Jess Hill

“In chronic abuse, incidents are just fragments: they rarely give precise shape to the whole. It's the atmosphere victims live in that keeps them in a state of high alert. Over time this climate of constant abuse and threat can end up shredding the nervous system.”
― Jess Hill, See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence

“This is what's known as the Cycle of Violence, where an explosion is followed by a period of remorse, then promises and pursuit, a false honeymoon stage, then a build-up in tension, a standover phase, and another explosion. Then kindness expressed during the false honeymoon stage may feel genuine to the abuser, but this reward phase - like every other part of the cycle - is still all about maintaining control.

Periods of kindness, no matter how short, bond the victim to her abuser.”
― Jess Hill, See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence