Survivors Abuse Survivors Rage Quotes

If you carry around a lot of suppressed or repressed anger (anger you have unconsciously buried) you may lash out at people, blaming or punishing them for something someone else did a long time ago. Because you were unwilling or unable to express how you felt in the past, you may overreact in the present, damaging a relationship. ~ Beverly Engel

Incest is almost always a devastating experience for
the victim. ~ Susan Forward

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

Abusive relationships exist because they provide enough rations of warmth, laughter, and affection to clutch onto like a security blanket in the heap of degradation. The good times are the initial euphoria that keeps addicts draining their wallets for toxic substances to inject into their veins. Scraps of love are food for an abusive relationship. ~ Maggie Young

What really amazes me is that survivors can be out in the world completely functional using maybe 20 percent of their capacity. Can you imagine what we'll be able to do when we let the other 80 percent out? If we were able to recover, stop the abuse, and heal everyone, the world we live in would be so phenomenal.

If you think of all the ways in which you have been stunted, all the energy you have consumed simply to keep hanging on by your fingernails, all that you might have created or accomplished or simply enjoyed had you not had to stagger under the burden of abuse, you may have a formidable list.

If you multiply that times the number of other women similarly struggling - not only now but also back through the decades and centuries - the result is awesome.

Now, imagine all the women healed - and all that energy no longer used for mere survival but made available for creativity, nurturing relationships, working for peace and equality. The effect on the world would be monumental.

We have never in recorded history lived in a time when women were, as a whole, empowered. We can only begin to imagine the riches. ~ Ellen Bass And Laura Davis

Survivors who choose to heal are extraordinary people. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Christy isn't a case, he's a person. ~ C. Kennedy

I am small.
So are stars from a distance. It's all a matter of perspective. ~ C. Kennedy

To survivors of sexual abuse, for bullying your demons in any manner you choose, and for accepting only the definition of therapy that works for you. You have the right to remember. To voice it. To be pissed off about it. Above all, to be proud. You've outlasted your scars and can teach the lesson on heroism. ~ Pam Godwin

The second day of the book tour I stopped an interviewer and said, "Aren't you asking the wrong question?" The interviewer stared at me blankly.

"The question is not really why I chose to share my experiences with other people. The question we should be dealing with is why does anyone mistreat their children? I think that's what we should be talking about. ~ Christina Crawford

- Child is abused, perpetrator threatens to hurt mother. Child feels protective of mother.
- Struggle to escape perp reinforces feelings of mutual protection. It's Mom and I against the world.
- Something necessary at the time later creates "enmeshment." Child doesn't see her actions as separate from mother. Even during normal adolescent individuation. But
- Normal individuation doesn't happen in abuse survivors. They don't feel normal, so they
- Act out in unhealthy or self-destructive ways, which creates
- Fear and pain for mother, which creates
- Guilt for child who still feels responsible for mother's emotional health.
- Child seeks release from the guilt and from not feeling normal, which leads to
- Escape to the world of other not normal people, where mother can't see her child self-destruct, which leads to
"The bad news. ~ Claire Fontaine

Although Megan "knew" she was not in danger, her body told her that she was. If sensorimotor habits are firmly entrenched, accurate cognitive interpretations may not exert much influence on changing bodily orgamzation and arousal responses. Instead, the traumatized person may experience the reality of the body rather than that of the mind. To be most effective, the sensorimotor psychotherapist works on both the cognitive and sensorimotor levels. With Megan, a purely cognitive approach might foster some change in her integrative capacity, but the change would be only momentary if the cowering response were reactivated each time she received feedback at work... However, if she is encouraged to remember to "stand tall" in the face of criticism, her body and her thoughts will be congruent with each other and with current reality. ~ Pat Ogden

Dissociation - complete dissociation - is an emotional protection strategy that totally and completely removes painful realities from the mind and body of the survivor. ~ Kathy Broady

This isn't normal. This isn't how normal people think.
Fuck off, world- what the hell is normal anyway? ~ Elizabeth Haynes

To any survivor who may be doubting whether what they've experienced is truly abuse, remember that emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse will never be, and should never be, considered part of the messy equation of a normal relationship. As both metal health professionals and survivors can attest to, the traumatic highs and lows of being with a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath are not the natural highs and lows of regular relationships. That suggestion is quite damaging to society and to survivors all around the world. ~ Shahida Arabi

Eighty two percent of the traumatized children seen in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network do not meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD.15 Because they often are shut down, suspicious, or aggressive they now receive pseudoscientific diagnoses such as "oppositional defiant disorder," meaning "This kid hates my guts and won't do anything I tell him to do," or "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder," meaning he has temper tantrums. Having as many problems as they do, these kids accumulate numerous diagnoses over time. Before they reach their twenties, many patients have been given four, five, six, or more of these impressive but meaningless labels. If they receive treatment at all, they get whatever is being promulgated as the method of management du jour: medications, behavioral modification, or exposure therapy. These rarely work and often cause more damage. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

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

Since her time in the necromancer's clutches, she was still recovering lost memories from the quicksand of her mind. They'd drop like nuclear bombs, freezing her at the worst time as visuals which should've stayed forever buried bubbled to the surface. ~ Katherine McIntyre

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

Maternal absence, in one form or another, is always found in the background of the incest romance. Womens literature on incest generally treats the theme of maternal absence tragically. Mens literature trivializes it or treats it comically. And clinical literature tends to treat it judgmentally. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

Survivors are damaged to different degrees by their experiences. This does not depend on what happened physically. A Survivor who has been raped will not necessarily be more damaged than a Survivor who has been touched. The degree of damage depend on the degree of traumatic sexualization, stigmatization, betrayal and powerlessness, the child has experienced. This in turn depends on a number of factors such as:
* who the abuser was;
* how many abusers were involved;
* if the abuser was same-sex or opposite sex;
* what took place;
* what was said;
* how long the abuse went on for;
* How the child felt and how she interpreted what was happening;
* if the child was otherwise happy and supported;
* how other people reacted to the disclosure or discovery of the abuse;
* how old the child was ~ Carolyn Ainscough

Healing isn't just about pain. It's about learning to love yourself. As you move from feeling like a victim to being a proud survivor, you will have glimmers of hope, pride and satisfaction. Those are natural by-products of healing. ~ Ellen Bass

And as the ground gets farther and farther away you swear to yourself that you're going to tell someone how bad it is, you're gonna stop pretending like none of these things are happening, but by the time the ground is coming toward you again you are already polishing your story. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

The first generation of therapists doing this work were told by their clients that the one massive cult was everywhere, knew everything, had access to state-of-the-art technology, and was willing to kill both clients and therapists to stop the information from getting out." []
"The reality is that even before stories of ritual abuse and mind control began coming out to therapists, the groups had agreed on what kind of disinformation to spread, so that clients would be afraid to tell their therapists what had happened to them, and therapists would be afraid to work with these clients." [ ]
"We know that there is not one massive Satanic cult, but many different interrelated groups, including religious, military/political, and organized crime, using mind control on children and adult survivors. We know that there are effective treatments. We know that many of the paralyzing beliefs our clients lived by are the results of lies and tricks perpetrated by their abusers. ~ Alison Miller

Then, suddenly, the work became dangerous, not only for clients but for therapists as well. A well-funded, highly organized opposition appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, in the early 1990s. Its goal was to discredit the existence of ritual abuse, and one of its tactics was to actively undermine any effort to discover what had been done to these clients and anyone who attempted to help them recover. ~ Alison Miller

Beautiful creatures
cannot be confined
Her wings will grow,
she'll find the sky. ~ Christy Ann Martine

In a state of grace with myself, I do not abandon myself when the going gets tough or should others find me antithetical in any way in their frames of reference. Loyalty means care and kindness at all times, and particularly when they are needed to reduce the pain of difficult times. I never, absolutely never, side with anyone who is against my welfare. I aid nobody who detracts from my dignity, who makes me feel less than human either through subhuman onslaughts or superhuman demands. I fight or avoid people whose effect is ultimately destructive to my validity as a person, or who in any way dilute my ability to take myself seriously. ~ Theodore Isaac Rubin

Memories demand attention, and these memories will have teeth. ~ C. Kennedy

We can ill afford to wait until we have worked through all our memories & feelings about incest before learning to rest & play. While it may seem to be a natural impulse to get to the bottom of things & purge ourselves fully, we need to regularly examine the full picture of our lives for balance along the way…Learning to rest & play is an essential part of our healing. ~ Maureen Brady

He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been. ~ George R R Martin

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

You have the right to set ground rules. This means deciding if, when, and how you want to see the people in your family. Many survivors feel that if they open up the channels at all, they have to open them up all the way. When you were a child you had two options - to trust or not to trust. Your options are broader now. ~ Ellen Bass

Clairey tasted the bile rising up in her throat, could smell the pathetic fear she was giving off, and they
were as familiar to her as waking and sleep, as hunger and thirst. In her time of peace there with Ellis, she had nearly forgotten the taste and smell of it, how her joints became liquid and her mouth became sour. That was what violence did to her. ~ Tracy Winegar

A short poem from my new book, The Lost Journal of my Second Trip to Pergatory,
Thorny Crowns
Of course the gold one was for special occasions, weddings, etc,
silver for family reunions, office-casual type affairs.
Bronze was a everyday choice; during yard work its burnished surface shone in sunlight.
There were various colors and holiday appropriate ones.
I could never find the hatboxes they were stored in.
But the wooden one was reserved for the long suffering caused by family.
Stevie's funeral, my hospital trips and sister's rebellion rated real wood.
One tip filed extra sharp produced a fine and dramatic line of blood droplets on her brow. ~ Michelle Hartman

Throughout my entire miserable childhood I woke at least once a night weeping from overwhelming delight. I did it hungry, I did it after beatings, I did it after the deaths of loved ones.
Now you tell me if I'm crazy or if I've always been blessed. ~ Bob Thurber

I can't remember the words she spoke when they finally opened the garage door and yanked me inside, but I was petrified. It wasn't sound Mom's screams or the jolt of her grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me like a rag doll that plagues my memory, but the look of her eyes- wide, wild, and unrecognizable. ~ Maggie Young

She could do this. She was stronger now. This was her chance to prove it. ~ Talena Winters

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. ~ Damian Barr