Link – How Accurate is the “Cycle of Abuse”?
We aren’t all the same.
Also, being abused as a child may mean struggles, it may mean having to learn some skills that you didn’t learn as a kid, and it may mean having to dig deep to find your strength. It does not mean you are destined to be anything. Stop believing those bad studies showing an absolute abuse cycle, the truth is much larger than that.
“Most people take it for granted that the path from childhood to adulthood is a fairly straight one. We think of the embedded attitudes, habits, and values our parents taught us—some of which we are still trying to eradicate. Many people, as legions of memoirists remind us, carry with them the psychological scars of wounds they suffered at the hands of cruel, violent, alcoholic, unloving or neglectful parents. Longitudinal studies repeatedly find that children abused in these ways are more likely than other children to develop emotional problems, become violent or depressed, attempt suicide, commit crimes, drop out of school, and develop chronic stress-related illnesses. Adults imprisoned for violent acts and child abuse report high rates of their own victimization as children.
Yet…what is missing from this picture? The group we don’t see: children who were abused but who proved to be resilient, growing into healthy adults determined not to revisit on their own children what they had suffered. We aren’t aware of them because they aren’t in therapy or prison, telling their stories to sympathetic listeners and researchers. “
