Favourite Quotes - Part 3

[~Lapis-Lazuli~]

"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

[woodsgnome]

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.

[radical]

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.

[woodsgnome]

"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.

[woodsgnome]

"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.

[Three Roses]

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

[Marie]

❤️"You can heal your life"❤️

Louise Hay

[lambchop]

Love this one....

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~ William Morrow

[Blueberry]

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! 

[woodsgnome]

Blueberry....


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.

[woodsgnome]

"Maybe the most difficult stranger to welcome is the one who lives inside."

       ~ Mirabai Starr ~

[woodsgnome]

"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

[Sceal]

" Never give up on a dream because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway" - Earl Nightingale

[woodsgnome]

  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

----------------------------------

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.

[Sceal]

"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