If you are a member of a 12 step program and like it, you may want to skip this thread. At any rate, do NOT attack or criticize me for what I'm about to say. It is my own personal experience and opinion.
In my opinion, the 12 step programs are a big farce. ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED ABUSE GROWING UP! I have. I started to attend an adult children of alcoholics meeting. I had gone to AA in the past to deal with my own excessive drinking. I had also attended Al Anon to deal with issues that were current at the time. However, this is the first time I was trying to really address my childhood abuse. I needed to do this, because certain things had severely triggered me, and triggered very painful emotions that stemmed from this.
At any rate, I picked up a temporary sponsor. Being as how I had already worked the 12 steps in the past, she told me I could go ahead and work steps 4 and 5 on the people in my family of origin who had recently triggered me, my abusers, one of which (my older sister) had severely triggered me with a gaslighting, invalidating email. (My mother and 2 of my 3 sisters are narcissists, and my mother was an alcoholic). In the 12 step program, step 4 says "take a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves" and step 5 says "tell God, another person, and ourselves the exact nature of our wrongs". She told me that, for this 4th step, I would journal for a week about my mom and sisters who had abused me. Just write whatever came to my mind about them, and how I was feeling about them. I did so. So much anger and hurt came out, as well as shame and fear. Since this was supposed to be an inventory of myself, I described that my own shortcoming was the shame and fear that this abuse created in me. This is totally normal for a child who grew up in an abusive home. After the week of journaling, I was to share this stuff with her. I should have not done this. After all, I didn't really know this woman. However, other people in the meeting I had known from when I went to Al Anon many years ago said that this woman, C, had a very strong program and had been coming for 30 years.
So when I was doing the 5th step with her, I did not feel that empathetic connection with her. Whenever I shared part of my journaling, and I shared some of the worse incidents of abuse that happened to me as a small child and teenager, she had one of several responses: 1) to just listen in a detached manner, 2) to chuckle 3) she actually defended my mom and my older sister when I described certain abusive incidents. At one point she chided me for calling my sister for support when I was a young mother, and my son was seriously ill with a birth defect he was born with, and my husband and his parents were very angry with me for having a very aggressive cat euthanized for fear of him hurting my new baby. She said "Why would you have called your sister?" in a rather judgmental tone. At one point, when I said that I had gotten triggered, she said "Oh, so you haven't forgiven your family yet".
It takes me 3 days to emotionally process something like this, I believe partly or mostly due to my autism. I came to the awareness that I was trying to recover from the shame of having been treated like an inferior bad person. (In the 60's no one ever heard of high functioning autism). Yet, here was this so called sponsor, shaming me and invalidating me! So it just became another repetition of the very thing I'm trying to overcome.
I believe that the 12 steps are seriously flawed, especially as applied to an adult who experienced abuse/trauma as a child. I have done hours of research on the internet, and heard many, many other people who have had bad experiences in 12 step programs, in a similar fashion to me. Why would a person have to go back and make amends to someone who abused them? ( that's in steps 8 and 9) That is pretty absurd, and dangerous, and just makes no logical sense. Yet that is what the program says. Anyone that you have issues with, YOU must go and make amends to them.
I'm angry with myself. It was foolish and imprudent of me to share my deepest innermost self with a total stranger. How could I have known if she was trustworthy? And I don't believe it is wise to share our vulnerabilities and weaknesses with people we don't really know. That is a setup for hurt. There are many, many things I could go into with regards of how the 12 steps are shaming and blaming to the person in the 12 step program. We have to say that we are powerless and our lives are unmanageable. Really? In some ways we are powerless, but in other ways I have power and influence. I paint, and many people have been moved and affected by my art. Then this idea of constantly looking for faults in ourselves, and having to confess these faults to other people. How is that supposed to help me feel less inferior? I think it would do the opposite. Many people who had child abuse were constantly reminded of their faults, and what a bad guilty person they were. To me, to focus so much on my own faults, and my wrong doings would only cement that shame and guilt. I'm not saying that if I hurt someone, I should just blow it off. I do believe I should make it right. However, with child abuse, I believe that the child is the innocent party. I need to focus on my strengths.
Not only that, the groups are cult like. Many of the old timers have this very rigid and self righteous and arrogant attitude about them, and they look down on the new people and act superior to them. Years ago, in AA, when I had trouble with some college friends, I was told to just let those friendships go, and just have friends only with people in "the program". I was told that "program" people are far more healthy and superior to people who are not in the program, on many occasions. That's pretty cult like. And, you are not allowed to question or criticize their methods, at all. There is a certain 12 step speak, where people just start reciting slogans and steps at you, and trite sayings. There is no real empathy or understanding. Lots of the people become almost robot like. There is an anti intellectual approach. Several times, i was chided for being "too intellectual". I guess they just want dumb sheeplike people they can brainwash.
Another issue is, many times I've been blamed and criticized for my HFA traits, even though I've tried to explain to these people about my HFA. During this 5th step, the sponsor criticized me for being uptight when I shared a particularly paintful and humiliating memory of abuse from my mother at age 4. She talked about how newcomers like me were so uptight, and old timers (of which she is one) are so relaxed.
Needless to say, I am cutting off all ties with this group, and with this so called sponsor.
I would love to hear if other people on the spectrum have had experience with the 12 steps.
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Czarsmom
18 Sep 2016, 1:38 pm
