274 Quotes About Abuse-survivors

You are not the darkness you endured.You are the light that refused to surrender.

I opened my eyes and felt better, exhausted but relieved of a burden. The pressure to tell and the weight of the emotions had been with me for weeks. Now that I'd told what had happened, the burden lifted a bit.

My pain has always deserved a voice and I will not deny it that, but I won't devote my life to it either.

[On a violent encounter with a boyfriend] Before I’ve even blinked, he’s snatched both my wrists, gripping them tightly together whilst dragging me back into the room.[...]I sense utter madness, blind rage and a very practiced hand, and decide with a calmness that is necessary for survival not to make a sound. Not to move a muscle. I go completely limp and acquiesce. You don’t argue with crazy. And I don’t want to give him one tiny reason to beat me to a pulp.

Once the individual has learned to dissociate in the context of trauma, he or she may subsequently transfer this response to other situations and it may be repeated thereafter arbitrarily in a wide variety of circumstances. The dissociation therefore “destabilizes adaptation and becomes pathological.”[6] It is important for the psychiatrist to accurately diagnose DDs and also to place the symptoms in perspective with regard to trauma history.

Dissociation can be interpreted as an “emergency defense,” or a “shut off mechanism.”[6] According to Allen and Smith,[6] it is understood as an attempt by the individual to “prevent overwhelming flooding of consciousness at the time of trauma.” It is argued that the individual subconsciously cannot tolerate being present emotionally during the trauma but cannot control the situation, and therefore protects him- or herself from experiencing it in the moment via dissociation.

Girl A,’ she said. ‘The girl who escaped. If anybody was going to make it, it was going to be you.

They depend Soullessly on our silence..

As if you're a shadow on the wall attached to the horror. Your pain is the ghost of the smack you witnessed, but it's still pain. Just a different type of pain. Your body may not be cut or bruised, but your soul is ripped apart all the same.