Without trauma-informed treatment, traumatized clients may not respond optimally and they may even be re-traumatized by the mental health system if they are labeled as “treatment resistant” because the treatment does not address the core issue of trauma; some may be misunderstood as fabricating or exaggerating their trauma history or symptoms.

~ Bethany Brand

Bethany Brand Abuse Survivors Fabricating Mental Health Mental Health System Ptsd Re Traumatized Trauma Informed Traumatized Treatment Resistant

As you may already know, post-traumatic stress disorder is extremely complex. Each client has a unique, perhaps virtually unbelievable, set of experiences, and an almost equally set of reactions to those experiences.

~ Aphrodite Matsakis

Aphrodite Matsakis Abuse Survivors Counseling Denial Disbelief Mental Health Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Psychotherapy Ptsd Society Denial Therapy Trauma Survivors Traumatic Experiences Unbelievable

Healthy people understand that others have the capacity to choose to end relationships and it serves as motivation for them to learn to relate in healthy and loving ways. However, when we are driven by shame, we don't just fear losing a relationship, but we live in terror that if we let anyone really get to know us, we would never be desired, pursued, or loved. In us, that fear can be worked out in the development of unhealthy denial, workaholism, perfectionism, chameleon-type behavior, and sadly, even revictimization... When we live in denial or present a false self out of fear... we will do anything to be accepted by people... When we begin to tell the truth about what happened to us we also begin the process of turning about from this type of idolatry... When we begin to tear away our layers of illegitimate shame... When our own vision is not distorted by our shame we can discern what was our responsibility and what wasn't.

~ Wendy J. Mahill

Wendy J. Mahill Abuse Survivors Being Exposed Chameleon Chameleon Type Behavior Dysfunctional Relationships False Self Fast Of Being Alone Fast Of Rejection Fear Of Being Found Out Fear Of Being Known Fear Of Exposure Fear Of Intimacy Healing Insights Hiding From The Past Revictimization Self Hate Shame Unhealthy Coping Unhealthy Habits Unhealthy Relationships Vulnerable Wearing A Mask Workaholic

Shame evokes anxiety about what will happen if someone really knows is, but, because it is impossible to for anxiety and anger to be felt simultaneously, we can dream our anxiety by employing anger or rage in the form of contempt... Contempt, because it feels more powerful has always helped us feel safer and more powerful than the anxiety we feel when we experience shame. [3]

~ Wendy J. Mahill

Wendy J. Mahill Abuse Survivors Ashamed Avoidance Contempt Healing Insights Psychological Defence Self Contempt Shame

I am continuously struck by how frequently the various thought processes of the inner critic trigger overwhelming emotional flashbacks. This is because the PTSD-derived inner critic weds shame and self-hate about imperfection to fear of abandonment, and mercilessly drive the psyche with the entwined serpents of perfectionism and endangerment. Recovering individuals must learn to recognize, confront and disidentify from the many inner critic processes that tumble them back in emotional time to the awful feelings of overwhelming fear, self-hate, hopelessness and self-disgust that were part and parcel of their original childhood abandonment.

~ Pete Walker

Pete Walker Abandonment Abuse Survivors Complex Ptsd Flashbacks Healing Insights Imperfection Perfectionism Self Criticism Self Disgust Self Hate Shame Survivors

The more we get attached to any relationship, the more we lose the grip on our emotional freedom.

~ Dr. Jacinta Mpalyenkana

Dr. Jacinta Mpalyenkana Abuse Survivors Emotional Freedom Emotional Healing Relationships Quotes

There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their own path or stumbles across it.

~ Laurie Matthew

Laurie Matthew Abuse Survivors Half Insights Healing Abuse Healing From Abuse Healing Insights Healing Journey Healing Quotes Healing The Past Healing Trauma Recovery Survivors

Many of us learned that keeping busy…kept us at a distance from our feelings...Some of us took the ways we busied ourselves—becoming overachievers & workaholics—as self esteem…But whenever our inner feeling did not match our outer surface, we were doing ourselves a disservice…If stopping to rest meant being barraged with this discrepancy, no wonder we were reluctant to cease our obsessive activity.

~ Maureen Brady

Maureen Brady Abuse Survivors Avoidance Avoiding Pain Coping Mechanism Coping Mechanisms Coping Skills Healing Insights Keeping Busy Obsessions Overachievement Overachievers Overcomer Quotes Overwork Recovery Recovery From Abuse Workaholic Workaholism

When faced with choosing between attributing their pain to “being crazy” and having had abusive parents, clients will choose “crazy” most of the time. Dora, a 38-year-old, was profoundly abused by multiple family perpetrators and has grappled with cutting and eating disordered behaviors for most of her life. She poignantly echoed this dilemma in her the

~ Lisa Ferentz

Lisa Ferentz Abuse Survivors Abusers Abusive Parents Child Abuse Survivors Crazy Cutting Denial Dysfunctional Families Eating Disorder Causes Nuts Survivors Therapy

Several psychologists (L. Armstrong, 1994; Enns, McNeilly, Corkery, & Gilbert, 1995; Herman, 1992; McFarlane & van der Kolk, 1996; Pope & Brown, 1996) contend that the controversy of delayed recall for traumatic events is likely to be influenced by sexism. Kristiansen, Gareau, Mittleholt, DeCourville, and Hovdestad (1995) found that people who were more authoritarian and who had less favorable attitudes toward women were less likely to believe in the veracity of women’s recovered memories for sexual abuse. Those who challenged the truthfulness of recovered memories were more likely to endorse negative statements about women, including the idea that battered women enjoy being abused. McFarlane and van der Kolk (1996) have noted that delayed recall in male combat veterans reported by Myers (1940) and Kardiner (1941) did not generate controversy, whereas delayed recall in female survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse has provoked considerable debate.

~ Rachel E. Goldsmith

Rachel E. Goldsmith Abuse Survivors Authoritarian Bias Child Sexual Abuse Controversy Credibility Delayed Reaction Denial Doubting Mind Incest Psychological Trauma Recovered Memories Recovered Memory Sexism Sexual Abuse Society Denial Survivors Trauma Trauma Memory Traumatic Experiences

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, it may be difficult to do so.

~ Aphrodite Matsakis

Aphrodite Matsakis Abuse Survivors Denial Disbelief Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Society Denial Trauma Traumatic Experiences Traumatized

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.

~ Darlene Ouimet

Darlene Ouimet Abuse Survivors Get Over It Ptsd Revisiting The Past Trauma Trauma Survivors Traumatized Wallow

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 trauma and death.

~ Zachary Quinto

Zachary Quinto Abuse Survivors Attraction Avoiding Commitment Avoiding Pain Dysfunctional Love Dysfunctional Relationship Healing Insights Relationship Problems Self Protection Trauma Traumatized

I believe that we belittle survivors by assuming that they will fail.

~ Toni Bernhard

Toni Bernhard Abuse Survivors Trauma Trauma Survivors Traumatized

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 which there is violence will take away a more nuanced approach to their important work, informed by a deeper understanding of trauma.Most of all, I hope that those of you who have DID know that the disorder itself is an incredible survival technique. You should feel proud to have survived. Trauma has had a major impact on my life, as it has on yours, but I’ve learned that my life extends beyond the pain and darkness. Survivors of trauma are full of life, creativity, courage, and love. We are more than the sum of our parts.

~ Olga Trujillo

Olga Trujillo Abuse Survivors Dissociative Identity Disorder Mpd Multiple Personality Disorder Trauma

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.

~ Darlene Ouimet

Darlene Ouimet Abuse Survivors Blame Blame The Victim Healing Insights Rape Rape Survivor Sexual Abuse Sexual Assault Survivors Survivors Of Abuse Victim Blaming

Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial.

~ John Bradshaw

John Bradshaw Abuse Survivors Child Abuse Child Abuse Deniers Denial Dysfunctional Families Dysfunctional Family

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 with others in adulthood, are trained, usually at home by parents, to disbelieve any memories that might come up.⸱͏ Children are taught to believe that they got the idea that they were abused from something they read or saw on television or from someone else’s experience or from a therapist. (This is a basic argument of those who attempt to discredit these experiences in the public eye and among professionals.)⸱ Children are also taught that if they experience flashbacks of awful abuses, those must be dreams or imagination or signs that they are crazy. Nothing bad really happened to them

~ Alison Miller

Alison Miller Abuse Survivors Abusive Cults Brainwashing Brainwashing Quotes Cult Abuse Denial Denial Of Abuse Deny Dissociative Identity Disorder Mind Control Programming Organized Abuse Recant Recantation Recanters Ritual Abuse

Many survivors struggle to believe the abuse happened. They don’t want to believe it. It’s too painful to think about. They don’t want to accuse family members or face the terrible loss involved in realizing “a loved one” hurt them, they don’t want to rock the boat.

~ Laura Davis

Laura Davis Abuse Survivors Avoidance Child Abuse Survivors Denial Denial Of Abuse Denial Of Child Abuse Denial Of Incest Disbelief Facing Reality Parental Abuse Rock The Boat Survivors Survivors Of Abuse Trauma Memories

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 abuse and related details. Memories that are retrieved in this manner are relatively easy to understand and believe because the person remembering is so flooded with coherent, consistent information.

~ Renee Fredrickson

Renee Fredrickson Abuse Survivors Avoidance Child Sexual Abuse Denial Healing Insights Survivors Trauma Memory

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 studiously avoided thinking about it. A catalyst sets the memory process in motion, but the essential factor in the memory surfacing is the readiness of the survivor to deal with the reality of abuse.

~ Renee Fredrickson

Renee Fredrickson Abuse Survivors Denial Repressed Memories Trauma Memories

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 it was no big deal.

~ Erin Merryn

Erin Merryn Abuse Survivors Assertiveness Blame Child Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Survivor Denial Dysfunctional Family Family Conflict Incest Pedophile Protector

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 sense of missing pieces. For instance, when we achieved something, we felt like an imposter. Or, though we had a relationship with a significant other, we often felt alone and unrelated to anyone.

~ Maureen Brady

Maureen Brady Abuse Survivors Aloneness Confusion Denial Detachment Emotional Detachment Healing Insights Intimacy Quotes Recovery From Abuse Relationship Problems

A refusal on the part of psychiatrists and therapists to validate the horrors of their patients' tortured past implies a refusal to take seriously the unconscious psychological mechanisms that individuals need to use to protect themselves from the unspeakable. Such a denial is, however, no longer ethical, for it is in the human capacity to dissociate that lies part of the secret of both childhood abuse and the horrors of the Nazi genocide, both forms of human violence so often carried out by 'respectable' men and women.

~ Felicity De Zulueta

Felicity De Zulueta Abuse Deniers Abuse Survivors Child Abuse Childhood Abuse Complex Ptsd Denial Denial Of Child Abuse Dissociate Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Genocide Hidden Pain Horror Of Incest Horror Of War Ignore What Is Wrong Invalidation Misdiagnosis Mpd Nazis Not Serious Psychiatrists Psychiatry Psychological Defence Psychologists Ptsd Respectable Men Respectable Women Society Denial Survivors Survivors Of Abuse Therapists Torture Survivors Traumatized Unethical

I'm still not sure if I was a victim or not... and if I was, who was my abuser?

~ Eskay Teel

Eskay Teel Abuse Recovery Abuse Survivors Abused Children Child Abuse Childhood Abuse Childhood Traumas

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.

~ Warwick Middleton

Warwick Middleton Abuse Survivors Abusive Parents Attachment Child Abuse Child Abuse Survivors Dissociation Dissociative Disorder Grooming Psychological Defense Trauma Bonding

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. Each time she is used and trashed, she becomes further convinced of her innate badness. She sees herself participating in forbidden sexual activity and may often get some sense of gratification from it even if she doesn't want to (it is, after all, a form of touch, and our bodies respond without the consent of our wills). This is seen as further proof that the abuse is her fault and well deserved. In her mind, she has become responsible for the actions of her abusers. She believes she is not a victim; she is a loathsome, despicable, worthless human being—if indeed she even qualifies as human. When the abuse has been sadistic in nature...these beliefs are futher entrenched.

~ Diane Mandt Langberg

Diane Mandt Langberg Abuse Survivors Child Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Survivor Child Sexual Abuse Survivors Complex Ptsd Complex Trauma Dehumanization Incest No Longer Human Self Blame Victim Blaming