Sanctuary: A place of refuge, safety, protection and asylum; a holy, consecrated spot

The notion of sanctuary dates back to ancient times. Many civilizations provided the persecuted with impunity if they reached a recognized sanctuary. Western culture later adopted this concept where during times of battle, troops could retreat to the nearest church where they’d be free from harm.

Intimacy: The feeling of being in close personal association and belonging together. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity. Also means ‘to state or make known’

The Intimacy vs. Isolation conflict is articulated by Erik Erikson as one of eight stages of human development. According to Erikson, each stage builds on the successful completion of the stage before it.

Over 40 years this author has found — whether working with sex addicts, veterans, rapists, rape victims, domestic violence victims or substance abusers — the level of sanctuary directly affects outcome. True sanctuary creates an emotional climate where the intimate disclosure that precedes healing can occur. A sanctuary environment allows authentic ‘meeting’. Do we actively develop our vocabulary of sanctuary with the same fervor that we pursue techniques, software and the continuing educational hours to maintain our licenses? Or do we unwittingly degrade sanctuary because we ourselves are uncomfortable, fearful of hearing truth from different perspectives and paralyzed in the commonly established roles and paradigms of our field?
 
What are the sanctuary elements needed for people to name, claim, integrate and use their experiences?

How do we construct sanctuary? 

• For veterans to tell of their nightmares, the eyes of the dead, the dismembered child, being two seconds too late to save a friend…
• For the small child to recount his mother’s rape as he helplessly watched…
• For the minister addicted to Internet porn, discovered by the teenage son of the women with whom he is having an affair…
• For the women held hostage and gang-raped in a field for 14 hours…who went to the county jail flaunting her drugs so she would be arrested and “safe” but couldn’t say what really happened…
• For the women raped by her father since childhood, but he is a police officer so…who could she tell?
• For the university president arrested for obscene phone calls to teenagers, himself a victim of childhood sexual abuse…
• For the woman prostituting, stabbed and left to bleed out in the alley by her pimp — her blood stained his white suit so he refused to call an ambulance…
• For the little boy, every morning he knows what kind of beating it is going to be by what kind of belt his mom hangs on the door knob… ( He grows up to be a rapist) 
• For the ‘good husband’, a family man with a secret life of prostitutes who one night going down the stroll in a strange city honks for the hooker — and as she turns, he realizes it is his own daughter, supposedly in college, who is prostituting… 
• For the woman raped by the priest in childhood, the priest who a few years later presided over the burial of her father, her marriage and baptizing her children…
• For the man serving a life sentence for murder. It’s his 33rd birthday, his fifteenth year in and he’s never told the truth to anyone. He tries to figure out how to have dignity — sees kids just like he was going in and out; he would like to help but doesn’t know where to start…

These are real stories; some found sanctuary and built a life. Some didn’t and killed themselves. Why is it safe for some to pick up the phone and make that call…and for others to literally die instead? As helping professionals, it’s our responsibility to improve our processes so that more people feel safe enough to ask for help.

The Need for Sanctuary

It might be argued that in today’s world — with war, genocide and millions incarcerated — we are in dire need of those who have crossed the bridge of degradation to dignity, number to name, changed their paradigms and traveled emotional distances with the courage to tell their story, making it safe for those who follow. It might be argued that we need more consciousness, authentic friendships and a generation of emotionally literate young people with the heart to create sanctuary for those from different backgrounds. If more sanctuary existed and emotional intelligence was developed in the young, might there be less addiction? Many are needed with the courage to engage in community-building and peacemaking — not only for self and family, but for community and planet.

Working in the field of restoration, reconciliation and recovery, the ability to build and expand our vocabulary of sanctuary for ourselves, co-workers and those whom we serve may well be one of the most overlooked ‘non-negotiables’. Despite the plethora of tests, instruments, indexes, motivational interviewing techniques, NIDA studies, focus groups, 12-Step gatherings and conferences, do clinicians regularly ask “what makes you feel safe?” “When have you experienced sanctuary and acceptance?” It is different for everyone.

Sanctuary: Yesterday and Today

Cultures throughout the ages have had spaces, places and ceremonies that represent sanctuary. Establishing sanctuary was a prerequisite for healing, vision, celebration and transition. Sanctuary was present from the dreamtime of the Australian aboriginal people, to Asclepius’ Temenos in Epidaurus; from the dances of the bushman of the Kalahari; to the soul-catching, sweat lodge and rites of passage of the American Natives. All created space for the sanctuary that preceded acknowledgement and transformation of the spiritual and psychological. We cross the centuries to industrialized, ‘civilized’ nations where thousands of us seek relief from addictions, therapy for anxiety disorders and elevated blood pressure. We study meditation…we practice yoga. Our global ‘progress’ has decimated and degraded sanctuary and ceremony, and that degradation contributes to the wounded feeling function of our time.

Sanctuary is not space without boundaries. It is psychological space supported by a physical environment where boundaries are created with the intent of repelling that which is lowest in our nature, and inviting that which is sacred and authentic to enter. With entry of the sacred, comes consciousness and transformation.
 
Developing Sanctuary

Do we not have an obligation as helping professionals, regardless of our specialty, to aid as much of the whole person as possible? To develop a vocabulary of sanctuary, we must start with ourselves. What constituted sanctuary when we were five, 10, 20 years old? What constitutes sanctuary for us today? What are the elements that we need to feel safe, to be able to say anything? Who are we comfortable saying anything to in our own lives? How do we create the emotional climate that is needed for the suffering, to present an astounding contrast from the world in which they’ve lived?

The emotional climate of sanctuary starts with the faculty. It’s easier to stop smoking in a smokeless environment. It’s easier to establish sanctuary in an environment where adults have established authentic friendships and rigorously protect and develop those relationships.

Retention is always positively impacted when faculty do not indulge in gossip, have unfinished business with each other or harbor resentments. Bad habits on the part of the faculty typically create a low emotional ceiling, easily intuited by those seeking help. This is particularly true in correctional environments where projects to reduce recidivism often succeed or fail based on the authenticity faculty are able to build with each other.

Typically, authenticity creates buy-in to the project by incarcerated people. “Free world” staff members provide the most interesting soap opera in town — and every detail is noted by the incarcerated. Those in prison are typically described as having authority problems; in fact, the problem is typically with vested authority rather than personal authority, a distinction made by Stanley Milgram in his landmark book, Obedience to Authority.

Gangs, criminal organizations, street crews, mafia, cartels, numbers men and enforcers all were adept at forming and maintaining organizations on personal rather than vested authority. Interestingly, many who initially joined such organizations report that they joined seeking sanctuary in some form — personal, family or neighborhood protection. To create a sanctuary environment for transformation, it is useful to understand that many sanctuary experiences were on the wrong side of the law.

By asking hundreds of people in need about their experience with sanctuary, this author has experimented with a multitude of interventions and strategies. A few include:

1. Having the environment represent those served, inclusive of art, posters, books and customs.
2. Development of curricula that are inclusive of multi-cultural role models. These curriculums are gender-accountable as opposed to gender-responsive, reinforcing emotional literacy and emotional responsibility for both men and women. (www.extensionsllc.com)
3. Inclusion of ceremonies/holidays that represent the global village.
4. Changing the vernacular at residential sites to “students” and “faculty” rather than “counselors” and “clients”.
5. Discussing, in initial interviews, when and where the prospect felt safe — physically, psychologically, spiritually and emotionally
6. Having “sex workers” in recovery participate in screening new hires served as an effective filter for hiring.
7. Structured focus groups between sex workers and sex purchasers articulating their personal experiences from a feeling perspective.
8. Development of a quality assurance system whereby those served give daily feedback on their teachers in a non-threatening and productive way.
9. Creating a culture where no faculty member teaches any curriculum without having personally gone through it themselves.
10. Development of a process of “reciprocity partnerships” whereby an agency’s faculty is assigned a partner (not their supervisor) whose task it is to discover each other’s strengths and foster integration.
11. Developing curriculum for women to de-role from rape and objectification; inclusive of a presentation for men regarding their experiences.
12. Developing a multitude of teaching tools that move treatment away from didactic sessions, allowing rotating leadership and settings with multiple roles so that no one is left behind — and all involved can have a strength-based, growth-oriented experience.

Objectification and Misanthropy

Objectification: An attitude that regards treating another person merely as an instrument, object or commodity with insufficient regard for a person’s personality.

Misanthropy: The hatred of humanity; from the Greek word misos or hatred. Parallel to misogyny: the contempt or hatred of women, as well as misandry: the contempt or hatred of boys.

It has been said that evil prevails when good people do nothing. Are helping professionals actively contributing to the larger story that is needed in our world?

Those coming to us come to us for help, live in today’s world in which desensitization to humanity is frequently the norm. Even Craigslist has been the site of sex sales of teenage girls. We are bombarded with examples of objectification, misogyny and violence. Ours is a time with arguments about what constitutes torture (water boarding) or genocide (Rwanda). Newspaper articles abound with labels: convicts, felons, sex workers, illegal aliens, prostitutes, veterans, inmates, victims, abusers, predators, addicts, refugees, insurgents, detainees, collateral damage… By 2008, the United Nations counted 42 million refugees worldwide. The U.S. Department of Defense reports that more U.S. military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Finian Cunningham of Global Research interestingly refers to this phenomenon as “Empire Pathology”.
 
Newsweek reports the advent of “war porn”, where actual footage depicting the death of enemy soldiers has “taken the Internet by storm.” Interestingly, one of these sites started when a sexual porn site Webmaster experienced problems with credit card payments from soldiers in war zones. His solution was to swap war footage for access to sex sites. Within two years, there were 30,000 members. One wonders about the Iraqi child who will someday see footage of her father being eaten by a dog…collateral damage?

Historically, labeling and prejudgment have traveled together, yet the rate at which we are objectifying, creating and naming others as enemy is unparalleled with the advent of the Internet. Different groups routinely argue that sexual abuse may not be on the rise; rather, it’s more frequently reported. These arguments include clergy, workplace and most recently the military, where sexual abuse now has its own acronym: MSA, or Military Sexual Abuse.

Women veterans are nine times more likely to suffer Post Traumatic Stress if they’ve suffered MSA. In our political world, objectification is increasingly common, arguably allowing violations of civil rights considered unacceptable a decade ago — Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, allowing officers to stop people on the basis of “reasonable suspicion”, being a prime example. Suddenly, the renowned surgeon, who happens to be Latino, driving a BMW with his assistants in hospital attire, is a possible illegal alien and is stopped and harassed.

Are we alert to objectification and misanthropy in our own workplace? Are we conscious of the veterans, the Muslims, the elderly and the youth? Are we ensuring that our agencies are good places for women to work? Do we have childcare provisions?

In a world where women still earn less on the dollar than men, are we ensuring parity? Do women replacing men in our agencies routinely earn less? Do men tend to be labeled “directors” and women “administrators?” Do men and women end up with the same benefits, computer equipment, cell phones and offices?

Remembering Meaning

Sir Laurens Van Der Post — Carl Jung’s closest friend, student of the African bushmen, survivor of a Japanese prisoner of war camp — frequently re-told one of the oldest stories of the Kalahari:

“The Bushman in the Kalahari Desert talk about two ‘hungers.’
There is the Great Hunger and there is the Little Hunger.
The Little Hunger wants food for the belly; but the Great Hunger,
the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning…
There’s ultimately only one thing that makes human beings deeply and profoundly bitter,
and that is to have thrust upon them a life without meaning…
There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness…
But of far more comfort to the soul…is something greater than happiness
or unhappiness, and that is meaning. Because meaning transfigures all…
Once what you are doing has for you meaning, it is irrelevant whether you’re happy
or unhappy. You are content — you are not alone in your Spirit — you belong… The worst form of human suffering is to hide behind a life without meaning…and one will hide behind all sorts of indulgences and violence if one is thrust into such a life.”

Might we consider expanding the horizons of our work and create more sanctuary tomorrow than we did yesterday.

Let us help people remember, collecting dismembered pieces of their lives so they might rediscover meaning. Let us not slide into the twilight of indifference as objectification and misanthropy grows around us. In reference to adulthood, e.e. cummings once said, “and down they forgot as up they grew.”

A nine-year-old boy wrote a poem after the bombing of the World Trade Center towers — at nine he grasped the importance of a life with meaning — of feeding the Great Hunger. May we do as well:

Remember the twins the towers
Cloaked in the smoke of hatred
Swallowed up in the fires of hell
Soon there is nothing left but the ashes of sadness
I wish there was peace on this kithless globe
And let it begin with me

Mr. Woods’s misfortune may do for sexual addiction what Magic Johnson did for HIV, if only from the perspective of being a beloved public figure, whose personal tragedy is taking sexual addiction out of the closet. The news coverage, undoubtedly painful and intrusive to his family, portrayed the women with whom he was involved as glamorous. Interviews were coveted, head shots of the women appeared on the internet and in newsstands. One ambitious entrepreneur sold golf balls with the faces of these women — an act that begs interpretation regarding our culture’s acceptance of objectification. Mr. Woods, of course, is neither the typical representative of the rank-and-file sexual addict, nor are the women he is with. However, the media circus surrounding Mr. Woods may be an opportunity to look in the mirror at ourselves, our culture, pornography, sex addiction treatment and our ability to value or degrade each other.

What responsibility does the helping professions have to improve our ability to aid those who suffer?

What Is Sexual Addiction?
Dr. Mark Gold of PsychCentral.com describes it as “[a] progressive intimacy disorder, characterized by sexual thoughts and acts…Over time, the addict has to intensify the addictive behavior to achieve the same results.”

Womenshealth.com states, “Sexual addiction is not sexual desire, nor defined by the type of sexual act performed, or even by the frequency of sexual activity…a compulsive use of sex to address non-sexual emotional needs…frequently indicated by the willingness of an addict to suffer enormous consequences for engaging in sex.”

The literature suggests that sex addicts are typically cross-addicted, most commonly as workaholics, and secondarily as substance abusers. Given the size of the pornography industry — which rivals big oil, arms and illegal drugs — the increasing number of people needing treatment and the definitions above, one might surmise that we are collectively suffering from a pandemic of intimacy disorders and objectification.

Who Goes to Treatment, Who Doesn’t?
Those who enter treatment for sexual addition are primarily white professional men. Dr. Patrick Carnes, considered a leading expert in the field, stated in a 1999 Fortune Magazine article, “Most of my patients are CEOs, doctors, attorneys or priests — they are people with a great deal of power. We have corporate America’s leadership marching through here, and they are paying cash because they don’t want anybody to know…”

A sex addict/workaholic in a corporate environment, where power and control often reign over authenticity and information, creates the perfect conditions for the progression of an intimacy disorder. Sexual addiction has not just affected corporate America; it’s rampant in prison populations where creative men and women (inmates) make a living writing and selling porn to others. In inner cities, the sex-addicted workaholic might be focused on gang-building, drug-selling…even murder. These are people who lack $45,000 for treatment, and would probably not attend an all-white treatment center or 12-step meeting even if they were able to do so. Just as the age of first drug use dropped from the late teens to middle school, the age of first exposure to and use of pornographic materials has dropped, precipitated by a generation that uses the Internet as its parents used television.

Cyberspace Pornography: Porne Graphos
Cyberspace pornography addiction is reported as one of the most common manifestations of sexual addiction, as well as a gateway activity that fosters ramp-up to increased acting out. Adult channels are found in hotels, cable networks and cell phones. In l999, the Omni hotel chain announced that it would no longer offer adult movies in hotels or sell adult magazine in its gift shops, incurring a $1.8-million loss in revenues. Omni made the decision “in response to what it perceives as a growing need for corporate America to support pro-family issues.” For hotels that didn’t follow Omni’s footsteps, Frontline’s “American Porn” 2002 report claims that in-room adult movies generated more revenue than mini-bars.

The word pornography has its origins in the Greek word porne, meaning “whore or female captive” and graphos, which means “to write or tell about”. Erotica, on the other hand, comes from the name of the Greek god Eros. Gloria Steinem pointed this out in her essay, “Erotica vs. Pornography”, observing that what society needed was love, and what we got was pornography. Her observations were made before the explosion of the Internet and simultaneous explosion of easily accessible cyberspace pornography.

It is of note that prior to the Nazi invasion of Poland, the Nazis launched a campaign proliferating pornography, in the hopes of destroying community and promoting shame and isolation, hence making their conquest easier. The pornographic images of those exploited were Jewish women, adding to the mindset that Jews were “less than human.”

On today’s computer, a few clicks can progress from standard centerfold fare to child porn, teen porn, bestiality, pregnant women, incest, elderly women, chat rooms and web cam views in the heterosexual, homosexual and transsexual worlds. On “granny sites”, rape and bondage are particularly popular with women who appear to be between 60 and 85. Any user searching otherwise benign keywords in combination, such as boys, nubile, teen, legal, nasty, barely, zoo and girls enters a world where video trailers to lure viewers are full of daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, grandparents and grandchildren. The young girls — barely developed, pig-tailed and sometimes wearing braces — are asked “Are you really 18?” and answer, “Yes, I am really 18.” They then have ejaculate squirted onto their faces. The young boys staring doleful and naked from the computer screen, would seem better placed in a little league uniform, or eating cookies in their grandmother’s kitchen.

In ancient Japan, an unfaithful woman was humiliated by a practice known as Bukkake, tied and publicly held captive, while all the men in town would ejaculate on her face. Today, Bukkake porn is a niche group for straights, gays and lesbians. Men, women and children can be looked up by weight, strength, age, race, body parts, sexual preference and ability or activity. For those of us who know Black history, through another lens this is reminiscent of requests made at the auction block. Three decades ago, Susan Griffin’s heartfelt book, Silence and Pornography, was heralded by Sam Keen (one of our most thoughtful societal observers) as a book that “told me more about cruelty and tenderness, more about sadism and masochism (and) more about myself …”

Ms. Griffin observed:

“…pornography depicts acts of terrible violence to women’s bodies… is violent to a woman’s soul. In the wake of pornographic images, a woman ceases to know herself… Her experience is destroyed. Like men and women living in the institution of slavery, we have become talented at seeming to be what we are not…. the racist mind of the slave owner required that the men and women he enslaved resemble the image which he had of them. Because he imagined that blacks were stupid and slow, he required of his slaves that they appear to be stupid and slow. And because they wished to survive, men and women of quick intelligence learned to mime a slow and stupid manner. That this racist mind had a frantic need to believe its own invention…we can see in the slave owners’ injunction against the slave’s learning to read. One might ask, why would a law against learning to read be necessary for a people supposedly too dull to perform this skill? But, of course, the answer is that the people were not too dull… their masters had to be fooled, had to be deceived even against their own knowledge of black intelligence into a belief of black stupidity.”

To continue Ms. Griffin’s analogy, imagine a Fellini-type time-travel movie where plantation owners who beat, rape, exploit and sometimes kill slaves gather in self-help groups. They commit to recovery, discuss powerlessness, economic effects of their behavior, selfishness and loss of productivity at work. They participate with renewed fervor in church, have spiritual awakenings, take moral inventory, articulate the emotional effects on their family and thank each other for sharing. Associations are formed for spouses, social events are held. Slavery itself is never addressed, nor the reality of the slaves’ lives, who they are and the effect of slavery upon them. They remain nameless and faceless. The plight of the slave doesn’t occur in the mind of the owner…after all, they have housing, are cared for, they made “choices” and they are from a different class. The plantation owners, proud of their sobriety, honesty and community, establish a network of help and service, exclusively to address their own suffering.

What Is Missing?
Are the sincere efforts of those in the treatment field — many of whom are in recovery themselves — de facto promoting racism, classism and sexism? Sobering and notable by its absence in this sea of information and advice for sexual addiction is the voice representing the experience of those in the sex industry. What is their experience as they contribute to the multi-billion-dollar worldwide industry? Why are those who are objectified, raped, used, bartered, sold and exploited left out of the process? How does it feel to them, even if it is only “play acting”, to pretend to have sex with animals, enjoy being ejaculated on or fake orgasms before a camera for hours? How do they explain their jobs to children? Whether “play” or not, the fantasy life of the sex addict takes the performance seriously. The addict, like the slave owner, has a frantic need to believe the sex purchased — whether virtual or actual — is relished by the seller. In treatment, people walk the walk, talk the talk, suit up and show up to develop new roles for themselves — is the reverse not true? Does the field understand the culture of degradation? Do addicts think of the 16 year old — the age of their daughters and granddaughters — who works as an erotic dancer and does wall dancing for extra money? Do treatment professionals even know what wall dancing is?

In the plethora of the most commonly available self-help books, only Dr. Sbraga and Dr. O’Donohue in The Sex Addiction Workbook include sections directly addressing the sex industry and objectification. Yet, consistent in testimonials of partners of sex addicts is that they feel degraded because they cannot favorably compare with the pornographic images. Is the culture of treatment such that counselors ever illuminate to partners the reality of life in the sex industry?

Do faces on the screen, prostitutes from the street and the dancers in the club remain unnamed, forgotten, relegated to stay in their place, never dignified within the treatment process as real, feeling people, profoundly affected by their expendability? Is the rationale for those addicted similar to the group that could afford cocaine (and insurance for treatment) in the l970s? Many proclaimed that buying illegal drugs was a victimless crime; meanwhile caskets carrying murdered children from the streets of Bogotá, their organs hollowed and filled with cocaine, were one of the many ways drugs were delivered. Are these issues discussed or is it considered bad form? As part of training, do counselors learn about the actual (not virtual) life of the porn star, erotic dancer and prostitute? Or are sex industry workers dismissed as being “hooked on eroticized rage”? In the age of restorative justice and victims’ rights, do treatment centers offer education or group sessions between addicts and sex workers in recovery?

Susan’s mother turned her out when she was 12 because one of her tricks would not pay unless he could have sex with Susan. It was Detroit, early winter. Thrown outside after the act, Susan washed herself off with the garden hose; she found herself months later enmeshed in the sex industry.

Naked pictures of Juanito were taken at age 11 and circulated in juvenile hall after his first rape by the officers. For the next seven years, each time he returned, the officers who regularly raped the boys knew he had already been “broken in”, and it continued. Juanito found himself turning tricks to support his drug habit and participating in pornographic movies. Years later, he was found dead behind a dumpster, a victim of violence.

Maria, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, was strikingly beautiful. Prostituting before she was 20, she woke up one morning after passing out in a motel room; her trick had stuffed a syringe inside her vagina.

Do our treatment programs and support groups hear these stories? Do we ignore the suffering of those who are used, either in person or the subjects of fantasy and masturbation on the Internet?

In our prison system, people migrate from name to number; in sex clubs, pornography and prostitution, from name to object. Woe unto the nameless faceless people who have worked in the sex trade and end up incarcerated. Many do not realize that the women’s prison population in the United States is growing at a faster rate than that of men. This is where some percentage of sex workers ends up. Interestingly, two states with well-known centers to treat sexual addiction are mandatory minimum-sentencing states: Arizona and Mississippi. Do sex addicts in treatment understand that what gets them off often means long incarcerations for street workers after several arrests? Do high-end treatment agencies do service and outreach to the exploited who have no means to pay for treatment?

Ironically, the plight of those in the sex industry is largely hidden from the sex addict, who continues to rationalize behaviors. The professionals who do work with those in the sex industry are frequently admonished not to encourage people to explore experiences in detail, for fear of re-traumatization. But does that not help the sex addict to maintain the rationalization that the sex addict is the victim alone? In our recent history, the consciousness of the world was changed by the likes Fannie Lou Hamer, Victor Frankl and Elie Weisel — through their honest explication of the horrors they experienced. Bessel van der Kolk, dedicated his book Traumatic Stress to Nelson Mandela and “all those who, after having been hurt, work on transforming the trauma of others”. After studying trauma world-wide, van der Kolk states “that the spirit of squarely facing the facts as a prelude to healing should guide both our clinical and research work with victims of trauma and violence.” The treatment of sexual addiction is rife with trauma and violence, and all parties deserve the facts (not the images) squarely faced.

The words to John Newton’s hymn, Amazing Grace, are known to all. His transformation led him to leave the life of a slave trader and speak out about was arguably the greatest human rights issue of his time: the abolition of slavery. Might we not only sing his words, but also follow his example. Would that those with the resources to get help, and those who counsel them, actualize the grace that will lead to the service and healing of the most exploited.