TWELVE RECOVERY THEMES & SPIRITUAL STEPS FOR VICTIMS  & SURVIVORS

   ONE: POWER vs. VICTIMIZATION

“Our first step is to accept the fact that we have become powerless to cope with our post-traumatic symptoms.”

 “Even though we had the strength to survive against the worst of stressful conditions, we must admit we have become defenseless to survive against a new enemy – our memories, flashbacks, anxieties, nightmares, and aggressive instincts. Our first step is to accept the fact that, in many respects, we are powerless to control these symptoms.  Thus, to take this first step, we relinquish all destructive ways of seeking power and look outside of ourselves for sources of positive power.”

 

 TWO:  SEEKING MEANING

 “Our next step is to seek meaning from having survived and from our experiences of stress or suffering.”

“If we are to live with any sense of hope in this world, we must seek meaning in having suffered our painful or upsetting experiences. We want to believe we have endured for a purpose. We would like to be free from nagging thoughts telling us there is no hope and no one cares whether we live or die. How do we find a sense of meaning? Do we find it in drugs or alcohol?  Do we find it in surviving dangerous situations?  Do we find it in hurting people? Taking risks? Provoking fights?  Being chronically ill? Being victims repeatedly? No!   Thus, each of us must seek meaning in our own individual ways: by seeking help from those who wish to help us, from God as we individually understand Him, and from the creative and positive aspects within ourselves that have previously been hidden from us.”

 

 THREE: TRUST vs. SHAME and DOUBT

“Our third step is to begin to find relief by seeking help from our Higher Power, God as we understand Him, and from persons we can learn to trust.”

“If we are to find relief, we seek a source of help from person(s) we can learn to trust. Many of us would like to count on our Higher Power, God, as individually understood, and ask Him to show us a way out of our miseries, self-doubt, shame and distrust of others and failed to place our belief in our Higher Power or those who wish to help us.

Each of us can find a way out of this dilemma by opening ourselves to help from friends, family, professionals, and our Higher power. Sometimes the help may come in ways that we don’t think we want and sometimes we make it difficult for those who would help us by rejecting them or walking away from them when we need them the most. Thus, we ask for help from our Higher Power  and others in order to learn to trust.”

 

 FOUR:  SELF INVENTORY

“We will make a searching self-inventory, acknowledge our shortcomings, and seek help from our Higher Power to accept our positive qualities, and change our negative ones.”

“After taking the step of seeking and accepting help, we find ourselves aware of many negative qualities. We may fear that revealing ourselves to others will only be a negative experience. Most of us don’t really know ourselves. We may not remember the whole truth and tend to think only about things that trigger bad feelings. If we cannot remember accurately, we cannot honestly assess what has happened to us, nor our strengths or failings. But the truth is that there are both negative and positive things that have happened in the past and we have both negative and positive traits now.  Thus we ask a person we trust and a higher power to help us honestly evaluate the presence of both desirable and undesirable qualities and seek help from our Higher Power and others to make an honest self-inventory.”

  FIVE:  ANGER

 “We will admit to ourselves, to our Higher Power, and to a person whom we trust, all our angry feelings and aggressive outbursts.”

“Many of us who have been victimized are an angry group of people. Everything makes us angry. People upset us. Friends let us down. Professionals don’t listen to us. We may have been victims so frequently that we expect the worst to happen and are ready to explode at any moment. Even the littlest things are likely to make us mad. If we could only give up our anger; but that may seem impossible because we may only feel alive if we’re angry and we don’t have to face other feelings within us like grief, fear, or guilt. But our uncontrolled anger causes such negative consequences that we can’t even recognize its normal aspects and we don’t express it constructively.  As a result, we are frequently passive and inactive when we should be assertive. Thus, we seek help from others and from our Higher Power to gain insight into the reasons we are so angry.  We ask for help to ‘let go’ of our destructive anger and help to find ways to use our anger constructively and to uncover the other feelings which anger blots out.”

  SIX:  FEAR

 “We will open the doors to the past and reveal to our Higher Power  and another person whom we trust our frightening, traumatic memories.”

“After beginning to realize that anger is often a defense against vulnerability, we will now begin to understand the link between the two. In this way, we can begin to accept the fact that fear is normal and relief from apprehension may be found by facing it with the help of someone we trust and our Higher Power. For many of us, fear causes a variety of symptoms. We suffer from pains in all parts of our bodies and have many abnormal bodily functions. We wake up terrorized in the middle of the night, or we feel panic when we attempt to be among people we don’t know. Most of the time we are afraid of unknown enemies. But the truth is that we are really afraid of ourselves and the crazy or destructive things we might do.  Thus, we seek help to discover the origins of our fear, to find relief from frightening memories and dreams, and from the terror of losing control, being alone, or doing things that have frightened us before. We seek the help of others and from our Higher Power to accept the normality of helplessness, to feel safe so that we need not fall back on our old instincts to protect ourselves, and to take risks in constructive rather than destructive ways.”

SEVEN:   GUILT

“We will ask forgiveness from our Higher Power, God as we understand Him, and recognize we can be forgiven and become free from condemnation.”

“We ask for and accept forgiveness from our Higher Power and a person(s) whom we trust. Our guilt may be the result of perpetrating, participating in, or knowing about acts committed which were unacceptable in our eyes, causing suffering and grief for other persons and now causing us to feel tormented with guilt and self-blame.  Or we may feel survival guilt because friends or family members may have died or been victimized. We may feel guilty for becoming hardened and insensitive to others so that we’ve become ‘blind’ to guilt feelings that we prefer not to know about.  But we may have lived with guilt long enough to finally seek for and accept forgiveness from our Higher Power and others.  After having accepted forgiveness we can now forgive ourselves, but, we recognize that old habits of self-condemnation are difficult to break. Thus, self-forgiveness must be a daily matter.

 EIGHT:   GRIEF

 “We seek strength and support from our Higher Power and another person to finally grieve those who have died or whom we may have left behind.”

“We seek strength to complete the grieving process for those who have died, losses we have suffered, or aspects of ourselves that we have lost forever. We would like to finally be able to shed tears without being lost in unending grief. This means also being able to understand the link between grief and all the feelings we may have harbored such as anger, guilt, and yearnings to join those from whom we have been separated. We may remain numb and without tears, crying inside and never letting it show. Or we may cry easily and feel ashamed that we can’t control ourselves. The hurt comes back in our dreams, in our reluctance to become emotionally involved with others, and in the ‘stone walls’ we block our emotions with and keep others at a distance.  We may also be afraid to let our tears flow because of a fear that the dam will break and there will be no way of stopping the outburst of feelings or the crazy things we might do.  Thus, we ask for help from our Higher Power and others to let down our walls and finally shed tears without shame.”

  NINE:  LIFE vs. DEATH

“We reveal to ourselves, our Higher Power, and those we trust our depression and all remaining suicidal or self-destructive wishes and make a commitment to living.”

“We may be depressed or we may not realize we’re depressed.  We may be self-destructive or may have thought of or even tried to kill ourselves before. Some of us have suicide plans in the back of our minds to fall back on if we can’t find any escape from our emotional pain, keeping us from enjoying life fully. Some of us may be killing ourselves slowly – with drugs, alcohol, over-eating, smoking, and other bad habits.

We wish to expose and purge those negative forces within us which still may prevent us from making a complete commitment to life.  We seek the desire to live and the belief that others care about us and also want us to live. Thus, each of us seeks help from our Higher Power and others to make this very important decision:  ‘I am going to live!’

After further self-evaluation, we reveal to ourselves, to our Higher Power, and to those whom we trust all remaining suicidal wishes, and ask to be purged of the remaining destructive, death forces which have hurt ourselves and others. Then, we seek and accept the strength of our Higher Power, God as we understand Him, to make a daily commitment to living.”

 TEN:  JUSTICE  & FORGIVENESS vs. REVENGE

 “We reveal to ourselves, our Higher Power, and another person all remaining  wishes for revenge and ask for God’s strength to give these up.”

“We may still feel the bitterness of having suffered at the hands of others.  We may still be enraged at a perpetrator that abused us or that killed a family member or friend. We may still be bitter that many people abandoned us – parents, friends, leaders, church, society, professionals, and our Higher Power, which for some you is a personal God.  As a result, there may be a potential ‘killer’ inside of each of us which is fueled by that deep-seated hostility. If so, we continue to suffer the consequences  – broken relationships, isolation, illness, drugs, violence, mental hospitals, and even prison.  Are we ready to ‘let go’ of that bitterness that imprisons us?  We may have been angry for such a long time that we’d feel strange if it was gone.  Deep seated anger can be replaced by the presence of a personal God, in our lives to neutralize the bitterness within us that resulted from having been hurt or from losing our friends and loved ones. We seek the help of our Higher Power to regularly pursue the cause of justice rather than revenge, to turn away from hatred, and to be channels of forgiveness to those who have wronged us.”

  ELEVEN:  FINDING A PURPOSE

 “We seek knowledge and direction from our Higher Power, which for some of us is a personal God, for a renewed purpose for our lives.”

“We have sought positive power, meaning, trust, and truth, we have surrendered our destructive anger, fear, guilt, and grief, and we have committed ourselves to life and justice. Now, having been freed from those burdens which have kept us from having meaningful lives, we are ready to find a renewed purpose.  This may be uniquely different for each of us but it is usually found by moving ahead and taking constructive risks with help from our Higher Power – replacing old victimization patterns with positive life styles, making new friends, learning new information, developing new skills, and being of service to others. Recognizing that a our Higher Power also can be a source of strength for our lives, we will daily seek freedom from old burdens or new problems through prayer, meditation, and a daily surrender to God, as we understand Him. In this way we can continue to find daily freedom from the past prison of rage, guilty memories, and impacted grief, in order to gain knowledge of His purpose for our lives and the endurance to carry it out.  By surrendering ourselves to His leadership each day, each of us can continue the daily discovery of His will and purpose for a rewarding and exciting life.”

 

 TWELVE:  LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS

“Having experienced a spiritual rebirth, we seek strength from our Higher Power to love others and help those who suffer as we have.”

“Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we seek to carry this message and to help all those who suffered as we have suffered. We seek to understand the true meaning of love, to become open to accept the love others have for us, and to renew our commitment to friends and family. Thus, we ask for the help of God to renew our commitments, love those we have found difficult to love, and help those who have been victims as we once were.  Finally, we would like to spread the message of hope to all victims and survivors – that freedom from victimization can be found in a day-to-day spiritual step program.”

Joel Osler Brende,MD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Internal Medicine at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Georgia, has worked extensively with soldiers and war veterans suffering from PTSD and is the author of this 12 step program.

©2011 Dr. Joel Brende, Swwwim Team. All rights reserved.