The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse - Softcover

Ellen Bass

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0434111686 ISBN 13: 9780434111688

Publisher: Hutchinson, 1990

Synopsis

The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and encouragement to every woman who, was sexually abused as a child -- and those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible. The authors weave personal experience with professional knowledge to show the reader how she can come to terms with her past while moving powerfully into the future. They provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, a map of the healing journey, and many moving first-person examples of the recovery process drawn from their interviews with hundreds of survivors.

Definitive in scope, The Courage to Heal speaks directly to the survivor in a warm and personal way:

• TAKING STOCK -- outlines the effects of child sexual abuse and the ways women cope over time.
• THE HEALING PROCESS -- explores each stage from the decision to heal and remembering through breaking silence, knowing it wasn't your fault, nurturing the inner child, and grief and anger, to resolution and moving on.
• CHANGING PATTERNS -- offers in-depth guidance for shifting self-defeating patterns in specific areas of one's present life, including self-esteem, feelings, intimacy, sexuality, and dealing with families.
• SUPPORTERS OF SURVIVORS -- provides insight and strategies for partners of survivors, family members, and counselors.
• COURAGEOUS WOMEN -- profiles survivors who share the challenges and triumphs of their own healing journeys.
• HONORING THE TRUTH -- a substantial new Afterword that refutes the "false memory" argument and presents a thorough and enlightening response to the backlash.
• RESOURCE GUIDE -- fully updated for this edition -- informs readers about therapy, healing activities, recommended reading, support groups, self-help programs, and services and organizations.

About this title

About the Author:

A workshop facilitator for survivors, their partners, and counselors, Ellen Bass is co-editor of I Never Told Anyone and the author of several volumes of poetry. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

If you don't feel respected, valued, or understood, or if your experience is being minimized or distorted, that's a sign that you're in bad therapy, or at least that there's a bad fit between you and the counselor. If you feel there is something wrong in the therapy relationship, or if you get upset or angry with your counselor, talk about it in your session. Afterward, you should feel you've been heard and understood. However, if your counselor discounts your feelings or responds defensively, then you're not getting the respect you need. Look elsewhere.

If you feel your therapist is pressuring you to say you were abused, you're seeing the wrong therapist. No one else can tell you whether or not you were abused.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hutchinson
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0434111686
• ISBN 13: 9780434111688
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496