Voltar

Admitting the need for help may also compound the survivor's sense of defeat. The therapists Inger Agger and Soren Jensen, who work with political refugees, describe the case of K, a torture survivor with severe post-traumatic symptoms who adamantly insisted that he had no psychological problems: "K...did not understand why he was to talk with a therapist. His problems were medical: the reason why he did not sleep at night was due to the pain in his legs and feet. He was asked by the therapist...about his political background, and K told him that he was a Marxist and that he had read about Freud and he did not believe in any of that stuff: how could his pain go away by talking to a therapist?

Judith Lewis Herman , em Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
pride healing psychology psychotherapy denial therapy mental-illness mental-health psychoanalysis freud abuse-survivors post-traumatic-stress-disorder ptsd posttraumatic-stress-disorder sigmund-freud powerlessness healing-from-abuse traumatic-experiences stigma mental-disorder tortured torture-survivors male-survivor political-refugees self-stigma

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 , em First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
betrayal psychology incest psychotherapy therapy mental-illness survivor dissociation dissociative sexual-abuse multiplicity healing-insights child-sexual-abuse mental-disorder multiple-personality-disorder child-sexual-abuse-survivor parental-abuse dissociative-identity-disorder mpd abnormal-psychology abusive-mother attachment-trauma betrayal-quote betrayal-trauma betraying-innocence dissociative-disorder male-survivor sexual-abuse-of-a-child

...some patients resist the diagnosis of a post-traumatic disorder. They may feel stigmatized by any psychiatric diagnosis or wish to deny their condition out of a sense of pride. Some people feel that acknowledging psychological harm grants a moral victory to the perpetrator, in a way that acknowledging physical harm does not.

Judith Lewis Herman , em Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
pride healing psychotherapy prejudice denial defeat recovery therapy mental-illness mental-health trauma defeated abuse-survivors post-traumatic-stress-disorder ptsd posttraumatic-stress-disorder mental-health-stigma powerlessness labeling labelling healing-from-abuse traumatic-experiences stigma mental-disorder tortured torture-survivors male-survivor political-refugees self-stigma

Everyone heals in their own time and in their own way. The path isn't always a straight line, and you don't need to go it alone.

Zeke Thomas
healing rape abuse-survivors rape-survivor sexual-assault sexual-violence healing-from-abuse male-survivor

... 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 , em First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
betrayal incest attachment pedophile society-denial childhood-sexual-abuse traumatic-experiences child-sexual-abuse child-sexual-abuse-survivor parental-abuse pedophiles abusive-mother attachment-trauma betrayal-trauma male-survivor abusive-women

Another question I am frequently asked is, "What do you mean by recovery?" It has taken me a while to answer that one. I had been depending on other people's definitions of recovery until I developed one that worked for me (just as you must come to one that makes sense for you.) Mine is simple. For me, it is about fre

Mike Lew , em Victims No Longer: Men Recovering from Incest and Other Sexual Child Abuse
child-abuse recovery survivors healing-insights child-sexual-abuse male-survivor

The biased use of pronouns serves to perpetuate the culturally based myth that men are perpetrators and women are victims. This myth is extremely damaging to the millions of male victims of sexual and physical abuse who live unacknowledged by our society.

David Lisak
bias gender-stereotypes sexism society-denial victims physical-abuse sexual-abuse perpetrators abused-men rape-myths male-survivor abusive-women