A GUIDE TO SURVIVOR LANGUAGE

Blocking Out
A coping behaviour preventing a woman from accessing full or partial memory of traumatic experiences. A woman may have blocked out (can't remember) large parts of her life.

Body Memory
Re-experienced body sensations and/or pain associated with the original trauma. The body always remembers what was done.

Boundaries
Because her private space was violated, a survivor has to learn that she DOES have the right to establish boundaries about where and when people can touch her.

Denial
Resisting accepting the reality of the traumatic event- it feels safer not to believe! Denial is a way to cope with memories. "There is no way this could be happening to me. I must be crazy".

Flashback
An intrusive recalling of traumatic event(s). It can be experienced as a visualization of the event or moment and feeling numb or detached. An event can be re-experienced emotionally, with or without memory of the event. Flashbacks include "Body Memories".

Healing
To heal, a survivor must relive the feelings and the pain she was unable to feel at the time of abuse. Healing can be long and highly traumatic as a woman attempts to integrate the fragmented parts of herself. "You can't heal what you can't feel".

Integration
Reaching a stage of wholeness; feeling connected at all levels: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Multiple
Survival through developing multiple personalities (MPD). It is a form or level of dissociation. Some women may notice severe and rapid mood swings, loss of time, changes with vision, headaches, and other symptoms. These symptoms alone to not define MPD.

Numbed Out
Unable to feel anything, blocking out pain and feelings.

Panic Attack
Feeling out of control. A woman may feel as if she is going to faint or die. She learns how to breathe deeply and work her way through panic.

RA
RA is an abbreviation for Ritual Abuse. A woman may refer to herself as being RA or being an RA survivor. SRA -Satanic Ritual Abuse.

Safety
In order to heal a survivor needs to find or create a safe place or space. It may be a physical space or a place imagined, possibly through meditation.

Self-Injury
A woman injures herself in order to convert deeply rooted emotional pain into more manageable physical pain.

Spacing Out
A survivor dissociates; she is unable to concentrate; she is not grounded in the present. She may not be able to feel emotion.

Trigger
A trigger can be a sound, touch, smell, or feeling, which reminds a woman of a traumatic experience. She may respond by spacing out, numbing out, going into denial or going into a fight/flight response. It may initiate an anxiety attack, flashback and/or body memory. A woman mayor may not be aware of the trigger or why she is reacting to it the way she does.

Survivor
"Persons who have made a conscious decision to move from being passive victims to empowered agents of change who are more in control of their lives. They have begun to own their painful experiences, have started a process to mourn their losses, honour what they needed to do to get through each day, and are ready to embrace life. They have moved past simply reacting to life and have decided to sift through the many scattered and missing pieces of personal identity to search for wholeness. Survivors are persons who seek courage, strength, and wisdom from their experiences and are on a conscious search to reclaim a sense of hope, personal power, sexuality, personhood, femininity, spiritual richness, and the will to thrive."

Victim
"Persons who have experienced or are experiencing unwanted or uninvited sexual intrusion into their physical and emotional being. They typically feel helpless, out of control, and disconnected from their lives. Victims tend to become overwhelmed by their feelings of rage, anger, sadness, and depression. They are caught in a cycle of reactivity and frequently engage in self-harming and maladaptive ways of coping."