60 PTSD Quotes for When You Can’t Remember How Strong You Are

The PTSD quotes below will help you heal and inspire you find the strength within.

PTSD, or post traumatic stress syndrome can be caused by almost any event that makes a person feel like their well being is under threat.

According to DVNF.org, the technical definition is, “a mental health problem that some people develop after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening event, like combat, a natural disaster, a car accident, or sexual assault.”

PTSD can impact your lives in so many ways, yet most of us who suffer from it remain in denial for a long while. 

I experienced many traumatizing things in my childhood, but yet whenever I would talk about it I would say, “It’s ok, it wasn’t that bad.”

Yet as an adult I had control issues, abandonment issues, and would have random bouts of pain and irritability.

Two sessions with the therapist that I have now been seeing for over a year, and she diagnosed me with PTSD.

The first thing she did was recommend, The Body Keeps the Score. 

If you have had trauma I would highly encourage you to pick up a copy.

These quotes will help heal and inspire you regardless of what caused your PTSD, or that of a loved one.

Also, check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily wisdom. 

See the rest of our quote database for even more inspirational ideas and thoughts.

PTSD quotes for abuse survivors

1. “Trauma does not have to occur by abuse alone…” ― Asa Don Brown

2. “Childhood trauma does not come in one single package.” ― Asa Don Brown

3. “A great loss brings up an emotional storm that opens up a hidden reservoir of childhood pain” ― Pete Walker

4. “Dissociation -the common factor in all types of post-traumatic syndromes- is facilitated by violation of boundaries by relational omission and intrusion as represented by distinct effects and consequences of childhood neglect and abuse.” ― Vedat Sar

5. “While a psychiatric diagnosis can serve a purpose in treatment plans, it should not become a tool to discredit a person’s disclosure of abuse.” ― Lee Ann Hoff

6. “Abuse really is its own alphabet. Those who have not gone through it cannot understand it fully. The echoes of violence hang in subconscious long after the threat is gone.” ― Michelle Franklin

7. “I thought when the abuse stopped I could move on with my life. Instead I am still running from Brian. The only difference is now I am running from him in my dreams.” ― Erin Merryn

8. “The trauma said, ‘Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” ― Andrea Gibson

9. “The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.” ― Nathaniel Branden

10. “Many survivors insist they’re not courageous: ‘If I were courageous I would have stopped the abuse.’ ‘If I were courageous, I wouldn’t be scared’… Most of us have it mixed up. You don’t start with courage and then face fear. You become courageous because you face your fear.” ― Laura Davis

Understanding PTSD quotes that will help you heal

11. “You can’t patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.” ― Michael Connelly

12. “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

13. “Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.” ― Carolyn Spring

14. “We hardly ever talk about trauma afterwards, because it helps to live in a world where we can pretend it never happened.” ― Joyce Rachelle

15. “Avoiding triggers is a symptom of PTSD, not a treatment for it.”― Jonathan Haidt

16. “Healing trauma involves tears. The tears release our pain. The tears are part of our recovery. My friend, please let your tears flow.” ― Dana Arcuri

17. “Determine your core beliefs – Write them out and look at them often. If someone is violating them, evaluate and remove offenders quickly. Take control. Heal the PTSD and live the life you deserve. Be a SurThriver.” ― Tracy Malone

18. “The objective is for the past to become a very tiny part of your very large, confident, capable, and free self.” ― Michele Rosenthal

19. “Feelings are not to be suppressed or fixed — they’re to be acknowledged.” ― Jennifer Lane, Spiked

20. “When it comes to mental illness most of the diagnoses are similar or the same yet they can never display how we individually go through our pain.” ― Stanley Victor Paskavich

21. “In the culture people talk about trauma as an event that happened a long time ago. But what trauma is, is the imprints that event has left on your mind and in your sensations… the discomfort you feel and the agitation you feel and the rage and the helplessness you feel right now.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk

22. “The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.” ― Judith Lewis Herman

23. “Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” (p.97)” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk

PTSD quotes for veterans

24. “This dog had shown more courage than I. This great, powerful, beautiful dog was willing to take a chance on me – a broken, depressed, lonely Marine.” ― Mary Alice Monroe

25. “In war, the damage you inflict on the enemy might be immediately apparent. The damage you inflict on yourself in doing so will only become apparent later.” ― Stewart Stafford

26. “Battling for our Wounded Warriors to have a better tomorrow for what they battled for US yesterday.” ― Roxanne Ward

27. “There are people who come home from war and want to talk about the pain, but no one wants to listen; there are others who want to keep silent and repress the memories, and all their family and friends want is to talk about it. I call this the war veteran reintegration paradox.” ― M.B. Dallocchio

28. “The shrinks call it Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. I call it hell. The demons are waiting in each corner, ready to drag me back to the battlefield. ― James Coyne

29. “The brave men and women, who serve their country and as a result, live constantly with the war inside them, exist in a world of chaos. But the turmoil they experience isn’t who they are; the PTSD invades their minds and bodies.” ― Robert Koger

30. “The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness, trapped in a sort of spiritual solitary confinement, looking back at the rest of the world from beyond the barrier of what happened. They find themselves unable to communicate their condition to those who remained at home, resenting civilians for their blind innocence.” ― David Brooks

PTSD quotes about what trauma feels like

31. “PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.” ― Susan Pease Banitt

32. “Some people’s lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. You can’t process it because it doesn’t fit with what came before or what comes afterwards.” ― Jessica Stern

33. “There are edges around the black and every now and then a flash of color streaks out of the gray. But I can never really grasp any of the slivers of memories that emerge.” ― Katie McGarry

34. “Alone with thoughts of what should have long been forgotten, I let myself be carried away into the silent screams of delirium.” ― Amanda Steele

35. “The part I wanted them to understand is that these equations can implode, constricting your whole life, until one day you’re sitting in a locked steel box breathing through an airhole with a straw and wondering, ‘Now? Now am I safe?” ― Roxane Gay

36. “You’d think I’d be used to loud noises with the constant screaming in my head.” ― Lidia Longorio

37. “You’ve been so used to fighting Wars with a gun in your hand that you forget to put it down. Not every fight requires a weapon of some kind, and not everything is a fight.” ― Lori Llewellyn
If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of gun violence quotes that illustrate both sides of this social issue.

38. “There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton

Powerful PTSD Quotes  

39. “Even in times of trauma, we try to maintain a sense of normality until we no longer can. That, my friends, is called surviving. Not healing. We never become whole again … we are survivors. If you are here today… You are a survivor. But those of us who have made it thru hell and are still standing? We bear a different name: warriors.” ― Lori Goodwin

40. “Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods.” ― Peter A. Levine

41. “As a deep wound comes to the surface, things can appear worse for a time.” ― Renae A.Sauter

42. “P.T.S.D. doesn’t make you weak. It makes you a survivor.” ― DaShanne Stokes

43. “The medical professionals should fight PTSD at every cost for those living in pain and the battles they’ve lost.” ― Stanley Victor Paskavich

44. “We are all just one event or trauma way from suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” ― Donna Kasubeck

45. “You are not broken and in need of fixing. You are wounded and in need of healing.” ― Danu Morrigan

46. “I cannot stand the words Get over it. All of us are under such pressure to put our problems in the past tense. Slow down. Don’t allow others to hurry your healing. It is a process, one that may take years, occasionally, even a lifetime — and that’s OK.” ― Beau Taplin

47. “Our tears are trying to serve a purpose, but we rarely let them. I don’t know how we got started with subverting that purpose.” ― Hugh Howey.

48. “After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.” ― Arthur Golden

49. “Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so.” ― Anna Funder

50. “There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape.” ― Brian Evenson

More PTSD quotes  and sayings

51. “I’m still coping with my trauma, but coping by trying to find different ways to heal it rather than hide it. – Clemantine Wamariya

52. “You’re not the same. You’re not supposed to be the same. You’re supposed to be different. This isn’t something you will ever forget.” – Daisy Whitney

53. “When you’re going through these difficult times of chaos and trauma, the most important thing is to keep those who are closest to you together.” – Michael Imperioli

54. “Grateful people may recover faster from trauma.” – Deborah Norville

55. “The more trauma and bad experiences you have, the more you are able to laugh on yourself and the situation.” – Neena Gupta

56. Always remember, if you have been diagnosed with PTSD, it is not a sign of weakness; rather, it is proof of your strength, because you have survived!” – Michel Templet

57. Only those who have walked through darkness know the precious fragility of the light.” – Heather Babcock

58. Count Your Blessings And Not Your Depressings.” – John M Sheehan

59. “The fact is that trauma and risk-taking hadn’t become scarier over the years; it had become more normal.” – Lynsey Addario

60. “If you have suffered from trauma, one of the most healing things that can happen to you is being seen. Being seen doesn’t have to mean that someone actually lays their eyes on you, although that certainly helps.” – Timothy Morton

Which of these PTSD quotes resonated with you best?

PTSD can be complex and difficult to understand, both for the person who has it, and their loved ones.

I hope these quotes were able to help you better understand the symptoms of PTSD.

If you think there is any chance that you have PTSD, please find someone to talk to.

You really will feel much better.

The path to healing can be arduous but all of the hard work is worth it.

At first, I didn’t see the value of dredging up things I thought I had “handled.”

My therapist told me that handling is just another form of control, and is not the same thing as acceptance or healing.

I truly believed she was batty, but now I have to agree.

Please leave a comment below about what has helped you heal, or any other PTSD quotes and sayings that I might have missed.

And please remember, that you are loved and not alone.