“Trauma by nature drives us to the edge of comprehension, cutting us off from language based on common experience or an imaginable past.”

Annotation

Van der Kolk tells us that when we are traumatized, the Broca's area of the brain, which deals with speech, tends to shut down. We are literally rendered "speechless" and unable to create a coherent narrative about the trauma. This is why healing modalities that go beyond the verbal assessment of trauma (such as art therapy) can be so useful to the trauma survivor.

Explore more quotes:


About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.