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“Attitude Is Everything

We live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happened—as if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations.

The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), “there are no victims.� How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances?

When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability.”
― Sandra Lee Dennis

“By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“The stigmatized individual is asked to act so as to imply neither that his burden is heavy nor that bearing it has made him different from us; at the same time he must keep himself at that remove from us which assures our painlessly being able to confirm this belief about him. Put differently, he is advised to reciprocate naturally with an acceptance of himself and us, an acceptance of him that we have not quite extended to him in the first place. A PHANTOM ACCEPTANCE is thus allowed to provide the base for a PHANTOM NORMALCY.”
― Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity

“Don't be afraid to speak out. Your human rights story could be the inspiration that opens the window to someone else's awakening. Let's draw open the curtains together.”
― Janine Myung Ja, Adoption Stories

“The stigma of chronic pain is one of the most difficult aspects of living with chronic pain. If you have chronic pain, people can sometimes judge you for it. Specifically, they can sometimes disapprovingly judge you for how you are coping with it. If you rest or nap because of the pain, they think you rest or nap too much. If they catch you crying, they become impatient and think you cry too much. If you don’t work because of the pain, you face scrutiny over why you don’t. If you go to your healthcare provider, they ask, “Are you going to the doctor again?â€� Maybe, they think that you take too many medications. In any of these ways, they disapprove of how you are coping with pain. These disapproving judgments are the stigma of living with chronic pain.”
― Murray J. McAlister

“Here I want to stress that perception of losing one’s mind is based on culturally derived and socially ingrained stereotypes as to the significance of symptoms such as hearing voices, losing temporal and spatial orientation, and sensing that one is being followed, and that many of the most spectacular and convincing of these symptoms in some instances psychiatrically signify merely a temporary emotional upset in a stressful situation, however terrifying to the person at the time. Similarly, the anxiety consequent upon this perception of oneself, and the strategies devised to reduce this anxiety, are not a product of abnormal psychology, but would be exhibited by any person socialized into our culture who came to conceive of himself as someone losing his mind.”
― Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates

“I will be living with chronic pain for the rest of my life. I don’t have the mobility, energy or life options I used to have. I work hard to manage the pain, and I want the medical system to be a respectful and effective partner, not a jailer. The opioid crisis is not my doing.”
― Sonya Huber

“Success and failure can both make you lose appetite and concentration, don't let it bother or over-excite you, just think them away as a mere thing that had just happened, and get along with your life.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“In reviewing his own moral career, the stigmatized individual may single out and retrospectively elaborate experiences which serve for him to account for his coming to the beliefs and practices that he now has regarding his own kind and normals.”
― Erving Goffman

“Every time you feel like mocking a person you disagree with politically by implying that they are mentally ill, I want you to instead imagine you are talking to every single person who actually is mentally ill and telling them they are worthless. That's how it makes mentally ill people feel. Doesn't seem very progressive now does it?”
― Ariel Howland

“In the debate over opioid addiction, there’s one group we aren’t hearing from: chronic pain patients, many of whom need to use the drugs on a long-term basis.”
― S. E. Smith

“Several themes describe misconceptions about mental illness and corresponding stigmatizing attitudes. Media analyses of film and print have identified three: people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike perceptions of the world that should be marveled; or they are responsible for their illness because they have weak character (29-32)."

World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16�20.
PMCID: PMC1489832
Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness
PATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON”
― Patrick W. Corrigan

“The stigmatization and the excruciating pains of social alienation
have compelled most victims to conceal their status while the
malevolent ones continue to distribute the virus free of charge to
unsuspecting men and women”
― Oche Otorkpa, The Unseen Terrorist

“Homelessness is stigmatized by society, the media, and the general public.”
― Asa Don Brown

“Holding one's self responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since violation of standards, rules, and goals are insufficient in its elicitation unless responsibility can be placed on the self. Stigma may differ from other elicitors of shame and guilt, in part because it is a social appearance factor. The degree to which the stigma is socially apparent is the degree to which one must negotiate the issue of blame, not only for one's self but between one's self and the other who is witness to the stigma. Stigmatization is a much more powerful elicitor of shame and guilt in that it requires a negotiation not only between one's self and one's attributions, but between one's self and the attributions of others.”
― Michael Lewis

“It’s hard to imagine a more squarely on-the-nose example of demonizing mental illness than portraying a mentally ill man as a literal demon.”
― Charles Bramesco

“There’s a saying that goes something like: ‘We are all one drink or pill away from addiction,â€� and I know this is meant to destigmatize what addicts go through, but I feel like I’ve been seeing variations on this ‘common knowledgeâ€� more and more lately being used (on social media) as a cudgel to remind patients to not overdo it,â€� Anna says, speaking to the dual-edged sword of awareness. A motto designed to humanize the experience of addiction has been turned into a weapon that targets people who rely on opioids for pain management, and that translates to real-world stigma.”
― S. E. Smith

“In 2020, first responders were cheered, revered, heckled and jeered. The intensity of the year has brought about change and review of the policies and procedures surrounding first responders.”
― Asa Don Brown

“We’ve all seen the headlines implying that people with PTSD are dangerous. We must not resort to thinking, due to fear, that a person with PTSD equals a ticking time bomb. The stigma surrounding PTSD is so negative. It arouses concerns and provokes whispers and worried glances. People don’t understand it at all. They assume I’m a potential powder keg just waiting for a spark to set me off into a rage, and that’s just not true, about me or any person with PTSD. I have never physically assaulted anyone out of anger or rage. I'm suffering with it and people are afraid to ask me about it.”
― James Meuer, Damaged : A First Responder's Experiences Handling Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

“I take opioids to treat chronic pain. Stigmatizing them will harm me.”
― Sonya Huber

“There is absolutely nothing surprising about a severely stigmatized group embracing their stigma. Psychologists have long observed that when people feel hopelessly stigmatized, a powerful coping strategy–often the only apparent route to self-esteem–is embracing one's stigmatized identity. Hence, 'black is beautiful' and 'gay pride'–slogans and anthems of the political movements aimed at ending not only legal discrimination, but the stigma that justified it. Indeed, the act of embracing one's stigma is never merely a psychological maneuver; it is a political act–an act of resistance and deviance in a society that seeks to demean a group based on an inalterable trait. As a gay activist once put it, 'Only by fully embracing the stigma itself can one neutralize the sting and make it laughable.”
― Michelle Alexander

“No matter how low or crazy this old man is, he knows the spark of weed definitely sets hell ablaze and the man getting burned has only the madhouse to cool his feet!”
― Godwin Inyang, Beauty Is A Burden

“Rather than shaming and condemning an already deeply stigmatized group, we, collectively, can embrace them–not necessarily their behavior, but them–their humanness.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“I know, even in the scene of theft, the saint weed smoker becomes the culprit.”
― Godwin Inyang, Beauty Is A Burden

“We must love ourselves and others deeply. Contrary to what we've been taught, stigmatizing our mothers, brothers, and cousins will not protect our houses from ruin.”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“It is easier to blame and stigmatise the women sleeping in doorways than it is too over them help.”
― Bekki Perriman, Doorways: Women, Homelessness, Trauma and Resistance