In order to believe clients' accounts of trauma, you need to suspend any pre-conceived notions that you have about what is possible and impossible in human experience. As simple as they may sound, it may be difficult to do so.
The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are...
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C.g. Jung
To find out if she really loved me, I hooked her up to a lie detector. And just as I suspected, my machine was broken.

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Unknown
Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.
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Jane Austen
Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.
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Sara Gruen
Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honour of losing and the joy of winning I am not here to tell you that defeat is a part of life: we all know that. Only the defeated know Love. Because it is in...
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Paulo Coelho
More Quotes By Aphrodite Matsakis
Some survivors can be wary of most people, yet blinded by compassion toward fellow survivors or others who suffer – or who pretend to suffer, or exaggerate their sufferings, in order to take advantage of the survivor. Some survivors overidentify with other survivors, not realizing...
Some of the experiences endured by human beings on this earth are virtually unbelievable.
However, if you do not believe your clients, they may sense your doubt and never fully trust you. As Bruce Goderez (1986), director of a PTSD inpatient unit says, "It is important for the clinician and counselor to be willing to be made a fool."...
As you may already know, post-traumatic stress disorder is extremely complex. Each client has a unique, perhaps virtually unbelievable, set of experiences, and an almost equally set of reactions to those experiences.
In order to believe clients' accounts of trauma, you need to suspend any pre-conceived notions that you have about what is possible and impossible in human experience. As simple as they may sound, it may be difficult to do so.
