Great to run across this, especially “the illusion of control” that kicks-in automatically for us childhood sexual abuse survivors who grew-up with parental emotional abandonment. My compensation was to excel in school and athletics, but my lifelong PTSD, which I have just fully realized at 77, thanks to attendance at thousands of 12-step meetings. I’m a retired psychiatrist and addiction medicine specialist who was the acting Medical Director in Colin Ross’ inpatient trauma treatment program at Forest View Hospital in Grand Rapids in 1998-99, until I started drinking again after 13 yrs. of recovery. My symptoms were so subtly buried that no-one had a clue, including me! I didn’t realize that the occasional “night terrors” were actually reliving dreams of sexual abuse by an uncle when I was a child, nor that my near total lack of memory of my stellar HS football career was due to dissociation, or that the failed marriages were due to an attachment disorder, or that my father’s lifelong disdain for his only child was a repetition of his father’s treatment of him, etc., etc. I’m a student of 12-step recovery and am rewriting much of the Big Book, as it was written by a 3 yr. sober abused child, Bill Wilson, in 1939, so it is filled with self-recriminations and self-abusive language. I’m writing a series of essays on academia.edu on “The Psychology of 12-Step Programs” to hopefully redress this negative self bias. AA/NA etc. are, afterall, basically religious in format and quasi-Biblical content, so, filled with negative self-condemning vocabulary, but strongly defended by an unquestioning worldwide loyal following, all too often child abuse survivors like me. Thank you for your insightful and heart-felt work!
Dr. Kathleen Young: Treating Trauma in Tucson 
Great to run across this, especially “the illusion of control” that kicks-in automatically for us childhood sexual abuse survivors who grew-up with parental emotional abandonment. My compensation was to excel in school and athletics, but my lifelong PTSD, which I have just fully realized at 77, thanks to attendance at thousands of 12-step meetings. I’m a retired psychiatrist and addiction medicine specialist who was the acting Medical Director in Colin Ross’ inpatient trauma treatment program at Forest View Hospital in Grand Rapids in 1998-99, until I started drinking again after 13 yrs. of recovery. My symptoms were so subtly buried that no-one had a clue, including me! I didn’t realize that the occasional “night terrors” were actually reliving dreams of sexual abuse by an uncle when I was a child, nor that my near total lack of memory of my stellar HS football career was due to dissociation, or that the failed marriages were due to an attachment disorder, or that my father’s lifelong disdain for his only child was a repetition of his father’s treatment of him, etc., etc. I’m a student of 12-step recovery and am rewriting much of the Big Book, as it was written by a 3 yr. sober abused child, Bill Wilson, in 1939, so it is filled with self-recriminations and self-abusive language. I’m writing a series of essays on academia.edu on “The Psychology of 12-Step Programs” to hopefully redress this negative self bias. AA/NA etc. are, afterall, basically religious in format and quasi-Biblical content, so, filled with negative self-condemning vocabulary, but strongly defended by an unquestioning worldwide loyal following, all too often child abuse survivors like me. Thank you for your insightful and heart-felt work!
Greeley Miklashek, MD, gmiklashek435@gmail.com
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I really appreciate your comment!
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