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“Too often the survivor is seen by [himself or] herself and others as "nuts," "crazy," or "weird." Unless her responses are understood within the context of trauma. A traumatic stress reaction consists of *natural* emotions and behaviors in response to a catastrophe, its immediate aftermath, or memories of it. These reactions can occur anytime after the trauma, even decades later. The coping strategies that victims use can be understood only within the context of the abuse of a child. The importance of context was made very clear many years ago when I was visiting the home of a Holocaust survivor. The woman's home was within the city limits of a large metropolitan area. Every time a police or ambulance siren sounded, she became terrified and ran and hid in a closet or under the bed. To put yourself in a closet at the sound of a far-off siren is strange behavior indeed—outside of the context of possibly being sent to a death camp. Within that context, it makes perfect sense. Unless we as therapists have a good grasp of the context of trauma, we run the risk of misunderstanding the symptoms our clients present and, hence, responding inappropriately or in damaging ways.”
― Diane Langberg, Counseling Survivors of Sexual Abuse

“Gaslighting is a subtle form of emotional manipulation that often results in the recipient doubting their own perception of reality and their sanity. In addition, gaslighting is a method of manipulation by toxic people to gain power over you. The worst part about gaslighting is that it undermines your self-worth to the point where you’re second-guessing everything.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“If you were raised as child by a narcissistic mom, you may have spent a lifetime being mistreated and shamed for things that you never did. Toxic shame is a result of being told you are not enough. You may feel worthless and unlovable.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“Healing generational trauma takes courage and strength. It’s common for dysfunctional families to deny their abuse. They silence victims and dump toxic shame onto them. Complicit families keep abuse alive from generation to generation, until one brave survivor boldly ends the cycle of abuse.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“Toxic shame
is a
body flashback
to the moment someone
hurt you
badly
and gaslighted you
into believing
it was okay
or
well-earned.”
― Remy Alberi, The Comprehension Watch

“The hole in my chest is cavernous. It should be impossible for the human body to contain this much emptiness. The echoes created within ripple out between past and present, creating confusion between the then and the now. I survive with one foot nailed in the past.”
― Mari Stewart

“Many psychologists use the term existential to describe the fact that all human beings are subject to painful events. These are the normal recurring afflictions that everyone suffers from time to time. Horrible world events, difficult choices, illnesses and periodic feelings go abject loneliness are common examples of existential pain. Existential calamities can be especially triggering for survivors, because we typically have so much family-of-origin calamity for them to trigger us into reliving.”
― Pete Walker , Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

“I’ve crossed that line we’re not supposed to cross. I died. And I’m still here. I cheated death. I took away God’s power.
I killed God and I feel empty inside.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, Waking Gods

“As an adult survivor of sibling abuse, the most difficult fact pertaining to it is that 90% of abusive siblings deny they have abused their sibling. They will not take accountability for it.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“Narcissistic abuse is cited as being ‘soul murder.â€� It not only breaks your heart and crushes your spirit, but it’s directly linked to trauma wounds. Trauma pierces your core essence. It breaks you into dozens of pieces. Your trauma runs deep. Unaware, you may carry it into your adulthood.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“What the toxic family unit has lost sight of is the positive traits of the innocent person who was manipulated into being the scapegoat. The scapegoat can feel the acute injustice that leaves a psychological scar. Although nobody would willingly choose to be a scapegoat, this person has countless wonderful strengths, characteristics, and accomplishments.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“But I'd begun, slowly, to understand that complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or cPTSD, was different. It was particularly difficult to treat, because - like a flat landscape - it didn't offer a significant landmark, an event, that you could focus on and work with. Complex post-traumatic stress, according to the psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman, is the result of 'prolonged, repeated trauma,' rather than individual traumatic events. It's what happens when you're born into a world, shaped by a world, where there's no safety, ever. When the people who should take care of you are, instead, scary and unreliable, and when you live years and years without the belief that escape is possible.

When you come from a world like this, when all your muscles are trained to tension and suspicion, normal life feels unbearable. It doesn't make sense, getting up, going to class, eating lunch, returning home, sleeping. You don't trust it. It doesn't feel real. And unreality can hurt more than pain.”
― Noreen Masud, A Flat Place: Moving Through Empty Landscapes, Naming Complex Trauma

“In the years following my first hospitalization and my first explorations into myself, I determined to become someone I could live with, if not, in the words of the therapist, someone I could love. My first efforts were based on my blanket acceptance that I wasn't a very good person, and that I should change those parts of myself that could be changed. I hadn't yet realized that I'd simply internalized all the verbal assaults that characterized the first eighteen years of my life.”
― Pat Capponi, Upstairs In The Crazy House: The Life Of A Psychiatric Survivor

“One of the challenges adult children of narcissistic mother’s face is the myth that every mother is giving, nurturing, and gracious. Worldwide, this is a false notion and taboo topic. For many adult children, they are scolded by our society who chides, “But it’s your MOTHER!â€� Despite the fact that we’ve spent a lifetime suffering chronic mental abuse, rejection, criticisms, and scapegoating by our mothers, most people don’t believe us, don’t understand us, nor have they personally experienced narcissistic abuse by their mothers.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“Two words sum up being the daughter of a narcissistic mother: deep sorrow. It was like a massive boulder sat on my chest. Choking me. Suffocating me. Drowning me. Spinning my life out of control. My memories of growing up to become an adult woman who suffered ritual narcissistic abuse had a common thread: Tears. Drama. And compounded trauma.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“False guilt is feeling guilty when one is not actually guilty. Genuine guilt is a result of wrongdoing. It is appropriate to feel guilty if we had done something wrong. However, false guilt is rooted in deception, denial, and dysfunction. It is directly connected to our destructive and codependent relationship with a narcissist.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“one day, you're not You
anymore

you become the Terror
sewn into your spine

there's no safe place to go
because the One you trusted

is the Lost and Lowdown
seamstress

you live for a while as the Terror
and absorb the experience

but after the Terror,
there is something so glorious...”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Not Your Kind: The Gaslit Files

“I had always thought that having a flashback meant fully hallucinating your past. In the movies, soldiers would be transported back to Afghanistan—they’d see desert sand and automatic rifles in a waking nightmare. But even when I remembered moments of abuse, I knew where I was. I knew I was on the couch. I knew I was not going to die.

But I soon learned that in trauma lingo, people often aren’t talking about the movie version of flashbacks. They’re talking about emotional flashbacks.

For example, before I quit my job, my boss often came into my office to tell me I’d made some minor mistake. If my body and brain were totally in the present, I would have felt embarrassed for messing up but would recognize that it wasn’t a huge deal, acknowledge my faults, and get back to it. Instead, after my boss left, I always felt guilt and anxiety and shame and terror. I’d run downstairs to have a cigarette, text a friend about how I was a moron, and spend half an hour freaking out about how nobody respected me and I’d probably end up fired. Even though consciously I was completely in the present, my emotions were back in 1997, back when I was a little kid and making a mistake on a spelling test could literally be a matter of life and death. This return was an emotional flashback.”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

“The pain is a fanged beast that I’ve battled a hundred times throughout the years, and every time I think I’ve cut it down for good, it reanimates and launches itself at my throat again.”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

“I watched my blood well out of the cut and the tightness in my chest began to unwind. As drops fell into the cracked bowl of the sink the more I could feel. I turned on the water and let it just trickle over the cut. Cold water. Warm blood. And a moment of calm.”
― Mari Stewart

“Isn't that ultimately, the deepest reason why we choose to leave the Jehovah's Witness cult - to be fully who we are?”
― Bonnie Zieman, EXiting the JW Cult: A Healing Handbook: For Current & Former Jehovah's Witnesses

“Do not let bitterness take root, lest she strangle you.”
― Rene Schultz

“The best thing she ever did was to behave in front of her children. If all she could give them was to contain the dark, squalid rooms within her, then that is enough. If to other people it seems like very little, well, she knows that it is everything. She has freed them from a burden they do not even know exits, that of being tormented by a deep, unsolvable ache for all the wrong things.”
― Alexis Schaitkin, Saint X