I think there's physical survival and there's other survival.
I never related to being told I'd survived when I was dissociating a lot and - in my case - still struggling with denial. I felt my psyche had not survived the trauma, and that was why it kept pushing it down, blocking it or trying to run from it.
In the sense of my mind and emotions, therapy and working on trauma has been the process of survival. Like the time some people have to spend recovering as part of physical survival (going through treatment, physical therapy, taking care of themselves differently, doing exercises and pushing themselves through the pain). Having now been through so much of the equivalent for my mind and feelings, I've recently started feeling like a survivor. But I didn't before.
Before, when I didn't agree with being told that I'd survived, I felt like the other person was talking about my body but I was talking about my mind.
