Surviving Childhood Sexual Abuse: Practical Self-help For Adults Who Were Sexually Abused As Children

by Carolyn Ainscough, Kay Toon

Understanding the past-and breaking free from it-is the key to surviving childhood sexual abuse. This book can help ease the journey, with discussions of the damage caused by abuse; anxiety, fears, and nightmares; depression and low self-esteem; eating disorders and negative body image; feelings toward the abuser, and how to overcome problems and work toward prevention.

Genres: Psychology, Self Help, Abuse

308 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 21, 2000

Reviews

[Elizabeth Castaneda- dodge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very hard book to read..

[Betti · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was pivotal in my healing. I cannot recommend it strongly enough, and I will always be grateful to Cory for sending it my way.

[LaDonna Qualtieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to pick this book up and put it down many times. A seesaw of triggering and healing. I only read during times I was also actively in therapy. This book helped cement a belief in me that the things done to me were not my fault.

[Jayda · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars just because it's a bit outdated, which makes sense since this second edition is from 2000. That said, I had some breakthroughs and I also felt it was really forward-thinking for the year 2000.

I highly recommend this book.

[Morgan]

This is quite hard to rate just because I don't know how sound or unsound the actual psychology is. From the standpoint of a reader/user of the exercises, it was quite helpful. I tend to feel very disconnected from my abuse and haven't ever examined the ways it has impacted my life today but the exercises in the book walk you through that. I definitely realized some things I hadn't connected (traumas experienced in my childhood have led to me feeling the need to be perfect which has touched every area of my life, the role I've played in relationships starts to make a lot more sense, etc.).

The book does make a note it can be used by people of all genders who were abused by any gender but sometimes the wording is specific in a way that might throw some off, for example a section that covers how the reader's relationship with their mother was changed by the abuse. Since this is a general workbook, not all exercises and situations described within will be applicable to every reader but I feel like it does cover a wide range.

Ultimately it's up to each individual abuse survivor to decide how to heal from their trauma but this workbook was helpful for getting me looking at things I'd never considered before and getting on track to actually tackle my traumas rather than just living with the aftereffects.

[Annette Gale]

Contains lots of useful info and exercises, a must have for those healing from child sexual abuse.

[Nitra]

It's really hard to read this book, hopefully I can finish it really soon. It is a good book and has real life events, it's just so hard to read those stories of sexual abuse.

[Monique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard read but necessary to understand sexual abuse victims. Television wasn't enough for me so I had to go a little further and read some true stories.