Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Ellen Bass

Quote by Ellen Bass

“To heal from child sexual abuse you must believe that you were a victim, that the abuse really did take place. This is often difficult for survivors. When you’ve spent your life denying the reality of your abuse, when you don’t want it to be true, or when your family repeatedly calls you crazy or a liar, it can be hard to remain firm in the knowledge that you were abused.”

Quote by Ellen Bass

Book:The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
Create image

Work

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Ellen Bass
Ellen Bass

Ellen Bass is an American poet born in 1947. Her works are known for their profound emotions and rich imagination, exploring themes such as personal experiences, social justice, and the female identity. more

You May Also Like

“During sexual abuse, children feel and incorporate the rage, pain, shame, and sense of perversion that the perpetrator is projecting. They take these feelings into the very core of themselves, and they are badly traumatized by the emotions surrounding the assault, as well as by the assault itself.”

RageProjectionChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsHealing InsightsTraumatizedChild Sexual Abuse Survivors
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
Create image

“Sometimes buried memories of abuse emerge spontaneously. A triggering event or catalyst starts the memories flowing. The survivor then experiences the memories as a barrage of images about the abuse and related details. Memories that are retrieved in this manner are relatively easy to understand and believe because the person remembering is so flooded with coherent, consistent information.”

DenialAvoidanceChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsHealing InsightsTrauma Memory
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
Create image

“Some Survivors get angry at having to work at recovering from sexual abuse. They feel that it is unfair. They suffered all their life because of what someone else did to them: why do they have to suffer any more pain? This anger of “having” to do something is similar to the anger they felt at “having” to put up with the abuse.”

HealingAngerChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsHealing From Abuse
Book:The Right to Innocence: Healing the Trauma of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Therapeutic 7-Step Self-Help Program for Men and Women, Including How to Choose a Therapist and Find a Support Group
Create image

“Another question I am frequently asked is, "What do you mean by recovery?" It has taken me a while to answer that one. I had been depending on other people's definitions of recovery until I developed one that worked for me (just as you must come to one that makes sense for you.) Mine is simple. For me, it is about freedom. Recovery is the freedom to make choices in your life that aren't determined by the abuse. The specific choices will be different for each of you; the freedom to choose is your birthright.”

RecoveryChild AbuseChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsHealing InsightsMale Survivor
Book:Victims No Longer: Men Recovering from Incest and Other Sexual Child Abuse
Create image

“In my view, the spurning of DID is highly connected with knowing and not knowing about child sexual abuse. Side by side with denial of childhood trauma and of severe dissociation, is an unmistakable cognizance of dissociative processes as they are embedded in our language. We regularly say things such as, "pull yourself together", "he is coming unglued", "she was beside herself", "don't fall apart", "he's not all there", "she was shattered", and so on.”

DenialDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseSociety DenialMental Health StigmaDissociative DisorderDdnosInvalidationDissociative States
Book:Knowing, Not-Knowing and Sort-of-Knowing
Create image

“Memory repression thrives in shame, secrecy, and shock. The shame and degradation experienced during sexual assault is profound, especially for children who have no concept of what is happening to them or why. Sexual abuse is so bizarre and horrible that the frightened child feels compelled to bury the event deep inside his or her mind.”

ShameSexual AbuseRepressionChild Sexual AbuseSexual AssaultRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaForgetting The PastForgetting The Pain
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
Create image

“You can avoid the issues from abuse for only so long. Sooner or later, the problems in your life cause you to either face it or go deeper into denial. Most of you will eventually be forced into admitting that it is indeed the sexual abuse that is the root of your problems. Even then, the tendency will be to ‘forgive and forget’ in the belief that by doing so the pain will be assuaged.”

Sexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsHealing InsightsSurvivors Of Abuse
Book:The Right to Innocence: Healing the Trauma of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Therapeutic 7-Step Self-Help Program for Men and Women, Including How to Choose a Therapist and Find a Support Group
Create image

“Even with my bachelor’s degree, I still felt more comfortable at the strip club than anywhere else. And that feeling hit me the very first time I walked through those doors. While I initially starting dancing to avoid eviction, I stayed because I felt more at home in the strip club than I did in college, at church and at my parent’s. Not only was I accustomed to feeling degraded, I believed I didn’t deserve any better or that any man would treat me better than the men at the club.”

RapeChild Sexual AbuseStrippersSex AbuseExotic Dancers
Book:From Ivy League To Stripper Life: 10 Lessons Learned
Create image