Quotes About Healing

don't think anything really heals trauma. You just find some kind of narrative to learn to cohabit with it. I suppose now is the time to admit to you, Dear Diary, I never had a therapist. I always imagined that if I did she would coax me to start a journal.

Forgiveness is really about freeing yourself from the hate and self-pity, which eats like a cancer into your brain day and night, year after year.

Damaged kids were like seeds landed in the wrong ground. Parts of them grew crooked. But they could still grow strong with the right care.

The truth . . . sets you free." His breathing changes. He struggles to get his next words out. "It's . . . the secrets that fester. You . . . think you've buried them, gotten rid of them somehow, but they're like this damned cancer. The minute you're down, the second you grow tired, it starts to grow again,

Since after the accident. I heard. But sometimes people are broken and don't know how to mend because they aren't able to say what they need or deeply want. Sometimes you get to a point in life where you realize you've made a terrible mistake and you desperately need to fix it, but it's so deep and bitterly ingrained you can't start.

Her goal in life is to help others cope with mental adversity, to show that one does not have to be irreparably destroyed by horrific actions of the past.

should experience grief?" She stormed off and slapped through

I don't think anything really heals trauma. You just find some kind of narrative to learn to cohabit with it.

Who knew grief could be so goddamned physical, a dark and sly trickster that blindsided you when you weren't even thinking about loss, and suddenly you couldn't get it out of your mind again.

No. Not really. I haven't been okay for a long time, and I don't think I realized the extent of the toll this is taking on me.

Maybe the brutal bedding had destroyed a part of her brain.

But many people come to therapy seeking closure. Help me not to feel. What they eventually discover is that you can't mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You'll also mute the joy.

at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past.

Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals. —Gretel Ehrlich

But Wendell told me that by diminishing my problems, I was judging myself and everyone else whose problems I had placed lower down on the hierarchy of pain. You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing. And, of course, often what seem like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones.

If you stay in therapy," I say softly, "you might have to let go of the hope for a better childhood—but that's only so that you can create a better adulthood.

Forgiveness is a tricky thing, in the way that apologies can be. Are you apologizing because it makes you feel better or because it will make the other person feel better?

Well you seem like you're enjoying the experience of suffering, so I thought I'd help you out with that... There's a difference between pain and suffering,' Wendell says, 'You're going to have to feel pain- everyone feels pain at times- but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering

We marry our unfinished business.

A supervisor once likened doing psychotherapy to undergoing physical therapy. It can be difficult and cause pain, and your condition can worsen before it improves, but if you go consistently and work hard when you're there, you'll get the kinks out and function so much better.

During an initial burst of pain, people tend to lash out either at others or at themselves, to turn the anger outward or inward.

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing. And, of course, often what seen like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones.

Typically, a patient might have a difficult session about a childhood trauma, then come in the next week and announce that therapy is no longer needed.

the goal is to integrate the loss into your life and create an ongoing connection with the person who died while also finding a way to continue living.