When traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering. Judith Lewis Herman
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.
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Mahatma Gandhi
Buy a gift for a dog, and you'll be amazed at the way it will dance and swerve its tail, but if don't have anything to offer to it, it won't even recognize your arrival; such are the attributes of fake friends.
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Michael Bassey Johnson
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
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George Carlin
When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad.
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Lao Tzu
We are supposed to call poison medicine and we wonder why we're always sick.
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Stefan Molyneux
More Quotes By Judith Lewis Herman
The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.
The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny...
The traumatized person is often relieved simply to learn the true name of her condition. By ascertaining her diagnosis, she begins the process of mastery. No longer imprisoned in the wordlessness of the trauma, she discovers that there is a language for her experience. She...
Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.
Traumatic events destroy the sustaining bonds between individual and community. Those who have survived learn that their sense of self, of worth, of humanity, depends upon a feeling of connection with others. The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair,...
