Finding Words For Trauma: Insightful Complex PTSD Quotes

When you’re living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), it can be difficult to find the words to express your experience. The symptoms of this disorder can result in difficulties with communication, sometimes leading survivors to sense they are isolated from other people. Feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness can also be common. Finding quotes that resonate with your lived experience can help you feel seen, offer encouragement, and introduce you to new sources of inner strength.

Some of the quotes below aim to put words to the pain of post-traumatic stress. Others touch on the devastating effects of childhood trauma, which tends to be a common contributing factor to C-PTSD. There are also some quotes discussing the path to wellness, which may serve as resources for self-care and encouragement as you process your traumatic experiences. If you’ve experienced trauma or live with C-PTSD, therapy can offer an effective path toward healing.

Find professional support for complex PTSD recovery

Connect with an experienced therapist

What is complex PTSD?

Even if you’re aware that you’ve experienced traumatic events that have negatively impacted your mental health, you might not be sure whether you have complex PTSD. Many psychiatrists in the U.S. don’t use this diagnosis, and it’s not included in the DSM-V (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, which is the standard reference text for the American psychiatric community). 

However, C-PTSD does appear as a distinct diagnosis in the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). Many trauma survivors find it helpful as a framework for understanding and processing the difficulties they’ve experienced. 

First described by psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman in 1992, C-PTSD is usually understood as a disorder resulting from prolonged or repeated trauma, often in situations that are difficult to escape or involve violations of trust, consent, and autonomy. Examples include the following:

• Childhood abuse, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse
• Intimate partner violence
• Enslavement, kidnapping, or imprisonment
• Mass organized violence, such as genocide or forced migration

While standard post-traumatic stress disorder can arise from a singular traumatic event like surviving an accident, a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, or a sexual assault, prolonged trauma may lead to additional psychological difficulties. 

Along with typical PTSD symptoms, C-PTSD can include those discussed below:

• Difficulties with emotion regulation: People with C-PTSD may be prone to unpredictable, hard-to-control shifts in mood or emotional outbursts. 
• Negative view of the self: An individual with this disorder may have persistent negative self-beliefs, such as regarding themselves as worthless, damaged, helpless, or unlovable. They may also experience severe guilt or shame.
• Relational difficulties: It can be hard for people with C-PTSD to trust others or value themselves, often leading to challenges in maintaining healthy and stable relationships.

Complex PTSD quotes that may help with recovery

Being heard, understood, and validated may contribute a great deal to the healing process for people with complex PTSD. Having one’s thoughts and feelings disregarded or invalidated by others can play a role in the development of complex trauma, with severe consequences for self-esteem and the ability to form relationships.

If you’ve had this type of experience, the following quotes may show you that you’re not alone, voiceless, or misunderstood. They might also give you a way to articulate what you’ve gone through, offering you a new way to communicate your experiences to the people in your life.

Quotes about the experience of C-PTSD

These quotes may express what it’s like to live with C-PTSD when you’re having trouble finding the words. 

“I have met many, many severely distressed people whose daily lives are filled with the agony of both remembered and unremembered trauma, who try so hard to heal and yet who are constantly being pushed down both by their symptoms and the oppressive circumstances of post traumatic life around them.”

— Carolyn Spring, author of Unshame: Healing Trauma-Based Shame Through Psychotherapy

“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, comedian 

“Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — ‘Life is good,’ ‘I’m safe,’ ‘People are kind,’ ‘I can trust others,’ ‘The future is likely to be good’ — and replaces them with feelings like ‘The world is dangerous,’ ‘I can’t win,’ ‘I can’t trust other people,’ or ‘There’s no hope.’”

— Mark Goulston, M.D.

“...It’s like going through the motions of everyday life in a zombified state. It’s having outbursts of anger for what seems like no apparent reason, for even the smallest of offenses. It’s forgetting how to be your once-cheerful, perky self, and having to re-learn basic social skills…”

— Sarahbeth Caplin, author of Someone You Already Know

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

— Judith Lewis Herman, author of Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Quotes about childhood trauma

Complex PTSD often results from sustained abuse during childhood. This type of trauma can be severely debilitating because it occurs while the survivor is still forming their basic ideas about themselves, the world, and other people. The following quotes discuss the impacts this type of abuse can have on a person’s mental and emotional development.

“By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure.”

— Judith Lewis Herman

“It's what happens when you're born into a world, shaped by a world, where there's no safety, ever. When the people who should take care of you are, instead, scary and unreliable, and when you live years and years without the belief that escape is possible. When you come from a world like this, when all your muscles are trained to tension and suspicion, normal life feels unbearable. It doesn't make sense, getting up, going to class, eating lunch, returning home, sleeping. You don't trust it. It doesn't feel real. And unreality can hurt more than pain.”

— Noreen Masud, author of A Flat Place: Moving Through Empty Landscapes, Naming Complex Trauma

“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, author of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

Quotes about recovering from trauma and complex PTSD

Despair and hopelessness can be common in complex PTSD, but research suggests that hope, optimism, and self-confidence may facilitate recovery. The following quotes may encourage you to believe in your ability to heal. 

“There is healing in telling. There is healing in exposing abuse. There is healing in being truthful. There is healing in knowing you are not to blame. There is healing in standing up for yourself. There is healing in setting boundaries. There is healing in self-love. Hold onto hope that you will recover.”

— Dana Arcuri, author of Soul Cry: Releasing & Healing the Wounds of Trauma

“A deep love relationship, particularly during adolescence, when the brain once again goes through a period of exponential change, truly can transform us. So can the birth of a child, as our babies often teach us how to love. Adults who were abused or neglected as children can still learn the beauty of intimacy and mutual trust or have a deep spiritual experience that opens them to a larger universe.”

— Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score

“Children so need to believe that their parents love and care for them, that they will deny and minimize away evidence of the most egregious neglect and abuse. 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.”

— Pete Walker

“Dr. Seligman suggests adopting a positive set of thoughts he calls “learned optimism.” This process is achieved by consciously challenging negative self-talk and replacing inaccurate thoughts with positive beliefs.”

— Arielle Schwartz, author of The Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach to Regaining Emotional Control and Becoming Whole

“Self-compassion is like a muscle. The more we practice flexing it, especially when life doesn’t go exactly according to plan – a frequent scenario for most of us – the stronger and more resilient our compassion muscle becomes.”

— Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World

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

— Catherine Woodiwiss, author of I Believe You: Sexual Violence and the Church 

Therapy for complex PTSD

While reflecting on powerful quotations can be a source of support in your recovery, you may also benefit from talking with a therapist about your experiences. Research suggests that evidence-based psychotherapies can provide significant relief for painful emotions, relationship dysfunction, and other symptoms of C-PTSD. Examples include the following:

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
• Exposure therapy
• Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) 
  

If you’ve had difficulty finding time for treatment, you might want to consider seeking help via the internet. Since there’s no need to travel and you’re not limited to therapists in your immediate area, online psychotherapy is often easier and more convenient to fit into your schedule.

Studies suggest that internet-delivered therapy can be effective for trauma recovery. A 2019 review of existing research studies found evidence that online CBT typically had positive effects on PTSD symptoms that were comparable to the results of in-person therapy.

Takeaway

The effects of complex trauma can touch on many different areas of life, leading to challenges like watchfulness, guilt, mistrust, and a negative self-image. Learning new ways to tell your story may be a part of the recovery process, and the words of others who have faced similar difficulties may help. They can articulate your challenges, validate your experiences, and affirm your strengths, giving you new resources as you work toward healing. Online or in-person therapy may offer the professional guidance you deserve on your journey toward recovery from trauma.