tried, but the words just turn to ashes every time they tr...
Lewis's mental map of reality had difficulty accommodating the trauma of the Great War. Like so many, he found the settled way of looking at the world, taken for granted by many in the Edwardian age,...
Then I drop to my knees because I can't find a decent enough reason not to, because reluctance rarely stands a chance against repeated behavior.
The traumatized person is often relieved simply to learn the true name of her condition. By ascertaining her diagnosis, she begins the process of mastery. No longer imprisoned in the wordlessness of t...
It's all fun and games until somebody dies.
Deep connection is the antidote to madness.
There are no injuries that run so deep that one can't add insult to them and make them feel even worse.
Mental anguish always results from the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
A freeze response (dissociation, collapse, numbing, paralysis, deadness) during the incident that threatened your life or limb. Sometimes it's difficult for people to understand that this is really su...
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.
When you have mental illness it's common to be shunned by your family or friends it wouldn't happen if they knew the pain you were in.
A few years ago I heard Jerome Kagan, a distinguished emeritus professor of child psychology at Harvard, say to the Dalai Lama that for every act of cruelty in this world there are hundreds of small a...
We raise predators by treating children as prey.
I believe that we belittle survivors by assuming that they will fail.
Trauma is any stressor that occurs in a sudden and forceful way and is experienced as overwhelming.
Surprisingly, it is often when wandering through the emotional carnage left by the worst of humankind that we find the best of humanity ad well.
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