Moving Through 

Not an endorsement. Simply a book I utilized in my early recovery. 

Writing has meant so much to my recovery. I remember journaling, just before I got sober, and writing certain words in code. I used numbers for letters in conjunction with their alphabetical order.

It was still courageous of me, but I realize now that there was an effort to hide within that code. I could not say that I was a survivor of 9,14,3,5,19,20. And I had such shame about it, that I was fearful others would find out about it. As a closeted gay man, actively engaged in self-destructive substance abuse in his mid-twenties, I thought the events (what little I could remember of them) were my fault.

Today, I can say incest (9,14,3,5,19,20) out loud. My personal definition of the word transcends any of the stereotypical joking, or front loaded shame of judgment about particular family dynamics.

For me, the word no longer means the violation of the familial. Incest is the overreaching violation of someone from a position of power. It is the best word I had at the time (late 1980's) to encapsulate the meaning of what had happened to me as a very small boy.

In today's time, the identifying codes have changed. CSA (Childhood Sexual Abuse) is one of the current monikers. It is more specific in its description, and attempts to remove the judgement of the victim. This is how I see it, anyway.

As I got clean and sober, the memories and flashbacks felt unbearable. They were frequent, and positioned me in a place where it felt like the horrors of my past were actively happening.

For me, talking about my recovery from trauma is forever linked with my recovery from addiction. The two are never mutually exclusive in my story. I know that is not everyone's experience, but my sobriety hinged on ownership of trauma from my childhood.

Being sober a while, gave way to other symptomatic behaviors. There were additional arcs of engagement that had their roots in trauma. Unrequited and intense love relationships, soul-crushing emotional entanglements, sexual dysfunction (There I go, speaking in code again), incessant cruising, being a magnet for the workplace bully, food, cigarettes, caffeine, and a host of other "coping skills" were at my disposal. And at moments of my recovery, I was blissfully unaware of the how the dots connected to trauma.

A lot of the above mentioned behaviors are decades old, but there are subtle variances of the dynamics that will always require maintenance and adjustment . . . Again, I am speaking for myself.

Still, I can look back on the path of my recovery, and see that awareness has been revealed at exactly the point in time when I was ready to receive it.

Recently, I am aware of how I can bottle things up as a way to avoid confrontation. At some point, the pressure becomes too great, and the top pops off the bottle. People around me are surprised at the intensity of my reaction to a given situation that has long been intolerable for me. Yet fear of naming the situation kept me quiet, until things were more than I could bear.

This leads to hurt feelings all around.

It's true that one of the possible consequences of setting boundaries, is creating discomfort in others. But in reality, setting boundaries of for the person who sets them. So if my past history of conflict is interfering with my present ability of limit setting, then I am perpetuating self-harm.

I am recently healing from one of those scenarios.

And while I did not need (or want) to retreat into some of the immediately self-destructive behaviors of my past, I am grateful for the safety net of my recovery folks who support me.

They help me continue to unlock the coded behaviors that are emblematic of CSA, and the lingering damages those experiences have in my life.

It may sound daunting or even overwhelming to hear that the work is constant. But there are incredible benefits to continuing on this path.

The fruits of this labor are even richer, when viewed through this lens.

M