I ahve been asked many times how i handled shame during my recovery. There is no short answer so I am posting the chapter in my book. I know it is a long post but I think it answers the question from my perspective and of course it is probably different for everyone.

From my book Whole Again.


Chapter 8

Shame: The Great Silencer of Innocence

After returning home from Colorado, I had no reason to expect to be greeted with open arms from my family. But I was surprised; things when pretty well, at first. My reunion was not without its setbacks and I still had Ernie to find, and talk with others more important than that asshole. My family, being as big as it is; is never without drama and I had been too much apart of the drama of the past. I just didn’t want to be known for causing anymore of it. But it is part of the adventure of being from a large family. Eventually I would have to face the demons that were holding me back and start dealing with the shame. Shame was in the way and I had come home to heal, so my shame and trepidations about reconnecting with my family became just another part of the process.

After about six months of being home, it was time to start talking about what had happened to me and who the players were. For six months I had been trapped in the same feelings that drove me from them in the fist place. The pressure of not telling my family and being totally open with them was becoming too much and very distracting. It was time to get my past out in the open, the truth about what really had happened and it was time to eliminate all the wondering on my family’s part. I needed them to understand the truth of my youth and the relationship with my abusers. I believe those who did know something believed it was my choice to be involved with this animal. I needed them to know I was not gay in my teens, and the abuse really did serious damage to me emotionally, and it affected my relationship with them. I was not looking for forgiveness or understanding, just awareness. From the time I decided to come home until I was finally ready to open up with my family, I had been feeling I was catapulted back in time to my teens. I felt I was back in group therapy just listening to others talk for a week and a half and all the time I was busting at the seams wanting to speak out. It was like being in a pressure cooker. It was time to start talking about my abuse with my family.

Getting it off my chest was the best thing I could have done for myself. I had decided I didn’t care too much about what they thought about it, I just wanted it out there. I wanted to let them know that I was not gay, my abuse was not my choice and I was sick of having to deal with the pain and guilt. I needed them to know how sorry I was for all of it. I needed them to realize the abuse had cost me so much and kept me away from them, and I wanted it to be different now.

This stuff never ceases to amaze me. Talking about the abuse with my family was so much relief and I was surprised at how supportive most of them were. For the first time in my adult life I actually felt better about my relationship with my family, some how the shame was not as bad.

At the time I didn't totally understand how important it is to open up and talk about what happened or was happening. For the most part I was following my instincts. I learned the hard way, as with most things in my life, it didn’t have to be this way. I was truly humbled by how my feelings had changed in such a positive way for my family. Opening up to them was very helpful with my recover but it would be another six months before I finally started in earnest with recovery and some sort of plan. I had made a good start, by stepping out of denial and into the awareness stage of recovery. If I learned nothing else about recovery, it is this; there are no time limits and getting rid of one millstone always reveals another one to deal with. It is an ongoing adventure.

After I relieved myself of the lie with my family it was time to focus on other painful issues. After careful consideration I decided shame was the best emotion for me to deal with first. I had considered depression, anger and anxiety, but after thinking things through I reasoned shame had to be a root-cause emotion. Meaning, it may be a medium for the other emotions.

I wasn't sure how my past counselors would see my choices or my methods for dealing with these millstones. It really didn’t matter to me. Not because I was shucking my counselor advise or undermining their work. In fact it was quite the opposite. I found counseling very useful but I saw their counsel only as guide to the work I would have to do. Counseling, this time around, really gave me a sounding board for my own work and progress. It had many upsides but the real work was mine to do and I found my approach to be working well, so why change it. Maybe some counselors might believe I was self-diagnosing and treating myself, I don't know? But my counselor at the time was very supportive and was glad I was being so proactive. He was certainly impressed with my commitment and progress. Truthfully, if I didn’t take a lot of initiative, counseling would have taken much longer and probably would not have worked. I think this could be said for anyone's recovery.

So I chose to work on my feelings of shame first because I believed it was foremost in my mind and heart, and beyond fear, it was the first and foremost emotion I felt after the abuse started. It was a very powerful emotion for me throughout my abuse and the many years that followed. While I was being abused, I believed, shame was the driving force for many of my decisions, behavioral and emotional development. Shame drove me to isolation, acting out and was the source of a fear for me. Ultimately, I felt worthless and inadequate and these feelings led to many other reactions, conditioning and negative feelings.

Shame became my demon of self-hate loathing, and it did its job well. It made me believe I was broken and needing to be fixed. Of course, as a kid I could not see anyway out and therefore there was no way of exorcizing this demon, figuratively speaking of course. Shame was an incredibly damaging emotion with life long affects in my case. So for all of these reasons I believed shame was a good place to start. As with all my experiences with recovery thus-far, it proved to be a very painful process and challenged my "shadow beliefs" about myself, this was a good thing. It was painful but not in the way one might expect. As with the onion, each layer revealed another layer to be dealt with. What I found painful was the number of layers. They were many and they were all revealing. They were shocking and profoundly uncomfortable at first, and there were pleasant surprises from time to time. But with each layer I peeled away the next became more easily dealt with. With each exposed layer I found my fears diminish and my resolve and confidence toward recovery strengthened.

I am not sure where I heard the term "shadow beliefs" so I will not take credit for the term, only that I heard it many years ago or read it somewhere. What it means to me is false beliefs about ones-self. When it comes to abuse, it is a very good definition of what happens to a victim's self-image. We develop a sense of “self” based on our environments and type of positive or negative reinforcements we are exposed to. As kids, we only know what we are told, feel or are exposed to. If positive reinforcement is non existent, as was the case with me, then it had to lead to a lower self-image and low self-esteem. I was a kid and I didn’t have a clue what was normal, right or wrong or which way was up when it came to emotional development. I had no way of comparing what was happening to me with what was right, wrong, or normal. Abuse in my mind was everywhere and I didn't understand in those early years it was this thing called abuse. It was just something happening to me all the time and it didn't make me feel very good. I had an overwhelming sense it was wrong, but I was too scared, and too ignorant to face what was happening. Whenever I was being abused I simply went somewhere else in my mind which developed into a sense of duality, a very real sense of being disconnected. Recovery had taken me this far with understanding some of the aspects of the shame but it was not nearly far enough.

Recognizing the shame was only the first step in learning how to process it. "Accepting it" had a great influence on me, was second step. And understanding denial kept me from feeling connected emotionally to the shame was third. Now I had to learn to connect with the shame and let myself feel it, rather than the numbness it has left me with. I knew of no other way but to take the bull by the horns and really process this beast out of my life. Learning to connect with my shame was not easy. In time I learned just thinking about it would not melt the wall of solid ice I placed around it. I had to find a way to melt these walls and really connect directly to my sense of shame, too feel it and conquer it. I had to make a connection between my mind and my heart. It took a while for me to realize the lack of a connection between the mind and emotional heart was the source of the isolation I felt. They don’t teach you these things in school and I didn’t have a clue how to do it.

For several weeks I found myself just rationalizing my feelings and not connecting to them, something I had become very good at over time and was perhaps the foremost tactic in my arsenal of self-deception. I had to find a different way. I began to think in terms of how to feel an emotion. I needed to understand what it meant to connect with an emotion. I had never thought about it. How do you just let yourself feel an emotion, especially one that is so negative? Hell I am a guy and not a women. Everybody knows women are better at feeling than guys. After all, I had spent a life time trying not to feel these feelings and learning to consciously ignore them. How do you turn a life time of conditioning around?

I decided to try and stop thinking about the mechanics of shame and get into the cause and effect aspects. Over the years I had read many self-help books and had a good counselor or two who I used for stress and depression. I started to think back to these sources of information and a technique of asking oneself questions about a problem, this was a common technique. As it turned out, asking questions is the same approach I use as an engineer when working on a problem. So I was good at it. Understanding the right questions to ask was the trick. Until now, I thought asking questions was a good approach for rationalizing my feelings but it was never fully effective in connecting me to feelings. It occurred to me, maybe I was not taking this technique far enough. Maybe, if I used this technique in conjunction with my meditation and self-hypnosis skills, I may end up with a possible solution for getting in touch with these feelings. I was excellent at self-hypnosis and meditations techniques. I had a lot of fun with them over the years so I gave it a shot and what a ride it turned out to be.

I took the time to read as much as I could about child sexual abuse and shame before I started using my techniques. I believed it was very important because understanding as much as I could about shame before I started, would give me a good foundation for moving forward. It could only help me to get in touch with these feelings because I learned what to expect and I learned the intellectual truth about shame. Knowledge is power, was my mindset. It took about a month and a half to read and do research before I was ready to make my first attempts at working through shame, (of course all the prep work I was doing, in reality, was dealing with the shame and the beginning of processing it). Keeping in mind, I had read much of the material before, but not in the context of recovery. Also I needed time to sharpen my relaxation skills, which was all I wanted to achieve with these techniques. In doing so, I was practicing clearing my mind so I could focus on the issue at hand. During this time I also contemplated just how much shame I was really feeling and what it meant. This helped to set the tone for my attempts at relaxation and better prepared me to be able to confront my shame. I decided my mind set to the exploring these feelings would be one of remorse. I don't know why I choose to be remorseful, or why I needed any mind-set in my thinking and approach but my gut was telling me it was necessary.

I was ready to start trying to connect with my shame and learn the reasons why shame was so dominating in my life. My initial goal was to learn to “feel” the shame again and understand, in totality, what I felt shameful about. I spent a lot of years burying this stuff and while I had conscience knowledge of it and its profound affects, I could only see it in a disconnected abstracted way. I also had become very good at numbing myself to these feelings. This was important to understand before I began. It gave me a clearly defined goal. What I didn't realize was, I had generalized the shame and in fact I had forgotten many of the incidents that caused my shame. It wasn't long before my memory was awakened in force. I quickly learned it was not the shame I was disconnected from but the truth of my shame.

With all this wonderful new knowledge I began to confront shame. I started by lying in bed and in the dark with total quiet. Using self-hypnosis techniques I had learned from a book called the “Relaxation Response,” I was able to become very relaxed and in a focused state of mind. I asked myself several times what was I ashamed of? I didn’t think about it rationally. I only wanted to know what would come to my emotional mind. It wasn't long when, to my surprise, my wife and the night we broke up was the first thought to pop into my head. I was surprised and I was a little startled by this. I was not expecting it. I regained my composure and focused on relaxing and staying focused. Ok, in my mind I may not have understood why my wife was the first memory to jump into my head, and I was not sure how much it had to do with abuse, if at all. But it was a start, however, I did not feel the shame at this point, my reaction was more fear based. I wouldn’t allow myself to move beyond my thoughts of Barb or the night we broke up, I wanted to stay with these thoughts and see where they took me. I told myself early on I would deal with what ever the truth is and I would not set any issues aside. Total commitment. Right?

I tried feeling the shame I was seeking and I was not having much success. I was running through the gambit of questions desperately trying to connect with my feelings. I was trying too hard. I decided to focus on how I thought Barb was feeling the night we broke up. Only then did it really hit me hard, for the first time, in many years; I had made a real connection to the shame of that night. All the reasons for what ever happened that night didn’t matter; all that mattered was I had betrayed my wife in her mind and I had hurt her deeply. It was a prank phone call from a stranger who I chose to encourage, instead of just hanging up; I thought it was pretty funny at the time. Barb overheard a comment about big boobs and she ended the marriage, the phone call lasted less than three minutes. Until this moment I always thought it was a total over-reaction on Barb’s part and I remained angry for years over it. None of this mattered. I was never more ashamed of anything than I was this night of recollection and reconciliation with myself. I was feeling overwhelming shame. It wasn't about any damned phone call, I had hurt her deeply and the reasons didn’t matter. She was my wife and she believes I betrayed her, and now I could see her in my mind’s eye and I, for the first time, could feel the genuine shame I should have felt all those years ago.

I stayed focused on thoughts of Barb and how wrong I had been. I could see the same images from that night, the hurt on her face, her telling me she was divorcing me and how mad I was inside about it. I spent all these years justifying my actions and anger, by reminding myself how I had worked hard on our marriage after our first separation. I had never worked as hard at anything until now. And I never saw what happened that night from Barb’s point of view. I do now, and my shame is in full bloom. In fact I was overwhelmed with remorse and sorrow for what I had done. So maybe instinctively I understood I needed to be remorseful and my lack of remorse was a possible source of shame for me. How ironic is it when my first attempt at dealing with shame proved me to be responsible. I wasn’t expecting this result. How much more was I responsible for?

I wanted to get in touch with shame and I sure as hell did. It wasn’t her fault, it was mine and mine alone. And the shame only increased when I remember how angry I was at her for all of it, especially after we broke up. She wouldn’t have any conversations or talk with me, she simply ignored me. I couldn’t believe at the time, she could have such a terribly hard and unkind attitude toward me. When I left Christmas night I fully believed she would call the next day after she thought it over. I was wrong, she was ruthless and to this day I have very difficult time believing she could have been so heartless. But she was hurt. After my letters of bargaining went unanswered, I became totally angry and send a very unkind letter to her, I really regretted it at the time. Let's face it, there is nothing more destructive than words, spoken or written. The more she ignored me the angrier I became. After a few months of her treating me this way I found myself overwhelmed with anger. It didn’t matter that love was never an issue for Barb and I, and it really hurt me that she was throwing me out like a piece of trash, without one conversation. It seemed I couldn’t hold back all my pent-up anger. And now I don’t blame her one bit. She was never able to trust anyone and I played and we paid. I had really hurt her, it was my fault! What was clear to me after I sent that letter was I was projecting all my anger from my past on her, which was exactly what she was doing to me. We both had real abuse issues not dealt with.

Remembering all of this crap was difficult and I wanted to stop that night. But I reminded myself why I was doing this and that I would accept what ever truth comes my way through recovery. So I continued with the exercise by just accepting what I was feeling and I would not try to understand anything about it beyond the obvious, doing so as tears rolled down my face.

I was exploring shame and I had not yet scratched the surface, nor had I connected what just happened to my abuse. I felt totally ashamed. But I decided to push on. I told myself ok, hurting Barb was one thing but there must to be more, what else am I ashamed of? I let my mind clear only to see my mother with her head down, her shoulder hunched over and a very sad look on her face. The sadness I felt was palpable. Once again the flood gates opened and I was feeling all the shame of a son who had failed and hurt his mother so deeply and in so many ways. I had always felt like a failure as a son, in every way. I always believed I had shamed my family and most of all, my mother. I recalled all the conflicted I had caused during my adolescents by being involved with Ernie. There was no end to the pain I had caused my mom. And here again I was feeling more shame and sadness, not to mention a fair amount of quilt.
Working on guilt would have to wait. I had a very difficult time ignoring the guilt, but I had to. I was not doing this exercise to judge or condemn myself, which would be anti-productive. I said I wanted to feel my shame and understand where it was coming from. So I stayed focused on just these two goals. I was remembering the times my mother was hurt by all of this. My technique was working in spades. It was overwhelming and surprising but there was a difference, I was in control.

I was doing this because I wanted to. Not like it had been in past years when the shame and guilt were imposed on me by issues not dealt with. This was of my choosing. And I was remembering all I had learned about shame and this knowledge proved very empowering during this exercise. But I was not willing to stop yet. I wanted to know more sources of my shame. I had to hold back the tears but I pushed on. What made my efforts more tangible is the fact that I think in images. As an engineer I learned to think in 3D and color imagery. I found being able to visualize my thoughts was very useful.

And then I started to remember the other kids Ernie had abused. Most of them were several years older than me but not all of them, now as an adult I realize the older ones were only kids too. I was just a kid but I had done nothing to stop him. It was at this point I had stopped and could go on no more this night. I just started getting in touch with my shame. As much as I wanted to start analyzing and applying all my knowledge, I couldn't; I laid in bed just feeling my shame and how sad I was about all of it. My actions had caused a lot of pain for many people I loved. I wasn't going to minimize my responsibility by blaming the abuse. No, I had to feel my shame and just let it run its course for now. I was in recovery and in time I would put it all together and heal from it. But for now I had to stay on track with learning all the sources of my shame and connecting to it. There would be more nights like this. One step at time, I kept reminding myself.

Not surprisingly I found myself dealing with the abortion of my child. I begged my girlfriend not to have the abortion, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. Ronnie was a New York model for several years and had absolutely no desire to have kids. She didn’t like kids and I loved them. I tried everything I could to prevent the abortion. It was murder. My child had been killed by a heartless women and by a society that believes they know best. All I can say to all you pro-choice advocates is; you are full of crap if you don't think it is murder. Tell that to my broken heart. Tell it to all the fathers who have to live with the shame and guilt of what you did to their child, with no regard for the child or the father. My child deserved to live and because it was inconvenient, my child was murdered, and I could not help my own child. It was hard enough dealing with the fact that I loved and cherished kids, and the fact I had decided I didn't want kids because I could not in good conscience, bring a child into a world where sexual abuse was dominant.
But when I had the chance at having a child I was elated. And then the one act of fate that would have changed all of this was stolen and twisted into the same insane selfishness of my abusers. And as with my abusers, I had no control over what was happening to me or my child. After she told me she had murdered my child I only wanted death. I couldn’t believe this happened; I couldn’t even protect my child.

I had just started building that damned house in Chelmsford and I had no heart left for it. I started using pot very heavily just to numb the pain. I have never recovered from the loss of my child. I expected hell to have a nice cozy cell with my name on it. After the death of my child I really gave up. It took a long time to heal from this and I have never fully healed. Who could, well I guess there are a lot of people who don’t have a heart. Why else are there so many abortions. Falling in love with Barb was my saving grace, but she came along years after the abortion.

This was so hard to deal with. Remembering and feeling, damned near broke my spirit. I was responsible for a life. Me of all people was responsible for a child’s death. At one point I almost gave up and said why the hell is recovery important when looked at in this light? I could only remind myself of the fact that I had to push forward. Does anyone ever really recover from the loss of a loved one?

Over the next several weeks I continued with these exercises every other night or two. Each night I would go through my relaxation response technique and each night I would review my inventory of shame. I would do it in the exact same order as they were revealed. Each time I found the need to spend less time with each one, before I moved on to the next new memory of shame that came. It seems I blamed myself for every act of abuse. The memories were so many. I was amazed how easy it became to remember the abuse. It was sadder when I realized these are the predominate memories I have as a kid. It was also becoming clear I was blaming myself for all the failures on everyone’s part, including my abusers. This was an important revelation.

I began to think where did all the good memories go? Were there good memories or was there no room in my mind for them? Was the trauma from the abuse so severe it erased them and if so to what degree? This was scary stuff.

I noticed each time I worked on my shame, I found myself thinking differently about it. I understood I felt responsible for the abuse but my head and heart were seeing it differently, slowly. I knew it was not my fault and now it seemed am aware of and accepting a new truth. It feels like I am healing. The same way it feels when you break a bone. It is in a cast and it will heal in time, and everything will be fine. Ever since my day in the cemetery I have been feeling a sensation of transformation about myself. I was experiencing good progress that was encouraging. But it was still so damned sad. How could any adult live or function with this much shame, not to mention a kid? How could any kid develop a normal emotional life carrying this burden? The truth is they can't and I didn’t. There were many more revealing nights of recollection. The deeper I explored my shame the more painful places it brought me too. The feeling of totally failing my brothers and sisters was as painful as any of it. I know some of my brothers and maybe a sister or two believed me to be gay and I wasn't. I always believed my mother and father believed I was gay, but that would predispose the premise my parents had knowledge of my relationship with my abuser, and I don’t see that as a possibility. Being gay was the last thing I wanted anyone to think. However, I want to be clear here, I do not believe to be gay is to be an abuser and being gay has nothing to do with being a child molester. I felt I had failed all of my family and was not worthy of their companionship or love. What a price to pay.

One night, I was doing my relaxation exercise, and I was feeling the shame of how much I had failed God and how I was not as good a Christian as I thought I should be. I never believed I would be saved and hell was already preordained for me. This was so hard for me to deal with. I love God, and yet I believed I would never know Him in heaven. This was sad.

After about a month there were no new memories and I was left with trying to figure out a way to complete the process. I was definitely feeling the shame and guilt. At least the guilt was noticeably diminished. I wasn't sure how to proceed and I needed to take a break for a few weeks. So I discontinued the exercises and just allowed myself to think about things for a few weeks. This was actually a very good thing to do. I didn’t know why at the time, but it allowed me to process the shame in a natural way. Prior to starting the exercises I had already learned as much as I could about shame and how it made people feel. So there was a natural tendency to see my shame in two different lights. I could feel how wrong it all was with new understanding. And I could feel the pain; I was no longer numb to it. The couple of weeks turned into a few months.

It is funny, when I began this mission I was certain of only one thing and that was, I didn't have a clue what to expect. This has turned out to be so true. These few months of dealing with my shame was nothing less than unique. It has brought me to places in my heart I had long forgotten or never knew. I was healing, and it was exuberating but sobering. I found myself reliving the shame but it was very different this time. I told myself l had wanted a break for a couple of weeks but there is no real break from it. The genie was out of the bottle once again and a natural healing process was in play. And healing is painful process. But recovery makes it different. When you have a physical wound that you know is going to heal, it makes the healing process easier, and in time you will feel better. So there was room for hope and optimism. Whereas before I was in recovery, I believed the wounds were mortal, leaving no room for hope optimism, only a slow stewing suffering with no end in sight.

I found myself completely focused on feeling the shame and also rationalizing it with new insight based on truth. Initially, I was in awe of just how much shame I carried. I was sad because I was continuing to realized and feel just how much this crap has cost me. It was a horrible price for a kid to pay, anyone in fact.

Other dots began to connect after a few weeks. So many issues of shame had come to light it made me feel sad, and at times sick. Memories of acting-out were present but now I had an understanding of why. The one dot that was a total surprise was about the night Barb and I broke up, Christmas Night 94.

There were so many other things that made me feel shame. When I first started working at the age of fourteen, all my paychecks went to Ernie and I was not allowed to give my parents any part of it. All my siblings contributed gladly on a weekly basis. My parents really needed the help and here I was not able to give them a dime. It looked like to my parents that I didn't care. Nothing could have been further from the truth. For reasons I still have not learned to understand, I took the fall for what Ernie was doing, I never let my parents know I was being influenced so much by him. This has never stopped bothering me and it lead to another dot being connected.

The fact is I was upset with Barb because she would not agree to let me give my mother $200.00 so she could buy some Christmas gifts. My mother was on a fixed income and Dad had died six years before. We had plenty of money but Barb was having none of it. This resulted this being the first Christmas we had not visited my mother on Christmas. I felt terrible that night because I had to say no to Mom. I was angry and disappointed with Barb. We didn’t argue about it, I just decided to have a couple of doubles of vodka's and enjoy the day. I rarely drank and usually only when I was really upset about something. If I drank more than couple or three times a year, that was a lot.

Not giving my mother a couple of hundred dollars when she really needed it triggered a lot of old feelings. Ernie had done the same thing to me and my parents. And now Barb was not letting me give my mother help when she needed it. It was a very real trigger. It took recovery for me to be able to connect this dot. I really hated myself again, that Christmas night. I kept thinking what a lousy son I have been. And what did I do with it. I destroyed my marriage. It doesn’t get anymore self-destructive than that. Barb did nothing wrong and I still have no excuses, just a little understanding. She didn't understand any better than I did at time, how I was feeling or what those feelings would trigger; Barb was not the type of person who cared much about how other people were feeling, only what they thought about her. Until now I had little understanding about my behavior that night. I still don’t totally understand it, but I am sure I was triggered into another self-destructive behavior and I am sure there is more to it.

In time, my exercises found me thinking about the shame I had about myself with my family. I asked myself some very pointed questions because I was having a difficult time articulating this shame. You would think an emotion that caused so much pain would be easy to articulate. Feeling the pain is one thing, understand the reasons why is hard. It occurred to me I would need to do some of my relaxation exercises to work through this one.

I put myself in an emotional place where I was alone with one of my brothers. There was no conversation just me focusing on my feelings of shame while studying my brothers' face. I thought to myself how could I have done this to you? How could I have been involved in homosexual activity? Why would you want me as a brother and I don’t blame you that you don't. My feelings gradually articulated themselves into words. I could see how I believed my brother would be totally embarrassed and angry that I was a homosexual, keeping in mind homosexuality was a closet issue in the day. Over the next several days of exercises, I remembered how scared I was of failing my family. I didn’t want them to know any of perverted behaviors I was involved in or the acting out. At the time I didn’t understand abuse was unrelated in any way to homosexuality, I thought if you are doing homosexual acts then you must be a homosexual so I was as ignorant as the rest of society. Only the acts of homosexuality are similar, but that is where the similarities end. But tell this to a kid and it will not make much difference. The “thought” of being known as a “homosexual” was a terrifying label that I could do without. It was a horrible stigmatism for me. Keeping in mind my conditioning on the concept of homosexuality was imprinted by my abuser always trying to convince me I was homosexual. It was this imprinting above all that defined my understanding of what it meant to be a homosexual, in the day. It was to bad society had not evolved enough to make a distinction between abuse and homosexuality.

It was clear, I had learned at an early age to feel like a failure and to dislike myself deeply. This demon of shame was truly a root cause emotion. Working through my shame took a fair amount of time, longer than I expected; although, my progress to this point continued in a steady trend upward. Recovery took on a life all its own after awhile. Progress became self-regulating and steady.

I was about to learn much more though. At this point in time I had only scratched the surface of shame. During the first month of dealing with my shame using meditation techniques, I was feeling strange. I could not put my finger on it. I wasn't feeling bad, and I wasn't feeling good either, but it felt right. It was again strange and new territory for me. Over the weeks I had been thinking about what I had learned about my shame, and then it dawned on me. The things I had uncovered about what was making me feel shame were valid but not complete. The more I thought about the feelings the more apparent it became they were not the root cause of my shame. The shameful feelings I had identified were only affects of the abuse or things I had done to myself that made me feel shame. They were simply not the root cause of my shame. I had to dig deeper. But I was still plagued by this unknown state of mind I was in. One night while lying in bed it hit me. Again I was having a moment of growth. I realized I was feeling grief. I was grieving and I didn’t know it. It was another epiphany which led to more growth and healing.

The fact I did not recognize grief concerned me because I had been exposed to death with my father, grandparents, uncles, friends and children. But I had never felt grief like this. I didn’t have any understanding that I was grieving for my life. I had become so good at suppressing my emotions; I don’t think I have ever really grieved before With all the people I had lost, I was sad, I cried, but I never felt grief in this way. This was true grief for me, although I was not sure at what level or exactly what part of me was grieving for what. Realizing and feeling grief for anything about me was strange in the least and sad, if nothing else. Again I had to wonder, how does any kid develop normally when they have suppressed emotions of this magnitude? They don't, they become cautious, leery, angry, sad, and in the process we find ways to be survivors.

I decided I had to let myself go through this grieving process before I did any more exploring of my shame. I would let my mind and body tell me when I was ready for the next step in recovery, as long as I could feel steady progress and did not allow myself to stall they would be my guides. I had already realized I needed to go deeper if I was going to find more answers and healing. But my grieving was an unexpected result that I needed to learn to work with and heal from, and it was a very clear sign of healing.

During the next several weeks I found myself thinking about my shame almost exclusively. I started to connect more dots and I was really feeling connected to the shame. This was another milestone for me. I had always felt the shame or shameful but I never felt the any emotional truth about it. I had accepted, as a very young teenager, I was to blame for all that had happened to me. Unfortunately, over the years, I rationalized it was not my fault; but I never did any of the emotional work to heal from it. I just buried all this stuff so deep it was impossible for me to understand there was much work to do. I was never given an instruction manual on how to fix the wounds of child abuse. Hell I didn't even know how to recognize the signs. Strange there are very few things I can't fix. Now I was learning to fix me-so to speak. Do the challenges ever end?

I was definitely learning to connect with the emotions from the abuse. The only way I can describe how this connection feels is to equate it to my love for Barb. I felt the love and I felt as if Barb and I were one (and strange I still do), I felt complete when Barb and I were together. This is the level of connection I was now feeling for my shame, it was really part of me and I was in touch with it. It was no longer this obscured feeling with an unknown face. There was no doubt I achieved some sort of major break thorough and made some very real connections.

It took about six more weeks for me to get to a point where I wanted to move further into my shame. My grieving had softened, it was still there but it was manageable. So, I began to contemplate how I was going to move forward. I knew I was going to use meditation and relaxation but they were only tools. I needed to figure out what questions I needed to ask myself to get beyond what I was now considering only the “effects” aspect of “cause and effect”. I needed to connect with the real cause of my shame, the shame that drove me to shameful behavior so the decision was made that the only way to figure this out was too simple go with a trial and error approach.

The night I tried to move beyond my superficial shame, again proved very difficult and I was in for some more surprises. While meditating I had reached a solid emotional block. I could not move my emotions or thinking beyond the superficial shame issues that I was already familiar with. I kept trying to move forward but there was something very strange happening.

I had reached a point where I became acutely aware there was much more to my shame than I had been consciously aware of before now. Thus far my work bad exposed several areas I felt shame about and I was happy for learning this. But it wasn’t long before my need to continue with this was something I could not turn back from. In my exercises I had reached a strange place. I had a real sense of fear and panic.

I was still not able to articulate to myself what was causing these feelings. They were acutely real and palpable. The more I concentrated on trying to get myself in tune with the next level of shame, the more difficult it became. If I didn’t know better I would have sworn I was pushing against a concrete wall. The more I would try and reason myself through this emotional block the more anxiety I felt. I tried for several days without success. No matter what I did, my emotional block was not moving aside. All of this was weird to me and I had to stop and reassess my technique and try to understand what was happening or not happening.

In the days that followed I could not stop thinking about what I was experiencing. It was more obvious than ever. I had stripped enough of the superficial shame and I was now facing something much more sinister. Consciously I had come to a place my subconscious mind did not want me to go, or visa versa? I had to find a key to unlock the vault. Instinctively I knew I was about to face every fear I ever knew, including the silent demons that molded so much of my life. It took some days to rationalize what was happening. I believed I had reached a place of extreme confrontation. I had stripped away so many layers and now all that seemed to be, is me and one very big emotional block. Beyond which laid all the answers, the “prevailing truth” I have searched so long for. But how do I break through? Of course I did understand consciously it was about Ernie and the others, at least this was what I believed at the time and I was correct. But this was a powerful block.

I tried for several more nights to use meditation to break through with the same results. The more I tried the more I failed. The more I increased my efforts the more fear I felt. It was frustrating but with perseverance and a lot of self-reasoning I started to adjust my approach. The Armish have a saying ''the faster I go the behinder I get." I think this applies here. I couldn't emotionally force my way through this block, I would have to reason my way through it.

The next several nights I mediated and didn’t try to work with the emotions I was dealing with. I decide to meditate on a different approach by asking questions from a different perspective. I wasn't sure what perspective I had to come up with so I just let my mind wander into what ever questions came to mind. The question would click or it wouldn't. One question kind of hit me in the back of the head; well actually, it fell on me like a ton of bricks. ''Richard, what is the truth?" What is the truth? A deep sadness started to come over me, every time I heard myself ask; "Richard, what is the truth? the obviousness of the question was crystal clear. My perspective had to be what the truth. The more I meditated on this, the more the block I was experiencing was beginning to dissolve. Flickers of truth were flashing through, flickers of Ernie and acts of sex. More importantly these images were accompanied with feelings.

My first thoughts were of how much I had been betrayed by Ernie, Bette and so many others. The truth was there was no real love, only deception, manipulation and sexual abuse. The truth was, Ernie had made me his wife or consort. He treated me like a wife, he acted like he owned me, his jealousy was as acute as any couple may experience. He tried to make me believe I was a homosexual.

With each new truth realized, came several new questions. I say "new truths" because by now I was looking at them through the eyes of recovery. I had reached a new level of awareness and it was hard, very hard. I was finally facing Ernie, not some label named sexual molestation or abuse.

My truth had a face to it now. It would be just me and him for a while now. But I was still blocked from connecting with the shame or feeling it. What was I going to find out? Was I to blame? Was I a total fool who wasted his life on a fool’s errand because I believed there was love involved? What was the real truth? One truth was becoming more evident. Throughout the shame killing process I found myself dealing with fleeting feelings of anger. Again it was uncharted territory for me. It was clear I would have to deal with anger in time but not just yet.

Knowing I was knocking on the door of my core issue of shame was an anxious time for me. I was not excited about it. I only had an understanding with myself that I would have to go through this. I was on the eve of battle so to speak. I knew I would win. I had to. But knowing this didn’t make the next steps any easier, it only increased my resolve; I couldn’t run if I wanted to. In a sense, winning or losing didn’t matter, but facing this demon did.

As I continued trying to break through, I was amazed at how much emotional resistance I had. I could physically feel my conscience mind in conflict with my subconscious mind. It was weird at times. Regardless, I didn't stop and my next series of truths began to formalize into disturbing memories. Each night as I prepared to work on this issue, my heart would begin pounding through my chest, and the anxiety would build to an exhausting level. It took a couple of more weeks but I was finally making progress.

During the next several weeks I was flooded with emotional stress. I was breaking through and I was overwhelmed with feeling of confusion, stress, some anger and sadness. My sense was, I had finally reached a place where I was at the nexus of my shame. In my mind the level of emotional force was represented a huge ball or sphere. In it was a tremendous source of energy, it feels like the power of the sun, but it was dark energy. In my imagery, I see myself on the surface of this sphere which has a near impenetrable shell. I am using a hammer to crack its surface to get at the source, to no avail. In my mind I have put many cracks in the surface which I can see intense bright streaks of energy breaking through. It is very negative energy and I know instinctively I have to confront it because what I seek is beyond this intense force. And it feels like the energy driven shame is trying to explode out of its containment. It wants out and I want in.

I started having many memories of the sex acts I was exposed to. My first intimate kiss was by a guy. My first French kiss was from a guy. My first tongue to the ear was a guy. My first experience with sex was with a guy. The incidents of rape were vivid and this asshole always climaxing on my stomach. There was a time when I could not think of these acts without being triggered in an intense way. Now I was being triggered again and again, it was very disturbing but I came to do battle and it was truly a battle of epic proportions. I remember the constant child pornography this guy always made me look at and the films he had. I hated it and in time I would only pretend to look at them. He was always having me read homosexual dirty books. He started this stuff when I was thirteen.

With each memory came overwhelming and intense shame. I was truly at the core of my shame. To see myself in these situations again only reinforced my tendency to see the person (me) in those situations as not me but someone else. I couldn’t believe at any level I could have been that person until now. The truth is, it was me and not someone else. The memories continued for many nights. I was remembering in vivid color, the smells and my reactions at the time, and of course there was the anger that was fleeting at best but slowly increasing. I felt like I was playing a “whack-a-mole” game when it came to anger.

By now a few months had gone by and I was glad I had taken a couple of months to process the initial feeling of shame. In fact I could not move on until I allowed myself to heal and grow a little bit. Had I not done this, facing the core issues, as I was now, would have been impossible. I realized we need to heal from this stuff in small increments, baby steps so to speak. But something else had become clear. I was experiencing very brief feelings of minimal anger. I couldn’t understand why I was not feeling enraged, instead of the shame and guilt I was experiencing. It occurred to me I had never allowed myself to feel angry at Ernie or at least I could not recognize if I was. This was confusing to me. On the one hand I was abused and on the other I was not expressing anger over it. It dawned on me, if I was not expressing anger then that meant I was not feeling the anger. Why?

For the next couple of weeks I continued to focus on the intense shame I was feeling and why I was so disconnected from the anger. In my heart of hearts I knew I was angry and yet I was totally disconnected from it consciously. It was clear the anger issue I had was not being able to feel the anger, this I did not expect. As I contemplated why, I realized this was a major issue that had come to light. It also explained a great many things. At this point I had concluded my inability to connect to the anger was part of the cover up of self-deception. If I was outwardly angry then I would be acknowledging the abuse happened. This would not fit in with my self-deception that Ernie was a great guy. Also, as a kid my parents did not believe in kids expressing anger. In fact if we did it was met with consequences. Ernie was just as suppressive as my parents were when it came to anger.. This conditioning in conjunction with my denial made it very clear to me I was suppressing all my anger. No wonder I had acted out in so many unhealthy ways. This was another epiphany and moment of growth and awareness.

Understanding this basic trap was important and allowed me to set the anger aside for awhile until I was finished or had gone as far as I could with my shame issues. But it also places me in a position of not being able to ignore the anger. As with the other emotions of guilt and depression the anger would have to wait. Anger would be next, but not yet. And yet I experience anger in fragmented impulsive moments of insight and I was aware I was becoming angry. Core anger was a stranger to me but it was starting to become familiar.

I once again I found myself contemplating just how screwed up my life has been. Here I was working on recovery and I am only just discovering the many levels of shame I have had. While the process was allowing me to heal it was also accurate to say my inventory of shame was huge. And I was still breaking through the barriers. In my mind I was suppose to be simply identifying my shame and not healing from it as yet. That was supposed to happen in the next step of my plan. But recovery does not work this way. I have discovered once you become aware of an element of recovery the healing process is already underway.

And so the journey continues. I had more work to do with shame and it was a struggle. During this time I had become intensely active in the on line support group. When I had first joined this site I was amazed how connected I felt to these online friends. It was the first time I felt I was not alone with this stuff and being able to relate to other kindred spirits was invaluable. And now I needed their and my counselor's justification more than ever. Once more unto the breach, I guess. I was getting angrier by the day. The “six hundred” may have rode to their deaths but this would not be my fate. The fact of the matter is I was facing Ernie and all his demons. I knew I had reached the final level of shame. And now I felt I was in the fight of my life and I was not about to give in. I was going to plunge through this emotional barrier and take this son of bitch on head up and full front. Bring it on you bastard; I have waited a life time for this moment. It was time to take the final plunge.

I put myself into as relaxed a state of mind as I could and I put myself on the imaginary sphere that was holding me from the truth. In my mind I would no longer use a hammer to and break through. As I stood there looking at the rays of light bursting through the many cracks ,I simply said to myself, "face me you bastard". In an instant the barrier dissolved and I was sinking into the light, free falling but not out of emotional control. What ever waited at the end of this fall I was ready for. As I fell, I was crying, not in my mind but I was really crying, I couldn't control it and I didn’t want to. All the hurt and all the images of shame with this guy were passing me, the rapes, the lies, the torture and all the rest. And I didn't care. None of it was important to me. I wanted this son-of-bitch and I knew he would be at the end of this fall. And then I stopped. I was standing there looking to the center. Someone was there. I walked toward him ready to do battle and kick this son of bitch in the ass and out of my life once and for all. The “why" didn’t matter anymore. But I was in for another shock. As I walked closer and began to see this person more clearly, it was not Ernie. It was a little kid just sitting there in this empty place, devoid of all features and only light. The closer I went the more vivid the image of this kid became. He was smiling and had his arms extended toward me in welcoming manner. I was in shock; this was not what I was expecting. It was me. I was eight years old again. He was just waiting there all these years for me. He stood and walked to me and put his arms around me. No words. We just stood there holding each other. He couldn't stop smiling and I could not stop crying. For the first time in my adult life I felt whole. I cried for the better part of a week, on and off and in private, just grieving.

About two weeks went by and I was coming out of a mild state of shock. All of the shame work had really drained me and I didn’t feel the need to pursue it for a while. I was grieving at a major level. I would never have believed recovery could be so revealing or so good. I saw my shame in a totally new light; I didn’t need to feel it anymore. I never understood all the hype about an inner child and I didn’t know if this is what I was experiencing or not. All I knew was I had just accomplished something major in my recovery. This became a time for reflection. One night while on the DS web sight, I was reading some of the many poems and I thought, I wish I could express myself as well as these people do. I had never written a poem before and was not really inclined to do so now. But I thought it would be another tool for me to play with. For the next three hours I just wrote and the poem "The Boy Warrior" was born.

The Boy Warrior:

You came as a thief in the night.
Cowards heroics.
And took all that was dear to me,
never asking just taking.

You followed in the shadows a
all the days of my life,
But, now I see you, no more places
for you to hide,
You were the monsters chasing me in my dreams,
And will no more.

For out of the ashes of the life you took,
came something you cannot take
The courage of a child!
The love of a child!
Or the spirit of a child!

Yes you took so much.
And you still follow and torment
me in my moments of weakness.

So many times you wore me down,
and each time I would fight you back.
For so long I fought you to a stalemate,
never winning never loosing.

Me at the edge of the abyss,
And you always managing to
take more ground.
Never satisfied,
Greed with no bounds.

Always trying to push me over the edge,
and close you came many a time.
How clever you thought you were!

How blind you are by your own ignorance.
Only a fool wouldn't know.
That out of the destruction comes creation

Yes my old nemesis, my life long companion.
You did create something!
You made me!

I am the sum of your trials.
You are part of me.
I accept you are part of my life.
I accept you have taken all that is dear to me.
Above all, I accept you made the Boy Warrior!!!

Did you believe I would never find him again?

That eight year old boy, I left behind so many years ago.
It is he who carried me through life!
It is he who pushed you when I could not!
It was he who loved when I wanted to hate!
It was he who cried when I could not!
It is he who opened my eyes to you!
It is he who would not give up on me-when I gave up on him!

Yes you hurt me.
But you did not destroy me or him.
We stand together now.
We fight side by side - you have lost!

Yes! See what you have made!

You know the bad but what of the good?
You know not my measure of Love,
Compassion,
Generosity,
My spirit,
Love of life and people!
Or my unwavering faith.
You know not my willingness to do
the right thing regardless of the cost.

No you don't know me!
And you never will.

I will morn my loses.
And rejoice for my life.
There are no more shadows.
As we walk in the light of our soul now.

The soul of an eight-year-old boy and
a 53-year-old man who became the boy warrior.
A boy who's smile lights the way,
As we forever embrace and walk the path of life as one.
Whole again.

This poem, while not a work or art, had a profound affect on me. I still read it every day. And it feels each time I read, I am reading it for the first time. I am not sure if it is a poem. But it does the trick for me and it is an accurate expression of how I see my life.

During my quest to defeat my shame I learned a lot about myself and why shame is so powerful. I also learned it could be defeated with simple commitment to one's self and a lot of work and support. This is not to say it was an easy process, only much easier than trying to carry it as burden any more years. Shame was the foundation for so much my self-loathing, leading to guilt, depression, anxiety and self-defeating behavior.

My healing from shame may never be over completely, but it is no longer driving me. I have taken control of it and recovery has shown me so much truth about the shame victims feel, shame that binds us to the future. Thus far, recovery has allowed my shame to be understood and mostly eliminated but it is a memory. Not a memory with the feelings of shame, just a memory of dark times and how those times made me feel.

Shame was an all encompassing emotion and architect of self-image. For a kid, when they are developing, shame designs a very negative self-image for them. It becomes them and until someone shows the child another way, it can't change. Shame made me isolate myself and protect myself which was only a small part of it.

When I think back on all the negative aspects of what shame did to me, it is mind boggling. The defense mechanisms alone are incredible. Pretending my abusers were nice people was nothing less than bizarre but unfortunately very common. I mean how bizarre does it get when I asked this ass-hole to be my best man at my wedding? I didn't want him but to keep up the charade, I asked him. And the fact is I didn't have anyone else I felt I could ask. I didn’t have any best friends. It was sad; I remember when my brothers had a small get together with just them and me for a bachelor party. It was just us because they didn't know anyone to ask. There were a few they could have but they didn't know them so they were not asked. And besides I think at the time they were doing what they thought was right, I didn't think their hearts were in it. They don’t know how important that night was to me and how much it meant they did anything for me. My denial was astronomical; I have always regretted having Ernie or Bette as part of my wedding in any way, even the day of my wedding.

I was never troubled about how easily I made acquaintances, however I was always troubled how quickly they sensed I was holding them at a distance. It bothered the hell out me because most people found me likable and very easy to talk with. I really wanted to connect with them but there was always this sense of not knowing how to and feeling disconnected. I hated the game of trying to find ways of fitting in. My humor and honesty always opened the door but I rarely, if ever, moved beyond keeping people at an emotional distance. On the one hand I would be trying to and on the other not having a clue why I could not. I spent my entire life with a constant level of embarrassment always fearing people knew or would find out about my past. What the hell was there to find out? Only the shadow beliefs of an abused kid, who was made to believe things about himself that, were not true. All of this effort, and in the end I hid nothing. Benjamin Frankly once said; ''If you want to keep a secret between two people then one of them needs to be dead." So many people knew and no one knew what to do. Some tried, their intentions were in the right place, but their methods were flawed. Their methods only reinforced my belief the abuse was my fault and only served to deepen my shame and self-loathing. All I can say is they cared enough to try and it was not their fault for not knowing any better than society as a whole.

The number of times I have tried to figure out why I am always trying to please people has been uncountable. I had convinced myself, this is the way I am and I was doing God’s work. I have to say that these were no doubt fundamentally correct but I now know there was another underlying motivation; I was using it as a cover and a mask. I was trying to prove to people beyond any doubt that I was a good person. And if they thought I was a great guy then they would have no reason to ask about my past. What a game to play with ones-self. What a price to pay and what a sad sacrifice I made.

Other feelings would come alive through this process of shame. I was starting to feel some of my suppressed anger. It scares me because I was realizing I had so much suppressed anger. Looking at my life, as objectively as I can, gives me a sense of someone who has a lot to be angry about. I am beginning to realize just how much real suffering victims of sexual abuse endure and how much it was not our fault. The hardest part of my recovery was coming to grips with just how screwed up my emotional life had been and how much it affected everything in my life. I have truly lived a screwed up life. And how necessary it didn't have to be? Why are kids made to pay such a horrific price? When will society smarten up and get off the BS and put an end to this madness? It is a nice dream but I fear society will not, as a whole, be doing much more than it already has. I believe it will come down each of us making our own stands, one battle at time. I had a difficult time coping with the magnitude of energy it took to keep the lie alive. What a waste. It may have kept me alive but I was not living. I was just a caged animal who had found a way to accept his fate. A caged animal, who only found security and safety in the cage . The only lock on the door was the one in my mind.

It has been demonstrated by animal keepers an animal will stay in a cage with the door unlocked, if the cage is