Follow on to Parts 1 and 2
"What you are is an expression of history." Robert Penn Warren, World Enough And Time
"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."
--Elbert Hubbard
"No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it.
It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them."
Alan Watts
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Much of what Watts had to say in this and other quotes of his resonates strongly with my experience on this road called cptsd. He has a lot of wisdom nuggets tucked around his writings.
This one I've found helpful whenever I sense an urge to rush to the cure (rush? I've been searching for nearly 50 years of if only thinking!). And sometimes I'm crushed realizing that, well, there may never be a defined 'cure' that I'll even recognize. Then I remember to slow down and truly 'live in the moment'--all of them, even the painful ones. Tricky to say that, though; 'now' and 'in the moment' have become such buzzwords in an age of celebrity psychobabble still promising that elusive cure-all. Anyway, I'm still learning to play this symphony en route, as it is, without regard for that defined endpoint where perfection breaks out and saves me.
Love this! Thanks for posting
Thanks for some great quotes! :thumbup:
While I'm looking for confirmation of a quote made by Niels Bohr (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr) (the Nobel Prize winning physicist who stood at the cradle of quantum mechanics) I came across this gem:
"No, no, you're not thinking — you're just being logical."
— Bohr
(the unverified quote I'm looking for is something like this:
"To understand nuclear physics is child's play compared to understanding child's play.")
"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's."
---Joseph Campbell
I used to spend a lot of time searching for the way, an all-inclusive path that I could jump on, like an automated walkway, and easily find all the answers. The more I did that the more disappointed I became. Why couldn't I do this better, etc.?
Now I realize the value in knowing that recovery is a work-in-progress, with no set destination--whatever I discover might even contain a pleasant surprise; even if I only come to it through more pain, anxiety and depression. Whatever I'm finding often brings more questions than pat answers. As Campbell pointed out, our individual paths are sometimes anything but clear. And that's fine.
If we run away from our sadness,
If we turn our backs on anger,
If we deny fear its inherent right to be here,
If we kick our pain out onto the cold, dark streets,
How will we ever know
That these weren't precious gifts made of gold,
Forged in the fires of ourselves long ago?
...Jeff Foster
"Put down the shovel of self-blame and stop digging"
Sonia Connelly, Sundown Healing - http://traumahealed.com/articles/prefer-narratives-with-hope/
I'm in a bit of limbo today... up, down.
*** trigger warning: this is a bit dark***
edited it out.
The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.
Albert Einstein
silence cannot be misquoted..... anonymous.
(why No Contact is so important)
"...don't add legs to a snake..."---anonymous.
My take: Cptsd abuse is like a poisonous snake and we only make it worse by adding power (obsessing, trying to undo, fighting back, etc) to its venomous abilities to hurt those in its way. We've already suffered and need to be careful we're not adding to the injury instead of dealing with the recovery.
"I don't want to be perfect. I want to be real." ...Jeff Foster
-- wisdom and talent are the lowest tiers of usefulness -- samurai wisdom
without action, there is still nothing accomplished.
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
- Albert Einstein
This is more of a commentary. The following certainly isn't a 'favourite' but it reflects what was probably well-intended but rubbed me the wrong way; and to me it comes off as just another way to say "just get over it."
Anyway, the quote is:
"Stop casting yourself as 'the victim' in the story of your life."
Easy enough to say. Stop seems like such an authoritarian command, though. Maybe it works better along these lines--"Consider casting yourself in a new story..."
Because in one sense or another, denying the victim part usually doesn't hold up.The 'stop' order seems to suggest a wrong conclusion when the reality is an abused person will have internalized it as hurtful, as it was undeniably inflicted on an innocent child. There is no right to that, no positive, without denying reality. It did happen, it felt bad; and leaves scars and shock waves that can tear a person open. A cute phrase can't paper it over.
Hi Meursault, and everyone,
I feel the same way about those kinds of paternalistic prescriptions. I'd cringe if I heard someone say that to a child. To an adult.....well!. I appreciate things like: 'You control the story you tell about yourself' (I don't think that's a saying, but you get the drift). I experienced for myself the freedom when I was in one of those awful rounds of 'tell us about yourself' in a workshop a couple of weeks ago. I suddenly thought "I can say whatever I choose", and did. i didn't feel I had to follow the sorts of scripts followed by others. It was liberating to control a narrative about myself, especially following what others were saying would have emphasised what I feel are stigmatised differences from them and left me feeling awful. Being told off, as with the quote you mention, like a child for expressing vicitimisation, to ourselves or anyone else just makes me angry. I'd rather be reminded of my freedom - that's what I find liberating.
I had the displeasure of being in the public mental health system today. I'm very grateful for a treatment they are providing me as an outpatient. There are some great people working there, but *, the whole place is so invalidating and infantalising. The walls are littered with cute quotes and advice that I mainly just find annoying or offensive, and would if they were on the walls of a classroom. The quote I found least offensive was something like "a teabag only learns how strong it is when it is in hot water" I still have no idea what on earth that means. Is it about how strong the tea turns out after the tea leaves are drained of their flavour by sitting in boiling water?. Other slogans and posters implied to people suffering severe illnesses and the outcome of devastating trauma, that changing our attitudes and being better behaved would solve everything. Chin up!
I tried to have a normal adult to adult conversation with the doctor who came to ask me some questions before giving me an injection. He literally looked at me blankly as if he had no idea how to respond to a fellow human being, and seemed to find the idea of me asking a few questions to be bizarre. By contrast, this afternoon I went to a dentist appointment.....but there shouldn't be a contrast in being treated and talked to as an adult worthy of ordinary respect. It's not a budget thing because it costs nothing.
I guess my point is that if I spent too much time there I'd feel small and humiliated, because a good patient in that system is a good little boy or girl, in the old 1950s model of mother and father know best, and I strongly suspect trying to behave as a fellow adult with the staff would be pathologised, by many.
Excuse my rant. I am grateful to the good people there, and for being able to have an expensive treatment I'd otherwise have to go overseas for.
"Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression."
--Isaac Bashevis Singer
...we're all creators, looking to create our way out of this swamp called cptsd...but even when we begin to formulate a vision of a way out, getting past the chasm Singer mentions can be painful and then some. So we move on, regardless; but so often fearful, heartbroken, and not sure we can build enough strength to make it to that "ultimate expression"...peace with ourselves.
"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."
-- Lao Tzu...
...as soon as one sets up too precise expectations the risk is that anything short seems like certain failure and crippling disappointment. Goals are still fine and help set parameters, but they seem more doable when they're flexible enough for real life's complexities and contradictions.
Sometimes you just need to talk about something - not to get sympathy or help, but just to kill its power by allowing the truth of things to hit the air. ~ Karen Salmansohn
❤️"You can heal your life"❤️
Louise Hay
Love this one....
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~ William Morrow
:)
In my calendar, don't know who from: "Strong people don't put others down, they lift them up."
We do a lot of lifting up on this forum, so yet another proof that we survivors are strong people.
(Thinking about this later, I wanted to add that certainly part of the "lifting up" we practise on this forum has to do with the ground rules laid down and adhered to by Kizzie and 3Roses. So a big thank you to both of you! Me, I had to learn how not to put other people or myself down constantly, and I may not be the only one on here.) Still a very apt quote!
Blueberry.... :yeahthat:
I'm reminded of another quote that goes something like: "The smart have their theories and books, but the wise have their scars." One result: empathy for others who've endured this journey.
"Maybe the most difficult stranger to welcome is the one who lives inside."
~ Mirabai Starr ~
"Scars mark the places where life and sanity were threatened, ordeals endured, wounds opened and closed. They evoke a queasy awe in the best of us. We stare and look away, want to ask what happened but don't dare broach the subject, as if these patches of mended flesh identified experience beyond the realm of human discourse. Perhaps it's no coincidence that the word 'scar' is one letter away from 'scare.'"
–Kat Duff
" Never give up on a dream because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway" - Earl Nightingale
Successful improvisation is
mostly a matter of taking your thoughts
out of the equation, because thinking
can keep the magic from happening.
You have to be open enough to
let the magic happen, instead of
trying to make it happen because
magic is never made.
~ Jimmy Herring
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This seems strange, at first, to consider being with life this way. But really, having tried and tried and tried again to figure things out, in the end this is where I feel life has more promise. So many thoughts only haunt me, and dwelling on them one misses the magic of stepping past them.
"Here lies a woman who was always tired.
because she lived in a world where too much was required."
- Clementine Churchill in the movie The Darkest Hour
Quote from: woodsgnome on July 07, 2017, 09:18:48 PM
"Maybe the most difficult stranger to welcome is the one who lives inside."
~ Mirabai Starr ~
Ooh, I really like this one WG!
Dont bother losing weight, just get fatter friends. fits every part of my life it means to change who you compare youself to
"A centerpiece of healthy adulthood is having your child self intact and alive and something to be proud of." ~ Maurice Sendak
Rings true, poignant, but also confusing. The latter is for those of us whose early struggles obliterated any sense of the child self. We were too busy defending; so maybe that's the pride part--that we were able to somehow do that?
"Peace is the way we struggle. Peace is not the absence of the storm. Peace is not some tranquil, idyllic place. And peace does not keep the storm at bay. But peace names that way we struggle with that which lies before us" ~ Jarem Sawatsky, author of Dancing with the Elephant.
I've always felt that my goal is peace. I've pictured it as something in the distant future, a someday phenomenon for when I can make it past all the cptsd roadblocks to serenity. But maybe peace is more a process than a destination, as suggested by this quote. In one sense, I'm living in peace; but life interferes, and life includes cptsd, etc. So peace is still my goal, but with a slightly different spin to what that really means.
This is the full version of my signature.
Happiness turned to me and said - "It is time. It is time you forgive yourself for all of the things you did not become. It is time to exonerate yourself for all the people you couldn't save, and all the fragile hearts you fumbled with in the dark of your confusion. It is time to accept you don't have to be who you were a year ago. You don't have to want the same things. Above all else, it is time to believe, with reckless abandon, that you're worthy of me, for I have been waiting for years.
-bianco sparacino
One of mine, from on the wall of my science class age 13.
"No one can make you feel inferior without your permission."
A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt.
He said, 'I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.'
The grandson asked him, 'Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?'
The grandfather answered: 'The one I feed.'
~ :bigwink: :yes: ~
While this story speaks for itself, the words "loving, compassionate" surprisingly rattled me. It's so hard to cultivate compassion for those who hurt me so badly. If I turn this to self-compassion it feels better, but when I regard the "loving compassionate" side as a whole, with even the hurt parts included, I can see it as an umbrella-like term under which I can find shelter.
It's still a paradox to have love and compassion around such deep hurt, but it's important to remember that doesn't imply tolerance or approval of what happened in any way. It only means I don't have to feed it anymore, giving it further strength.
Once the self-compassion part kicks in, the other can fade into obscurity. I visualize it as putting it all in a box, then closing it, locking the lid -- and losing the key. In its own way, that's the 'love and compassion' into which the hurt parts can settle, not forgotten but not feeding the reactions anymore. That's still hard, but worthwhile aiming for.
Hi Woodsgnome, I find what you wrote very thought-provoking and thank you for sharing it. :hug:
Hope :)
"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
~ E.E. Cummings.
He says "...we do not believe ... until ..." Seems so simple, and yet it's the biggest challenge sometimes, to find even a hint of what he says.
Sometimes it seems like the only road we know of has disappeared, vanished. And then ...
"When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, you don't conclude that the road has vanished. And how else could we discover the stars?"
~ Nancy Willard ~
Ooooo I love that one, WG! :yes:
"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves."
~Friedrich Nietzsche
"Community does not necessarily mean living face-to-face with others; rather, it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other." ~~~Parker J. Palmer
While we only communicate here via posts and other resources, this quote I think summarizes well why it's still valuable to connect this way. Indeed, some of us have very few (or none!) other contacts we can trust as much as those on this forum.
:cheer:
Former astronaut Eugene Cernak: "...there is only light if sunlight has something to shine on. When the sun shines through space, it's black. The light must have something to strike."
:yeahthat: :sunny:
I just read this in a wonderful book by Paula D'Arcy -- Stars at Night -- When Darkness Unfolds as Light. Written as a commentary on her own grief survival story, its dark topic -- what to do, and be, after devastating personal losses -- I found highly relevant to what we discuss on this forum; our grief over our own deep losses.
"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
"The Ache" was a term I've used for years in reference to what the whole mess of CPTSD feels like. I still feel it, but reading this quote I realize there's also this scream. Being internal, no one else hears it, and it makes "the Ache" seem even worse. The other apt term used by the author refers to the "one being held captive." Know that one, too.
I know -- just words -- but they resonated deep and clear for me when I read them. me
That resonates with me too. Thanks for sharing, Woodsgnome.
:thumbup: Tks for sharing this WG :hug:
Holding What Must Be Held (excerpt from a poem)
When I think I can't ache any more,
the world serves more heartache.
And I meet it.
I say no, but I feel myself stretched
by some great invisible hand,
rendering me spacious enough to hold
what must be held.
— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Rosemary Wahtola Trommer is a wonderful poet who creates beautiful contemplations about 'stretching' our capacity for spaciousness. It reminds me of the familiar saying about how it's the crack that lets the light in. But finding a way to create the opening, and not be scared of it -- that's the hard part, eh?
woodgnome,
yes,
Quotefinding a way to create the opening, and not be scared of it -- that's the hard part, eh?
very inspiring, thank you!
Two quotes I've come across in the past couple of days:
"People with an upper hand tend to make another's experience small." I don't know who it's from, but it makes me think of what happens to me when I'm being bullied - somebody tries to make me or my feelings or my thoughts small. I like this quote because it helps me see I'm not the first one to experience this under a bully.
The other one: "I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." - Elie Wiesel
I'm frequently 'haunted' by ghostly sounds in the form of re-hearing the taunts, shouts, and shame-talk of those who abused me years ago. While I've learned to vocally respond and not hide under the covers like I used to, running into the quote below gives me another perspective which I like. So here it is:
"I am peace, that is who I am, while old ghosts trespass on land which isn't theirs."
~ Simon Parke ~
:doh: Wouldn't ya know, just after posting the above quote by Parke, I went online and ran smack into the following quote which dove-tails nicely with the Parke quote, with the aha :bigwink: feeling of how these things work. The second quote:
"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."
Dan Millman
Hi Woodsgnome,
Wow, those two quotes are perfect, thanks for sharing them. :hug:
Hope :)
From over at OOTF: "Every interaction w/ PD persons results in damage — prep beforehand and make time after to heal", it's in mbr Spring Butterfly's signature.
Even interaction in my head with FOO mbrs results in damage and I need time to heal from it.
That is so completely true BB and I don't think those who haven't been subject to N abuse get it sadly. I just had the Outreach Worker from my inpatient program say to me during a checkup phone call this week "Just let it go" (re my NM dying and my mixed feelings about that). Yup, sage advice from a MSW clinician.
Another 'good' quote, though new to me, could turn out a fave though: Patrick Teahan talking about abusive families and childhood trauma based on his own experience and his clients' experiences "basically from age 0 to 20/21 it's one long gaslighting experience" :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Hope nobody is triggered by that. Me, I seem in the mood to laugh rn. Of course it's sad, but we all know that sadness in and devastation to our lives. Patrick Teahan isn't suggesting that our experiences are/were something to laugh at. Just a spot of humour directed at our abusive parents >:D
Simon Parke: "Your past is a springboard, not a chaperone."
Yes, yes, yes, and again -- yes!!! The past -- it's there, but I'm not. My ego/memory wants to go there, but the real "me" doesn't.
I'm on a journey, finding my own pace, and space, in my own wilderness of mind. Yes, the mind can glance back; and yes, it affects my present. But I'm also -- NOT THERE, IN THAT PAST.
"If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always got"
Change can be empowering !
"Sometimes when you're in a dark place, you think you've been buried, but actually you've been planted." CHRISTINE CAINE
from the book by Compton, Ellen. Good Things Happen in the Dark: A Candid Manifesto for Courageous Authenticity.
This imagery brought to mind the earlier (1908) book THE SECRET GARDEN and its subsequent serialization on BBC TV in 1975. Both of these were discussed by several people on this forum a few years ago.
Quote from: woodsgnome on January 10, 2024, 08:09:32 PM"Sometimes when you're in a dark place, you think you've been buried, but actually you've been planted." CHRISTINE CAINE
Love that quote!
This is a quote I like from a great movie "The Usual Suspects"
"The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled Was Convincing the World He Didn't Exist."
Harry potter, by Albus Dumbledore
"happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."
The Movie: Nymphomaniac
"Perhaps the only difference between me and other people was that I've always demanded more from the sunset; more spectacular colors when the sun hit the horizon. That's perhaps my only sin".