Connie A. Lofgreen > Quotes

“Normal memory gradually fades into the past. Traumatic and repressed memories have a tendency to linger around. They are splintered into fragments during overwhelming events experienced as a child. Images, sensations, emotions, and beliefs are torn apart. These disconnected pieces can later erupt into consciousness as separate "memories." These fragments may surface in the form of explicit memories, which are frighteningly vivid snapshot or video-like images of traumatic experiences; or they may surface as implicit memories, which include physical sensations, emotions, or beliefs that were part of the original traumatic experiences. When implicit fragments emerge into the present without an accompanying visually explicit memory, it is very hard to discern that these feelings of anxiety, fear, shame, rage, numbness, and loneliness are related to prior trauma.”
― Connie A. Lofgreen, The Storm of Sex Addiction: Rescue and Recovery

“Children who are not loved in their very beingness do not know how to love themselves. As adults they have to learn to nourish, to mother their own lost child. 1 Marion Woodman”
― Connie A. Lofgreen, The Storm of Sex Addiction: Rescue and Recovery

“The addict's purpose is to control another person as the source of his drug, the intoxicating effect of which is often enhanced by power, risk, or rage.”
― Connie A. Lofgreen, The Storm of Sex Addiction: Rescue and Recovery

“Current stress or the navigation of relationships triggers feelings lurking under the surface and cause addicts to overreact to present circumstances. They quickly launch into states of extreme emotion because they are stuck in survival mode—a persistent state of agitation, vigilance, and hyper-arousal—that leaves them full of anxiety and mistrust. They may even overreact to normal situations as if they were crises. Addicts unconsciously reactivate the feelings of prior trauma. This generates exaggerated emotions from which they want to escape. They may experience unconscious fear and rage about abandonment, abuse, or the deprivation of nurturance, or experience shame about not being "good enough." Addicts may feel terror rather than concern, despair rather than sadness, abandonment rather than normal loneliness, rage rather than anger, shame rather than disappointment, or numbness rather than anything at all.”
― Connie A. Lofgreen, The Storm of Sex Addiction: Rescue and Recovery

“Severe deficits in intimacy skills leave one vulnerable to these compulsive relationship disorders. Attempting to relieve an intimacy deficit, a sex or relationship addict relates to the emotional intensity itself as a substitute for intimacy, and is attracted to partners who will provide an ample supply of drama.”
― Connie A. Lofgreen, The Storm of Sex Addiction: Rescue and Recovery