RA is ritual abuse. A woman may refer to herself as being RA or an RA survivor.

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 imaged, possibly through meditation.

In this situation, a woman dissociates herself; she is not able to concentrate, she is not grounded in the present. She may not be able to feel, emotionally.

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

A survivor is a person who has been victimized by violence, though it usually refers to sexual abuse and violence. It is a word used to acknowledge that one has survived abuse and is not a victim. In time, a woman learns that she is not bad, and that what happened to her was not her fault.

A trigger can be a sound, sight, 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 or flight response. It may initiate an anxiety attack, flashback and/or body memory. A woman may or may not be aware of the trigger or why she is reacting to it the way she does.