Carolyn Spring Books & Quotes

“Denial is our very real, personal response to our own trauma. But denial is the normative response to trauma—by everyone. Society may deny that anything bad ever happened to us. It may deny that DID exists. But that doesn't mean to say it's right. All it says is that like global warming, our histories and our stories are an "inconvenient truth".͏”

Trauma Denial Global Warming Dissociative Identity Disorder Dissociation Inconvenient Inconvenient Truth Child Abuse Survivors Associate Denial It Wasn T That Bad

Book:Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

Source: Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“The happy family is a myth for many.”

Neglect Child Abuse Dysfunctional Family Childhood Abuse Dysfunctional Families Happy Family Complex Ptsd Abusive Parents Child Abuse Survivors Complex Trauma Abusive Mother Abusive Father Disorganized Attachment Happy Families Abusive Father S Perfect Childhood

Author:Carolyn Spring

“It was that culture of denial that allowed my abuse to take place to start with. Did you know that it wasn't until 1984 that the Department of Health added the category of "sexual abuse" to its list of harms that can befall children? When I was being raped and made pregnant at the age of 11, it wasn't just my own dissociative process that told me that it wasn't happening; it was society too. "We don't have a category for that. Computer says no."͏”

Denial Child Sexual Abuse Incest Society Denial Dissociative Child Rape Child Protection Childhood Sexual Abuse Inconvenient Truth Abuse Deniers Denial Of Abuse Chosen Ignorance Denying Reality Department Of Health

Book:Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

Source: Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“There is a slave trade still in this country—yes, the real and horrific sex and human trafficking trade run by organised criminal gangs, which is appalling and must be stopped. But there's the hidden slavery too of children exploited and used within their own families, within organised and ritual abuse.”

Source: Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“In the same way that the women's movement of the seventies and eighties brought rape and incest into public consciousness, we can do the same with the causes and reality of dissociation and multiplicity.”

Mental Health Child Abuse Dissociative Identity Disorder Dissociation Child Sexual Abuse Abuse Survivors Multiplicity Survivors Multiple Personality Disorder Incest Multiple Personalities Mental Health Stigma Trauma Survivors Dissociative Disorders Require

Book:Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

Source: Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“We also need to recognise that denial is used by abusers to protect themselves. People who work with sexual offenders talk about a ‘triad of cognitive distortion’. This means that almost every abuser ‘thinks wrongly’ and this is a key area of work for treatment with sexual offenders. Basically they have three wrong thought patterns, and these are denial, minimisation and blame.”

Denial Child Sexual Abuse Rape Culture Perpetrators Society Denial Victim Blaming Rapists Sex Offenders

Author:Carolyn Spring

“Sometimes claims of polyfragmentation and ongoing abuse and victimisation can become a kind of ‘badge of honour’: it can be an earnest, unconscious demonstration proving that we cannot recover, rather than the tragic reality of overwhelming suffering that will take a lot of hard work and dedication to overcome.”

Dissociative Identity Disorder Polyfragmented Polyfragmented Did Did Osdd Badge Of Honour Badge Of Honor Race To The Bottom

Author:Carolyn Spring

“I have met many, many severely distressed people whose daily lives are filled with the agony of both remembered and unremembered trauma, who try so hard to heal and yet who are constantly being pushed down both by their symptoms and the oppressive circumstances of post traumatic life around them.”

Ptsd Survivors Survivors Of Abuse Trauma Survivors Complex Ptsd Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Ptsd Recovery Trauma Memory Cptsd Retraumatization

Author:Carolyn Spring

“Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.”

Trauma Ptsd Triggers Traumatized Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Trigger Flashback Dissociated

Author:Carolyn Spring

“Trauma tried to tell me that I was not human and that I should be excluded from humanity.”

Ptsd Abuse Survivors Inhumanity Trauma Survivors Ptsd Quotes No Longer Human Inhumane Treatment Not Human

Author:Carolyn Spring

“As a child, the best way to survive was to be still, to submit—to do nothing that might incur further harm. That belief had grown with me through my teens, my twenties, my thirties, an unacknowledged mentor directing my every path, reinforcing a ubiquitous sense of powerlessness and victimhood. I had believed that I was bad, and unloveable, and cowardly, and weak—beliefs that had been unconscious, and had always gone unchallenged. I believed them because they were true, and they were true because I believed them.”

Helplessness Negative Thoughts Abuse Survivors Powerlessness Victimhood Negative Thinking Belief System Victim Mentality Effects Of Child Abuse Victim Role Unhelpful Thoughts

Author:Carolyn Spring

“I can no longer deny that bad things happened to me. I can’t be absolutely sure what happened to me, or who did them to me: I can’t ‘prove’ that 100%. But I have enough evidence to be able to state unequivocally that a lot of bad things happened to me from a very young age for a very long time.”

Denial Dissociative Identity Disorder Dissociative Amnesia Child Abuse Survivor Forgetting The Past Organised Abuse

Author:Carolyn Spring

“society has an embarrassing history of denial”

Abuse Slavery Trauma Denial Holocaust Society Denial Slavery Quotes Slave Trade Denial Of Abuse

Book:Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

Source: Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“Bemoaning my existence wasn’t changing my existence.”

Complaining Powerless Helplessness Abuse Survivors Powerlessness Victim Mentality Victimized Powerless Quotes Victim Role Feeling Like A Victim

Author:Carolyn Spring

“I have come to believe with fervent passion that the focus on multiple personalities is missing the point. dissociative identity disorder is not rare; it is not unique; it is not special. It is just a logical set of symptoms to some terrible trauma. It is a normal way to react to very abnormal childhood treatment. In fact, I only have it because I am normal. If I had not reacted normally to chronic trauma and disrupted attachment, I would not have developed it.”

Dissociative Identity Disorder Dissociation Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Parts Osdd

Author:Carolyn Spring

“And if we do speak out, we risk rejection and ridicule. I had a best friend once, the kind that you go shopping with and watch films with, the kind you go on holiday with and rescue when her car breaks down on the A1. Shortly after my diagnosis, I told her I had DID. I haven't seen her since. The stench and rankness of a socially unacceptable mental health disorder seems to have driven her away.”

Source: Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“Whatever people say about ‘false memories’ (which is mostly false, anyway) and whatever we feel about possibly making it all up, we can’t fake emotional illiteracy and screwed-up attachment patterns! That’s the real evidence of what happened to us. Someone who has had a car crash might have no memory of what happened, but they’ve got the evidence in terms of a mangled car and broken legs. I think it’s the same for us – we’ve got mangled emotions and broken personalities.”

Dissociative Identity Disorder Dissociative Amnesia False Memories False Memory Syndrome

Author:Carolyn Spring

Carolyn Spring Books

Living with the Reality of Dissociative...

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