"The first step," she says cheerfully, "is to think about all the stories you're currently telling yourself about your trauma! Here is a worksheet with a list of trauma symptoms. You can check any of the ones you resonate with. We're going to go around the room to share, but of course you won't have to share any particular symptom! Some things are private."

The worksheet mostly lists normal trauma symptoms, in various categories. The "dysregulated emotions" category includes "excessive focus on politics." There's a "sexual behaviors" section, which looks as follows:

SEXUAL BEHAVIORS:
[] Promiscuity
[] Casual/anonymous sex
[] "Cottaging" (cruising public spaces for sex with strangers)
[] Unsafe sex
[] Maintaining multiple sexual/romantic relationships at once
[] Use of pornography, erotica, etc. 
[] Online sex (cybersex, romantic/erotic connections with others online)
[] Sadomasochism
[] Paraphiliac behaviors
[] Disconnection from your gender
[] Transvestism
[] Exchanging sex for money, drugs, or gifts
[] Maintaining abusive romantic/sexual relationships
[] Sexual assault or rape
[] Pedophilia
[] Any sexual behavior which hurts others, which makes you feel ashamed or depressed, which you keep secret from others, or which makes you feel out of control

He marks all the ones he'd done on purpose at least in part because he wanted to, and does not mark the ones he'd done because they were his only option, which means "Promiscuity," "casual/anonymous sex," "use of erotica," "online sex," "sadomasochism," "paraphiliac behaviors," and "transvestitism." (He hovers over "maintaining abusive relationships," decides not to mark it.) 

Faye dutifully goes through the worksheet! In the sexual section, she checks “cottaging”, unsafe sex, exchanging sex for money; worries at her lip for a while looking at “maintaining abusive relationships”, ends up adding a star next to it rather than a check mark. 

(She checks a lot in “dysregulated emotions”. “Excessive focus on politics” gets a check mark but a profoundly unhappy look.)

"Does anyone want to share a personal experience with how one of their trauma symptoms affects them?" the woman says cheerfully. "We can start with something that's not too personal to open up!"

After a long enough pause Sasha raises a hand from his place on the floor and says "I don't drink anything I didn't pour myself," just to get it the hell over with. 

"And why is that?" the woman says with an uncanny perkiness.

".....because I'm very careful about doing things that could get me drugged. Because of my trauma." 

Actually now that he thinks about it this seems less like a trauma symptom and more like being careful about a real risk that is more salient to him than to most people but the point was to get this over with. 

...Faye can recognize someone in need of saving when she sees them. She waves. “Um. Something not too personal... I think I’ve gotten a lot more suspicious of people and their motives? I’m naturally a lot more trusting than I ended up, I think, and that’s because when I believed the best in people that tended to end five minutes later when they turned out to be awful. So now I, uh. I’m not sure if I got more judgmental or just less naïve? Probably the latter, outside of heaven, and so I expect having a hard time adjusting here now that I can trust people more. Uh. Sorry, that got more personal than I meant to get.”

"You can get as personal as you want to!" the therapist says cheerfully. "I just don't want to make people feel like they have to share when they feel uncomfortable."

“Oh good.” She puts on her best Customer Service Voice. “It’s important, when working through trauma survival especially, to be careful not to pressure anyone to ignore their boundaries. I really do appreciate your care around that.”

"Of course!" the therapist says. "No one should ever have to attend or open up in group if they don't want to. After all, you have all eternity to recover! There's nothing but time!"

That sure is a casual assumption that of course everyone will go to therapy eventually. 

(Thank you Faye. Thank you thank you thank you.) 

“I’m glad we’re all on the same page!” Another very large, very polite smile with just a bit too much eye contact, and then she laughs the intensity off as though it had never happened. “So. Yeah. I have trust issues now, I guess. A bit typical of me, I know, but I guess that things are stereotypes for a reason.”

"That makes sense!" the therapist affirms.

A couple other people share. Jamie used drugs! Alexandra yelled at her husband and children! Ashley felt upset when she met people who looked like her abuser!

Faye makes very sympathetic faces at Jaime and tells Ashley she’s the same way (there’s a certain hairline she just can’t stand being around without panicking, it’s not silly at all) and carefully try to ask what Alexandra’s husband was like!

Sasha is pretty sure Faye wouldn't deliberately bring Lev to a group therapy that was supposed to be for all women, at least, so probably the group just happened to be this way. 

(He still hates it.) 

And then Pearl shares.

"I used to self-harm," she says. "And in addition to hurting myself, I wanted other people to hurt me. I stayed in a relationship where I was being physically abused because I thought I didn't deserve any better. I thought I deserved to be hurt, that that was all I was good for."

Abruptly, Sasha goes very still. 

I like to be hurt — and at first he only hurt me in the ways that I liked — and I was young and I didn't know any better and they helped me get top surgery and they called me my real name and I would have done anything to keep that and I thought — and he beat me harder than I liked and he cried and he apologized and he said he'd just been so scared that I'd do something stupid if I tried to hurt myself instead of letting him do it — and he loved me and he said he just wanted me so much and I loved him and he beat me and I stayed and he raped me and I stayed and I didn't have anywhere else to go, all my friends were his friends my parents had disowned me I'd dropped my other friends when I left for college — and the whole time everyone was saying, he's always been good to me he loves you so much you're so lucky Sasha he's fighting the good fight he's the only one fighting the good fight and i stayed and — 

— and it wasnt about deservingit was never about deserving ddeservng isnt fukcing real i didnt have anywhere else to go i

Faye doesn’t notice at first—she’s nodding sympathetically along to Pearl’s story—but then she glances at Sasha and Sasha isn’t okay and she’s not sure if she should say anything, given how terrible the therapist was to him earlier. 

She eventually settles for leaning down and saying very quietly “Do you want to go outside for a moment?”

"Thank you for sharing, Pearl!" the therapist chirps. "I bet we'll all learn a lot from your experiences."

"Yes please I would like to go outside." 

Faye gives a quick nod to him and then loudly and cheerfully says “I’m really sorry to interrupt but Sasha and I have to go to the bathroom for a minute” and stands up. 

"That's fine!" the therapist says. "Take as much time as you need."

Okay. Okay. Okay okay okay. Outside. With his female lesbian soulmate who reads Audrey Lorde and takes him to all-women support groups and he is not thinking about this it's not 

Outside is. Better. He is maybe crying a little bit. He is maybe crying more than a little bit. 

“I’m really sorry. Is there. Anything that would be good? Or should I just leave you be for a bit.”