Attachment Trauma Quotes

“It is regarded as axiomatic that parents have more power then children. This is an inescapable biological fact; young children are completely dependent on their parents or other caring adults for survival.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Father-Daughter Incest

“If the abuser is a parent or caretaker, the abuse may be the most attention the child has had from that person. To the child, withholding attention can be a powerful form of coercion. Sexual molestation may be accompanied by physical expressions of affection that are sometimes the only affection the child receives.”
― Rick Moskovitz, Lost in the Mirror: An Inside Look at Borderline Personality Disorder

“Complexly traumatized children need to be helped to engage their attention in pursuits that do not remind them of trauma-related triggers and that give them a sense of pleasure and mastery. Safety, predictability, and "fun" are essential for the establishment of the capacity to observe what is going on, put it into a larger context, and initiate physiological and motoric self-regulation.”
― Sarah Benamer, Trauma and Attachment

“If it is your fault that your mother is miserable, it becomes a potentially fixable affront. Taking blame means that at least the hope of love is still there-all you have to do is deserve it.”
― Victoria Secunda, When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life

“Too many Americans are spurred to achieve, rather than to attach.”
― Thomas Lewis, A General Theory of Love

“Another reason it's dangerous to acknowledge that you were unloved is that it implies the possibility that your mother may have been right-you are unlovable.”
― Victoria Secunda, When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life

“The little girl's dependency on her father made [his] abuse more insidious.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“More than one personality was created in the hope of being the daughter Nancy could consistently love. More than one new personality was created in response to Mother's unexpected fury.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“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, First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple

“... 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, First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple

“Many daughters live out their lives avoiding or abiding or arguing with their mothers-burying the long-ago injury or insult or childhood deprivation under a blanket of forgetfulness-and not confronting it head-on. It's humiliating to remember the ways in which one demeaned oneself in order to prevent being in a mother's bad graces, the willingness to do anything in order to not be rejected, when rejection felt like death.”
― Victoria Secunda, When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life

“If your mother lived your life as though it were her own-never allowing you a moment of stress or frustration, routinely sleeping in your bed when you had a bad dream, never setting limits or establishing boundaries, seldom or never letting you out of her sight, excusing and failing to provide consequences for your negative or hurtful behaviour, insisting on a daily chronicle of every detail of your life, all in the name of maternal love-then you never had to grow up and take responsibility for your actions. You remain a child.”
― Victoria Secunda, When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life

“New evidence (2002) indicates that reparative adult experiences enable those with attachment traumas to increase their ability to cope with stress and restore a sense of security. Healing through new relationships occurs frequently, and makes a person who has experienced trauma increase the ability to cope with stress and negative affect. Religious or 12-step experiences, therapeutic experiences, and intimate relationships all offer possibilities for repair.”
― Marion F. Solomon, Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain

“The mother‘s relationship to her daughter not only forms the earliest, if not primary, foundation for how the daughter formulates her sense of self, but is the basic template for her understanding of how relationships work in the world.”
― Peg Streep, Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt

“The mother‘s relationship to her daughter not only formed the earliest, if not primary, foundation for all the daughter formulates her sense of self, but is the basic template for her understanding of how relationships work in the world.”
― Peg Streep, Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt

“For most of us, there are multiple attachment experiences, and picturing these pairings of the connections offered by others and the adaptions made by us may illuminate the complexities of current relational experience.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Since an infant is born with a sense of self not separate from the mother, I believe part of my brain took a nosedive in the gap between mothers, and part of my brain decided I must not exist, and in some crazy unexplainable way, nothing changed in that part of my brain, even as an adult.”
― Anne Heffron, You Don't Look Adopted

“When the infants were between 6 and 9 months of age, caregivers in the experimental group were trained in sensitive responding. Then at 1 year of age, Strange Situation assessments were done. The effects of the intervention were dramatic. Compared with the control group, infants in the experimental group were almost three times as likely to show a secure pattern of attachment. Follow-up studies found that the effects of the intervention were enduring and were still evident more than 2 years later not only in child–caregiver relationships but also in child–peer interactions.”
― Christopher Peterson, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

“In sum, secure attachment at all ages depends on the sensitivity of attachment figures. The results of intervention studies with infants, parents, and couples provide compelling evidence that sensitivity is a skill that can be taught and learned, and that can transform troubled relationships into well-functioning, satisfying ones.”
― Christopher Peterson, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

“Please stop dating and marrying people who are your parents' types. The attraction will not last and you're doing it to fill an unmet need for approval that you never received from your family in childhood. Your romantic partner is not supposed to be a peace offering or any other kind of goodwill offering.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“A reframing journey after attachment trauma involves a process of meeting yourself again”
― Boadi Moore, Healing Your Attachment Wounds: A Guide to Healing What's Hidden in Your Attachment Style and Relationships