114 quotes found
“In order to believe clients' accounts of trauma, you need to suspend any pre-conceived notions that you have about what is possible and impossible in human experience. As simple as they may sound, ...”
“We don't go back to wallow, we go back to undo the lies that are back there that are holding its captive from living a wondrous and full life.”
“I found myself in a pattern of being attracted to people who were somehow unavailable, and what I realized was that I was protecting myself because I equate the idea of connection and love with tra...”
“I believe that we belittle survivors by assuming that they will fail.”
“It is my hope that this book helps those who know and love people with DID: family members, lovers, coworkers, and friends. It is also my hope that those charged with intervening in families in whi...”
“People may not realize the damage that they are doing by placing the blame on the victim ~ but that doesn't lessen the damage that they cause by doing it.”
“Lies that cause survivors to deny or recent abuse memories and experiences The alters who are designated to live in the "real world, going to school or college and holding jobs while interacting w...”
“Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial.”
“Sometimes buried memories of abuse emerge spontaneously. A triggering event or catalyst starts the memories flowing. The survivor then experiences the memories as a barrage of images about the abus...”
“My mom called Grandma today and told her we would no longer be attending family parties. My mom told her we have had enough of being blamed for something Brian did and everyone brushing it off like...”
“What most people call spontaneous recall usually involves memories that have been denied, not repressed. The survivor has always been aware that the sexual abuse happened, but he or she has studiou...”
“Denial protected us, screening out certain experiences & feelings until we grew strong enough to relate to them...Yet it also dropped a curtain over our experience, obscuring it, leaving us with a ...”
“The capacity for dissociation enables the young child to exercise their innate life-sustaining need for attachment in spite of the fact that principal attachment figures are also principal abusers.”
“One of the reasons a survivor finds it so difficult to see herself as a victim is that she has been blamed repeatedly for the abuse: "If you weren't such a whore, this wouldn't have to happen." Eac...”
“When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to se...”
“A short poem from my new book, The Lost Journal of my Second Trip to Pergatory, Thorny CrownsOf course the gold one was for special occasions, weddings, etc,silver for family reunions, office-casua...”
“Since her time in the necromancer’s clutches, she was still recovering lost memories from the quicksand of her mind. They’d drop like nuclear bombs, freezing her at the worst time as visuals which ...”
“Survivors who don’t stand up for themselves often develop physical and emotional illnesses. Many become depressed because they feel so hopeless and helpless about being able to change their lives. ...”
“I no longer look to my abusers with any expectation– of remorse, or apology or restitution or restoration or relationship. I’m at peace, accepting that they won’t and can’t help me out of the mess ...”
“He doesn’t hurt us anymore.”Of course he doesn't hurt you anymore, I think. You're not defenseless anymore.”
