274 Quotes About Abuse-survivors

The capacity for dissociation enables the young child to exercise their innate life-sustaining need for attachment in spite of the fact that principal attachment figures are also principal abusers.

Sexual abuse is also a secret crime, one that usually has no witness. Shame and secrecy keep a child from talking to siblings about the abuse, even if all the children in a family are being sexually assaulted. In contrast, if a child is physically or emotionally abused, the abuse is likely to occur in front of the other children in the family, at least some of the time. The physical and emotional abuse becomes part of the family's explicit history. Sexual abuse does not.

Don't you love your mother, dear?""I guess so. A hard, sharp, thorny kind of love that might be pity more than anything else.

Shame plays a huge part in why you hate who you are.

The second time I try to kill a man I'm fourteen. Killing a man seems a very grown-up thing to do - like writing in Biro.

Maggie, tou made it possible -but not probably for me to be the man I am now.

Abuse is never contained to a present moment, it lingers across a person’s lifetime and has pervasive long-term ramifications.

Abuse is never deserved, it is an exploitation of innocence and physical disadvantage, which is perceived as an opportunity by the abuser.

Dissociation, a form of hypnotic trance, helps children survive the abuse…The abuse takes on a dream-like, surreal quality and deadened feelings and altered perceptions add to the strangeness. The whole scene does not fit into the 'real world.' It is simple to forget, easy to believe nothing happened.