Recommended Books and Films
Important: I want to stress that my mentioning of resources is not a recommendation. These are tools that can be used and abused. It’s always really important for each survivor to examine potential resources and only accepting those that make sense to you. Remember that I too am a survivor and these resources may fit with me, but might not fit with you and your healing journey. Remember what works for one survivor at a particular time, might not suit another survivor at a different time. And speaking of resources, when decide to see a therapist, remember to take the time to find the right person for the job. If you aren’t comfortable with the situation, just back off. Get all the information that you need, and proceed at your own pace. Remember this is about your mental health and nothing is more important than that. Don’t be pressured or steamrolled. This is your recovery, and you have absolutely every right to know what you’re getting. And finally remember that there are no “magic cures”. Recovery from abuse is a long term process. Be very aware of shortcuts or “miracle” programs.
Books: On the topic of child sexual abuse
Did you have a parent whose love for you felt more confining than freeing, more demanding than giving, more intrusive than nurturing? Did you feel trapped in a "psychological marriage" with this parent? If so, you may be a victim of covert incest.
Identification of this kind of incest is difficult, since covert incest victims often feel idealized and privileged, not violated and abused. In Silently Seduced, Dr. Adams, through illustrative case examples and perceptive insight, provides covert incest victims a framework to understand what happened to them, how their lives and relationships continue to be affected and how to begin the process of recovery.
Come to terms with your past while moving powerfully into the future
The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and a map of the healing journey to every woman who was sexually abused as a child—and to those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible.
Weaving together personal experience with professional knowledge, the authors provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, and support throughout the healing process. Readers will feel recognized and encouraged by hundreds of moving first-person stories drawn from interviews and the authors' extensive work with survivors, both nationally and internationally.
This completely revised and updated 20th anniversary edition continues to provide the compassionate wisdom the book has been famous for, as well as many new features:
Contemporary research on trauma and the brain
An overview of powerful new healing tools such as imagery, meditation, and body-centered practices
Additional stories that reflect an even greater diversity of survivor experiences
The reassuring accounts of survivors who have been healing for more than twenty years
The most comprehensive, up-to-date resource guide in the field
Insights from the authors' decades of experience
Cherished by survivors, and recommended by therapists and institutions everywhere, The Courage to Heal has often been called the bible of healing from child sexual abuse. This new edition will continue to serve as the healing beacon it has always been.
Learn powerful techniques for healing the scars of early sexual abuse in gay men!The first book of its kind, Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma: Integrating the Shattered Self addresses the specific therapeutic needs of gay men in recovery. All too often, gay men hide their childhood memories of being sexually victimized, because of fear, shame, and the stigma of stereotypes which equate homosexuality with child abuse. Some gay men may view these histories as "rites of passage" and dismiss other perspectives as betrayals of their community or inadvertant support for the anti-gay agenda of the religious right. Certain therapists and so-called support groups ridicule them as hysterics with false memories. Groups like the North American Man-Boy Love Association or the Rene Guyon Society dismiss the source of their anguish as wishful thinking or a healthy, consensual intergenerational romance. Finally here is a book that addresses the unique emotional and psychological needs of gay male survivors of sexual abuse.Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma offers new hope by separating the crime of pedophilia from the consensual intimacy of an adult male same-sex relationship. It provides specific guidance for therapists working with gay men either in individual or group therapy settings, and offers practical treatment suggestions as well as moving insights into the painful conflicts gay men may have in accepting their own sexuality and revealing their status as child survivor of an adult sexual predator. Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma discusses practical ways to help the survivor heal, including:
adopting eye movement desensitization and reprocessing techniques to treat traumatized gay men
helping gay men to break the old arousal patterns associated with their abusers
handling survivors'formidable issues of trust, addictions, depression, and low self-esteem
leading survivor groups of mixed sexual orientation
discerning the special meaning of HIV to traumatized gay men
respecting cross-cultural differences in treating the gay male sexual trauma survivor
finding new directions for research This powerful volume offers sufficient technical detail to be useful for the therapist working with gay men, yet it is written with enough clarity and compassion to be used as bibliotherapy for men just coming out as gay, as survivor, or as both. Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma is an essential resource for mental health professionals, as well as for gay men who have themselves survived sexual abuse or who love someone who did.
"But what about me?"
"Is it possible to go one day without dealing with the survivor's issues?"
"Will we ever make love again?"
"Will the survivor love me in the end?"
"How do I know if I should throw in the towel?"
Based on in-depth interviews and her workshops for partners across the country, Laura Davis offers practical advice and encouragement to all partners—girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, and lovers—trying to support the survivors in their lives while tending to their own needs along the way. She shows couples how to deepen compassion, improve communication, and develop an understanding of healing as a shared activity. Addressing partners' most important questions, Allies in Healing covers:
The Basics—answers common questions about sexual abuse.
Allies in Healing—introduces key concepts of working and growing together.
My Needs and Feelings—teaches partners to recognize, value, and express their own needs.
Dealing with Crisis—includes strategies for handling suicidal feelings, regression, and hopelessness.
Intimacy and Communication—offers practical advice on dealing with distancing, control, trust, and fighting.
Sex—provides guidelines for coping with flashbacks, lack of desire, differences in sexual needs, and frustration.
Family lssues—suggests a range of ideas for interacting with the survivor's family.
Partners' Stories—explores the struggles, triumphs, and courage of eight partners.
Millions of adults were sexually, physically or mentally abused as children, and the road to wholeness as an adult is often long and painful. This book provides the encouragement for today's adults to help themselves overcome the impact of their tragic childhoods. The author uses case histories to end the victims' apparent isolation and shows the way to increasing their self-esteem, enabling them to lead happier, more productive lives.
As the partner of an incest survivor, do you feel like a neglected victim even though your life has been drastically affected by the aftermath of sexual abuse?
Do you fee left out in the cold as you watch them go through recovery?
Do you feel isolated or rejected, and think that no one else will understand your problems?
Although the impact of incest or sexual abuse can destroy relationships and test long-standing commitments, the information in this book may be the key to holding your relationship together through the journey to recovery.
Ghosts in the Bedroom provides comfort and guidance for partners in the process of recovery. Graber draws from personal experience to show how partners can accept responsibility for their own issues, support the recovery of the incest or sexual abuse survivor and work toward solving relationship problems together.
This is the true story of how a small group of courageous journalists uncovered child abuse on a vast scale - and held the Catholic Church to account. Betrayal is a ground-breaking work of investigative journalism, now brought brilliantly to life on the screen in the major new movie Spotlight.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
On 31 January 2002, the Boston Globe published a report that sent shockwaves around the world. Their findings, based on a six-month campaign by the 'Spotlight' investigative team, showed that hundreds of children in Boston had been abused by Catholic priests, and that this horrific pattern of behaviour had been known - and ignored - by the Catholic Church. Instead of protecting the community it was meant to serve, the Church exploited its powerful influence to protect itself from scandal - and innocent children paid the price.
This is the story from beginning to end: the predatory men who exploited the vulnerable, the cabal of senior Church officials who covered up their crimes, the 'hush money' used to buy the victims' silence, the survivors who found the strength to tell their story, and the Catholics across the world who were left shocked, angry, and betrayed. This is the story, too, of how they took power back, confronted their Church and called for sweeping change.
Updated for the release of the Oscar-winning film Spotlight, this is a devastating and important exposure of the abuse of power at the highest levels in society.
Presenting the first real investigation of what male sexual assault survivors themselves identity as most important during various stages of recovery, Leaping upon the Mountains contains powerfully moving contributions from hundreds of men of all ages and backgrounds throughout the United States and 45 other countries. It is not a work of fiction, but a compilation of many truths, many realities -- a quilt pieced together from men's experiences -- forming an impressively triumphant pattern. Taken together, they state, lucidly and forcefully, that recovery work produces changes that are real, important, and permanent. Leaping upon the Mountains is a celebration of successful recovery, which offers hope and encouragement to all male survivors of sexual child abuse.
Readers will discover: • Encouraging and inspiring messages from other male survivors • A large resource section providing concrete help to survivors and professionals • Ways of reconnecting with their own strength and creativity
This book is about successes. Its contributors speak eloquently and persuasively of the reality of recovery.
VICTIMS NO LONGER was the first book written specifically for non-offending adult male survivors of incest and other sexual child abuse, rape, physical violence, emotional abuse, abandonment and neglect. It offers hope and encouragement to these courageous men and those who love them - partners, family, and friends - as they heal from their traumas of boyhood, adolescence, and manhood. This book has remained in print for over 25 years. Updated, revised, and translated, its messages resonate with survivors and allies across cultural, linguistic, racial, religious and geographical boundaries. The ebook version will provide an additional resource to survivors, therapists, counselors, and allies throughout the world. VICTIMS NO LONGER is a gentle guide, a resource for healing, learning, and thriving, helping survivors to: break through isolation, shame, fear, and grief; achieve understanding of the long-term effects of sexual abuse; and take power over their lives, relationships, work, emotions, and sexuality. It enables the reader to begin working through issues of trust, intimacy, sexual confusion, loss, power, control, and connection - making life choices that aren’t determined by the abuse. Topics include masculinity, emotions, sexuality, homophobia, shame, guilt, survival strategies, perfectionism, individual and group therapy, confrontation, forgiveness, and moving on. Universal, yet deeply personal, VICTIMS NO LONGER offers a sense of belonging, understanding, andliberation for men at all stages of recovery. This classic work has been called “life-saving,” “compassionate,” “comprehensive,” “clear,” “moving,” “a beacon of hope,” “definitive,” “warm,” “a salvation,” “comforting,” “challenging,” “required reading,” and “loving.” VICTIMS NO LONGER continues to speak clearly and powerfully to the pain, fears, needs, hopes, and dreams of male survivors and the people who care about them as they navigate their odyssey of recovery. www.victimsnolonger.org
This inspirational book was written to empower male survivors of sexual victimization at any age to overcome the effects of trauma and learn to thrive. Male survivors often struggle to feel any sense of hope for the future, so Joining Forces is designed to inspire them and their allies with easily mastered skills developed over the course of psychologist Dr. Howard Fradkin’s 30-year career, and the real-life experiences of other survivors who have learned to thrive. Each chapter invites survivors to dare to dream that they can take another step in their healing process by leaving their isolation behind; challenging their dysfunctional beliefs and replacing them with healthier, functional messages; practicing healing exercises; reading about the struggles and successes of men just like them; and learning how to build hope through the use of affirmations.
This book is unique in that it is based on the experiences of over 800 participants in MaleSurvivor Weekends of Recovery. The tools taught during those workshops, plus many more developed through Dr. Fradkin’s clinical experiences, are presented so that each survivor has an opportunity to use coping skills as he faces the challenges of his recovery. Survivors and their allies will learn that they are not alone in their struggles and that others have walked in their path, become stronger, and found a sense of freedom. They’ll read about how to make healthier choices to enhance their relationships, emotional functioning, and job performance and to thrive in their lives.