Is Sexual Harassment Different for Men? (Part 3 of 9)

Too often, law enforcers and others assume they need a response of crying to believe the victims. Again, it’s the stereotypical acceptance as one standard of behavior. Reports of the celebrity abuses say that some of those women reacted by self-medicating—drugs, alcohol, engaging in high-risk sexual behavior, or withdrawing from friends.

I can’t say this often enough: there is no such thing as one response to being molested. We survivors behave in a wide variety of ways. When we talk about it, some of us appear calm, even detached. Others become angry or shout. Some go mute. Some of us cry.

One of the things I’ve read too often that’s taken to be true for all of us childhood survivors bothers me. They say their kids were doing well in school, never troubled, and then their grades began to fall. After that, they had trouble getting along with others and became belligerent. That’s one response—and it may be common—but it certainly doesn’t fit all of us.

For me, it was the opposite. In school, I did extremely well. Once I was inside the building, my mood shifted. I focused on learning and mixed well with other students. Until ninth grade, I wasn’t absent for a single day. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, school became my emotional sanctuary.

How did you respond to the molestation when you were a child?

Just Be Over It

By Mark Cooper

This is my story. It is not the same as your story. But I hope my story will encourage you to more fully live your story.

Those of us who deal with trauma recovery are probably familiar with the unhelpful concept, “Just be over it.”

My brother and I were enjoying dinner with friends. We got into a discussion about a former neighbor, a veteran of WW2, who battled alcoholism. My brother told us that the man’s son described his dad crying anytime the subject of the war was broached. My brother explained to us that the trauma of war no doubt contributed to our neighbor’s battle with alcohol. He then went on, “Of course, after a while a person should probably just be over [the trauma].”

I had to fight tears as I heard his words; his words felt like a mockery of my healing journey from abuse, but more than that, they exposed his own battles. My brother knows the pain of trauma in his life, but shows little evidence of facing that pain. His “just be over it” statement, rather than being an expression of callousness towards our neighbor, speaks of the harshness he feels towards himself; an expectation that by now he should “just be over” the pain of his wounds.

Those of us who have entered the healing journey know that we will never “just be over” our wounds. Rather, we have embraced the hard work of dealing with those wounds. We have accepted that our journey will include countless tears, frustration and anger. We know we must continually be honest with ourselves, with others, and with God. We face the raw truth of how we were hurt and how we have caused hurt in attempts to sooth our pain. But as the tough work of healing progresses, we eventually realize that we have more peace—even if it is fragile—than we once thought possible.

That peace would never have come had we told ourselves to “just be over it.”

* * * * *

A note from Cec's assistant: Cec's publisher sent him a box of bookmarks for his upcoming book, More Than Surviving. If you would like to help Cec by distributing some of the bookmarks, please contact him at cec.murp@comcast.net and give him your mailing address. Thank you!

A Number (Part 2 of 2)

By Daniel K. Eichelberger

I am a statistic. The experts say that one out of every six boys have experienced the things that I have. A staggering number of individuals...boys…children...youth. The number is thought to actually be higher, as it is estimated that as many as 90% never disclose that they have been through it. And of this selected group (yes, we were certainly selected), there are yet more statistics. Disheartening statistics that indicate all of us nameless, faceless numbers are likely to engage in unhealthy and risky behavior in adulthood—drugs, crime, abuse, sexual deviance and promiscuity. The percentages there are shocking. Almost 80% are left with at least one psychological disorder.

Can anything less be expected when you have been robbed of your identity and ushered into that selected group where you are only one of a number of others, useful as long as your flesh is warm? (Did I say selected? Certainly, we were that).

I am a number. Yes. I am a statistic. But I am also something else. It is the miracle of God’s grace that, statistic though I am in the first sense, I have not become one in the second. I am definitely part of the one in six. Maybe part of the 80%. But I have been spared from the statistics of unhealthy and risky behavior. God’s love and grace caught me just in the nick of time.

So, while I am still just a number in one sense, I will rejoice that I am not in the other. I will praise my Maker for loving and seeking me out before my life was wrecked by destructive behavior. And I will dedicate my time, my life, my compassion, my empathy, my love to being His hands and feet in helping those other numbers, those nameless faces—those part of all of the statistics. It is the least that a fellow number can do.

Moving Beyond the Abuse

"It's the past. Forget it and move on," my youngest brother, Chuck, said to me. We had both been sexually assaulted by the same person. He didn't admit being sexually molested, but he didn't deny it either. On the few occasions when I tried to talk to him about it, his answer was, (1) "You can't undo the past," (2) "We don't have to think about those things," or (3) "That stuff happened back then." His words implied that we need only to forget the past, leave it behind, and it's gone.

If only it were that simple.

Chuck died after years of trying to cure his pain through alcohol. I don't know if the pain he tried to medicate was the abuse, but I suspect it was. On rare occasions when he was drunk, he made oblique references to "that mess in childhood."

Outwardly, Chuck wanted to get past the sexual molestation and get on with his life. So why didn't he "move on" with his life?

I had a second brother named Mel, also an alcoholic. He was married five times and died of cirrhosis at age 48. Unlike Chuck, Mel wouldn't talk about our childhood. "There's nothing back there to talk about," was the most he ever said.

I write about my two brothers because both of them seemed determined to get past the abuse of childhood by forgetting, denying, or ignoring. That approach doesn't work.

We don't forget—not really. We don't forget because childhood abuse affects our lives and shapes our attitudes about people and relationships. Some guys want to hurry and get over it, but it's not something to get over and to move on.

Abuse happened to us. Until we accept it and face what it has done to our lives, we don't really move forward. We only live unhealed lives.

An Act of Power?

When I read anything about rape these days, it all seems to say, “Rape is an act of power. Dominion over another.” Maybe that’s right, but I don’t agree that we boys were chosen so that a bigger person could have control over us.

For me, the perpetrators were blinded by their own needs. I call it an addiction, even though many would disagree. I see our exploitation as a result of a compulsive, overpowering urge.

A few perpetrators have said, “I couldn’t help it. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway.” That sounds like an addiction to me.

For me, such admissions don’t fit with domination or control. It says to me that the victimizers were their own victims. Out of their own overwhelming lustful need, they seduced us boys.

I’m not excusing them; I’m trying to understand why they do such evil things. For me, that’s the only satisfactory solution. When they’re engaged in the sexual act, it has one purpose: to provide them with sexual gratification. And it works. They are satisfied—for the moment. And then the urges and the compulsion returned—following the pattern of an addiction.

I understand compulsion because I was a smoker for six years. Once I got hooked, I couldn’t stop. At times I was tormented and had to force myself not to think about cigarettes. Once I had that white stick in my mouth I was satisfied, although I detested the fact that I was addicted and realized that tobacco controlled my life patterns until I broke free.

During the past two decades, I’ve spoken with perhaps a dozen former perpetrators. None of them have ever spoken about power unless it was to say they felt powerless to stop.

The practical side of this is that it enables me to feel compassion for those who victimize. I remind myself that they didn’t seduce us to rack up trophies of conquest.

“I hated myself,” one former teacher told me. “I couldn’t stop even though I knew it was wrong—and I didn’t quit until a parent reported me.” He spent two years in prison and is today registered as a sexual offender.

Power? Really?

Distorted Relationships (Part 4 of 5)

“It was all a lie,” Max, a 23-year-old, said to me. He told me of the leader in his church who befriended him when he was 10 years old.

“I was the only boy who didn’t like sports, and my classmates called me ‘faggot,’ even though I didn’t know what the word meant until later.

“The youth leader encouraged me. ‘You’re a nice, sweet kid. Don’t pay attention to what they’re saying.’ He spent time with me and he was the first adult who ever listened to me. After I cried, he hugged me and whispered, ‘It’s all right to cry. Let it go.’

“After that, we started with hugs and I felt so grateful to have a friend. I didn’t like it when he taught me to masturbate him and the other things, but I loved the man so much I would have done anything for him. ‘It’s our secret,’ he said. ‘Just you and me.’

“I thought he really loved me. The church fired him, and he refused to talk with me. So it was all lies. He hurt me, and I thought he truly loved me.”

Max and I met at the 2016 annual conference of “Hope for Wholeness.” He said that occurred during his teens. “For a couple of years I became that faggot my classmates labeled me.”

When Max was 20 years old, he was a miserable drug addict, a college dropout, and isolated from his parents. He attempted to take his own life and obviously didn’t succeed. A wise therapist suggested that he attend the “Hope for Wholeness” conference.

That was three years before we met, and he said that group saved his life and he’s finding others who strengthened him.

“My classmates were wrong about me,” he said. “And for the first time in my life, I’m happy and like who I am.

“I can define myself,” Max said, “And I don’t give anyone else that privilege.”

My Struggle

(This post comes to us from Mark Cooper.)

I struggle with homosexual attractions, fantasy, and masturbation. Because of my Christian beliefs, I see this as sin.

I have finally admitted a long-seeded desire for revenge, especially against the older brother who abused me. He had more power.

As a “good boy” who grew up to become a man committed to presenting a good front, I stuffed my anger and desire for revenge. Sexual sin has been my drug to dull my anger. Sexual addiction is a result of the deeper issue, my anger.

In a moment of insight I’ve seen an issue that runs even deeper than my anger. That is my experience of being powerless when I was abused.

Every time the truth of my powerlessness hits, I feel terror. I can’t face that terror for longer than a few seconds. Then I pull away from both the reality of the powerlessness and the resulting terror. Anger kicks back in. The layers of self-protection begin again.

Courage to Heal

(By John Joseph*)

The recovery process is an active one that demands a lot from me. It isn’t a passive progression that happens on its own—I must be a daily, and often aggressive, participant. I don’t like that, but it is true.

To deny my responsibility to pursue wholeness in the areas of my broken soul is to give my past power to destroy me through addiction, depression, and shame.

Am I going to let that happen?

The terrible truth is that there’s something in me that works against me. Call it my “addict," my “disease,” my “inner child,” or the “devil." Its name doesn’t matter. It's still out to take me down in any way it can.

John Mayer wrote some poignant lyrics about this in his song Gravity:

Gravity is working against me
And gravity wants to bring me down
Oh I'll never know what makes this man
With all the love that his heart can stand
Dream of ways to throw it all away[1]

How many of us survivors have found ourselves on the edge of the emotional cliff, ready to jump off again? How many times have we acted out the same demeaning behavior only to go down the shame spiral again? Why do we feel the constant weight of what Mayer calls gravity in our bones that brings us to the brink, again and again, of throwing it all away?

Our various faith traditions may call it karma, fate, fortune, or sin. Whatever it is, it will gain the upper hand and destroy me if I am lazy or unmindful of it.

To recover is to have the courage to heal every day.

(*John Joseph is a pseudonym of a pastor. He's a regular contributor to this blog.)

*****

[1] Writer(s): John Mayer

Copyright: Reach Music Publishing-digital O.B.O. Goodium Music, Specific Harm Music, Sony/ATV Tunes LLC

Codependency

(By John Joseph*)

I’m the kind of guy that, if I saw you first thing one day, I would say, “Good morning! How am I today?” Yes, I am a codependent. What is a codependent? It is someone who is dependent on another person to define his or her feelings about themselves. It is a psychological term that came into use a few decades back to describe the behavior of family members living with an alcoholic.

Far too many wives and children become codependents, sentenced to the hell of merely reacting to the dependent behaviors of the alcoholic. They’ve been forced to define themselves based on the addictive behavior of another. Although they aren’t the addicted person, they are co-dependents and much of their lives are wrecked by the addiction and the addictive person.

Thus I’m a codependent. Maybe you are one, too. The sad truth is that someone else’s addiction to sexual abuse has affected our ability to live normal lives and to define ourselves in the healthiest ways.

What do we do now? How do we untangle the wreckage of the past? How do we cease living as codependents and find emotional health?

The first step is to move out of a dependent relationship. If someone in your life is abusive or addicted, leave them. Get out. Then get good counseling and enter a recovery program. It’s only when we rise up to reclaim our personhood that we cease to be dependent on others, no matter who they might be.

(*John Joseph is a pseudonym of a pastor. He's a regular contributor to this blog.)

Your Addiction

I've never been stimulated by or addicted to pornography. I suppose the major reason is because it wasn't available during my growing-up years. Today it's easy to make a few clicks on the keyboard or press buttons on the TV remote and the porn is in front of us.

A few men speak with disdain over others' bad decisions. They're repulsed when they learn that a friend has sneaked back (even temporarily) into old habits. Roger visits his friends Norm and Stan for dinner and ends up drunk or smoking pot again. "He should have known better," Stan says.

Perhaps it gives the speaker a sense of superiority or he feels smug because he doesn't do those things. He can talk dismissively about others who are still caught with their addictions or weaknesses.

I think of a verse from the Bible that urges us to help those who have failed and adds, "Humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself" (Galatians 6:1).

I may not have your problems, but I have my own. I'm not better than you (or worse). Each of us faces our own weaknesses.

Your addictions or problems are yours; 

I must not forget that I struggle with my own issues.

(This post was adapted from Not Quite Healed, written by Cecil Murphey and Gary Roe.)

Hope in Despair

(This is an encore post from John Joseph.)

When it comes to recovering from childhood sexual abuse, hope is essential. Without it, there’s no chance of holding on until things get better.

Hope is an anchor tossed into the future to help us get there. Hope is the soul’s seed that grows the healthy crops of emotional wholeness. We all need hope, especially survivors.

At times, hope seems elusive. As a recovering person, I've gone through many seasons of outright despondency. I can’t count how many times my future seemed so dark and empty that I found myself depleted and discouraged. That's when my addictions can kick in, which leads me deeper into gloom and self-loathing. The vicious cycle of hopelessness, despair, and acting out fuels more vicious cycles.

As a survivor, I tend to turn small problems into catastrophes. The future can be habitually in a state of calamity in my mind, and remembering hope is one of the greatest tools I’ve found to bring me out of it.

Hope rises to the surface of my soul when I take a few moments to meditate on the current good in my life. It settles me down again in a way that nothing else can. My goal is to learn how to live in hope every day.

"I've Put That Behind Me"

I had lunch with a man I'll call Ned, and he knew about my abuse. Just before we left the restaurant he leaned toward me and said, "It happened to me, but I've put all that behind me." And he spoke of other things.

I looked at Ned's 300-pound frame and wondered how he knew he had moved beyond his abuse. I don't know if he was obese because of the molestation, but a number of survivors admit that they became compulsive overeaters by finding their comfort in food. That's a nice way of saying, "I'm addicted to food."

Right here I want to point out that I'm not a therapist, but this much I know. People with addictive behavior become that way to fight off or satisfy some painful aspect of their lives. My alcoholic baby brother, Chuck, once said he drank because it was the only time he didn't feel the pain.

There is no putting molestation behind us. There is healing and there is denial. Our abuse will always be there, but if we work at it, the pain decreases and we become stronger and more emotionally helpful.

We don't put abuse behind us. 

It stays with us as we heal.

Rape Isn't about Sex

I've heard that statement for at least thirty years. They go on to say, "It's about control."

Maybe it is.

I am not a therapist; however, as a survivor of sexual assault, I think it's more about compulsion—the perpetrators' obsessive needs. Or if control is the word, perhaps it refers to perpetrators struggling and failing to control their driving compulsions. The successful assault of a child temporarily satisfies their irresistible impulse.

Control sounds to me more like a reasoned, determined act to subjugate someone to their wills. In the act of rape, perpetrators are in control, but I don't see that as the issue. They're fixated on themselves—the driving force that leads to (momentary) sexual release.

In 2005, I had a lengthy conversation with a former perpetrator. He likened his behavior to someone who was addicted to cocaine. "The more I resisted, the stronger the drive. My thoughts constantly focused on boys."

He went into some detail, but he also said, "After every encounter, I detested myself. I knew it was wrong—but I did it anyway."

I don't write this to minimize the pain and trauma inflicted on us survivors. I write this because I'm learning compassion toward perpetrators—beginning with those who molested me. I don't excuse what they do, but seeing their actions as a form of addictive behavior evokes sympathy. I've been able to forgive because they are also victims of their own compulsive desires.

Self-Pity

(This post comes from John Joseph.)

D.H. Lawrence once wrote “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” (Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence). I wish he could say the same for me. Of all the issues raised by my lifelong recovery from childhood sexual abuse, self-pity is one of the most pernicious and destructive. Would to God that it would drop from the bough, but it doesn’t.

The best that I can do with self-pity is to manage it like an addiction. Addictions have a mind of their own, a life of their own, and exercise control over me by promising relief from existential, mental, or emotional distress. Unfortunately, addictions never deliver what they promise. They can’t. The details may differ addiction to addiction, but the results are always disastrous and lead me to a mouthful of corn husks with a pig pen for a penthouse. They just never pay off. And that’s where managing them comes in, especially in recognizing that feeling sorry for myself is a slippery slope into addictive behaviors. I’m so predictable.

If you’ve never attended a Twelve Step meeting, it’s difficult to describe the inherent power of Step One—admitting that you and I are powerless over whatever is controlling us. A billion words or more have been written about this first step, yet few ever come easily to them. We mostly come crawling to them after waking up in the dregs, bruised, bleeding, and drenched in the sledge of whatever’s gotten hold of us, whatever we’ve given ourselves over to for the umpteenth time, be that heroin or hatred. To finally admit that something has control of us is just the admission that God, our Higher Power, is waiting to hear.

Once we can bring ourselves to admit that we aren’t the center of the universe and admit that we’ve surrendered all of our self-control over to a substance, a feeling, a destructive behavior, or to another human being, healing and freedom can break in. For me, admitting that self-pity is not only unattractive but overwhelmingly destructive and controlling is a great first step to freedom from it and from all the awful things that come with it.

Dabbling in Discouragement

(This post comes from John Joseph.)

No matter how far I’ve come in my recovery, discouragement seems to be a ready option. As a codependent, addict, and all-around needy person, I seem to have a knack for obsessing over what’s wrong in my life rather than appreciating the long list of good things I have. Experiencing even a small setback can become handy fodder for the recovery blues and send me into a long spiral of discouragement, especially if I don’t watch out for it.

When I get discouraged all kinds of things start happening inside me, like paranoia, sadness, isolation, and a lot of fear. I start shutting down to my present life and feel like I’m “walking beside myself,” something author Leanne Payne calls morbid introspection. I call it hell. It’s like second-guessing every word you speak and finding fault with every nuance of yourself, your looks, your talent, your intellect. Even the way you laugh or the way you walk—everything you do seems wrong and unacceptable somehow. You’ve probably noticed this in others, those people who are miserable inside and out all the time. It’s easy to see it in them, but it can be difficult to diagnose in yourself and even harder to cure.

What I’m learning is that discouragement can start with small things and then escalate into something far too big to handle. For instance, someone makes a thoughtless comment and I take it too deeply, reading meaning into it they never intended. A project goes south and I begin to think there’s no way to get it back on track. I receive a bit of criticism, deserved or not, and suddenly I believe I’m a completely worthless person, unworthy even of the air I’m breathing. That is a very, very unfortunate way to live.

Allowing myself to dabble in discouragement is dangerous for me. It’s like letting a child play with a poisonous snake or a loaded gun. It might seem okay for a moment, but the potential results are deadly. Today I choose to lay discouragement down and be thankful for the good things I have and the good things I know are yet to come in my life.

Paper Parachutes

(This is an encore post from John Joseph.)

Addictions are like paper parachutes. We assume the plane we’re on is going down. We snatch the nearest thing and jump only to find that the parachute is made of newspaper. As it shreds into thousands of pieces we fall faster and faster, hurtling to the ground at warp speed.

Once again, something we thought would save us accelerated our destruction. The crazy thing is that the plane probably wasn’t going down, but was having only minor problems. Had we not reacted in hysteria we would have landed safely.

As a sex-abuse survivor, I’ve jumped needlessly thousands of times. My paper parachutes have been forays into drug and alcohol abuse, sex addiction, hyper-spirituality, affairs, and even suicidal ideations. I’ve hit the ground so hard at times that it is a miracle I’ve survived and been able to maintain the relationships around me.

I've discovered about my recovering self that I must resist. Panic is my enemy, not my friend. The bizarre tendency I have to turn minor upsets into major catastrophes must be tamed.

One technique I have used to curb panic is to breathe. As a passenger, my job is to keep breathing and not jump. I’m not the one flying this thing. The pilots know what they are doing (insert your Higher Power here).

Turbulence, even severe turbulence, doesn’t mean we’re crashing. It just means we’re traveling and making progress toward our destination. Mechanical problems and delays rarely result in the mangled and flaming tragedies we imagine and are normal to the process.

Recovering from childhood sexual trauma won’t happen without turbulence along the way. We'll face setbacks, delays, bad weather, and crying babies in the seat beside us. The secret to staying the course and moving from victim to victorious survivor is simple: Keep breathing and don’t jump.

Fractures

(This is an encore post from John Joseph.)

In a recent session, my therapist and I discussed fractures in the psyche. Fractures often occur as coping mechanisms in children who are traumatized by abuse, violence, instability, or loss. A fracture is like splitting off part of the personality that “takes over” to help the child survive. Though not as extreme as multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia, those fractures and their functions are identifiable.

It didn’t take me long in that session to realize that my psyche is made up of the innocent little boy, the victim, the addict, and the self-actualized adult. Of course they're all me because I'm the sum of my experiences. I can chart the years in which one or the other has been the dominant expression of my personality. Until age four, I was the innocent little boy. Being abused at four moved me into the victim state that emerged into the addict from ten to eighteen years old. From age eighteen on, I've worked to become the self-actualized adult.

In that session, I came to understand that I still move in and out of the fractures, depending on my mood and circumstances. For instance, I was embarrassed in a business meeting the other day, and the victim side of me emerged.

I felt abused for several days afterward even though no real abuse occurred. If I’m not careful about recognizing when I've fallen into the victim mentality, it can drive me into the addict mode and my acting out behavior takes over. That progression helps me understand the years of compulsive sexual behavior I've suffered and gives me one more tool with which to overcome the effects of my abuse.

Self-loathing

(This is an encore post from John Joseph.)

One effect of my early childhood sexual abuse has been self-loathing. For the longest time I didn’t understand that was what I was dealing with. I thought I was just so messed up that I didn’t deserve the air I was breathing. I constantly compared myself to others, especially men, and I never measured up. The problem with that perspective is that it kept me from being the best me that I could be.

Self-loathing is an emotional habit rooted in envy. As a child my body was never as big as the men who abused me. They were taller, stronger, and their genitalia were bigger. I could never measure up. I can see clearly now that my lifetime of irrational comparisons was founded in those moments of abuse in which I was weaker and the abusers stronger. It wasn’t a fair fight. I was a child.

My continuum of self-loathing ran from a minor comparison of hair or height to athleticism or financial status. At best, it caused an irritation. At worst, it caused deep anxiety and self-destructive behavior such as addiction or depression. A few times I was so distressed by not being like someone else that I despaired and could have taken my life.

The cure for self-loathing I have found, is to recognize that envy hurts me. I am learning to celebrate myself—my body, and my lot in life. What I have is what I have. Comparing myself to others causes me to devalue myself. As I grow in recovery my goal is to love and appreciate who I am and to resist falling into the abyss of self-loathing.

Porn

(This is an encore post from "J".)

An addiction to pornography was one of the effects of my early childhood sexual abuse. The women in the pictures were fascinating, though I had no clue why they were unclothed. My brother would “show me” what the women did as we looked at the pictures. The natural result was a strong sexual confusion on my part. For years, I thought I was a woman.

I now live a heterosexual lifestyle and have been married for three decades. But through these years I have found myself struggling with this addiction. Of course, I felt the typical shame and self-loathing after indulging. The more I watched the more I want to do it.

I have come to understand many things about the roots of my addiction. The primary root is the yearning to feel needed. The abuse scarred me deeply and has manifested itself in me at times as an irrational compulsion for gay porn. This is what is called “acting out” for me. I acted out the early homosexual abuse through porn, compulsive masturbation, and a few gay encounters.

 Acting out in any way is destructive emotionally and spiritually, but especially to my marriage and to my work. When I sense a temptation to indulge in porn, I try to remember that this feeling is strong, but irrational. The porn will never satisfy me in the deepest way and it can never heal what hurts the most—my broken heart.

Waiting to Exhale

(This post comes from an anonymous reader.)

One of the effects of my abuse has been the feeling of holding my breath inside. Because sexual addiction was a huge result of abuse in my life, I didn’t think I could breathe unless I was acting out the brokenness inflicted upon me through sexual molestation. I found my deepest worth in being used by a man. When that wasn’t happening, I didn’t feel I was breathing.

A therapist related my need to be abused to people who cut themselves. I’m not an expert on cutting, but my therapist said that cutters seem to feel as I did, existing miserably between periods of cutting themselves. He indicated they feel like they can’t breathe until they cut. Once they cut, they feel temporary relief, then all the self-loathing returns. That described me.

I lived for years holding my breath between acting out sexually online or with others as a result of my abuse. If I wasn’t engaging in my addiction I was thinking about it. My life revolved around secrets and shame, knowing that I wasn’t being the man I should be or wanted to be. I understand men who are living a double life and who often become suicidal because of the depths of pain and shame.

Yet the more I've come to understand that abuse wasn’t my fault and that I was victimized by older men, the closer I come to finding wholeness in my life.

I'm learning to breathe on my own and not just exist until acting out my addiction. I understand that my thoughts and feelings are often irrational and overwhelming and that I have to have safety precautions built into my life to help me to overcome them.

Learning to breathe emotionally is a function of the knowledge of being part of a caring community. Knowing I am a survivor is a great step, but I need support and understanding to overcome the abuse.

One day at a time I learn to take a breath, exhale, take a breath, and then exhale. I no longer have to act out my brokenness in order to breathe.

I’m no longer waiting to exhale.