Finding a Support Group

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Stories

The Need

Support Groups helped me deal with my abusive childhood

"My life had been filled with fears, shame and anxiety for 40 years until I found the Monday Night Women Survivors of Childhood Abuse meeting at SHARE!".

My SHARE! Story begins when my first lesbian relationship broke up after 12 years. Initially, it hurt but it wasn’t devastating. Then after about a year my ex-partner got a new girlfriend and I broke down. I couldn’t stop crying. I became very suicidal. I had been seeing a therapist and agreed to be hospitalized me for thirteen days. In the hospital, they treated me for co-dependency and when I left, gave me a referral to Co-Dependents Anonymous. I started attending several meetings near my home in Long Beach. The pain was so bad.

About three years before the break up I had remembered that my uncle had molested me. I didn’t have all the details but I had the beginning and end of it when he gave me a quarter for my troubles. I wanted to know more and soon I remembered details of the things he forced me to do as a child. So many feelings came up, and I had to find a way to deal with the pain.

At the meetings I attended I picked up a SHARE! directory with the Incest Survivor Meetings listed in the back. I held on to that thing for five months before I took the plunge. I finally chose to go to the Monday night meeting at SHARE! even though it was 45 minutes from my home because it used the Courage To Heal, a book recommended by my therapist. I was still extremely suicidal, staying alive only to not hurt other people.

When I walked into the meeting I felt like I was home. Everyone there knows what I am talking about. SHARE! taught me that there are people who care. I found at the meeting people who cared for me, even if they shouldn’t have. I remember one weekend, it was Memorial Day. I didn’t think I was going to make it. I called people from the meeting. They helped me make it through. I called them, I went out, and walked, did the laundry and got through the weekend.

Despite the long drive I haven’t missed a single meeting at SHARE! except when I went back East to tell my parents about the molestation.

That was an incredible experience. I told them what happened and came out to them as a lesbian for the first time. They were able to take it and understand because I didn’t have to blame them for what had happened.

When I got back to LA, I felt so much better. The Monday Night Meeting at SHARE! has been the single most important healing resource in my recovery.

I have made a commitment now not to kill myself. I can do that for me now, not for someone else. Life is still hard, but I have decided to live and I have to do the things I need to live.

"Before my nose was below water but I could see. Now my nose is above water. I can breathe. I have strength. I can live. Thank you SHARE!"

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Before I attended support groups, I was a basketcase

Basketcase’ is the only word to describe me before I came to SHARE!. I was unable to work or to have relationships. I was non-functional and totally miserable. I didn’t want to live another minute. It was that horrible.

I heard about SHARE! through the ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) directory. Initially I went to the noon ACA meetings, but they didn’t last long so I moved over to the noon CoDA (Co-Dependents Anonymous) meetings. At SHARE! I got the tools to work my way back to wholeness; to become a functional human being. The fellowship, the structure of the meetings, and the interchange between members of the meetings--whether good or bad--always resulted in recovery. Yet as I used the 12-step tools, my depression continued to manifest itself unaffected by the recovery I received in the programs.

Don’t get me wrong, I needed ACA to deal with my dysfunctional family. My mother never hugged me or kissed me or told me that she loved me during her entire life. She was feelingless, without a heart.

My father had enough feelings for both my parents. He was an alcoholic and a rageaholic. He terrorized me as a child. He never hit me. He did not have to . He would burst into my room violently while I was reading or playing quietly. It was terrifying. It sounds so trite, but when you’re a little kid it’s absolutely terrifying. He wouldn’t let me call him Dad, because he saw the name "Dad" as a term of respect and endearment and he knew he didn’t deserve it. He wanted me to call him by his first name. I couldn’t, so I didn’t call him anything.

ACA helped tremendously. Yet I used all of the tools and was still subject to this incredible, devastating depression.

People in my meetings didn’t want to hear about clinical depression. There is such a stigma against mental illness and depression is a mental illness. To serve my needs, I started the Wednesday Night Depression Support Group at SHARE!. Getting to a meeting where depression was the main agenda, was like an alcoholic finding an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting after going to Overeaters Anonymous meetings. The Depression Support Group provided a venue where I could deal with my specific needs.

Both ACA and the Depression meeting empowered me to trust my own judgment and to trust myself. They took me out of victim mode and showed me how to take full responsibility for my own recovery. I had been seeing an ineffectual therapist and doctor. The meetings made it possible for me to seek better help. I got a new therapist and a new doctor. I now have a medication that works.

Today, I am in control of my life. I am in control of myself. I feel like an adult, not an adult-child. I have a good perspective on life. I have confidence. I have ability and I accept myself and others. I am becoming the person I always wanted to be. I like myself. I accept my defects while I continue to work on them. I am graduating cum laude from Cal State this year. I am financially stable for the first time in my life. Relationships continue to be a problem, however, I now have tools and resources to support me as I work through the difficulties. The CoDA meetings are helping me improve my relationships. I have a lot of gratitude for what I have gotten from meetings. I owe my life to the recovery movement and SHARE!.

Support groups helped me find new relationships and cope with my dysfunctional family

When I came to SHARE! more than two years ago, I was very lonely. I have always been able to survive much better than the others around me. Nevertheless, I had not been in a relationship with a member of the opposite sex since childhood. There was an imbalance in my life. I was unable to correct it despite all the efforts I could muster and my best intentions. I had even looked at the smartest people around me to try to pick up their methods of dealing with the problem. Nothing worked.

A friend referred me to a meeting of Co-Dependents Anonymous at SHARE!. It helped me so much that I wound up becoming secretary of that meeting for a year and a half. During this time, I explored the twelve step network. I went to different programs, Overeaters Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Debtors Anonymous, etc. either at SHARE!, or using SHARE!’s directories to investigate programs that did not meet at SHARE!. I attended incest survivor meetings that I learned about through SHARE!, and finally started one at SHARE!.

I eventually accepted that the members of my family were irresponsible children. I started giving myself credit for taking care of them, and stopped letting their epithets bother me.

My last visit home, I was able to stand up to my entire family. I let them know that I could walk away from them whenever I desired, and that they could take me or leave me. They chose to take me.

SHARE! has advantages over the other local meeting places in that it is not only larger (has more meetings) than other meeting places, but also is set up for that purpose, and thus the staff was well able to answer questions I had about various twelve-step (and other) programs.

Today, my life is less lonely. My relationships with my friends, both male and female, are closer, tighter knit relationships. I make ends meet. Thanks, SHARE!. You've made my life better.

"SHARE! is the best thing that ever happened to me. So many of SHARE!’s meetings have helped me. In the Anger Release meetings at SHARE!, I learned that all I had to do to get well was to feel my feelings. I learned anger was okay. Being able to pound and scream in a room is so valuable because I was never allowed to be angry as a child. t I come from a totally dysfunctional family. My sister is emotionally disturbed and can’t hold a job. My brother is a heroin addict. My other sister was molested by my father as a child and committed suicide a year and half ago. Everyone in the family is either anorexic/bulimic or a drug addict.

I was a prostitute. I used to eat and throw up between customers. It helped stuff the feelings. The Women Survivors of Childhood Abuse Meetings at SHARE! made me realize that my being a call girl was my way of remaining loyal to my father. Prostituting myself validated his sexual abuse of my sister. I stopped being a prostitute when AIDS hit the headlines. I thought it was because of my fear of AIDS, but I received a letter from my dad around the same time telling me he didn’t approve of my "work." I was doing it to make him okay.

The noon Co-Dependents Anonymous meetings taught me about boundaries. I developed respect for myself and others. I learned how to be compassionate and understanding, and that not everyone thinks the same way.

SHARE! helped me overcome my eating disorder. I though I was hungry but I discovered that "hungry" feeling was really shame and guilt. SHARE! let me express my feelings. SHARE! helped me reveal who I truly am and feel good about it. I am not my father’s or mother’s primary caretaker. I am responsible for me.

SHARE! has made such a contribution to my life, in a thousand ways, not just the first time I came to SHARE! in desperation. Knowing that SHARE! is available is helpful even when I am away. SHARE! is like a home--I don’t have to call in advance,, the door is always open, and it’s safe. Thank you, SHARE

We are privately funded through donations. SHARE! Is a project of the Emotional Health Association, a California non-profit 501(c)3 corporation.