Patrick J. Carnes > Quotes

“Abandonment is at the core of addictions. Abandonment causes deep shame. Abandonment by betrayal is worse than mindless neglect. Betrayal is purposeful and self-serving. If severe enough, it is traumatic. What moves betrayal into the realm of trauma is fear and terror. If the wound is deep enough, and the terror big enough, your bodily systems shift to an alarm state. You never feel safe. You’re always on full-alert, just waiting for the hurt to begin again. In that state of readiness, you’re unaware that part of you has died. You are grieving. Like everyone who has loss, you have shock and disbelief, fear, loneliness and sadness. Yet you are unaware of these feelings because your guard is up. In your readiness, you abandon yourself. Yes, another abandonment.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“By the nineteenth century, society had given up burning witches. Yet the sexual exploitation of children continued. In late-nineteenth-century Britain, for example, men who raped young girls were excused because they did it to cure venereal disease. There was a widely held belief that children would take "poisons" out of the body. In fact, leprosy, venereal disease, depression, and impotence were part of a wide range of maladies believed cured by having sex with the young. An English medical text of the time reads, "Breaking a maiden's seal is one of the best antidotes for one's ills. Cudgeling her unceasingly, until she swoons away, is a mighty remedy for man's depression. It cures all impotence.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred

“Betrayal. A breach of trust. Fear. What you thought was true—counted on to be true—was not. It was just smoke and mirrors, outright deceit and lies. Sometimes it was hard to tell because there was just enough truth to make everything seem right. Even a little truth with just the right spin can cover the outrageous. Worse, there are the sincerity and care that obscure what you have lost. You can see the outlines of it now. It was exploitation. You were used. Everything in you wants to believe you weren’t.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Loyalty to that which does not work, or worse, to a person who is toxic, exploitive or destructive to you, is a form of insanity.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“We are so used to our own history, we do not see it as remarkable or out of the ordinary, whereas others might see it as horrendous. Further, we tend to minimize that which we feel shameful about.”
― patrick j. carnes , Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred

“If you are reading this book, a clear betrayal has probably happened in your life. Chances are that you have also bonded with the person or persons who have let you down. Now here is the important part: You will never mend the wound without dealing with the betrayal bond. Like gravity, you may defy it for a while, but ultimately it will pull you back. You cannot walk away from it. Time will not heal it. Burying yourself in compulsive and addictive behaviors will bring no relief, just more pain. Being crazy will not make it better. No amount of therapy, long-term or short-term, will help without confronting it. Your ability to have a spiritual experience will be impaired. Any form of conversion or starting over only postpones the inevitable. And there is no credit for feeling sorry for yourself. You must acknowledge, understand and come to terms with the relationship.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“In the 1980s, research on post traumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans was regarded as important, noble, and useful. When the same researchers looked at the same problem in children who had been sexually abused, a tremendous controversy ensued a controversy that persists to this day. There were those who disputed the extent and severity of the sexual abuse that had been uncovered.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred

“Unless we learn how to handle betrayal and the torturous, obsessional relationships that evolve out of treachery, we add to the betrayal of the planet. Trust is restored when we learn to trust ourselves and build trust with others. There is no other way.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“By the Middles Ages it was a sin to have sex with a child. If an adult were guilty of such a sin, one remedy was to declare the child a witch. The child thus became an offender who "beguiled" the adult with the power of the Evil One.
Understanding this process puts a new light on the burning of witches. A Catholic bishop in Wurttemberg in the seventeenth century writes, for example, of his sadness at having presided over the burning of three hundred young girls that year and of his wonder if the church were making a mistake.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred

“However, sexual anorexics do have a definite profile that separates them from the larger population of those having difficulty being sexual: They are often extremely competent people who are committed to doing things very well and have a fear of making mistakes and being human.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred

“Trust is restored when we learn to trust ourselves and build trust with others. There is no other way. By”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“What moves betrayal into the realm of trauma is fear and terror. If the wound is deep enough, and the terror big enough, your bodily systems shift to an alarm state. You never feel safe. You’re always on full-alert, just waiting for the hurt to begin again.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“One long-term impact of trauma is the fact that often-traumatized individuals have difficulty recognizing how they are feeling and then fail to respond in an appropriate and helpful way. They become out of touch with their own feelings, bodies, and needs, which in turn makes it more difficult to respond to the feelings, sensations, and needs of others in their lives.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“More and more studies show that alcoholics may switch to other addictions. Addiction becomes a solution to the trauma.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“In part this is an intimacy disorder, for as soon as she starts to recommit to the relationship, he starts distancing himself. The intensity begins to build again. He feels trapped or jealous or possessive or something else that distances him from her. Imagine that a relationship is a circle. For true intimacy to take place, both must stay in the circle at the same time.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Addicts can clearly know they need to stop and cannot. Despite the consequences they continue high-risk behavior. They become so obsessed with the behavior that all their life priorities—children, work, values, family, hobbies, friends—are sacrificed for the behavior and the preoccupation that goes with it. The addiction becomes a way to escape or obliterate pain. The addict needs the behavior in order to feel normal. Now reread the previous paragraph and substitute the word relationship for the word behavior.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Today, our society is caught in the grip of superficial values—glamour, glitter, materialism, a pathological emphasis on youth, a neglect of the elderly, the handicapped. Families are being broken up under the impact of a frenzied desire for success. Violence is glorified and paraded in front of children every day on the media.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Betrayal, addiction and trauma weave a design of continually recycled wounds that create an overarching pattern of compulsive relationships.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Betrayal is the sense of being harmed by the intentional actions or omissions of a trusted person.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all. JEAN GENET, PRISONER OF LOVE”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“The bottom line is: Your life is up to you. Take charge of it, or somebody else will.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“defines trauma as “any experience which stuns us like a bolt out of the blue; it overwhelms us, leaving us altered and disconnected from our bodies”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“For the addict, however, there is no choice. No choice. The addiction is in charge.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction

“Seduction is high warmth with low intention”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Much energy goes into looking good and shoring up any holes that may appear in that image. This is where the pain starts, in the tremendous distance between idealistic expectations and actual performance.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred

“Abandonment by betrayal is worse than mindless neglect. Betrayal is purposeful and self-serving.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Again, sexual anorexia is not about character. Sexual anorexics do not wish
for the torment of obsession and the demands of rigid control. They recognize
that the satisfaction and safety they feel in giving in to their obsession is but
temporary. Despite this, the obsession not only does not go away, it somehow
feeds on itself.”
― Patrick Carnes Ph.D

“Just as coaddicts sometimes make addicts into “parents,” coaddicts will treat addicts as “another child in the family.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction

“Unstructured time, a heavy responsibility for self-direction, and high demands for excellence seem to be the common elements in these situations that are easy triggers for addictive behaviors. Procrastination”
― Patrick J. Carnes, Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction

“It is also the soothing, medicating and nurturing that are part of betrayal bonding. Both partners are obsessed with whether she is going to accept the promise again. Neither partner has to come to grips with the pain or patterns of their lives.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships