Support for Male Survivors of Sexual Trauma
If you're a man carrying the weight of sexual trauma, you're in the right place. Malachi Gillihan is both a trauma specialist and a survivor. He works with male survivors of sexual trauma through individual and group-based recovery, in person in Berkeley and virtually across the country and beyond.
This is work guided by someone who understands it from the inside, not only from training. You can start where you feel ready, on your own or in a group, and there's no need to have the words or the whole story before you reach out. The aim is steady, effective, integrative and human work that addresses the entirety of what the trauma impacted.
How Sexual Trauma Shows Up in Men's Lives
Maybe you've kept this in a box for years. You built a life, a career, and relationships. Sometimes on paper, things look fine. But something persists underneath it.
Many of the men Malachi works with are in their thirties or beyond. They reach a point where they're ready to look at what happened and how it shaped them. And they're often surprised by how far it has reached.
Sexual trauma doesn't stay in the past. It doesn’t just go away, and the longer it’s ignored, self-medicated away, or pushes down, the stronger its impact becomes. It shows up in how you trust people. How safe you feel in your own body. The way you handle closeness, or avoid it. Your relationship with work, money, and success, with anger, with rest. Sometimes it's been running quietly in the background so long that it just feels like this is how you are.
You don't need all of that mapped out before you begin. Most men start before they fully see the picture. That's part of the work.
Individual and Group Paths to Recovery
There are two ways in, and some men do both.
Individual Sessions
One on one, at your pace, in a space built for your safety. Sessions run 50 to 75 minutes of private, focused time, shaped entirely around where you are. You set the direction, under the care of someone who has done this work himself. There's room to go slow, to pause, and to build trust. For many men, this is where the deepest work takes root.
Group-Based Support
Many men find their deepest healing in the company of others who also get it. There's something in sitting with men who've carried the same weight that one-on-one work can't replicate. The isolation eases. You see your own story reflected, you watch other men move forward - and you realize that you can too
Malachi offers group-based support for men, including the new evidence-based approach The Octave, an 8-stage group process for men with histories of sexual trauma. These are support groups for male survivors, built on the same foundations of safety and pacing, with the added strength of shared experience.
How the Work Combines Talk and Body-Based Practices
Trauma isn't only a story in your head. It settles in the body, in the nervous system, in the way you brace, constantly scan your environment, or shut down without deciding to. So the work goes beyond talking about what happened.
Malachi blends conversation with body-based practices that help you feel steadier and more present. You learn to notice what's happening in your body, and to work with it instead of against it. Movement and somatic practices support this, where they're useful, always at your pace.
Safety comes first, and nothing moves faster than you're ready for. Some sessions focus on understanding what happened and why you respond the way you do. These insights are an important part of the process. Others focus on rebuilding the felt sense of safety that trauma took from you. Over time, you integrate a little more, you heal a little more, and you begin to more effortlessly experience the sense of wholeness that is possible.
Who This Work Is For
This work helps men who want to address the impact of sexual trauma, even when they're only just beginning to see it. This includes those who have just re-discovered childhood betrayals, or who are wondering why that flirtation from an adult, that lack of boundaries from a mom, or that weird drunken situation continues to bother youSexual trauma takes may forms, and doesn’t always look like overt chronic childhood molestation by a sibling or family member. Because male gender socialization erases the possibility that a man can be a sexual victim, it makes invisible many instances of unwanted sexual experiences, including experiences that popular media and narratives deem as fantasies and initiations. When we are impacted by these experiences, and struggle as a result, that struggle is also antithetical to what it means to perform masculinity. The struggle makes men feel that they aren’t a “real man.”
This struggle can appear in countless forms. Addiction, relationship problems, ED, sexual identity, parenting, being a workaholic, being a procrastinator, anxiety, hypertension, IBS and other digestive issues, chronic pain, domestic violence, self-harm and struggles with depression and suicide, troubles with sleep and energy, and endless rumination.
Malachi supports men through this work. He also works with people of all genders and trauma backgrounds across his wider practice. If something here resonates, that's usually a good sign.
Guidance From a Survivor and Trauma Specialist
Malachi is a survivor of sexual trauma himself. That's not a credential he went looking for. It's the reason he understands, from the inside, what it takes to face this, and what it means to recover and heal.
It shapes how he shows up. He isn't across from you as someone studying trauma from a distance. He has done his own healing, and he has spent years training in how trauma lives in the nervous system and the body.
This is the population he feels most called to support. Healing for male survivors of sexual trauma sits at the center of his doctoral research and the specialized groups he runs.
You Are Not Alone, Not Broken, and Able to Heal
You're not alone. More men carry this than you'd ever guess (more than 1 billion). The isolation is part of the wound, and it lifts.
You're not broken. What happened to you was not your fault. The ways you adapted to survive made sense. They kept you going. But eventually they keep you from living the life you want.
You can heal and grow. Recovery is both about re-discovering and restoring who you are at the core, with what you have learned and how you have grown along the way. It's about building something more resilient, that can weather storms with less drama, with more dignity, and with more room to breathe.
Sexual Trauma Support for All Genders
Not everyone who lands here is a male survivor. If you're seeking support for sexual trauma and this specific page isn't your fit, there's a broader path for that work, open to people of all gender identities, as well as folks who were perhaps socialized as a specific gender, but who don’t resonate or identify with that socialization.
Start With a Free Consultation
You've carried this long enough on your own. Whatever stage you're at, there's a way forward, and you don't have to find it alone. The clearest place to begin is a short consultation, a chance to talk about where you are and what might help.
In person in Berkeley; virtual across the US and beyond; individual and group-based options. If you have questions before you start, reach out, and we are happy to help.