Jeremy Sachs joins me to explore how identity, masculinity, and shame shape male survivors’ healing — and what therapists need to know.

In this episode of Good Enough Counsellors, I’m speaking with therapist and author Jeremy Sachs about his upcoming book, An Intersectional Guide for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse and their Allies: Masculinity Reconnected (Routledge, July 2025).

Drawing on years of experience running recovery groups for men, boys, and trans survivors, Jeremy brings a deeply compassionate and intersectional lens to a subject often left in the shadows.

We talk about how myths about masculinity, cultural shame, and systemic failure can all affect whether survivors seek help — and how they experience it. Jeremy also shares practical reflections for therapists and allies who want to work more effectively with male clients.

⚠️ Content warning: This episode includes discussion of sexual abuse, trauma, and the failings of healthcare and justice systems. Please listen with care.

Takeaways:

• Why Jeremy wrote this book — and how male survivors shaped each chapter
• What we mean by masculinity, and how cultural expectations harm survivors
• The role of shame, silence, and developmental trauma in male experiences
• How Black men and trans men may face unique stigma and barriers to care
• What “intersectionality” looks like in real therapeutic work
• Why disclosure is complex — and how therapists can respond with empathy
• The idea of “sexual selves” and how Western norms disconnect men from their bodies
• What transformative justice is — and why some survivors seek it outside systems
• The essential role of allyship and community in recovery

You can find Jeremy and order his book here: https://jeremysachs.com

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My website: josephinehughes.com

Jeremy Sachs: 00:00:01

And then toxic masculinity comes along and says, that's not good enough. You should have fought them off, you should have done this, you should have done that.

So toxic masculinity works really hard to keep men isolated, to prevent them from showing vulnerability and to keep them in a prison of shame, because it is a set of values I would argue no man can live live up to. But add the experience of sexual trauma even harder.

Josephine Hughes: 00:00:36

Welcome to Good Enough Counsellors, the podcast for growing a private practice without the pressure to be perfect. I'm Josephine Hughes, counsellor and creator of Therapy Growth Group, helping you get the clients you want.

And in today's episode, I'm joined by therapist and author Jeremy Sachs, whose upcoming book, An Intersectional Guide for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse and their allies, Masculinity Reconnected, explores the deep and often misunderstood impact of sexual abuse on men.

Jeremy has spent years running therapy groups for male survivors and brings a powerful, compassionate lens to topics like masculinity, shame, identity and justice.

His book draws on lived experience, therapeutic practice and intersectional thinking to offer support for both survivors and those who work with them. So before we begin, I just want to give you a gentle content warning as well. This conversation includes discussion of sexual abuse and trauma.

If that feels difficult for you today, please take care of yourself and listen at a time and pace that feels right for you. Jeremy, welcome. I'm so glad to have you here.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:01:56

Oh, thank you very much. It's very lovely to be here.

Josephine Hughes: 00:01:59

I'm really excited to have this opportunity to spread the word about your book because it feels like it's a really important thing for us to be talking about. And I wonder, just to start with, if you could tell us what made you write Masculinity Reconnected?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:02:17

Yeah, of course. So it's, it's sort of been a bit of a process, I think.

So back in: 2015

At that time, I was running the UK's only HIV Aware group for 10 to 12 year olds working with some of their mothers, you know, so it was a very, very women and girls dominated sort of space and, and my work, you know, kind of reflected that. So actually I stepped into these masculine spaces and it felt like a step into the unknown.

It felt very confronting too, because of my own relationships with men, my own relationships with my own masculinity, you know, all, all the stuff that I managed to keep in my shadow Suddenly, you know, was percolating up as like, oh, goodness.

And then after sitting in these groups with these men going, God, there's just, there's no textbook or experience that I've encountered that really reflects some of the wisdom and the compassion and humility that these men were bringing to the incredibly complex and shameful topic of sexual abuse, rape, and masculinity. And I was like, there's just nothing out here about this. So, you know, I started writing blogs about it. I'd made a few, I made a podcast.

And so now the book, I suppose, is a bit of a retrospective.

It got to the 10 year mark of doing work specifically with men, with boys, with trans, non binary people, transmasc men or trans masc people, and just going, gosh, let's consolidate all of this. And that experience made it, I don't want to say easy as isn't the right word, but it made it simple.

Because actually, after working with hundreds of men, you would, you would be amazed at how each individual group that was a closed group ran for X amount of time. The same issues kept coming up over and over again. And I was like, this is a, this is a roadmap.

This is a roadmap to a book for chapters reflecting each week's topics that the men wanted to talk about.

Josephine Hughes: 00:04:37

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:04:38

And so it sort of presented itself and I was like, I think it would be great to write this.

And then on top of that, reading literature and it's, it is a really pervasive experience for men, and yet it's not talked about a lot and there aren't too many books on it, and there are some great books on it, but there's not a lot. So going. Actually, I haven't read about X, Y and Z and we'll probably get into that.

Josephine Hughes: 00:05:03

Right.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:05:03

But these, these certain areas of masculinity or experience that just weren't reflected in these books.

Josephine Hughes: 00:05:09

Yeah.

I think it's important to say how they just, just to emphasize that those chapter themes are actually based on what your male survivors think are the really important themes that.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:05:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josephine Hughes: 00:05:22

That they need to talk about. Yeah, yeah. And that brings me on to the next question, because there's a whole chapter on defining masculinity, isn't there?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:05:31

Yes. Yes.

Josephine Hughes: 00:05:32

And what do you think gets missed when we talk about defining masculinity in mainstream culture? Why is it important to have a whole chapter on masculinity?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:05:42

Well, I think masculinity is presented as a monolith. You know, it does change it does move. And the chapter introduces masculinity as something that is fluid.

And, you know, it sort of uses the slightly tongue in cheek example of men's relationship to high heels.

Josephine Hughes: 00:06:01

Yeah, I thought that was brilliant, you.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:06:02

Know, and how that originated as the status of sort of, you know, money and military prowess and then became, as female fashion became more floral and suddenly men bulked away from wearing high heels because it became feminized. So, you know, there's a lot of interesting ideas about how masculinity has moved, but I think.

I think the idea that masculinity needs to be one thing really presents a bit of a prison for men. And this is difficult because a lot of men, the majority of men, do the best they can, and they do the best they can for themselves as men.

They do their best they can as fathers to sons. And yet when we hold masculinity as this monolith that is inflexible, it gives us very little wiggle room when difficult emotional things come up.

So the father, who.

And I want to be really careful with how I talk about this, but the father who isn't necessarily abusive, who isn't violent, but also because his masculinity is a monolith, feels that the world is hard and he needs to toughen up his son.

And that patriarchal expectation that's passed from father to son because the son's boyhood and innocence and playfulness opens up the boy to violence from the world. And I wonder, in the father's shadow maybe shames the father somehow, you know, so.

So that needs to be stamped out because, my son, I've got to toughen you up because the world is tough and. And men need to be X, Y and Z. And. And. And this is where it's.

I've got to be careful, because this isn't necessarily abuse, but this is a man using all that he has, which is little, to do the best he can for his son.

And of course, when we add experiences like sexual abuse, when we add experiences like sort of minority stress on men from different communities, when we add systemic oppression on men, masculinity or the model that it presents to men really starts to crack and crumble because ultimately saying one way of being something is the correct way is always going to fail all men, because they'll never live up to that.

Josephine Hughes: 00:08:33

Yeah, because, I mean, there's. There's so many themes that you bring into the book.

And I think it's really important to say this is written with an intersectional lens and I think that that really comes out in the book, doesn't it?

So can we talk a little bit more about intersectionality and how things like race and disability, sexuality, class, gender actually impacts or shapes a man's experience of abuse and recovery?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:09:00

Yeah, of course. I, I mean, this, It's a difficult question because I just, I just want to, you know, tell you everything.

Yeah, I know about it, but yeah, so the books that I've certainly read for men about sexual abuse, they may mention gay or bisexual men when we're talking about difference. And that will be a very small component in these books.

So what I've tried to do is not go, oh, here's the small part of one chapter about identity, but really throughout the book, go, you know, a man struggling with the concept of shame will also come with other elements that impact for shame around sexual abuse based on their personal and social experience before abuse happens during and after.

Josephine Hughes: 00:09:55

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:09:55

So, for example, if you were a black man, you potentially will have experienced your identity being skewed in all sorts of ways. And we know the fetishization of black men or the assumption that they are sort of promiscuous or over sexual.

Now this is part of a bigger dialogue of how white Europeans, other black bodies, say they are different from us, and that's how we can justify treating them differently.

But you, but in the context of sexual abuse, what it is for a black man to be abused, feel the shame around that and then have to say, well, I might want to report this. I'm not only dealing with perhaps my identity being over sexualized and going, well, you know, black men always want their.

So sexual, da da da da da da. Could it really be abuse?

But also then stepping into a police station and going, what does the black identity mean within the context of a criminal justice system? What are the extra barriers there?

And you know, even sort of medical racism with black skin and doctors not being trained, what certain bruises look like with that, you know, and then the extra layer of, of saying abuse in adolescence, something that is so rarely talked about, it goes childhood. Adulthood, yeah.

But adolescence, the experience of adultification, so what is it for teenage boys to be assumed older or more mature, really robbing them of the innocence and the vulnerability of their teenage years.

And this, when it's outside of a home, this is almost, almost exclusively a type of oppression that robs certain young men of the innocence of being able to be a victim.

And so whether that's black men, whether that's gay boys, whether that's working class boys, you Know, So understanding the context of our clients and identity is so important because this affects concepts of shame, this affects how men seek help, this affects whether men are able to disclose abuse, whether they're able to find healing from it, or perhaps if the world continues to be traumatic, perhaps not sexually, but socially traumatic, then how are they supposed to heal from this potentially life altering experience of sexual abuse? So in short, intersectionality really pulls these ideas together.

And what I hope is that rather than confining this theory to one small part of the book, it is prevalent throughout.

So actually if you are a, a white middle class man, you will find your self represented in the pages in the same way as if you are an autistic man or disabled. You know, you'll find a reference to what it is to live your lived experience. Yeah, that's, that's the desire.

Josephine Hughes: 00:13:03

Yeah. And just add in that you've got like case histories as well, haven't you? That some people have, you know, held their hands up and said, this is me.

And other people where you've, you've kept them anonymous.

But I think what was quite nice was quite balanced because having read sort of books about sexual abuse in the past, it can be very overwhelming, can't it? And you sort of just start each chapter with a description. That helps to put what you're saying into context really, doesn't it? I think.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:13:29

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. That's a nice, that's a really lovely observation to hear.

I think what worked well in groups and the feedback we got was not to just dive in to go, okay, how's. Let's take masculinity. How is masculinity impacted by sexual abuse? But actually taking a moment to go, what, what is masculinity?

Another chapter is about coping strategies, be they sustainable ones or ones that are harmful to us. Just going, what does that look like? What, How.

Why might we employ different coping strategies before we even decide whether they are sustainable ones we want to nurture or difficult ones we want to, we'd like to use less of just talking about introduction to those themes and hopefully working in, as you say, case studies. Each chapter is introduced by a man.

Some of them want to be anonymous, some of them have shared their identities, but they introduce topic and what it means to them and setting the scene in a way that can be either psychosocial or a bit of psycho education, a bit of theory, a bit of sort of social commentary, you know, that is accessible, hopefully.

Josephine Hughes: 00:14:42

Yeah, I was wondering if we could talk about obviously touch a little bit on black men.

And also I was wondering, because you do talk about trans men as well, and I think people might be sort of surprised about the inclusion of trans men. But actually, I think it's a really important topic that you brought in because certainly from the case study that.

One of the case studies that I read was how a trans man found that the sexual abuse got all sort of confused and probably stopped them from being able to come out as trans for a while. I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about that intersectionality.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:15:21

Yeah, I think. Well, I suppose I want to put in the qualified.

You know, this is based on the trans men I have worked with and the testimonies from trans men in the book.

You know, this won't be a catch all for all of trans men's experience, but it can be really difficult because the trans identity has been up for debate as a sort of culture war, as a political football.

So how you start to work out what gendered violence means to you when your identity is being used in such a harmful way creates an astonishingly difficult and isolating environment in which to try and process trauma. And this happens on a social level. So the UK is particularly bad for it.

I have colleagues in Amsterdam, in Holland, who just look over here with bafflement when they work in sort of gender specific arenas, particularly with trauma going, what is this about? You know, and it's, it's really embarrassing because they say this is just not a discussion.

Josephine Hughes: 00:16:32

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:16:32

You know, so this feels very unique to the uk.

Josephine Hughes: 00:16:35

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:16:37

So which is really why it's important to talk about. So for trans men, I think when you don't get your identity acknowledged, it really opens up you to further harm.

So, you know, the testimony given by the young man in the book, I've heard him talk about him accessing group therapy on the NHS and him talking about his depression and the impacts of sexual abuse, and the therapist in front of everybody in the group saying, do you think you are trans because you were sexually abused?

Josephine Hughes: 00:17:17

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:17:17

And this being astonishingly jarring for him, going, this is not what I want to talk about. And it's not like he hadn't thought of that. You know, again, these are some of the insidious things we, you know, as survivors will think about.

Am I this way because of abuse? Am I gay? Am I this? Am I. Did I lose out on something because I'm. Am I a certain way because of something? You know, and it's.

And I want to be really gentle with this topic because it's not like that can't be explored in therapy because we want everything to be on the table in our therapy rooms.

But when it comes across as pathologizing a person's identity, going, well, here's the medical reason you're trans, and it's because you were sexually abused, and this has made you confused about your gender. That's absolutely harmful.

You know, absolutely have space for trans clients to go, I sit with this internalized transphobia or this dysmorphia or this.

This difficult question of, you know, the transition to come out as trans is hard enough and it's been influenced by my sexual abuse and sit with that unknown. But to pathologize, to go, oh, maybe this is the answer. Yeah, so difficult.

Josephine Hughes: 00:18:39

Yeah, so difficult. It's not giving people almost like the chance just to explore it for themselves and for it to make me their own meanings in a sense.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:18:49

Yes. And it's. It's really.

And, you know, if a trans man was abused by a man, what is it to your identity to transition if you're sort of making visible changes to your transition, to transition to the gender that you're abused by? And what does that mean for your relationship to masculinity?

What does that mean, I mean, for your relationship to your sexual relationships going forward? So, you know, really important to represent. Yeah, I think.

Josephine Hughes: 00:19:15

Yeah, really, really important things to think about. I wonder if we could move on to think about, because part of your chapter on masculinity, you talk about toxic masculinity.

And I think it's really important to bring out some of the ways in which the myths and narratives around masculinity, particularly toxic masculinity, that can really impact male survivors of sexual abuse. I just wonder if you could tell us about. About some of those myths.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:19:43

Yeah, of course. I mean, you know, toxic masculinity, I think, is the natural enemy of. Of male survivors. Right.

Because toxic masculinity takes concepts of traditional masculinity which are not harmful and kind of makes them monstrous. You know, men are not allowed to age past 35 because then suddenly your body changes and muscle mass decreases and, you know, you're. Suddenly your.

Your social capital is removed. Men can't be victims of things. You know, men have to be emotionally financially independent and not rely on other people.

Men need to be able to fight back and take on the world and, you know, never, never submit to things. And so we know this is not how trauma works.

Trauma or the bodily systems, the defense cascade, which I sort of go into In a bit of detail in the book, the defense cascade, which for shorthand will describe as the sort of the fight, flight, freeze, flop, friend or form, you know, that is really complex, our relationship with that afterwards. But what it is doing is. It is doing. It's the best it can to survive something that is perceived as a life or death situation.

And then toxic masculinity comes along and says, that's not good enough. You should have fought them off, you should have done this, you should have done that.

So, you know, toxic masculinity works really hard to keep men isolated, to prevent them from showing vulnerability and to keep them in a. In a prison of shame. Because it is a set of values I would argue no man can. Can live up to. But add the experience of sexual trauma. Even harder.

Yeah, even harder.

Josephine Hughes: 00:21:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And certainly, I mean, it was really interesting to read. You know, you go through the myths one by one, don't you?

And it's just really interesting to highlight them and, and just, I mean, just to sort of mention things like, you know, that. That men just always want sex. So therefore how could it be sexual abuse?

That men can't be sexually abused by someone who's like a woman who's maybe smaller, lighter than they are, that if men have physical reactions, that means it isn't abuse because they enjoyed it in inverted commas. So really sort of like messages that are fed.

And I think the other one that came up because there's a particular story about a young man who essentially was raped by an older woman and, you know, the shame that sort of went as. As part of that, but, you know, sort of like in a way you were lucky, you know, those sorts of.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:22:47

Yeah, those messages.

Josephine Hughes: 00:22:49

Yeah. There's so many strong messages out there, aren't there, about sex and about how men should feel about sex. That must just add on.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:22:56

Yeah, absolutely. And then again, you know, intersectionality plays its part there. Right. Because for. For black men who are fetishized and over sexualized.

Well, you must have wanted sex.

Josephine Hughes: 00:23:06

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:23:07

For autistic men who are assumed not to be sexual.

Josephine Hughes: 00:23:12

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:23:12

Being like, well, you can't.

How could you possibly be, you know, you can't be a victim or you could, you know, or disabled men who would want to have sex with you or, you know, the majority of sort of the straight white men whose experience is often used as a point of humor. You know, in the book, I show examples of films where the rape of men is the punchline.

Josephine Hughes: 00:23:37

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:23:38

Very important. I'm not a film critic. You know, I, I wish I was Mark Kermode. I'm not.

But the fact that these films, these narratives that make such light of sexual abuse and rape towards particularly sort of white straight men.

Josephine Hughes: 00:23:54

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:23:54

Leaves men with nowhere to go.

Josephine Hughes: 00:23:56

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:23:57

Nowhere to go. So very difficult. These myths that toxic masculinity perpetuates.

Josephine Hughes: 00:24:03

Yeah. So how do you think therapists and allies could support men to be able to seek help more? Because it gets in the way, doesn't it?

These myths are what gets in the way. And the shame that comes with it of admitting, of being able to admit perhaps that you're not lucky.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:24:23

Yeah, yeah.

Josephine Hughes: 00:24:24

You know, that gets in the way. What can we do as allies and therapists, do you think?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:24:28

Well, I think there's lots of ideas we could draw on, do get the book to read about them. But I think perhaps one of the areas we can really think about is understanding the complexity of what victimhood looks like for men.

Because there is a perception of what a victim should look like. Absolutely. Some men will fit that description, but a lot of men won't, you know, so men will often find the barriers themselves.

We know that men don't engage with healthcare, and this is across all healthcare men across all socioeconomic backgrounds demonstrate worse health behaviors. So dietary, smoking, risk taking behaviors, you know, so this is beyond.

Wilfred, beyond has this sort of fear of attacks on linking that you can get with men a lot. So in, in a nutshell, attacks on linking, I believe he was exploring the idea, I think it was psychosis.

So we're borrowing a little bit to apply to a different sort of presentation.

But you know, he talks about how every time the therapist sits and tries to draw themes from the past to explain emotions, behaviors in the present, the client really fights against it. So I might say to a male survivor, sure, you were abused by a teacher, but I just, I just wonder like what, what part your mother was in this.

Because you, you seem really conscious that you weren't protected. And the victimhood we might be looking out for is a man being really angry at that.

The attack on the linking might be angry, or he might not come next session or he might withhold payment or he might say, oh, I almost forgot I had therapy today. You know, these little things of going, oh, the pain is so, so much. It's going to come out in all sorts of ways that don't look like victimhood.

Josephine Hughes: 00:26:38

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:26:39

But they, they are communications of pain, they are communications of vulnerability.

You know, so little things like that, I think are really important to think About, I think, also being aware of our own sense of how we expect men to be, which I think follows on. Right. Our own, you know, toxic masculinity is not just fed and nourished by men, it's fed and nourished by all genders.

Josephine Hughes: 00:27:07

Yeah. And we're in it, aren't we? We can't necessarily see it, like you say, with the films. It's just there. We don't. Unless we think about.

Well, actually, what is going on here.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:27:16

Yes, yes, it is.

Josephine Hughes: 00:27:17

We just accept it and think that's.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:27:19

Yeah, it is for patriarchy that we live in. That is inescapable. So what is. What is our role in that? You know, how do we. And that can look like a lot of different things.

So, you know, if you're working with a client, perhaps a gay man, who's having issues with sex, how much sex do we think is too much sex and how much sex is for clients saying is too much or problematic or difficult.

You know, we need to be aware of where sort of our own senses of either sexual liberation or prudence or sort of the moral judgments on it can be different and not pathologize. So I think kind of just being aware of all these different things.

Josephine Hughes: 00:28:02

Yeah. So, yeah, it's removing that shame, isn't it? It's not allowing the shame to come in, you know, in a sense, to come through the therapist.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:28:11

It needs to be kept away.

Josephine Hughes: 00:28:13

Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:28:14

Our own sense of. Of shame or our own sense of disgust, you know, which some people can have towards different types of men.

Josephine Hughes: 00:28:24

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:28:25

You know, so just being really cognizant of that. And I would say using it. Use that in the countertransference. Use that in your.

If a client is bringing up difficult feelings and you're like, but they've experienced this horrific trauma, why can't I feel my full empathy for them? Well, that is really good information your client is giving you within your counter transference. Use that to access part of his experience.

Josephine Hughes: 00:28:51

Yeah. What's going on?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:28:53

But make sure you don't take it out on the client.

Josephine Hughes: 00:28:56

Yeah, absolutely.

Something I thought was sort of really quite interesting was you use the term sexual selves in the book, and I wondered if you could explain sort of what you mean by that, because this is where I think it's interesting to look at the different stages of development through, you know, child, adolescent, adult. And so what does sexual selves mean? Let's start with that and then I'll move on to the next part of the question.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:29:21

No, of Course, it's a term that was coined in the sort of, I think the 60s by a sort of renowned sex therapist. And it has evolved, it has evolved to how. What we understand about ourselves sexually. So it is beyond the act of having sex itself.

It's how we sexually express ourselves. Now this could be in the clothes we like to wear. This could be in the sort of, the events we like to attend.

This can be about the partner or partners we wish to have sex with. This could be the types of sex we want to have. So it's, it's all about sort of how we express ourselves implicitly and explicitly sexually.

So a really important part, a really important part of us.

And of course, framing sexual abuse through the lens of the sexual self is a really interesting window into looking at how sexual abuse impacts a person, whether it's, whether the abuse is experienced in childhood, adolescence, or adult. Because, and I'm, I'm conscious in the book, I have divided it into those three developmental stages.

If you had a room of male survivors here, all abused at different life stages, they would probably more or less all relate to each other. So it's not, we can't silo these experiences as tidily as I'm about to, but it helps us hold a framework.

But if you're abused in childhood, you then don't get to learn about your sexual self in the natural, organic way you would have. It is ruptured from the very beginning by sexual abuse. And that is an astonishingly painful question to go into your teen and adult years with.

Who would I have been if I had not been sexually abused? And I sit with men who, you know, feel robbed of their chance to go, well, maybe I'm bisexual, maybe I'm gay.

Maybe, you know, they meet gay men in group and they feel an attraction or a sort of, or a little something and they, you know, they've got the wife, they've got the kids, and suddenly they're like, oh, did abuse rob me of a whole part of myself? You know, really painful experience.

In fact, I was talking, I won't say which organization, but talking to somebody who works for a big male survivor charity the other day, and they're saying more and more men are putting on their self referral sheets that they are gender questioning.

Josephine Hughes: 00:32:01

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:32:02

That doesn't mean more and more trans men are accessing the support, but more and more men are going, if I was abused in childhood, what has that done to my sense of sexual. Sexual self and gendered self? Yeah, so there's that. Yeah, Adolescence.

And I need to really moderate myself because I could talk for hours about adolescence, but adolescence, the sexual self is just emerging, or the. Or what we would define as sexual selves.

Music and dating and, you know, sexual jokes and self exploration, self pleasure, this kind of thing is just emerging. And it is also a period of time where we are phenomenally vulnerable. We are.

The changes to our bodies, the changes to our psyche, the changes to us socially. We don't go through changes like that in any other time in our life except when we're toddlers.

And yet we are not protected like toddlers are protected. So this is when we're really vulnerable to grooming because we are out there going.

We're going through that process of differentiating from our parents, perhaps for the second time in our lives, first time being toddlers. And we're looking to belong. We're looking for role models. We're looking for sort of sexual exploration.

And this is when people can really prey on young people and when young people are missed because of all the things we've talked about. We talked about adultification, we've talked about stereotyping, we've talked about all these things so young people can really miss.

And then in adulthood, and again, you know, the sexual self can be mocked, can be pathologized, can be stereotyped. You know, so looking at how to get in touch with our authentic sexual selves is such a huge challenge for male survivors.

Men's sexual self is such a difficult thing to talk about because of the way men's sex is really narrowly looked at and the way men have been told sex should be. You know, it's about winning over your partner, it's about penetration, it's about orgasm. That's it.

So already men are on the back foot going, well, what do I like? What does turn me on? What does? And then sexual abuse just goes further to remove men's opportunities to develop an authentic relationship with their.

With their own sexual pleasure and sexual self.

Josephine Hughes: 00:34:31

Yeah, yeah, I suppose, you know, just sort of listening to you, it just shows how deep the impact of this abuse is, how very sort of much people actually suffer. And there's.

I think part of what else you said I thought was interesting was that usually men who have experienced sexual abuse are probably experiencing other abuse as well, that there might be other abuse going on, but it doesn't happen on its own. There's usually something else in the background as well.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:35:03

Yeah. The thing I say a lot is sexual abuse rarely happens in a vacuum.

And actually there is often Other abuses or actually what can be really difficult in our client work.

You know, it might not be other abuses, but it might be a single parent who works hard and suddenly some of the caregiving falls through the cracks and that young person is. Is made to be vulnerable. It could be a mother or father who's depressed and is physically there. I will feed you, I will clothe you.

I will give you cuddles. But emotionally, something is withheld because the depression is. Is this vacuum inside.

So the child, on some unconscious, conscious level, doesn't get something, which leaves this space, this vulnerability, this deficit of care that's really hard to put your finger on, but opens them up to predatory people, to abusive people. And that is so difficult to work with because often men really sit in this thinking. And this is again, the sort of monolith of masculinity.

Well, my mother did her best.

Josephine Hughes: 00:36:11

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:36:11

So don't you blame my mother because she's a saint and da, da, da. And it's really. I mean, that's so young. Right? That's. That's for real kleiny and sort of good breast Barbara. It's a sort of paranoid schizoid.

And that tells you something about the pain men feel.

Josephine Hughes: 00:36:27

It's.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:36:27

It's that young when. When they go. Don't you. Yeah, talk about my. Don't you.

Josephine Hughes: 00:36:32

You know, and I suppose it's sort of adultification as well going on there as well. Perhaps, you know something, the masculinity boys are expected to. To look after their mothers. That sort of stuff going on too. Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:36:42

Yes. Yeah. And the vulnerability of young carers and, you know, with sort of all of these experiences.

Josephine Hughes: 00:36:48

Yeah.

So I wondered if we could move on to talk about disclosure as well, because you've got a whole chapter on disclosure and sort of bringing it back to sort of therapists here. What do you think clients need to consider when they're thinking about disclosure?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:37:03

That's. I mean, it's. It's difficult, isn't it?

What I think a lot of clients, what a lot of survivors experience, again, you know, so multifaceted and so many different types of experiences.

But what we can give them as therapists is this neutral space that listens because very often they may disclose and then have to manage for consequences of that disclosure.

So I've sat with men who were abused in adulthood, disclosed this to their wives, and the wives have said, could you stop telling me about this because I'll no longer find you sexy. Or men who have been abused in childhood and disclosed to their mothers.

And because the abuser was known in the community, the mother go, I don't want to hear it. Don't talk about them that way. They're still a friend or I still love them or I still know, you know, don't talk to me about this.

Or men disclose and people go, oh my God, what can I do? I'm so upset. And then men are stuck having to not just manage the disclosure but manage the other person, the other person's feelings.

Josephine Hughes: 00:38:15

Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:38:16

So I think my advice to therapists, you know, disclosure is so complex and complicated and we've not even talked about disclose into the criminal justice system.

And this isn't salacious or provocative, me saying this because there's home office reports that say the police don't take rape seriously, particularly from men. It's often a case of sex gone wrong or miscommunication or you know, so that, that's just not a controversial statement.

And I can give you links to reports if you like because people love to attack that. Just facts. So we're not even talking about those sorts of complex disclosures. So I would say this issue is so complicated.

Us as therapists need to be really simple. We need to really take seriously the core conditions, our non directive, our person centered approaches.

We need to really resist the urge to take action. And I'm not saying we're going to be like, you know, people going let's go to the police or let's or you know, manage my emotions.

That's not what we do. But resist the temptation to go, okay, let's get stuck into it. Let's really get to the work. Let's get to. Don't need to do that.

We need to be the simple listening space because every other facet of their life potentially has been blown up.

Josephine Hughes: 00:39:45

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:39:46

By disclosure. If we can be the bunker where no shrapnel is getting in, that's what we have time. We will have time to unpick what it means.

We have time to look at the behaviors and the aftermath of abuse. But yeah, my gosh, my gosh, it's.

Josephine Hughes: 00:40:07

Complicated and it's interesting, isn't it?

Because what it's making me think and in relation to the fact that these chapters are what come up and they're based on what the survivors want to talk about is you have a whole chapter on your chosen family as well. You know, because it's so difficult for people, isn't it?

Like you just sort of mentioned perhaps mentioning to a mother and her saying, you know, I still Love the person or I don't want to hear about them in that sort of way and how difficult that is for survivors.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:40:36

Yes, yes. I think. I mean, one of the themes of the book is absolutely about connection. You know, therapy is good, but it's.

Josephine Hughes: 00:40:46

Not the whole of your life.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:40:47

Yeah, it's not the whole of your life. Therapy in isolation or therapy is a siloed approach to healing. I don't want to say whether it works or not.

It will for some people, but connection is really important. Chosen family. I've chosen to write about chosen family because survivors often have such a complex relationship with their birth family.

And it is lessons learned from the black queer communities.

It's lessons learned from, you know, sort of sex worker communities and minority communities that actually when the world is dangerous, when perhaps the people we were born with don't meet our needs, finding people around yourself that can turn up for you and also you can see yourself reflected in is so critical, so critical to healing.

Josephine Hughes: 00:41:39

I was wondering, for any therapists listening, what's one thing you wish more of us understood about male survivors?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:41:47

It's quite a tricky question.

Josephine Hughes: 00:41:50

There's probably lots.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:41:52

I mean, yeah, there sort of is and there sort of isn't, depending which direction we go, you know, But I think understanding about the barriers and the differences in victimhood is really important.

I think understanding that, you know, we will go on a journey about ourselves when it comes to working with male survivors, you know, I believe more or less the right clients for us will find us. So then going, okay, what am I putting out? That is a. That has attracted these male survivors to us.

And that can be anything from your unconscious sort of projections and counter transference. Right.

The weight of the words on our website to our headshots, you know, just understanding kind of why we're the person they've wanted to really disclose this to. Because, you know, when I worked for Survivors uk, the average time it took for a man to disclose sexual abuse was 26 years.

Josephine Hughes: 00:42:49

Good grief. Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:42:51

And then I think they used to be called survivors Manchester, but now we are survivors. They did an additional bit of.

Bit of research among their clients and found that if an initial disclosure goes wrong, it takes men another 15 years before they disclose again. So, you know, 26 years, then another 15 years. Let's interrogate. Why us? You know, let's go. Why has. Why.

Why do I have the privilege that there's something about me that's allowed this and that could be really useful in our relational way of working? So I kind of would want therapists to think about that. Think about their own sense of what masculinity and or toxic masculinity means to them.

Think about what their place is.

If you are a white therapist working with a minority sexual abuse is the experience of having your agency taken away and yourself worth and your, your sense of self oppressed. In the therapy room, our skin color discloses all sorts about ourselves. You know, be conscious of that.

Be conscious of what that means when we're dealing with the trauma that is so about oppression. You know, might not come up explicitly.

Josephine Hughes: 00:44:04

But be aware of it.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:44:05

But be aware of it because there will be something in the room. There will be something. Yeah, there. So just being mindful of that.

Josephine Hughes: 00:44:13

If we've got any male survivors listening today, what would you want them to know or take away from this conversation?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:44:19

Oh, I think that's so funny.

I suddenly felt a bit teary maybe just after an hour of talking about it and then just for sort of a sense of going, oh, what to say directly to survivors. You know, I think it is the most isolating place in the world. It is a prison. In a prison.

In a prison, masculinity can be joyous and wonderful, but it can be a oppressive prison. Sexual abuses is a prison. Shame is a prison.

You know, all of all of these systems that, that miss or harm men, particularly minority men can feel like a prison. And it's, it's. You're on the isolation ward as well, you know, you're in solitary confinement.

So I would say your experiences, while they are unique to you, there are others who will understand and have been through the same. Find connection. If you're not ready to step into a therapy room or find a group either in person or online, find something that is connective.

It could be an old hobby you used to have. It could be a book club, it could be an online gaming room. I would say find that connection.

And if you really can find some sort of connection that while might be a hobby you enjoy, also reflects a bit of who you are. So if you are a gay man that likes to read, find a book club, great. If you can find a queer book club, even better.

If you are a black man who likes foraging for mushrooms, great.

Find an outdoors group that also looks at foraging and is for black or minority people, you know, this kind of thing, just try and try and do that and take it seriously, you know, men.

And I don't want to speak for all men, but a lot of men would sit here and say, I would rather Do a week or a month of intensive painful therapy and get it done with. Then have to have long term interventions.

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So allowing yourself time to find connection, practice it, make it habit, that's the advice. I would say you're not alone and find these connections.

Josephine Hughes: 00:46:55

Yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:46:55

And make it part of your practice.

Josephine Hughes: 00:46:58

That's a really interesting insight, isn't it? Really interesting to hear you say that.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:47:02

I do that before therapy. I would say if it feels difficult, if you, if I mean therapy is such a luxury, particularly long term therapy in the uk, it's a real luxury.

But to do that before even walking.

Josephine Hughes: 00:47:16

Into a therapist's office, it'll sustain the therapy as well, won't it? Those relationships, those connections can help so much. Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:47:23

You can go somewhere and go, my bloody therapist said always, always therapeutic in itself.

Josephine Hughes: 00:47:29

Yeah, yeah. So Jeremy, how can people find your book? Just remind us about the title and where they can find it. When is it coming out?

Jeremy Sachs: 00:47:38

Of course it is the An Intersectional Guide for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Their allies, Masculinity Reconnection. You can find it. I would say go to your local bookshops and order it. It's. It will be available. Amazon does have it too, but they are the devil.

So if you can at all avoid it, do if you need to do it, so be it. But yes, so it's out with root ledge. So they're, you know, they're doing a good job of sending it to all the corners of the globe. Yeah, yeah.

Also my website, which is jeremysax.com There's a section on it where you can go buy it and there's also. I'm also doing loads of events to. To launch it. I'm doing an event in London, I'm doing an online event. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds, Amsterdam.

There'll be a Dublin event as well. So online stuff, in person stuff. Yeah, Come, come say hello.

Josephine Hughes: 00:48:33

Well, really, I really hope that all those events help it get into the hands of people, both people like myself, you know, who would like to be allies and also the survivors themselves because it is written for them too, isn't it? It's not a highly technical book for therapists, it's for the survivors.

But you know, also is very informative for those of us who would like to learn more about what it's like to be a male survivor of sexual abuse.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:49:01

Yeah, absolutely.

I really want sort of all sort of clinical approaches to be able to find something in the book, you know, whether you're a therapist, counsellor, social worker, and it is written directly to therapists, so such is the way I wanted to prioritize it. But there are worksheets in it for therapists to use if they'd like. There's testimony from survivors to really bring ideas alive.

There's interesting questions, I hope, and there's also a lot of referrals to other resources, whether that's technical, books, films, charities, all of that. Cubbins.

Josephine Hughes: 00:49:38

Yeah, yeah. Oh, thank you so much for coming along and telling us about it and for.

Well, to say thank you, because this is what people need to hear, you know, and thank you for the work you do with male survivors as well, because it means so much, doesn't it? And it makes a real difference in the world for people to have someone there who understands.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:49:57

So thank you for that as well, Tara, very much. And thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure. It's lovely to spend an hour chatting about yourself and your work. Very good.

Josephine Hughes: 00:50:06

It's great to hear about it, so thank you very much.

Jeremy Sachs: 00:50:10

Thanks.

Josephine Hughes: 00:50:12

Thanks for listening. Do come and join my Facebook community. Good enough. Counsellors.

And for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please Visit my website, JosephineHughes.com if you found this episode helpful, I'd love it if you could share it with a fellow therapist or leave a review on your podcast app. And in closing, I'd love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream. I really believe you can do it, Sam.