
The Trauma of Everyday Life

Especially in situations in which unbearable emotions are stirred up, the self’s only choice is to wall itself off from whatever is threatening it, to remove itself from what it cannot regulate.
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
“a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream,”
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
The infinitely poignant beauty of creation is inseparable from its diabolic destructiveness.
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
“Body exposed in the golden
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
All that is subject to arising is subject to
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
The effort required to ward off the possibility of trauma—the rush to normal that the absolutisms of daily life encourages—is itself traumatic.
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
We emerge, as infants, from a relational matrix and then struggle to come to terms with the trauma of aloneness.
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
“It is a joy to be hidden,” wrote Winnicott of the struggles of such children, “but disaster not to be found.”
Mark Epstein • The Trauma of Everyday Life
The mind that knows knows itself knowing.