I went voluntarily to an ex-gay group in Central CA for about 3 years and did counseling off-and-on for another 18-20 years with a counselor from that organization.

Thankfully, it was not a traumatic experience for me as it was all talk therapy and no extreme stuff like others have experienced. (which is why I think I stayed with it for so long.) It was a local "ministry" that was part of the now defunct, Exodus international organization.

What I will say is that most repairative therapy or conversion therapy promises hope to people who do not want to accept their orientation, but none of the programs have been able to demonstrate real change in orientation for most, if not all, of their participants.

In the program I went to, we met on Thursdays evenings every week in an office space. There were about 15 people or so in the group including leaders (who were all either staff or upjumped fellow ex-gays who had served their time.) We'd start every week singing worship music and it became clear very early that this organization was run by Charismatic/Pentecostal evangelicals and effectively served as a recruitment vehicle for their Holy-Ghost power style churches in the area.

After singing lots of songs about how God is powerful and loving and how we were broken and sad and needed Jesus, we would either go through a curriculum lesson: usually a combination of pop-psychology mixed with Christian scripture cherry-picked to give the concept we were covering authority, or we would go straight to our gender-specific, small group break outs.

The teaching was based in the theory that detached fathers and overbearing mothers and the family dysfunction they create was responsible for our same-sex attraction. (So help me God, if I never hear that phrase again, it will be too soon.) So every week the focus was on fixing various undiagnosed ailments and wounds in our inner selves. I was programmed for years that my homosexuality wasn't a sexual problem - it was a relational problem and that what I need was real and deeper non-sexual intimacy with other men. I was literally taught that gay couples can’t actually love each other, but instead were just using each other to meet the individual partner's needs. They bolster this claim by pointing out that this dynamic of envy (as opposed to love) was why you would always see opposites in same sex couples: the dominant masculine lesbian with her girlish partner, the hefty gay guy with the slender boyfriend. And we bought it. No one was there to challenge the assumptions going on. This was the mid-90s, mind you, so there was no r/dopplebangers to prove them wrong.

After lessons and reflection we would then break up into gender specific groups and either process the lesson together (not very often) or "check in" on how our week was (almost always.) It was a horror show of guys admitting to cruising or having a fall or mastubating while thinking of dudes. Most of the men in the room were from evangelical christian homes or churches and all were closeted to some degree. Some had never acted out, but were tormented by the fact that they were attracted to men and a couple of them were sexually active and trying to quit. As a young man of 19 at the time, and deeply in the closet, I had no idea where the gay hot spots for cruising and hooking up were until I joined this group. If I were not such a rule-follower back then, I totally could have started my gay journey just from attending that ministry. I also learned that God was DEEPLY concerned with how often I touched my own cock and whom I was thinking about when I did. Apparently, God likes to watch.

Additionally, to join the group, each member had to sign a covenant document stating that they would follow the ministry rules for being there. There was no Fraternization allowed outside the group for fear of hookups and you were not even allowed to acknowledge each other in public if you did not know the person outside of group already. That was to protect members from being accidentally outed without their consent. I appreciated the gesture, as I certainly did not want to be outed against my will. But looking back it created a very regulated, insular, little community of outcasts who actually would have benefited more from openness and acceptance rather than forced secrecy.

The counseling wasn't very expensive by today's standards but you did have to pay for your sessions (both group and individual) but they let you do office hours answering phones or admin tasks to work off the fee if you couldn't pay. The organization was (and still is) supported by outside giving.

So, like I said it was mostly talk therapy and no one did anything outwardly abusive, but as I look back now, I can see how damaging their so-called therapy was. While I was taught that "God loves you just as you are" the other half of the statement was: "but he loves you too much to leave you there."

The truth is that the lessons did have some solid psychological teaching in them. I did learn to confront my own passivity and loneliness and to have better boundaries for myself. But when they would talk about toxic shame and teach lessons on our "victory in Christ" it was always in the context of "but homosexuality is wrong and an affront to God, so if you're doing that, you're unacceptable." No one could see, or would choose to see, how they were contributing massive quantities of shame to the pile they said they were trying to eliminate.

The other effect of this terrible counseling - practiced by unlicensed professionals with no real mental health oversight or accreditation - was that it tied the legitimate wounds, issues, neuro-divergence, and traumas that we all had to our orientation. We did dig deep, we did confront our traumas and sins and brokenness, but we were taught that our attractions were the culmination of all that and we were fixing it. It linked our desires for the same gender to mental health or abuse/neglect issues. The result was a poisoning of the well in regard to all of us developing a healthy association to our own sexualities. Why would you connect to your own desires if your desires were nothing but a symptom of how fucked up your life has been? It was so destructive.

I lived for years disassociated from my sexuality - from my sexual desires - I still have a smack of shame every time I cum because cumming was simply a sin. Period. (Outside of monogamous, heterosexual marriage, that is.) And the shame was compounded if I came and was fantasizing about a guy. Many weeks in group and private counseling sessions and accountability partner meetups were spent clutching pearls over something that didn't matter. Man, If I had known what a crock it all was, I would have been chasing so many boys! But I didn't know, so I clutched pearls and fasted from the internet from time to time and met with other christian guys to talk about how we could stop jerking off - not how we could care for people, or rectify injustice, or make a goddamn difference in the world, just stop jerking off.

In the end, never lost my attraction to men. Never really. I learned to suppress it pretty well and I even told myself that I was developing attractions to women, but a few weeks into my marriage to one, we could both tell I was not into her the way either of us wanted me to be. She did not captivate my imagination the way a beautiful man does. I didn't long for her body or her parts (though they are very nice parts) they way I LONGED for a man's parts.

But I was convinced by my conversion therapy experience that I would. Someday, I would be as attracted to her as I was to men. I was sold the lie that change was possible and that since it was possible, I was going to do it. Today I am 49 and newly separated from my wife of 13 years and my step children and everyone is a wreck. I am finally living in the truth of who I really am, but at a terrible cost. We're all devastated and grieving because I couldn't make the lie true, no matter how I tried. There is now wreckage of a family that never should have been, but for the fact that I went to conversion therapy.

[edited for typos - I probably still missed a few - and a few extra details.]