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Abuser Quotes

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Abuser Quotes

“When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to see that if we can let it go, we will see ourselves as clean where we once thought we were dirty. We will remember our innocence. We will see how our shame supported a system in which the perpetrators were protected and we bore the brunt of their offense — first in its actuality, then again in carrying their shame for it. If the method we chose to try to beat out shame was perfectionism, we can relax now, shake the burden off our shoulders, and give ourselves a chance to loosen up and make some errors. Hallelujah! Our freedom will not come from tireless effort and getting it all exactly right.”

FreedomHealingShameGuiltRecoveryInnocenceImperfectOffenseSexual AbusePerfectionismChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsIncestHealing InsightsAbusersPerpetratorsChild RapeHealing From AbuseRecovery From AbuseAbuserInnocence LostPerfectly ImperfectBurdens Of The PastFalse GuiltPeptrator
Book:Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse
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“i paid in blood to be here. i paid with a childhood littered with bigger monsters than you. i’ve been beaten into a silence more times than i’ve been embraced on this earth. you haven’t seen what i’ve seen. my rock bottom went so deep i’m pretty sure it was hell. i spent a decade climbing out of it. my hands blistered. my feet swelled. my mind said i can’t take it anymore. i told my mind you better get yourself together. we came here for joy. and we are going to feel all of it. i’ve been hunted. killed. and walked back to earth. i snapped the neck off every beast that thought it could. and you want to take my seat. the one i built with the story of my life. honey. you won’t fit. i juggle clowns like you. i pick my teeth with fools like you for fun. i have played and slept and danced with bigger devils”

GrowthAbuseSelf WorthNarcissistic AbuseAbuser
Book:Home Body
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“In projecting onto others their own moral sense, therapists sometimes make terrible errors. Child physical abusers are automatically labeled “impulsive," despite extensive evidence that they are not necessarily impulsive but more often make thinking errors that justify the assaults. Sexual and physical offenders who profess to be remorseful after they are caught are automatically assumed to be sincere. After all, the therapist would feel terrible if he or she did such a thing. It makes perfect sense that the offender would regret abusing a child. People routinely listen to their own moral sense and assume that others share it. Thus, those who are malevolent attack others as being malevolent, as engaging in dirty tricks, as being “in it for the money,“ and those who are well meaning assume others are too, and keep arguing logically, keep producing more studies, keep expecting an academic debate, all the time assuming that the issue at hand is the truth of the matter. Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 p122”

TruthFaithPsychologyCrimeTrustConflictDebateDeceptionTherapyMoralsChild AbuseRemorseRapeProjectionAttackingSelf CenteredChild Sexual AbuseIdentificationAcademiaArgumentsAbusersPedophileAbuserPedophilesPaedophilesRapistFalse BeliefCognitive DistortionsMoral StandardsDirty TricksJustifying ViolenceSex OffenderMoral SenseChild Physical AbuseOveridentificationCognitive ErrorsMalevolent People
Author:Anna Salter
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“In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.”

HealingAbuseVictimTraumaPrisonerPowerlessPtsdDomestic ViolenceAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsPowerlessnessCaptivityHealing InsightsBelief SystemComplex PtsdHealing From AbuseRecovery From AbuseAbuserCore BeliefsStockholm SyndromeTraumatic StressIntimate Partner ViolencePerpetratorBelie
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“The woman knows from living with the abusive man that there are no simple answers. Friends say: “He’s mean.” But she knows many ways in which he has been good to her. Friends say: “He treats you that way because he can get away with it. I would never let someone treat me that way.” But she knows that the times when she puts her foot down the most firmly, he responds by becoming his angriest and most intimidating. When she stands up to him, he makes her pay for it—sooner or later. Friends say: “Leave him.” But she knows it won’t be that easy. He will promise to change. He’ll get friends and relatives to feel sorry for him and pressure her to give him another chance. He’ll get severely depressed, causing her to worry whether he’ll be all right. And, depending on what style of abuser he is, she may know that he will become dangerous when she tries to leave him. She may even be concerned that he will try to take her children away from her, as some abusers do.”

PsychologyAbuseDomestic ViolenceEmotional AbuseDomestic AbuseMental AbusePhysical AbusePsychological AbuseAbusive RelationshipsAbusive RelationshipAbused WomenAbusive MenAbuserAbusive PartnersAbusive Partner
Book:Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
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“The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.” At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.”

PsychologyAbuseDomestic ViolenceEmotional AbuseAbuse SurvivorsDomestic AbuseAbusersMental AbusePhysical AbusePsychological AbuseAbusive RelationshipsAbusive RelationshipAbused WomenAbusive MenAbuserAbusive Partners
Book:Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
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“IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you to look off in the wrong direction, distracting your attention so that you won’t notice where the real action is. He draws you into focusing on the turbulent world of his feelings to keep your eyes turned away from the true cause of his abusiveness, which lies in how he thinks. He leads you into a convoluted maze, making your relationship with him a labyrinth of twists and turns. He wants you to puzzle over him, to try to figure him out, as though he were a wonderful but broken machine for which you need only to find and fix the malfunctioning parts to bring it roaring to its full potential. His desire, though he may not admit it even to himself, is that you wrack your brain in this way so that you won’t notice the patterns and logic of his behavior, the consciousness behind the craziness.”

AbuseDomestic ViolenceEmotional AbuseDomestic AbuseAbusersMental AbusePhysical AbusePsychological AbuseAbusive RelationshipsAbusive RelationshipAbused WomenAbusive MenAbuserAbusive PartnersAbusive Partner
Book:Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
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“When people conclude that anger causes abuse, they are confusing cause and effect. Ray was not abusive because he was angry; he was angry because he was abusive. Abusers carry attitudes that produce fury.”

AbuseAngerDomestic ViolenceDomestic AbuseAbusive RelationshipsAbusive MenAbuserAnger And AttitudeAbusive Partners
Book:Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
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“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.”

AbuseDomestic AbuseChildhood AbuseAbusive RelationshipsAbusive MenAbuserAbusive Partners
Author:Lundy Bancroft
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“Although the typical abusive man works to maintain a positive public image, it is true that some women have abusive partners who are nasty or intimidating to everyone. How about that man? Do his problems result from mistreatment by his parents? The answer is both yes and no; it depends on which problem we’re talking about. His hostility toward the human race may sprout from cruelty in his upbringing, but he abuses women because he has an abuse problem. The two problems are related but distinct.”

AbuseDomestic ViolenceDomestic AbuseChildhood AbuseAbusive RelationshipsAbusive MenAbuserAbusive Partners
Book:Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
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“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'. But his first wife disagrees and his second wife, although believing him innocent, describes his children's childhood as very difficult. His daughters say they had a significantly unhappy childhood. In the autumn of 1991, his middle daughter invited him to her home to confront him with the story of her childhood. She was supported by a friend and he was invited to listen and then leave. She told him that he had abused her throughout her youth. Scotford, however, said that the daughter went to a homeopath for treatment for thrush/candida and then blamed the condition on him. He also said his daughter, who was in her twenties, had been upset during a recent trip to France to buy a property. He said he booked them into a hotel where they would share a room. This was not odd, he insisted, 'to me it was quite natural'. He told journalists and scholars the same story, in the same way, reciting the details of her allegations, drawing attention to her body and the details of what she said he had done to her. Some seemed to find the detail persuasive. Several found it spooky. p172-173”

MediaChild AbuseLieSexual AbuseIncestChild RapePedophileFalse MemoryAbuserFalse Memory SyndromePaedophileChild Sex AbuseEnable AbuseBfmssRoger Scotford
Book:Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony
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“The symptoms of abuse are there, and the woman usually sees them: the escalating frequency of put-downs. Early generosity turning more and more to selfishness. Verbal explosions when he is irritated or when he doesn’t get his way. Her grievances constantly turned around on her, so that everything is her own fault. His growing attitude that he knows what is good for her better than she does. And, in many relationships, a mounting sense of fear or intimidation. But the woman also sees that her partner is a human being who can be caring and affectionate at times, and she loves him. She wants to figure out why he gets so upset, so that she can help him break his pattern of ups and downs. She gets drawn into the complexities of his inner world, trying to uncover clues, moving pieces around in an attempt to solve an elaborate puzzle.”

AbuseEmotional AbuseIntimidationMental AbusePhysical AbuseAbusive RelationshipVerbal AbuseAbused WomenAbusive MenAbuserAbusive Partners
Book:Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
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“The problem with depicting abusers as full-time monsters is that when a person is actually experiencing abuse in their own life, they'll think "oh but he's the sweetest guy most of the time so he can't be an abuser " or "but he's not ALWAYS horrible, he's usually amazing, so he's not an abuser", and they'll make the mistake of thinking they mustn't really be being abused when they actually are.”

ViolenceAbuseDomestic ViolenceDomestic AbuseAbuser
Author:Miya Yamanouchi
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“Domestic violence is just as much a quality-of-life and liberty for community, social, and legal attention to support mental, emotional, health, wellness & physical safety as any other epidemic outbreak; only this illness has an anger managed, self-controlled, personal boundary-respecting, and accountability-subjective cure!”

Mental HealthChild AbuseDomestic ViolenceSexual AbuseEmotional AbusePhysical AbuseAbuserCure Diseases Without MedicinesElder Abuse
Author:Tracey Bond
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