Best 1773 quotes in «abuse quotes» category

Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time. As his conscience adapts to one level of cruelty—or violence—he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist. These walls tend to grow over time, so that after a few years in a relationship my clients can reach a point where they feel no more guilt over degrading or threatening their partners than you or I would feel after angrily kicking a stone in the driveway.

Of all the horrid ramifications of child abuse, the self-beliefs formed by the child reap the greatest destruction. Abuse is the most penetrating and permanent communication possible, and it always conveys to the child one or more of several messages: ‘I caused it to happen. It’s my fault because I am bad. I don’t deserve any better.

Often, our misunderstandings about love are born in disruptive family relationships, where someone was either one-up or one-down to an extreme. There is an appropriate and necessary difference in the balance of power between parents and young children, but in the best situations, there should be no power struggles by the time those children have become adults - just deep connection, trust, and respect between people who sincerely care about each other. In disruptive families, children are taught to remain one-up or one-down into adulthood. And this produces immature adults who either seek to dominate others (one-up) or who allow themselves to be dominated (one-down) in their relationships - one powerful and one needy, one enabling and one addicted, one decisive and one confused. In relationships with these people, manipulation abounds. Especially when they start to feel out of control.

Oh dear, thought Demelza, how strange it all is! Me, sitting here, a mother, like a middle-aged dowager, moving in the best circles, behaving with prim propriety, hands folded on reticule, feet politely together, smiling graciously when spoken to, inclining the head this way and that, the perfect lady; when I've still got two scars on my back from my father's leather strap, and I learned to swear and curse and spit before I was seven, and I crawled with lice and ate what food I could find lying in the gutter, and had six dirty undernourished brothers all younger than me to look after.

Oh, I know that she's disgusted, cause she's feeling so abused. She gets tired of the lust, but it's so hard to refuse.

On a superficial level, self-esteem techniques and a tough "refusal to allow others to hurt me" tactic may work for the short term. But what happens for the abused person on a bad day, a bad month, or a bad year? Sin and the effects of sin are similar to the laws of inertia: a person (or object) in motion will continue on that trajectory until acted upon by an outside force. If one is devastated by sin, a personal failure to rise above the effects of sin will simply create a snowball effect of shame. Hurting people need something from the outside to stop the downward spiral. Fortunately, grace floods in from the outside at the point when hope to change oneself is lost. Grace declares and promises that you will be healed. One-way love does not command "Heal thyself!" but declares "You will be healed!

On a nightstand in a teenager’s room, a glass vase filled with violets leans precariously against a wall. The only thing saving the vase from a thousand-piece death on the hardwood floor is the groove in the nightstand’s surface that catches the bottom of vase, and of course the wall itself. The violets, nearly a week old, droop in the light of a waning gibbous moon. Wrinkled petals are already piling up on the floor between the nightstand and the wall, and a girl only six days sixteen stares at the dying bouquet from her bed.

Once I stopped running from the past and intentionally leaned into the memories to examine them, I wasn’t haunted by the past anymore.

Once this bubble of self-deception is burst and the mask that shielded her and others from what she wished to ignore is lifted, it is difficult for the woman to return to her life as it was. It has been said that “the discovery of a deceiving principle, a lying activity within us, can furnish an absolutely new view of all conscious life.” This reawakened awareness changes the upscale abused woman’s life forever. Suddenly, new choices stand before her. This can be a frightening and sad phase in therapy, a moment when the woman is grappling with a kaleidoscope of loss and potential future gain. Some women experience this period as the dark night of the soul. It can be sickening to face the truths one has chosen to ignore in hopes of maintaining the status quo. Even if the woman wishes to stay married, she will never perceive her life in the same way again.

One cannot prevent abuse through discipline, when abuse and discipline feel exactly the same.

One in four girls will experience sexual abuse by the time she is sixteen, and 48 percent of all rapes involve a young woman under the age of eighteen. It’s not surprising then, that in a society where sexual abuse of young women is rampant, many women never share their stories. They remain hidden and invisible.

One is that if women’s sexuality in Africa wasn’t under assault, if women were able to say no, if women weren’t subject to predatory attacks by men, or predatory behavior generally, then you would have a disease in Africa called AIDS. But you wouldn’t have a pandemic.

One of life's greatest blessings, Lita had once realized, goes completely unnoticed until it's gone. It is forgetting. Forgetting a terrible memory so completely that you forget there was anything to forget in the first place. It's just gone. Vanished. That is, until it comes back. And the memories always come back, one way or another, but most especially in dreams.

One might say my life has been tragic. Yet, as I sat in pain in the hospital I raised my tired hands toward the sky, palms facing in, fingers spread, and I gave thanks.

One of the worst cases of employee abuse that I witnessed in the workplace was a toxic manager holding employees captive in a remote location against their will to complete a project that was behind schedule. It was verging on kidnapping the employees.

One researcher, J.P. Gump found that the most profound shame results from the destruction of your subjectivity when "what you need, what you desire, and what you feel are of complete and utter insignificance.

Only an animal visibly damages its mate.

On the street there is no tomorrow. There is only here and now and nothing else. And yesterday is just another day you’re trying to forget." - excerpt from: freefalling

Or perhaps it's the wickedness in him that she can't resist. There are such women.

On top of the abuse and neglect, denial heaps more hurt upon the child by requiring the child to alienate herself from reality and her own experience. In troubled families, abuse and neglect are permitted; it's the talking about them that is forbidden.

Out of all the people in this family, you're forcing me to go see a psychiatrist? What about your ex-wife who hasn't seen the sun in two years? Or your daughter who's one heartbeat away from being a necrophiliac! Or your son who think it's okay to molest his sister!

Other personalities are created to handle new traumas, their existence usually occurring one at a time. Each has a singular purpose and is totally focused on that task. The important aspect of the mind's extreme dissociation is that each ego state is totally without knowledge of the other. Because of this, the researchers for the CIA and the Department of Defense believed they could take a personality, train him or her to be a killer and no other ego stares would be aware of the violence that was taking place. The personality running the body would be genuinely unaware of the deaths another personality was causing. Even torture could not expose the with, because the personality experiencing the torture would have no awareness of the information being sought. Earlier, such knowledge was gained from therapists working with adults who had multiple personalities. The earliest pioneers in the field, such as Dr. Ralph Alison, a psychiatrist then living in Santa Cruz, California, were helping victims of severe early childhood trauma. Because there were no protocols for treatment, the pioneers made careful notes, publishing their discoveries so other therapists would understand how to help these rare cases. By 1965, the information was fairly extensive, including the knowledge that only unusually intelligent children become multiple personalities and that sexual trauma endured by a restrained child under the age of seven is the most common way to induce hysteric dissociation.

... Other students lived on campus and got drunk at parties. Other students dated and graduated and got married and led normal lives. She wanted to marry an ex-con and pretend being kidnapped had been a normal thing she could forget about. ...

Our tenderness, compassion and kindness go with sensitive generous heart that should not be abused by others.

Outside of my professional life, I have known many couples over the years who had passion and electricity between them and who treated each other well. But unfortunately there is wide acceptance in our society of the unhealthy notion that passion and aggression are interwoven and that cruel verbal exchanges and bomblike explosions are the price you pay for a relationship that is exciting, deep, and sexy. Popular romantic movies and soap operas sometimes reinforce this image.

Over the years, I have sat with many very poor mothers and fathers as they have shared their stories of surviving genocide, slavery, murder, torture, humiliating rapes, and abuse. The pain they describe is unfathomable – and mental temptation is to imagine that the people who endure it are somehow fundamentally different from me. Maybe, somehow, they just don’t feel things like I do. Maybe they expect less, care less, hope for less, want less or need less. But painfully, over time, I have seen that they are exactly like me.

Parental Alienation is an emotional act of violence that is aimed at an adult, but critically wounds a child.

Past shapes your future, yet it does not dictate, determine, speaks nor controls your future.

Patrice had long since buried the particulars of events so painful that they caused her to resolve only to see good. With such a stance, such as dissociative split, she could walk with evil and believe it did not exist. She was Joe's perfect mate.

Over the years Amy’s family has become a cascade of domestic abuse: her father beat on her brother, who grew big and furious and beat on her mother, who had no one but Amy to vent her anger on. Based on this pattern, you’d think that if there were someone in the family after Amy, that someone would do well to take karate classes, or hit the weights.

Pag sinabihan kang panget o mataba, bullying yun. Pero pag binungangaan ka o pinitik man lang, assault yun. That's a crime! Dapat magreklamo ka na sa pulis o barangay.

Parents that provide a nonviolent, fostering, strong and steady background for their children assist in impede violence and abuse in their households.

Part of the problem was that I couldn't seem to get past the fact that I hadn't tried to escape from Kas. Even in France, when he'd left me on my own for several days, I'd carried on working [as a prostitute] and doing all the things he'd told me to d. And although I knew that it was because of the fear he'd so carefully and deliberately instilled in me, I still felt as though I'd somehow colluded in what had happened to me - despite knowing, deep down, that nothing could have been further from the truth.

People can be animals. They will use you, take you for a ride, abuse you and take all your precious light away from you. Rise above their manipulation and egotistical bullshit because they are NOTHING without you. No one deserves your light but yourself.

People may indeed be treated as objects and may be profoundly affected thereby. Kick a dog often enough and he will become cowardly or vicious. People who are kicked undergo similar changes; their view of the world and of themselves is transformed. . . People may indeed be brainwashed, for benign or exploitative reasons. . . If one's destiny is shaped by manipulation one has become more of an object, less of a subject, has lost freedom. . . If, however, one's destiny is shaped from within then one has become more of a creator, has gained freedom. This is self-transcendence, a process of change that originates in one's heart and expands outward. . . begins with a vision of freedom, with an "I want to become...", with a sense of the potentiality to become what one is not. One gropes toward this vision in the dark, with no guide, no map, and no guarantee. Here one acts as subject, author, creator.

Perception and worldview are one's summary of life.

People pleasing does make it easier to ignore the red flags of abusive relationships at the very early stages especially with covert manipulators. We can also become conditioned to continually “please” if we’re used to walking on eggshells around our abuser.

People that hurt others, only act on a pain they feel themselves.

People tried to tell me all my life - and they still do - that abusers don't really know what they are doing is wrong, but if that is the case then how do they know that it needs to be hidden?

Persons Are Turned against Themselves Evil also turns a person against herself so that self is used against self. The case of the woman who received a dismissal letter from her pastor comes to mind again. The psychological decompensation she suffered was successfully used by her husband to intercede with a psychiatrist of his choosing to commit her to the mental unit of a hospital for an extended involuntary stay, which further worsened her condition. Additional examples abound. Some patients report cults using induced hypnotic states to encourage a subject's dissociated hands and arms to do something hurtful to someone else. In such cases, the subject is encouraged to watch the hand that is hers but not hers (because it is dissociated from her). The end result is often extreme guilt. self-loathing, and distrust of one's self and motives.An incestuous parent may use a child's own natural bodily responses to repeated sexual stimulation to make the point that the child really "wants and enjoys“ what is being forced upon her.

power happily walks hand in hand with abuse

Pinned shoulder to shoulder, t-shirts extended in lines, The power of expression, is what "THE CLOTHESLINE" defines. Although each color symbolic, the threads weave the same, Each shirt a picture of violence, each shirt a witness to pain. The color white a memorial, for a victim who died, Simply, because of her gender, precious life was denied. Yellow signifies a victim, embraced by batter and assault, When intimacy turned into violence, as if loving was a fault. Shades of pink, red, and orange - when passion turned into rape, Denied the right to say "NO", by either stranger, or date. The blue and green bear nightmares, when a child of incest and misuse Was forced not to tell the "SECRETS", endured from physical and sexual abuse. See the beautiful shades of lavender, to the one not afraid to voice, A different sexual orientation, condemned, when in public made the choice. In the beginning they first choose the color, then allowing pain to flow from inside, Using buttons, bows, paints, and prose, self-expression no longer denied. As you walk through the line of color, emotional pain may fill your heart, But to the victim this personal creation, permits an inner healing to start. Pinned shoulder to shoulder, t-shirts extended in lines, The power of expression, is what "THE CLOTHESLINE" defines.

Power is confusing for us, perhaps even terrifying, because our relationship with it had an unfortunate beginning. Someone in a position of power over us used and abused us…It seems as if power were something to be wielded, always at someone’s expense, usually our own.

Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.… Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life.… They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke the responses of catastrophe.

Psychological and emotional wellness is an ongoing process for everyone.

rape or seduction, he'd take either

Real humility is graceful power, not a mandate to be victimized and abused.

Real man don’t abuse women. Real man walks away when the women is ill-discipline and is not worth it.

Running away from your past is not an answer, it’s only a temporary remedy just like the drawing lines in the sand, a small breath makes it disappear.

Recovery can take place only within then context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connection with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological facilities that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic operations of trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy. Just as these capabilities are formed in relationships with other people, they must be reformed in such relationships. The first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure. Many benevolent and well-intentioned attempts to assist the survivor founder because this basic principle of empowerment is not observed. No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster her recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in her immediate best interest.