When My Mother and Father Forsake Me...

Dan Hitz is the Executive Director of Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, a member ministry of the Restored Hope Network dedicated to bringing freedom to men, women, and adolescents struggling with sexual and relationship issues.  For more information contact Reconciliation Ministries at 586.739.5114, or visit us on the web at www.recmin.org.

For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.

Psalm 139:13-14

Those verses were intended to give us comfort as we realize the great attention to detail that Lord used to lovingly put us together in our mother’s womb. For those of us who grew up in a dysfunctional family, those verses may bring up different emotions altogether. We may wonder why the Lord “chose to put us in that specific womb”. Far from feeling good about ourselves as the Lord’s creation, our negative upbringing can make us feel like damaged goods.

Erik Erikson is a developmental psychologist famous for identifying the stages of psychosocial development. His theory basically describes God’s intent for the role that parents and other significant people play in our emotional and social development. Unfortunately in this fallen world, not all of us have grown up with a healthy mother and father. Not all of us have gone through childhood and adolescence with a healthy connection to our peers. If that is the case in your life, the Lord can heal the emotional wounds inflicted through the things you have experienced. He can also heal the wounds you’ve endured because the nurturing and care that you were supposed to receive didn’t happen. Psalm 27:10 reads, “When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me.” God can heal the hurts in your heart and fill the emotional voids.

A brief exploration of God’s intended role for our parents and peers will help you understand where you need the Holy Spirit to touch your heart. Our relationship with our mother is the most important relationship that we have when we are born. Mothers are intended by God to give us a sense of being – a sense that it’s okay to be alive and that we have value. Mom’s nurture us. When we are hungry they feed us. When we mess our diapers, they change us. We learn from them that our lives are celebrated and that we will be well cared for.

After we learn to crawl and walk, we look beyond mother to our father. Fathers are intended by God to help us learn to explore the world and take the initiative to try new things. They are also designed by God to encourage us to grow into the identity and purpose that He created us to have. Dads empower us to become established in this world and succeed. Little girls learn what it means to be female through their mothers, while little boys learn what it means to be male from their fathers.

As we enter school, the next important relationships we have are with our same-gender peers. At this stage boys usually think girls have “cooties” and girls may think boys are a bit nasty. This is a normal stage of development. Little boys learn how to relate to other little boys as they interact and play together. It works the same for girls. We learn that we are a good and acceptable little boy or girl as we fit in well with other little boys or girls.

As we gain confidence in our own gender peer group, we then begin to reach out to the other gender and learn how to relate to them. Boys notice that the girls lose their cooties and are becoming attractive. Girls notice that the boys aren’t so nasty after all. Confidence in who we are as a person continues to grow as we establish healthy relationships with the opposite sex.

God intends our emotional and relational development to continue throughout our lives as we enter into committed relationships, begin our families, and relate to others in our community. Many of us have not had the ideal development and growth described in this article. A problem at any stage of development will create challenges in the future stages. Fortunately, the Lord has taken that into account and has made provision for our emotional healing on the cross. We can take comfort in the verse that was referenced earlier in this article which reads, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me.” When Jesus began His ministry, He read out of the book of Isaiah where it says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted…” (Luke 4:18-19). In the original language, the phrase “brokenhearted” refers to shards of glass like when you break a mirror. Jesus was saying that He was sent by the Father to heal the “shards of glass” – the fragments of our heart – from emotional trauma and neglect. We find in Jesus a loving Savior who is willing to hear our prayers, heal our emotional wounds, and fill the voids in our hearts with His presence.

If you’ve grown up without the kind of nurturing that God designed you to have, spend time in prayer and share your hurts with Him. Recognizing our areas of deep need is a first step in overcoming our mother and father wounds. Be honest about your pain. Ask Him to teach you to recognize His healing presence and to heal your heart. As you work through the various areas of need in your heart, you may recognize pockets of hidden anger. It is important for your own personal growth to learn to forgive those who have wounded you. Forgiveness is more for your sake, than for the sake of those who have offended you. Your offender may be totally unaware that he or she has wounded you, or he or she may actually be glad that you were wounded. We live in a very fallen world. Harboring anger and resentment will only serve to hinder you, keep you bound to your wounds, and give your offender the victory. Forgiveness sets you free. Ask the Lord to help you release your anger and resentment to Him and allow Him to deal with those who have hurt you. Your offender and your wounds will lose their power as you experience the healing power of Christ.

Sometimes when we are sinned against, we respond with sinful reactions. Ask the Lord to show you the areas in your own life where you have responded to your pain in sinful ways. When He does, repent and seek to make amends where appropriate. In walking away from our sin we find a deeper capacity to receive God’s love and walk in deeper relationships with others in the Body of Christ. In addition to friends, we all need others who are more mature than us and have journeyed successfully through some of life’s difficult pathways. Ask the Lord to send you a safe, Christian mentor to walk with you and help you in your journey. Your pastor, a recovery group, or the pastoral care department at your church may be a good place to start. No pastor or mentor can become the long-lost mother of father that you never had, but he or she can share his or her experience with you as you both walk towards Jesus together.

As you follow these steps in your journey, you will begin to experience the fulfillment of the verse, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me.” You will grow into a beautiful relationship with God the Father where He truly will fill the voids in your heart. He longs to become the safe, loving, nurturing parent that you have always wanted.

© Reconciliation Ministries 2014. This article may be reproduced and distributed as long as credit is given and no fee is charged.

God Meant it for Good: A Lesson from Joseph

Craig is a licensed Minister of the Gospel in the International Fellowship of Christian Assemblies. He joined the ministry team of Reconciliation Ministries in 2023 as a ministerial caregiver and prayer minister. Craig’s passion for recovery ministry comes from his own process of healing from childhood neglect, emotional and sexual abuse, and relational challenges. He has experienced the Lord’s transforming power in his life and has a passion to help others grow in Christ and experience the healing that the Lord provides.

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.” – Genesis 50:20 NLT

As the youngest of 3 boys in an extremely dysfunctional and abusive home, I have always been the caretaker and the strong one. I started counseling people when I was in junior high and have taken care of hurting/needy people all of my life. It was easier to take care of others than to face my own life because when you are helping others, no one asks about you.

I had always been different growing up and my dad never accepted me. Anyone not like him was wrong.  He was an accountant and very logical and I was creative, sensitive and not the normal rough and tumble boy like my two older brothers. My dad was in his own world which consisted of work and having a “Better Homes & Garden” yard. This fit with the image that he wanted to have of us being the “perfect” family to all on the outside. My brothers and I were on our own to figure out life and how to not get dad angry. My oldest brother made the mistake of trying to get close to my dad, and we watched in horror as my dad emotionally destroyed him. Needless to say, being close with my dad was not an option for me. My mother was very stressed out with 3 boys very close in age and having no family support in raising us. When I was very young my mother had a nervous breakdown from the pressure of raising three boys and trying to be perfect enough to please my perfectionistic, workaholic, raging father. I learned at a very early age not to be a burden to anyone and not to need. My mom became completely depleted emotionally and started to turn in greater ways to me as the youngest and more sensitive child for her emotional needs, intimacy, and support. We had been enmeshed since I was born, but it became even more so now to the point where I had no identity of my own. In this I learned that I was not allowed to live, need, feel, or exist because I was there to meet her needs. Basically, I was a non-person. If I felt smothered or had any preferences to not be so close to her, I was wrong. I felt like a fly in the web of a spider who was trapped by the web and having my blood sucked out of me a little at a time. Some of the time the spider was kind and other times I could tell that it was killing me. I learned to suppress my hatred of my mom because how can you hate your mom especially when she is “Mother Teresa” to the rest of the world. She really was a great lady it was just that she was also very broken, and I was the one who bore the brunt of her brokenness. I was beginning to view “love” as something destructive because as I was to learn later, abusive people tend to tell their victims often that they love or care for them.

At age 10 a male member of the family started to molest me and this went on for 3½ to 4 years; this just about destroyed me. I didn’t know how to deal with the shame, confusion, and devastation, so I learned to shut down and become numb in order to cope. As I look back, I can see why the longer the abusive relationship lasts the more damage it causes. The reason being is that over time you become more and more dysfunctional as you try to cope with the on-going horribleness of it all. You start out in a shock and trauma phase and gradually adjust. I even got to the place of lying to myself that this was some kind of special relationship where he really cared about me. Needless to say, the damage was quite severe. I walked into junior high school while this was still going on and was immediately labeled as gay, because I was so confused, and treated as a leper. Most of my friends split and I was left to survive on my own. In an effort to try and make sense of everything that was happening to me, I turned to the world of make believe: the theatre. I could pretend to be someone else and that people liked me. I reached out for a male image to become and ended up with the male model image popularized at the time by “GQ” magazine. I grabbed onto this with all of my might and transformed myself into this image. I also lost myself in the theatre and the hope of being a star someday. The GQ image brought with it a lot of problems as men and some women started responding to the alluring person I had become. Being propositioned and made passes at become a normal thing, but it was very confusing for me. While I was still being abused by the male family member, I had become a Christian in 7th grade, but never allowed the Lord to do much in my heart because I didn’t trust anyone. I didn’t even discover the Bible until I started to go to a youth group in high school. I didn’t know what to do with all of the confusion in my life, so I buried it. My brother had introduced me to hardcore porn during the years of my molestation, so I went to the local bookstore and found a whole world of porn that I immersed myself into trying to deal with my pain and confusion. 

In college the propositions became more frequent and I immersed myself into helping others even more than before. During that time, I did grow a lot in my walk with the Lord, but I still did not know what to do with all the struggles I was having or my confusing life. After college, I started out in ministry and swore off dating since I always ended up in abusive/destructive relationships; this became one more step to lose myself in ministry and forget even having a life or needs of my own. The unfortunate consequence of these decisions was my own near total nervous breakdown at age 30, when the Lord clearly ordered me to get out of ministry. It took almost ten years to recover from this as I worked hard to carve out a new career in the secular work force. With the Lord’s help I was able to work more than ten years in the human resource field; furthermore, after many years of working through forgiving my father, I even became an accountant myself and could embrace the talents that I had inherited from him.

Over the years, I tried everything I could think of to get some help: counselors, pastors, and books. While I learned many facts and information about my struggles, I really didn’t receive any healing. A friend of mine told me about Living Waters and I will admit that I didn’t have much hope that the program would do anything for me. I cried my way through my first Living Waters program in 2002. For the first time someone was speaking right to me and the Lord was giving me some hope for change. During Living Waters, bondages were broken, walls started to come down and many years of pain were beginning to be removed. After my initial session, I continued in Living Waters as a leader in training and then as a leader. The Lord has done a great work in my life through my years of involvement in the Living Waters program and through inner healing prayer. The Lord has healed my fractionalized identity and helped me accept who I was created to be. He also healed my broken heart and taught me how to forgive.

Previously, living as a victim who was not allowed to need, feel, or exist, I would draw people to me that wanted one-sided relationships: I being the giver and they being the taker. I also seemed to have a sign over my head that drew abusers. As I have come to life through the Lord’s healing, I now can feel, have preferences, and desire two-way relationships. Where I once was content to just listen to endless monologues, I now want to have two-way discussion; this is not to say that there isn’t a time and place where friends need to dump or get something off of their chest, but this should not be the normal mode in a friendship. I also can see the abusers a mile away and can run because I no longer feel worthless and deserving of bad treatment.

I used to hide from my pain and background by filling my life with other people’s needs. This was safer for me because my emotional energy was channeled outward and I could ignore my inner struggles. I became addicted to the feelings that came from helping others and it was like a drug that made me feel good about myself. The more I helped people, the better I felt, so it became quite a cycle until I crashed. Now I no longer need to help others to feel good about myself or to ignore the things in my life because the Lord has healed me and helps me address the things going on in my life. Today, I am developing disciples, doing some prayer ministry and ministerial care for Reconciliation Ministries, and making my way back into full-time ministry as a planter of house churches. As I move back into ministry this time, the Lord has taught me a great deal about having a balanced life. It is okay for me to have a life and be alive and enjoy having friends. I am no longer hiding from my background and pain through helping others. He has healed me and I am ready to give again using my God given gifts as they were intended to be used. It is not God’s desire to use me as my abusers did and chew me up and spit me out when He is done. The Lord desires to work through my life to help others, and He also desires to have relationship with me.

Craig is licensed as a Minister of the Gospel. He provides ministerial care and prayer ministry. If you would like to schedule an appointment with him, call 586.739.5114.

Photos used under license with www.shutterstock.com.

© 2023 Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, Inc. This article may be reproduced and distributed as long as no fee is charged and credit is given.

When Healing Hurts: Ministering to Sex Trafficking Survivors

Katrina's Mission is about abolishing sex trafficking in the city of Detroit and restoring hope to survivors through the love of God. In this article, she shares insights about those who are trafficked, as well as some of the challenges survivors face in their recovery process. 

 The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the exiles of Israel, He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Psalm 147:2-3 NIV

There are so many in this world who are hurting and broken. Each one of us goes through trials. While this is true, the path to healing is different based on the trauma that was endured. I have the privilege of helping to bring healing and wholeness to women that have been rescued from human trafficking.

Katrina and her team regularly minister to trafficking victims on the streets.

Before we get into the healing, I want to clear up a common misconception about human trafficking. In the four years that I have worked with survivors and listened to their stories I have never heard any of them say that they were abducted. Each woman that I have spoken to has had some type of “relationship” with their trafficker. Social media is typically the platform that the trafficker uses. In this day and age, we generally post everything about our lives. This is what the traffickers look for. They scour and search for the vulnerable. They will then befriend and earn their trust. The traffickers are very skilled at what they do. In only a matter of days they will have earned your trust, convinced you that they have a better life for you, and that they love you. This is one of the reasons that most women have a difficult time leaving and healing. They feel they made the initial choice to be with their trafficker, so now they deserve what they get.

The road to healing begins with breaking down and rebuilding. You have to break down all the lies that they believe. Examples of this are “I deserve this,” “nobody will ever want me again because I'm dirty,” “this is all that I have to offer,” and “I am worthless”. These are just a few of the lies that have been embedded into them. There is also a deep fear instilled in them. Fear that the trafficker will find them. Fear they will be beaten again or even killed. These were not idle threats. Most of the women have been beaten and brutally raped to force them into submission. Once you can break down the fear and lies, you can help replace them with truth. Truth about who God says they are. Truth about the fact that one choice should not define us for the rest of our lives.

The next part of healing is to break the trauma bond. A trauma bond is a lot like Stockholm syndrome. In the beginning of the “relationship” they felt like there was a connection with the other person and they were falling in love with them. They had begun dreaming of what their future would be. When they realize that this is not the case they begin to look to their trafficker as their protector. Although he may abuse her, she is under the illusion that he won’t let anyone else hurt her. This connection is so strong that even when she does get beaten or raped by another person she does not feel that he let her down.

Stock photo courtesy of Eric Ward via www.unsplash.com.

Once you have gotten her to this point of healing, she is now able to begin the deepest part of healing. Healing what was initially broken within her to make her vulnerable in the first place. By this time that initial trauma is buried so deeply within that it is extremely painful and uncomfortable to deal with. This is when many of the women will return to the streets. The process of healing is a whole new pain that they don’t know what to do with. Therefore, they return to the streets because it’s a predictable pain. Healing from this type of trauma isn’t linear. There isn’t a straight line that will take them from broken to healed. It is a process. It takes time. It takes love. It takes those who are willing to walk beside them, pick them up when they fall and encourage them along the long and winding road. I think one of the hardest parts of working with these women is giving them the freedom to give up on their healing. You can’t force someone to forgive themselves, to believe in themselves, or to complete the healing process. All you can do is plant seeds of faith, hope and love.

Stock photo courtesy of Kelly Sikkema via www.unsplash.com.

The last stage of the healing process is helping her to create new “normals”. Our goal is to equip the women to be self-confident and independent. This comes in the form of teaching them how to make their beds, clean the house and do laundry. They will also have to learn how to create a grocery list and then go grocery shopping. The women go to church and a weekly Bible study to learn who they are in Christ. The women are given a stipend so they can learn how to budget and save money. Many of the women have had all of their identifications stolen. We help them get their birth certificates, social security cards and a state ID. Once they have proper identification they can choose to continue their education or learn a trade. These survivors are some of the bravest women I have ever known.

Katrina is a credentialed missionary who has worked with Elli's House 313 for the last three years, ministering to trafficked women still on the street as well as rehabilitating women rescued from sex trafficking. It is Katrina's passion to see the broken hearted be healed, to proclaim freedom to those in captivity, and show those bound in shame and despair that there is a Savior who sees them, and has loved them every moment of their lives since He first formed them in the womb.

If you'd like to partner with Katrina in offering these beautiful women beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning and a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, you can visit https://giving.ncsservices.org/App/Giving/ncs-3761 and choose Katrina Kalinowski from the drop down menu.

Follow her mission on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Katrinas-Mission-101377431259729/?ref=page_internal

Follow her on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/katrinasmission/

© 2022 Katrina Kalinowski. This article was printed by Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, Inc. with permission.

The Secret Shame of Male Sexual Abuse

Dr. Doug Carpenter is the author of the book, Secret Shame: A Survivor’s Guide to Understanding Male Sexual Abuse and Male Sexual Development. He is a Licensed Psychologist in the state of Michigan. He and his wife, Mary Carpenter, LMSW; are the founders of Insight Counseling Services. Dr. Carpenter has a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from Forest Institute of Professional Psychology; earned a Master of Science in Counseling and Substance Abuse Rehabilitation from Pace University; and has an Associate of Arts in Theological Studies from Kent Christian College. Dr. Carpenter has extensive study and therapeutic skills in the area of gender role conflict, shame, sexual abuse and trauma, and chemical and behavioral addictions. You can find more information about his counseling services at http://www.insightcounselingpc.com/. This article is printed with the permission of Dr. Carpenter.

A famous psychologist, Carl Jung, said that “Shame is a soul eating disease.” Sexual abuse is the secret shame that lies deep within boys and men. For decades, the focus of sexual abuse research, educational programs, and media has been on the suffering of females. There has been much less attention given to the effects of sexual abuse on males. 

Men who have experienced sexual abuse deserve to be heard and to heal! The wounded inner child deserves to be comforted and protected, and the adult deserves to be free of the impact of sexual abuse and move into living a happy life free of emotional, physical, relational, and sexual dysfunction and compulsivity.

The effects of sexual abuse are vast and individualistic. There are commonalities, such as sexual identity confusion. However, the degree it affects a man on an individual basis is limitless. The American Psychological Association reports that 40% of men who are sexually abused will experience no ill effect. However, that leaves 60% of men who will have some problems ranging from mild to severe. The research identifies that men wait anywhere from 20-26 years before telling anyone about their abuse - think of all the issues boys carry from childhood into their adult lives. Few boys report sexual abuse as it is occurring or shortly after. Chapter 9 of my book, Secret Shame: A Survivor’s Guide to Understanding Male Sexual Abuse and Male Sexual Development, examines over 30 reasons why men do not disclose their sexual abuse.

At some point, a boy or man may choose to disclose a small snippet of his abuse. The reaction of the person whom they tell has significant implications on their decision to continue telling their story or return to the deep cloistered cave of secret shame. The mental grappling a man goes through concerning disclosure is a significant struggle. This decision is as significant, if not more, than all other decisions in life such as whom to marry, where to live, and what career to pursue.

The man needs to explore how the abuse changed his thinking and behavior. A good majority of men were abused before puberty. The research identified that men on average are abused around the age of eight or nine. This is considered the latency stage of development where boys are focused on learning and growing in their skills to navigate the world around them. Issues of a sexual nature are supposed to be dormant between the ages of 6 until puberty. The disruption of this phase by sexual abuse or exposure to sexually explicit material such as pornography creates a stirring of sexual curiosity and desire that is prematurely awakened and disrupts the maturational process.

Sexual abuse interferes with the natural process of imprinting and the development of a healthy sexual template. Our initial sexual experiences form a mental imprint, these sexual experiences are written on a blank canvas and become the template the mind compares and returns to when further sexual thoughts, feelings, and experiences occur. Most individuals can remember their first sexual experience, wanted and unwanted, in fairly great detail. Sexual abuse and exposure to sexually explicit materials take the sexual template awry. Early awakenings of sexual material can significantly increase sexual curiosity to unhealthy levels and encourage seeking out sexual information via unhealthy means.

At times, the abuse was so traumatic the boy used the defenses of dissociation and repression to survive. In these instances, the mind struggles to remember the details of the event or has absolutely no memories. This can result in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and associated symptoms such as flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, and body memories. No matter the degree of trauma, the contents of the event are stamped into the sexual template of the mind in either a conscious or unconscious format. Both formats impact the future mental, emotional, and sexual functioning of the individual. Learning has occurred as a result of the event and neural synapses were formed. These become the road map for sexual arousal patterns.

Sexual identity confusion is the number one issue faced by sexually abused males. Adolescence is considered a time of storm and stress along a normal continuum of development. Adding sexual abuse and trauma only compounds the stressful work that occurs during this era of life. Children and adolescents lack the cognitive skills to understand what is happening to them and how they arrived in an abusive situation. They cannot make meaning of the abuse.

A significant step in the healing process is understanding the automatic process of the human response cycle. The male body responds to visual cues and physical stimulation. The male body cannot decipher between abuse, sex, and intimacy. This process leaves a boy confused about his body. Why did it respond to another male? Why did I feel both scared and excited? Why did my body betray me and respond to another man when it is only supposed to respond to a female concerning sex? Why did I get an erection? Why did I ejaculate? Many boys and men struggle with believing their bodies betrayed them at a crucial point in their life. This creates a plethora of deep questions about their sexuality and masculinity. Many sexually abused males report the sense of having their masculinity robbed from them as a result of the abuse and that it somehow feminized them.

Why me? This is a question asked by all survivors. Another important step in the healing process is understanding the manipulative characteristics of the perpetrator. Sexual abuse did not just happen! It is a well-thought-out, calculated, manipulative plan on the part of the abuser. The perpetrator has a keen awareness of the vulnerabilities of the child and knows how to gradually begin taking advantage of these weaknesses. The abuser maneuvers himself into a place of importance in the child’s life. The child begins to trust him, depend on him, and may even love him before the sexual abuse begins. Before long, the child is confused about the deep love and appreciation he has for a person who now changes the relationship into something sexual. Someone the child thought was helpful, is now hurtful instead. Unfortunately, the perpetrator is so cunning that he finds a way to convince the child that it is their fault or they initiated it. This adds to the deep confusion of the child and the feelings of being trapped. Self-blame becomes a paramount issue for the child which only leads to further sexual identity confusion and significant issues concerning self-esteem, self-hatred, and self-loathing. The abuse permeates the very fiber of the child’s existence and he makes false attributions about himself. This begins the roots of shame that only deepens and festers throughout the psyche of the abused.

Male sexual abuse has a high risk of creating an array of sexual problems. Many times, men do not even understand the connection between their abuse and their problematic adult patterns of behavior. It may lead to complete abstinence from sexual and romantic relationships. On the other hand, the early awakening of these desires can lead to problematic relationships with pornography and sexual addiction. The research also shows a correlation between sexual abuse and later sexual dysfunction.

There are many barriers to the healing process for men. Sexually abused individuals are likely to develop negative coping skills to numb the pain that lies within. This can manifest through drugs, alcohol, sexual addiction, gaming, gambling, overeating, self-injury, even suicide. The abuse creates several problems that need to be addressed. In fact, it is often a side effect of the abuse, such as addiction, that lands a person in treatment where the sexual abuse is then disclosed as the root of his problems.

Successful treatment for sexually abused men involves several steps. First, the man must be able to let go of the masculine veneer he hides behind. He must get in touch with his feelings, make himself vulnerable, be willing to share his story, and first accept that he was a victim. He must stop the self-blame and accept that his perpetrator was a masterful manipulator. Children cannot consent to sexual acts. The second stage in healing is being able to take the facts and make meaning of the events. The man comes to understand his childhood vulnerabilities and how the perpetrator took advantage of those. He may also come to understand more about the perpetrator’s life and why or how he became an abuser. The man accepts that he survived the abuse. Third, the man makes healthier choices for his life. He begins moving from being a survivor into being a thriver. He identifies healthy coping skills and implements them into his daily life. He increases his overall self-care physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and sexually. Lastly, he begins to engage in healthy relationships with others. This happens through forming healthy male and female friendships, pursuing healthy and authentic love relationships, staying connected to an accountability partner, therapist, and/or group of people where he can share and live authentically as himself and eventually can use his story to help others. He frees himself from the shame he has lived in for many years.

© 2022 Dr. Doug Carpenter, Psy.D., L.P. This article was printed with permission.

Actor images used under license with www.shutterstock.com.

Secret Shame: A Survivor’s Guide to Understanding
Male Sexual Abuse and Male Sexual Development

This book has been in the making for more than six years. If you are a male (or know a male) who has been sexually abused and has never disclosed your story; felt emotionally and physically defective; felt your masculinity has been compromised; questioned your sexuality; repeated your sexual abuse with others in childhood; recreated your sexual abuse experience in adulthood; acted out sexually with other men; isolated from emotional and sexual relationships; turned to sexual compulsivity and promiscuity; suffered from abuse-related sexual dysfunction; and, have carried secret shame, THIS WAS WRITTEN FOR YOU!

As a clinical psychologist for the past twenty-four years treating men’s issues, my work has centered on the sexual trauma of men and how it is the driving force to multiple forms of addiction, especially sexual compulsivity. Throughout the years, I struggled to find a helpful resource for men that provided the information necessary for them to understand their trauma and the deep shame they carry. Male sexual abuse is complicated and the shame it engenders attacks the very essence of a man’s core beliefs of himself, his masculinity, and his sexuality.

The book is filled with information from hundreds of research articles, yet is written in common language understandable to the reader. The book examines the occurrence of male sexual abuse, the negative effects sexual abuse has upon the survivor, and the influence it has upon male sexual development, sexuality, and subsequent sexual behavior. It contains personal accounts of thirteen men who were individually interviewed by the author and who were courageous enough to share their in-depth experiences of sexual abuse and its implications upon their sexual development and sexual lives. The chapters highlight various aspects of their stories to help bring insight into the reader’s own experience.

Secret Shame: A Survivor’s Guide to Understanding Male Sexual Abuse and Male Sexual Development explores all of these topics in-depth. To help the sexually abused man work through these steps on his own or with a therapist, I have also created the Secret Shame Workbook that is complementary to the main text. The chapters coincide and offer a roadmap through the healing process.

You can find the book, Secret Shame, at https://tinyurl.com/3ncwffak.

There is Hope

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” - Jesus in John 16:33 NIV

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Lately I’ve found myself returning to John 16:33 for comfort. To say that we are in stressful times is a cosmic understatement. As Christians, we know that our only peace is in Jesus Christ, but sometimes we have a hard time walking that out. Worry and uncertainty make many of us more susceptible to the temptations and sin that “so easily trips us up” (Hebrews 12:1 NLT). If you’ve found your battle with sexual sin and broken relationships increasing lately, reach out for help. Don’t give in to the false comfort of pornography, anonymous encounters, or codependency. Jesus can bring you peace and give you strength to live for Him.

I was reminded of the precious love of Jesus a few days ago as I was privileged to share my testimony of overcoming sexual abuse and unwanted homosexuality at a Celebrate Recovery meeting in Saginaw. As I was sharing my story of growing up in pain and trying to make that pain go away through sin, I could see the hurt in many faces. I could sense that they understood the journey. These brothers and sisters knew what it was like to experience pain – some self-inflicted, some inflicted by others – and try to make that pain go away through sin. They knew the futility of it. They were also experiencing the beautiful love and transformation of Jesus Christ to heal our hearts and empower us to rise above the pain and live for Him. The love that Jesus has for everyone in that room is overwhelming.

Jesus has that same love for you. If you are struggling with sexual sin, the effects of abuse, or you’re trying again to find peace in the arms of another; look towards Christ. Reach out for help. We at Reconciliation Ministries understand the journey. Our next session of Living Waters is on January 25th. Living Waters can help you experience Jesus in a powerful way, and experience freedom. We have special tuition discounts due to the challenges of COVID, and we will be following COVID protocols for safety. We also offer licensed counseling and prayer ministry. Call us at 586.739.5114, and let us walk with you to Jesus. He loves you. He can change your life.