The Courage to Heal - Third Edition - Revised and Expanded : A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Rating:
Summary: The Black Book of CSA
Review: These ladies get to the facts in a gentle, move "foward" manner. Most in AA speak of the "Black Book" or Bible of AA. Well, this is the Black Book for CSA Survivors. Best of all, they do NOT exclude lesbian survivors with all the myths surrounding those issues. Nor, do the exclude male survivors.

Tuff issues, tuff topics, tuff healing... Hence the word "survivor not victim". Excellent book for a gift or to get someone on the road to recovery.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable Book
Review:
I can not for the life of me understand why reviews or how reviewers can put this book down. It is an excellent source at helping to heal the wounds of past child/sexual abuse. One of the best books I have read on the subject and one of the reasons that I am moving from the lable Victim to Survivor. I say the authors did a fantastic job on this book. I also want to recommend NIGHTMARES ECHO by Katlyn Stewart and BEAUTY FOR ASHES by Joyce Meyer....I am extrememly impressed with these authors. They have helped me to heal...for that I am grateful.


Rating:
Summary: Not for those who want to move on....
Review: Nor for those who want to get a realistic picture of their own lives.

The authors strongly suggest that if you think or feel that you may have been sexually abused, then you probably were, so you read the book, operating on the entire self-diagnosis.

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Summary: PLEASE DON'T READ THIS BOOK!!!
Review: This book is manipulative, ignorant, full of lies, and even dangerous. It starts out to be a compassionate piece of work that is focused on helping the victims of sexual abuse recover and come to terms with what has happened by helping them to uncover "repressed memories"

I read this book out of curiosity, and was appalled by it. It teaches women to blame all their problems on repressed memories of abuse, even if there's no evidence that abuse happened. It asserts that "if your life shows the symptoms of abuse, then you were abused." That is not true, and is not to be believed.

This book has the ability to trigger a multitude of false memories in people, which can shatter lives and families. Please do not waste your time reading this book!

Rating:
Summary: A good resource for those in need
Review: This book captures the true pain of what so many folks go through when addicted to another. I highly recommend.

John D. Moore
---
Author of Confusing Love with Obsession
When You Can't Stop Controlling Your Partner & the Relationship

Rating:
Summary: LOST IN THE DARK or I Don't Remember, But...
Review: Childhood sexual abuse is a real problem. It is a rampant and widespread problem. It is a terrible problem. There are few acts in the world more inexplicably horrible than abusing a child. Any psychologist who has met a child who has actually been abused understands the nightmare, the black swell, the sickening underworld of terror and isolation...

In the wake of these real horrors it is a shame to see a book such as this, an unobjective, unempirical sliver of random grabbings in a world of twilight, a mess of lies, guesses and opinions about real, massive problems that need truth, research and facts.

THE COURAGE TO HEAL is perhaps the worst travesty that has ever occurred to psychotherapy. Yet, its readers rarely ever see its gross madness, mainly because they have not been trained in psychology. Anyone who understands critical thinking, scientific reasoning, and most of all, how memory works, will see instantly the witchdoctoring this book practices. My favorite line from the book:

"If you think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, then you were... If you don't remember your abuse, you are not alone. Many women don't have memories... this doesn't mean they weren't abused." My God.

Memory is a complex, problematic, erroneous thing. It can be led, rearranged, reordered, fiddled with... We do not go through life taking a perfect recording of everything we see. We construct a lot of our memories post ex facto, actively changing and reinterpreting things... Decay, interference, and encoding failures are real things and are only the tip of the iceberg to how subjective our memories are.

The mind is complex - far more complex than the stomach, for instance. You would not allow people to operate on your stomach if they merely assured you that they have had stomach problems themselves. Yet, day by day, more and more people allow these two authors - neither of whom know anything about the human mind - free access to the operating table. If your therapist recommends this book (or a Rorschach, or a TAT) for helping you through real problems, it is time to leave that therapist's office.

Rating:
Summary: The Courage To Heal - An Awesome Book!
Review: This book was recommended to me by my therapist. Reading this book did more for me than 20 years of therapy! The fact that it was written by real people (and not a doctor) who had experienced sexual abuse, made it all the more helpful to me. For me, this book was RIGHT ON about everything and helped me to reprogram my thinking.

I really do not understand those who didn't get anything out of this book. I have to assume that these people aren't ready to let go of their denial about what happened to them.




Rating:
Summary: Excellent Resourceful Guide
Review: Not only is it an excellent guide, but inspirational as well to the community of abuse victims out there. This should be a required read in all schools as well as health facilities.
I also recommend other inspirational reads: Nightmares Echo, Sickened,Beauty For Ashes And Courage To Heal-Workbook

Rating:
Summary: The naysayers are either ignorant or abusers themselves
Review: The most singly important book that I've found for self-help for adult recovery from childhood abuse. As a male who was sexually abused by older males and adults of both genders, I found this book to be a validation of the intense trauma that one endures during childhood sexual abuse. As for those who discount the miniscule portion of the book that deals with "recovered" memory, so be it, but there are literally millions of adult survivors of sexual abuse (one in three females, one in five males) who have never forgotten their experiences and this book provides some guidance for recovery including resources and directions to pursue that recovery. Those adults who try to relate their never forgotten abusive experiences by family members to other family members, are most often met with ridicule and the 'recovered memory' arguments - even though they never forgot! It has been documented that recovered memory is valid in the vast majority of cases, and it has also been documented from hospital records and adult follow up that a large percentage of abused children do not remember their abuse. The recovered memory controversy relates only to unqualified therapists and psychiatrists who have planted memories either through hypnosis or leading questions and as soon as someone brings up that issue I strongly suspect the originator to be an abuser. It is the abusers fear of being caught that causes them to lambaste recovered memory. The overwhelming majority of this book deals with memories and experiences that were never forgotten and how to deal with them. Though written for females who were sexually abused, I found it very helpful in my own recovery. My own childhood sexual abuse has been the most traumatic of my entire life which includes combat duty with it's associated action, and a distressing air disaster in which life was lost.