Surviving Childhood Abuse Quotes

As an adult, emerging from the ether's of an abusive childhood, i found myself left with a constant craving for protection, safety and security. I spent many years living my life, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I needed to control everything, in an effort to prevent any harm from coming my way (even though control is an illusion).
It took me many years to realize i had to become that safe harbor for myself. And that part of becoming that safe harbor was not about avoiding life, but rather, developing the confidence and coping skills to know that i would have what it takes to find my way through life's inevitable trials and tribulations. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

So, although my story is sometimes ugly, it's also beautiful. ~ Niki Krauss

Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser; of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse. ~ Stefan Molyneux

In the dark, the little live Christmas tree, two feet tall, sparkled with tiny coloured lights, like the tears I saw glistening in my brother's eyes. ~ V.C. Andrews

A child's attachment process begins within the first year of life ... ~ Asa Don Brown

We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people. ~ Alice Miller

It feels as if childhood sexual abuse or domestic abuse of women in the home has increased but actually if you ask women of 60 or 70 years old, the incidence is about the same. We just didn't know it. ~ Gloria Steinem

I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity. ~ Stefan Molyneux

Only when a child's authenticity is threatened do they develop unhealthy behaviors, distorted reality perceptions, and emotional difficulties. When you force a child to do what they don't want to do, feel what they don't feel, and think what they don't think, their authentic self becomes damaged. ~ Darius Cikanavicius

Each 'RED BUTTON' is representative of a thousand children raped. Don't like that word? Well, children, I assume, don't like being raped either. And by Catholic priests sworn to protect those God ordains strength (?) ~ A.K. Kuykendall

The central attitudes driving Mr. Sensitive are:
I'm against the macho men, so I couldn't be abusive.
As long as I use a lot of "psychobabble," no one is going to believe that I am mistreating you.
I can control you by analyzing how your mind and emotions work, and what your issues are from childhood.
I can get inside your head whether you want me there or not.
Nothing in the world is more important than my feelings.
Women should be grateful to me for not being like those other men. ~ Lundy Bancroft

It makes perfect sense that if human beings are raised in warm, loving households; if they are brought up to believe that the world is a secure and decent place, then they will grow up with a healthy relationship toward themselves and other people. - able to give love freely and receive it in return. Conversely, if a person is severely mistreated from his earliest years, subjected to constant psychological and physical abuse, he or she will grow up with a malignant view of life. To such a person, the world is a hateful place where all human relationships are based, not on love and respect, but on power, suffering, and humiliation. ~ Harold Schechter

Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul. ~ Dave Pelzer

The initial trauma of a young child may go underground but it will return to haunt us. ~ James Garbarino

The BFMSS [British False Memory Syndrome Society]
The founder of the 'false memory' movement in Britain is an accused father. Two of his adult daughters say that Roger Scotford sexually abused them in childhood. He denied this and responded by launching a spectacular counter-attack, which enjoyed apparently unlimited and uncritical air time in the mass media and provoke Establishment institutions that had made no public utterance about abuse to pronounce on the accused adults' repudiation of it.
p171-172

The 'British False Memory Syndrome Society' lent a scientific aura to the allegations - the alchemy of 'falsehood' and 'memory' stirred with disease and science. The new name pathologised the accusers and drew attention away from the accused. But the so-called syndrome attacked not only the source of the stories but also the alliances between the survivors' movement and practitioners in the health, welfare, and the criminal justice system. The allies were represented no longer as credulous dupes but as malevolent agents who imported a miasma of the 'false memories' into the imaginations of distressed victims.

Roger Scotford was a former naval officer turned successful property developer living in a Georgian house overlooking an uninterrupted valley in luscious middle England. He was a rich man and was able to give up everything to devote himself to the crusade.
He says his family life was normal and that he had been a 'Dr Spock father'. Bu ~ Beatrix Campbell

Sometimes I hesitate to use the term sexual abuse. It conjures up worst-case scenarios in our minds, and we think, "That will never happen to my kids." And we never begin the conversation regarding sexual abuse with our children. But one violation left in secret can cause significant pain. ~ Carolyn Byers Ruch

Daddy," she says again, this time putting more of a needy whine into her voice. It is the thing that has swayed him, these times when he has come near to turning on her: remembering that she is his little girl. Reminding him that he has been, up to today, a good father.

It is a manipulation. Something of her is warped out of true by this moment, and from now on all her acts of affection toward her father will be calculated, performative. Her childhood dies, for all intents and purposes. But that is better than all of her dying, she knows. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Comics who grew up surviving their childhood by being able to be the first one to make the joke about their weight or their hairy arms - like me - whatever they're insecure about, whatever they're apologizing for, that becomes their strength. ~ Sarah Silverman

We laughed the laugh of women untethered, finally, from their origins. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Sadness in childhood is maturity in adulthood. ~ Efrat Cybulkiewicz

Childhood trauma can range from having faces extreme violence and neglect to having confronted feelings of not belonging, being unwanted, or being chronically misunderstood. You may have grown up in an environment where your curiosity and enthusiasm were constantly devalued. Perhaps you were brought up in a family where your parents had unresolved traumas of their own, which impaired their ability to attend to your emotional needs. Or, you may have faced vicious sexual or physical attacks. In all such situations, you learn to compensate by developing defenses around your most vulnerabe parts. ~ Arielle Schwartz

All people cross the line from childhood to adulthood with a secondhand opinion of who they are. Without any questioning, we take as truth whatever our parents and other influentials have said about us during our childhood, whether these messages are communicated verbally, physically, or silently. ~ Heyward Bruce Ewart III

Ritualised child sexual abuse is about abuse of power, control and secrecy. Ten years ago many people found it difficult to believe that fathers actually raped their children, yet survivors of such abuses spoke out and eventually began to be listened to and believed. Ritual abuse survivors, when they try to speak out about their experiences, face denial and disbelief from society and often fear for their lives from the abusers. ~ Laurie Matthew

I spent so much of my life shut down from the abuse of my childhood. I didn't have friends and I didn't have connections with people. ~ Bonnie St. John

Youngsters deserve no opinions. ~ Carla H. Krueger

I believe my strength has something to do with memory, with that concept of fluid time. For while I recall with clarity the terror of abuse, I also recall the green and lovely dream of childhood, the moist membrane of a leaf against my nose, the toads that peeled a golden pool in the palm of my hand. Pleasures, pleasures, the recollections of which have injected me with a firm and unshakable faith. I believe Dostoevski when he wrote, "If one had only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may be the means of saving us." I have gone by memory. ~ Lauren Slater

Many deeply hidden memories have come flooding back. The important message here though is that it is possible to heal and survive. Everyone has survived their own kind of emotional or mental trauma. We all have our inner fears and misreplaced feelings of guilt. ~ Lynette Gould

He stared at the corner of the yellowed ceiling, at the spider web and its solitary occupant. "Why here?" he asked the spider. "You could choose anywhere instead of this house. I know I wouldn't be here if I didn't have to be." The spider said nothing. Come to think of it, Callum was sure the spider hadn't moved even an inch in the last week. Maybe it was dead. Dead and crisp like the untouched wasp carcass on his window sill. ~ Scott Kaelen

My traumatic experience was life changing ~ Asa Don Brown

Many people with Dissociative Disorders are very creative and used their creative capacities to help them cope with childhood trauma.p55 ~ Marlene Steinberg

Research has also revealed that women who have developed PTSD in relation to early childhood sexual abuse often develop borderline personality disorder. Some severe cases will result in the development of dissociative identity disorder or depersonalization disorder. Patients who have been exposed to protracted and repeated sexual abuse may also develop schizophrenia simultaneously with PTSD. ~ John M. Duffey

I am disgusted that I was often taken into their bed and told to do things to both of them. The things a decent parent wouldn't think of. I didn't know that having sex with her or with him was wrong because I'd never known anything else but I never understood why it used to hurt so much. It carried on right until she died and I am sure that if she was still alive it would still be going on now. I wished someone would help me and stop them hurting me. I tried to do what they told me to do because somethings they were nice to me if I did it properly."

- Graham talks about being sexually abused by his mother (and her boyfriend)

Graham was sexually abused by his mother. The only person who showed him any affection in his childhood was his grandmother.

"My mother always told me the police would think I was a 'dirty little bastard' if I told them and they would take me away to a children's home and I would never see grandmother again."

"I knew it was my fault and nobody would believe me."
- Graham

Children often do not tell about abuse because of their fears about how other people will respond. The most common fear is that they will not be believed, It is a child's word against an adult's and the adult may be well liked and respected in the community. Nowadays, because of the television and newspaper coverage, people are aware that child sexual abuse does happen. In the recent past it was thought to be a rare occurrence, ~ Carolyn Ainscough

Anger is the immune system of the soul. ~ Stefan Molyneux

I have sometimes said to a client: "If you are so in touch with your feelings from your abusive childhood, then you should know what abuse feels like. You should be able to remember how miserable it was to be cut down to nothing, to be put in fear, to be told that the abuse is your own fault. You should be less likely to abuse a woman, not more so, from having been through it." Once I make this point, he generally stops mentioning his terrible childhood; he only wants to draw attention to it if it's an excuse to stay the same, not if it's a reason to change. ~ Lundy Bancroft

Don't put your child at risk. Limit unsupervised one-on-one time between your child & another adult or another child. ~ Carolyn Byers Ruch

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

Another year passed, much as the first did. ~ V.C. Andrews

The rush I got from crime was better than that of glue, drink or hash. I loved playing cat and mouse with the local coppers. He Who Dares Wins, the SAS motto, was very applicable to my life then. ~ Stephen Richards

Take off your damned wrapper! The old buffer ordered, looking intensely at her lower part. Comfort was on her knees, rubbing the old man's dirty feet.
All her plea and tears continually worsen the whole matter.
I want to do you harder cos you gonna be fucked by other folks who needs a large hole, said the man, moving towards her.
Comfort struggled with all her feminine might, but the old masculine but old man ripped her wrapper and slapped her on the face.
Lie here, Lie here! I'm gonna do what your old man did to your mama and its gonna sweet you.
She screamed as the man's organ prick her glory hole like a sharp needle. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

One of the most common corruptions of childrearing remains the controlling caregiver's propensity to shape the child into an object aligned with the caregiver's own unprocessed trauma. Controlling caregivers have a variety of methods at their disposal to accomplish this, including such "civilized" approaches as manipulating, conditionally loving, withdrawing attention, threatening, isolating, shaming, guilt-tripping, humiliating, and withdrawing resources. ~ Darius Cikanavicius

Candy. He spoke of candy. Was he still in the child's world where candy stood for something sweet enough to hold back tears? I had grown older, and had lost enthusiasm for childish delights. I wanted what every teenager wants
freedom to develop into a woman, freedom to have full control over my life! Though I tried to tell him this, my voice had dried up along with my tears. ~ V.C. Andrews

It's sad
that burnt marshmallows
make me think of
methamphetamine,
when they
should bring
back childhood
memories of
s'mores ~ Phil Volatile

There's no weakness as great as false strength. ~ Stefan Molyneux

The more a child is abused, the more the child uses his abilities to anticipate, manage, prevent, dismantle, and challenge the abusing ways of his parents. ~ Steven Franssen

I want everyone that has been abused by someone in their childhood to know that you can get past it. Having DID is not the end of the world; it's the beginning of your new life. DID allows the victim of exceptional abuse the ability to "forget" the abuse and continue living. Without it, I may have gone crazy as a teen and spent my life in a as a teen and spent my life in a psychiatric hospital. ~ Dauna Cole

Emotional incest is yet another form of emotional abuse. Emotional incest commonly involves the reversal of the parent/child roles. When this occurs, the mother or father "parentifies" the child who is then manipulated to gratify the unmet childhood needs of the parent. This typically manifests as the parent pumping the child for the unconditional love that she should herself be giving. ~ Pete Walker

Healing was a terrifying and painful experience and my life was as full of struggle and heartache as it had always been. Several years after I started therapy, I began to feel happy. I was stunned. I hadn't realized that the point of all this work on myself was to feel good. I thought it was just one more struggle in a long line of struggles. It took a while before I got used to the idea that my life had changed, that I felt happy, that I was actually content. Learning to tolerate feeling good is one of the nicest parts of healing. ~ Ellen Bass

A child needs to feel safe and protected, which means that their body, psyche, and belongings are safe and secure from violation. Because a child is helpless and dependent on their caregiver, they need a guardian in this predominantly unknown and sometimes scary and dangerous world. A child's caregiver is responsible to fit the roles of safe haven and protector. ~ Darius Cikanavicius