Top 70 Shannon Thomas Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Most people have no clue hidden abuse is taking place right under their noses. It is being perpetrated by individuals who would never be suspected of being abusers. The concealed nature of this harm is what leaves its targets devastated.”

— Shannon Thomas

2. “Abusers like to target people who have something they do not or cannot possess themselves. Narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths are notorious for picking targets that initially boost their egos. It could be the target’s appearance, age, intellect, reputation, religious convictions, career success, family, friends, or something else.”

— Shannon Thomas

3. “Normal people have a hard time comprehending that abusers go to such lengths, but they do.”

— Shannon Thomas

4. “It is a source of power and entertainment for a toxic person to destroy an originally healthy and happy person. This point is often missed by survivors because in the middle of the abuse, they see themselves as broken. Since the abuser says such hateful things, the survivor assumes they were targeted because they are “weak.” That is the exact opposite of the truth.”

— Shannon Thomas

5. “A psychological abuser will find a survivor’s emotional soft spots and exploit them for control and entertainment.”

— Shannon Thomas

6. “In a nutshell, the Despair stage is not pretty. It is the stage where the survivor realizes careers have been lost because of the chaos the abuser has brought into the survivor’s life.”

— Shannon Thomas

7. “Normal people don’t play all the toxic games psychological abusers do, and yet, survivors end up initially blaming themselves.”

— Shannon Thomas

8. “Unraveling the lies and replacing them with truth is at the heart of the recovery journey for survivors of psychological abuse.”

— Shannon Thomas

9. “We are hardwired to need and want to be included.”

— Shannon Thomas

10. “The abuser sees it as a huge victory to turn an independent survivor into a needy, dependent person who can no longer make decisions without the abusive person’s help.”

— Shannon Thomas

11. “When an abuser gaslights, he or she sets up situations to make the target doubt their own memories and assessments of situations. This is done in order that survivors will become so unsure of themselves they hand over reign of their lives to the abusers.”

— Shannon Thomas

12. “Toxic people are great actors. They will utilize whichever props are available to maintain control in the relationship.”

— Shannon Thomas

13. “Some are quietly deteriorating the person’s self-esteem through the emotional game of abandonment. Being present physically but checked out emotionally is not a marriage or a relationship.”

— Shannon Thomas

14. “By the time survivors are compelled to leave their psychologically abusive relationships, they do not see any other viable option but to leave. They have tried anything and everything to keep their relationship going. No matter how hard they tried to fit the mold the abuser wanted, it was never enough.”

— Shannon Thomas

15. “Our quality of life will be seriously impaired if we are withdrawn into isolation and lack moments of hope in our daily lives.”

— Shannon Thomas

16. “Psychologically abusive people can only maintain normalcy for short spurts of time. Being an authentically caring, decent person isn’t baseline for them. They must fake the behaviors that would show these positive character qualities. These fraudulent acts of kindness have brief shelf lives before they expire and the abusers return to their normal state of affairs.”

— Shannon Thomas

17. “Denial is a powerful human component that cannot be ignored in the context of psychological abuse.”

— Shannon Thomas

18. “Let me stop here and correct a very common misconception: personality disorders are not the same classification of mental health disorders, such as Bipolar Disorder or Major Depressive Disorder.”

— Shannon Thomas

19. “Of all the offenses an abuser puts a target through, I am most deeply outraged by the stealing of goodness. It offends me at a core level.”

— Shannon Thomas

20. “Resist remaining in any level of denial. The truth is painful to see, but necessary.”

— Shannon Thomas

21. “An educated survivor can, and will, guard against future abuse.”

— Shannon Thomas

22. “Psychological abusers like people who make them look or feel good.”

— Shannon Thomas

23. “I have been known to tell survivors, who are remaining in contact with intensely toxic people, that I cannot continue to work with them unless they implement and follow the No Contact rule.”

— Shannon Thomas

24. “Survivors often get to a point in recovery where they can predict the responses of the toxic person.”

— Shannon Thomas

25. “Tenderness from empaths will be used against them time and time again by psychological abusers.”

— Shannon Thomas

26. “There are sad consequences if we do not recognize that our old selves have faded away. Insecurity will drive us to push away happy, successful people because we do not think we deserve their attention. Our inner dialogue and self-worth will determine the type of people we allow – or reject – in our lives.”

— Shannon Thomas

27. “Toxic people have an incredible ability to triangulate their helpers into abusing survivors. This is done on purpose so the toxic person’s hands stay clean from the abuse. It’s hard to pin responsibility on an abuser when he or she wasn’t even in the same room when the offense took place.”

— Shannon Thomas

28. “One of the main allegations that narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths make against survivors is that they accuse survivors of being disrespectful. Why is this complaint so common for toxic people? It is because their grossly over-inflated egos make them believe that even the most minor correction, or disagreement, with the toxic person’s opinion is a huge sign of disrespect.”

— Shannon Thomas

29. “Toxic people absolutely refuse to have normal human flaws and weaknesses. They do not see themselves as average people.”

— Shannon Thomas

30. “An overload on emotional capacity is the reason people get to the point where they feel they cannot continue to stay in a relationship, remain at the same place of employment, continue in a one-sided friendship, struggle with the pressures created by a harmful spouse, try to meet unrealistic toxic family obligations, or whatever else might be at the core of an “I can’t do this anymore” statement.”

— Shannon Thomas

31. “Boundaries are the foundation for regulating a high degree of compassion for other people.”

— Shannon Thomas

32. “Abusive church leadership must minimize God to a puppet that can be moved around at will, and it smells of blasphemy to me. It.”

— Shannon Thomas

33. “I saw a post online where someone said, “An abuser doesn’t abuse every day.” That, my friend, is intermittent reinforcement in a nutshell.”

— Shannon Thomas

34. “Realizing toxic people are not actually insecure is one of the hardest concepts for survivors because thinking toxic people struggle with insecurities is a form of justification for their bad behaviors.”

— Shannon Thomas

35. “Survivors who repeatedly believe they are the problem, they are broken, and they are not good enough, are people who are never going to see the hidden abuse. Not because they don’t want to, but because they are looking in the wrong spot for answers. In therapy, we start to literally deprogram the conscious and subconscious lies the abusers have planted in the survivors.”

— Shannon Thomas

36. “The key is to not follow the toxic person into their vortex of lies.”

— Shannon Thomas

37. “Through No Contact, survivors can find ever-increasing distance from the malice that almost permanently ruined their lives.”

— Shannon Thomas

38. “Rarely does a toxic person give an authentic apology. To do so would be too much evidence that they are just like everyone else and flawed.”

— Shannon Thomas

39. “When we decide that boundaries are needed, they can be hard to set – and maintain – if we doubt ourselves and our assessment of the situation. Survivors often wonder if they are overreacting or being too sensitive.”

— Shannon Thomas

40. “Restoration is to take the actions that are within our power to restore what our abusers took from us.”

— Shannon Thomas

41. “If your definition of love is wanting to see another person authentically happy and living a fulfilled life, then the answer is no. Psychological abusers cannot feel love. They can only mimic what love looks like.”

— Shannon Thomas

42. “The survivor delivers this message in a firm and clear tone of voice, not mad or screaming. Just stating the facts. Take it or leave it, toxic person. Survivors.”

— Shannon Thomas

43. “Survivors are receiving very poor “counseling” from ministry staff and volunteers who have no professional training in mental health. Church leaders cannot be expected to give informed advice regarding the type of abusive relationships that many therapists struggle to recognize and treat.”

— Shannon Thomas

44. “Far too many churches are believing the notion that if it looks good, it must be good. Nowhere does fake billboard living work with more efficiency than in a church environment.”

— Shannon Thomas

45. “The problem is a survivor never knows when the next warm and fuzzy experience will happen, or when the next episode of abuse is coming through the door.”

— Shannon Thomas

46. “Many survivors will work their way through the first stage of Despair, second stage of Education, third stage of Awakening, and find themselves paralyzed at the fourth stage of Boundaries.”

— Shannon Thomas

47. “SURVIVOR: To remain alive; to carry on despite hardships or trauma; persevere, to remain functional or usable, to live longer than; outlive, to persist or remain usable through, and to cope with a trauma or setback, to persevere after.”

— Shannon Thomas

48. “The important thing to remember is that even if survivors stayed broken for the rest of their lives, the abusers do not. They are not experiencing the same devastation. They never did.”

— Shannon Thomas

49. “Survivors are wise to not fall into the trap of second guessing all of their actions because it is likely they could never show enough agreement to please a truly toxic person.”

— Shannon Thomas

50. “The most important point is that the girl’s moods are not changing because she’s moody. She is conditioning the boy to always be off balance. Off balance. Some toxic people will actually say out loud that they like keeping people off balance. If someone tells you that, run.”

— Shannon Thomas