Short-Term Therapy? Beware! It has become more common with managed care, and can be useful for some other issues, but usually not here. Like some popular misunderstandings of EMDR, it can lead you to think you can quickly handle your trauma without attention to the commonly underlying issues of pain, rage, terror and sadness.

It takes a strong, well-grounded, patient therapist to stick with you through your process. If you end up with a therapist who cant go the distance with you, don’t give up! Thats their problem, not yours! Don’t hesitate to change therapists if this happens. Trust your judgment. You’ll usually have a sense of whether you’re just trying to escape your problems. Therapy can be painful, but you should have a sense that its getting you somewhere.

Some last considerations: You’ll probably want individual therapy with sessions once or twice a week. Group therapy with other abuse survivors can be a very useful and powerful experience. See Mike Lew’s very valuable information on that.

Successful therapy will affect all your relationships. It can be a challenge for you and significant others. Your therapist should be willing to help you with that, including being willing to see you in some joint sessions with others if necessary.

Finally, confrontation with your abuser is not usually considered necessary for successful resolution of your problems. Neither is forgiveness, which can actually block the pain experienced by the child, and can disenfranchise the anger.

As Richard Hoffman says in the Forward to Leaping Upon the Mountains, "At first there is pain, like the blood returning to a numb limb when we’ve slept too long, too drunkenly, too deeply. You wake to a world where others are suffering from the onslaughts of abusive power: where children are still being violated, women are still being raped, men are still being beaten, and where shame still drives the deadly machinery of disempowerment and disintegration. But it is also a world where, once you commit yourself to the struggle for wholeness, recovery and justice, there is joy and laughter, solidarity and strength a world of truth telling and compassionate listening".

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Mariposa Men’s Wellness Institute was founded in 2001

to help men become emotionally healthy.