122 Quotes About Incest

If I don't let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as essential that she should," he announced, "wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in me?

She's terrified that all these sensations and images are coming out of her — but I think she's even more terrified to find out why." Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing.

Coming to terms with incest is not easy. Learning to be a survivor, not a victim, gives new meaning to life

It is regarded as axiomatic that parents have more power then children. This is an inescapable biological fact; young children are completely dependent on their parents or other caring adults for survival.

We must avoid possession," he said. "But, oh, let me kiss you.

A child who is being abused on an ongoing basis needs to be able to function despite the trauma that dominates his or her daily life. That becomes the job of at least one ANP [apparently normal part of the personality], whom the child creates to be unaware of the abuse and also of the multiplicity, and to “pass as normal” in the real world. The ANP is just an alter specialized for handling the adult world—in other words, the “front person” for the system.

Born deceitful, obdurate, imperious, barbaric, selfish, as extravagant in his pleasures as he was miserly when it came to doing any good, a liar, a glutton, a drunkard, a coward, given to sodomy, incest, murder, arson and theft – not a single virtue compensated for all these vices.

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.

When we are ready to let go of our old controls, we admit that we were powerless over the incest or abuse...We have often thought, 'If only I could have stopped it,' but we could not have stopped it. We let go of the 'if only' now and sit still with our stark powerlessness…In our surrender to powerlessness, we touch ourselves with the gift of truth.