Broken Trust by Patrick Fleming

Author:Patrick Fleming
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crossroad Publishing Company
Published: 2007-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

PROVIDENTIAL MEETINGS

The compulsive gambler’s disclosure was an answer to years of prayer. I knew I needed help, but I feared telling anyone. I prayed frequently that someone would see me and report me. I recognize now how insane I must have looked to the detectives and those who saw me cruising. I was scandalizing them. They knew who I was and I learned from one of them that they often laughed at me driving around the cruising area. I knew they were laughing at me, yet I insanely continued to cruise.

After six months of intensive therapy, the professionals knew my emotions were blocked but could not get to the root problem. They discussed the possibility of hypnosis and then decided against it. They asked me to try EMDR (a therapy technique).23 I did and in the very first minutes I broke down and began crying. I was reliving the childhood rape scenario. I remembered each movement and word uttered. I had never cried about it before. At the end of the session, the therapist asked me what I would say to that child today. At first, I could say nothing. I continued to cry. Finally I said, “It’s not your fault. You are not guilty.” Almost miraculously, it felt like shackles around my ankles were unlocked and I was free. I had carried guilt about it for fifty years. I had thought that, since I had not resisted the perpetrator from the beginning of his abusing me, I had cooperated and had given myself up to him. I also had thought I had to deal with the abuse by myself. I remembered then how I had become emotionally bitter and hardened.

A therapist in the program helped me put my past in perspective. He told me I had three strikes against me before I got started: a bipolar mother, rejection from my father, and the traumatic sexual abuse.

After the residential program, I went back into ministry. I saw a therapist regularly, had a sponsor, and attended many Twelve-Step meetings. Despite these supports, I went back to cruising. Unfortunately, I still carried the delusion I was a pariah. Another five years passed, and a woman whose marriage I witnessed and whose husband I received into the church asked me to talk to him. They were no longer able to have sexual relations. I listened to his story. He was the youngest of three children, the oldest a brother, then a sister and he. When he was a child, his brother began to use him sexually. This continued for some years. When the brother was about thirty-three, he died of AIDS. At the funeral, the man could not cry. Asked why not, he told his sister his story, then told his wife. As he was relating his memories to me, a flash came to me: “Why, you are not a pariah!” Afterward, I asked myself why this thought had come to me. I finally realized I had been telling myself for years that I was a pariah.

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