Breaking the Chains of Shame
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Breaking the Chains of Shame

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April 28, 2016

Written by: Shawn Hittman

I was in 5th grade when it started, the suffocating grip of real shame. One day on the playground during recess, I was running around playing with my friends when one of them used the word "incest" in the most negative and derogatory way. I can't imagine I'd heard that word much before, if at all, but for some reason I knew right away that it was probably the most terrible thing on Earth. I froze. There was an awful tingly feeling that shot up the spine to the base of my head behind my ears. Just as quickly as it went up, it descended into my stomach and festered like a rancid cinder block. I immediately started working the arithmetic in my head of the activities I'd been involved in just a couple years earlier. They didn’t fit the definition of incest, but at that time I didn’t know any better. I don't remember if I reacted on the outside, whether I walked away or not. What I do remember are the hours and days that passed after that moment in my head and heart. They were torture chambers of guilt and shame both taking turns flogging me just the way I thought deserved. The shame told me I was nothing. No, I was less than nothing. I was quite possibly the worst human being on the planet. The only relief I felt was that only my little sister and our abuser knew what happened and at this point he had been out of our lives for a couple years.

My journey started in 2006 after a newer friend bravely opened up to me about painful elements of his childhood. What he told me triggered the secret I had buried long ago. It had been about 20 years since I'd thought about any of it. I had accomplished the goal set forth from 5th grade to bury all memories of what happened. I was well ahead of schedule in my over-compensation efforts. I had competed in sports all the way up into the collegiate level. I had a lot of good friends and a great family. I was on the prom court and one of the more popular kids in my high school class. I had earned a degree in Finance and Spanish from a well-respected University in Wisconsin, which landed me a job with a great company that started my career. I had done what I needed to do to excel by most standards. No one ever suspected I could have ever done any wrong, much less hid my terrible secret. And up until that day talking with my friend, I realized I didn’t even suspect that of myself anymore.

I decided to embrace the moment and take a leap of faith. For the first time ever, I started to open up to my friend and tell him parts of what I remembered from my childhood. It was in that moment, my healing journey consciously began. After a couple minutes sharing some of my memories, I caught him wearing a very interesting smirk. It was as if he was saying, in the warmest way possible, "I knew there was something about you that you were hiding." He was right. I guess I wasn't that successful at keeping secrets after all.

After 3 years of weekly sessions at The Healing Center, I learned firsthand how truly challenging the healing process is. I forced myself to recall painful memories from nearly three decades earlier and I had to learn about and conquer the common societal stigmas attached to male survivors. Like many men, I was conditioned from early on to be tough and not to complain or cry. All the clichés of "being a man" actually stifled opportunities for me to seek the help I needed. There was also a heavy stigma that since my abuser was also a male, I must be gay. It was confusing. I felt my body betrayed me when I became aroused at all during the abuse. I was weighted down by this non-fact that floats around about men who are abused as boys becoming abusers themselves. That scared me to death. I did not want that to be my story. There were also times I realized I was holding my seven-year-old self to standards that were very unfair and unhealthy.

I have experienced restoration and have real hope about the future. Growing up with PTSD meant I just had to work extra hard to over-compensate and keep pace with my peers. It was like competing in a race while carrying an invisible load of bricks. I’ve learned to drop most of those bricks and now I even feel like I enjoy a strange advantage, almost like I can run faster than most others who weren’t carrying bricks throughout those formative years. Using that same determination, I’ll continue pushing to get the most out of this life and serve my fellow man. I’m ecstatic about the divine path ahead and I bathe in the joy that my story can be used to help others feel like they’re not alone or accountable for the abuses they’ve suffered. I hope it fills the void left by our society’s inability or unwillingness to capitalize on the momentum and awareness created around the crimes of Jerry Sandusky in 2011 that really hit me hard. There is hope for the future and we can conquer the shame that stifles our journey of personal growth. My goal in this life is to reach as many survivors as I can to help break the chains of shame and reintroduce hope into their lives if by no other means than telling my story first, so they can start to heal from theirs, just as someone else did for me.

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