Quotes about abuse
Israelmore Ayivor - Leaders' Watchwords
The real form of abuse is not a physical torture it’s mismanagement of purpose by misunderstanding God!
Asa Don Brown - The effects of childhood trauma on adult perception and worldview
A secure attachment is the ability to bond to develop a secure and safe base...
Anthony Liccione -
Hit the bottom and get back up or hit the bottle and stay down.
Asa Don Brown -
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.
Lundy Bancroft - Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
HE ISN’T ABUSIVE BECAUSE HE IS ANGRY HE’S ANGRY BECAUSE HE’S ABUSIVE.
Lundy Bancroft - Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
Never believe a man’s claim that he has to harm his partner in order to protect her only abusers think this way.
Christina Enevoldsen -
A person raised in a healthy family is equipped to live a confident and independent life someone from an unhealthy family is filled with fear and self-doubt. He has difficulty with the prospect of life without someone else. The devaluing messages of control and manipulation create dependency so those who most need to leave their family of origin are the least equipped to do so.
Stephanie Witter -
Love doesn’t conquer all it’s a powerful tool to overcome everything because it means you’re not alone.
J.D. Stroube - Caged in Darkness
Her soft trailing fingers would continue to attempt a connection that I refused to allow that I couldn’t allow if I wanted to survive.
Stefan Molyneux -
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.
Charles W. Pickering -
Lawsuit abuse is a major contributor to the increased costs of healthcare, goods and services to consumers.
Kayla Krantz - Survive at Midnight
It's been so long, I don't remember what okay feels like.
Flora Jessop - Church of Lies
To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty as those who abuse. Stand up for the innocent or go down with the rest.
Martha N. Beck -
...they needed someone to explain, to spin, the parts of the tale that couldn't be suppressed. Someone reputable and educated. Someone brilliant yet absolutely committed to the faith. Someone like my father.
Ricky Maye - Barefoot Christianity
We don't look at the stars in the universe and say how tragic they are, how bruised they are, even though that is what they are. We look at them and speak of the beauty they contain. The inspiration they give us. Even though stars are the scars of the universe we don't see them as these broken pieces of gaseous matter, we see them as these majestic astrological blessings that give hope to billions. What if you saw yourself in that same light, or better yet what if you saw others in a similar way
Anne Lamott - Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to you, while a chilling voice thundered, "We *told* you not to tell." But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on.
Larken Rose -
Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting--or even demanding--their own enslavement.
Rob Bell - Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality
The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it.
Banksy -
At this time of year it's easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity - the lies, the corruption, the abuse.
Israelmore Ayivor - Six Words Inspiration
Life is power, don’t abuse it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough -
Rather than being incensed by the nature of the bruise, maybe we should be inspired by the possibilities in the bruise.
Dave Pelzer - A Child Called "It"
Mother can beat me all she wants, but I haven’t let her take away my will to somehow survive.
Boris Cyrulnik - Les vilains petits canards
La mise en place du processus de résilience externe doit être continue autour de l'enfant blessé. Son accueil après l'agression constitue la première maille nécessaire et pas forcément verbale, pour renouer le lien après la déchirure. La deuxième maille, plus tardive, exige que les familles et les institutions offrent à l'enfant des lieux pour y produire ses représentations du traumatisme. La troisième maille, sociale et culturelle, se met en place quand la société propose à ces enfants la possi
Robert Goolrick - The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life
I know that it's easier to look at death than it is to look at pain, because while death is irrevocable, and the grief will lessen in time, pain is too often merely relentless and irreversible.
Michelle Stevens -
My job as a therapist is to help victims of trauma understand that they are not to blame. They are not responsible for the bad things that happened to them as children, nor are they responsible for the personal problems that developed as a result. What they are responsible for is fixing those problems. This can only be done by bravely facing the past, identifying the effects that the past has on the present, and working through all the painful emotional baggage.- Scared Selfless
Jude Gibbs - Gifts from the Ashes: Hope in Jesus for Bereaved Parents
Embrace the pain
Moonshine Noire -
(...) ha! what is hope? a butterfly in a boxof demons, and nothing escapes the darkuntainted, a mockery of politics and greedstamped with treason and dipped inmyths and force-fed brainwashinggoing off after a time for the grandmassacre of faith, humanity, and still we search, scorched feetfor life but find only fake plastic treessatirical, ludicrous, and ironic
Simon Baron-Cohen - Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty
Parents who discipline their child by discussing the consequences of their actions produce children who have better moral development , compared to children whose parents use authoritarian methods and punishment.
Jonathan Kozol -
I do not know very much about painting, but I know enough to know that the Art Teacher did not know much about it either and that, furthermore, she did not know or care anything at all about the way in which you can destroy a human being. Stephen, in many ways already dying, died a second and third and fourth and final death before her anger.
Sigmund Freud - Civilization and Its Discontents
we are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our body, which is doomed to decay..., from the external world which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless force of destruction, and finally from our relations with other men... This last source is perhaps more painful to use than any other. (p77)
Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl
My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.
Ellen Bass - The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was—and am—innocent.” The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis
Erin Hanson -
Do not hold your breath for anyone,Do not wish your lungs to be still,It may delay the cracks from spreading,But eventually they will.Sometimes to keep yourself togetherYou must allow yourself to leave,Even if breaking your own heartIs what it takes to let you breathe.
Judith Lewis Herman - Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.
Israelmore Ayivor - Become a Better You
When you don’t understand how to make a good use of something, you will abuse that thing.
Miya Yamanouchi -
An abuser isn't abusive 24/7. They usually demonstrate positive character traits most of the time. That's what makes the abuse so confusing when it happens, and what makes leaving so much more difficult.
Melody Lee - Moon Gypsy
You can only hurt a woman so many times before her fangs grow sharp, her claws scratch deep, and her eyes become blades.
C. JoyBell C. -
You can have a pet zebra and put that zebra into a small cage every day and tell the zebra that you love it, but no matter how you and the zebra love each other, the fact remains, that the zebra should be let out of that cage and should belong to someone who can treat it better, the way it should be treated, someone who can make it happy.
Adelyn Birch - Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
If you fear that defending your boundaries is being controlling, don't worry. There is a difference between being controlling and having boundaries. Controlling people is about telling them what to do. Setting boundaries is about saying what you do or do not want to happen to you.
Adelyn Birch - Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
If we're highly empathetic and emotionally sensitive we're at greater risk of becoming involved with a manipulator.
Adelyn Birch - Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Beware of relationships that substitute intensity for emotional intimacy.
Adelyn Birch - Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Selfishness is self-absorption, self-seeking behaviour that either disregards the rights and needs of others or tramples them deliberately in favour of personal gain.
Adelyn Birch - Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Abuse can take many forms. It always involves a boundary violation, although every boundary violation is not necessarily abuse.
Adelyn Birch - Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Many of us find it hard to set boundaries and defend them because we fear doing so will cause rejection or abandonment. We may avoid confrontations to make things easier. We may feel guilt if we say no or if we think we might hurt someone's feelings. We fear boundaries will keep us from being loved.
Adelyn Birch - Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Boundaries protect the things that are of value to you. They keep you in alignment with what you have decided you want in life. That means the key to good boundaries is knowing what you want.
Shannon Perry - Ad Eundum Quo Nemo Ante iit:: A Carmina Collectio
So while I was busy saving you from Hell,you were pushing me further to it; the poison murdering me well.
Cathy Burnham Martin - The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts
When we resort to screaming at someone, we are revealing weakness and a sense of helplessness. If we can’t seem to get our message or feelings across any other way, then we get angry, and we get loud!
Cathy Burnham Martin - The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts
There is tremendous trauma in the betrayal caused by a perpetual liar as they repeatedly commit psychological abuse.
Cathy Burnham Martin - The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts
In truth, if it isn’t to save your life when it’s in imminent danger, someone yelling at you is just plain wrong. The same is true for ranting or bitching. The same goes double for anything even close to manhandling.
Taylor Rhodes - calloused: a field journal
no one can recover if they won’t admit the wrongdoings. i won’t recover if i pretend it was all sunshine. i have to remember his vindictive temper and realize that sheltering the house from the storm wasn’t actually going to make a difference if i still got damaged in the process. because then it’s just another broken house with no one to tell its story.
Steve Maraboli -
No matter how they abuse you toleration is how you abuse yourself.
Joyce Rachelle -
You don't have to live happily ever after with every single person in your life in order to live happily ever after. Some unfortunate endings are necessary.
Madeleine Brent - Stranger at Wildings
Or perhaps it's the wickedness in him that she can't resist. There are such women.
Sarah Schulman - and the Duty of Repair
Confusing being mortal with being threatened can occur in any realm. The fact that something could go wrong does not mean that we are in danger. It means we are alive. Mortality is the sign of life. In the most intimate and personal of arenas, many of us have love and trusted someone who violated that trust. So when someone else comes along who intrigues us, whose interests we share, who we enjoy being with, with whom there could b some mutual enrichment and understanding, that does not mean tha
Michael Bassey Johnson -
Stop falling for those who won't raise you up in the future.
Lailah Gifty Akita -
God is the source of life. Life without God is hopeless. But life with God is an endless hope
Bryant McGill - Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Beating yourself up over every perceived mistake is the work of an internal abuser who must be restrained and reformed.
Osayi Emokpae Lasisi - Because You Deserve Love
If he’s hitting you now, stop contemplating leaving him, and just leave.
Shannon Celebi -
The bottom line was that I was in an abusive relationship.
P.A. Speers - Type 1 Sociopath - When Difficult People Are More Than Just Difficult People
If you do not have a close friendship with your children, I will." Child Molester warning all parents from the book Type 1 Sociopath
Stefan Molyneux -
The woman who left abusive husbands in the 60's and 70's improved the institution of marriage because men now know that women can leave their husbands and the women or men who stay in abusive relationships are a massive advertisement to non- consequentiality of abuse.So, if you stay in a abusive relationship you are signaling to everyone who ever comes in contact with you or hears about you that abusers face no consequences to their abuse therefore by staying in an abusive relationship you are e
Lundy Bancroft - Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
Abuse and respect are diametric opposites: You do not respect someone whom you abuse, and you do not abuse someone whom you respect.
Dena Rosenbloom - Life After Trauma: A Workbook for Healing
When trauma involves intentional harm, such as in a crime or abuse, trust can totally collapse.
Azar Nafisi - Things I've Been Silent About: Memories
Don't let strangers touch you." And yet it is seldom strangers, I learned long before I was a teenager, who do you harm. It is always the ones closest to us: the suave chauffeur, the skilled photographer, the kind music teacher, the good friend's sober and dignified husband, the pious man of God. They are the ones your parents trust, whom they don't want to believe anything against.
David Vann - Aquarium
A change in those moments, some switch turned off forever, the end of trust or safety or love, and how do we ever find the switch again?
Michelle Stevens -
Most kids who don't feel enough love and nurturance carry around this kind of inner rage- a rage that often lasts throughout adulthood. The people who should have cared for them didn't. The lesson to take away: All people are shit. This is why troubled youth walk around with chips on their shoulders and why they are so hard to help.Early on they learn that people can't be trusted. They often spend the rest of their lives embracing this damaging belief. Seeing the world through shit-coloured glas
Michelle Stevens -
Most kids who don't feel enough love and nurturance carry around this kind of inner rage- a rage that often lasts throughout adulthood. The people who should have cared for them didn't. The lesson to take away: All people are shit. This is why troubled youth walk around with chips on their shoulders and why they are so hard to help.Early on they learn that people can't be trusted. They often spend the rest of their lives embracing this damaging belief. Seeing the world through shit-coloured glas
Noah Webster -
When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.
Little White Bird - The Dark Horse Speaks
It was never the poverty that deterred me, never the disease, unsanitary conditions, bugs or garbage, those things were never even a thought in my head as a reason for not staying. I kept looking for the good and always found it each day. I was happy on the reservation.It would have all worked out if Chief could have been a little nicer to me. The only thing I was missing was love and respect from my partner. Maybe he had changed.
Dean Koontz - Brother Odd
In this world where too many are willing to see only the light that is visible, never the Light Invisible, we have a daily darkness that is night, and we encounter another darkness from time to time that is death, the deaths of those we love, but the third and most constant darkness is with us everyday, at all hours of every day, is the darkness of the mind, the pettiness and meanness and hatred, which we have invited into ourselves, and which we pay out with generous interest.
Patty Hite -
When I deny the seriousness of my abuse I agree with my abuser and those who wouldn't acknowledge it. When I am in denial, I have the tendency to minimize my abuse, believe the lies others have said, as well as deny it ever happened. It is important for me to remember as much detail as I can so I can trust my own perceptions of what really happened and not depend on the validations from others.
Emily Thorne -
My father wrote: "Always question where your loyalties lie. The people you trust will expect it, your greatest enemies will desire it, and those you treasure the most, will, without fail, abuse it.
Judy Frankel -
Inviting someone to work for pay is a sacred privilege and a trust. It must be regarded a high honor to be able to give another person work, and neither employer nor employee should abuse this relationship
J.A. Perez -
Those who would abuse your trust for their own benefit can do it well, but only one time.
Elijah Noble El - The Age of Recovery
She’s all the blood I’ve ever shed. She’s every time I’ve ever thought of death. She’s every time I’ve ever looked at happiness and thought, ‘That’s not meant for me.
Elijah Noble El - The Age of Recovery
I moonlight as the greatest actor. I smile. I choose the comedy mask every time. I tell those who worry that I am fine, that I always will be. There is nothing to gain from these lies. I win no awards, yet I bow. On that stage I tell my life story with the lightest of words, the heaviest of hearts. I bleed for the people who stay and watch. Behold: the comedy, the tragedy. They smile and cheer. They clap for this. And I bow, and I bow, and I bow.
Shahida Arabi - Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
(a quote from a survivor)Information was key. Once you begin waking up to what has been happening around you the whole time you can begin stopping the cycle which angers the Narcissist to an interesting boiling point
Cathy Burnham Martin - The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts
No one else “makes” us do anything. They can’t make us nag them, or make us angry, or make us have to strike out at them, or make us drink alcohol, or make us yell at them, or anything else. We are responsible for our choices, including our responses and reactions.
Thomm Quackenbush - Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
We want our delusions and will violently defend these when confronted. We want to believe that the job that is slowly choking us is good, because the effort it would take to change is too terrifying to contemplate. We never want to hear how badly we are being treated in a relationship because we are strong and how dare you suggest we don't know better.
Robert G. Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses
Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the pulpit's last resort. The old instruments of torture are kept only to gratify curiosity; the chains are rusting away, and the demolition of time has allowed even the dungeons of the Inquisition to be visited by light. The church, impotent and malicious, regr
Jackie Haze - Borderless
An emotionally abusive relationship, in very simplistic terms, is much like standing up in a too hot bath and sinking back in so as not to feel so dizzy.
Robert Goolrick - The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life
I would give anything, anything, to be the man to whom this has not happened. I can not accommodate myself to it. In a lifetime of trying, I can not accommodate myself to it.And now I will have to be that person forever.
Vivian Amis -
People that hurt others, only act on a pain they feel themselves.
Suzanne Collins - Mockingjay
Haymitch isn't thinking of arenas, but something else. "Johanna's back in the hospital."I assumed Johanna was fine, had passed her exam, but simply wasn't assigned to a sharp shooters' unit. She's wicked with a throwing axe but about average with a gun. "Is she hurt? What happened?""It was while she was on the Block. They try to ferret out a soldier's potential weakness. So they flooded the street, " says Haymitch.This doesn't help. Johanna can swim. At least, I seem to remember her swimming aro
Oprah Winfrey -
Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.
Joyce Rachelle -
Before you reach the point of forgiveness, you go through the phase where you pray... for every possible misfortune and ill luck to strike them dead while you sit and watch.
Susan Forward - Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
I also believe that forgiveness is appropriate only when parents do something to earn it. Toxic parents, especially the more abusive ones, need to acknowledge what happened, take responsibility, and show a willingness to make amends. If you unilaterally absolve parents who continue to treat you badly, who deny much of your reality and feelings, and who continue to project blame onto you, you may seriously impede the emotional work you need to do.
Craig D. Lounsbrough -
I tend to walk around convinced that any amount of forgiveness that I could extend could never possibly compensate for the offenses that I’ve had to endure. Yet, maybe the greater offense is that I’ve got that backwards.
Vironika Tugaleva -
Compassion does not have to be a face-to-face relationship. Forgiveness does not imply friendship. Understanding why someone has inflicted pain on us is how we set ourselves free of the past, not how we excuse someone's behaviour so they can continue to abuse us.
Kris Kidd - Down for Whatever
You are only as deepas the ashtrays you use. You only stick around because you like the abuse.
Ryū Murakami -
There were little girls who would snuggle up to any grown man and try to guide his hand inside their underwear, and there were kids who compulsively bit their own arms. Kids who would suddenly start twitching and banging their heads against a wall, not even stopping when the blood ran down their faces. Kids who waddled around oblivious to the stinking load in their own pants. Watching children like this, it was all too easy to see why their parents beat them. It was only natural to hate such kid
Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island
Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him.
Gail Honeyman - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.
Alice Jamieson - One Tortured Mind
The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off. Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what
T.H. White - The Once and Future King
Finally, there was the impediment of his nature. In the secret parts of his peculiar brain, those unhappy and inextricable tangles which he felt at the roots, the boy was disabled by something which we cannot explain. He could not have explained either, and for us it is all too long ago. He loved Arthur and he loved Guenever and he hated himself. The best knight of the world: everybody envied the self-esteem which must surely be his. But Lancelot never believed he was good or nice. Under the gro
Matthew Little - Hell in a Basket
I hope you see what you've done to me.
Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl
I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were entirely transactional: 'We're out of milk again.' (I'll get some today.) 'I need this ironed properly.' (I'll do that today.) 'How hard is it to buy milk?' (Silence.) 'You forgot to call the plumber.' (Sigh.) 'Goddammit, put on your coat, right now, and go out and get some goddamn milk. Now.'
Alice Jamieson - One Tortured Mind
If I was set an essay on Friday, I’d spend three hours on Saturday morning in the library. Was that normal? I didn’t know. What I did know was that I felt less prone to depression and more normal walking through Venice or staring out over the lake in Zurich. At home I wrestled continually with my moods. The black thing inside me gnawed like a rat at my self-esteem and self-confidence. I felt there was a happy person inside me too, who wanted to enjoy life, to be normal, but my feelings of self-l
B.G. Bowers - Death and Life
In the end, it was the secrets that held me hostage and fuelled my depression, but, once released, emancipation - from fear, shame, guilt and judgement - was finally possible.