Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.

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.

Dissociation appears to be... the internal mechanism by which terrorized people are silenced.

People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory and fragmented manner.