Trauma Quotes to Help You Understand How it Works and Heal

These trauma quotes will help you better understand trauma and how to cope with it.

Let us know which one you found most helpful in the comment section below.

Trauma is the word we use to describe the emotional (and physical) response your body has to a terrible event.

Immediately following the event, a person might also experience shock and denial.

However, longer-term reactions might include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, trouble with relationships, and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea.

Some of these trauma quotes offer some inspirational ideas for healing, while others explain what trauma feels like.

Types of trauma

There are three types of trauma.

The first is acute trauma which stems from a single event, like a terrible car accident or natural disaster.

The second kind of trauma is called chronic trauma and results from repeated and prolonged traumatic events.

This might be abuse, neglect, or domestic violence.

The last kind of trauma is referred to as complex trauma.

This type of trauma happens when someone is exposed to varied and multiple traumatic events.

These trauma quotes from books by Bessel A. van der Kolk and Peter Levine delve into the effects of trauma on your body and how to move forward toward healing.

Don’t forget to also check out these healing quotes honoring your struggles and strengths.

Also, check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily wisdom. 

See the rest of our quote database for even more inspirational ideas and thoughts.

Healing from Trauma quotes from Peter Levine’s book

1. “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, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

2. “What I do know is that we become traumatized when our ability to respond to a perceived threat is in some way overwhelmed. This inability to adequately respond can impact us in obvious ways, as well as ways that are subtle.” ― Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

3. “This difficulty in normalizing ourselves is very important. I believe that the ability to return to equilibrium and balance, after using the “immobility response,” is the primary factor in avoiding being traumatized.” ― Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

4. “For someone who’s been traumatized, that feeling of balance and wholeness is such a surprise, it can cause an “identity crisis.” We don’t recognize ourselves because we’re no longer filled with shame and fear and collapse.” ― Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

5. “I found that, if given appropriate guidance, human beings can and do shake off the effects of overwhelming events and return to their lives using exactly the same procedures that animals use.” ― Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

6. “Our sense of safety and stability in the world and our interpersonal relationships become undermined by childhood abuse because we carry these early thwarted—that is, deeply conflicted—survival patterns into adulthood.” ― Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

7. “Often, traumatized people either feel nothing or they feel rage, and often the rage is expressed in inappropriate ways. By beginning to get a sense of what healthy aggression feels like, the extremes of numbness and rage can begin to give way to a healthier middle ground.”― Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

8. “The symptoms of trauma can be stable, that is, ever-present. They can also be unstable, meaning that they can come and go and be triggered by stress.” ― Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

9. “I have come to the conclusion that human beings are born with an innate capacity to triumph over trauma. I believe not only that trauma is curable, but that the healing process can be a catalyst for profound awakening—a portal opening to emotional and genuine spiritual transformation.” ― Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

10. “I have little doubt that as individuals, families, communities, and even nations, we have the capacity to learn how to heal and prevent much of the damage done by trauma. In so doing, we will significantly increase our ability to achieve both our individual and collective dreams.” ― Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

Overcoming trauma quotes from The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel A. van der Kolk

11. “Trauma produces actual physiological changes, including a recalibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

12. “When you activate your gut feelings and listen to your heartbreak—when you follow the interoceptive pathways to your innermost recesses—things begin to change.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

13. “We deliberately tried to collect just isolated fragments of their experience—particular images, sounds, and feelings—rather than the entire story, because that is how trauma is experienced.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

14. “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

15. “However, 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 in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

16. “People can learn to control and change their behavior, but only if they feel safe enough to experiment with new solutions. The body keeps the score: If trauma is encoded in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations, then our first priority is to help people move out of fight-or-flight states, reorganize their perception of danger, and manage relationships.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

17. “The great challenge is finding ways to reset their physiology, so that their survival mechanisms stop working against them.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

18. “Being traumatized is not just an issue of being stuck in the past; it is just as much a problem of not being fully alive in the present.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

19. “The greatest hope for traumatized, abused, and neglected children is to receive a good education in schools where they are seen and known, where they learn to regulate themselves, and where they can develop a sense of agency.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

20. “Feeling out of control, survivors of trauma often begin to fear that they are damaged to the core and beyond redemption.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Past Trauma quotes about childhood

21. “What lingers from the parent’s individual past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes part of her or his irrational parenting.” ― Virginia Satir

22. “I think it’s difficult to forget things that are unresolved.” ― Chris Van Allsburg

23. “The areas in which we felt most insecure, unsafe, unloved, uncomfortable, embarrassed, angry, and generally unresolved as a child are the areas that we will be most prone to self-deception as an adult.” ― Cortney S. Warren

24. “Unresolved issues from childhood revisit us in adulthood.” ― Kilroy J. Oldster

25. “Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

26. “An immature parent with unresolved issues and repressed shame can also transfer his or her shame to us. This interpersonal transference of shame is referred to as induced shame.” ― John Bradshaw

27. “Unresolved emotional pain is the great contagion of our time―of all time.” ― Marc Ian Barasch

28. “It’s like that sometimes for people who have had traumatic experiences in their past life. It’s hard to move on, to belong, in one place when you have unresolved business in another.” ― Amanda Gray

29. “A number of neurotic ancestors, combined with persistent, unresolved terrors of childhood, had deprived me of the comfortable gift of natural courage.” ― Vera Brittain

30. “Your subconscious’s goal is to recreate unresolved childhood issues and then hopefully mend them.” ― Karen Salmansohn

Emotional trauma quotes for healing when the days are hard

31. “Healing is messy!” ― Sijdah Hussain

32. “I know it hurts. I know you feel like you weren’t good enough. But your breakthrough is coming. Don’t give up on yourself now. You came too far. Your value is still high and you’re still beautiful. You don’t need anyone to claim you to feel whole. Let it hurt and grow from it.” ― Keishorne Scott

33. “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, Your Journey To Success: How to Accept the Answers You Discover Along the Way

34. “You don’t have to preserve your pain in order to prove that it was real.” ― Brittany Burgunder

35. “It is so easy for us to want healing to pursue a more linear path: Something arises and it would be best if we could stay with that.” ― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

36. “Sometimes the people around you won’t understand your journey. They don’t need to, it’s not for them.” ― Joubert Botha

37. “Hold yourself back, or heal yourself back together. You decide.” ― Brittany Burgunder

38. “Heartache purged layers of baggage I didn’t know I carried. Gifts hide under the layers of grief.” ― Shauna L Hoey

39. “I’m not crazy, I was abused. I’m not shy, I’m protecting myself. I’m not bitter, I’m speaking the truth. I’m not hanging onto the past, I’ve been damaged. I’m not delusional, I lived a nightmare. I’m not weak, I was trusting. I’m not giving up, I’m healing. I’m not incapable of love, I’m giving. I’m not alone. I see you all here. I’m fighting this.” ― Rene Smith

40. “The fear of what might happen stops people but the trauma process is so beautiful and transformational. There is nothing to fear in our emotions, they will not swallow you whole – they will speak to you in profound ways.” ― Adele Theron

Deep traumatic quotes that remind us of the important things to remember when healing

41. “Our brain and body become addicted to the feelings associated with our trauma and our worst day because they have been firing more than any other feeling.” ― Kenny Weiss, Your Journey To Success: How to Accept the Answers You Discover Along the Way

42. “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, Your Journey To Success: How to Accept the Answers You Discover Along the Way

43. “One of the symptoms of trauma is feeling helpless. There are things outside our control, but there’s one thing we always do have the power to control, even if we’re not aware of it. It’s the power to respond intentionally using our choice. I call this our superpower.” ― Danielle Bernock, Because You Matter: How to Take Ownership of Your Life So You Can Really Live

44. “The reason why you need emotional support is because it’s important for survivors to be heard. To be understood. To be able to express yourself without fearing criticism or harsh judgement. To be validated for your pain, suffering, and loss. For others to be there for you to encourage you, especially if you’re having a bad day or feeling triggered.” ― Dana Arcuri, Soul Cry: Releasing & Healing the Wounds of Trauma

45. “Healing trauma involves tears. The tears release our pain. The tears are part of our recovery. My friend, please let your tears flow.” ― Dana Arcuri, Soul Cry: Releasing & Healing the Wounds of Trauma

46. “Your external world mirrors your internal state. Heal the parts of you that need your attention or you will forever live out your pain for all to see.” ― Dana Hall LCPC, MA, TF-CBT

47. “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, Your Journey To Success: How to Accept the Answers You Discover Along the Way

48. “Interpersonal neurobiology asks us to place no boundaries on where and how it might illuminate our world. It is possible that every moment has the potential to be therapeutic in some way.” ― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

49. “There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their own path or stumbles across it.” ― Laurie Matthew, Behind Enemy Lines

50. “Commit to the healing path and trust the process.” ― Rosenna Bakari

More trauma quotes to help boost your healing process

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

52. “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is 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

53. “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.” ― Oprah Winfrey

54. “PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.” ― Susan Pease Banitt

55. “After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.” ― Arthur Golden

56. “Unlike other forms of psychological disorders, the core issue in trauma is reality.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk

57. “We don’t heal in isolation, but in community.” ― S. Kelley Harrell

58. “Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so.” ― Anna Funder

59. “Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.” ― Han Kang

60. “Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods.” ― Peter A. Levine

Insightful trauma quotes to contemplate on

61. “Trauma does not have to occur by abuse alone…” ― Asa Don Brown

62. “No one ever told me how sorrow traumatizes your heart, making you think it will never beat exactly the same way again. No one ever told me how grief feels like a wet sock in my mouth. One I’m forced to breathe through, thinking that with each breath I’ll come up short and suffocate.” ― Sarah Noffke

63. “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.” ― Danielle Bernock

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

65. “Sometimes it takes dealing with a disability – the trauma, the relearning, the months of rehabilitation therapy – to uncover our true abilities and how we can put them to work for us in ways we may have never imagined.” ― Tammy Duckworth

66. “I’m still coping with my trauma, but coping by trying to find different ways to heal it rather than hide it.” ― Clemantine Wamariya

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

68. “Trauma fractures comprehension as a pebble shatters a windshield. The wound at the site of impact spreads across the field of vision, obscuring reality and challenging belief.” ― Jane Leavy

69. “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

70. “Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us – in their depth, their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion.” ― Sharon Salzberg

Trauma Quotes To Help With The Recovery Journey

71. “Would they be cheered by their recovery, or marked for life by their trauma?” ― Dan Wells

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

73. “Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and severe hemorrhaging.” — Jhonen Vasquez

74. “Any character that has a reference or baggage or emotional trauma, I personally feel, leaves an impact.” — Mohit Raina

75. “When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.” — Mark Twain

76. “I’m not lazy. I’m just exhausted from fighting my way through every single day.” — Mimi Love

77. “Some people survive and talk about it. Some people survive and go silent. Some people survive and create.” — Nikita Gill

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

79. “Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.” — Peter Levine

80. “One of the hardest things was learning I was worth recovery.” — Demi Lovato

Insightful childhood trauma quotes

81. “The initial trauma of a young child may go underground but it will return to haunt us.”― James Garbarino

82. “Trauma can have a masking effect.”― Asa Don Brown

83. “Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by.” ― Rachel Reiland

84. “I was not abandoned as a child. I left.”― Dane Cook

85. “I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have a childhood that was not like mine.”― Jenny Lawson

86. “Childhood trauma can range from having faced extreme violence and neglect to having confronted feelings of not belonging, being unwanted, or being chronically misunderstood.”― Arielle Schwartz

87. “I look at my mother, connected by a breath of glimmering hope, her red and shadowed eyes reveal that some element of our whole being has been lost and, somehow, thrown away.”― Alfred Nestor

88. “Traumatic experiences in early childhood may interfere with the child’s ability to securely attach.”― Asa Don Brown

89. “After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.”― Mary Oliver

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

What did you learn from these trauma quotes?

Many of these trauma quotes and sayings are from people in the mental health field who have written books aimed at helping trauma survivors take back their lives and find peace and healing.

This is often a long and challenging road, so do not be afraid to seek help if you feel like the weight is too much to carry alone.

Having a good therapist can do wonders for a person suffering from the aftermath of their trauma.

As someone who had a traumatic childhood, I can attest to how therapy can help you change the course of your life.

It is important to know what therapy can do and what it can not.

I think I spent the first year of therapy telling my therapist that I did not understand why she just couldn’t make it better.

I felt like it should be the same as going to the doctor; like I came here, now I should get an answer and feel better.

It doesn’t work that way, though.

Therapy will give you the tools to change the way you behave in the present and reconcile the past.

Therapy will also help you in your current relationships.

If you are considering seeing a therapist, then check out these helpful tips for finding one in your area.