12 Mis-Steps: How Twelve-Step Programs Trip Up Trauma Survivors

"This thoughtful and moving book shows so much of what we're getting wrong when it comes to trauma and addiction treatment—and it is an important guide to how we could start to get it right."

—Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream, Stolen Focus, and The Magic Pill

Like many, K'ai Roberts Fu walked into a 12-Step program seeking help, hope, and healing. But what happens when the path meant to save you is the one holding you back?

A core message of Alcoholics Anonymous is that it works for almost everyone. The implication is clear: if the program doesn’t work for you, perhaps you are to blame. The reality: the program’s success rate is below 50%, and much of the philosophy and practice contradicts trauma recovery best practices. Rather than heal, it can impede.

In this dynamic, thought-provoking, and surprisingly humorous book, K'ai shares her lived experience as a survivor who faithfully attended meetings for over a decade. You’ll journey through smoke-filled 12-step meeting rooms; Argentine Tango halls; women’s music festivals; trauma-informed therapy with a radical psychologist; and an emergence from both the program, and from a destructive marriage that 12-step principles led her to endure.

12 Mis-Steps is a challenging, honest, and insightful critique that refuses to blame the individual for the program’s limitations. It explores the conflicts between concepts like “powerlessness” and the need of trauma survivors to reclaim their agency.

This book does not propose a new program. It offers no definitive answers. It is instead a discussion to be joined: one that empowers you to question what is seldom questioned. It provides you with new tools and opens up new options that you may not know exist.

12 Mis-Steps is for trauma survivors – in or out of 12-step programs – looking for resources and answers that work for them. It's for people with PTSD who've been funneled into a program that tells them they are more powerless than they already feel. And it's for therapists, family, and friends looking for new ways to help clients and loved ones when the old ways have failed.

If the program isn’t working for you, it’s highly likely that you are not the problem. You are also not alone.

Welcome to a brave, compassionate conversation; one that will inspire you to play a far more active role in your own recovery.