from trauma is often (though not always) different from women. And that’s primarily because of those damn Man Rules. “The Eight Points of Agreement Regarding Males, Trauma, and Addiction,” (see Appendix A) is a document created when, with funding from a private family foundation, I was able to bring a group of national experts together to focus greater attention on the issue of male trauma. I had the privilege of visualizing and organizing the summit out of which this document came. To date it is one of the most significant professional experiences I have had. This is part of the map to help you in your recovery.
“Asshole”
As I like to say in the trainings I do, “What is a word we commonly use for a man who has trauma? Asshole.” Isn’t that interesting? Have you ever thought that when you act like an asshole it could be because you have had some kind of trauma triggered and you do not know how to deal with the pain of it so you act in ways that push people away? You react before you even know what you are doing. Does that sound at all familiar? Have you ever thought that about the other men in your life when they are acting that way? Maybe you are in a relationship—romantic, professional, or friend—with a man who acts like an asshole. Have you ever thought that it could be trauma? Can you cultivate the compassion necessary to support him while making it clear that mean or abusive behavior is unacceptable?
The feeling of being “Jekyll and Hyde” haunted me during those first twelve years in recovery, and I never understood it. I thought those kinds of wild emotional swings were supposed to be over once I got through early recovery. I had a secret I kept from the people closest to me in my community and even from myself. The shame was debilitating. I didn’t talk about it in meetings. In fact, I was deeply invested in looking good in my twelve-step meetings because I had five years in recovery. Then ten years. Yet, all the while I was slowly dying inside and becoming more and more afraid that I would never be able to feel close to anyone without feeling like it was ripping me apart.
Of course, men are rarely encouraged to talk about their experiences of abuse or trauma, and our culture seems very confused about what is acceptable behavior both from and toward boys and men. The historical silence surrounding the issue of the sexual abuse of boys began to break with the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal. The sex abuse scandal at Penn State University reinforced that sexual abuse, one of the types of trauma that has the most ignorance and stigma associated with it, even happens to the young men we view as the toughest and the best representatives of masculinity. There have been some other notable events that have helped to erode our societal denial regarding the sexual abuse of men. In October of 2010 Tyler Perry talked about his own sexual abuse, and in November of 2010 Oprah Winfrey aired an episode focusing on men’s experience of sexual abuse. Two hundred men came forward about sexual abuse they had experienced. Even more powerful, their loved ones heard these stories—many for the first time—and were then interviewed for the next show.
We have started to make an increasingly clear connection between the violence and abuse perpetrated on boys and men, how men are raised in this society, and the violence men commit. Every man I spoke with during the writing of this book had experienced some kind of emotional or verbal abuse, and many talked about physical abuse as well. Some of their stories are heartbreaking. They run the gamut of abuse, from extreme verbal and emotional abuse to racism, to sexual abuse by both men and women, to the systematic abuse perpetrated at the boarding schools that Native Americans were forced to endure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The silence that many men feel forced to keep around these traumatic experiences of abuse causes a great deal of pain and, not surprisingly, often becomes a factor in their addictive behaviors down the line. That was also the experience of the men I interviewed for A Man’s Way through the Twelve Steps.
Knowing that abuse and violence against boys and men and the resulting trauma are so strongly linked with addiction, and knowing that if they are left untreated the aftermath of these experiences can cause undeniable psychological, relational, physical, and spiritual destruction, it seems not only logical but also mandatory that we should offer help and healing opportunities not just for the addictive behavior on the surface, but for the trauma-based pain and fears that underlie and feed it.
The challenge for men is in being able to overcome years of socialization and, in effect, training that have reinforced separateness, isolation, emotional illiteracy, and varying degrees of relational incompetence. Bobby said, “I have had to challenge my internalized ideas of masculinity around strength and self-reliance in order to examine a self-defeating pattern of automatic responses that did not serve me or others in seeking healthy outcomes.” When men get into intimate relationships and find their partners wanting, even begging for, communication, vulnerability, and openness, they often freeze up or are deeply scared by that level of intimacy.
Although men and women may come at relationships from different perspectives, they both want and need relationships and desire connection, authenticity, emotional openness, and vulnerability. One of the primary purposes of this book is to support men in looking at all of the barriers that keep them from cocreating and engaging in healthy relationships. These barriers are more than just trauma, but there is no question that trauma plays a central role. Importantly, as Ray pointed out, some of our ideas about being men actually help us: “They [these ideas about being a man] have given me the courage and the desire to go through the healing process.” Remember, the Man Rules have some positive aspects.
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