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Child Abuse Survivor Quotes

Browse 46 quotes about Child Abuse Survivor.

Child Abuse Survivor Quotes

“The fear of abandonment forced me to comply as a child, but I’m not forced to comply anymore. The key people in my life did reject me for telling the truth about my abuse, but I’m not alone. Even if the consequence for telling the truth is rejection from everyone I know, that’s not the same death threat that it was when I was a child. I’m a self-sufficient adult and abandonment no longer means the end of my life.”

Moving OnChild AbuseFear Of DeathAbandonmentChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsSelf SufficiencyIncestDysfunctional FamilyChildhood AbuseDysfunctional FamiliesAbusive ParentsChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorChildhood Sexual AbuseChild Abuse SurvivorsFear Of RejectionControlling ParentsAbuse DeniersTelling Your StoryAbandonment IssuesRevealing The TruthAbused ChildFear Of AbandonmentAbusive FamilyFamily AbuseAccepting The PastEscaping AbuseJust TellConsequences Of CrueltyTruth About AbuseDisclosing Abuse
Book:The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal
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“I lived through this horror, and no one can tell me I have to stay quiet. "I have been silenced long enough, and I will not allow that family to silence me again. I will continue to speak out and make sure my voice is heard.”

InspirationalEmpowermentRapeRape CultureTriggerAbuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorSpeak Out
Book:Living for Today: From Incest and Molestation to Fearlessness and Forgiveness
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“I was just thinking that I started off OK," Jo said. "There wasn't anything different or wrong with me when I was born. I wasn't inherently bad or freakish." That's right, Jo," Lynn said. "Other people—my mother and father—did things to me that made me feel all wrong about myself," Jo said, another warm wave of new, sure knowledge washing over her.”

Self AcceptanceDissociative Identity DisorderComplex PtsdAbusive ParentsChild Abuse SurvivorTrauma SurvivorFeeling Broken
Book:The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
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“I felt like I needed to comfort both the little girl inside me and my mother, assuring them that neither of them could have prevented the rape. I didn't want my mother to blame herself and I didn't want to blame the little girl inside of me for not speaking up at the age of six.”

AwarenessShameBlameGuiltParentingParentsSpeaking OutTriggerChild Abuse SurvivorRape SurvivorTrigger WarningChild MolestationErin Merryn
Book:Living for Today: From Incest and Molestation to Fearlessness and Forgiveness
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“I was so moved that she remembered my birthday that I cried harder than I had in years. When I returned her call, she told me her computer was broken and she couldn't afford to replace it. My heart fell. As I had done so many times before, I went to her rescue. Still on the phone, I went online and bought her a new laptop, top-of-the-line. That was what she had really called for, She thanked me and hung up. I went to Casey, sobbing. Soon afterward, I closed the bank account and asked my mom to not ask me for any more gifts or money. Now my relationship with my mom is very limited, and it's still very painful for me. She continues to occasionally send me bills she can't pay. I respond by telling her that I love her but I cannot pay her bills.”

Selfish PeopleChild Abuse SurvivorBeing IgnoredEmotional NeglectAbusive MotherBad ParentingBeing UsedDrama TriangleRescuing Others
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“Sense such humiliation, combined with prohibiting a child's verbal expression, is a constant and universally encountered factor in child-rearing, the influence of this factor in the child's later development is easily overlooked.”

ParentingChild AbuseHumiliationChild RearingChild Abuse Survivor
Book:For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
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“The adult incest survivor is likely to become involved in sexual relationships with older or more powerful people…There is little room for intimacy and much opportunity for abuse and sacrifice…The survivor may continue to be ‘child’, rather than an equal.”

IncestFather FigureChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorSugar DaddyChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorsPower Imbalance
Book:Secret Survivors: Uncovering Incest and Its Aftereffects in Women
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“From spending ten years in hell and coming to this regime of kindness was a shock. It was so much of a shock, it was unbelievable. I was like an untamed animal, I couldn’t accept it and I just wouldn’t accept it.”

Child AbuseChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorChild AbusersChild Abuse DeniersCatholic Child Abuse
Book:Harry's Fight: Harry Marsden - From Catholic Care Home Abuse To Gangster To Good Fellow
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“A lot of attention has been given over to the Catholic Churches sexual abuse of children in their care, but this attention seems to have been hijacked by the media and has overshadowed the many thousands of victims that endured physical abuse.”

Child AbuseChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorChild AbusersChild Abuse DeniersCatholic Child Abuse
Book:Harry's Fight: Harry Marsden - From Catholic Care Home Abuse To Gangster To Good Fellow
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“From a young boy’s viewpoint this could not get any worse, especially when you were told that you belonged to the devil, and this bullying of me went on for a long time.”

Child AbuseChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorChild AbusersChild Abuse DeniersCatholic Child Abuse
Book:Harry's Fight: Harry Marsden - From Catholic Care Home Abuse To Gangster To Good Fellow
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“I have beaten people into the ground and the more they cry the more of a beating I gave them. If they don’t cry, I come off, if they cry then I will beat them and beat them and beat them.”

Child AbuseChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorChild AbusersChild Abuse DeniersCatholic Child Abuse
Book:Harry's Fight: Harry Marsden - From Catholic Care Home Abuse To Gangster To Good Fellow
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“All these do-gooders make it sound like you just have to repent and off you go to heaven, but what about all the atrocities the Catholic religion did to us? Who pays for that! They just took over our lives!!”

Child AbuseChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorChild AbusersChild Abuse DeniersCatholic Child Abuse
Book:Harry's Fight: Harry Marsden - From Catholic Care Home Abuse To Gangster To Good Fellow
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“Religion to me was only something to be used and abused, as it had done nothing for me other than give me pain. Religion for me was a method used to gain an extra bottle of wine or a nice meal.”

Child AbuseChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorChild AbusersChild Abuse DeniersCatholic Child Abuse
Book:Harry's Fight: Harry Marsden - From Catholic Care Home Abuse To Gangster To Good Fellow
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“With regards pedophilia I have always looked on it as that … pedophilia. I thought that one religion is no different to the other and I am now truthfully beginning to think that.”

Child AbuseChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorChild AbusersChild Abuse DeniersCatholic Child Abuse
Book:Harry's Fight: Harry Marsden - From Catholic Care Home Abuse To Gangster To Good Fellow
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“I came to understand intellectually that my mind used dissociation as a way to protect me from knowing things. Dr. Summer repeatedly explained, "If you had woken up every morning and knew that later that day or evening you would be abused, you would have killed yourself". I would always nod, as if in agreement. It all made sense in a theoretical way, but I could not and did not want to truly understand or accept what had happened to me.”

Child AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseDissociative DisorderDissociative AmnesiaChild Abuse Survivor
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“I started crying. "When will it stop hurting?" "I don't know. I wish I could tell you. I wish I could take the pain away. But it will get better and easier for you over time.”

GriefHealing QuotesEmotional PainChild Sexual AbuseHealing The PastHealing From AbuseRecovery From AbuseChild Abuse Survivor
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“I finally had the courage to start talking about how I developed dissociation as a coping mechanism as a child and carried that through my life, I talked about being trained to initiate and accommodate abuse and about how these coping mechanisms carried over for me as a teenager and young adult.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseDissociative DisorderCoping MechanismChild Abuse SurvivorCoping Strategies
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“In order to survive our youth, many of us became sensitized to which conditions we had to play to, to receive attention. No wonder we mistook this attention for love. We thought love came in finite quantities—it had to be competed for among siblings, or it had to be paid for with exacting dues.”

HealingSurvivorChild AbuseEmotional AbuseChild Sexual AbuseCompetitivenessHealing InsightsUnlovedChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorEmotional NeglectConditional LoveParental NeglectSurvival Mechanism
Author:Maureen Brady
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“You may experience waves of disbelief after each memory you retrieve. Whether as a phase or waves, the disbelief is usually accompanied by massive self-hate and guilt. ‘How can I even think such a thing? I must really be warped,’ you tell yourself.”

Child AbuseDisbeliefDissociationChild Sexual AbuseIncestSelf DoubtRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaChild Abuse SurvivorRecovered MemoriesTrauma MemoryDissociated
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
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“Hypercritical, Shaming Parents Hypercritical and shaming parents send the same message to their children as perfectionistic parents do - that they are never good enough. Parents often deliberately shame their children into minding them without realizing the disruptive impact shame can have on a child's sense of self. Statements such as "You should be ashamed of yourself" or "Shame on you" are obvious examples. Yet these types of overtly shaming statements are actually easier for the child to defend against than are more subtle forms of shaming, such as contempt, humiliation, and public shaming. There are many ways that parents shame their children. These include belittling, blaming, contempt, humiliation, and disabling expectations. -BELITTLING. Comments such as "You're too old to want to be held" or "You're just a cry-baby" are horribly humiliating to a child. When a parent makes a negative comparison between his or her child and another, such as "Why can't you act like Jenny? See how she sits quietly while her mother is talking," it is not only humiliating but teaches a child to always compare himself or herself with peers and find himself or herself deficient by comparison. -BLAMING. When a child makes a mistake, such as breaking a vase while rough-housing, he or she needs to take responsibility. But many parents go way beyond teaching a lesson by blaming and berating the child: "You stupid idiot! Do you think money grows on trees? I don't have money to buy new vases!" The only thing this accomplishes is shaming the child to such an extent that he or she cannot find a way to walk away from the situation with his or her head held high. -CONTEMPT. Expressions of disgust or contempt communicate absolute rejection. The look of contempt (often a sneer or a raised upper lip), especially from someone who is significant to a child, can make him or her feel disgusting or offensive. When I was a child, my mother had an extremely negative attitude toward me. Much of the time she either looked at me with the kind of expectant expression that said, "What are you up to now?" or with a look of disapproval or disgust over what I had already done. These looks were extremely shaming to me, causing me to feel that there was something terribly wrong with me. -HUMILIATION. There are many ways a parent can humiliate a child, such as making him or her wear clothes that have become dirty. But as Gershen Kaufman stated in his book Shame: The Power of Caring, "There is no more humiliating experience than to have another person who is clearly the stronger and more powerful take advantage of that power and give us a beating." I can personally attest to this. In addition to shaming me with her contemptuous looks, my mother often punished me by hitting me with the branch of a tree, and she often did this outside, in front of the neighbors. The humiliation I felt was like a deep wound to my soul. -DISABLING EXPECTATIONS. Parents who have an inordinate need to have their child excel at a particular activity or skill are likely to behave in ways that pressure the child to do more and more. According to Kaufman, when a child becomes aware of the real possibility of failing to meet parental expectations, he or she often experiences a binding self-consciousness. This self-consciousness - the painful watching of oneself - is very disabling. When something is expected of us in this way, attaining the goal is made harder, if not impossible. Yet another way that parents induce shame in their children is by communicating to them that they are a disappointment to them. Such messages as "I can't believe you could do such a thing" or "I am deeply disappointed in you" accompanied by a disapproving tone of voice and facial expression can crush a child's spirit.”

ShameCriticalContemptChild AbuseHumiliationEmotional AbusePerfectionismSurvivorsDisapprovalDisgustAbusive ParentsBlamingChild Abuse SurvivorShamingBelittlingShamedAbusive ParentingEmotionally Abused
Book:The Nice Girl Syndrome: Stop Being Manipulated and Abused -- And Start Standing Up for Yourself
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“We don’t widely accept the idea that bad things happen for uncontrollable reasons because of fear. How could that be? If that is true, we can’t make sense of it with our cognitive brains. And that is scary. If that is true, there is no way for us to control those things while in human form. And that is scary. So we search for meaning, a less scary understanding. And we usually end up assuming the victim is to blame.”

Good PeopleSurvivorsRape CultureBad Things HappenVictim BlamingChild Abuse SurvivorSelf BlameJust WorldBad Things In Your LifeJust World Beliefs
Author:Elisabeth Corey
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“What happens when you hit your daughter. First, she will bond to you out of fear, mistakenly thinking she has done something wrong, and if she can just manage to not do it again or somehow please you, you might not hit her or anyone else anymore. She will even think you will love her properly if she can earn your approval. She won't realize this is impossible. Then she will either do that with every man she comes within 100 feet of for the rest of her life or until she learns not to - this will take much doing - or she will despise them with such vehemence that she can barely stomach one around. Sometimes she will do a combination of both of those things, working herself into a pattern of push and pull - I love you, I hate you, I need you, I don't need anyone - that will drive her a little crazy. She won't understand at first, if ever, why she only attracts other masochists. Whatever numbing agent she's picked for herself - she will probably try drugs, drink too much alcohol, starve herself or binge and purge, maybe cut herself, act out sexually - in fact, she may do all of those things - that continues to help kill her spirit and dulls her enough to keep her participating in living like a maniac will be consumed to varying degrees depending on need. She will be more likely to commit suicide than if you hadn't abused her. She will give herself away and will mistake admiration and infatuation and sometimes even abuse for love.”

TraumaMemoirCodependencyTrauma HealingChild Abuse SurvivorTrauma Bonding
Book:Blood: A Memoir
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“It is not okay to ‘live and let live,’ to let ‘bygones be bygones,’ to ‘forgive and forget,’ to let the ‘past be the past’ or any of the other clichés your family and friends will try to persuade you to forget about what happened and to move on. Try not to accept these messages.”

Abuse SurvivorsSurvivorsHealing InsightsSociety DenialForgive And ForgetLive And Let LiveChild Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse DeniersLet Bygones Be BygonesForgive And Let GoLet The Past Stay In The Past
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
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“Controlling my environment was still a compelling need for me. I did everything I could to not be surprised by anything... Looking back, I think that my need to predict how my day was going to unfold was a direct response to the amount of chaos in my childhood.”

Complex PtsdControllingAbuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorEffects Of Child AbuseControlling OthersAbusive ChildhoodNeed For Control
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“I had never before considered that people near me might have problems that were not caused by me. I had been created to please people. If the people around me weren't happy, I must be doing something wrong. Lynn helped me see that I lacked the power to make other people feel anything.”

Ego CentricChild Abuse SurvivorPeople PleasingPeople PleaserMaking Others HappyNot About YouOther People S HappinessAll My Fault
Book:The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
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“My mother emotionally, physically and mentally abused me in ways that will forever impact me. She gave me breast and vaginal exams until I was seventeen years old. These "exams" made my body stiff with discomfort. I felt violated, yet I had no voice, no ability to express that.”

Child AbuseSexual AbuseEmotional AbuseMental AbusePhysical AbuseChild Abuse SurvivorAbusive MotherNarcissistic MothersAbusive Mom
Book:I'm Glad My Mom Died
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“In spite of the horror, in spite of the tragedy, in spite of the weeks of sleepless nights, I'm finally alive. I'm not pretending. I feel real. I'm not playing charades anymore. I wouldn't go back to the way I was for anything. I'm really like a different person. I'm where I am, and I'm making the most of it. I know I'm courageous now. I found out I had it in me to face this. — Barbara”

HopeHealingRecoveryTrue SelfAuthentic SelfAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsHealing JourneyReal SelfFace Your FearsHealing From AbuseRecovery From AbuseCharadesChild Abuse SurvivorHealing AbuseChild Abuse SurvivorsNew MeFeel AliveDeciding To ChangeGave Your Fears ChoiceHope And Disappointment
Book:The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
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“Loftus was asked to be an expert witness because the idea of memories as formed through a manipulable process of rehearsal is important to new views of memory and her own research. In the course of her testimony, the prosecutor skeptically asked: "You really don't know anything about five-year old children who have been sexually abused do you?" At that moment a "memory flew out at me, out of the blackness of the past, hitting me full force." She answers the prosecutor, "I do know something about this subject because I was abused when I was six years old" (149). With the force of a blow, a forgotten and apparently unrehearsed memory of being abused by a baby-sitter suddenly emerges after many years, its truth uneasily opposed to the falsehood of children's "rehearsed" memories or "contaminated" memories that she produces in her laboratory to show memories are but "mist" (4). Nonetheless, in her second popular book, The Myth of Repressed Memory, she argues against the existence of "repressed" memories...”

RepressionIncestRepressed MemoriesFalse MemoriesChild Abuse SurvivorTrauma MemoryRepressed MemoryFalse Memory MythElizabeth Loftus
Book:Telling Incest: Narratives of Dangerous Remembering from Stein to Sapphire
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“Sometimes a stare comes from too much anxiety or stress. Your system can become overwhelmed." I didn't know it then. but parts inside were scared because he was looking at us so closely. He's getting too close. He's going to find out about us. I didn't make the effort to try to catch any of these thoughts.”

AnxietyDissociative Identity DisorderTranceDissociative DisorderChild Abuse SurvivorDissociative PartsTraumatic StressThousand Yard Stare
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“Dr. Summer explained once again that he believed I was remembering real abuse that happened to me when I was growing up, that the thoughts were memories frozen in time by a dissociative process. We were piecing together a clear picture of what had happened to me so we could put my memories in their proper place: the past. He explained that the pain was my body remembering what had happened. He had explained the process many times before, just like this, but I still didn't understand. The words wouldn't connect. I asked, "How can I be a lawyer, be married? How can I be functioning if all this happened to me? I don't understand.”

DissociationDissociative DisorderRepressed MemoriesHealing From AbuseChild Abuse SurvivorDissociated Memories
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“Recovering from family scapegoating requires recognizing that being the ‘identified patient’ is symptomatic of generations of systemic dysfunction within one’s family, fueled by unrecognized anxiety and even trauma. In a certain sense, members of a dysfunctional family are participating in a ‘consensual trance‘, i.e., a ‘survival trance’ supported by false narratives, toxic shame, anxiety, and egoic defense mechanisms, such as denial and projection.”

ScapegoatDysfunctional FamiliesEmpathsTrauma SurvivorsChild Abuse SurvivorFamily ScapegoatScapegoat ChildNarcissistic FamiliesFamily RolesC Ptsd
Book:Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed: Understanding Family Scapegoating Abuse
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