Abuse Quotes

i sometimes felt as if these marks on my body were a kind of code, which blossomed, then faded, like invisible ink held to a candle. But if they were a code, who held the key to it? I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.

~ Margaret Atwood

JUST LISTEN“When your mind is quiet and you listen closely, you will hear the children weeping silently. If you can’t quite hear their cries, then listen with your eyes. These are the children of the streets, who have learned pain and suffering before they ever had a chance to experience life. Do not ignore their cries for help, for all they wish is that you will rescue them. They do not have a family that wants them, they don’t know how it feels to be loved and they’ve never lived anywhere that felt like home…the streets are where they find their voice and relief from all of the suffering.Just listen and you’ll see them.

~ Paige Dearth

I am often asked whether physical aggression by women toward men, such as a slap in the face, is abuse. The answer is: “It depends.” Men typically experience women’s shoves or slaps as annoying and infuriating rather than intimidating, so the long-term emotional effects are less damaging. It is rare to find a man who has gradually lost his freedom or self-esteem because of a woman’s aggressiveness.

~ Lundy Bancroft

Dear Mrs. Black: On seven prior occasions this company has denied your claim in writing. We now deny it for the eighth and final time. You must be stupid, stupid stupid, stupid!

~ John Grisham

I wonder where love really is. Good feelings. Happiness. They're someplace, I know. I feel that. But without Father and Mother, how do I get there?

~ Susan Shaw

Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33TAT: No. I don't know anymore than you know they're not. But, I'm talking about boundaries and privacy here. As a therapist working with survivors, I have been harassed by people who claim to be affiliated with the false memory movement. Parents and other family members have called or written me insisting on talking with me about my patients' cases, despite my clearly indicating I can't because of professional confidentiality. I have had other parents and family members investigate me -- look into my professional background -- hoping to find something to discredit me to the patients I was seeing at the time because they disputed their memories. This isn't the kind of sober, scientific discourse you all claim you want.

~ David L. Calof

This is the hardest part— That boy is not made of fists. That boy learned how to braid my hair. These things do not un-truth themselveswhen the first door slams.I did not stop loving himall the months I was holding my breath.

~ Brenna Twohy

A child that’s being abused by its parents doesn’t stop loving its parents, it stops loving itself.

~ Shahida Arabi

The fact of the matter is, if you haven’t been in an abusive relationship, you don’t really know what the experience is like. Furthermore, it’s quite hard to predict what you would do in the same situation. I find that the people most vocal about what they would’ve done in the same situation often have no clue what they are talking about – they have never been in the same situation themselves.By invalidating the survivor’s experience, these people are defending an image of themselves that they identify with strength, not realizing that abuse survivors are often the strongest individuals out there. They’ve been belittled, criticized, demeaned, devalued, and yet they’ve still survived. The judgmental ones often have little to no life experience regarding these situations, yet they feel quite comfortable silencing the voices of people who’ve actually been there.

~ Shahida Arabi

Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.

~ Lundy Bancroft

Dissociation leaves us disconnected from our memories, our identities and our emotions. It breaks the trauma into digestible components, so that different aspects of the trauma get stored in different compartments in our brain. What happens as a result is that the information from the trauma becomes disorganized and we are not able to integrate these pieces into a coherent narrative and process trauma fully until, hopefully, with the help of a validating, trauma-informed counselor who guides us to the appropriate therapies best suited to our needs, we confront the trauma and triggers in a safe place.

~ Shahida Arabi

What’s important to remember is that while human beings in general can engage in toxic behaviors from time to time, abusers use these manipulation tactics as a dominant mode of communication. Toxic people such as malignant narcissists, psychopaths and those with antisocial traits engage in maladaptive behaviors in relationships that ultimately exploit, demean, and hurt their intimate partners, family members, and friends.

~ Shahida Arabi

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.

~ Shahida Arabi

(a quote from a survivor)Read up on the psychology of abuse. Listen to music. Being alone to process without chatter. Usually outside doing something physical, doing these things helps you believe you CAN do anything. Share my story without shame.

~ Shahida Arabi

The experience of chronic abuse carries within it the gross mislabeling of things. Perpetrators are really nice daddies. Victims are evil and seductive (at the age of three!). Nonprotecting parents are tired and busy. The survivor makes a giant leap forward when [he or ]she can call abuse by its right name and grasp the concept that what was done was a manifestation of the heart of the perpetrator, not the heart of the victim.

~ Diane Mandt Langberg

But it's up to us...' he said softly. 'it's up to us not to lose this.

~ Rainbow Rowell

society has an embarrassing history of denial

~ Carolyn Spring

There is a slave trade still in this country—yes, the real and horrific sex and human trafficking trade run by organised criminal gangs, which is appalling and must be stopped. But there's the hidden slavery too of children exploited and used within their own families, within organised and ritual abuse.

~ Carolyn Spring

It is always a mistake to underestimate how long it takes for mankind to understand the traumas it has suffered, especially the self-inflicted ones.

~ A.c. Grayling

#NAME?

~ Lundy Bancroft

No one's ever sat me down and taught me what empathy is or why it matters more than power or patriotism or religious faith. But I learn it right there in the hallway: I cannot do what's been done to me.

~ Zak Ebrahim

A man or a woman can't be defined by the pain inflicted in them by others or by someone else's issues, but by their own character and actions.

~ Linda Alfiori

Julia's fears of coming forward with the violence were based on anticipated as well as actual responses from friends and acquaintances. I also recognized Julia's introverted and moody side, but I knew she wasn't capable of inciting her husband to kick, choke, and lock her in her home like an animal. Besides, considering how she was being treated, it was not surprising that she seemed moody, sensitive, even depressed. More important, nothing any woman could do could justify such behavior.

~ Susan Weitzman

Consider these traditional theories of domestic abuse:- Learned helplessness suggest that abused women learn to become helpless under abusive conditions; they are powerless to extricate themselves from such relationships and/or unable to make adaptive choices- The cycle of violence describes a pattern that includes a contrition or honeymoon phase. The abusive husband becomes contrite and apologetic after a violent episode, making concerted efforts to get back in his wife’s good graces.- Traumatic bonding attempts to explain the inexplicable bond that is formed between a woman and her abusive partner- The theory of past reenactments posits that women in abusive relationships are reliving unconscious feelings from early childhood scenarios. My research results and experience with patients do not conform to these concepts. I have found that the upscale abused wife is not a victim of learned helplessness. Rather, she makes specific decisions along the path to be involved in the abusive marriage, including silent strategizing as she chooses to stay or leave the marriage. Nor does the upscale abused wife experience the classic cycle of violence, replete with the honeymoon stage, in which the husband courts his wife to seek her forgiveness. As in the case of Sally and Ray, the man of means actually does little to seek his wife’s forgiveness after a violent episode.Further, the upscale abused wife voices more attachment to her lifestyle than the traumatic bonding with her abusive mate. And very few of the abused women I have met over the years experienced abuse in their childhoods or witnessed it between their parents. In fact, it is this lack of experience with violence, rage, and abuse that makes this woman even more overwhelmed and unclear about how to cope with something so alien to her and the people in her universe.

~ Susan Weitzman

The first time he had hit her, he had been so wracked with remorse, she had actually felt sorry for him. Consumed by guilt and self-loathing, he had sobbed in her arms like a child, swearing it would never happen again and begging for her forgiveness. Her stomach turned over now at the thought of how she had comforted him, assuring him that she trusted him and promising that she would never leave. She saw now with sickening clarity that she had been setting a precedent - giving him permission to do it again; reassuring him that she would tolerate anything.If only she had walked out there and then.

~ Cleary James

If people keep stepping on you, wear a pointy hat.

~ Joyce Rachelle

If the goal is unknown, then abuse is inevitable

~ Sunday Adelaja

It's not rocking the boat, Dad. It's called communication. You're allowed to ask questions. Other people do it all the time. Other people don't live in fear of someone else's reactions. They don't relentlessly stress out about getting into trouble.

~ Koren Zailckas

you remind me of someone i knew. looked just like you but kind.

~ Taylor Rhodes

Shut the fuck up and mind your own business, Bren.” Before Furi could put up any kind of guard, Brenden had his hands around his throat and shoved him until his back slammed into the stainless steel refrigerator.“You think you can talk to me that way, you little shit?” Brenden snarled, spittle flying from his mouth. His hands twisting and burning the skin around Furi’s neck.“Get off me,” Furi gasped, trying unsuccessfully to pry the thick fingers off. His husband and brother-in-law had both been linebackers in college. Neither minded using their brawn and strength on him, and often.Brenden brought his knee up fast, kneeing him so hard in the groin Furi thought death would be better than the pain. Brenden stepped back and let Furi drop to the hard granite floor, slapping him hard in the back of the head before strolling off as if he owned the world. Furi couldn’t hear what the hell his husband was saying because his ears were ringing and his eyes were so filled with tears he thought best to just keep them shut.“Patrick,” Furi groaned, clutching at his balls, knowing nothing would stop the throbbing.“Don’t talk like a big boy if you don’t have the balls to back it up, darlin,” his husband said nonchalantly.

~ A.e. Via

I'm Used To, Being Used, Not Abused.

~ Syed Sharukh

She preferred to be numb. And mostly these days she was. She played dead, sleepwalking her way through her life on autopilot, hardly caring whether he hit her or kissed her - it was all the same in the end.

~ Cleary James

those glasses aren't for the sun they're for darkness, exclaims Rue. Sometimes when we harvest through the night, they'll pass out a few pairs to those of us highest in the trees. Where the torchlight doesn't reach. One time, this boy Martin, he tried to keep his pair. Hid it in his pants. They killed him on the spot. They killed a boy for taking these/ I say Yes. and everyone knew he was no danger. Martin wasn't right in the head. I mean he still acted like a three year old. He just wanted the glasses to play with, says Rue. Hearing this makes me feel like District 12 is some sort of safe haven. Of course, people keel over from starvation all the time, but I can't imagine the peacekeepers murdering a simpleminded child. There's a little girl, one of greasy sae's gradkids, who wanders around the Hob. She's not quite right but she's treated as a sort of pet. People toss her scraps and things.

~ Suzanne Collins

Do we all repeat the same words in our heads in the days after experiencing abuse at the hands of those who love us? From this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part.Maybe those vows weren't meant to be taken as literally as some spouses take them. For better, for worse?Fuck. That. Shit.

~ Colleen Hoover

How could she love him after what he did to her? How could she contemplate taking him back?” It’s sad that those are the first thoughts that run through our minds when someone is abused. Shouldn’t there be more distaste in our mouths for the abusers than for those who continue to love the abusers?

~ Colleen Hoover

We live with the scars we choose.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Whatever it was, she knew she would not be blamed for it, she was blameless. But what use had that been to her in the past, to be blameless? So at the same time she felt guilty, and as if she was about to be punished.

~ Margaret Atwood

..but I know my commitment to change and transformation is stronger than my commitment to self-destruction. In these moments, the need to rewrite the familiarity of violent reactions and hold oneself accountable becomes increasingly important. Patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism have a way of permeating all of us to our core. It is essential that we are all personally committed to not perpetuating further abuse upon each other's bodies.

~ Jennifer Patterson

Dad was thirsty, not given to great displays of affection, like his father and his father's father before him. A long line of self-indulgent men who couldn't give love but lived to take it, which isn't the same as receiving it. They were all in so much pain and that's always the perfect excuse.

~ Courtney Summers

Shouldn't there be more distaste in our mouths for the abusers than for those who continue to love the abusers?

~ Colleen Hoover