63 Inspirational Quotes for Veterans with PTSD

"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

"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

"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."

- Larry Godwin

"Post-Traumatic Stress Injury isn't a disease. It's a wound to the soul that never heals."

- Tom Glenn

"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

"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 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

"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

"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

"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."

- Diane Sawyer

"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

"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

"Trauma creates change you don't choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose."

- Michelle Rosenthall

"Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence."

- Peter A. Levine

"Trauma destroys the fabric of time. In normal time you move from one moment to the next, sunrise to sunset, birth to death. After trauma, you may move in circles, find yourself being sucked backwards into an eddy or bouncing like a rubber ball from now to then to back again. ... In the traumatic universe the basic laws of matter are suspended: ceiling fans can be helicopters, car exhaust can be mustard gas."

- David J. Morris

"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

"Healing is not an overnight process. It is a daily cleansing of pain, it is a daily healing of your life."

- Leon Brown

"You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion that define you as a person. There is no feeling any more, because to feel any emotion would also be to beckon the overwhelming blackness from you. My mind has now locked all this down. And without any control of this self-defence mechanism my subconscious has operated. I do not feel any more."

- Jack White

"When you can tell your story and it doesn't make you cry, you know you have healed."

- Karen Salmansohn

"Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods."

- Peter A. Levine

"You never know how strong you are, until being strong is the only choice you have."

- Bob Marley

"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

"Hold yourself back, or heal yourself back together. You decide."

- Brittany Burgunder

"Courage is resistance to fear, the mastery is fear –not the absence of fear."

- Mark Twain

"People start to heal the moment they feel heard."

- Cheryl Richardson

"Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid."

- Franklin P. Jones

"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."

- Joseph Campbell

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."

- Elmer Davis

"The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission."

- John F. Kennedy

"I have long believed that sacrifice is the pinnacle of patriotism."

- Bob Riley

"What we change inwardly will change outer reality."

- Plutarch