Quotes — Mental Health and Conditions

• "In overcoming the destructive force of trauma, our innate potential… lifts us to new heights of mastery and knowledge."

  — Peter Levine

  Waking the Tiger

• "The challenge of trauma treatment is not only dealing with the past but, even more, enhancing the quality of day-to-day experience… When you can’t be fully here, you go to the places where you did feel alive—even if those places are filled with horror and misery."

  — Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

  The Body Keeps the Score

• "If you are experiencing strange symptoms that no one seems to be able to explain, they could be arising from a traumatic reaction to a past event that you may not even remember. You are not alone. You are not crazy. There is a rational explanation for what is happening to you. You have not been irreversibly damaged, and it is possible to diminish or even eliminate your symptoms."

  — Peter Levine

  Waking the Tiger

• "Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence. Not only can trauma be healed, but with appropriate guidance and support, it can be transformative. Trauma has the potential to be one of the most significant forces for psychological, social, and spiritual awakening and evolution."

  — Peter Levine

  Waking the Tiger

• "Ultimately, the main goal of trauma therapy is to relegate the trauma to its rightful place in the client’s past."

  — Babette Rothschild

  The Body Remembers

• "One of the difficulties of PTSD is the phenomenon of flashbacks, which involve highly disturbing replays of implicit sensory memories of traumatic events sometimes with explicit recall, sometimes without. The sensations that accompany them are so intense that the suffering individual is unable to distinguish the current reality from the past. It feels like it is happening now."

  — Babette Rothschild

  The Body Remembers

• "While dissociation appears to be an instinctive response to save the self from suffering—and it does this very well—it exacts a high price in return."

  — Babette Rothschild

  The Body Remembers

• "Depression hurts. It’s the “black dog” of the night that robs you of joy, the unquiet mind that keeps you awake. It’s a noonday demon that only you can see, the darkness visible only to you."

  — Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel V. Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn

  The Mindful Way Through Depression

• "Depression and anxiety are downward spirals: patterns of negative, unhealthy activity and reactivity that the brain ends up stuck in… Recent research has uncovered the power of the upward spiral: the fact that small positive life changes lead to positive brain changes in its electrical activity, its chemical composition, and even its ability to grow new neurons… Upward spirals can reverse the downward patterns of depression and anxiety…"

  — Alex Korb

  The Upward Spiral

• "… by making small changes in your thoughts, actions, interactions, and environment, it’s possible to change the activity and chemistry of the key brain circuits underlying depression and anxiety."

  — Alex Korb

  The Upward Spiral

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