Quotes by Carolyn Spring

Recovery is not so much a dream at it is a plan.

society has an embarrassing history of denial

There is a slave trade still in this country—yes, the real and horrific sex and human trafficking trade run by organised criminal gangs, which is appalling and must be stopped. But theres the hidden slavery too of children exploited and used within their own families, within organised and ritual abuse.

And if we do speak out, we risk rejection and ridicule. I had a best friend once, the kind that you go shopping with and watch films with, the kind you go on holiday with and rescue when her car breaks down on the A1. Shortly after my diagnosis, I told her I had DID. I havent seen her since. The stench and rankness of a socially unacceptable mental health disorder seems to have driven her away.

In the same way that the womens movement of the seventies and eighties brought rape and incest into public consciousness, we can do the same with the causes and reality of dissociation and multiplicity.

Denial is our very real, personal response to our own trauma. But denial is the normative response to trauma—by everyone. Society may deny that anything bad ever happened to us. It may deny that DID exists. But that doesnt mean to say its right. All it says is that like global warming, our histories and our stories are an inconvenient truth.͏

Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness.

It was that culture of denial that allowed my abuse to take place to start with. Did you know that it wasnt until 1984 that the Department of Health added the category of sexual abuse to its list of harms that can befall children? When I was being raped and made pregnant at the age of 11, it wasnt just my own dissociative process that told me that it wasnt happening; it was society too. We dont have a category for that. Computer says no.͏

The happy family is a myth for many.