{"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"Mark Goulston","tags":["dangerous-world","lack-of-trust","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","posttraumatic-stress-disorder","ptsd","sense-of-self","shattered-souls","stress","trauma","traumatic-stress","work-view"],"id":23247,"author_id":"Mark+Goulston"},{"text":"Many call it the 1000 yard stare and can't realize the pain when PTSD takes us there.","author":"Stanley Victor Paskavich","tags":["depression","depression","mental-illness","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","ptsd","ptsd","war"],"id":42102,"author_id":"Stanley+Victor+Paskavich"},{"text":"I had built such a wall between my experiences and how I felt about those experiences that I was incapable of reliving both simultaneously. I could talk about my traumas, even walk through them, but I couldn’t feel them. When I tried to bring it all together, when I tried to remember how I had felt, I disappeared in my own head. My to-do list took on grave importance. The book I read the night before filled my thoughts. Yesterday’s article suddenly called out to be rewritten. I couldn’t get inside myself.","author":"Sarah Hackley","tags":["healing","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","ptsd","trauma","traumatic-experiences"],"id":42410,"author_id":"Sarah+Hackley"},{"text":"The no-booze rule is one of several shams perpetuated by certain religious groups, presumably to keep their flocks in line. After all, what’s a shepherd to do with drunk sheep? So take your medicine, but leave the booze on the shelf. We have a label to keep, and it’s not Jack Daniels. Don’t mourn for me. Just tell me what to do rather than teach me what to be. Slam another pill, pop that one last sedative…you’ll find me in the kitchen, washing my glass.","author":"Chila Woychik","tags":["booze","drinking","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","religious-extremism"],"id":45449,"author_id":"Chila+Woychik"},{"text":"Dissociation can enable us to withstand pain and loss under which we would otherwise break. It enables us to survive and pull through. But, a habit of continual dissociation – especially after the trauma has passed – leads to the shut-in feeling I was experiencing. While I imagined I was being strong in the face of pain, in reality, I was merely hiding.","author":"Sarah Hackley","tags":["dissociation","healing the emotional self","post traumatic stress disorder","ptsd","survival","trauma"],"id":89818,"author_id":"Sarah+Hackley"},{"text":"PTSD in its rawest form is a death sentence which causes many veterans and others to execute themselves in hope to be free.","author":"Stanley Victor Paskavich","tags":["mental-illness","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","psychology","ptsd","shell-shocked","suicide","suicide-awareness","war"],"id":106133,"author_id":"Stanley+Victor+Paskavich"},{"text":"Impending war was evidenced by the faraway expression in the older villagers' eyes, the shadows on their faces, not of fear but of sorrow. Because they knew; they had lived through the last war and they remembered the generation of young men who had marched off so willingly and never come back. Those too, like Daddy, who had made it home, but left in France a part of themselves that they could never recover. Who surrendered to moments, periodically, in which their eyes filmed and their lips whitened, and their minds gave over to sights and sounds they wouldn't share but couldn't shake.","author":"Kate Morton","tags":["death","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","soldiers","sorrow","war"],"id":116158,"author_id":"Kate+Morton"},{"text":"I am Frustration. I am Memory-Lost. Sometimes I read a line a dozen times before it sticks. My creative force has slipped. I type slower, speak slower, think at a snail’s pace. I’m Life shapeshifted by Post Traumatic Stress, bastardized by Fate.","author":"Chila Woychik","tags":["creative-losses","fate","post-traumatic-stress","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","writing"],"id":127462,"author_id":"Chila+Woychik"},{"text":"In talking with people that have experienced it, I learned that PTSD is something that a person in a position of authority sometimes thinks they’re not supposed to have. They don’t always have an avenue to personally address it or even discuss it.","author":"Stana Katic","tags":["being-strong","being-strong-minded","mental-health-stigma","mental-illness","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","posttraumatic-stress-disorder","ptsd","self-stigma"],"id":146450,"author_id":"Stana+Katic"},{"text":"Many veterans feel guilty because they lived while others died. Some feel ashamed because they didn’t bring all their men home and wonder what they could have done differently to save them. When they get home they wonder if there’s something wrong with them because they find war repugnant but also thrilling. They hate it and miss it.Many of their self-judgments go to extremes. A comrade died because he stepped on an improvised explosive device and his commander feels unrelenting guilt because he didn’t go down a different street. Insurgents used women and children as shields, and soldiers and Marines feel a totalistic black stain on themselves because of an innocent child’s face, killed in the firefight. The self-condemnation can be crippling.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015.","author":"David Brooks","tags":["ashamed","combat-ptsd","guilt","horror","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","ptsd","shame","soldiers","survivor-guilt","veterans","war","war-trauma"],"id":153770,"author_id":"David+Brooks"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":30,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}