Quotes About Healing

Because I barely survived Shane Hall. I barely survived myself. It was a dark time. My home life was traumatic. I was a chaotic, angry kid. Why reminisce?

After I accidentally broke my arm, and my foster mom…" He paused, jaw working. "When I survived the crash on the way to the hospital and my foster mom didn't, I started breaking my arm on purpose. Drinking all day. And I decided that I didn't deserve good things.

Do you think we'll ever get over it?" asked Eric. "I know that I'll never be over you. But maybe that's okay. Maybe I'll meet someone that I can love in a different way, and be happy.

You put me back together when I was in pieces. You gave me confidence, and reminded me that I was lovable. You saved me.

What was it like, the luxury of not hurting?

When we grieve, we naturally allow ourselves to feel the anger, hurt, disorientation, and sadness that are a part of processing pain. As we grieve, we let go of some of our hypervigilance. When we understand that feeling these feelings are part of the healing process, and that by feeling them we can allow them to dissipate, we begin to see light at the end of the tunnel.

The more I worked with clients' grief issues, the better they were getting. Additionally, trauma was not being talked about as a relational issue; it was talked about as if it happened just within a person. It was during this period that it also became clear to me that the trauma I was seeing in clients was the direct result of relationship pain, and that if it remained unresolved, it would continue to drive dysfunctional relationship patterns.

But even blessed and intelligent families lose it when their emotional problems overwhelm them. For our families it appeared to be alcoholism that led to relationship trauma … or was unhealed relationship trauma the prequel that led to using alcohol to self-medicate emotional pain?

even though the false self is meant to protect the more vulnerable self, it actually has the effect of weakening it. When people who have become dependent on false-self functioning go into therapy or enter a 12-step program, they can go through a period of feeling very vulnerable and shaky because they are removing their coping strategy and exposing the pain underneath it. But over time, new healthy emotional habits get created, and new ways of healthy coping get practiced and adopted.

Science can now illuminate why approaches like psychodrama, 12-step programs, group therapy, journaling, bodywork, yoga, exercise, and massage work; why one-to-one therapy can help us learn a new style of attachment; why changing the way we live and the nature of our relationships can change the way we think and feel, and vice versa; and why quick fixes don't work but why a new design for living does.

Healing trauma is healing codependency. As historical pain is processed rather than projected and the self becomes more distinct and present oriented, codependent behaviors begin to clear up naturally.

we're expressing in our adult lives the anger we had to hold in as children. Our anger might also be acting as a defense against deeper feelings of pain and helplessness. We need to get to the root so that we can change the pattern.

A trigger that is part of the healing process is recovery itself. During recovery, we "remember" what we have "forgotten." For a moment it hurts all over again. But if we can get through that reexperiencing of the pain with the help of a solid recovery support network, there is freedom on the other side. Actually the fear of the pain is often worse than the pain itself.

Change comes when we have sat in the pain long enough and fully enough so that we can feel it, can open our mouths and talk about it, see it for what it is, reorder and understand it, and then walk out of it. This does not mean that we won't feel bad, hurt, angry, or triggered about our past again. It just means that if and when we are triggered, we won't catapult into an unconscious place from which we can only act out, shut down, or dive straight into self-medicating behaviors.

Nothing is better, no reward greater than our true connection with ourselves, and through that we can reach out and really touch another. Working through trauma pulls us from the surface of life into the wellspring from which we learn who we really are.

In working through the pain of a traumatic past, it is important to help clients to identify not only what hurt them, but what sustained them.

A person who escapes from an unhealthy family system while others remain mired within it may experience what is referred to as "survivor's guilt." The guilt one feels of being the one who "got away" while others may not have been able to.

Reenactment patterns. It is a natural phenomenon of unresolved and unconscious pain that gets recreated over and over again in what psychologists call an attempt to "master pain." Memory is state dependent, so we tend to re-create familiar patterns when confronted with like circumstances.

If I forgive, I'll no longer feel angry at the person for what happened. In my experience, anger can still come up, but when it does, we remind ourselves that we've decided it isn't worth it to hold on to it any longer.

I have news for you; you didn't break my heart. My heart's fine. My heart's in the best shape of its life. You know what you did to me? You took an AK-47 and blew my soul open. So fuck you and your fucking talk because nothing short of a miracle could take back the last nine months of hell you put me through!" - Paul Hudson

It sounds silly I know. But for me, the power of music rests in its ability to reach inside and touch the places where the deepest cuts lie. Like a benevolent god, a good song will never let you down.

There's nothing like heartbreak to crack a person wide open. But the cracks can sometimes act as reservoirs too.

I had scars. But my scars also served to instill a kind of reverence in me. Reverence that, during times of weakness, became shrouded in darkness.

Break my heart? Is that what you just said? I have news for you; you didn't break my heart. My heart's fine. My heart's in the best shape of its life. You know what you did to me? You took an AK-47 and blew my soul open.