The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, 20th Anniversary Edition - Softcover

Bass, Ellen; Davis, Laura

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061284335 ISBN 13: 9780061284335

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2008

Synopsis

Come to terms with your past while moving powerfully into the future

The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and a map of the healing journey to every woman who was sexually abused as a child—and to those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible.

Weaving together personal experience with professional knowledge, the authors provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, and support throughout the healing process. Readers will feel recognized and encouraged by hundreds of moving first-person stories drawn from interviews and the authors' extensive work with survivors, both nationally and internationally.

This completely revised and updated 20th anniversary edition continues to provide the compassionate wisdom the book has been famous for, as well as many new features:

• Contemporary research on trauma and the brain
• An overview of powerful new healing tools such as imagery, meditation, and body-centered practices
• Additional stories that reflect an even greater diversity of survivor experiences
• The reassuring accounts of survivors who have been healing for more than twenty years
• The most comprehensive, up-to-date resource guide in the field
• Insights from the authors' decades of experience

Cherished by survivors, and recommended by therapists and institutions everywhere, The Courage to Heal has often been called the bible of healing from child sexual abuse. This new edition will continue to serve as the healing beacon it has always been.

About this title

About the Author:

A pioneer in the field of healing from child sexual abuse, Ellen Bass currently teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University in Oregon. Her poetry books include Mules of Love and The Human Line.

Laura Davis is the author of The Courage to Heal Workbook, Allies in Healing, Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, and I Thought We'd Never Speak Again. She teaches writing and lives with her family 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: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0061284335
• ISBN 13: 9780061284335
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 640