The Shame Free Zone

Well, it's official.  We have finally turned absolutely everything we disapprove of into a disease.  I for one am fed up with it.  As a recovered alcoholic/drug addict (I just celebrated 24 years of continuous sobriety last September 4) I find it annoying how carelessly people toss that label around.  It's true humans have a tendency to do almost anything to excess.  Whether it is that midnight snack that turns into an entire carton of ice cream or video gaming which takes us away from face to face interactions with our loved ones, humans love what they love and sometimes they love it a little too much.

But addiction is a strong term and anyone who suffers from addiction can tell you that the reason we seek treatment and/or recovery is because we are afraid of dying. 

Did you get that?  Dying.  Addiction kills.  Now you can make a case for sex addiction killing.  HIV can kill and that is sexually transmitted so yes, sex addiction can kill.  But more importantly, sex addicts are so tortured emotionally that they run the risk of committing suicide.  So how many of these political and sports figures who have been "outed" as sex addicts of late are miserable?  Seems to me most of them are guilty of one thing: having more fun than we think they should.

As a Certified Sexologist, I work with sex addicts and the painful truth about sex addiction is that it rarely involves flying to South America to rendezvous with a lover or making it with every porn star, stripper, waitress, model, ad infinitum that catches your eye.  No, most sex addicts are jerking off to online porn while the rest of their life fails to get lived.  They go broke paying for porn, prostitutes and strippers. They are lonely because they cannot form a relationship with a real live human for free. And some sex addicts can't even stop masturbating long enough to hold down a job.  Some of my clients have lost several jobs due to masturbating to online porn at work. 

Sex addicts cannot stop.  Sex addicts are NOT having fun. Sex addicts feel like dying.

But the label "sex addict" is a convenient way to simultaneously shame and forgive our public officials, sports stars and celebrities. Labeling oneself a "sex addict" is also a very effective way to be forgiven for having too much fun.

Enough already. Sex addiction is real and it is real dangerous. But a lot of sex is just that - a lot of sex. If every married person who cheats on their spouse is a sex addict then about half of America is addicted to sex and that just aint so. A much more pervasive condition is Sexual Shame.  Most of us DO suffer from sexual shame and labeling everything from infidelity to group sex to BDSM as evidence of sex addiction only piles more sexual shame on what should be our God given right to diversity and choice.

To help YOU sort the Addiction from the Shame I have listed below Seven Ways to Tell if You are a Sex Addict or Simply Suffering from Sexual Shame:

7 WAYS TO TELL IF YOU ARE A SEX ADDICT OR SIMPLY SUFFERING FROM SEXUAL SHAME

SEXUAL SHAME:

1. You are afraid others will find out

2. Your wife or husband is threatening to leave you

3. Your church and/or religious leader (pastor, priest, rabbi, chaplain, etc.) disapproves

4. Your behavior is against the law

5. You feel guilty

6. You worry you are a sex addict

7. You feel worthless and/or bad and/or defective

SEX ADDICTION:

1. You would like to enjoy more intimacy but you can't get off unless you do your "ritual"

2. You spend so much time having sex and/or masturbating and/or viewing online porn that you don't have time for other things in life

3. Your sexual interests and behaviors are costing you more money than you can afford

4. Your sexual obsessions have caused you to lose one or more jobs

5. Your sexual obsessions dominate your thoughts so you can't think of much else

6. You don't enjoy what you are doing anymore but you can't stop

7. You can't stop

If you think you are suffering from either Sex Addiction or Sexual Shame, send me an email or give me a call.  I work with clients from Seattle to Miami and from London, UK to Berlin, Germany.  I love my work and I am fairly certain you will love what I can do for you.

lightly she steps

holding herself tight

careful not to breathe too deeply

practicing numbness

and being small

did she eat today?

when this cloud descends

she never knows for sure

the body becoming a burden

the bearer of so much bad news

starving is better than doing drugs

she comforts herself with the mediocrity

of her dysfunction

hopeful that after 24 years

recovery must be on her horizon

small distractions fill her heart with hope

the tiny sips the hummingbird takes

the sound of her dogs breathing

assure her that these animals

will not be murdered

how can anyone truly comprehend

another's pain?

the way we cope seems "funny"

to observers no doubt in denial

but this tapestry is beautiful

in it's own demented way

yes, i can hear Taffy spitting at the dogs

yes, i can see the burlap bag twist

with their collective struggle

but my father seems so proud

surely he will grant me admission

in his own demented way

the bullets are fast and the whimpers

are drowned by the sound of gunpowder

i search his face for the love i crave

and there is nothing - nothing at all

just the vacuum of wasted life

in my own demented way

i am forgiven for this crime

i am restored to the one who loves animals

and of course they love me

but you never forget a murder

even if you forget the names of those you killed

in time's own demented way

karma is doled out and debts are paid

sometimes with the slow agony

of all that can never be taken back

the murderer never just kills another

you kill yourself too

in murder's own demented way

you learn the value of life

and swear to cherish it

even if you have to kill to eat

even if you have to kill to be kind

even if you have to watch everyone you love die

in life's own demented way

death finds each of us

and the only thing that matters today

is that my tears find my face

and i refuse to "grow up"

and "take it like a man"

I can't listen to the current news about Jaycee Lee Dugard's recent rescue from her kidnapper's backyard without feeling a bit nauseous.  It's all over the news so I am sure you have heard the details by now.  She was kidnapped by convicted sex offendor Phillip Garrido when she was only eleven years old and has spent the last eighteen years of her life imprisoned in his backyard.  He impregnated her with two children who are now age eleven and fifteen and have never attended school.

The story is very unusual as kidnapping and rape stories go.  Usually the victim is found dead if they are found at all.  It kind of makes me wonder how many missing children are still alive, living in desperation confined to someone's backyard or basement. The prospects are chilling to say the least.

 I wince with embarrassment at the details of this crime. Unlike some rape and incest stories, this one feels all too familiar to me. Pedophiles populate both sides of my family of origin. My mother's grandfather molested little girls. My dad's brother raped his own brothers and sisters as well as his eleven year old stepdaughter. Recently I found out that a favorite uncle on my dad's side of the family raped one of my cousins when that cousin was just five years old. And of course, my sister and I were molested by our dad. After Dad raped my sister, she started having a recurring nightmare that she was pregnant with Dad's baby. Fortunately, that dream never became a reality.

But what really makes me squirm with shame is the fact that Dugard was held prisoner in the backyard and became an active business partner to her captor. While the public tries to wrap their collective minds around the idea that a rape victim could become close to her perpetrator, I know all too well exactly how that happens and what it feels like. When you are a child your number one job is survival. Adults hold the key to your survival. They make the money and they put food on the table. They are also bigger and stronger and can kill you. So you do what you are told. And when it comes to living with a pedophile, you learn to take orders and follow instructions in every detail. People who have come into contact with Dugard's daughters comment on how "well-behaved" they are. That brings a knowing smile to my face - not a happy smile mind you - just a knowing one. People used to say the same thing about my sister and me. We were so "well-mannered, polite, quiet and respectful." Well of course we were. It's not like we had an option to be otherwise.

My story is NOT as tragic as Dugard's. Yet I feel her story in my bones as if her story were my own. I see the shy, self-effacing expressions on my cousins faces - cousins who were being beaten and raped on a regular basis by my uncles. Some of them never did learn how to interact socially like "normal" people. Others found ways to adapt once they left home. They adopted outrageous behaviors and rebelled against the hypocracy of a family that attended prayer meetings and Pentecostal revival meetings only to come home and sexually abuse their children. I see myself at age nine, confined to my grandmother's fenced in backyard when I went outside to play, living in a small travel trailer with my parents and my sister and studying a correspondence course because I was not allowed to attend public school.

 I know what it feels like to be strangely acquainted with one of the ugliest truths about life while remaining naive about life in general. I know what it feels like to have people point and stare because you are the little girl who is not allowed to step one foot outside of her backyard. The neighbor kids would climb trees next to our backyard and tease me about the fact that I couldn't even cross the street to the field next door. I tried to protect myself from their taunts by becoming educated. I prided myself on being a straight A student and knowing more than the silly kids who went to public school. Of course I had absolutely no social life to interfere with my grades. And even the grown-ups had nasty things to say, like my aunt who told my mother her daughters would "never know how to function in the real world." Those words stung deep and stuck hard.

I worked very hard when I got to college - the first public school I ever attended in my entire life - to fit in with the "real world." Often times that meant laughing at jokes I didn't comprehend and lying about a high school I never attended. If anyone found out the truth about my childhood they would become so distracted by the strange details they could no longer see me as human. So I lied. I hope the world will be kinder to Dugard and her daughters. They ARE normal. They did EXACTLY what anyone else would do in the same situation. The situation they were forced to endure was abnormal and criminal. But other than being the victims of a insane sex offender, they have nothing to do with what happended to them.

Perhaps the part that disturbs us the most is the idea that there might be something lovable about a child rapist. Well since my father and my uncles are pedophiles I know first hand that they are also people that I loved. I didn't love the uncle who raped his eleven year old step-daughter. He was such a mean asshole no one loved him - not even his own mother. But the rest of the child molestors I called family were at times charming and sweet. And it is that which scares us the most - the thought that someone could be committing such an atrocious crime and still have redeeming qualities.

While it is true that a survivor of child rape must be "re-programmed" in some sense of the word - acquainted with the debilitating pain that permeates their being but has been buried under a mountain of denial for instance - the public also needs to allow these sex abuse survivors to educate them. The truth is that child molestation and child rape are all too common in our culture and that makes it more than an aberration - it indicates there is something seriously wrong with the way we approach the topic of sex in the first place. If sex were not inundated with shame, we might be able to sort the violence from the sex and understand that copulationg with someone with less power is an act of perpetration. Pedophiles must have absolute control - that's why they prefer children as sex partners - they get to control every aspect of the child's life - even the most intimate and personal aspects of their body.

But since we as a society still relegate sex to the closet - unless of course it is brought out as entertainment or advertising - we don't talk about what is healthy and what is not healthy. We live our "normal" sex lives in secret and it makes it that much easier for criminals to live their "sex lives" in secret too. We need less shame, less blame and more sexual sophistication. Had my dad understood the impact growing up in a family full of sexual perpetrators had on him, he could have gotten the help and the support to change his own patterns and impulses so my sister and I would never have had to endure the hell we called home. Child sexual abuse is passed from generation to generation. Demonizing the individual perpetrator does nothing to end the insanity. We have to heal the sexuality of entire families if we want to put an end to child sexual abuse.

That said, I am still for the death penalty for some child rapists. I am not in favor of putting people like my uncles or my dad to death. I really believe they would be capable of change if they were exposed to the kind of help they need. Besides they never preyed upon the children of strangers and so pose less danger to society at large. But the predators who stalk and kidnap the children of others should be eliminated. We have not found a way to treat these people and every time they are released from prison, they do it again.