I'm super uncomfortable being honest about my abuse story even in 12 step rooms

I'm super uncomfortable being honest about my abuse story even in 12 step rooms
it's astonishing that people are willing to accept pedophiles as fellow sex addicts
I don't know if they are. I've never heard anyone declare themselves that or any members call another guy a pedophile. People allude to "illegal porn" or "illegal behavior" and reading between the lines, it often means underage. I don't think every "addict" who progresses toward that line is a pedophile. I think many walk toward that line as a transgression/shame point for themselves. However, being a victim of CSA, I know what damage can be done and I feel like that's what this conversation has been about rather than pedophile vs not-pedophile. I think people who cross into illegal behavior even once, can do a lifetime of damage. I think some people take a full accounting of the damage they did or might have done but I wonder how many and I wonder if a lot of other men are letting them off of the hook because they also want to not face the damage that they've done.

I have to remember that at the end of the day (or my life), being a victim or a victimizer isn't the dividing line of good/bad. People are imperfect and some are seeking to be better and some are not. But certain 12 step rooms are not "designed" for survivors to get the support, help and identification that they need or want.
 
I've never heard anyone declare themselves that or any members call another guy a pedophile. People allude to "illegal porn" or "illegal behavior" and reading between the lines, it often means underage. I don't think every "addict" who progresses toward that line is a pedophile.

i was reacting to what @Rick S. said -
"I went to a SLAA men's meeting and one of the guys admitted he was a priest who sexually assaulted children. I never went back to THAT group again. Thing is, he didn't seem remorseful, just mad that he had been defrocked. Remembering that share haunts me."

sex offenders should get help, but they shouldn't get to sit next to survivors. like i said, if they are so "addicted to sex" that they can't help but molest other human beings, they can always apply for chemical castration. it won't kill them
 
Ed follow your instincts and hopefully your own T. Look at the scientifcly accepted research.
For myself After spending many many many nights in meetings. More hours online meetings and being ever more pressured to share details and finally truly listening to the check ins. With true help from my T I awoke to the reality that many if not most members of SAA were Perpetrators - a LOTif pedophiles and at least some seemed to be more interested in gleaning tips on what grooming tips worked. No wonder you are feeling the way you are.
At least move to the CR or even AA groups for the support and structure of the twelve step system without as much risk of Perp baggage.
Wow, now there is a sentence, I need to remember. "Perl Baggage"
 
I'm tired, exhausted really, of trying to manage an image.
Many of us get stuck in this. We want to project an image to the world that we can hide behind, assuming the world will find us wanting.

Some facts that help me with this.

1) Some people abused me. That's a neutral truth, like breaking a leg, not something to be ashamed of.
2) I responded to that abuse by developing some patterns of thinking and behaving. I am responsible for managing those with help.
3) Because I am human, like everyone else, I am not perfect, can't be expected to be perfect and need to stop expecting it from myself.
4) The past is the past. I need to let it be the past without blame or worry.
5) Every present day, I have an opportunity to be my best self. That is my main practice. Be my best self. And if I fail that day, repeat number 3!
6) Recovery means putting the above into deep action.

Our image to the world is actually constructed from number 5. That is what your world will see.
 
DannyT, I agree with all that you wrote. For me, I thought the image that I tried to portray was me. I really did. I didn't know until now that it was just a mask BUT a mask made up of deep seated patterns of thinking and behaving that protected me when I was a boy. For some of us, it takes longer to recognize that we aren't in that trauma or neglect any longer and that we can let go and move into living in today. However, it takes help and support and identification to outgrow and recognize that we can let go and live differently. And there is grieving and anger from lost time and lost relationships while we live today. It's an undertaking. For me, it requires faith, acceptance, perseverence, stamina, support, trust. To come out as an abuse survivor and to change one's identity when trust and faith have been exploited or terribly abused is a scary process. I like your facts a lot because they are the essence of how we live but they each sentence in the "facts" might require different levels of work depending on your life experience, background, support, circumstances, etc. It's been a process for me to get to know those facts.
 
I like your facts a lot because they are the essence of how we live but they each sentence in the "facts" might require different levels of work depending on your life experience, background, support, circumstances, etc. It's been a process for me to get to know those facts.
You're so right that it is a process. I think the facts part is really important. And the process part to me needs to be taken in steps. I tried to make the list in the order I think the steps worked for me. Almost all of us have serious trouble with fact number 1. And until it is accepted as fact, we can't move on to the others. Asking for help is impossible because we blame ourselves, etc. So we need to take the time. I posted a set of steps from Buddhism that really help with how to take the time and make this work.

Once we recognize as fact that "Some people abused me. That's a neutral truth, like breaking a leg, not something to be ashamed of." Then we can accept that truth. We can say, "OK. Something broke that day, but I didn't do the breaking. It just broke, and now I can try to heal it. But then we have questions about the all the crap that came after. "If it was a neutral thing, why am I still suffering?" Good question! That's where fact number 2 comes in. I could have added that one is also neutral. No one is to blame for the thinking. It's just human thinking. We can change it. Especially if we add number four, then we can get help.

Thanks so much for this thread. It is so helpful to talk these things through.
 
This is great Danny. Finally simply admitting that i was abused was a beginning of relief. It's the truth. That's the start.

What you're writing about in 2nd paragraph is letting go of judging self for my human reactions, patterns and behaviors and accepting them. And by accepting them without judgment or with less and less judgment, i can start to see that i have choices. For me, that required support, identification and others telling me things can change thru these groups, other groups, faith practices, starting to listen more to self.

it takes stamina, dedication, courage, faith, letting go, a lot of letting go
 
letting go of judging self for my human reactions, patterns and behaviors and accepting them. And by accepting them without judgment or with less and less judgment, i can start to see that i have choices.

it takes stamina, dedication, courage, faith, letting go, a lot of letting go

Yes, yes, yes! A thousand times yes. All the while we're stuck in judgement of ourselves (and blame for self and others) we're trapped in the dark room with the abuse still happening. We're caught in a loop, like when we pick a sore and make it worse. But once we start to accept the neutral facts of the abuse and our responses with out judgement we have so many more choices. Like you said, It's the "beginning of relief. It's the truth. That's the start."

And going back to your original theme, one of those choices you get is whether or not to tell the abuse story. Once we see the events and responses as essentially part of the human condition, our story becomes part of the larger story of CSA in the world. We are, each of us, all of us. And sometimes telling the story is useful. Telling it the first few times (especially if we haven't already accepted the story as "neutral" the way we are talking about it) is one of the first giant steps in healing. But once we accept and welcome the story, it just becomes another story in our lives, like my ski accident stories or hurricane stories, and telling them only happens for a purpose. If I'm with you guys, I'll often share pieces of my story where they seem like they might help someone see the commonness of their story as part of our collective story of csa. Or maybe a friend asks me why I never have dates. I don't mind sharing my experience cause it might help them understand me better. But I'm not afraid of it any more. It's just a story that has its purposes in my life. And I get to choose how much to tell. "Something bad happened to me when I was a kid" is as much the story as spelling out all the details would be.

You're so right that it takes stamina, courage, faith, and a lot of letting go. It also takes some joy. The process of letting go is relaxing into joy. Relaxing into the pleasure of the work of healing. Of seeing the patterns and letting go of caring whether today is a great or a terrible day, realizing that it is a day we get to live. Our emotional states are truly rollercoasters we get to ride. They don't have to ride us. That's a choice that's hard to earn. Like you said, "it takes stamina, courage, faith, and a lot of letting go." I'm so grateful to be alive and still practicing.
 
Last edited:
Hey anyone who reads this.

I'm revisiting this thread 2 weeks later to say how grateful I am for this thread. It has changed my relationship to SAA in a good way. I've tapered off and basically don't attend any longer. Whether that is permanent or temporary only time will tell. Having different voices share their perspectives on here opened my eyes to some things that I didn't see myself. I don't want to focus too much on what those rooms can't do for me. They once were great rooms for me and they gave me a space to break some patterns and habits. Now I have other things to "break down" and yet other things to "build up" but not in there.

Thanks all for the dialogue.
 
Thank you Ed for starting this thread and for everyone else. It is such a confirmation that I'm heading in the right direction. So much identification. I have really needed SA especially because the sobriety definition is not problematic for me. I really enjoyed connecting with others who have addiction and the honesty. I wasn't expecting perfection from it. One problem I began to notice was that while they acknowledge that sex addiction is the symptom only - it gets the focus of attention. I managed to do step 4 (an inventory of resentments and fears) without getting the POWER back mentioned in this thread:

ED:"letting go of judging self for my human reactions, patterns and behaviors and accepting them. And by accepting them without judgment or with less and less judgment, i can start to see that i have choices."

DannyT's "facts"

I can't drink - it's just how it is. If I have one I am powerless (at this time) to stop - I only stop when I'm drunk. I have not had a drink for 10 years. I have food issues, film issues. I am an addict but I know that is only the symptom of something else - the something else is Fact 2 on Danny's list. And with help I believe I'll change - I will get back the power, to live free from the victimhood of these "patterns of thinking and behaving".

I was at a loss in SA - as I say I'd done my step 4 and was aware something was off. I told my T and he put me in touch with someone in AA (who happens to have SSA but I don't think was CSA) I now go to one AA meeting a week and have him as a sponsor and only after 3 weeks I'm on step4 and this time I get it! It seemed like a total joke one minute "You were sexually abused by your Sex Ed teacher and write down your defects" < I'm like What?! You're joking right - but he repeats it until I thought of I'll go with this .... and now I am getting it!! So thankful that he is not holding back. I simply would not have been ready for this before being able to tell people about the CSA - before letting my stories get told.

Full of thanks.
 
Working with someone who "gets it" and trusting that person and following their lead, made a big difference in my life when I was dealing with the addictions especially someone who encourages me to stay with the harder stuff but in a way that is meant to free me from some of the hold it had on me.
 
This is such an interesting and useful thread!

SAA has been extremely helpful to me, but at the same time in the course of a year and half working on recovery I've also learned that 1) a huge amount depends on the specific group you find yourself in; and 2) SAA treats the symptom, but not the root cause of the problem.

Regarding point 1, I learned the lesson pretty starkly when I had an unexpected schedule change and had to go to a meeting on a different day that I had never before attended. It was basically a bunch of dudes sharing war stories, and frankly it scared the crap out of me. Mutually reinforcing self-justification, plus a sort of competition to indicate "just how far down you've gone." As my T said when I told her about it: a bad meeting can be much worse than no meeting at all.

My usual weekly, on the other hand, is a group of men and women who are sincere and very seriously committed to recovery. We discuss our thoughts about the meditation of the day, share about what's going on in our lives, and give one another feedback. Everyone is honest, but people are also very careful to avoid saying anything that might be triggering, and fortunately the few "absolution junkies" we've had ("AJ" is my term for people who come in to announce that they've acted out, but don't seem to be doing any work to change their behavior) have disappeared pretty quickly. The ones who keep coming back are all facing their issues together, and working in fellowship with them makes me feel like I'm doing a small part to reduce the amount of evil in the world, starting with myself, and hoping it radiates out to others.

Which gets me to point 2. I very strongly relate to Ed's experience of finding it difficult to share about CSA in meetings. I feel the same way. When I mention it in my group, I feel as if all the other guys start shifting awkwardly in their chairs. Maybe it's projection on my part, maybe it's because it actually does make the other members uncomfortable -- haven't solved that one yet. For what it's worth, in the case of my group I suspect the discomfort might be less about their being perps, and more about their unwillingness to acknowledge CSA in their own pasts. I am absolutely the only guy in the group who has ever admitted to having had these experiences, and frankly I find it difficult to believe that I'm the only one who has this issue. My own sense is that this discomfort might relate to the idea that SAA is not sex therapy or group therapy. SAA isn't so much able to help you grapple with the the "why," but at least in my case I've found the steps and the group helpful as a kind of supplement to T when it comes to figuring out how to surrender compulsions and change how I live my life. That said, it's probably no accident that everybody in my group who's working the program successfully also has a T.
 
I attended Sex and Love Addicts for five years around twenty years ago. I'd uncovered the first memories of sexual abuse but rather than solving my troubled relationship with sex it only exacerbated it. I went to eight meetings a week for about a year after my wife moved out. It was good to have the fellowship but really did nothing to help me heal the trauma wound. More recently I've been involved in another 12 Step fellowship around food. A woman friend and I decided to create a special focus meeting with the title Childhood Trauma and Its Impact. She too is a sexual abuse survivor. Our local intergroup was happy to list the meeting the way we described it but when I tried to list the meeting at World Service level things got sticky. The next thing I knew I was approached by the regional trustee who wondered whether we could call it something else when we listed it on the international website. I suggested the matter be taken to the next board meeting, observing that trauma is present in practically every 12 Step room. She agreed but there was no movement at the board level. So we listed it as focused on health... but kept the title locally.

A friend in program has a good friend who works in the eating disorder field. They will NOT refer people struggling with eating disorders to Overeaters Anonymous simply because the program makes no mention of trauma. These professionals understand that the disorders that lead to the creation of 12 Step programs are always rooted in the experience of trauma. Yes, the steps can provide a useful framework for exploring these experiences but trauma is secondary to the spiritual process around which the steps are constructed. Unfortunately, the language can make it very difficult for people carrying shame from their acting out behavior to find compassion for themselves. I remember a friend who was sexually abused as a boy who was active in AA. When I asked about the abuse he used the famous AA line... "poor me, pour me a drink." They're told that it is wrong to make amends to oneself, yet addictions are literally shame delivery mechanisms. We eat, we drink, we use, we fuck... we feel like shit and then do it again because the pain is too much to bear.

Acknowledging that our behavior and our feelings about ourselves are all rooted in sexual trauma is really the healthy place from which to begin our healing, our recovery. I'm still active in OA and have many dear friends, a few of whom know my entire history not only of sexual abuse but of sexual acting out. But I keep bringing up trauma so folks really can't ignore it. Yes, it is still my responsibility to not act out either with food, alcohol or porn and I'm doing that. Thankfully, I have MS as a place where ALL of it can be talked about. Thanks everyone for speaking so honestly about all of this.
 
Last edited:
My experience was with SAA, I felt that other 12 step groups put a lot of shame on behavior except for them. Getting past that shame was helpful.
I went to SLAA for a couple of years very early in recovery. I was very blunt about my SA history, and many members also shared their SA histories I think because I had the temerity to share my own. But I felt uncomfortable in that fellowship since it didn't provide me with recovery tools from the incest and all the sex and love addiction stories bothered me. I found another group, SASA, which I'm just checking out after a few weeks in it. A very small group of survivors, but good sharing so far.
 
SDD, I attended four or five SAA groups last Spring as I was unpacking the trauma material that was coming up. To be honest, I've had a bit of aversion to language in the 12 Steps and in the past did a fair amount of reading in something called the Orange Papers which was not flattering. I read about the Oxford Group which was started by a Lutheran minister. My history in the Lutheran church was not all good... so I interpreted the Steps as tied to some of the morality of the church which was fixated on sinners. To do a "searching a fearless moral inventory" seemed to be saying the same thing. Talking about "character defects" didn't make me feel warm and accepted either. Doubtless I could have brought up my sexual trauma but the focus of SAA meetings was "controlling" sexual acting out... in my mind fixated on the trees and missing the forest. I couldn't continue, though I have continued with OA. Over the years I've discovered the wisdom in the Steps and the language that once troubled me doesn't any longer. And one thing is certain, the 12 Step community is wonderful... though doing virtual meetings eliminates the more personal encounters which I miss. I'm not at the moment immersed in the trauma material, so I'm content with OA and of course, being here and talking about what really matters... healing from trauma.
 
As my T said when I told her about it: a bad meeting can be much worse than no meeting at all.
Fucking thank you!!!!!!! I don't know how many times I've heard that bs line that "a bad meeting is better than no meeting". Hell no! The way I live my life now along these lines is "I'd rather be alone than be in bad company."

I am absolutely the only guy in the group who has ever admitted to having had these experiences,
That was often my experience or I would also find other people who had abuse in their past but were very confused about what SAA addresses and what therapy addresses. I knew why I was in SAA - to treat active sex additction/compulsion. I knew also that abuse is definitely at a higher rate in those rooms but didn't find many guys that were sophisticated about the separation of the issues and the co-mingling of the issues. This thread has confirmed to me that those places are terrible places for me to discuss abuse and I'm so grateful because I've basically moved on after many years and am so glad that I have. But I did the work, got better in there, did service and now it is bye bye - for me.
 
These professionals understand that the disorders that lead to the creation of 12 Step programs are always rooted in the experience of trauma. Yes, the steps can provide a useful framework for exploring these experiences but trauma is secondary to the spiritual process around which the steps are constructed. Unfortunately, the language can make it very difficult for people carrying shame from their acting out behavior to find compassion for themselves. I remember a friend who was sexually abused as a boy who was active in AA. When I asked about the abuse he used the famous AA line... "poor me, pour me a drink." They're told that it is wrong to make amends to oneself, yet addictions are literally shame delivery mechanisms. We eat, we dring, we use, we fuck... we feel like shit and then do it again because the pain is too much to bear.
This my exact experience and understanding. Beneath most compulsions around substances and/or behaviors are trauma. These substance/behavior 12 step programs aren't about the trauma - they're about freedom from the active addiction/compulsion. They do not treat the trauma - absolutely not. And the people who dwell in those programs for years - even if sober - often discourage any seeking to that deeper level. I've concluded that most (NOT ALL) of the long timers want to keep themselves in this tidy little circle where everything can be defined by conveniently thinking "well I do that because I'm an alcoholic/addict" rather than "I do that because I haven't dealt with that terrible abuse or neglect that I suffered repeatedly as a child". I tried to be one of those long term 12 steppers who thought the regular old 12 steps could answer it all but I couldn't. Maybe some can but not me.

I'm also consciously making amends to self even though many years ago it was told to me that was ridiculous. I have found other 12 step programs that directly address trauma and even include sexual abuse in their inventories because really so many have suffered it. I am finding more places to accept grief. I have a lot of grief. Grief is an example of an emotion that isn't "tolerated" in a regular 12 step meeting especially if one is long term sober and the grief is from episodes from decades ago. I'm supposed happy, joyous and free - where is grief in there? Being an adult survivor is thorny and not simply about today but it healing has a lot to do with many years ago and it doesn't comport well with 12 step recovery (which is always focused on the newcomer).

This thread isn't to bash 12 steps at all. They're great for their limited purpose. But they are definitely limited in my experience.

One last note...Bill W, the "father" of all of this, years into being sober, recognized the need for deeper work. He wrote letters around healing early-in-life painful episodes and needing to go beyond character defects to what really lie beneath them. Even his experience bore out that once people get sober, many recognize that there are real reasons why they were compulsively using substances/behaviors to alter their minds and moods. That's just deeper work.
 
Great discussion. Thanks to all. I've been in na and sca for years. I find i agree with the sentiments here. These groups have been incredible in helping me control unwanted behaviors. But that's really all they do for me. My very first sponsor warned me, after I shared some of my csa history with him, that I shouldn't confuse step work with therapy.

The only thing working the steps can help me do is stay sober. Full stop. For anything else, i look elsewhere for help.
 
My very first sponsor warned me, after I shared some of my csa history with him, that I shouldn't confuse step work with therapy.

I didn't confuse step work with therapy. I confused the community with being able to understand or care about my abuse. The 12 step communities aren't more caring or knowledgeable about CSA issues than the regular world. There may be more people willing to acknowledge that they experienced CSA but that's where the dialogue ends. This isn't to put down 12 step groups. It's stating the reality. For understanding and support in healing/recovery, the places (in my experience) are few and far between but better to accept that 12 step groups are not the places to get what I hope for in regards to my unresolved or being-resolved CSA issues. There are many CSA and other trauma related survivors in 12 step groups and getting sober can just be the beginning of a journey that exceeds the limits of the 12 step groups.
 
Top