Trauma Experience Quotes

From nine years old, I lived with fear. I saw our neighbours disappearing. I was scared that I would come home from school and my parents would not be there.

But over 20 years ago I was a victim of rape. And thank god it didn't result in a pregnancy. Because I can't imagine going through what I went through and then having to consider what to do about an unwanted pregnancy from an attacker.

I spent a year in a 12-step program, really committed, because I could not believe what had happened - that I might have killed myself.

My accident - 15 centimetres right and nothing would have happened; 10 centimetres left and I would not be here.

I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.

I knew I was shot. Didn't know how bad it was. You know, in a weird way, your body kind of goes numb. You know, as bad as the wounds were - and obviously, I know now how severe it was - at the time, I guess my body had been shutting down a lot of the real pain.

Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.

I suffer from vertigo. It's paralyzing in extreme situations. The most scared I've been as an adult was trying to conquer that fear by going climbing in Wales.

The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual’s own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed.

My analyst refused to hear my dreams. This was years ago.

I'm very pleased with how far I've come, and I see my injuries and my scars and all my buddies and everybody that was at Walter Reid with me, you know I see it almost as a form of character.

When they set off for their first day at their new school, I will never forget that winter morning as I watched our girls, just 7 and 10 years old, pile into those black SUVs with all those big men with guns.

I think sometimes certain behaviour of men is seen as normal or usual - but it's never normal or usual to the victim, ever. It's horrific.

People who know the game of hockey, who followed hockey, they know who Sandeep Singh is. They know I have been Indian Hockey team's captain, but they don't know about the struggle and the life after being shot.

People say the 'Lost Generation' in a romantic sense, but I think it was tragic. They were really lost.

My mom put me away at 7. I enjoyed it... Being in institutions, I got three meals a day, clothes.

You don't know what a broken jaw feels like until it happens.

Well, it wasn't a holiday, but I had expected to do some sightseeing when I went to Haiti to film a series called 'True Horror' for Discovery. Before I arrived, our film crew were kidnapped and held at knifepoint.

We shot that in Morocco, and got out of the country at the beginning of July - and two months later came the attack on Twin Towers. The movie was then released in December, so that kind of atmosphere is not something that was unfamiliar to me.

I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets. The war took care of that for me. You know, I was brought up strictly kosher, but I - it made no sense to me. It made no sense to me what was happening. So nothing of it means anything to me. Nothing. Except these few little trivial things that are related to being Jewish. ... You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.

For an overwhelming majority of my life, my country has been a source of pain, fear, and embarrassment.

Depression - it falls into that small category of things like combat that, if you haven't been in it, you can say you can imagine it all you like. But it's truly different.

My childhood was absolutely the worst place I've ever been," "It was terrible.

I don't consider myself a survivor; that's someone who has gone through something terrible.

I've been bullied. A lot.