Survivor Quotes - Page 3

When I try to achieve greatness, it spits on me the night before.

You may be operating from the belief that you must do everything yourself because no one will ever be there for you. Or you may think that if you never speak up you’ll avoid being rejected. Both these fears no longer apply to you today as an adult. If you never reach out for help, you will continue to deprive yourself.

Beverly Engel

I spent most of my life believing lwas crazy because all the crazy things I experienced in childhood were treated as nonexistent or normal. This belief colored every decision made, from something so basic as what to wear today, to the more esoteric boundaries of whether I should kill myself. I understood very well that killing myself under the wrong circumstances would establish my insanity forever. So I analyzed every word, every gesture, before committing myself. (Which probably accounts for why I am alive today.)

Sarah E. Olson

She turned back to the reporter, holding out the microphone. “I'm not an expert, I'm a survivor. I hope you can learn how to be one yourself.

Rose Wynters

The enemy plotted against you and awaited your downfall. Look at you surviving. And your enemies can not figure out how. What you have inside is greater than any negative force.

Amaka Imani Nkosazana

... it is possible to heal. It is even possible to thrive. Thriving means more than just an alleviation of symptoms, more than Band-Aids, more than functioning adequately. Thriving means enjoying a feeling of wholeness, satisfaction in your life and work, genuine love and trust in your relationships, pleasure in your body.

Ellen Bass

In her heart she is a mourner for those who have not survived. In her soul she is a warrior for those who are now as she was then. In her life she is both celebrant and proof of women's capacity and will to survive, to become, to act, to change self and society. And each year she is stronger and there are more of her.

Andrea Dworkin

I vowed that I would never tell anyone of my shame. They say that when you kept a secret, it eats you up inside, but I felt it was better that way. I wanted to appear strong in front of my children and my family. I didn't want anybody to know. And I would maintain my persona as Jenni, the Rivera Rebel who had never lost a fight. But deep down inside I knew I had lost a piece of myself that I would never recover. My soul had been shattered, but to the outside world I did just as I had been taught since I was a little girl; I kept my head up and continued forward. It is, after all, the Rivera way.

Jenni Rivera

A victim has the potential to transform into a survivor, but if that is forgotten, a true victim is what they become. A survivor must endure strife and persevere against those thoughts that would convince them otherwise. Holding fast to ones will will allow them to know their strength has not evaporated; They will never be without hope.

J.D. Stroube

She’d lost so much in the process of becoming Zyne, but somewhere in the middle of it all, she’d found herself. Her heritage had shattered her illusions of a tranquil life. Destiny swept behind in a blaze, decimating everything she tried to hold on to. She was left alone, like the solitary tree standing after a forest fire. She’d thought she would crumble to ash, just another memory on the wind. But as blackened pieces of her cracked and fell away, she saw the truth. Under all that charred wreckage was the heartwood. Bruised. Scarred. But still good. Still capable of growth. When she looked in the mirror, she no longer saw a victim, but a survivor.

Gwen Mitchell

P.T.S.D. doesn't make you weak. It makes you a survivor.

DaShanne Stokes

My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.

Steve Goodier

It is necessary to make this point in answer to the `iatrogenic' theory that the unveiling of repressed memories in MPD sufferers, paranoids and schizophrenics can be created in analysis; a fabrication of the doctor—patient relationship. According to Dr Ross, this theory, a sort of psychiatric ping-pong 'has never been stated in print in a complete and clearly argued way'. My case endorses Dr Ross's assertions. My memories were coming back to me in fragments and flashbacks long before I began therapy. Indications of that abuse, ritual or otherwise, can be found in my medical records and in notebooks and poems dating back before Adele Armstrong and Jo Lewin entered my life. There have been a number of cases in recent years where the police have charged groups of people with subjecting children to so-called satanic or ritual abuse in paedophile rings. Few cases result in a conviction. But that is not proof that the abuse didn't take place, and the police must have been very certain of the evidence to have brought the cases to court in the first place. The abuse happens. I know it happens. Girls in psychiatric units don't always talk to the shrinks, but they need to talk and they talk to each other. As a child I had been taken to see Dr Bradshaw on countless occasions; it was in his surgery that Billy had first discovered Lego. As I was growing up, I also saw Dr Robinson, the marathon runner. Now that I was living back at home, he was again my GP. When Mother bravely told him I was undergoing treatment for MPD/DID as a result of childhood sexual abuse, he buried his head in hands and wept.(Alice refers to her constant infections as a child, which were never recognised as caused by sexual abuse)

Alice Jamieson

I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk.""Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging frustration well up inside, then stared angrily at the psychiatrist."Look, I've been religious about this recovery business. I go to AA meetings daily and to your sessions twice a week. I know it's good that I've stopped drinking. But every other aspect of my life feels the same as it did before. No, it's worse. I hate my life. I hate myself."Suddenly I felt a slight warmth in my face, blinked my eyes a bit, and then stared at him."Bob, I'm afraid our time's up," Smith said in a matter-of-fact style."Time's up?" I exclaimed. "I just got here.""No." He shook his head, glancing at his clock. "It's been fifty minutes. You don't remember anything?""I remember everything. I was just telling you that these sessions don't seem to be working for me."Smith paused to choose his words very carefully. "Do you know a very angry boy named 'Tommy'?""No," I said in bewilderment, "except for my cousin Tommy whom I haven't seen in twenty years...""No." He stopped me short. "This Tommy's not your cousin. I spent this last fifty minutes talking with another Tommy. He's full of anger. And he's inside of you.""You're kidding?""No, I'm not. Look. I want to take a little time to think over what happened today. And don't worry about this. I'll set up an emergency session with you tomorrow. We'll deal with it then."RobertThis is Robert speaking. Today I'm the only personality who is strongly visible inside and outside. My own term for such an MPD role is dominant personality. Fifteen years ago, I rarely appeared on the outside, though I had considerable influence on the inside; back then, I was what one might call a "recessive personality." My passage from "recessive" to "dominant" is a key part of our story; be patient, you'll learn lots more about me later on. Indeed, since you will meet all eleven personalities who once roamed about, it gets a bit complex in the first half of this book; but don't worry, you don't have to remember them all, and it gets sorted out in the last half of the book. You may be wondering -- if not "Robert," who, then, was the dominant MPD personality back in the 1980s and earlier? His name was "Bob," and his dominance amounted to a long reign, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Since "Robert B. Oxnam" was born in 1942, you can see that "Bob" was in command from early to middle adulthood.Although he was the dominant MPD personality for thirty years, Bob did not have a clue that he was afflicted by multiple personality disorder until 1990, the very last year of his dominance. That was the fateful moment when Bob first heard that he had an "angry boy named Tommy" inside of him. How, you might ask, can someone have MPD for half a lifetime without knowing it? And even if he didn't know it, didn't others around him spot it?To outsiders, this is one of the most perplexing aspects of MPD. Multiple personality is an extreme disorder, and yet it can go undetected for decades, by the patient, by family and close friends, even by trained therapists. Part of the explanation is the very nature of the disorder itself: MPD thrives on secrecy because the dissociative individual is repressing a terrible inner secret. The MPD individual becomes so skilled in hiding from himself that he becomes a specialist, often unknowingly, in hiding from others. Part of the explanation is rooted in outside observers: MPD often manifests itself in other behaviors, frequently addiction and emotional outbursts, which are wrongly seen as the "real problem."The fact of the matter is that Bob did not see himself as the dominant personality inside Robert B. Oxnam. Instead, he saw himself as a whole person. In his mind, Bob was merely a nickname for Bob Oxnam, Robert Oxnam, Dr. Robert B. Oxnam, PhD.

Robert B. Oxnam

Janna knew - Rikki knew — and I knew, too — that becoming Dr Cameron West wouldn't make me feel a damn bit better about myself than I did about being Citizen West. Citizen West, Citizen Kane, Sugar Ray Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Robinson miso, miso soup, black bean soup, black sticky soup, black sticky me. Yeah. Inside I was still a fetid and festering corpse covered in sticky blackness, still mired in putrid shame and scorching self-hatred. I could write an 86-page essay comparing the features of Borderline Personality Disorder with those of Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I barely knew what day it was, or even what month, never knew where the car was parked when Dusty would come out of the grocery store, couldn't look in the mirror for fear of what—or whom—I'd see. ~ Dr Cameron West describes living with DID whilst studying to be a psychologist.

Cameron West

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren't alone, that there is hope, then I will have achieved one of my goals. A sad fact is that people with DID spend an average of almost seven years in the mental health system before being properly diagnosed and receiving the specific help they need. During that repeatedly misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated, simply because clinicians fail to recognize the symptoms. If this book provides practicing and future clinicians certain insight into DID, then I will have accomplished another goal. Clinicians, and all others whose lives are touched by DID, need to grasp the fundamentally illusive nature of memory, because memory, or the lack of it, is an integral component of this condition. Our minds are stock pots which are continuously fed ingredients from many cooks: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, teachers, schoolmates, strangers, acquaintances, radio, television, movies, and books. These are the fixings of learning and memory, which are stirred with a spoon that changes form over time as it is shaped by our experiences. In this incredibly amorphous neurological stew, it is impossible for all memories to be exact.But even as we accept the complex of impressionistic nature of memory, it is equally essential to recognize that people who experience persistent and intrusive memories that disrupt their sense of well-being and ability to function, have some real basis distress, regardless of the degree of clarity or feasibility of their recollections. We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self.

Cameron West

I want everyone that has been abused by someone in their childhood to know that you can get past it. Having DID is not the end of the world; it's the beginning of your new life. DID allows the victim of exceptional abuse the ability to “forget” the abuse and continue living. Without it, I may have gone crazy as a teen and spent my life in a as a teen and spent my life in a psychiatric hospital.

Dauna Cole

This book is dedicated to those who have died as a result of mind control and/or ritual abuse, and those who have lived when they would rather have died.

Alison Miller

Isolation of catastrophic experiences. Dissociation may function to seal off overwhelming trauma into a compartmentalized area of conscious until the person is better able to integrate it into mainstream consciousness. The function of dissociation is particularly common in survivors of combat, political torture, or natural or transportation disasters.

Marlene Steinberg

Being in a state of denial is auniversally human response tosituations which threaten tooverwhelm. People who were abusedas children sometimes carry theirdenial like precious cargo without aport of destination. It enabled us tosurvive our childhood experiences, and often we still live in survival mode decades beyond the actual abuse. We protect ourselves to excess because we learned abruptly and painfully that no one else would.

Sarah E. Olson

Rikki looked over at me.“Why now?" she asked, looking back at Arly. “Why is this happening now?""Hard to say." Arly [therapist] replied. "DID usually gets diagnosed in adulthood. Something happens that triggers the alters to come out. When Cam's father died and he came in to help his brother run the family business he was in close contact with his mother again. Maybe it was seeing Kyle around the same age when some of the abuse happened. Cam was sick for a long time and finally got better. Maybe he wasn't strong enough until now to handle this. It's probably a combination of things. But it sure looks like some of the abuse Cam experienced involved his mother. And sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.

Cameron West

Do not be ashamed of your past. Learn from those experiences and move forward in your life. Teach others of the possibilities of change & living victoriously. You are a survivor.

Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Someone once asked me how I hold my head up so high after all I have been through. I said it's because no matter what, I am a survivor NOT a victim.

Patricia Buckley

How could we have achieved the set-goal, without endurance to the end?

Lailah Gifty Akita

I spent many years trying to make up reasons about why I had the ﬂashbacks, memories, continuous nightmares. When I ﬁnally decided to quit trying to hide from truth, I began to heal.

Karen Marshall

I am passionate about the things that I believe in like equality, free will, justice and love.

Trish Kaye Lleone

I thought I would die without you, in reality I was reborn...

Seja Majeed

Even the Sun gets tired of rising, but he does it out of love for the Earth...

Seja Majeed

Live for what you love, and die for what you're unwilling to live without...

Seja Majeed

We search for happiness across every landscape, if only we knew that the seed in which it first grows, is planted within ourselves...

Seja Majeed

I do not subscribe to the abuse "victim" or "survivor" labelling mentality. I have experienced every kind of abuse imaginable and I am and always have been the most happy-go-lucky, positive and life affirming person around. Your labels do not serve you, so don't use them as an excuse to be miserable. You have a beautiful life to live, so accept the beauty and start living.

Miya Yamanouchi

No matter what, I would never let the people who wanted me to break see how much damage they had inflicted.

Rachel L. Schade

Her wounds brought her a great source of power because they lived in the same place as her heart.

Shannon L. Alder

I'm not... I'm not without a heart,' he heard Sophia say, her chin raised, eyes straight ahead. 'I'm not. I just don't have the luxury of being soft. I am trying to survive.

Alexandra Bracken

Over the years, I learned to smile or laugh when I was supposed to. I kept my true self hidden; I did not need to unleash my pain on the world around me. Instead, I taught myself to ignore it. I did not realize that the pain was eating away at my soul.

J.D. Stroube

The powerful hate truth that put them in bad light

Bangambiki Habyarimana

The powerful are like a compressor, they will grind into paste everything on their way

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Power is confusing for us, perhaps even terrifying, because our relationship with it had an unfortunate beginning. Someone in a position of power over us used and abused us…It seems as if power were something to be wielded, always at someone’s expense, usually our own.

Maureen Brady

Seeking help is not defeat. It is my power.

Catherine Jane Fisher

Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told — even though it was upsetting to think people could do stuff like that — they were not disjointed They were not repetitive in terms of "I've heard this before". It was not just she'd someone trying consciously or unconsciously to get attention. really processed them out and was done with them. She didn't come up with them again [after telling the story once and dealing with it]. Once it was done, it was done. And I think that was probably the biggest factor for me in her believability. I got no sense that she was using these stories to make herself a really interesting person to me so I'd really want to work with her, or something. Or that she was just living in this stuff like it was her life. Once she dealt with it and processed it, it was gone. We just went on to other things. 'Throughout the whole thing, emotionally Cheryl was getting her life together. Parts of her were integrating where she could say,"I have a sense that some particular alter has folded in with some basic alter", and she didn't bring it up again. She didn't say that this alter has reappeared to cause more problems. That just didn't happen. The therapist had learned from training and experience that when real integration occurs, it is permanent and the patient moves on.

Cheryl Hersha

When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain rather than left, or left rather than right. In my mind there were many rooms and, just as I still got lost in the labyrinth of corridors at college, I often found myself lost, with a sense of déjà vu, in some obscure part of my cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that plays a key role in perceptual awareness, attention and memory. Everything I had lived through or imagined or dreamed appeared to have been backed up on a video clip and then scattered among those alien rooms. I could stumble into any number of scenes, from the horrifically sexual, horror-movie sequences that were crude and painful, to visualizing Grandpa polishing his shoes.

Alice Jamieson

A terrible sadness threatened to overwhelm me as I wondered how two people capable of such love for each other had eventually felt so little for the child they had produced between them.

Toni Maguire

No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?

Sierra D. Waters

It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?

Sierra D. Waters

The story of my birth that my mother told me went like this: "When you were coming out I wasn't ready yet and neither was the nurse. The nurse tried to push you back in, but I shit on the table and when you came out, you landed in my shit."If there ever was a way to sum things up, the story of my birth was it.

Sierra D. Waters

Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.

Sierra D. Waters

John was still making comments regarding violent things that he shouldn't, but I hoped he was just being a big mouth. Nobody was going to listen to me anyway.

Sierra D. Waters

He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it

Sierra D. Waters

Along with the trust issues, one of the hardest parts to deal with is the feeling of not being believed or supported, especially by your own grandparents and extended family. When I have been through so much pain and hurt and have to live with the scars every day, I get angry knowing that others think it is all made up or they brush it off because my cousin was a teenager. I was ten when I was first sexually abused by my cousin, and a majority of my relatives have taken the perpetrator's side. I have cried many times about everything and how my relatives gave no support or love to me as a kid when this all came out. Not one relative ever came up to that innocent little girl I was and said "I am sorry for what you went through" or "I am here for you." Instead they said hurtful things: "Oh he was young." "That is what kids do." "It is not like he was some older man you didn't know." Why does age make a difference? It is a sick way of thinking. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse. What is wrong with this picture? It brings tears to my eyes the way my relatives have reacted to this and cannot accept the truth. Denial is where they would rather stay.

Erin Merryn

It's vital to our survival to be positive.

Lindsey Rietzsch

The true test of a warrior is how your 'stance' holds up after any 'circumstance'. Meaning, even after the stormiest weather, a true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lightning or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again.

Suzy Kassem

Her eyes bled from venomous anger...Her flower had been gruesomely deflowered...Her life had slowly turned into a blunder...There was no more thinking further....She would rather become a Foetus murderer Than end up a "hopeless" mother....Of course, she found peace in the formerUntil later years of emotional traumaOh, the foetus hunt was forever!The only thing you should abort is the thought of aborting your baby. Stop the hate and violence against innocent children.

Chinonye J. Chidolue

Healing isn’t just about pain. It’s about learning to love yourself. As you move from feeling like a victim to being a proud survivor, you will have glimmers of hope, pride and satisfaction. Those are natural by-products of healing.

Ellen Bass

Closeness was the promise of suffering and pain

Alice Jamieson

She wore her scarsas her best attire.A stunning dressmade of hellfire.

Daniel Saint

Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim--letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor.

C.R. Strahan

Two great things happened to me. One was that I survived. The other was that I met you, because I knew why

Kamand Kojouri

Traumatic events destroy the sustaining bonds between individual and community. Those who have survived learn that their sense of self, of worth, of humanity, depends upon a feeling of connection with others. The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience. Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms. Trauma degrades the victim; the group exalts her. Trauma dehumanizes the victim; the group restores her humanity.Repeatedly in the testimony of survivors there comes a moment when a sense of connection is restored by another person’s unaffected display of generosity. Something in herself that the victim believes to be irretrievably destroyed---faith, decency, courage---is reawakened by an example of common altruism. Mirrored in the actions of others, the survivor recognizes and reclaims a lost part of herself. At that moment, the survivor begins to rejoin the human commonality...

Judith Lewis Herman

For the human soul is virtually indestructible, and its ability to rise from the ashes remains as long as the body draws breath.

Alice MIller

What a beautiful woman. She moved with grace, she was entirely feminine, and yet, she possessed incredible inner strength. She’s a survivor.

Jan Moran

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Survivor Quotes - Page 3

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