Trauma Bonding Quotes

Type II trauma also often occurs within a closed context - such as a family, a religious group, a workplace, a chain of command, or a battle group - usually perpetrated by someone related or known to the victim. As such, it often involves fundamental betrayal of the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator and within the community (Freyd, 1994). It may also involve the betrayal of a particular role and the responsibility associated with the relationship (i.e., parent-child, family member-child, therapist-client, teacher-student, clergy-child/adult congregant, supervisor-employee, military officer-enlisted man or woman). Relational dynamics of this sort have the effect of further complicating the victim's survival adaptations, especially when a superficially caring, loving or seductive relationship is cultivated with the victim (e.g., by an adult mentor such as a priest, coach, or teacher; by an adult who offers a child special favors for compliance; by a superior who acts as a protector or who can offer special favors and career advancement). In a process labelled "selection and grooming", potential abusers seek out as potential victims those who appear insecure, are needy and without resources, and are isolated from others or are obviously neglected by caregivers or those who are in crisis or distress for which they are seeking assistance. This status is then used against the victim to seduce, coerce, and exploit. Such a scenario can lead to trauma bonding between ~ Christine A. Courtois

And the victim must have been broken and must remain so, so that the externalization of evil is possible. The victim who refuses to assume this role contradicts society's simplistic view. Nobody wants to see it. People would have to take a look at themselves. ~ Natascha Kampusch

Many survivors have such profound deficiencies in self-protection that they can barely imagine themselves in a position of agency or choice. The idea of saying no to the emotional demands of a parent, spouse, lover or authority figure may be practically inconceivable. Thus, it is not uncommon to find adult survivors who continue to minister to the needs of those who once abused them and who continue to permit major intrusions without boundaries or limits. Adult survivors may nurse their abusers in illness, defend them in adversity, and even, in extreme cases, continue to submit to their sexual demands. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

The little girl's dependency on her father made [his] abuse more insidious. ~ Joan Frances Casey

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

I wanted my mother to love me. Despite all the torture and brutality. ~ Wendy Hoffman

Grieving is intense and it is non-stop intense. Even if things are quiet, and you're sitting there in your chair, kind of staring off into space, inside, the intensity is raging. - Lori Ennis ~ Nathalie Himmelrich

When the traumatic event is the result of an attack by a family member on whom victims depend for economic and other forms of security (as occurs in victims of intrafamilial abuse) victims are prone to respond to assaults with increased dependence and with paralysis in their decision-making processes. Thus, some aspects of how people respond to trauma are quite predictable - but individual, situational and social factors play a major role in the shaping the symptomatology. ~ Marion F. Solomon

I think of my father growing up in South Jersey, the son of second-generation German immigrant glassblowers. The opportunities for him of feeling that aspiration, that yearning, get out of the small town, connect to a larger world, get yourself to New York, wanting to play the piano at every opportunity, bonding with people who were on a similar path, ending up in Provincetown, which was kind of nexus for nonconformity, and artistic dropout reality. ~ Anne Waldman

The body protects itself, and the same happens in the mind. It occurs sluggishly and imperfectly, a bad job done by indifferent craftsmen, but within minutes an accretion of defence mechanisms starts to form around the trauma, blunting its edges, eventually sealing it away inside scar tissue. Like a sliver of glass buried deep in a cut, the event will never go away, and often a movement will cause it to nudge a nerve ending and burn like fire for a while. However much it hurts when that happens, the last thing you want. ~ Michael Marshall

Self-pity is wasted emotion. It merely prolongs whatever trauma you suffered by keeping it alive in your head. Dude, you survived it. Move on. ~ Karen Marie Moning

a mind is only as limited
as it's capacity to
embrace his greatest enemy ~ M.M. Van Der Reijden

It's okay to not be okay - it means that your mind is trying to heal itself. ~ Abhijit Naskar

In lieu of letting go of our trauma and rather than healing completely, in my experience, we learn how to carry it and there are some days when it is heavier than others. Some days, I hardly know it is there, distracted as I am by present joys and excitement; while other days, the burden is cripplingly-heavy and I can hardly breathe under the weight of grief. ~ L.M. Browning

And I guess at the end of the day, you're just amazed that I can still stand, and I'm just amazed that I can stand still. ~ Kris Kidd

Cult recruiting methods based on dosing victims with the brain chemicals released during capture bonding would make cults even more of a problem than they are now. ~ Keith Henson

Look at us. One bleeding body, one corpse, and a husk who's been half dead for years. No one who took an objective look at this room could think it was anything but too late, Ruth. For all of us. ~ Sophie Hannah

Veterans being sent into unjust wars for corporate profit is a perversion of trust, at best. I found the emotional manipulation of both sides, the propaganda at play so incredibly revolting that I couldn't stand to idly wave a flag or flaunt yellow ribbons without asking serious questions regarding motive. ~ M.B. Dallocchio

I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity. ~ Stefan Molyneux

A woman in combat? Yes. Since when? Since Native American warrior Buffalo Calf Road Woman knocked that prick General George Custer off of his horse. Since Pantea Arteshbod propelled herself to become one of the greatest Persian commanders during the reign of Cyrus the Great. Since Hua Mulan disguised herself as a male to engage in combat and became one of China's most respected heroines. ~ M.B. Dallocchio

He thought it disproportionate in its violence considering the fragility of us. ~ David Jones

I think that writers are made, not born or created out of dreams of childhood trauma - that becoming a writer (or a painter, actor, director, dancer, and so on) is a direct result of conscious will. Of course there has to be some talent involved, but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force - a force so great the knife is not really cutting at all but bludgeoning and breaking (and after two or three of these gargantuan swipes it may succeed in breaking itself…which may be what happened to such disparate writers as Ross Lockridge and Robert E. Howard). Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle. No writer, painter, or actor - no artist - is ever handed a sharp knife (although a few are handed almighty big ones; the name we give to the artist with the big knife is "genius"), and we hone with varying degrees of zeal and aptitude. ~ Stephen King

The moment I fell in love with running, I started forgetting my grief and traumas. ~ Fauja Singh

Sisterhood - that is, primary and bonding love from women - is, like motherhood, a capacity, not a destiny. It must be chosen, exercised by acts of will. ~ Olga Broumas

Trauma is nothing more than being stuck in what you believe. ~ Byron Katie

We don't really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples - almost a third, as it turns out - engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge? ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

We laughed over our difference then spent years bonding over things that made us the same. ~ Nikesh Shukla

However light-hearted you try to be about it, the loss of youth, and everything that goes with it, is quite a trauma. ~ Julian Clary

All the trauma terrorized her feelings. She sensed them harden. Fade. Vanish. Her emotions decayed and disintegrated like a waning timeworn woman would forget her own name and everything she loved. No, she thought. I won't let this happen. I will never stop feeling. No matter what. This is the bad news, she said. I must be insanely strong to survive this. This is the good news: I am insanely strong. She put on the protective suit. She will go outside. ~ C.J. Anderson

Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation, not by confrontation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer. ~ Frank Herbert

There are no injuries that run so deep that one can't add insult to them and make them feel even worse. ~ Matthew S. Williams

The inability to get something out of your head is a signal that shouts, "Don't forget to deal with this!" As long as you experience fear or pain with a memory or flashback, there is a lie attached that needs to be confronted. In each healing step, there is a truth to be gathered and a lie to discard. ~ Christina Enevoldsen

I looked out the hall window across from me as I stood leaning against the wall, and saw the bars on the outside of the windows. The rain trickled down the reinforced misted milk-glass in a constant deluge of melancholy rivulets. It was getting cold - the shadows, the rising turbulent winds, the drifting red and orange leaves were returning once more. I tuned out the sounds of the doctors voices. Soon, I couldn't make out the words they were saying as definite signals meant to convey something. Their words became a dim humming, a song drifting along the periphery of my awareness. And it was then, I knew I would be able to leave. I would go back to my room and take out the violet silk dress, the monstrous talisman I had created, and I would look at it. I might give it away after all. I need to let her go for all the ghosts she carried within her every measured stitch. ~ ~Theresa Griffin Kennedy~

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

Bruce Wayne's childhood experience of losing his parents during a random back-alley mugging remains the primary origin story for the Batman character, but other than irrationally (or, more accurately: insanely) motivating his desire to fight crime, the trauma seems to have had little discernable effect on his character. ~ Dan Hassler-Forest

In the first weeks of the Obama administration, 'bipartisanship' was the reigning buzzword, and when the Beltway thinks 'bipartisan,' it pictures President Reagan and Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill putting aside their differences and forging a legislative partnership, a ruddy pair of genial patriarchs bonding over the Blarney Stone. ~ James Wolcott

There's something about trauma to the mind, body and soul. One day your normal and the next your different; you don't know what changed but you know nothing's the same and all of a sudden you are learning to adapt yourself to the same environment with a whole new outlook. I guess you realise your not invisible and every aching bone bleeds it's sorrow through anguish in your movements. One day it'll get easier, because I'm telling myself it will and that's the difference between becoming a pioneer through this disaster when all thought I'd be a slave to pity. ~ Nikki Rowe

What ever happened to mental hygiene?" he asked rhetorically. "It doesn't exist - and never did. When you went through high school, you were never taught how to deal with stress, how to deal with trauma, how to deal with tension and anxiety - with the whole list of mood impairments. There's no preventive maintenance. We know how to prevent cavities. But we don't teach children how to be resilient, how to cope with stress on a daily basis. ~ William J. Broad