100+ PTSD Quotes to Help Survivors Cope with Trauma

PTSD quotes can be some of the most honest representations about what it’s like to have post traumatic stress. Some of these quotes about PTSD will be relatable or help you cope with the trauma. As you suffer from PTSD it’s important to remember that you’re not alone. Let these PTSD quotes remind you that the pain is real and you will heal.

100+ PTSD Quotes to Help Survivors Cope with Trauma

PTSD Quotes

1. “Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods.” ― Peter A. Levine
2. “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
3. “There is no timestamp on trauma. There isn’t a formula that you can insert yourself into to get from horror to healed. Be patient. Take up space. Let your journey be the balm.” – Dawn Serra
4. “You have to understand that PTSD has to be an event that you experience, a very traumatic event. And actually, there is evidence that brain chemistry changes during this event in certain individuals where it’s imprinted indelibly forever and there’s an emotion associated with this which triggers the condition.” – Dale Archer
5. “Bad things do happen how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” – Walter Anderson
6. “Most of us have unhealthy thoughts and emotions that have either developed as a result of trauma or hardships in their childhood, or the way they were raised.” – Steven Seagal
7. “A lot of people who have experienced trauma at the hands of people they’ve trusted take responsibility, and that is what’s toxic.” – Hannah Gadsby
8. “One of the things that pains me is we have so tragically underestimated the trauma, the hardship we create in this country when we treat people unfairly, when we incarcerate them unfairly, when we condemn them unfairly.” – Brian Stevenson
9. “PTSD occurs following a trauma that was so awful that in retrospect you don’t understand how you survived. What that causes is an extreme feeling of vulnerability that you get past but that doesn’t go away.” – Paul Goulston
10. “What we change inwardly will change outer reality.” – Plutarch

Quotes About PTSD

1. 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.”― Mark Goulston MD
2. “Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it’s all in your head?” – Tracy Morgan
3. “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
4. “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 bare a different name: warriors.” – Lori Goodwin
5. “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
6. “It is only in sorrow bad weather masters us; in joy we face the storm and defy it.” – Amelia Barr
7. “I did not ask for the things I’ve been through. And I certainly didn’t ask my mind to paint and repaint the pictures back in flashback form.” – Michelle Groth
8. “Healing from trauma can also mean strength and joy. The goal of healing is not a papering-over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life – warts, wisdom, and all – with courage.” – Catherine Woodiwiss

If you’re currently suffering from PTSD, try our guided meditation for PTSD.

Quotes on PTSD

1. “To close your eyes will not ease another’s pain.” – Chinese Proverb
2. “When you love a girl that has lived trauma, when she realizes that you are choosing to love her, and not hurt her, she will love you back with the same kind of tenacity that it took to walk through fire.” – Tracy Malone
3. “Post traumatic stress injury isn’t a disease. It’s a wound to the soul that never heals.” – Tom Glenn
4. “I survived because the fire that burned inside of me burned brighter than the fire around me.” – Unknown
5. “I wish my head could forget what my eyes have seen.” – Dave Parnell
6. “You wake up every morning to fight the same demons that left you so tired the night before, and that, my love, is bravery.” – Unknown
7. “I’m destroying myself so others can’t,” she said, “and it’s the worst kind of control but it’s the only form I know.” – S.Z.
8. “You are stronger than you think. You have gotten through every bad day in your life, and you are undefeated.” – Unknown
9. “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
10. “Hold yourself back, or heal yourself back together. You decide.” ― Brittany Burgunder

Positive PTSD Quotes

1. “Instead of saying ‘I’m damaged, I’m broken, I have trust issues.” I say “I’m healing, I’m rediscovering myself, I’m starting over.” – Horacio Jones
2. “The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.” – Steve Jobs
3. “Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.” – Mason Cooley
4. “Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it’s all in your head?” – Octavia E. Butler
5. “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
6. “Trauma creates change you don’t choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose.” –Michelle Rosenthal
7. “Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.” – Richard Bach
8. “Courage is resistance to fear, the mastery is fear – not the absence of fear.” – Mark Twain
9. “You never know how strong you are, until being strong is the only choice you have.” – Bob Marley
10. “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will be someone else’s survival guide.” – Unknown

Loving Someone with PTSD Quotes

1. “People are not addicted to alcohol or drugs, they are addicted to escaping reality.” – Unknown
2. “People start to heal the moment they feel heard.” – Cheryl Richardson
3. “Punishing someone for PTSD is like punishing someone for cancer. The answer is love and protection.” – Unknown
4. “You don’t have to save me, you just have to hold my hand while I save myself.” – Unknown
5. “The mind replays what the heart can’t delete.” – Unknown

Combat PTSD Quotes

1. “When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.” — Mark Twain
2. “War becomes a part of you. It is a feeling just as much as an experience. If you can’t feel it, you weren’t paying attention. And if you weren’t paying attention, you are probably dead anyway.” – Clint Van Winkle
3. “Am I awake or dreaming? It doesn’t matter anymore. When I close my eyes I dream of death and war. When I open my eyes I see death and war.” – Michael Anthony
4. “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
5. “The shrinks call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I call it hell. The demons are waiting in each corner, ready to drag me back to the battlefield.” – James Coyne
6. “People generally don’t suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who’ve endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul.” – David Brooks
7. “The brave men and women who serve their country and as a result live constantly with the war inside of 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
8. “When you ask a veteran when they were last “over there,” know that in many cases, the real answer is “every night.” – Unknown
9. “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
10. “I feel no emotional connection to these outwardly human gestures. I am not there, because I never left Afghanistan.” ― Jake Wood

PTSD Awareness Quotes

1. “It isn’t about what’s wrong with you, it’s about what happened to you.” – Unknown
2. “You cannot heal a lifetime of pain overnight, be patient with yourself, it takes as long as it takes to rebuild yourself.” – Unknown
3. “Both tolerance and respect are empty virtues until we actually understand whatever it is we are supposed to be tolerating or respecting.” – Stephen R. Prothero
4. “I’m not lazy. I’m just exhausted from fighting my way through every single day.” – Mimi Love
5. “Some people survive and talk about it. Some people survive and go silent. Some people survive and create.” – Nikita Gill
6. “Wounds won’t heal the way you want them to, they heal the way they need to.” – Dele Olanubi
7. “Healing happens when you’re triggered and you’re able to move through the pain, the pattern, the story and walk your way to a different ending.” – Vienna Pharaon
8. “I’m not weak, I was trusting. I’m not giving up, I’m healing. I’m not incapable of love, I’m giving. I’m not alone, I see you all here. I’m fighting this.” – Rene Smith
9. “Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.” – Peter Levine
10. “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” – C.G. Jung

PTSD Triggers Quotes

1. “Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.” ― Carolyn Spring
2. “You have to understand that PTSD has to be an event that you experience, a very traumatic event. And actually, there is evidence that brain chemistry changes during this event in certain individuals where it’s imprinted indelibly forever and there’s an emotion associated with this which triggers the condition.” – Dale Archer
3. “I believe our emotional traumas create triggers. Those triggers are actually a form of PTSD.” – Suzanne Wagner
4. “Just when you think you’re in a good place, one small trigger sends you spiralling down again.” – Unknown
5. “Triggers can happen when you least expect them. When you think all the emotional wounds are healed something can happen that reminds you there is still a scar.” – Alexandra Eva May
6. “If someone else’s reaction seems out of proportion to the situation, it usually means that something else was triggered.” – Dr. Lauren Fogel
7. “The body remembers. Stuffed until an event, a sound, a sight, a touch, a word, or a person awakens them” – Unknown
8. “If storing memories is like putting away groceries, a traumatic event is stored by shoving a bunch of stuff in a cabinet and then any time it gets opened all the stuff falls on your head.” – Unknown
9. “If the wounds on her heart and the bruises on her soul were translated on her skin, you wouldn’t recognize her at all.” – Verona Q
10. “A trigger is the connection between the conscious mind and a buried painful memory.” – Unknown

Living With PTSD Quotes

1. “Alone with thoughts of what should have long been forgotten, I let myself be carried away into the silent screams of delirium.” ― Amanda Steele
2. “Instead of being ashamed of what you’ve been through, be proud of what you have overcome.” – Dr. Phil
3. “PTSD nightmares aren’t always exact replays of the event. Sometimes they replay the emotions you felt during the event, such as fear, helplessness, and sadness.” – Alice Cariv
4. “Simple little things like a song or smell can be a trigger.” – Selina Bonser
5. “When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.” – Bessel van der Kolk, MD
6. “The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost
7. “I did not ask for the things that I’ve been through, and I certainly did not ask my mind to paint and repaint the pictures in flashback form.” – Michelle Groth
8. “It isn’t in my past. It’s in my everyday.” – Helen Wilson
9. “Over time, as most people fail the survivor’s exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor, thus persists even after she is free.” – Judith Lewis Herman
10. “Simple little things like a song or smell can be trigger.” –Selina Bonser

PTSD Recovery Quotes

1. “Recovery is a process. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes everything you’ve got.” – Unknown
2. “I won’t let pain, turn my heart into something ugly. I will show you that surviving can be beautiful.” – Christy Ann Martine
3. “Recovery doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It simply means it no longer controls you.” – Unknown
4. “Healing is not an overnight process. It is a daily cleansing of pain, it is a daily healing of your life.” – Leon Brown
5. “Dont ask the question ‘why the addiction’ but ‘why the pain?’” – Dr. Gabor Mate
6. “You survived the abuse. Now, you’ll survive the recovery.” – Unknown
7. “Talking openly about your mental illness is not seeking attention, it’s seeking help.” – Anonymous
8. “Recovering from PTSD is being fragile and strong at the same time. It’s beautiful medley of constantly being broken down and pieced together. I am painting almost done to completion, beautiful but not quite complete.” – Kate J. Tate
9. “Recovery is about progression, not perfection.” – Unknown
10. “One of the hardest things was learning I was worth recovery.” – Demi Lovato

Complex PTSD Quotes

1. “People are afraid to heal because their entire identity is centered around the trauma they’ve experienced. They have no idea who they are outside of trauma and that unknown is terrifying.” – Ebonee Davis
2. “It’s not the person refusing to let go of the past, but the past refusing to let go of the person.” – Sonawane Raj
3. “PTSD is the constant battle of reminding my body and mind that the past, present, and future are not one in the same, and despite what I’m feeling I am safe and in control of my body.” – Shantae Griffin
4. “When all you know is fight or flight, red flags and butterflies all feel the same.” – Cindy Cherie
5. “I have a gaping, painful hole in my soul… where good, loving parents and a normal, safe childhood, should have been.” – Lilly Hope Lucario
6. “There is nothing in this world that can trouble you as much as your own thoughts.” – Unknown
7. “You can’t patch a wounded soul with a bandaid.” – Michael Connelly
8. “I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war.” – Daniel Somers
9. “When you notice someone does something toxic the first time, don’t wait for the second time before you address it or cut them off.” – Shahida Arabi
10. “I have met many, many severely distressed people whose daily lives are filled with the agony of both remembered and unremembered trauma, who try so hard to heal and yet who are constantly being pushed down both by their symptoms and the oppressive circumstances of post traumatic life around them.” – Carolyn Spring

Trauma Quotes

1. “The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.” – Taylor Swift
2. “Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.” – Peter A. Levine
3. “Repeated trauma requires you to create a system of defenses that protects you. And these protections were so important. They saved your life. They protected your real self.” – Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD.
4. “A great loss brings up an emotional storm that opens up a hidden reservoir of childhood pain” ― Pete Walker
5. “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
6. “There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton
7. “When you can tell your story and it doesn’t make you cry, you know you have healed.” – Karen Salmansohn
8. “There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away.” ― Sherman Alexie
9. “Just like there’s always time for pain, there’s always time for healing.” ― Jennifer Brown
10. “Grief is messy. It’s traumatic. Devastating. Confusing. Exhausting. Grief is a natural process of our human experience. May you find comfort in these unexpected places along your journey.” ― Dana Arcuri

Conclusion

These PTSD quotes tell a very real story of how life with PTSD can be. It can be hard to face the truth when you’re experiencing fight or flight. But the important thing to remember is you are not alone. Many people have survived trauma and come out stronger in the end. Use these quotes about PTSD to help you heal your pain and come out stronger.