c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
This is the hardest part— That boy is not made of fists. That boy learned how to braid my hair. These things do not un-truth themselveswhen the first door slams.I did not stop loving himall the months I was holding my breath.
— Brenna Twohy, Forgive Me My Salt
A child that’s being abused by its parents doesn’t stop loving its parents, it stops loving itself.
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
The fact of the matter is, if you haven’t been in an abusive relationship, you don’t really know what the experience is like. Furthermore, it’s quite hard to predict what you would do in the same situation. I find that the people most vocal about what they would’ve done in the same situation often have no clue what they are talking about – they have never been in the same situation themselves.By invalidating the survivor’s experience, these people are defending an image of themselves that they identify with strength, not realizing that abuse survivors are often the strongest individuals out there. They’ve been belittled, criticized, demeaned, devalued, and yet they’ve still survived. The judgmental ones often have little to no life experience regarding these situations, yet they feel quite comfortable silencing the voices of people who’ve actually been there.
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.
— Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
Dissociation leaves us disconnected from our memories, our identities and our emotions. It breaks the trauma into digestible components, so that different aspects of the trauma get stored in different compartments in our brain. What happens as a result is that the information from the trauma becomes disorganized and we are not able to integrate these pieces into a coherent narrative and process trauma fully until, hopefully, with the help of a validating, trauma-informed counselor who guides us to the appropriate therapies best suited to our needs, we confront the trauma and triggers in a safe place.
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
What’s important to remember is that while human beings in general can engage in toxic behaviors from time to time, abusers use these manipulation tactics as a dominant mode of communication. Toxic people such as malignant narcissists, psychopaths and those with antisocial traits engage in maladaptive behaviors in relationships that ultimately exploit, demean, and hurt their intimate partners, family members, and friends.
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
People pleasing does make it easier to ignore the red flags of abusive relationships at the very early stages especially with covert manipulators. We can also become conditioned to continually “please” if we’re used to walking on eggshells around our abuser.
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
(a quote from a survivor)Read up on the psychology of abuse. Listen to music. Being alone to process without chatter. Usually outside doing something physical, doing these things helps you believe you CAN do anything. Share my story without shame.
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
The experience of chronic abuse carries within it the gross mislabeling of things. Perpetrators are really "nice daddies." Victims are "evil and seductive" (at the age of three!). Nonprotecting parents are "tired and busy." The survivor makes a giant leap forward when [he or ]she can call abuse by its right name and grasp the concept that what was done was a manifestation of the heart of the perpetrator, not the heart of the victim.
— Diane Mandt Langberg, Counseling Survivors of Sexual Abuse
But it's up to us...' he said softly. 'it's up to us not to lose this.
— Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
society has an embarrassing history of denial
— Carolyn Spring, Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices
There is a slave trade still in this country—yes, the real and horrific sex and human trafficking trade run by organised criminal gangs, which is appalling and must be stopped. But there's the hidden slavery too of children exploited and used within their own families, within organised and ritual abuse.
— Carolyn Spring, Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices
It is always a mistake to underestimate how long it takes for mankind to understand the traumas it has suffered, especially the self-inflicted ones.
— A.C. Grayling, The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life
-He drives recklessly or speeds up when he’s angry.-He punches walls or kicks doors.-He throws things around, even if they don’t hit you.
— Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
No one's ever sat me down and taught me what empathy is or why it matters more than power or patriotism or religious faith. But I learn it right there in the hallway: I cannot do what's been done to me.
— Zak Ebrahim, The Terrorist's Son: A Story of Choice
A man or a woman can't be defined by the pain inflicted in them by others or by someone else's issues, but by their own character and actions.
— Linda Alfiori
Julia's fears of coming forward with the violence were based on anticipated as well as actual responses from friends and acquaintances. I also recognized Julia's introverted and moody side, but I knew she wasn't capable of inciting her husband to kick, choke, and lock her in her home like an animal. Besides, considering how she was being treated, it was not surprising that she seemed moody, sensitive, even depressed. More important, nothing any woman could do could justify such behavior.
— Susan Weitzman, Not To People Like Us: Hidden Abuse In Upscale Marriages
Consider these traditional theories of domestic abuse:-	Learned helplessness suggest that abused women learn to become helpless under abusive conditions; they are powerless to extricate themselves from such relationships and/or unable to make adaptive choices-	The cycle of violence describes a pattern that includes a contrition or honeymoon phase. The abusive husband becomes contrite and apologetic after a violent episode, making concerted efforts to get back in his wife’s good graces.-	Traumatic bonding attempts to explain the inexplicable bond that is formed between a woman and her abusive partner-	The theory of past reenactments posits that women in abusive relationships are reliving unconscious feelings from early childhood scenarios. My research results and experience with patients do not conform to these concepts. I have found that the upscale abused wife is not a victim of learned helplessness. Rather, she makes specific decisions along the path to be involved in the abusive marriage, including silent strategizing as she chooses to stay or leave the marriage. Nor does the upscale abused wife experience the classic cycle of violence, replete with the honeymoon stage, in which the husband courts his wife to seek her forgiveness. As in the case of Sally and Ray, the man of means actually does little to seek his wife’s forgiveness after a violent episode.Further, the upscale abused wife voices more attachment to her lifestyle than the traumatic bonding with her abusive mate. And very few of the abused women I have met over the years experienced abuse in their childhoods or witnessed it between their parents. In fact, it is this lack of experience with violence, rage, and abuse that makes this woman even more overwhelmed and unclear about how to cope with something so alien to her and the people in her universe.
— Susan Weitzman, Not To People Like Us: Hidden Abuse In Upscale Marriages
The first time he had hit her, he had been so wracked with remorse, she had actually felt sorry for him. Consumed by guilt and self-loathing, he had sobbed in her arms like a child, swearing it would never happen again and begging for her forgiveness. Her stomach turned over now at the thought of how she had comforted him, assuring him that she trusted him and promising that she would never leave. She saw now with sickening clarity that she had been setting a precedent - giving him permission to do it again; reassuring him that she would tolerate anything.If only she had walked out there and then.
— Cleary James, The Endgame
If people keep stepping on you, wear a pointy hat.
— Joyce Rachelle
If the goal is unknown, then abuse is inevitable
— Sunday Adelaja
Violet remembered that slap; later her mother had called it a "love tap," as if to further confuse love with pain.
— Koren Zailckas, Mother, Mother
It's not rocking the boat, Dad. It's called communication. You're allowed to ask questions. Other people do it all the time. Other people don't live in fear of someone else's reactions. They don't relentlessly stress out about getting into trouble.
— Koren Zailckas, Mother, Mother
you remind me of someone i knew. looked just like you but kind.
— Taylor Rhodes, moira: a ghost story
Shut the fuck up and mind your own business, Bren.” Before Furi could put up any kind of guard, Brenden had his hands around his throat and shoved him until his back slammed into the stainless steel refrigerator.“You think you can talk to me that way, you little shit?” Brenden snarled, spittle flying from his mouth. His hands twisting and burning the skin around Furi’s neck.“Get off me,” Furi gasped, trying unsuccessfully to pry the thick fingers off. His husband and brother-in-law had both been linebackers in college. Neither minded using their brawn and strength on him, and often.Brenden brought his knee up fast, kneeing him so hard in the groin Furi thought death would be better than the pain. Brenden stepped back and let Furi drop to the hard granite floor, slapping him hard in the back of the head before strolling off as if he owned the world. Furi couldn’t hear what the hell his husband was saying because his ears were ringing and his eyes were so filled with tears he thought best to just keep them shut.“Patrick,” Furi groaned, clutching at his balls, knowing nothing would stop the throbbing.“Don’t talk like a big boy if you don’t have the balls to back it up, darlin,” his husband said nonchalantly.
— A.E. Via
I'm Used To, Being Used, Not Abused.
— Syed Sharukh
She preferred to be numb. And mostly these days she was. She played dead, sleepwalking her way through her life on autopilot, hardly caring whether he hit her or kissed her - it was all the same in the end.
— Cleary James, The Endgame
those glasses aren't for the sun they're for darkness, exclaims Rue. Sometimes when we harvest through the night, they'll pass out a few pairs to those of us highest in the trees. Where the torchlight doesn't reach. One time, this boy Martin, he tried to keep his pair. Hid it in his pants. They killed him on the spot. They killed a boy for taking these/ I say Yes. and everyone knew he was no danger. Martin wasn't right in the head. I mean he still acted like a three year old. He just wanted the glasses to play with, says Rue. Hearing this makes me feel like District 12 is some sort of safe haven. Of course, people keel over from starvation all the time, but I can't imagine the peacekeepers murdering a simpleminded child. There's a little girl, one of greasy sae's gradkids, who wanders around the Hob. She's not quite right but she's treated as a sort of pet. People toss her scraps and things.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Do we all repeat the same words in our heads in the days after experiencing abuse at the hands of those who love us? "From this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part."Maybe those vows weren't meant to be taken as literally as some spouses take them. For better, for worse?Fuck. That. Shit.
— Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us
How could she love him after what he did to her? How could she contemplate taking him back?” It’s sad that those are the first thoughts that run through our minds when someone is abused. Shouldn’t there be more distaste in our mouths for the abusers than for those who continue to love the abusers?
— Colleen Hoover
We live with the scars we choose.
— Shannon L. Alder
Whatever it was, she knew she would not be blamed for it, she was blameless. But what use had that been to her in the past, to be blameless? So at the same time she felt guilty, and as if she was about to be punished.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
..but I know my commitment to change and transformation is stronger than my commitment to self-destruction. In these moments, the need to rewrite the familiarity of violent reactions and hold oneself accountable becomes increasingly important. Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism have a way of permeating all of us to our core. It is essential that we are all personally committed to not perpetuating further abuse upon each other's bodies.
— Jennifer  Patterson, Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement
He pulls down one of my straps, slides his other hand in among the feathers, but it's no good, I lie there like a dead bird. He is not a monster, I think. I can't afford pride or aversion, there are all kinds of things that have to be discarded, under the circumstances. "Maybe I should turn the lights out," says the Commander, dismayed and no doubt disappointed. I see him for a moment before he does this. Without his uniform he looks smaller, older, like something being dried. The trouble is that I can't be, with him, any different from the way I usually am with him. Usually I'm inert. Surely there must be something here for us, other than this futility and bathos.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Dad was thirsty, not given to great displays of affection, like his father and his father's father before him. A long line of self-indulgent men who couldn't give love but lived to take it, which isn't the same as receiving it. They were all in so much pain and that's always the perfect excuse.
— Courtney Summers, All the Rage
Shouldn't there be more distaste in our mouths for the abusers than for those who continue to love the abusers?
— Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us
Domestic violence is any behavior involving physical, psychological, emotional, sexual or verbal abuse. It is any form of aggression intended to hurt, damage, or kill an intimate person.
— Asa Don Brown
when you allow that man. to walk through your children. plant his feet. in their veins. hold their voices. necks. bodies. inside his violence. you are no longer a mother. when you give him the key to that door. because you need to be loved by someone. you have seasoned them for the wolf. burned their childhood into a fantasy. it’s going to take a third of their lives. all the courage. from their cells to their hair. to learn the alchemetic formula that turns that kind of betrayal. a demothering. soft. liveable. – before you get that key made
— Nayyirah Waheed, Salt
Domestic violence is frequently excused when alcohol and other substances are involved.
— Asa Don Brown
Society has seldom considered the vicarious effects of domestic violence between partners on the lives of children.
— Asa Don Brown
...Studies have found that children who witness abuse are more likely to accept relationships that are abusive.
— Asa Don Brown
Children who experience abuse also learn to deny pain and chaos or accept them as normal and proper. They learn that their feelings were wrong or didn't matter. They learn to focus on immediate survival - on not getting abused, and miss out on important developmental stages. As a result, they have problems developing their own identities.
— Randi Kreger, Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder
We are a society of excuses, shame and blame; we avoid accountability and often project our responsibility when involving domestic violence.
— Asa Don Brown
No amount of logic can usually move a battered woman, so persuasion requires emotional leverage, not statistics or moral arguments. . . .I have seen their fear and resistance firsthand . . . I believe it is critical for a woman to view staying as a choice, for only then can leaving be viewed as a choice and an option.
— Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence
It is seldom that domestic violence is an isolated episode
—  rather it is comprised of a number of episodes over an extended period of time.
No healthy mind could bring itself to torture another human being.
— Lance Conrad, The Price of Loyalty
Domestic abusers and the abused need to develop healthy support systems...
— Asa Don Brown
The above is stereotypical FMS rhetoric. It employs a formulaic medley of factual distortions, exaggerations, emotionally charged language and ideological codewords, pseudo-scientific assertions, indignant protestations of bigotry and persecution, mockering of religious belief, and the usual tiresome “witch hunt” metaphors to convince the reader that there can be no debating the merits of the case. No matter what the circumstances of the case, the syntax is always the same, and the plot line as predictable as a 1920's silent movie. Everyone accused of abuse is somehow the victim of overzealous religious fanatics, who make unwarranted, irrational, and self-serving charges, which are incredibly accepted uncritically by virtually all social service and criminal justice professionals assign to the case, who are responsible for "brainwashing" the alleged perpetrator or witnesses to the crime. This mysterious process of "mass hysteria" is then amplified in the media, which feeds back upon itself, which finally causes a total travesty of justice which the FMS people in the white hats are duty-bound to redress. By reading FMS literature one could easily draw the conclusion that the entire American justice system is no better than that of the rural south in the days of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. The Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century are always the touchstone for comparison.
— Pamela Perskin Noblitt, Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social, and Political Considerations
Pinned shoulder to shoulder, t-shirts extended in lines,The power of expression, is what "THE CLOTHESLINE" defines.Although each color symbolic, the threads weave the same,Each shirt a picture of violence, each shirt a witness to pain.The color white a memorial, for a victim who died,Simply, because of her gender, precious life was denied.Yellow signifies a victim, embraced by batter and assault,When intimacy turned into violence, as if loving was a fault.Shades of pink, red, and orange - when passion turned into rape,Denied the right to say "NO", by either stranger, or date.The blue and green bear nightmares, when a child of incest and misuseWas forced not to tell the "SECRETS", endured from physical and sexual abuse.See the beautiful shades of lavender, to the one not afraid to voice,A different sexual orientation, condemned, when in public made the choice.In the beginning they first choose the color, then allowing pain to flow from inside,Using buttons, bows, paints, and prose, self-expression no longer denied.As you walk through the line of color, emotional pain may fill your heart,But to the victim this personal creation, permits an inner healing to start.Pinned shoulder to shoulder, t-shirts extended in lines,The power of expression, is what "THE CLOTHESLINE" defines.
— Patricia Tokarz
As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.
— Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
To forget and to repress would be a good solution if there were no more to it than that. But repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms. And the worst thing is that although the feelings of the abused child have been silenced at the point of origin, that is, in the presence of those who caused the pain, they find their voice when the battered child has children of his own.
— Alice  Miller, Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries
I like it better when my room is pitch black, when the dark is so thick it swallows me up and I feel as if I could drown in it.
— Louise O'Neill, Asking For It
It is a rare person who can cut himself off from mediate and immediate relations with others for long spaces of time without undergoing a deterioration in personality.
— Harry Stack Sullivan, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry
Whatever you abuse will return to hunt you. Cultivate the self discipline to use everything within the environment God created them for.
— Paul Bamikole
An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as (we) were taught to believe that we were loved.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
I let go of false hope. I let go of the hope that they would transform in favour of working on my own transformation. I let go of the hope that they would HEAR me. I let go of the hope that they would SEE me. Instead of my hope being in THEM, I listened to me. I heard me, I saw me, I validated my own pain and I began to emerge from the broken life I had been living.
— Darlene Ouimet
Love is how you treat someone.
— Rick Cormier, MiXED NUTS or What I've Learned Practicing Psychotherapy
Some of the experiences endured by human beings on this earth are virtually unbelievable.
— Aphrodite Matsakis, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
So fast you couldn't realise it, from one face to another - that's called an actor. Then what happens??Victim a killer, victim a killer wow. One time be a part of a victim, other being a part of a killer - awesome just awesome.
— Deyth Banger
Not upholding a persons legal rights is a form of abuse. Unfortunately, USA government abuse of the general public is a normal state of affairs in many areas.
— Steven Magee
Fricking son of a popcorn pimp!
— Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy
Several researchers demonstrate the ways people fail to label trauma as such or underreport traumatic experiences. In a sample of 1,526 university students, Rausch and Knutson (1991) found that although participants reported receiving punitive treatment similar to that of their siblings, they were more than twice as likely to identify their siblings’ experiences as abusive as they were to label their own in this way. The authors reported that participants were likely to interpret parental treatment toward themselves but not parental treatment toward their siblings as deserved and therefore not abusive. Other studies similarly indicate that those reporting abuse experiences often do not demonstrate a metaconsciousness of having been abused (Goldsmith & Freyd, in press; Koss, 1998; Varia & Abidin, 1999; Weinbach & Curtiss, 1986)." KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING ABOUT TRAUMA: IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPY (2004)
— Jennifer J. Freyd
We look at your eyes. The eyes carry the wounds. The eyes know damage. Damaged people recognize other damaged people, and we let you in. We are kindred. - Broken Places
— Rachel Thompson
I have tried to communicate my ideas in a language that preserves connections, a language that is faithful both to the dispassionate, reasoned traditions of my profession and to the passionate claims of people who have been violated and outraged. I have tried to find a language that can withstand the imperatives of doublethink and allows all of us to come a little closer to facing the unspeakable.
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
About a month after she found out about that, I got pregnant for the first time. I knew I didn't want to have a baby at all, and wanted to get an abortion. But the day I found out, I wasn't sure what to do first. I felt alone and lost and needed someone to call who I could tell. I needed help. I wasn't sure if she would talk to me again so soon after what had happened. I decided to take a chance and try calling her. When I told her, she said, "Well, an abortion is only like $500, so go turn a couple of tricks and get it taken care of," before she hung up on me. I probably should have called someone else, but I didn't know who else to call.
— Ashly Lorenzana, Speed Needles
The rape of a child is a violent act of contempt, not an expression of sexuality or affection.
— Mike Lew, Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma
Few of us enter romantic relationships able to receive love. We fall into romantic attachments doomed to replay familiar family dramas. Usually we do not know this will happen precisely because we have grown up in a culture that has told us that no matter what we experience in our childhoods, no matter the pain, sorrow, alienation, emptiness, no matter the extent of our dehumanization, romantic love will be ours. We believe we will meet the girl of our dreams. We believe 'someday our prince will come.' They show up just as we imagined they would. We wanted the lover to appear but most of us were not clear about what we wanted to do with them-what the love was that we wanted to make and how we would make it. We were not ready to open our hearts fully.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33Freyd: I see what you're saying but people in psychology don't have a uniform agreement on this issue of the depth of -- I guess the term that was used at the conference was -- "robust repression."TAT: Well, Pamela, there's a whole lot of evidence that people dissociate traumatic things. What's interesting to me is how the concept of "dissociation" is side-stepped in favor of "repression." I don't think it's as much about repression as it is about traumatic amnesia and dissociation. That has been documented in a variety of trauma survivors. Army psychiatrists in the Second World War, for instance, documented that following battles, many soldiers had amnesia for the battles. Often, the memories wouldn't break through until much later when they were in psychotherapy.Freyd: But I think I mentioned Dr. Loren Pankratz. He is a psychologist who was studying veterans for post-traumatic stress in a Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland. They found some people who were admitted to Veteran's hospitals for postrraumatic stress in Vietnam who didn't serve in Vietnam. They found at least one patient who was being treated who wasn't even a veteran. Without external validation, we just can't know --TAT: -- Well, we have external validation in some of our cases.Freyd: In this field you're going to find people who have all levels of belief, understanding, experience with the area of repression. As I said before it's not an area in which there's any kind of uniform agreement in the field. The full notion of repression has a meaning within a psychoanalytic framework and it's got a meaning to people in everyday use and everyday language. What there is evidence for is that any kind of memory is reconstructed and reinterpreted. It has not been shown to be anything else. Memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted from fragments. Some memories are true and some memories are confabulated and some are downright false.TAT: It is certainly possible for in offender to dissociate a memory. It's possible that some of the people who call you could have done or witnessed some of the things they've been accused of -- maybe in an alcoholic black-out or in a dissociative state -- and truly not remember. I think that's very possible.Freyd: I would say that virtually anything is possible. But when the stories include murdering babies and breeding babies and some of the rather bizarre things that come up, it's mighty puzzling.TAT: I've treated adults with dissociative disorders who were both victimized and victimizers. I've seen previously repressed memories of my clients' earlier sexual offenses coming back to them in therapy. You guys seem to be saying, be skeptical if the person claims to have forgotten previously, especially if it is about something horrible. Should we be equally skeptical if someone says "I'm remembering that I perpetrated and I didn't remember before. It's been repressed for years and now it's surfacing because of therapy." I ask you, should we have the same degree of skepticism for this type of delayed-memory that you have for the other kind?Freyd: Does that happen?TAT: Oh, yes. A lot.
— David L. Calof
This book appears at a time when public discussion of the common atrocities of sexual and domestic life has been made possible by the women’s movement, and when public discussion of the common atrocities of political life has been made possible by the movement for human rights. I expect the book to be controversial—first, because it is written from a feminist perspective; second, because it challenges established diagnostic concepts; but third and perhaps most importantly, because it speaks about horrible things, things that no one really wants to hear about.
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33Freyd: The term "multiple personality" itself assumes that there is "single personality" and there is evidence that no one ever displays a single personality.TAT: The issue here is the extent of dissociation and amnesia and the extent to which these fragmentary aspects of personality can take executive control and control function. Sure, you and I have different parts to our mind, there's no doubt about that, but I don't lose time to mine they can't come out in the middle of a lecture and start acting 7 years old. I'm very much in the camp that says that we all are multi-minds, but the difference between you and me and a multiple is pretty tangible.Freyd: Those are clearly interesting questions, but that area and the clinical aspects of dissociation and multiple personalities is beyond anything the Foundation is actively...TAT: That's a real problem. Let me tell you why that's a problem. Many of the people that have been alleged to have "false memory syndrome" have diagnosed dissociative disorders. It seems to me the fact that you don't talk about dissociative disorders is a little dishonest, since many people whose lives have been impacted by this movement are MPD or have a dissociative disorder. To say, "Well, we ONLY know about repression but not about dissociation or multiple personalities" seems irresponsible.Freyd: Be that as it may, some of the scientific issues with memory are clear. So if we can just stick with some things for a moment; one is that memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted no matter how long ago or recent.TAT: You weigh the recollected testimony of an alleged perpetrator more than the alleged victim's. You're saying, basically, if the parents deny it, that's another notch for disbelief.Freyd: If it's denied, certainly one would want to check things. It would have to be one of many factors that are weighed -- and that's the problem with these issues -- they are not black and white, they're very complicated issues.
— David L. Calof
Dissociation gets you through a brutal experience, letting your basic survival skills operate unimpeded…Your ability to survive is enhanced as the ability to feel is diminished…All feeling are blocked; you ‘go away.’ You are disconnected from the act, the perpetrator & yourself…Viewing the scene from up above or some other out-of-body perspective is common among sexual abuse survivors.
— Renee Fredrickson, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.… Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life.… They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke the responses of catastrophe.
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
One in four girls will experience sexual abuse by the time she is sixteen, and 48 percent of all rapes involve a young woman under the age of eighteen. It’s not surprising then, that in a society where sexual abuse of young women is rampant, many women never share their stories. They remain hidden and invisible.
— Patti Feuereisen, Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse--A Book for Teen Girls, Young Women, and Everyone Who Cares About Them
To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins the victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim, this social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered.
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
It is she who has a hold on him. Doesn't she see how much he needs her? She has nothing to be afraid of, her conscience is clear. It is he who should be ashamed, and terrified of her giving him away. But that is just what she will never do. To do this she does not have the necessary ruthlessness--Komarovsky's chief asset in dealing with subordinates and weaklings. This is precisely the difference between them. And it is this that makes the whole of life so terrifying. Does it crush you by thunder and lightning? No, by oblique glances and whispered calumny. It is all treachery and ambiguity. Any single thread is as fragile as a cobweb, but just try to pull yourself out of the net, you only become more entangled. And the strong are dominated by the weak and ignoble.
— Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
I know personally that when a child is abused the trajectory of that child's life is changed forever. That doesn't mean the path to happiness is impossible, but it does mean there will be detours and side roads that were never intended. Come back from those places, my friends, with lessons and compassion those on the straight road might never have the chance to learn. You are now equipped to help hurting children because you've navigated down those dark courses and made it back. Cudos to you, but also let your shoulders feel the weight of the responsibility to help others who are still lost and struggling to find their way to safety.
— Toni Sorenson
An encounter with God demands a response. An encounter with Satan demands your God's response.
— Shannon L. Alder
so often victims end up unnecessarily prolonging their abuse because they buy into the notion that their abuser must be coming from a wounded place and that only patient love and tolerance (and lots of misguided therapy) will help them heal.
— George K. Simon
#1 Dating Tip: Make Sure Your Date has a Conscience!
— P. A. Speers
For all those who believed me,and for all those who didn't. It can't be easy hearingthings that you shouldn't.
— Icarus X., Phoenix: My Attempt to Rise from the Ashes of Childhood Abuse
Changing? Aren’t we a little delusional? You’ve always been scarred and you always will be. Well you’re not really the best thinker. Why waste time trying to mend what’s broken? It’s impossible as trying to keep it from being broken in the first place. You want kids, don’t you? Abused people turn abusive, it’s a fact. Why? Becayse you love them? Didn’t I love you? But I’ve hurt you still. Love has nothing to do with being abusive. You’ve always been bruised and cut and it’s just… pointless to try and change that… now.
— dee Juusan, Grey is...
Abuse the innocent and create a monster.
— Jaime Tenorio Valenzuela
Religious guilt will never grow the kind of love you want in someone.
— Shannon L. Alder
Over the years Amy’s family has become a cascade of domestic abuse: her father beat on her brother, who grew big and furious and beat on her mother, who had no one but Amy to vent her anger on. Based on this pattern, you’d think that if there were someone in the family after Amy, that someone would do well to take karate classes, or hit the weights.
— Ron Currie Jr., Everything Matters!
How much maltreatment and exploitation could someone handle before losing self-control?
— Mary Kubica, Pretty Baby
A horse that loves and cares for a man was loved and cared for by a man!
— Emma Bullington
There is life after abuse. This is mine.
— Lindsay Fischer, The House on Sunset
Traumatic experiences in early childhood may interfere with the child's ability to securely attach.
— Asa Don Brown, The effects of childhood trauma on adult perception and worldview
In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was lucky.
— Alice Sebold, Lucky
I told you when we mated that I would gladly give you my heart, my life, and my love, but that when I did so they came with one condition. Never abuse me. Love is not abuse."--Maxis
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dragonbane
A child's temperament appears to play another significant role in the child's own perceptions and worldview.
— Asa Don Brown, The effects of childhood trauma on adult perception and worldview
Does your guilty past catch up so fast with your age? You've been robbing hex nuts, cap nuts, lock nuts and wing nuts. No wonder you have turned into a greedy nut." ~ Angelica Hopes, If I Could Tell You
— Angelica Hopes
Altitude sickness, unregulated drugs and medical gas enabled workers to become drug abusers/addicts
— Steven Magee
There’s discipline, Mahrree knew, and then there’s abuse. The first works, while the second never does. And some people, like Lemuel Thorne, had no idea there was even a difference.
— Trish Mercer, The Falcon in the Barn
Over-the-counter ‪‎drug‬ ‪‎abuse‬ or addiction was a problem that I observed at Mauna Kea
— Steven Magee
Too fearful to intervene and hold back the tormenter, she was pleading instead with the victim to be more submissive. It was a solution that would resolve the conflict while entrenching the problem. Aedan didn’t have the words to understand, but he could feel the wrongness of it.
— Jonathan Renshaw, Dawn of Wonder
He will experience that prickle, that shiver of disgust that afflicts him in both his happiest and most wretched moments, the one that asks him who he thinks he is to inconvenience so many people, to think he has the right to keep going when even his own body tells him he should stop.
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
I grew up missing my mom while she was right in front of me.
— Maggie Georgiana Young
Abuse is a parasite that feeds off hate and shame, growing in size and strength with silence.
— Nikki Sex, Accuse
I could tell he wanted the best for me. Of course, he assumed that would be getting out. Everyone always thought that, not of what we had to go back to, at home. Maybe our parents had thrown away our mattresses. Maybe they'd told our siblings we'd been run over by trains, to make our absence fonder.Not everyone had a parent. It could be that nothing was waiting for us. Our keys would no longer fit the locks. We'd resort to ringing the bell, saying we've come home, can't we come in?The eye in the peephole would show itself, and that eye could belong to a stranger, as our family had moved halfway across the country and never informed us. Or that eye could belong to the woman who carried us for nine months, who labored for fourteen hours, who was sliced open with a C-section to give us life, and now wished she never did.The juvenile correctional system could let us out into the world, but it could not control who would be out there, willing to claim us.
— Nova Ren Suma, The Walls Around Us
Denial can be a most useful, temporary shield. Unfortunately, such flimsy armor will not last a lifetime. It is best to face your past, and do so quickly, before your past returns to face you.”— André Chevalier
— Nikki Sex, Accuse
Some survivors have found small metallic “implants” in their teeth or ears, and believe these were designed to monitor their location or to broadcast their words or thoughts to the abusers. Such technology has been developed recently for keeping task of animals or persons with dementia. But to what extent it was used years ago by mind controllers is unknown at this point. At least some of it may be similar to the “bombs” in the stomach, a trick to convince survivors that their abusers monitor them continuously. The presence of an object does not mean it is capable of collecting complex information and sending it back to abusers, or even sending them signals, for twenty or more years as some survivors believe. As with other apparently bizarre beliefs of our survivor clients, we must acknowledge that something happened, and remain open both to the possibility that there was such technology and the possibility that it is yet another deception to convince survivors they cannot escape the grip of their abusers.p205
— Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
If you really truly want to know, I've thought if I was ever free someday, I might discover I've held my tears so long that I can't cry anymore, that I'm a dry stone and nothing can ever be wrung from me.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Interlude: A Special Odd Thomas Adventure
Women aren't mean the way that men are. They're full of life and they're like God in that way.
— Heather O'Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals
When I feel myself slipping to the darkness of my past, I’ll close my eyes and remember this. Remember Jackson.
— Stacey Trombley, Naked
Carl’s abuse isn’t obvious. It’s not something one can even notice while it’s happening. Carl doesn’t do you the favor of punching you in the face and sending you to school with a black eye so that you have a fighting chance of being rescued. Carl doesn’t hit, scream, or molest, allowing you to know you’re being mistreated.
— Maggie Georgiana Young
For anyone who wonders what it's like to have a tragedy shatter your existence, this is what I would tell them: it's like going through the motions of everyday life in a zombified state. It's having outbursts of anger for what seems like no apparent reason, for even the smallest of offenses. It's forgetting how to be your once cheerful, perky self, and having to relearn basic social skills when mingling with new people (especially if those people are ignorant, or just plain terrible at showing sympathy). It takes a while to re-learn all those basic skills. Maybe...it's possible. Maybe you have to want your life back first, before it can start repairing itself But then you also have to accept that the mending process may take the rest of your life. I don't think there's a set time limit for it.
— Sarahbeth Caplin, Someone You Already Know
[Abusers] blame the world - circumstances, other people - for their defeats, misfortune, misconduct, and failures. The abuser firmly believes that his life is swayed by currents and persons over which he has no influence whatsoever (he has an external locus of control).But there are even subtler variants of this psychological defense mechanism. Not infrequently an abuser will say: "I made a mistake because I am stupid", implying that his deficiencies and inadequacy are things he cannot help having and cannot change. This is also an alloplastic defense because it abrogates responsibility.Many abusers exclaim: "I misbehaved because I completely lost my temper." On the surface, this appears to be an autoplastic defense with the abuser assuming responsibility for his misconduct. But it could be interpreted as an alloplastic defense, depending on whether the abuser believes that he can control his temper.
— Sam Vaknin, Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited
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.
— Dean Koontz, Brother Odd
I trace the letters on the tree behind us in the picture. No one knows what's churning inside of me. Crushing guilt...Pain...Relief. All mixed with knowledge that Trip is never coming back.
— Jennifer Shaw Wolf, Breaking Beautiful
Comment sections on the internet is like gang graffiti, abusive words sprayed like nonsense and it's ugly to look at.
— Michael P. Naughton, Deathryde: Rebel Without a Corpse
The comment section of the internet is like gang graffiti, it makes no sense and is ugly to look at.
— Michael P. Naughton, Deathryde: Rebel Without a Corpse
A substantial minority of DID patients report sadistic, exploitive, and coercive abuse at the hands of organized groups. Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision
— James A. Chu
Ignore the voice that scorns and ridicules to ensure it does not mold you. Stifling subtleties like these, if unchecked, are oppressive. Freedom is a love supreme birthright, not a privilege to be governed by any other.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Strange how mean words can return to ones thoughts, years after they’ve been callously thrown at you. They replay in your mind, spiking a sense of remembered pain. Nasty name calling can be an ugly memory that stabs unexpectedly—not unlike a nightmare where you wake up crying. Sticks and stones, may break your bones—yet, cruel names can hurt you.
— Nikki Sex, Abuse
It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how I come to know trees fear man.
— Alice Walker, The Color Purple
The patterns learned as a child, repeat as an adult. Those with an abusive childhood are very often oh-so blind to this inescapable truth.— André Chevalier
— Nikki Sex, Abuse
You couldn't not notice the bruise on the side of her face. Or the hickey under her chin.
— Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
When a man strikes another man, he better have a good reason. There is never a good reason for a man to strike a woman.
— Dixie Waters
I am here for readers to see parts of themselves during my dark days, but also for a better way of living in my triumphs and gained wisdom.
— Eva Blanco, Ohana: Happiness is a Choice
Facing one’s past can be a perilous activity. For the client, joy must exceed misery. Personal successes must far outweigh losses. Pleasure must exceed pain. Always. Always. To do otherwise is a failure of the counselor.— André Chevalier
— Nikki Sex, Abuse
Loan sharking may mean investment and immediate solutions but desperate loan sharks, who are short of cash, abuse your rights and attack other people's home. ~ Odyssey of a Heart, Home of a Soul
— Angelica Hopes
Stand up for yourself.Never give any one permission to abuse you.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Overcoming abuse doesn't just happen, It takes positive steps everyday. Let today be the day you start to move forward.
— Assunta Harris, A Sheep Amongst Wolves
You're a survivor because everyday you make a choice not to be governed by their harsh words or actions. No one has the right to take away your happiness.
— Assunta Harris
The fault lies not with you” she says this so gently it makes me want to cry. I have never shed a tear, not throughout all my father’s beatings or guillo’s mauling, but a few kind words from this women and it is all i can do not to bawl like a babe.
— Robin LaFevers, Grave Mercy
Pornography as propaganda, according to feminist analysis, represents women as objects who love to be abused, and teaches men practices of degradation and abuse to carry out upon women.
— Sheila Jeffreys, Unpacking Queer Politics
In some cases abusive or damaged relationships cannot and should not be saved.
— Toni Sorenson