Best 1773 quotes in «abuse quotes» category

If I was set an essay on Friday, I’d spend three hours on Saturday morning in the library. Was that normal? I didn’t know. What I did know was that I felt less prone to depression and more normal walking through Venice or staring out over the lake in Zurich. At home I wrestled continually with my moods. The black thing inside me gnawed like a rat at my self-esteem and self-confidence. I felt there was a happy person inside me too, who wanted to enjoy life, to be normal, but my feelings of self-loathing and the deep distrust I had towards my father wouldn’t allow that sunny person to come out. When the black thing had an iron grip on me, I couldn’t even look at my father: Did you do bad things to me when I was little? Like a line from a song stuck in your brain, the words ran through my head and never once came out of my mouth. Not that I needed to say what was in my mind. I was sure Father could read my thoughts in my moods, in the blank, dead stare of my eyes. It was hardly surprising that there was always an atmosphere of strain and awkwardness in the house, and the blame was always mine: Alice and her moods, Alice and her anorexia; Alice and her low self-esteem; Alice and her inescapable feelings of loss and emptiness.

I found proof that our very own mother had killed Jason. It broke my heart. She had been abusive in our childhood, and abusive toward our father before she left one night, but I had never expected murder.

If the abuse has taken place for a really long period of time, it becomes more and tougher and challenging as well.

If we're highly empathetic and emotionally sensitive we're at greater risk of becoming involved with a manipulator.

If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance (...); as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out [in his History of England], she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.

If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness. To abused women, meanwhile, the silence means that no one will help—just what her partner wants her to believe. Anyone who chooses to quietly look the other way therefore unwittingly becomes the abuser’s ally.

If you can't lay an egg or milk a cow

If you do not achieve your God-given goals, it does not mean God has not given the power. It rather means you have taken His power for granted!

If you do not cultivate your life's environment, you will not captivate the worlds enlightenment.

If you don’t want to abuse yourself, if you don’t want to abuse your life, the best thing to do is to begin to value every minute of your day

If someone suffers enough pain and abuse, his volitional capacities will diminish to nothing.

If the most connected we’ve ever felt with another person was in that brief moment of apology and regret after physical abuse, then we’ll seek that abuse for the rest of our lives.

If the goal is unknown, then abuse is inevitable

If we can heal our wounded child, we will not only liberate ourselves, but we will also help liberate whoever has hurt or abused us. The abuser may also have been the victimg of abuse.

If women are to achieve sexual dominance it may be that female abusers are even more skilful than their male counterparts. It might also mean that female intimate abusers use different tactics and have different goals than the male abuser. What I have found is that the effect of female intimate abuse is different and that male victims and survivors seem to need a different response. Male victims need safety and options but they are denied these supports as the community treats male victims with an even greater degree of blame than it applies to female victims.

If you can abuse and insult values, with the support of crutches of freedom of press and speech; I can do that too. I am also a free person; keep that in your mind, and shut your mouth.

If you fear that defending your boundaries is being controlling, don't worry. There is a difference between being controlling and having boundaries. Controlling people is about telling them what to do. Setting boundaries is about saying what you do or do not want to happen to you.

If you neglect your fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives, then don't be surprised when the Creator is forced to neglect you. Neglect, and you will be neglected. Protect, and you will be protected. Reject, and you will be rejected. Love all, and all that love will be mirrored by the Creator and reflected back onto YOU.

If you really truly want to know, I've thought if I was ever free someday, I might discover I've held my tears so long that I can't cry anymore, that I'm a dry stone and nothing can ever be wrung from me.

If you see something wrong happening in the church, you can either do nothing, or you can do something. And I already tried nothing. I have shared these details because I feel a moral responsibility to do so. Hiding behind the closed doors had done nothing.

Ignorance of one’s life mission leads to one’s life being used improperly

I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn’t be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike. I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn’t feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror’s reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. ‘Who are you?’ I’d ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn’t me. I’d watch my lips moving and say it again, ‘Who are you?

I grew up missing my mom while she was right in front of me.

I guess it's the same way trees grow around the very vines that are killing them, so they're strangled and sustained all at once. After a long time, even pain can be a comfort.

I have had the freedom and peace of forgiving my abuser, it helped me to stop resenting and no longer feeling hurt.

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.

I have options, I can be whoever I want to be!

I have seen a lot of ugly things as a trainee and as a nurse, but they don't bother me very much. It's not that the familiarity hardens one; it is rather that one learns the knack of channelling one's emotions around the ugly thing.

I have tried to communicate my ideas in a language that preserves connections, a language that is faithful both to the dispassionate, reasoned traditions of my profession and to the passionate claims of people who have been violated and outraged. I have tried to find a language that can withstand the imperatives of doublethink and allows all of us to come a little closer to facing the unspeakable.

If you have survived an abuser, and you tried to make things right… If you forgave, and you struggled, and even if the expression of your grief and your anger tumbled out at times in too much rage and too many words… If you spent years hanging on to the concepts of faith, hope, and love, even after you knew in your heart that those intangibles, upon which life is formed and sustained, would fail in the end… And especially, if you stood between your children - or anyone - and him, and took the physical, emotional, and spiritual pummeling in their stead, then you are a hero.

I had victory and knew I was going to be fine, no matter what was adding up in my direction. This forever kind of freedom is amazing.

I have found out the hard way that the path from victim to victory hinges on one word…Choose.

I know personally that when a child is abused the trajectory of that child's life is changed forever. That doesn't mean the path to happiness is impossible, but it does mean there will be detours and side roads that were never intended. Come back from those places, my friends, with lessons and compassion those on the straight road might never have the chance to learn. You are now equipped to help hurting children because you've navigated down those dark courses and made it back. Cudos to you, but also let your shoulders feel the weight of the responsibility to help others who are still lost and struggling to find their way to safety.

I know the difference between right and wrong. Right is when I do everything he tells me to. Wrong is when I question why. But every now and then a simple slap across the side of the head is a good way to remind me." - excerpt from: freefalling

I knew that I was the least-loved child because I was a girl and because my mother had died giving birth to me.

I know who you are...I've fallen hard for that person, and I sure as hell am not going to let you fade into your past.

Ili kupambana na matumizi mabaya ya madawa ya kulevya katika jamii ya Tanzania, ni muhimu kutoa elimu kwa Watanzania juu ya madhara yanayoambatana na matumizi ya madawa hayo. Tusipambane na madawa ya kulevya peke yake. Tupambane na elimu ya madawa ya kulevya pia.

I lie awake in my bed, clinging to the brightness I have known, fighting back the tide of darkness, the memories of blood and branding and horror, and the legacy of cruelty that runs in my own veins, shaping my own secret vow and wielding it like a brand against the darkness, whispering it to myself, over and over. I will try to be good.

I let go of false hope. I let go of the hope that they would transform in favour of working on my own transformation. I let go of the hope that they would HEAR me. I let go of the hope that they would SEE me. Instead of my hope being in THEM, I listened to me. I heard me, I saw me, I validated my own pain and I began to emerge from the broken life I had been living.

I knew that he wanted me dead. He wasn't the type to accept that he had made choices to get where he is.

I LOVE YOU FROM THE WAIST DOWN, I DON'T DEAL IN DAMAGED GOODS.

I look around at everybody laughing and joking together and struggle to understand my life has become a living hell that nobody present could even begin to imagine

I love you but I got to love me more.

I loved Trevor wholly. In all the good ways that made me feel alive and special and important. But also, in the bad ways. The ways that shut me off from others and left me alone with my pain. The ways that had me keep secrets. I loved Trevor in all the ways that I thought mattered, even though I knew that I didn’t.

I'm a buried kind of beautiful. Bring a shovel and a shooting star I may be a night's work.

I love you, Skye. You’re in my heart, in my head, under my skin. You’re my present and my future.

I'm not capable of being casual with you, Lily.

I'm never going to say male rape and abuse victims don't deserve as much care and support as female ones, but look at who is hurting them, and look at who built this system of hurt

I moonlight as the greatest actor. I smile. I choose the comedy mask every time. I tell those who worry that I am fine, that I always will be. There is nothing to gain from these lies. I win no awards, yet I bow. On that stage I tell my life story with the lightest of words, the heaviest of hearts. I bleed for the people who stay and watch. Behold: the comedy, the tragedy. They smile and cheer. They clap for this. And I bow, and I bow, and I bow.

I'm not a victim. I'm not a survivor. I'm a fighter.