The language of decision-makers often reveals their reticence to take risks & expose themselves to potential criticism. When confronting difficult choices, executives tend to use veiled terms to insulate themselves from accountability.

In a board meeting of a corporation struggling to extract itself from a sea of red ink, Richard, a top-level executive, was asked to offer a solution.

"I feel the company ought to divest itself of the trucking division," said Richard. "We could buy shipping services & rid ourselves of all that overhead."

Not so quick, Rick. Stop right there. Put that cab into reverse & back up a couple of sentences. Richard "feels" the company ought to shut down the trucking division. An expression of feeling is a limp, tentative way of suggesting such a momentous action. Yet people frequently use "feel" in that way without getting questioned for it.

A guy hauling in a high 6 figure salary owes more than sharing his "feelings."

A feeling is derived from inference or internal impressions. A "feeling" is an emotionally based response or perception. A feeling can be a sensation, a state of consciousness, or an impression. While feelings are distinctly human, they're not intellectual. And they're certainly nothing to bank on.

A supposition isn't much stronger. If Richard had said, "I suppose we should sell the trucking division," that would be indicative of shallowness & would create the perception that the suggestion to get out of trucking was only the 2nd thought to pop into his mind - the first being, "Gee, I really don't know what we should do."

What if Rick had said "perhaps we should sell the trucking division"? The adverb "perhaps" sounds genteel, but it's weak & indefinite.

Or suppose Rick retorts, "I gather that we should jettison the trucking division." In that sense, the verb "gather" means to conclude or infer, but its use in this context transparently indicates lack of Rick's own analysis.

He'd be more credible if he had said, "Folks, I reckon we oughta get out of the trucking business." That would at least indicate that he's drawing upon his own intuition rather than relying on prevailing opinion.

Trying to sound shrewd & analytical, Rick chooses slick rhetoric: "I suspect we should dissolve the trucking unit." Nope. The verb "suspect" really means to surmise based on distrust. You may suspect that Colonel Mustard is the culprit. Richard, however, doesn't have a clue.

What if he instead had used the word "surmise"? That's a cotton-candy word, utterly lacking in substance, because it means to arrive at a conclusion without sufficient supporting evidence. It's the functional equivalent of saying "speculate."

Rick may instead say, "I sense we should reduce overhead." Knowing what he THINKS, however, would be more tangible & valuable than knowing what he senses. The act of thinking ordinarily involves conscious formulation of a position by reasoning & deduction, rather than mere emotional response to a stimulus.

But even that is not as compelling as knowing what someone BELIEVES. A person who believes in an idea accepts it as truth & has placed faith or trust in its veracity based on analysis. Belief is far more powerful & convincing than feeling or supposition. Someone who issues a proclamation or advances a proposal as a firm belief based upon hard, supporting evidence is on firm ground.

In one important respect, however, stating what you believe isn't much more motivating than telling how you feel, because both are qualifying statements that function as disclaimers.

After boasting about optimal gas mileage, automobile manufacturers demur, saying in small print or in a quietly blurted sentence, "of course, your actual mileage may vary."

If Jane says, "I believe we should organize the training department under the marketing division rather than human resources," she is also making an unstated but implicit acknowledgment: "Of course, that's just my opinion & you & others may disagree."

The most effective approach is to clearly & unequivocally declare a conclusion derived from logical interpretation of relevant, indisputable evidence. Here's such a compelling statement:

"My analysis shows that in addition to an immediate infusion of capital generated by sale of the trucking division, the company would recoup $350,000 annually in savings in salaries, maintenance, fuel, workers' compensation, liability & medical insurance costs & other operating expenses."

Consider that approach when you want to instill certainty & convey conviction. You'll feel better when you do.

Getting Over Abuse & Neglect

Workshopped in Colchester, UK - June 2001
Read in NAFG Marietta - August 2001
Moreland, Georgia Edit October 2001

Abuse is all too often a misunderstood, denied & neglected topic in recovery. Some of us don't want to bring it up while others make it the focus of their lives.

As addicts, we've all suffered abuse in one way or another. Any event, action or feeling that helped to chip away at our self-esteem, faith, or trust in others is abuse.

Part of the disease of addiction is our lack of perspective & balance. When approaching this topic, we need to take special care in trying to find a middle ground.

Some reactions to physical, emotional & sexual abuse & neglect may include incest, domestic violence & symptoms of trauma. These different & varied reactions develop to avoid the pain of abuse & are the secondary phase of the problem.

As addicts in recovery, we want to be able to enter a phase of healing as soon as possible. We seek to do this before our disease begins to set up house & makes us believe these horrors are what we deserve.

The ability to deal effectively with abuse issues will come in time. Although surrendering, believing in our sanity & allowing God to care for us will give us time to realize our assets & liabilities, we need to take special care here.

Many of us remind ourselves that God will not give us more than we can handle. An aspect of our personality that isn't defective & doesn't need to change immediately is the one that's keeping us from the repetition of a painful experience.

We may need to deal with our past pain before the aspect ceases to have a function & becomes a defect. As we begin to feel & remember things that have happened to us, we often feel overwhelmed.

Most times, we aren't ready to do this right away so we don't need to push ourselves. Everything will come when we're ready to cope. We learn the tools to deal with these issues from other addicts who've been thru similar experiences.

Sometimes, we may find these issues coming up for us & we continue to deny their value, therefore, the pain continues to eat us from the inside out. Often we have to hit a bottom in this before we can bring ourselves up to a point of admitting that we need to deal with this issue. We must continue to follow the program, no matter what.

One addicts shared: "Abandonment reaches down to the depths of my soul. The pain it created tormented me for years. When I was being told that I was stupid, ugly & not worth loving, I couldn't understand why they hugged me, kissed me & told me to have sweet dreams. I was very confused.

"Then while the sexual abuse happened, I was too afraid to tell my parents because I didn't want to feel ‘thrown away’ again. So to me it was safer to stay in that familiar pain rather than risk my parents throwing me out like an old doll."

Too often, our fear of trusting others keeps us in denial. If we didn't learn to trust as children, we must learn to trust ourselves & others now. We need other people to do this. We do this the same way that we learn about any other subject - we open our minds.

We allow ourselves to get curious. We collect information & ask questions of anyone who might have our answers. We set up a learning experience. We keep trying out new things until we find something that works for us.

Sometimes, our painful experiences are rooted in family problems. Problems occur in all families regardless of the culture, income level or social status. Many times, we've thought that if we could just separate ourselves from our families, we'd be okay.

We're still sick inside. Circumstances that we experienced in childhood have resurfaced in marriage & other adult relationships. We may find ourselves attracted to abusive partners simply because that's the role that we learned growing up. We will remain in the cycle of abuse after getting in recovery if we don't take action to change it.

The cycle of violence repeats itself until broken. The original violence can be in the form of physical, sexual, emotional, or mental abuse as well as a combination of these.

The violent reactions come out primarily as power & control issues. Many addicts, whether using or clean, fall into this pattern. This behavior is familiar to them because they were controlled or abused in their past.

This disease tells us that we need to find someone to take care of us so that we don't have to be responsible.

When we don't take responsibility for ourselves, we give others power & control over us. We have the choice. We don't have to be the victim anymore.

This is another form of dependency & we learn that it doesn't matter whether it's on drugs or on people.

We need to grow up & become independent.

We must teach people how to treat us appropriately. People will treat you the way that you allow them to treat you.

Unconsciously, we maintain our pain by seeking out destructive relationships & situations. Sometimes we can't see the abuse going on because we're so accustomed to it in our lives.

Our walls of denial are so high because we're our own worst critics. We fear & distrust ourselves & we think that others would be even more critical of us than we are of ourselves. Our negative self-image makes us think we can't change & that we're failures.

If our parents, relatives or teachers were very critical of us, they reinforced some negative feelings in us towards ourselves. Because of our continuing cycle of pain in reaction to mental, physical & sexual abuse, we still suffer.

These memories trigger common feelings & fears that are at the root of our disease:

• denial
• anger
• fear
• guilt
• shame
• betrayal
• low self-esteem
• uniqueness 
• lack of acceptance

One addict shared:

"I was a victim of sexual abuse as a young child & learned to play the victim role to get what I wanted. As life went on, a lack of trust reminds me of the fact that I shouldn't allow anyone to use or exploit me.

"The hopelessness that I feel because of being on the outside looking in is hard on my partner. How can I as a victim pass on my experience, strength & hope & show you that you can live thru it & grow?

"Recognizing our denial is a step in the right direction. I see the reality of the issue & the emotions it brings up. I work thru the pain & see the insanity that I exposed myself to because of the pain. I believe that there can be a healing process, that there's hope!"

One important thing that we come to realize in recovery. is that no one can abuse us unless we choose to allow it.

Once we become conscious of our own patterns & personalities, we recognize when we're creating a situation. We assert ourselves & act to end the situation before it starts. With each healthy choice & action that we make for ourselves, we get that much stronger & accepting.

When we see that we can do this, our sense of self-worth grows. We become closer with God & we share more with others. We realize the importance of the Twelve Steps. We continue on the pathway of recovery with confidence.

Our disease doesn't want us to examine things clearly & encourages us to hide in the safety of blame. When we open-up, share, begin to sort thru what happened & begin to forgive & accept, we disable our disease & break the cycle of guilt & shame. Step two, gaining a belief in a loving Higher Power, is very important here.

To maintain our diet of accustomed pain, we may begin to abuse ourselves later in life. Our low self-esteem decreases to the point where we allow the abuse to continue because we feel unworthy of anything different.

This is a sick form of validation or attention-seeking behavior. We came to believe that if we didn't punish ourselves or justify our punishments, that it might mean our parents punished us unjustly. Somehow, the child within would rather suffer the ‘safe’ pain of abuse than the ‘great’ fear of abandonment that the feeling of hatred from a parent would mean.

Another addict shared:

"This is such a very tough emotional & painful issue for me. I'm fortunate that I didn't remember the sexual abuse until I was 8 months into recovery. There are so many emotions. I have anger at my abusers & myself.

I feel betrayed because the grown-ups who were supposed to protect me didn't believe or protect me. I have shame at being a victim. I experience guilt over allowing the abusers to abuse me. I feel dirty because I was a 4 year-old ‘whore.’ I have low self-esteem because I feel like I'm dirty & not good for any man. I even have a fear of facing & dealing with it in order to get past it & get on with my recovery."

"Since then, I've had to face it. It's everywhere. How can I run from it? Do I have to face it now? What did I do to deserve this? These questions haunted me for months. I could run by using. Yes, I have to face it now.

If I suppress my feelings, they'll get me later & will probably only be more painful. I did nothing to deserve it. I was 4 years old when it started. As I grew older, I sexually abused myself.

I can look back now with 17 months clean & see how the child in me worked with my disease. I learned to use what I had between my legs to get the drugs & people I needed. I figured that if I were a 'whore', I'd be the best damned one around. That way I could tell the men who came back for more that they bored me. It gave me the power to use & abuse men. The joy I got from watching them beg me for sex was sick.

"This issue has now caused problems in my marriage. I was doing my ‘wifely duty’ to keep my husband happy despite how badly I felt afterwards. This self-sacrificing has to stop.

"I can't talk about this with my husband. I shared about it at a meeting where both men & women were present. I was afraid of their reactions but I was suffering more. Their reactions were so diverse & I discovered that I wasn't alone or unique.

They told me that I'd be okay; I'd heal in my Higher Power's time. They told me that many of my fellow addicts are here for me, supporting & loving me. I can now go to the healing process.

"The healing process may very well be painful but I'm open to it. I have no idea how it'll actually work other than thru prayer, sharing with fellow addicts whose lives this issue also affects & working the steps."

The thread of guilt that we carry because of abuse weaves thru our lives so totally that we may be unable to trace its origins. While we rationalize our role in a situation to avoid guilt, reality allows us to know that we really were victims in instances of child abuse or molestation.

Many of us addicts have abuse & neglect issues that affect our recovery in one way or another.

We feel different.

We feel unique.

We feel no one will understand.

We feel alone & lost.

We also fear rejection.

Fear & low self-esteem control us.

Because of our inability to trust anyone or anything, we isolate ourselves.

We feel that this is something about which people don't talk.

We try to bury it as we always have in the past.

The abuse issue still haunts us because we can't ‘will’ it away or ignore the pain. Many addicts with abuse issues feel hopelessly lost. We feel that we're unable to own our feelings or ourselves.

More importantly, we believe that we're unable to own our recovery. All we knew how to do was numb ourselves & medicate our feelings. Once in recovery, we can no longer do this. We're no longer able to deny the feelings that surface.

If we're going to recover, a healing process must take place. If not, the cycle of violence will not be broken. We'll continually make ourselves the victim. Our recovery will continue to suffer because of our inability to move forward.

Many of us are in our mid-thirties before we can remember abuse. Usually we blocked it out before then. Many of us feel shame & don't know why.

We just feel that we're no good or feel like a bad person. Guilt is feeling bad about something we've done. Shame is feeling bad about who we are.

Toxic shame is the feeling that we're bad. Many addicts talk about feeling different from others - not as good as, less than, inadequate & undeserving. Some of this is a part of our disease.

If you allow others to boss you around & control your life, they will. We must give up people pleasing & approval seeking. We must learn to speak up for what we want & need. We aren't healthy in recovery if we're being a doormat.

Assertiveness is a necessary skill.

We may look around at friends, mates, employers or sponsors & realize that they're all takers & we're running out of anything to give. While care-taking others, we're losing ourselves.

So, we must use our power of choice & pick to be around people who treat us the way we want & deserve to be treated. We need to be careful not to stay in bad relationships hoping they'll change.

This is an illusion (like the denial of our disease). Realistically, we must accept things as they are now. To stay in bad situations is self-punishment. We deserve to receive respect & dignity from others.

As with every other aspect of our disease, sharing, caring & honesty are the keys to recovery. Abuse is often more upsetting than other areas, but when we approach it thru the Steps & with spiritual principles, we can overcome it.

Sponsorship of an abused addict can be difficult if the sponsor didn't live thru abuse as well. We have to wait until the member is ready to get help & actually asks for help. Until we're open to help, we stand in fear of judgment & any attempts to help us may frighten us into our pattern of denial & flight.

It's important for the sponsor to help their sponsee by putting them in touch with someone who can relate & who has worked thru this issue using the Twelve Steps. Victims can't trust themselves, others or the process of recovery.

Only patience, time & understanding can allow a person to discover who they're in a safe place, come out of hiding & begin to heal. We aren't doctors & can't employ any roles of authority beyond sharing our own personal experience.

Frequently others in our lives who don't have backgrounds of abuse have a hard time understanding our process. Partners of abused persons experience in their own way the feelings we have that result from past abuse.

Allowing the past to dominate in the present occurs because we're unable to process it & put closure on the past. Until we do so, we'll carry the past into every relationship & chance meeting. We'll punish others for what they can't know. It's our job to be happy, process this junk & get on with our lives free.

An addict's partner shared:

"My feelings of helplessness & pain are overwhelmingly frustrating. I feel that no matter what I do or don't do, trust will not occur! The hurt & pain from her heart is that of uncontrollable emotions, confusion & anger!

"I want to know that my helplessness is real. Except for patience, love & most of all faith, what can I do? The willingness to understand or even try to understand is futile. Since I've not discussed this with others, the feelings that I experience change from love to hate to total confusion.

"Daily, I feel I should just leave her but then a second later, my love & faith is replenished & reorganized as fast as this thought occurred."

Often one of the partners feels ignored & that so much attention revolves around the abused partner. It's essential in this healing process that we don't minimize or ignore our partner's value.

Integrity is vital for ongoing communication, equality & balance. What we say needs to match up with what we do for us to be real persons.

These principles apply in whatever type of relationship we're having: friendship, parenting or sponsorship. Couples already involved with these very sensitive & important issues, come to believe that together they can survive their dilemma & deepen & enrich their relationship with deeper commitment, respect & acceptance.

The very nature of this process is often frightening & complicated. There's hope. We rely on the promise of 'together, we can - divided we die.' Trust & gender issues create problems that hinder the sharing of pain.

Sincere confusion makes it hard on our partners. They want to do something but nothing seems to help. Partners have to come to terms with their own powerlessness.

Abuse issues are but one limb on the tree of our pain. It's important for all addicts in recovery to remember that it's easy to sabotage our recovery by taking on the problems of another. We can't let worrying about what others think define what we think of ourselves.

We must be free to share. Keeping our pain inside denies others the opportunity to learn who we are. We need to confirm, deny or explain our feelings.

Some of us have to deal with day-to-day reminders of our past. In order to live, many of us developed ways to deal with physical & sexual abuse as well as suppressing the feelings that we had behind the abuse.

Some of us ‘blink’, having a temporary removal from the situation. This is when our eyes closed; we stopped moving & ceased to be part of what was happening. Many of us experience a definite blink when trying to recall our pasts.

We still know how a ‘blink’ feels. We can still do it if necessary. It's part of how we survived our pain, fear & helpless terror when we were small. Getting hurt badly results in panic & depression.

Panic is fleeting; depression isn't being able to flee. When abused, we often had to leave our bodies rather than experience the situation. As we begin to deal with these issues in our lives, we begin to feel the feelings that we'd avoided.

This can be scary & seem overwhelming. It's very important for us to share our feelings with others & to maintain a close bond with the God of our understanding.

We need to find someone willing to walk us thru these changes. We ask them if they'll help us & get them to verbally agree. With the love & support of just one other person, the promise of ‘never alone’ becomes a reality for us.

With the willingness to act, we can do anything. Intangible forms of abuse, those not physical in nature, are harder for many of us to accept & recognize.

Mental abuse is visible only to someone open to the possibility & discerning enough to be able to separate abuse from normal interactions. Mental or emotional abuse is as damaging as any other form of abuse.

It may in ways be harder to detect or deal with because of its apparently immaterial nature. Whether the abuse was one continuous session or small attacks, the effects left in a person by mental abuse are often very visible.

Just as damaging is neglect & lack of any attention at all. Some have become excessively passive or aggressive to cope with those feelings. Individuals may be shielding themselves from closer interaction that would reveal their pain.

Our disease tries to separate us from the fellowship any way it can. Many of us have experienced physical or sexual abuse that we feel will kill us if we look at the pain it has caused us in our lives. We feel isolated & alone.

Our disease tells us that we're different & that others don't know what it was like for us. We feel ashamed & dirty. We're afraid to tell others because we fear their judgment. It's important to remember that we're not alone, that others have similar experiences.

When we surrender & share with other addicts, our pain begins to lessen. If the addicts we chose to share with are unable to relate to our specific pain, they help us find other addicts who can. We gain strength & hope, when we realize that we aren't alone & we can walk thru the ‘pain & fear’ & live.

For many of us, our first means of escape was leaving our bodies in order to cope with the pain in our lives. (dissociating) This built in defense mechanism was necessary when we were experiencing abuse. As we continue to grow in our recovery., we begin to feel a sense of safety.

We've escaped. With time, we're able to remain in touch with ourselves.