Top Best 100+ Quotes On Childhood Trauma

Growing up in toxic homes with abusive parents can lead to poor careers, terrible relationships, and a reality that is so stressful. Childhood trauma can leave you feeling demoralized and damaged, and it can make you believe that you are irreparable. Trauma can impair a child’s emotional and cognitive abilities and destroy their academic and social development. Adults who experience childhood trauma may have a higher risk of mental health and physical health conditions. But remember that while childhood trauma is a problem, you are not the problem, and remembering this can go a long way in separating yourself from your past traumatic experiences and regaining control over your life. If trauma happens, healing happens. 

For many people, their childhood memories are filled with joy and comfort. But for others, the darkness of childhood trauma overshadows their beautiful memories, and they carry the pain long into adulthood. There is no limit to what can cause childhood trauma, and with the right support at the right time, you can overcome it and find happiness in yourself. Children who suffer from trauma often become anxious and fearful and may grow up feeling guilt and shame that they are in some way to blame for their past. But you don’t have to live your life in the shadows of your childhood. If your trauma was caused by someone close, you can talk to your partner, a friend, or a professional. 
These Quotes On Childhood Trauma will reignite the fire that was taken away from you and help you see that your emotions are valid. These Childhood Trauma Quotes also shed light on how the healing process can unfold and how you have the potential to transcend your traumatic experiences, which can motivate you to take baby steps toward recovery. 

The following things can cause childhood trauma:

• Physical, sexual, or psychological abuse
• Neglect
• Bullying
• Sudden or violent loss of a loved one
• A natural disaster, such as a hurricane
• Community violence
• Acts of violence, such as an act of terrorism or school violence
• Serious or life-threatening accidents or illnesses
• War and refugee experiences
• Stressors related to being part of a military family, such as parental deployment or injury
• Commercial sexual exploitation

Unhealed Childhood Trauma Manifests as:

• Co-dependency
• External validation needed
• Fixing others
• People pleasing
• Difficulty sleeping and having nightmares
• Becoming withdrawn
• Living on high alerts
• Fear of abandonment
• De-prioritizing own needs
• Need to prove themselves
• Difficulty in setting boundaries
• Intense fear and sadness
• Persistently reliving the event or acting it out through play
• Feeling very upset when something reminds memories of the trauma
• Feeling hopeless and helpless
• Attracts narcissistic partners
• Avoiding people or places linked to the trauma
• Numbness
• Irritability and outbursts of anger
• Startling easily
• Constant vigilance for threats

Things children need to overcome trauma:

• Sunlight 
• Belief in their goodness
• Transparent talk
• Hugs 
• A calm environment 
• Compassion 
• A shoulder to cry on 
• Expressed gratitude for who they are
  
• Freedom to explore
• Playtime with parents 
• Laughter 
• Simplicity 
• Nature 
• Daily rhythms and rituals
• Unstructured play 

Related: Teenage Parenting Quotes in 2024, Best Parenting Quotes

Tips to heal childhood trauma:

• Learn to love yourself.
• Cultivate daily practices to heal the nervous system like muscular relaxation exercises, breathing exercises, meditation, swimming, stretching, yoga, prayer, exercise, listening to quiet music, spending time in nature, and so on.
• Reparent your inner child
• Acknowledge and recognize the trauma for what it is.
• Reclaim control.
• Seek support and don't isolate yourself.
• Take care of your health. self-care practices such as meditation, exercise, and yoga can help them process their emotions and heal from childhood trauma.
• Learn the true meaning of acceptance and letting go.
• Replace bad habits with good ones.
• Be patient with yourself.
• Listen to your needs.
• Make space for play and fun.
• Self-reflection is very important. Think back to your earliest negative experiences in childhood. Think about your relationship with your parents, teachers, and peers and how they’ve impacted you in any way.

Related: Effective Parenting Tips | Ways to be a Good Parent

Childhood Trauma Quotes:

• “ The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.”– Nathaniel Branden

• “ Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin.”– Danielle Bernock

• “ Behavior is the language of trauma. Children will show you before they tell you that they are in distress.” – Micere Keels

• “ Nine times out of ten, the story behind the misbehavior won’t make you angry; it will break your heart.” – Annette Breaux

• “ People think healing looks like having huge visible breakthroughs when really, it’s just a series of small decisions that reprogram your subconscious mind. One healthy activity at a time is a great starting point.” – Unknown

• “ Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.” – Carolyn Spring

• “ My trauma isn’t me. My trauma does not define me. I am more than my trauma. It isn’t my personality, hobbies, or interests. It is what happened to me.” – Unknown

• “ When you can tell your story, and it doesn't make you cry, you know you have healed.” – Karen Salmansohn

• “ Childhood trauma doesn’t come in one single package.” – Dr. Asa Don Brown

• “ Children don’t get traumatized because they are hurt. They get traumatized because they’re alone with the hurt.” – Dr. Gabor Mate

• “ Our brains are wired for connection, but trauma rewires them for protection. That’s why healthy relationships are difficult for wounded people.” – Ryan North

Related: Resolve Family Conflict Best Quotes

• “ Trauma comes back as a reaction, not a memory.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk

• “ Trauma is a result of an overwhelming sense of danger, powerlessness, and fear. Healing is a result of feeling safe, empowered, and supported.” – Unknown

• “ People start to heal the moment they feel heard. – Cheryl Richardson

• “ Did you know that sixty percent of us lay claim to childhood trauma? It’s an astounding number. And every year, over thirty-four million more kids are touched by it.”

• “ I am done looking for love where it doesn’t exist. I am done coughing up dust in attempts to drink from dry wells.”― Maggie Young

• “ There's no weakness as great as false strength.”– Stefan Molyneux

• “ One of the best ways of repressing emotions is artificial certainty.”– Stefan Molyneux

• “ Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”– Alice Miller

• “ Kids with a trauma history don’t need more punishment. And quite frankly, they don’t need more stickers.” – Dr. Ross Greene

• “ A child who has experienced trauma will sometimes show they feel connected to an attachment figure by releasing all their big emotions in their presence. What may appear as disconnection may actually be a sign of trust.” – J. Milburn

• “ People raised on love see things differently than those raised on survival.” – Joy Marino

• “ As a matter of fact, I had a terribly traumatic childhood. But afterward, I sort of reraised myself.”– Michael Gruber

• “I’m afraid of not unlearning the bad things my parents taught me.”– Trista Mateer

• “ The fetus is biochemically connected to the mother, and her external, internal, physical, and mental health affect the overall development of the fetus. Stress and depression during pregnancy have been proven to have long-term and even permanent effects on the offspring. Such effects include a vulnerability to chronic anxiety, elevated fear, propensity to addictions, and poor impulse control.”– Darius Cikanavicius

• “ The mind replays what the heart can’t delete.” – Unknown

• “ No matter how much it hurts you, someday you will look back and realize your struggles changed you for the better.” – Unknown

• “ It isn’t about what’s wrong with you, it’s about what happened to you.” – Unknown

• “ Some people think to be strong is to never feel pain. In reality, the strongest people are the ones who feel it, understand it, and accept it.” – Unknown

• “ Bad things do happen how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” – Walter Anderson

• “ Wounds won’t heal the way you want them to, they heal the way they need to.” – Dele Olanubi

• “ There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their path or stumbles across it.” – Laurie Matthew

• “ Smile and let everyone know that today, you’re a lot stronger than yesterday.” – Unknown

• “ The past is not today. The past cannot be changed, forgotten, or removed. It can only be accepted. We all have mistakes, struggles, and even regrets about things. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here now with more POWER to shape your day and your future.” – Unknown

• “ Abuse is never contained to a present moment, it lingers across a person’s lifetime and has pervasive long-term ramifications.” – Lorraine Nilon

• “ Adulthood is an attempt to become the antithesis of the wounded child within us.” – Stewart Stafford

• “ You are stronger than you think. You have gotten through every bad day in your life, and you are undefeated.” – Unknown

• “ There is no timestamp on trauma. There isn’t a formula that you can insert yourself into to get from horror to healing. Be patient. Take up space. Let your journey be the balm.” – Dawn Serra

• “ Abuse is never deserved, it is an exploitation of innocence and physical disadvantage, which is perceived as an opportunity by the abuser.” – Lorraine Nilon

• “ There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” – Laurell K. Hamilton

• “ A lot of people who have experienced trauma at the hands of people they’ve trusted take responsibility, and that is what’s toxic.” – Hannah Gadsby

• “ Anything human is mentionable, and anything mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.” – Fred Rogers

• “ If you continue to carry bricks from your past, you will end up building the same house.” – Unknown

• “ Always remember, if you have been diagnosed with PTSD, it is not a sign of weakness; rather, it is proof of your strength, because you have survived!” – Michel Templet

• “ An unacknowledged trauma is like a wound that never heals over and may start to bleed again at any time.” – Alice Miller

• “ Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.” – Peter A. Levine

• “ Sometimes, the hardest part of the journey is simply believing you’re worthy of the trip.” – Unknown

• “ You survived the abuse. Now, you’ll survive the recovery.” – Unknown

• “ What we change inwardly will change outer reality.” – Plutarch

• “ What we don’t need during struggle is a shame for being human.” – Brené Brown

• “ As traumatized children, we always dreamed that someone would come and save us. We never dreamed that it would, in fact, be ourselves as adults.” – Alice Little

• “ When it feels disheartening to learn that trauma changes the brain, remember that healing changes the brain, too.” – Unknown

• “ You wake up every morning to fight the same demons that left you so tired the night before, and that, my love, is bravery.” – Unknown

• “ You can reclaim your life from the suffering of childhood trauma.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ I encourage you to recognize that reclaiming your life from childhood trauma requires a long-term commitment to yourself and to the healing process. Your symptoms are the result of traumatic injuries that occurred over an extended period. It is important to be realistic about the timeline for healing.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ To recover, you need to learn how to support yourself – to meet your unmet developmental needs on each level that is relevant to your experience of childhood trauma.” – Pete Walker

• “ When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” – Alexander Den Heijer

• “ Grief is like the ocean, it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” – Vicki Harrison

Childhood Abuse & Trauma Quotes:

• “ As traumatized children, we always dreamed that someone would come and save us. We never dreamed that it would, in fact, be ourselves as adults.” – Alice Little

• “ The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.” – Peter Levine

• “ When we become an expert in our trauma history and know how we self-victimize and drop into denial, we have an opportunity to create a new reality with a new neural pathway in our brain.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ Trauma happens to us. When it does, our authentic self and power is taken from us.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.” – Fred Rogers

• “ Just like there's always time for pain, there's always time for healing.” – Jennifer Brown

• “ Unaddressed trauma survives in a vacuum, fueling our thoughts and behaviors, so we inadvertently re-create the same feelings we had when we first experienced the trauma. We call this the Worst Day Cycle.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ I survived because the fire that burned inside of me burned brighter than the fire around me.” – Unknown

• “ Your trauma is not your fault, but healing is your responsibility.” – Unknown

• “ Sometimes the strength within you is not a big fiery flame for all to see. It can be a tiny spark that whispers ever so softly, ‘You got this. Keep going.” – Unknown

• “ We deny, suppress, repress, and minimize our trauma to preserve our self-concept. By doing so, we set ourselves up for repeating the cycle again.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ People are afraid to heal because their entire identity is centered around the trauma they’ve experienced. They have no idea who they are outside of trauma and that unknown is terrifying.” – Ebonee Davis

• “ We forget to survive our childhoods when we are totally dependent on our parents’ goodwill; but to recover from such childhoods, we must begin by remembering the bad and the good.” – Victoria Secunda

• “ Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness yet become something beautiful.” – Unknown

• “ I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Jung

• “ Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives.” – Akshay Dubey

• “ Hold yourself back, or heal yourself back together. You decide.” – Brittany Burgunder

• “ Healing from trauma can also mean strength and joy. The goal of healing is not a papering-over of changes to preserve or present things as normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life – warts wisdom, and all – with courage.” – Catherine Woodiwiss

• “ Instead of saying, ‘I’m damaged, I’m broken, I have trust issues.’ I say ‘I’m healing, I’m rediscovering myself, I’m starting over’.” – Horacio Jones

• “ Even if you’ve accumulated a house full of nice things and the picture of your life fits inside a beautiful frame, if you have experienced trauma but haven’t excavated it, the wounded parts of you will affect everything you’ve managed to build.” – Oprah Winfrey

• “ Healing means releasing yourself from the version of you that you created for survival.” – Unknown

• “ One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will be someone else’s survival guide.” – Unknown

• “ Healing comes in waves. On some days, you will drown. On other days, you will float. On some days, you will feel broken. And on other days, you will feel renewed. This is a reminder to be patient with yourself.” – Unknown

• “ So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it allows you to define your own reality.” – Ellen Bass

• “ There’s a saying that goes, “Hurt people will hurt people.” But I rarely hear the opposite, “Healed people heal people.” Get healed. Then, go heal.” – Unknown

• “ The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.” – Unknown

• “ Trauma creates change you don’t choose. Healing is about creating change you choose.” – Michelle Rosenthal

• “ I have a gaping, painful hole in my soul… where good, loving parents and a normal, safe childhood, should have been.” – Lilly Hope Lucario

• “ Although humans rarely die from trauma, if we do not resolve it, our lives can be severely diminished by its effects. Some people have even described this situation as a “living death.”– Peter A. Levine

• “ You don't have to preserve your pain to prove that it was real.” – Brittany Burgunder

• “ We repeat what we don’t repair.” – Christine Langley-Obaugh

• “ The personality formed in an environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative.” –Shaili Jain

• “ Adverse childhood experiences are the main determinant of the health and social well-being of the nation.”–Shaili Jain

• “ It is hard to break the cycle of victimization and reenactment if the survivor comes from a dysfunctional family not equipped to deal with her plight, if she does not have access to financial or educational resources that could empower her, or if she belongs to a culture that blames her.”–Shaili Jain

• “ Traumatic stress can spread to anyone with whom the sufferers share their lives. Trauma begets trauma.”–Shaili Jain

Healing Inner Child Quotes:

• “ Many people wake up in middle age with the realization that in their youthful romances and early marriages, they were drawn to precisely the kinds of partners they were trying to avoid. All too often we marry stand-ins for our alcoholic fathers, shadowy replacements for our angry mothers, surrogates with whom we try to work out our unfinished childhood dramas.”–Sam Keen

• “ Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime.” – Herbert Ward

•  “ Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul.” – Dave Pelzer

• “ The past can tick away inside us for decades like a silent time bomb until it sets off a cellular message that lets us know the body does not forget the past.” – Donna Jackson Nakazawa

• “ Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies. The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become experts at ignoring their gut feelings and numbing awareness of what is playing out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” – Bessel van der Kolk

• “ An unacknowledged trauma is like a wound that never heals over and may start to bleed again at any time.” – Alice Miller

• “ We are often loyal to our suffering, our regrets, our losses, focusing on the trauma of ‘what happened to me…’ But is that what defines you?” – Jack Kornfield

• “ Survivors of abuse show us the strength of their personal spirit every time they smile.” – Jeanne McElvaney

• “ Healing happens when you’re triggered and you’re able to move through the pain, the pattern, the story and walk your way to a different ending.” – Vienna Pharaon

• “ There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their path or stumbles across it.” – Laurie Matthew

• “ Sometimes, the hardest part of the journey is simply believing you’re worthy of the trip.” – Unknown

• “ Anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.” – Oliver Wilkins

• “ I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Gustav Jung

• “ The deeper you heal, the higher you raise the bar on who has access to you.” – Unknown

• “ Teach your children to pray so if their little hearts feel heavy, they can go to God and not the world.” – Unknown

• “ How your children treat you when they are no longer obligated to listen to you anymore is a direct reflection of the impact you had on them as a parent.”– Unknown

• “ It’s crazy to think that our parents are traumatized by parents who are also traumatized by their parents… And it just keeps going until someone decides to reevaluate and get help for the sake of healing their family lineage.”– Unknown

• “ Heal before having children so your children don’t have to heal from having you as a parent.”– Unknown

• “ The untreated traumas of childhood become the frustrating dramas of adulthood.” – David Richo

• “ So much of the healing of our world begins in healing the inner child who rarely, if ever, got to come out and play.” – Vince Gowmon

• “… I’ve promised my inner child that never again will I ever abandon myself for anything or anyone else again.” – Wynonna Judd.

• “ Your inner child still needs to be loved to heal the complete self.” – Karen A. Baquiran

• “ They are not sorry for harming you. So, don’t feel guilty for cutting them off.” – John Mark Green

• “ Children who try to be good enough to win their parents’ love have no way of knowing that unconditional love cannot be bought with conditional behavior.” – Lindsay C. Gibson

• “ Your inner child is waiting for a genuine, heartfelt apology.” – Yong Kang Chan

• “ How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.” ― George Washington Carver

• “ The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.”– J.P. Morgan

• “ The process of reclaiming your wounded inner child is a forgiveness process. Forgiveness allows us to give as before. It heals the past and frees our energies for the present.” – John Bradshaw

• “ Inner Bonding is a process of connecting our Adult thoughts with our instinctual gut feelings, the feelings of our “Inner Child,” so that we can live free of conflict within ourselves.” – Margaret Paul

• “ When our Inner Child feels consistently unloved by our Inner Adult, the Child’s false beliefs, adopted in childhood when parents were unloving, are reinforced—beliefs that we are bad, wrong, unlovable, unimportant, inadequate, defective in some way.” – Margaret Paul

• “ Healing your lost inner child wounding takes time, gentle care, and learning to love and embrace your wounded parts.” – Robert Jackman

• “ It’s very important to realize that the inner child is still there, caught in the past. We have to rescue him.” – Thich Nhat Nanh

• “ We tend to think that all people who have a wounded inner child are nice, quiet, and long-suffering. But in fact, the wounded inner child is responsible for much of the violence and cruelty in the world.” – John Bradshaw

• “ When you abandon your Inner Child, you don’t take action to help yourself. Not taking action is avoiding responsibility.” – Margaret Paul

• “ Caring for your inner child has a powerful and surprisingly quick result: Do it and the child heals.” – Martha Beck

• “ When we honor our inner child’s feelings, we release the emotional hurts that we’re still subconsciously carrying around.” – Patricia Hope

• “ You may have a more grown-up body and more life experience but you are every bit as precious. Love yourself as if you are the most precious thing in the world. Because you are.”

• “ When you have lost your joy, look for your inner child. Wake her from her long scared slumber, tell her it’s safe to come out and play now. You’ve got her in your loving arms and no one can hurt her or leave her anymore.”

• “ You cannot see a tree as it grows. Only with time can you see it’s progress.” —  Nicole Addison

• “ The most sophisticated people I’ve ever known had just one thing in common: they were all in touch with their inner children.” – Jim Henson

• “ Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart” – Mencius

• “ Students with childhood trauma don’t have faulty brains. They have minds designed in threatening environments to help them survive.” – Inspired by Peggy Leigh

Childhood Trauma Quotes to Get Past Your Trauma:

• “ Repeated childhood trauma causes a child to live in a constant state of hypervigilance, always alert to impending perceived danger.” – Unknown

• “ See the world through the eyes of your inner child. The eyes that sparkle in awe and amazement as they see love, magic, and mystery in the most ordinary things.” – Henna Sohail

• “ The ever-curious inner child asks the vital questions, like, ‘Why is this important’ and, ‘Will this make me happy?” – Beau Taplin

• “ Honor your inner child by losing yourself in simple pleasures.” – Kim del Valle Walker

• “ When you feel a child inside of you springing to life, that’s how you know you’re where you should be.” – C. JoyBell C

• “ Within us, all is a radiant inner child bathed in joy.” – Amy Leigh Mercree

• “ The real you is still a little child who never grew up. Sometimes that little child comes out when you are…expressing yourself in some way. These are the happiest moments of your life – when the real you comes out, when you don’t care about the past and you don’t worry about the future. You are childlike.” – Miguel Angel Ruiz

• “ You just have to surround yourself with the things that make you grateful to be alive.” –  Juansen Dizon, Warm

• “ You will be happy again, you will be more yourself than ever, you will understand your heart better when you heal, you will be whole, you will be okay.”

• “ If you open your heart and become like a child, you will always be blissful, always content.” – Dharma Mittra

• “ Be happy for no reason, like a child. If you are happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because the reason can be taken from you.” – Deepak Chopra

• “ You’ll never be bored when you try something new. There’s really no limit to what you can do!” – Dr. Seuss

• “ The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age which means never losing your enthusiasm.” – Aldous Huxley

Quotes on Healing Childhood Trauma:

• “ Never underestimate the importance of having fun” – Randy Pausch

• “ All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.” – Henry David Thoreau

• “ What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.” – Mary Jo Putney

• “ A playful path is the shortest road to happiness.” – Bernie DeKoven

• “ Many daughters live out their lives avoiding or abiding or arguing with their mothers the long-ago injury or insult or childhood deprivation under a blanket of forgetfulness-and not confronting it head-on. It’s humiliating to remember how one demeaned oneself to prevent being in a mother’s bad graces, the willingness to do anything to not be rejected when rejection felt like death.” – Victoria Secunda

• “ Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it’s supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful – something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for.” – Susan Forward

• “ Most of us learn in childhood to “cope”–which is to say ignore, numb, manage, or reinterpret reality. We do it to survive, but our relational instincts get bent in the process.” – W. Allen Morris

• “ Above all, never let age extinguish the fire of your inner child.” – S. Ajna

• “ Be like a child and you will find more magic in the art and the architecture.”

• “ Give yourself permission to act like a child – to view the world with wonder – to let your mind be free.”

• “ The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age which means never losing your enthusiasm.” – Aldous Huxley

• “ Abuse is never contained to a present moment, it lingers across a person’s lifetime and has pervasive long-term ramifications.” – Lorraine Nilon

• “ After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go on permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.” – Judith Lewis Herman

• “ As noted, since we store our memories physically in our body, we are depositing our trauma physically in our body.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ Children grow up wounded due to someone’s emotional recklessness. We become adults who stay longer than they should, in relationships that offer very little in return.” – Elelwani Anita Ravhuhali

• “ Emotional abuse can leave a victim feeling like a shell of a person, separated from the true essence of who they naturally are. It also leads to a victim feeling tormented and tortured by their own emotions.” – Lorraine Nilon

• “ Emotional abuse is designed to undermine another’s sense of self.

• “ It is deliberate humiliation, with the intent to seize control of how others feel about themselves.” – Lorraine Nilon

• “ Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”– Alice Miller

• “ Remember, tears are like rivers that start in one place and flow to another – they can help carry you to healing.” – Susan Forward

• “ Slowly but surely, you will learn to behave as you would have wished to behave but were too wounded to know how.” – Marianne Williamson

• “ The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.” – Unknown

• “ For those of us who haven’t been taught how to deal with our trauma, we get stuck living on the worst day ever. The intense feelings of those moments replay themselves throughout our life because, to heal, we unintentionally and proactively seek them out and re-inflict them upon ourselves.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ If you are told from the time you are one month that you’re no good and you’re not smart and you can’t do it and you don’t have an opinion of your own and you pick the wrong friends and you don’t study the right way and you don’t wear the right clothes and you don’t look nice, at some point you’re going to start believing it. And if you believe it, you’re going to need a mommy to tell you what to do. And that’s abuse. Not to let your child grow up to be an independent, respected human being.” – Victoria Secunda

• “ Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom. However, the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the task of early adulthood――establishing independence and intimacy――burdened by major impairments in self-care, cognition in memory, identity, and the capacity to form stable relationships. She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.” ― Judith Lewis Herman

• “ Not every adult is emotionally equipped to nurture and raise children, and we cannot afford to sweep these conversations under the rug anymore.” – Elelwani Anita Ravhuhali

• “ Perhaps there was no more detrimental consequence of our childhood abandonment than being forced to habitually hide our authentic selves. Many of us come out of childhood believing that what we have to say is as uninteresting to others as it was to our parents.” – Pete Walker

• “ Persons in dysfunctional families characteristically do not feel because they learned from a young age that not feeling is necessary for psychic survival. Family members generally learn it is too painful to feel hurt or to experience the fear that comes from feelings of rage, abandonment, moments of terror, and memories of horror.” – Kathleen Heide

• “ Sexual abuse is an experience, not a definition to be encased in; you are far greater than any experience suffered through the insidiousness of indifference in the form of pedophilia. Reaching out for help is not a weakness, it is strength and courage in action. Recovery is not easy nor is it a quick process however, all souls are worth the effort required. Who you have come to believe you are can be very divergent from who you naturally are.” – Lorraine Nilon

• “ Soul Abuse is the destruction of a victim’s awareness of the strength within their soul. It stems from the abuser’s intention to corrupt another’s understanding of their own significance.  ” – Lorraine Nilon

• “ The fetus is biochemically connected to the mother, and her external, internal, physical, and mental health affect the overall development of the fetus. Stress and depression during pregnancy have been proven to have long-term and even permanent effects on the offspring. Such effects include a vulnerability to chronic anxiety, elevated fear, propensity to addictions, and poor impulse control.” – Darius Cikanavicius

• “ The sad thing that many of us empaths don’t realize is that often our desire to heal others is a disguised cry for help for our own healing. Because many of us weren’t taught how to value or nurture ourselves at a young age, we tend to unconsciously seek out our own healing in the healing of others.” – Mateo Sol

• “ The true gut reaction is when we make a decision and we know in our gut it was the right thing to do. There is no negativity or fear of unknowns. We don’t question our decision. When it’s a trauma gut reaction, we know something doesn’t feel right. We make a decision based on that, but we second-guess ourselves.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ Trauma happens to us. When it does, our authentic self and power is taken from us.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become experts at ignoring their gut feelings and numbing awareness of what is playing out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” – Bessel van der Kolk

• “ Unaddressed trauma survives in a vacuum, fueling our thoughts and behaviors, so we inadvertently re-create the same feelings we had when we first experienced the trauma. We call this the Worst Day Cycle.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ Unresolved trauma can take a significant toll on your physical health. Unresolved childhood trauma is particularly insidious, with effects that are both gradual and cumulative.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ We deny, suppress, repress, and minimize our trauma to preserve our self-concept. By doing so, we set ourselves up for repeating the cycle again.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ When we become an expert in our trauma history and know how we self-victimize and drop into denial, we have an opportunity to create a new reality with a new neural pathway in our brain.” – Kenny Weiss

• “ When we imagine the birth of a child, any child, we see a safe world. We envision a home filled with kindness and nurturance. While this home may not be perfect, it is a place where a child can learn and grow with curiosity and joy. Childhood trauma is a betrayal of this unspoken promise. ” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) is a response to traumatic events that were ongoing or repeated. With childhood trauma, these events occurred in your early years and were likely to be unpredictable, chaotic, or terrifying. You may have had parents or caregivers who abused, neglected, or abandoned you repeatedly, or you may have seen repeated traumatic events. The “complex” aspect of C-PTSD means that the trauma was at an early enough age or was repeated often enough that it affected your emotional development.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Childhood trauma and attachment wounds can lead you to feel emotionally unstable, especially if you have felt abandoned, rejected, threatened, or out of control. You might often feel overcome by irritability, anger, or rage. Without help, such emotional suffering can develop into urges to hurt yourself or others.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Developmental trauma is often understood in the mental health community to be a result of chronic maltreatment by a caregiver. But that is too simplistic an interpretation. Trauma’s complex influence on development is sometimes, but not always, tied to faulty parenting. It can also be caused by medical procedures, birth difficulties, frightening events, and caregiving failures that have nothing to do with maltreatment.” – Kathy L. Kain & Stephen J. Terrell

• “ Working with adults with severe early trauma histories almost always includes a process of sorting through complex and interrelated symptoms. This category of client often experiences what initially appear to be straightforward and separate physical issues: high blood pressure, autoimmune disorders, or diabetes, for example. But we now know that developmental trauma can trigger these somatic symptoms and conditions.” – Kathy L. Kain & Stephen J. Terrell

• “ Many survivors of childhood trauma carry a deep existential loneliness or sense of despair. There can be an overpowering senselessness or lack of reason that accompanies trauma and abuse. As a result, you may have lost faith in people or in a higher power. These overwhelming feelings of hopelessness can interfere with your ability to find a sense of purpose or meaning in your life.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Because developmental trauma occurs before, and during, the times of our most rapid development, its effects impact every area of our developing selves and imprint us in sometimes unique ways.” – Kathy L. Kain & Stephen J. Terrell

• “ The most common source of developmental trauma is fairly straightforward: When we were young, bad things happened, and those who should have been there to help and care for us did not come to our rescue or help us to navigate the situation.” – Kathy L. Kain & Stephen J. Terrell

• “ Childhood trauma can leave you feeling like you are at war with yourself. You might have a fierce inner critic, a strong need to be perfect, or a young part of you who feels small and powerless. Parts-work therapy recognizes that unresolved traumatic events from childhood can be held by parts of yourself until you have an opportunity to attend to your feelings and memories.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Childhood trauma can cause health challenges in adulthood, including digestive problems, fibromyalgia, and autoimmune and chronic pain conditions. Like somatic psychology, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) focuses on the mind-body connection, this time with an emphasis on nutrition, massage therapy, relaxation strategies, exercise, meditation, and yoga.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ As a result of childhood trauma, you may have felt that no one could handle your feelings or that no one would respond to you in a loving and supportive way. You may have learned to push away feelings of rejection, hurt, or anger. Now, as an adult, you might continue to distance yourself from your feelings or deny your needs. But these emotions may still build up inside of you: You might feel irritable or you might blow up in explosive anger and hurt or scare others. Feelings of shame and embarrassment may then fuel your inner critic and initiate a vicious cycle that reinforces the urge to further push away your emotions.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Childhood trauma can lead to ineffective relationship patterns, such as blaming, criticizing, or unnecessarily withdrawing from loved ones. You might experience difficulty in feeling close to others. Or, in contrast, you might feel afraid of being alone.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Having a history of childhood trauma can make you more prone to misperceiving the intentions and emotions of others. For example, you might think that your partner is angry with you when, in fact, the person is actually upset about an unrelated event, such as one that happened at work.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Childhood trauma can lead to difficulties with emotional and sexual intimacy with partners. You might have issues receiving a loving touch from a partner, or you might feel the urge to run away from a loved one who wants to be close to you because it brings up memories of being abused as a child. You might feel fearful of abandonment and irrationally jealous during times of normal, healthy separation. You might override your own boundaries physically or emotionally to avoid disappointing others or develop patterns of codependence, which can result in your sacrificing your own needs for the sake of the relationship.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ It can be difficult to tolerate the discomfort of shame, anger, and hurt that often accompanies childhood trauma. An adult survivor may struggle with perfectionism, unrelenting self-criticism, and addictions. ”– Arielle Schwartz

• “ In general, human beings are wired for survival. We all have a built-in tendency to pay more attention to disturbing experiences than to positive ones, as a means of guaranteeing that survival. But when you have a history of childhood trauma, this tendency to scan your environment for threats is even stronger. Your capacity to vigilantly observe your environment was necessary to keep you safe as a child. While it is important to attend to the pain of your past, you can also learn how to offset this negative survival tendency by focusing your attention on positive emotions and memories. ”– Arielle Schwartz

• “ Growing up with a history of childhood trauma can lead you to focus on your pain and problems, while simultaneously ignoring the ways you are strong and resilient. ”– Arielle Schwartz

• “ The most important thing to know about the symptoms of C-PTSD is that they are learned behaviors that can be unlearned with practice. Childhood trauma is relational trauma, which means that the wounds have to do with how we connect to others. New learning and growth are often best supported in the context of therapy. Within this healing relationship, you can experience reparative relational experiences while building new, healthy coping strategies.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Healing from childhood trauma is also a long gradual process because recovering your full self-expression requires a great deal of practice. Being yourself can be intimidating and flashback-inducing. Healthy self-assertion was punished like a capital crime in many dysfunctional families. Expressing yourself in ways that your parents forbade typically triggers intense flashbacks at first. This can cause you to lose sight of how this practice gradually reduces the chronic pain of remaining invisible.”– Pete Walker

• “ Remember that reclaiming your life from childhood trauma requires a long-term commitment to yourself and to the healing process. My hope is that this awareness can help you reconnect to self-compassion, rather than leave you feeling discouraged or hopeless.” – Arielle Schwartz

• “ Since childhood traumas are relational wounds, having a positive experience of a healing relationship can help restore your faith in the goodness of other people. In time, therapy can help you build your capacity to hold yourself and your pain lovingly.”– Arielle Schwartz

• “ De-minimization is a crucial aspect of confronting denial. It is the process by which a person deconstructs the defense of “making light” of his childhood trauma. The lifelong process of de-minimizing the impact of childhood trauma is like peeling a very slippery and caustic onion. The outer layer for some is the stark physical evidence of abuse, e.g., sexual abuse or excessive corporal punishment. Subsequent layers involve verbal, spiritual, and emotional abuse. Core layers have to do with verbal, spiritual and emotional neglect.”– Pete Walker

• “ Deep-level recovery from childhood trauma requires a normalization of depression, a renunciation of the habit of reflexively reacting to it. Central to this is the development of self-compassionate mindfulness. Once again, mindfulness is the practice of staying in your body – the practice of staying fully present to all of your internal experience.”– Pete Walker

• “ Adulthood is an attempt to become the antithesis of the wounded child within us.” ― Stewart Stafford

• “ Always remember, if you have been diagnosed with PTSD, it is not a sign of weakness; rather, it is proof of your strength, because you have survived!” – Michel Templet

• “ Healing means releasing yourself from the version of you that you created for survival.” – Unknown

• “ People can forgive toxic parents, but they should do it at the conclusion—not at the beginning—of their emotional housecleaning. People need to get angry about what happened to them. They need to grieve over the fact that they never had the parental love they yearned for. They need to stop diminishing or discounting the damage that was done to them.” – Susan Forward

• “ The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates

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