Quotes About Healing

After my mother's death, I had such difficulty relating to people.

I had accepted beatings, loneliness, and near-starvation as normal because those things had helped me to survive. Now when these women undressed me, it felt like they were removing a shield that had become a part of me. As they peeled off layer after layer, I began to feel my age and started crying. With my tears I shed each fiber of responsibility I had in caring for my sisters and brother. I was finally being cared for as a child, and so the child inside me opened wide.

I didn't like the people who just wanted to hear about the terrible things that had happened to me. But the friends who wanted to bask in my fondest memories of the Prockses made me feel special, inviting me into my own sense of knowing a right from a wrong.

When you feel that you aren't like everyone else or feel tainted by what has happened to you, it's hard to be optimistic about the future. In fact, for many survivors, it's nearly impossible to imagine the future at all. Many of us are caught in a state where we're still just trying to survive (our sole focus during trauma) and can't think much beyond that. Time for us is frozen and the future feels hazy at best.

You could even say it was the trauma that was the call for help, and of course if there are any spiritual beings who respond to such need, it is angels.

If you can access the sense of your inherent preciousness, you can rise above shame. If you can meditate and feel equanimity, you may be able to rise above your distress.

He had not felt loved by his mother and had experienced difficulty in receiving love since, so he didn't have some of the healing vectors that can counteract traumatic events. He had resources to help others but not the resources to save himself.

As Babette Rothschild says, "Often talking about what happened will be important for the survivor in the immediate aftermath of the event. Telling and re-telling the story to caring individuals may help prevent dissociation, and aid in integrating the experience."20

As it relates to healing the wounds of trauma, it is a journey from helplessness (which is the essence of trauma) to mastery.

We find the heaven within us when we recover our own preciousness; we find the heaven between us when another tenderly helps us heal; we find the heaven around us when, moving from hell to well, we find in the ordinary world the beauty and meaning that was earlier bleached out of it. And some, too, find a heaven of angels, which may pierce through the veils of our lives in moments of need or when our spiritual search takes us there.

Our goal is to move from being stuck in survival mode back into blossoming and into life. We want to thrive, not just survive.

The surrender was a turning point for me. That summer I cried nearly every day. It was part of letting up the emotional component that had been only partially present in much of my earlier recovery of memories, and the beginning of a deeper grieving for my losses. The crying itself did not resolve things for me, but it was part of what prepared me for what came later, when the opportunity presented itself to really cleanse the wounds with a qualified trauma therapist.

Even traumas that we have pushed outside our consciousness affect us deeply. They affect our nervous systems, our bodies, our reactions to events, our choices, our feelings about ourselves and others, and many other aspects of our experience. Out of sight is not out of bodymind.

You experience a change in how you see yourself, transitioning from feeling like a victim to someone who has not only survived but has healed.

If you are plagued by trauma symptoms but have no memories, that itself becomes an issue to make peace with.

You grieve what you lost and what you never had. If you try to short-circuit the grief, the grief will find a way to short-circuit you.

When we heal from trauma, what was shattered becomes whole again. We learn to claim aspects of self that got lost or frozen and integrate these with our growing capacities. Part of this will involve a new identity that grows out of this process. As we recognize our resources and our wholeness, a new me is born, one whose sense of value has been restored.

It is not easy to give of yourself if you still have many unmet needs.

Authentically positive self-talk is your most important ally in the healing process. You cannot heal completely without it."1 She describes this nurturing self-talk as growing out of a close relationship with yourself, learning to become your own best friend.

Recovery is treacherous but the peace and contentment that awaits us is beyond description. Trust your gut. Stay the course."2

Cognitively oriented therapists believe that we contribute to our own suffering by holding on to outdated beliefs and conclusions that keep us stuck in a particular story.

Traumatic experiences are so powerful that they often affect your entire worldview. It's like wearing glasses that distort your vision.

One of the most touching aspects of the healing process for me has been the realization that the world is much kinder and more beautiful than I thought it was. Somewhere in my unconscious, here was always someplace to get out of; as I healed, I was shocked to discover that, au contraire, being here is the prize.

Don't be afraid to cut people out of your life if they are causing you pain