Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E167: Healing The Wounds Of Sexual Abuse w/Therapist Michael Gasparro

Transcript

E167: Healing The Wounds Of Sexual Abuse w/Therapist Michael Gasparro · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  Are we calling too many things trauma?
• 0:03
  What are some of the bright lines that any parent should do
• 0:06
  to protect their child from abuse?
• 0:08
  And then that person's living in the feeling of being constantly
• 0:11
  a source of disappointment, and that's probably excruciating.
• 0:15
  We should not expect them to be perfectly able to be as chased
• 0:19
  as somebody who did not have that experience.
• 0:23
  Hey guys, welcome back to the Lila Rose podcast.
• 0:26
  Today I'm going to be sitting down with Michael Gasparo, who
• 0:29
  is a licensed marriage and family therapist.
• 0:32
  We are exploring the question of abuse and how to protect your
• 0:36
  children from abuse, particularly sexual abuse.
• 0:39
  How to navigate sticky situations with people that you
• 0:42
  love in your life who are struggling because of abusive
• 0:45
  histories or maybe something that happened in your past and
• 0:48
  how to overcome and how to ultimately discover healing and
• 0:52
  true freedom. Michael has been on the show
• 0:54
  before, you might remember him from our incredibly interesting
• 0:57
  deep dive into the question of same sex attraction.
• 1:00
  I think you're going to enjoy this episode as well.
• 1:03
  As always, do not forget to subscribe to the show if you're
• 1:05
  not already subscribed, whether you're on YouTube or podcast
• 1:08
  app. And don't forget to rate the
• 1:09
  show and give us five stars. That helps the show reach more
• 1:12
  people. Thanks for coming back on the
• 1:15
  show, Michael. Yeah, thank you for having me.
• 1:17
  Great to see you again. Thank you.
• 1:18
  You did awesome last time. Thank you, it was a good time.
• 1:22
  It was fun. People loved, loved the episode
• 1:24
  with you and it was really a lot tons of great feedback.
• 1:27
  And we're gonna talk about some of the, I guess the positive
• 1:30
  fallout from the episode cuz a lot of people had a lot of
• 1:34
  comments and questions that I think deserve us to do another
• 1:38
  dive into dive into it. But but yeah, for people that
• 1:42
  didn't see that episode yet, quick background on Michael
• 1:45
  Gasparo. Well, I shared about how I have
• 1:48
  had experiences in my own life with same sex attraction and
• 1:53
  that as a result of that and my Catholic faith together, I found
• 1:57
  myself trying to find a way to integrate my sexual struggles
• 2:00
  with my faith according to my conscience.
• 2:03
  And that has been a lifelong journey.
• 2:05
  And partly through psychological help and interventions, but also
• 2:10
  through spiritual healing, God has brought me to where I am,
• 2:12
  which is more free and healed than I was before.
• 2:15
  And it's just a journey now until eternity, to just keep
• 2:18
  opening my heart to that love that has brought me here.
• 2:21
  Beautiful. OK, so let's start with this
• 2:23
  comment that I saw. That is really what a lot of our
• 2:26
  conversations going to be about, but we'll see where it goes.
• 2:29
  Sexual trauma and unpacking that because a lot of people, I think
• 2:34
  there's some statistics that say like one in every five children
• 2:38
  experience some kind of sexual trauma or one in every three
• 2:41
  women are the victims of rape. I mean, some of these statistics
• 2:44
  might be exaggerated, but certainly this is something
• 2:48
  that's happening a lot and a lot of people are impacted by it.
• 2:51
  Growing up, I had a girlfriend, one of my closest friends
• 2:54
  experienced sexual abuse. So I think everyone has a story
• 2:57
  like that, whether it's themselves or someone that they
• 2:59
  know they love. And So what does that mean as
• 3:02
  people get older, the impact of that lifelong on them?
• 3:05
  There's a lot of different impacts.
• 3:06
  But I want to read this comment that I saw on the episode that
• 3:10
  we did that I thought was just really powerful.
• 3:12
  And I want to hear your your thoughts on this.
• 3:13
  So this is someone saying a lot of children have had trauma due
• 3:18
  to exposure to things children should have never been exposed
• 3:21
  to. I was bisexual in my 20s and not
• 3:24
  until therapy that specialized in sexual trauma did I
• 3:28
  understand that this attraction was me trying to be closer to my
• 3:33
  mother who alienated me and the fact that my abuse from three
• 3:38
  years old to 16 years old crazy by the same family member went
• 3:44
  ignored. I did not want any men near me
• 3:47
  because I felt as though all men wanted to do is put things
• 3:50
  inside of me as a child. I mean really hot horrific.
• 3:52
  I see this in the feminist movement so much because of the
• 3:55
  fear of men is in reality is it is a real reality for a lot of
• 3:58
  women who have been abused as little girls and as adults at
• 4:01
  parties, being drunk. And then she goes on to share
• 4:03
  about how she felt that, you know, sexual promiscuity was
• 4:08
  like a quick fix for her instead of learning to understand
• 4:11
  herself and learning what true love was very heavy but powerful
• 4:17
  that she's sharing this and talking about how that, you
• 4:19
  know, hearing you Share your story and some of your work, you
• 4:23
  know, prompted her to want to share this and talk about her
• 4:25
  path to healing. Yeah, and that kind of story is
• 4:29
  not as uncommon as we would like it to be.
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  I have a lot of clients who were abused sexually from a young age
• 4:36
  by family members, family friends.
• 4:40
  And it is especially even hard to find out how to deal with
• 4:45
  that when you're experiencing it by a loved one because it's more
• 4:48
  confusing it. And it's especially confusing
• 4:52
  when, and this is the part that is hard for people to hear.
• 4:55
  So I want to speak delicately about this, but when children
• 4:58
  are touched inappropriately, like that poor young woman,
• 5:02
  there's this double wound. There's a psychological wound
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  and fear and shame around the thing that happened, but then
• 5:07
  around sexuality in general, which makes it harder to become
• 5:11
  integrated as an adult and effectively mature as an adult.
• 5:15
  And the last thing I would say is there's that other side of
• 5:18
  the wound, the spiritual wound, the moral wound of being
• 5:21
  violated in a way that is both deeply psychologically and
• 5:25
  spiritually harmful. Well, let's start with the the
• 5:27
  adult who experienced this as a kid, right?
• 5:29
  So what do you think are the worse things that someone can do
• 5:33
  with that in their history as a way to deal with it?
• 5:36
  And then what would you recommend as the solutions, like
• 5:39
  if someone experienced sexual abuse or some sort of sexual
• 5:41
  trauma, Before we go to that, actually, let's just define what
• 5:45
  is sexual abuse and sexual trauma.
• 5:47
  Can we define that first? Yes.
• 5:49
  So sexual abuse could lead to trauma.
• 5:53
  So we'll, we'll first focus on what is abuse.
• 5:56
  And I would say there is a a Gray line here with people of
• 6:01
  the same age that are children because it can be very harmful.
• 6:05
  I think we see a lot people trying to normalize sexual play
• 6:08
  among kids. Have you heard that talked
• 6:11
  about, like amongst kind of progressive movements, like, oh,
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  that's normal and healthy for children to be touching each
• 6:16
  other, and that's not true. I think it's really important
• 6:19
  that we make it clear that even if it was kind of unintentional,
• 6:23
  because a child is exploring that, it's not helpful that
• 6:27
  they're doing that because it can arouse emotions within their
• 6:29
  bodies that they're not yet ready to intellectually
• 6:32
  comprehend or spiritually make sense of.
• 6:34
  Or I've seen like Planned Parenthood as an example, you
• 6:37
  know, that some of these, you know, pro unfortunately horribly
• 6:41
  abortion, but also pro sexual sexuality groups in terms of let
• 6:45
  children experiment sexually. So there's this recommended
• 6:48
  sexual education about like, you know, self pleasure.
• 6:51
  Like, you know, it's good for kids to self pleasure or at
• 6:53
  least adolescents. It's good to, I mean, ultimately
• 6:56
  masturbate. I mean, that is unfortunately
• 6:58
  some of the prevailing sexual education, sexual education that
• 7:01
  some of these progressive groups promote.
• 7:03
  Yeah, including in schools. Right.
• 7:05
  And that's my concern as well. And that's why I'm saying that
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  even if you don't define it as legal abuse, because it's not
• 7:12
  done by an adult to a child or it's not, it doesn't have to be
• 7:16
  an adult. It actually be an older child to
• 7:18
  a younger child, even if it's the same age children.
• 7:21
  Those two factors, consider one, that even if it's just innocent
• 7:25
  childhood experimentation that they don't understand, it can
• 7:28
  still be harmful. So we want to protect them by
• 7:30
  helping educate children that you know, the things we talked
• 7:32
  about last time about particular boundaries to keep in mind for
• 7:35
  young children. But two, sometimes children will
• 7:39
  do things to other children that had they had done to them.
• 7:42
  And that's what we talked about last time is often called trauma
• 7:45
  reenactment. So that's why even if it's among
• 7:47
  same age children, especially before the age of reason, but
• 7:51
  even afterward in childhood, it's not beneficial, necessary,
• 7:56
  it's even harmful and unhelpful for children to be enacting
• 7:59
  sexual play of any kind. So that would be a type of abuse
• 8:03
  that is less intentional because it would be same age children.
• 8:07
  Then let's define abuse from an older child or even an adult.
• 8:11
  It's essentially using a child in any way to arouse sexual
• 8:16
  pleasure for the adult's sake. That is abusive in in essence,
• 8:22
  even if the child doesn't perceive it as abuse.
• 8:25
  But could something be sexually abusive, even if it's not
• 8:28
  intended to? Like it's not like a a sexual
• 8:30
  thing for the adult, but it's still involved, you know, body
• 8:34
  parts that involve like the genitals that involve sex.
• 8:37
  And there's some kind of like punishment or there's some sort
• 8:40
  of, you know, being degrading of that child.
• 8:42
  Because I think, I mean, I was reading a, a story recently of a
• 8:45
  young woman who talked about how she was, the way she was
• 8:48
  disciplined by her, her parents involved like spanking on the
• 8:50
  bare bottom. And that had the effect for her
• 8:53
  that had trauma associated with sex for her because they're, you
• 8:56
  know, treating that part of her body in this ultimately
• 8:59
  disrespectful way. I think that makes sense.
• 9:01
  Yeah. So there are nuances to how
• 9:03
  types of harmful parenting, harmful disciplinary styles that
• 9:07
  are abusive, even if they're not directly sexual, can result in
• 9:11
  sexual wounds in adulthood. But sexual abuse specifically is
• 9:15
  more target as defined by more targeting of a child for sexual
• 9:20
  pleasure for the adult's sake. And the kind of reason I'm
• 9:23
  offering that definition with a little bit more a broad scope is
• 9:26
  because if a, if an adult doesn't even touch a child, but
• 9:30
  they give a lascivious look and they're kind of lusting in their
• 9:33
  in in their evil heart towards that child.
• 9:35
  And a child perceives that that's abusive even if there was
• 9:39
  never any physical contact. So we have to broaden it a bit
• 9:42
  beyond just physical touching or physical stimulation to what is
• 9:47
  it an adult's intention in their heart towards a child and then
• 9:52
  of course any subsequent actions.
• 9:53
  And it is it a pure intention of love towards a child for the
• 9:56
  child's own sake, or is it to arouse some sexual pleasure
• 9:59
  within themselves at the expense of a child's innocence?
• 10:02
  What are some of the bright lines that you think any parent
• 10:06
  should do to protect their child from abuse?
• 10:09
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  1st. We talked a little bit about
• 11:19
  this last time, so I would also reiterate forming deep,
• 11:23
  affirming, loving relationship with your children and fostering
• 11:28
  a sense that there is nothing a child can't talk to you about is
• 11:32
  probably a default best protection because we can't
• 11:35
  control everything that happens to our children.
• 11:37
  I don't have children right now, but I know parents cannot
• 11:40
  control everything that happens to their children.
• 11:42
  But you can help your child know their inherent dignity and worth
• 11:46
  and value. A.
• 11:48
  Which gives a child a sense of confidence that they know that
• 11:50
  they deserve to be treated with dignity.
• 11:52
  But B, if they are violated in any way, they will trust that
• 11:57
  you are the one they go to. And your reaction to anything
• 12:01
  bad that happens to your child, in line with what this person
• 12:05
  saying on the comment, is almost more important in some ways as a
• 12:09
  parent than what happens outside of your control to your child.
• 12:12
  Because that commenter said that their abuse was ignored, right?
• 12:16
  So that implies that it wasn't just the abuse that was harmful,
• 12:19
  it was the lack of response of an attentive parent that was
• 12:23
  also subsequent harmful, and maybe to an even greater degree.
• 12:27
  So for someone who is an adult, what would be the top things
• 12:32
  that they could do to heal from past sexual abuse?
• 12:38
  Wow, man, Yeah, I think the first step is a huge question.
• 12:41
  I know, right? What comes to my mind is
• 12:44
  acknowledging your need for healing.
• 12:47
  I know that might sound obvious, but I was at this Mass, Good
• 12:50
  Shepherd in Beverly Hills, and there's this priest there named
• 12:53
  Father Calm. He's 95, Lila.
• 12:56
  He is amazing. He is just an incredible
• 12:58
  gentleman. And he talked about in seeking
• 13:01
  healing in the Bible, the leper first had to acknowledge that he
• 13:04
  had leprosy to even desire healing from Jesus.
• 13:09
  And so we have to take an honest look at ourselves and say what
• 13:12
  happened to me? What's fueling behaviors in my
• 13:15
  life or feelings or distress in my life that I might need
• 13:19
  healing from. So just starting with asking
• 13:22
  Jesus to help reveal our wounds to ourself, reveal me to me,
• 13:26
  Lord, because we don't what's kind of cool as Christians, we
• 13:28
  don't have to like get to know ourselves by ourself.
• 13:32
  God wants to help reveal us to us.
• 13:35
  And in that knowledge of awareness of a wound, then Step
• 13:39
  2 or BI forget if I started with numbers or letters, But the next
• 13:42
  step would be go outside of yourself to seek healing as
• 13:46
  well. Because while we can bring
• 13:48
  healing into our own lives by our receptivity to God and
• 13:51
  others, that takes a real courageous next step to say, who
• 13:56
  can I talk to? Who's a trusted person in my
• 13:58
  life that I can talk to? Is it my priest?
• 14:01
  Is it my spouse? Is it a dear friend?
• 14:07
  Why, why is it so important to talk to someone about it?
• 14:10
  And I think this is especially real for men, but certainly it
• 14:14
  affects a lot of women too. But I think there is some people
• 14:17
  they don't have an issue sharing about tough things that have
• 14:20
  happened to them with other people.
• 14:22
  In fact, maybe they're an overshare and they just are very
• 14:24
  open and they'll share with anyone, right?
• 14:26
  And, and then there's other people that maybe they're more
• 14:29
  selective or they're, it's, it's more they hold their cards
• 14:31
  closer to their chest and don't just like share.
• 14:33
  And then there's other people that really don't share, like
• 14:36
  they don't even share with their closest friend if they have a
• 14:39
  closest friend, like really tough things that have happened
• 14:41
  to them, right? So there's all these like
• 14:43
  categories of the different amount of sharing that people
• 14:45
  do, right? And then you can say some of its
• 14:48
  generational, like, you know, rumors don't share because
• 14:51
  they're like, you know, or maybe I guess it would be the golden
• 14:55
  generation, like they were really tough and they just
• 14:57
  didn't share tough things that happened to them, right?
• 14:59
  Have you heard these generational differences?
• 15:01
  And like Gen. Z will just share everything.
• 15:03
  And it also depends on your age, whatever.
• 15:05
  But what I'm trying to get to here is why is it so important
• 15:10
  to talk to somebody about bad things that happened to you?
• 15:14
  Is it necessary to do that? I I think so.
• 15:17
  I mean, we have to start with something and someone.
• 15:21
  I think some people can turn to God first because that's the
• 15:24
  easiest thing. But some people have a hard time
• 15:25
  turning to God because they project their negative
• 15:29
  internalized view of themselves onto God.
• 15:32
  So God is a scary person so that you can be God to somebody,
• 15:35
  meaning that you are the face and hands of Jesus to somebody.
• 15:39
  So they might turn to you before they even turn to God.
• 15:42
  So as Christians, this is where we have a responsibility to be
• 15:45
  the heart of Christ for others and to dialogue from heart to
• 15:50
  heart with them. Saint John Henry Newman, I
• 15:52
  mentioned him last time, his motto was core, odd, core,
• 15:55
  loquitur. I think heart to heart and
• 15:57
  dialogue with Christ. Love that.
• 15:59
  Yeah, beautiful. And that idea that one heart
• 16:02
  dialoguing with another is a deeper reflection of the
• 16:06
  Christian life than just intellectual propositions.
• 16:09
  So what what I'm talking about when we reveal ourselves to
• 16:12
  another, it's not just words we're saying about something
• 16:14
  that happened. It's saying, here's my heart,
• 16:16
  here's what happened to me. And being seen in that
• 16:20
  experience of revealing our heart to another heart, there's
• 16:24
  something inherently very healing about it when we're
• 16:26
  received in that in a tender way.
• 16:29
  Is there a psychological backing for that?
• 16:31
  I mean, it makes sense from a common sense perspective and
• 16:33
  like a sort sort of a spiritual perspective, but what would be
• 16:37
  the psychological underpinning? Like I guess that's like talk
• 16:39
  therapy, right? Just by talking about your
• 16:42
  unburdening yourself to someone, you can do better.
• 16:46
  Yes, so there I think you're right.
• 16:48
  Like there's an unburdening that happens.
• 16:49
  By sharing that burden with another and and externalizing
• 16:53
  our experiences, we begin to be able to reprocess them in a way
• 16:56
  that helps us establish new narratives around it.
• 16:59
  Part of what trauma therapists say reinforces the extenuation
• 17:05
  of of trauma symptoms or the like, continuation of trauma
• 17:09
  symptoms is the narratives we hold onto about what happened to
• 17:12
  us, not just the thing itself. And that's kind of a whole other
• 17:15
  topic. But in saying out loud the
• 17:18
  narratives I have about myself and sharing from the heart and
• 17:21
  others experience or you know, sharing heart to heart with
• 17:24
  another that experience, I can start to see both through their
• 17:28
  reflection back to me, but also through cognitive flexibility,
• 17:32
  new narratives. Maybe it's not I'm bad.
• 17:35
  Maybe it's something bad happened to me.
• 17:37
  You know, that's a huge shift that can be life changing for
• 17:41
  somebody to be able to just shift a small way how we hold
• 17:44
  the truth about ourselves related to what happened to us.
• 17:48
  So back to kind of this idea of sharing with somebody else,
• 17:53
  because I, I, I think, have you, have you seen Abigail Shire's
• 17:57
  book Bad Therapy? Have you heard of that book?
• 17:58
  I've heard of the book, Yeah, I have not read it yet, but I'm
• 18:00
  familiar with the the. Theory, so her whole theory I've
• 18:03
  I was listening to it on tape. It's kind of been I've tried I
• 18:06
  have like 10 books I'm reading at any given like week at the
• 18:08
  same time we're listening to. But anyways, her whole thing as
• 18:11
  I as I know you know, is that there's too much therapy.
• 18:14
  We've sort of pathologic pathologized, thank you.
• 18:19
  We've pathologized everything. And like little kids are, you
• 18:23
  know, boys who are just restless in class because they're not
• 18:25
  really supposed to be sitting in a classroom 7 or 8 hours a day
• 18:28
  diagnosed with ADHD. They start to get into the
• 18:30
  system of like mental, the larger mental health care
• 18:32
  ecosystem. Everyone's medicated now.
• 18:35
  So there's her theory and I'm not doing it full justice and
• 18:38
  how I'm describing it, but this is part of her theory, right?
• 18:40
  We had Katherine Paklak on the show recently, and she was
• 18:42
  talking about how in her surveying of women who've had
• 18:46
  really big families, she discovered that there were all
• 18:50
  of these. And she's just a PhD economist
• 18:53
  who writes about like the birth dearth, the decline in birth
• 18:57
  rates, and then how there's these families having a lot of
• 18:59
  kids anyways. She found that families that had
• 19:02
  a lot of kids reported better ability, ability, resilience for
• 19:06
  the older kids to deal with tough stuff because they were
• 19:09
  younger kids in the house, meaning babies actually, Well,
• 19:11
  there's stressors associated with the baby.
• 19:13
  They also bring this positive experience to those around them,
• 19:17
  new meaning, new life, getting yourself outside of yourself.
• 19:20
  And they actually helped mental health outcomes for the family,
• 19:23
  which is sort of what is against the common knowledge today.
• 19:26
  The common knowledge today is that babies are stressful and
• 19:29
  tough and you shouldn't have them if you're in a tough spot.
• 19:31
  And her research is showing actually babies help us in this
• 19:35
  incredible way, like rise above and like get outside of
• 19:37
  ourselves. ANYWAYS, where I'm going with
• 19:39
  all of this is, are we calling too many things trauma and
• 19:44
  needing this sort of psychological solution via
• 19:48
  therapy too much? Is that part of our problem
• 19:52
  today? Or is it just that we need more
• 19:54
  intimate friends and family relationships that get us
• 19:57
  outside of ourselves and our safe places for us to share our
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• 21:01
  I think it could be both in the sense that there are real times
• 21:07
  where a person trained to understand the particular
• 21:12
  aspects of sexual abuse that may impact somebody's development
• 21:15
  and even be influencing their current behaviors can be a
• 21:18
  really helpful tool. Especially if that person is
• 21:22
  sensitive to the body, soul, unity of the human person and
• 21:25
  respectful of the need for spiritual and psychological
• 21:28
  healing and does not see therapy as an ends in itself, but as a
• 21:33
  means towards continuing to bring God's healing into your
• 21:36
  life. Particularly because then they
• 21:38
  can. A therapist may be able to
• 21:40
  foster you to also building its support resources outside of
• 21:43
  therapy. But I think that in terms of
• 21:46
  talking having a therapeutic effect, talking with a dear
• 21:50
  friend and revealing your wound to a loved one is therapeutic,
• 21:55
  whether or not you want to call it professional therapy.
• 21:58
  And so in that sense, I agree with you.
• 22:01
  We, we don't need to worry about over pathologizing sexual trauma
• 22:06
  because that in particular to our topic today, if anything, we
• 22:11
  need to be more clear about how much can be traumatic in that
• 22:14
  field. So for instance, broadening our
• 22:17
  definition to counter, like you said, Planned Parenthood's
• 22:19
  ridiculous sexual education model, exposure to pornography
• 22:23
  is traumatic for children. And so that's another example
• 22:27
  where we should be cautious to not let the culture minimize how
• 22:31
  much we call trauma. But in general, yes.
• 22:34
  Do we maybe apologize the wrong things at times?
• 22:38
  But that is if we have a bad idea of the human person.
• 22:40
  So if we have an anchored view of the human person in Christian
• 22:43
  anthropology as made in God's image and likeness with inherent
• 22:46
  dignity, male or female, beloved by God, infinitely loved, and
• 22:52
  basically a helpless child before God, we get that right,
• 22:56
  that we need God. He created us, and we were
• 22:59
  called to love him in return and love our neighbor as ourself.
• 23:01
  We won't call the wrong things trauma, I think in that case.
• 23:04
  So you're saying, and I agree with this, it's like our culture
• 23:07
  doesn't take sexual trauma seriously enough, right?
• 23:11
  Because everything's so sexualized, including children
• 23:13
  in so many ways. And so that's not serious taken
• 23:17
  seriously enough. Maybe there's other kind of
• 23:19
  aspects of human behavior that are over pathologized, but we're
• 23:22
  not when it comes to sexual trauma.
• 23:23
  That's not, that's not, not it, right?
• 23:25
  And I, and to be fair to Abigail Shire, she's not talking about
• 23:28
  sexual trauma in her book. She's more talking about
• 23:30
  behavioral stuff, right? That ends up having big impacts
• 23:34
  on kids, Although, you know, maybe some of it's rooted in a
• 23:37
  sexual trauma that's not diagnosed.
• 23:39
  Who knows, right? How what are the statistics on
• 23:42
  sexual trauma? Do we know?
• 23:43
  I know I said at the beginning some statistics, but I don't
• 23:46
  know if those are correct. I think it is varied between
• 23:50
  studies and how they define what sexual trauma is.
• 23:54
  I think it's reasonable. Let's just talk about reasonable
• 23:57
  assumptions. Think about anecdotally the
• 23:59
  people in your life who you know in your circles, how common is
• 24:03
  exposure to pornography at an early age?
• 24:05
  And I have seen studies quoted the average age of exposure for
• 24:10
  most children as 8 to 11 years old.
• 24:12
  I can't say that that's true for everybody.
• 24:15
  And I think we could all just. You said that's all a trauma.
• 24:18
  Sorry to interrupt, but it's every time you.
• 24:19
  Exposure to oh. Can it be a trauma?
• 24:22
  To be exposed to pornography, I think it's almost always going
• 24:25
  to be traumatic. If they're especially that age
• 24:28
  range, 8 to 11 years old, and they have not been educated on
• 24:30
  love and life from their parents, and then they're
• 24:32
  exposed to graphic sexual images, that's confusing and
• 24:36
  it's scary. And it might also be exciting
• 24:39
  because children are naturally inclined to be aroused like
• 24:43
  adults are. We are aroused by beauty and
• 24:46
  images of good, but they're perverse images because they're
• 24:49
  exploiting individuals and so that are in those images.
• 24:53
  And so it's it's the reason it's traumatic again, is because it
• 24:56
  cannot be properly integrated because there is inherently
• 24:59
  going to be shame and fear because they're not cognitively
• 25:02
  prepared for a, that level of intense input, sensory input.
• 25:07
  And B, it's not good for anyone to have that kind of input
• 25:10
  because it's not the way we're meant to be kind of consuming
• 25:13
  that kind of material. You know, that's not intended
• 25:16
  for human flourishing, that we'd be watching those kinds of
• 25:19
  images. So for those that have, you
• 25:23
  know, we're kind of talking about the adult who is the
• 25:25
  survivor of some sort of sexual trauma.
• 25:27
  And your point here, which is a powerful 1 is like maybe it's
• 25:31
  almost all adults to some degree, you know, because if it
• 25:35
  is, if it is pornography has this impact of having being able
• 25:40
  to traumatize or harm. And it's most people have been
• 25:44
  exposed to pornography, especially men, right?
• 25:47
  I mean, it's most boys have been exposed to pornography.
• 25:49
  I think I remember seeing a statistic, it was like over 90%.
• 25:53
  So everyone has had that. You could say trauma.
• 25:56
  And then of course, there's addiction that enters into the.
• 25:58
  Picture, yeah. And I think trauma when we are
• 26:03
  experiencing something that is negative, the degree to which we
• 26:08
  react, we in the psychology world, you might use a frame of
• 26:12
  reference called like an acute stressor.
• 26:14
  And if you're exposed to an acute stressor, it's like, you
• 26:18
  know, at any age you're going to have stress responses in the
• 26:21
  body. And if those responses are
• 26:24
  extreme and are prolonged, they become forms of post traumatic
• 26:28
  stress. And if they're long enough and
• 26:30
  severe enough, we call post traumatic stress disorder.
• 26:32
  So often with sexual abuse, there will be PTSD.
• 26:36
  That's not uncommon. To the degree that somebody has
• 26:41
  a diagnosable trauma based disorder, there's a whole
• 26:44
  variety of factors that would influence that, including
• 26:47
  someone's biology, temperament, personality, age of exposure,
• 26:49
  length of the trauma, was it repeated?
• 26:52
  Was it processed soon after with their family?
• 26:54
  Was there spiritual and physical and psychological healing that
• 26:57
  they were integrated that was given to them early on.
• 27:00
  So there's all these factors that would affect how does that
• 27:03
  traumatic experience impact subsequent trauma stressors and
• 27:08
  trauma responses. But you know, so we shouldn't
• 27:12
  you just say uniformly, anyone that's exposed to a pornographic
• 27:16
  image at a young age is going to have this set of symptoms.
• 27:20
  But we can say it's objectively a negative thing that will have
• 27:23
  a bad impact and needs to be mitigated through parental and
• 27:27
  psychological and spiritual healing.
• 27:29
  So yeah, this is kind of back to our definition of trauma, right?
• 27:32
  And what you're saying is, just because something is a trauma or
• 27:36
  has the potential to be a trauma doesn't mean that that person is
• 27:39
  traumatized. Yeah, especially to the degree
• 27:43
  like it's going to differ per person based on what happened to
• 27:45
  them. So for people that are dealing
• 27:48
  with, you know, some sort of early childhood or childhood
• 27:53
  sexual exposure or so there's exposure, there's sexual abuse,
• 27:57
  The exposure can have the impact of abuse back to kind of
• 28:00
  adulthood. You were kind of walking us down
• 28:02
  a road of things that someone could do and unearthing that you
• 28:05
  talked about making sure that they talk to someone about it
• 28:09
  and that can open the door to healing.
• 28:10
  What are some other core steps that you recommend for healing
• 28:14
  from sexual trauma or sexual exposure?
• 28:20
  Man, I, I think it's before I even give an answer
• 28:22
  specifically, I think we need to start with injecting hope here
• 28:27
  because God loves us so much and he is for us more than we are
• 28:31
  for ourselves. And I've spent a lot of my adult
• 28:33
  life asking God to help me see that, that he has more for me
• 28:38
  than I am for myself. And what's so harmful about
• 28:41
  sexual trauma is that it happens within our own body.
• 28:45
  And so then it's sort of like this confusing double, double
• 28:50
  wound if there's the spiritual and psychological wound that I
• 28:53
  mentioned earlier. But then there's also the mental
• 28:56
  gymnastics we have to go through to like make sense of am I
• 29:00
  lovable before God because of feeling so often sullied by this
• 29:06
  experience, if that even is fully conscious.
• 29:09
  Sometimes that belief is sort of pre conscious, not fully
• 29:13
  conscious. So it expresses itself and the
• 29:15
  way we seek affirmation and healing in all the wrong places.
• 29:20
  For instance, you know, don't seek affirmation in bed.
• 29:23
  As you know, it's probably aptly stated by especially Doctor
• 29:28
  Conrad Bars who writes a lot about feeling and healing your
• 29:30
  emotions after things like this and in general.
• 29:33
  So I think hope, I don't know why it's on my heart, Lila.
• 29:37
  But like before we even talk about anything else, it's our
• 29:39
  hope is in God and nothing we do or had done to us can take away
• 29:45
  that inherent dignity that is in imbued by our Creator on our
• 29:51
  very self. I love that.
• 29:54
  Yeah. I, I mean, I can't think, I
• 29:56
  don't think that can be overstated, especially with such
• 29:58
  a heavy topic. And we just, like kind of went
• 29:59
  right into it, yeah. Yeah, and it's so.
• 30:02
  It's also hopeful that God is the God of all healing and that
• 30:07
  even in this life we may not experience perfect healing.
• 30:11
  I think it's so important. What's so cool about being
• 30:14
  Christians is that we can speak about traumas with an eternal
• 30:17
  perspective. And in the Bible it says we do
• 30:20
  not grieve as those who have no hope and our hope is in
• 30:24
  something bigger than this life only.
• 30:27
  So with the comments you read, people might be like, well, how
• 30:31
  am I? What hope is there for me if
• 30:32
  I've lived through 20 years of abuse?
• 30:35
  Well, one, God wants us to bring earth, Kingdom of heaven on
• 30:40
  earth as it is in heaven. So we do want to bring wherever
• 30:44
  we can, God's healing, love and light through psychological and
• 30:47
  spiritual intervention and support.
• 30:48
  But whatever wounds remain in this life, we'll be healed
• 30:53
  perfectly in the next with the Lord if we go to be with God for
• 30:55
  all eternity. And I can't think of anything
• 30:58
  more hopeful than that. So I just think we have to keep
• 31:02
  that in focus as Christians that we grieve.
• 31:04
  We do grieve. So abuse is a a trauma that
• 31:07
  needs to be grieved. But we have to remember that we
• 31:10
  are allowed to help people grieve with hope.
• 31:12
  And he is the Father of all consolations.
• 31:14
  And those of us who have been consoled by His mercy through
• 31:17
  Jesus Christ are called to share that consolation with others.
• 31:21
  What is the like if you have someone come to you and I know
• 31:26
  you've had this in your practice, but they have, they're
• 31:28
  trying to heal from sexual trauma, You know, we talked
• 31:32
  about talking to someone about it as a first step.
• 31:36
  What is sort of the typical response for healing?
• 31:40
  You know, you mentioned knowing God's love for you and having
• 31:43
  hope that healing is possible. Certainly, I'm sure there can be
• 31:46
  like spiritual healings that can be given without even like maybe
• 31:49
  therapy or other things. God does what he wants to.
• 31:51
  Do God does what he wants to do, but are there some sort of like
• 31:54
  like must haves that you would say in the toolbox for healing?
• 31:58
  Or would it be more like it just depends on the person and their
• 32:01
  needs and having a good Christian therapist, it's going
• 32:03
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  and a baby in need. I think it's often both and in
• 32:56
  this conversation. So the thing that comes to my
• 32:58
  mind is as a therapist trained to help people with these issues
• 33:01
  and have lived, having lived through some similar experiences
• 33:05
  to what we're talking about today, I found healing in my own
• 33:09
  life through therapy, through psychological interventions.
• 33:12
  We mentioned eye movement desensitization and
• 33:14
  reprocessing. It's an evidence based trauma
• 33:16
  treatment and it uses both cognitive therapy, meaning
• 33:20
  changing our schematics, our, our thoughts and our stories to
• 33:23
  help impact our emotions and our behaviors.
• 33:26
  But it uses also behavioral therapy, which means an
• 33:29
  exposure. We remember the thing that
• 33:31
  happened. It exposes us to that thing.
• 33:34
  So it uses cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy, and and this
• 33:38
  cool thing called bilateral stimulation of the brain through
• 33:41
  eye movement or through tapping or through sounds.
• 33:44
  Is that the kind of like, hip almost?
• 33:45
  It feels hypnotic, but it's not. Yeah, it can they.
• 33:48
  Sometimes they use eye movements that you write to left, but it's
• 33:51
  all client directed, self LED. It's not actual hypnosis.
• 33:55
  The client always remains full in control of their faculties,
• 33:58
  but it's meant to and intended to keep right hemisphere and
• 34:01
  left hemisphere both online and engaged while reflecting
• 34:06
  cognitively what happened to you and exposing yourself
• 34:08
  behaviorally to the memory. And that helps shape the
• 34:11
  narrative differently. And they believe it even
• 34:13
  supports through this bilateral stimulation of the brain, it
• 34:16
  somehow speeds the process up of helping the brain relegate that
• 34:19
  trauma memory to long term memory storage.
• 34:22
  So that post traumatic stress, which is where the memory feels
• 34:25
  like it's still currently happening.
• 34:27
  It's sort of fresh in the front of our minds now.
• 34:29
  It's that that thing that happened to me, not the thing
• 34:32
  that is still happening. It helps shut down the amygdala
• 34:35
  response, which is our lizard brain, the fight or flight
• 34:38
  reaction in the brain, and keep more online the prefrontal
• 34:41
  cortex, which is the part of our brain that has higher cognitive
• 34:44
  reasoning faculties. Do you want to expand on that at
• 34:47
  all or? Yeah.
• 34:47
  Please do. Yeah.
• 34:48
  Well, so when someone comes to therapy, that's one example of
• 34:52
  in the psychological world, a common evidence based trauma
• 34:55
  reprocessing technique that is a psychological intervention using
• 35:00
  the brains natural healing capacities, but it's done in the
• 35:03
  presence ideally of a loving other who sees you.
• 35:05
  Now you've revealed heart to heart what's happening, but also
• 35:08
  we're employing these natural faculties that the brain can do
• 35:11
  to help heal itself. So there is an interpersonal
• 35:14
  component, an intrapersonal component within myself, the
• 35:17
  brain healing itself. And on top of that, if it's a
• 35:20
  Christian therapist, there can be a spiritual component, so you
• 35:23
  can pray with a client. I know there are therapists in a
• 35:26
  group that I'm a part of called the Catholic Psychotherapy
• 35:28
  Association who integrate inner prayer healing ministry with
• 35:33
  EMDR because they want to bring all of us to the ultimate source
• 35:38
  of healing, which is God. God is the source of all
• 35:41
  healing, whether it's through a psychological intervention or
• 35:44
  otherwise. And there's so many beautiful
• 35:46
  ways that that can happen too, with people bringing these
• 35:48
  wounds even to ministries. You know, with in the pro-life
• 35:52
  movement, there is all kinds of support needed for psychological
• 35:55
  help for women who are post abortive.
• 35:57
  But there's also ministerial approaches like I think it's
• 36:01
  Rachel's, Rachel's Vineyard, where they're actively seeking
• 36:05
  healing in the spiritual context.
• 36:07
  That's not strictly A psychological exercise, but it
• 36:10
  it's always both and. How much do you think of healing
• 36:13
  along with EMDR and and those sorts of therapies would are you
• 36:18
  mentioned earlier like this, the importance of changing the
• 36:21
  narrative about what happened to you, like the mindset of what
• 36:23
  happened to you? Because I think so much I know
• 36:25
  like Jordan Peterson, a lot of his work is around this, like
• 36:27
  telling the story of 1's life and having a story arc for your
• 36:30
  own life. Because if you if if your story
• 36:33
  is set in stone that you are a certain way, certain behaviors
• 36:38
  you're fated to your childhood was a certain way.
• 36:41
  And because of it, you are sort of limited in a certain way.
• 36:46
  You're sort of have certain obstacles that you will always
• 36:48
  have. You're going to never be able
• 36:50
  to, you know, achieve certain things that can change the
• 36:55
  trajectory of someone's life dramatically.
• 36:57
  And they might have had a different life if they had
• 37:00
  simply had a different thought process about what was possible
• 37:03
  for them or about what had happened to them.
• 37:06
  I think it's really interesting you mentioned that being a what
• 37:10
  then what helps somebody be able to change that narrative?
• 37:13
  Because maybe most people want to, but they have a hard time.
• 37:16
  And so one aspect of this idea of healing interpersonally is we
• 37:22
  need other people to help us see ourselves differently.
• 37:26
  And that's where both, yes, EMDR and these trauma reprocessing
• 37:30
  methods that can help people shift the narrative about
• 37:32
  themselves are good and helpful. And you being with me heart to
• 37:37
  heart may help me see myself differently and capable of a
• 37:40
  different trajectory. So I think interpersonal aspects
• 37:45
  of healing journeys are essential for helping us shake
• 37:48
  ourselves out of like sometimes we don't even know what those
• 37:50
  narratives are. We're not even fully aware we.
• 37:52
  Know we're living under a certain narrative.
• 37:54
  Yes, until somebody else can help see like you're more than
• 37:57
  that and they can. And this is what we call a, a
• 38:00
  corrective emotional experience. It's more than just knowing it.
• 38:04
  And I see this a lot with people with SSA in my practice, but
• 38:08
  also with people with sexual abuse.
• 38:10
  You they some of them are experts on theology of the body.
• 38:13
  They know their body's a good thing.
• 38:15
  They have the cognitive awareness that sexuality is a
• 38:18
  gift. But they lack sensory knowledge,
• 38:21
  emotional knowledge that it is because whenever they feel an
• 38:24
  arousal, they feel shame and fear.
• 38:27
  And so how do we help people? Yeah, you can change their
• 38:30
  intellect. You can say, hey, just listen to
• 38:32
  this story, God made you good, and sexuality is a beautiful
• 38:36
  thing and it's a gift from God. But they need a experience that
• 38:40
  shows them at the sense level, which Aquinas, I believe says
• 38:44
  and is cognitive. Cognitive ideas include both
• 38:48
  sensory knowledge and intellectual knowledge.
• 38:50
  It's called con natural experience.
• 38:53
  We learn like with the children. If you have a child and you tell
• 38:56
  them the stove is hot, they like believe you that the stove's
• 38:59
  hot, but they don't really know that the stove's hot until
• 39:02
  unfortunately they touch the stove and then it's hot and then
• 39:05
  now they have sense knowledge of.
• 39:07
  Course I'm thinking like, how does this work though with
• 39:08
  sexual trauma? Because it's not like you, you
• 39:11
  know, you can be, you can have you can experience sexual trauma
• 39:14
  and still experience healing without having sex, right,
• 39:17
  Right. Consensual sex.
• 39:19
  And there is this, you know, unfortunately, there is again,
• 39:22
  the kind of prevailing notion among his amongst progressives
• 39:25
  who are very to see sex in a certain way that I don't think
• 39:30
  is grounded in Christian anthropology.
• 39:32
  But they say, well you need to just have.
• 39:34
  That's the argument for you. Go and have consensual sex, have
• 39:37
  pleasurable experiences, do self pleasure to make sex not
• 39:40
  shameful and to make sex feel good.
• 39:43
  People need to have be with sexual trauma.
• 39:45
  So we're talking about a particular subgroup of people.
• 39:48
  So just to be clear, if somebody has this negative experiential
• 39:53
  knowledge of their own body and of sexuality due to abuse or
• 39:56
  exposure, etcetera, that sense knowledge that my body is good.
• 40:00
  Sexuality is a gift. And arousal by the way, is not a
• 40:03
  sin. Arousal itself is just a a
• 40:05
  reaction. It's just a pleasure reaction in
• 40:07
  the body. And this is where we can unpack
• 40:08
  the idea of what our emotions, what our feelings, how do they
• 40:11
  relate to the Christian life? But before we go into all of
• 40:13
  that, pleasure is just a reaction to to sensory and moral
• 40:18
  goods. It's not a sin.
• 40:20
  It's not it's an emotion. It's not in the realm of sin.
• 40:22
  Sin exists in the realm of the will with intent and action.
• 40:26
  So when a child has been exposed or been harmed in a way that
• 40:30
  makes them perceive that arousal itself is the problem, that
• 40:35
  needs to be corrected at a cognitive level.
• 40:37
  So we kind of provide new education, but there does need
• 40:39
  to be a sensory experiential knowledge that it's not sinful
• 40:43
  to feel aroused. And even a friend of mine,
• 40:45
  Doctor Libby Reichardt, who's the Dean of academics at Saint
• 40:47
  John Seminary, she told me she tells the priests in her
• 40:50
  seminary, her seminarians in her class, she's an expert on
• 40:53
  aquatist. And she says sexual arousal is
• 40:55
  not a sin, it's just a reaction. So then, yeah, OK, So what do we
• 41:00
  do? Do we do the Freudian thing and
• 41:01
  say, just go have sex with as many people as possible to get
• 41:03
  rid of your shame? No, but this is where healing
• 41:06
  from sexual abuse. We also need to be as Christians
• 41:08
  very patient with people knowing that as they unearth and begin
• 41:12
  to feel arousal. Sometimes it's it's a confusing,
• 41:16
  messy process for people. And can we, I would dare us to
• 41:20
  try to be pastoral and accompanying people with
• 41:22
  sensitivity that they might not yet be free for morality to the
• 41:27
  degree we wish they were yet. And we should not give up on
• 41:30
  them or shame them for not being where we wish they were at that
• 41:34
  time. And I'll say one last thing
• 41:37
  regarding that for children, some of it has to do with
• 41:40
  correcting, you know, let's say they're 12 years old and they
• 41:42
  have this experience and they come to you and they're they're
• 41:44
  getting psychological help. No, you don't need to go tell
• 41:47
  them to do sexual things to overcome shame.
• 41:50
  But there does need to be an awareness that children
• 41:53
  integrate their sexual feelings gradually in adolescence.
• 41:57
  So you should not expect your 14 year old child to be as capable
• 42:02
  of chastity and sexual integration as an adult.
• 42:05
  I'm not saying you endorse bad behavior.
• 42:08
  And there is especially levels of harm when a child is acting
• 42:12
  out with another child. That's a level of harm that is
• 42:15
  intolerable. We we need to intervene at all
• 42:18
  at all costs, basically without harming our own child.
• 42:22
  But if if a child was harmed and they're, let's say 20 years old
• 42:26
  now and they're struggling with compulsive masturbation because
• 42:30
  they were indoctrinated into this negative cycle, we should
• 42:34
  not expect them to be perfectly able to be as chaste as somebody
• 42:39
  who did not have that experience.
• 42:41
  And the catechism says this as much.
• 42:43
  The catechism says psychological issues, force of habit,
• 42:47
  psychosexual maturity, and a variety of other factors can
• 42:51
  contribute, especially with regard to masturbation, in a way
• 42:55
  that reduces culpability even to a minimum.
• 42:58
  And that is not saying it says the church is always taught in
• 43:01
  constant, constant tradition that it is a gravely disordered
• 43:06
  action and that it should, you know, it's it's material sin,
• 43:09
  Yeah, masturbation. So it's not at all saying the
• 43:11
  church is wrong. But the church also says when
• 43:15
  there are these factors that have influenced a persons state
• 43:18
  in life, like abuse and trauma, it's the highest good is not
• 43:23
  just immediately getting them to stop compulsive behaviors.
• 43:26
  We have to have a bigger, bigger picture.
• 43:28
  The highest good is helping them integrate and heal so they can
• 43:31
  be free for morality and free for the good without fear that
• 43:36
  their struggle is, you know, let's say, making them.
• 43:41
  I don't know how to put it, Lila, other than to say we have
• 43:43
  to be patient with people who have been through bad stuff.
• 43:45
  We have to be patient. It's AI mean.
• 43:48
  I think that's a a good go to for any of this stuff because
• 43:52
  it's just messy and the human experience is so varied on it.
• 43:56
  There's so many directions we can go with this, but One
• 43:58
  Direction that I think is important to explore is this the
• 44:02
  experience that a lot of people have, and especially people who
• 44:04
  maybe are in the Christian world or the more conservative world
• 44:07
  and were raised in those homes. And so they were raised by
• 44:12
  parents who really believed that sex was for marriage.
• 44:15
  And they were opposed to obviously same sex behaviors,
• 44:20
  activities. They were opposed to these
• 44:24
  identities of like bisexual or gay or all the stuff.
• 44:26
  And so the parents were or the teachers or the people in the in
• 44:31
  their system that they grew up in, the systems they grew up in.
• 44:34
  There was a sense that some of these people felt shame about
• 44:38
  sexual behavior or activities. And so they reject those
• 44:42
  fundamentalist upbringings. They see most fundamentalist and
• 44:44
  they're moving on to feel more free and sexually liberated by
• 44:48
  just living the way that they feel drawn.
• 44:51
  You see what I'm talking about. So, and I think there's
• 44:54
  something real there that there is real.
• 44:57
  There is harm that is done by some families, whether it's
• 45:01
  intentional or not, probably unintentional where sex is seen
• 45:05
  as so taboo and there's not this more, I think open view of yes,
• 45:13
  life is messy. Like the truth is the truth.
• 45:16
  God's plan for sex is still God's plan.
• 45:18
  But in the messy experience of human life and and traumas and
• 45:22
  hurt that people may have, stuff happens and how to navigate that
• 45:26
  stuff in the messiness of life can make or break a person self
• 45:31
  perceptive perception to some degree.
• 45:33
  As a kid that's kind of long winded, but I think you know
• 45:35
  where I'm going with that. So yeah, I am and I, I'm one of
• 45:38
  the things that come to my mind when you say that is the idea of
• 45:42
  the law of gradualness, not gradualness of law.
• 45:46
  And to explain a bit further, what I mean is we are allowed to
• 45:49
  learn. God gives us permission to learn
• 45:52
  through trial and error and trial and success.
• 45:54
  That's how children learn. We're not expected to be perfect
• 45:58
  in this life, much less in childhood.
• 46:01
  And gradualness of law would imply like the latter of what
• 46:05
  you mentioned about just saying none of it really matters, sort
• 46:07
  of resigning yourself to mediocrity.
• 46:09
  It's not really important. And the paradox in the spiritual
• 46:13
  life and for families to consider for their children is
• 46:16
  we have to accept exactly where we are at whatever stage we are
• 46:21
  in every way that's essential to spiritual interior freedom.
• 46:28
  And Father Jacques Philippe talks about that.
• 46:29
  But then he also says that's not to say that you don't also then
• 46:34
  Foster and accept the deepest desire for the highest happiness
• 46:38
  of your life, which is God. And so we ascend to that.
• 46:41
  We, we long for greatness in our lives.
• 46:43
  We, we long for greatness. I do, I long for it.
• 46:47
  But God gave us that longing. And so that will give us the
• 46:50
  energy to ascend to the heights of holiness.
• 46:53
  Well, also paradoxically saying, okay, but here I am in my
• 46:56
  poverty right now, right here, and I'm not as capable as I
• 47:01
  would like to be, but that's towards freedom for morality and
• 47:04
  this area of my life, psychosexual freedom or
• 47:07
  development. And I wish I was further.
• 47:09
  And God let you know what I love.
• 47:12
  I love the work of I can't say his name properly.
• 47:14
  It's the papal theologian right now.
• 47:16
  His name is Father. Weird.
• 47:17
  Check, guy, check. It's Polish.
• 47:20
  And he says part of the problem with people who have obsessive
• 47:24
  compulsive sexual issues and neurosis is that they take
• 47:28
  themselves so seriously that they forget that life is full of
• 47:32
  mistakes and blunders that we all make and they're not all
• 47:35
  tragic, though we have to be able to ask Jesus, Lord, help me
• 47:39
  to true holiness. He said, basically, is our
• 47:42
  poverty coming in contact with God's grace, not in perfect
• 47:47
  behavior all the time and that in our poverty we can also learn
• 47:51
  to laugh at ourselves and not take yourself so seriously.
• 47:53
  Of course, I made that mistake again.
• 47:55
  God, I'm little help me to love my littleness before you again,
• 47:59
  not gradualness of law, which say it doesn't matter or who
• 48:03
  cares because we want to acknowledge that the law is
• 48:07
  true. The church's teachings are true
• 48:10
  and are for our good, but can we accept that as an example, you
• 48:14
  know, sort of narratively. I work with people who are
• 48:17
  abused as children many times and one comes to mind where this
• 48:21
  you know and of course I should reiterate I will change some
• 48:24
  details and and be very vague on purpose to protect client
• 48:28
  identity. You should know if you're going
• 48:29
  to therapist. They will not share your
• 48:32
  information in a way that would make them identifiable in any
• 48:34
  public capacity. But as an example of this, I
• 48:37
  have a client, let's say who it was a young man who was abused
• 48:41
  at around age 10 years old by an older brother and was sexually
• 48:45
  abused by an older brother. OK, so then.
• 48:47
  By the way, in this case starting up, but was the older
• 48:50
  brother himself sexual abuse? Like why was the older brother
• 48:52
  abusing the younger brother? I don't know.
• 48:54
  We don't know. We don't know.
• 48:55
  We know that this happened, right?
• 48:58
  And when this client came to me for therapy, the client began
• 49:04
  both to address that issue for the first time in their life,
• 49:09
  but also concurrently was struggling with behaviors that
• 49:13
  re enacted that abuse while seeking healing from that abuse.
• 49:17
  And so it's a messy sort of mixture of things happening in
• 49:21
  that person's heart and mind. They love God, they want to
• 49:24
  follow God. They don't understand why their
• 49:26
  feelings are so difficult to manage.
• 49:28
  And so we do the both and of accepting them where they are
• 49:32
  right now. Maybe they're still engaging in
• 49:35
  trauma reenactment. Okay.
• 49:37
  We don't send them away till they're perfect.
• 49:39
  Yeah, figure that out and then come to therapy.
• 49:40
  No, come now. Come before God now.
• 49:43
  Come before your family and friends and loved ones now.
• 49:45
  And let us accompany you to show the that you are not defined by
• 49:49
  what happened to you, and you're capable of being experiencing
• 49:52
  God's healing love so that you can be free for the good, free
• 49:57
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  I love this idea of starting with, with anything in any kind
• 50:59
  of healing journey, but starting with I am loved unconditionally
• 51:03
  as I am with all of whatever baggage or struggles or
• 51:06
  challenges. And I am loved as I am with my
• 51:10
  attractions, with my wounds, with whatever it is like that
• 51:13
  radical affirmation and acceptance of self before God.
• 51:17
  And it's any part of progress in the spiritual journey, I think
• 51:20
  has to start with that. Well, at the same time, like
• 51:23
  you're saying, acknowledging that we are a mess, like we need
• 51:27
  God, all of us for different things, but we all share the
• 51:31
  need, the desperate need because of our own wounds and our own
• 51:34
  mortality and our own sin. Like we all need God equally.
• 51:37
  And so that there's just freedom, so much opportunity
• 51:41
  there to work from when you start with that, that space.
• 51:44
  And I'm, I'm thinking about someone that I know, again,
• 51:46
  anonymizing this, but you know, this person who felt that they
• 51:50
  were accepted by the LGBTQ world because they were finally
• 51:56
  accepted for who they were. And they felt that God liked
• 51:59
  that for them, like God honored that for them because they
• 52:02
  finally felt full acceptance, right?
• 52:05
  And that just broke my heart that they didn't feel that with
• 52:08
  others that around them, including maybe myself, because
• 52:12
  they felt there's weight of judgement when it comes to this
• 52:15
  is an ordered sexual path and this is a disordered sexual
• 52:18
  path. So I guess the question is like,
• 52:19
  how do we thread that needle for people, whether it's in therapy
• 52:23
  or friends or family that we have to say, say, listen, you
• 52:26
  are loved and I love you as you are no strings attached.
• 52:30
  You are good and God has a beautiful plan for you.
• 52:33
  You were made for greatness. Well, at the same time, saying
• 52:36
  these behaviors, you know, these activities are not your
• 52:41
  identity, first of all, like disordered sexual activities and
• 52:45
  you are still at your core, loved as you are, even if you're
• 52:50
  engaging in these activities. Yeah, I, I.
• 52:53
  Mean that's some people just I guess some people are like, OK,
• 52:56
  you're basically just saying you're rejecting me, you know
• 52:58
  what I'm saying? Well, when we're so one of the
• 53:01
  reasons I love that you brought this up is because I have often
• 53:04
  told my friends, people in the Church especially, who consider
• 53:07
  themselves traditional and sort of assent to the Orthodox
• 53:10
  teachings of the Christian faith.
• 53:12
  They love somebody that experiences SSA or or things
• 53:17
  like that. As long as they're perfect.
• 53:20
  It's it's like as long as you're not a messy person with that
• 53:23
  issue. And I think that is a real need
• 53:27
  and and the Christian community to take a hard look at ourselves
• 53:29
  and say, are we willing to love? Not just when the people are
• 53:34
  like, yeah, I'm 100% on board with the church's teachings
• 53:37
  though. And look how well I live them
• 53:39
  out. What about when they're not
• 53:40
  there? What about when they're not
• 53:42
  there? What if they don't get there?
• 53:44
  And this is where we also can. Let's define affirmation.
• 53:48
  I you mentioned like telling them I love you even though
• 53:51
  these things you do aren't good. I'd say I dare people.
• 53:55
  You don't need to say that. The truth can defend itself.
• 53:59
  I mean, if you're, if someone seeks advice from you, of
• 54:02
  course, speak truth. And you know, instructing the
• 54:05
  ignorant is a spiritual work of mercy.
• 54:07
  But when and how you do that is exceptionally important to
• 54:12
  consider. Well, trust the Holy Spirit
• 54:14
  first and foremost, but we actually demonstrate affirming
• 54:18
  unconditional love far more by our expression.
• 54:22
  Our our words are secondary. Here's what I would offer to
• 54:27
  consider affirming, living affirming lead towards somebody
• 54:31
  in a way that they will feel accepted if they're capable.
• 54:34
  We can't force somebody to to feel accepted from us.
• 54:37
  So we can offer affirming love to somebody and they can reject
• 54:40
  it. So that's another thing to keep
• 54:42
  in mind. This requires receptivity on the
• 54:44
  part of the person we love or are trying to love, but assuming
• 54:48
  all things equal, that they're receptive.
• 54:51
  Our first step, our first move as Christians is a disposition
• 54:55
  of heart and mind, of openness. Am I open to the goodness of the
• 55:00
  other person in front of me? And if I'm accepting an open
• 55:03
  unhurriedly to the goodness of the person in front of me, it
• 55:08
  will arouse in me delight towards their goodness.
• 55:11
  And I reveal that. Primarily, think of how we
• 55:13
  reveal to children, to infants. It's not just through words,
• 55:17
  it's through a tender glance, a tender touch, an expression, a
• 55:20
  tone of voice. And interestedness.
• 55:22
  Interested in? Them, yeah.
• 55:25
  You can say words of affirmation and lie, so that's why words are
• 55:31
  secondary expression that can come out of an authentic affirm
• 55:36
  affirming presence. But being truly Christian and
• 55:40
  unconditionally affirming in an authentic way starts with an
• 55:44
  openness and a disposition of receptivity to the goodness of
• 55:47
  the other, as they are right now, not as I wish they were two
• 55:52
  years from now or two, two years ago.
• 55:55
  Such a good point, Michael. That's a really good point.
• 55:58
  That's a that's something to meditate on.
• 56:01
  You mentioned you said the word unhurriedly.
• 56:03
  Yeah, unhurriedly, yes. Which, that's a good thing to
• 56:06
  meditate on, Yes. What?
• 56:08
  What? Yeah.
• 56:09
  Tell me more about that. Well, to live an affirming life
• 56:12
  towards oneself first is about being open and unhurried in my
• 56:17
  disposition of heart and mind before God, before myself and
• 56:20
  before others. And as a fellow Sinner here,
• 56:24
  that's the journey of a lifetime for me to learn.
• 56:27
  But busy hurriedness is not a default way of and and by the
• 56:31
  way, hurriedness, I don't just mean and like how fast you walk
• 56:35
  through life. If I'm sitting across from you
• 56:39
  and you're someone with sexual trauma and same sex attraction
• 56:43
  and the host of messiness that has emerged in your life as a
• 56:46
  result of that, if I'm hurried, it's also expecting you to be
• 56:51
  where you're not. So it's about my expectations
• 56:55
  for you, not just how sort of calm I sit before you.
• 57:00
  And then that person's like, living in the feeling of being
• 57:04
  constantly a source of disappointment.
• 57:06
  And that's probably excruciating.
• 57:10
  And they don't want to be around those tables anymore because
• 57:13
  they're always the disappointment.
• 57:15
  And so, and they're also like rebelling against it.
• 57:18
  Like, how dare you see me as a disappointment anyways, right?
• 57:20
  Might be the natural human response.
• 57:22
  And so they don't show up at the table anymore.
• 57:24
  Yeah, and how can we be affirming towards people we
• 57:28
  don't have a relationship with? It's not possible.
• 57:32
  And I have a lot of families I work with, with parents over the
• 57:35
  years who have children, adult children who don't, who reject
• 57:39
  the church or take on a gay identity.
• 57:43
  But I know this is beyond just the same sex attraction issue in
• 57:46
  this conversation. It could also be, imagine if you
• 57:47
  have a child who's living with their their boyfriend or
• 57:50
  girlfriend. If you assume that acceptance of
• 57:55
  your child as they are right now in every way whatever is
• 58:00
  equivalent to approving, you will be afraid to accept them.
• 58:03
  But the Church distinguishes between acceptance and approval.
• 58:06
  So this of course brings up, you know, a lot of practical
• 58:09
  questions for people because first of all, there's a question
• 58:12
  of commonality, right? If someone is really, let's say
• 58:17
  they're not already in the fold trying to do, you know, live
• 58:21
  their Christian faith or they, they may live, be living a form
• 58:24
  of Christian faith in their view, but they're not in any way
• 58:26
  in agreement about sexual morality, right?
• 58:30
  And so, and they're living their whatever lifestyle and they're
• 58:33
  living at hardcore and it's not a Christian lifestyle, right?
• 58:36
  So it's not like they're trying to get out of this thing.
• 58:38
  They're like in it and there's a lack of commonality now,
• 58:41
  especially like in a family culture where there's there's a
• 58:44
  Christian family with that person.
• 58:45
  They're not living their, their world is a different world,
• 58:49
  right? Or old friends they may have.
• 58:51
  Their world is a different world.
• 58:52
  How do you reach out to a person like that?
• 58:57
  If there is goodwill, that's important to distinguish, you
• 59:01
  know, to this person sense that I have goodwill and do they have
• 59:04
  goodwill toward me. I think it's the easy obvious
• 59:08
  things like do you want to get coffee?
• 59:10
  I mean, it's really simple. I think I mentioned this last
• 59:13
  time too. Fear is a really unhelpful it's
• 59:18
  a all emotions are good. We could talk about more
• 59:20
  emotion, emotions more in other. Times do too much emotions
• 59:22
  today. We'll do emotions in the future.
• 59:24
  Michael. In this context, it's good to
• 59:25
  remember all emotions are good because they're just faculties
• 59:28
  given by God to help us choose the good and avoid evil.
• 59:30
  But it is by their nature to be guided by reason.
• 59:33
  But fear is mostly useless, and so it's good that we have it.
• 59:37
  It's good that we have it, and it's good in certain
• 59:40
  circumstances, but most of the time it's useless.
• 59:42
  Do you think fear? Well, this is a question and we
• 59:45
  will do another episode on emotions.
• 59:46
  I know that's on the, but when it comes to sexual, potential
• 59:52
  sexual trauma, like there's the whole thing of like, it's good
• 59:54
  to be afraid when you're walking down a dark alley and not choose
• 59:58
  to go down the rest of the alley because you might get mugged,
• 1:00:01
  right? So in that sense, your trigger
• 1:00:02
  response to like these perceived potential dangers is a good
• 1:00:07
  thing. So when it comes to disordered
• 1:00:10
  sexual behavior activities, you know, God forbid, abuse, sexual
• 1:00:15
  abuse, things like this, there's good.
• 1:00:17
  It's good to have a healthy fair now.
• 1:00:19
  Yes, so fear, that's why. There a healthy fear of that,
• 1:00:22
  yeah. And that's why fear is
• 1:00:24
  inherently a gift, but it's also why Jesus speaks a lot about not
• 1:00:30
  worrying about the future, because attaching ourselves and
• 1:00:34
  being in a fearful state of heart and mind is not helpful
• 1:00:38
  for integrated living. Because ultimately we if we
• 1:00:42
  trust that God loves us and our loved ones infinitely more and
• 1:00:45
  infinitely better than we do, we will not live out of a spirit of
• 1:00:48
  fear, but out of a spirit of trust and, and of love.
• 1:00:51
  And so in survival situations where there is particular
• 1:00:55
  threats, your body will know how to respond, hopefully you know,
• 1:00:59
  and it all things being equal. So I'm not saying not to take in
• 1:01:02
  consideration natural fear as a response to perceived threats,
• 1:01:06
  but sometimes our threat perception is broadly and
• 1:01:11
  widely, it's like a net we've cast way too broad and way too
• 1:01:14
  wide because we don't trust. And so in this context, with
• 1:01:20
  this conversation, am I so afraid that my child will
• 1:01:25
  interpret my acceptance in a negative way that I just
• 1:01:29
  withhold accepting them? That's being driven by fear as
• 1:01:33
  opposed to being out of love, open to the goodness of my
• 1:01:36
  child, whatever and wherever they are, and allowing that to
• 1:01:39
  move me towards fostering ongoing relationship.
• 1:01:43
  And during that relationship there, there's healing that can
• 1:01:46
  occur. And the church says acceptance
• 1:01:48
  and approval are different. We must accept with compassion,
• 1:01:52
  sensitivity and respect all people who have same sex
• 1:01:55
  attraction, whether or not they identify with the Church's
• 1:01:58
  teachings or not, on this. But all and all signs of unjust
• 1:02:02
  discrimination must be avoided. I'm quoting the Catechism, but
• 1:02:05
  homosexual acts must never be approved under any
• 1:02:09
  circumstances. Well, let's apply that to how we
• 1:02:11
  treat people who live with their spouse who practice or live,
• 1:02:14
  excuse me, live with their boyfriend or girlfriend or
• 1:02:16
  practice contraception or do these things that we know in the
• 1:02:19
  sexual realm of our ethics and morals aren't oriented or
• 1:02:23
  highest toward their highest good.
• 1:02:25
  Well, we should still accept them where they are, but that's
• 1:02:29
  not it's cannot be intrinsically approval because the church is
• 1:02:33
  distinguished between the two. So I just think parents need to
• 1:02:36
  not be as afraid that showing acceptance will be interpreted
• 1:02:41
  as approval. Because I've seen more in my
• 1:02:44
  experience with clients, when a parent operates out of that
• 1:02:47
  fear, they're more likely to shun their child and not have
• 1:02:50
  them at the table, like you said.
• 1:02:52
  And when you're not sharing a meal at the table together of of
• 1:02:56
  life, how can you even have influence?
• 1:02:58
  And how can you have healthy influence towards the good?
• 1:03:01
  So do you invite the same sex partner to the to the meal?
• 1:03:06
  See what I'm see what I'm asking.
• 1:03:07
  Like what does that practically look like in a family dynamic?
• 1:03:10
  Well, I think is more important than answering you directly is
• 1:03:13
  to say, have you prayed and asked for the Holy Spirit to
• 1:03:17
  guide you towards what is right in that particular circumstance
• 1:03:22
  with those principles in mind? Because that's where prudence
• 1:03:25
  comes into play, to see, to judge and to act.
• 1:03:28
  So if we ask God for the grace and we turn towards him and ask
• 1:03:32
  for the grace to have good and act and act prudence, the virtue
• 1:03:35
  of prudence, we will come to better answers.
• 1:03:37
  And if we just on our own or like, well, I'm not going to do
• 1:03:39
  that because that's scary. So not not you're saying it's
• 1:03:44
  weary of a clear prescription on that.
• 1:03:46
  It really a lot of. It has to do with prudence.
• 1:03:48
  What about like a same sex wedding though?
• 1:03:49
  Something something like that. Yeah, I think we're going sort
• 1:03:53
  of deeper into that, that deeply personal act of prudence that
• 1:03:56
  you have to trust God, trust your relationship with that
• 1:03:59
  person. I personally also think children
• 1:04:02
  should be considered. So instead of answering that
• 1:04:05
  question, I'll pose another question.
• 1:04:06
  What about whenever you're a a family who one sibling
• 1:04:10
  identifies as trans or identifies as gay and has a same
• 1:04:14
  sex partner, and then you have children and you're concerned,
• 1:04:17
  you know, bringing them around the family might convey a
• 1:04:19
  message that's confusing to your children?
• 1:04:21
  These are real questions that people are wrestling with.
• 1:04:24
  And I don't have a clear prescription, but I will say
• 1:04:27
  you'll come to a better answer if you reflect on the church's
• 1:04:30
  teachings that that person must be accepted with compassion,
• 1:04:34
  sensitivity, and respect, and that God is for you.
• 1:04:39
  I said this at the beginning. God is more for you than you are
• 1:04:42
  for yourself. He is our advocate before God's
• 1:04:44
  self. He will give you wisdom and
• 1:04:46
  guidance if we seek it. And He is more for your family
• 1:04:51
  member than you are for them. He wants their eternal salvation
• 1:04:55
  infinitely more than you want it for them.
• 1:04:58
  And if we can trust that, I just, I'm convinced we'll come
• 1:05:01
  to better choices when we when we reflect on those principles.
• 1:05:05
  But I think if you have young children and you're trying to
• 1:05:07
  protect their innocence, then there you can make the argument
• 1:05:10
  that depending on a lifestyle that someone may choose to be
• 1:05:13
  living right? And it doesn't have to be even
• 1:05:15
  involving like homosexuality or something.
• 1:05:18
  It could be any number of other things.
• 1:05:20
  You might want to be more careful with the exposure, how
• 1:05:23
  your kids engage with that person, not because that
• 1:05:26
  person's bad, not because you don't accept and love that
• 1:05:30
  person, but because you're trying to navigate protecting
• 1:05:34
  your child. And these are, of course, all,
• 1:05:36
  you know, the realm of prudence. So I know there's not like 1
• 1:05:38
  clear prescription necessarily, but I think if it comes from
• 1:05:42
  that basis that you're saying of love, always love for your
• 1:05:46
  child, for the person, for this, for that, like it has to come
• 1:05:49
  from that place of love and knowing that God loves this
• 1:05:51
  person more than you ever will. Right and love means to will the
• 1:05:55
  good of the other at the highest agape form of love and to will
• 1:05:59
  the good of my children will be to protect them from anything
• 1:06:01
  harmful. So that's a very reasonable
• 1:06:03
  framework to reflect on and the context of being prudential,
• 1:06:07
  having prudential judgement and this thing is how do I protect
• 1:06:10
  my children from harm? So of course I would respect
• 1:06:13
  parents rights to limit exposure to certain things.
• 1:06:16
  I'm just saying if you come from a place of differentiating
• 1:06:19
  between acceptance and approval, that accepting people as they
• 1:06:23
  are is not tacit endorsement for everything they do.
• 1:06:26
  And if you can be let that go a little bit, have a little bit
• 1:06:28
  more freedom, just say, like, it's not my job to deny every
• 1:06:32
  perspective they present with me.
• 1:06:34
  The truth will defend itself. I don't have to constantly be
• 1:06:37
  vigilant and make sure I say the right thing at the right moment
• 1:06:40
  all the time. Can I just be open to their
• 1:06:42
  goodness? And there are people in my life,
• 1:06:44
  some of my clients, Lila, that identify as gay, they do not
• 1:06:48
  agree with the church's teachings and their parents as
• 1:06:50
  adults. They said, oh, well, you can go
• 1:06:52
  see this therapist. He's Catholic.
• 1:06:53
  We trust him. And it is very humbling to me
• 1:06:57
  just to be open to their goodness, even though they don't
• 1:07:01
  necessarily buy what I have to sell.
• 1:07:02
  Like they don't want it. But then they might have a
• 1:07:04
  corrective emotional experience that, well, this, I'm not trying
• 1:07:08
  to brag or make it about me, but like if I can hold space, as
• 1:07:11
  they say in the psychology world for this person's reality and
• 1:07:15
  empathize and be with them, they might have a corrective
• 1:07:18
  emotional experience about what a Catholic and what a Christian
• 1:07:22
  can be for them. Beautiful.
• 1:07:25
  All right. Any other final thoughts right
• 1:07:26
  now on sexual abuse and healing? Well, boy, there's a lot.
• 1:07:31
  So a couple come to mind right off the bat.
• 1:07:34
  You said earlier, what can they do?
• 1:07:36
  And we talked about seeking therapy and seeking help.
• 1:07:40
  Spiritual healing is so important.
• 1:07:42
  Even in my own life. I started realizing the need for
• 1:07:45
  specifically prayer, healing ministry, the sacraments being
• 1:07:49
  integral to my healing journey from wounds that are similar to
• 1:07:53
  the things we've talked about today in my life.
• 1:07:55
  So not minimizing spiritual healing.
• 1:07:58
  I know I said that last time, but it's so important because
• 1:08:00
  the psychological domain, the current therapy milieu, is very,
• 1:08:05
  in my opinion, dismissive of the body, soul, reality.
• 1:08:09
  And so those people who have been through things like this
• 1:08:12
  need to know that often the enemy attaches himself to our
• 1:08:18
  wounds in a way that keeps us stuck in them.
• 1:08:21
  And the Lord Jesus Christ wants us to have freedom from those
• 1:08:24
  attachments, however that looks so, to not minimize the need for
• 1:08:28
  spiritual healing and seeking that psychological support and
• 1:08:33
  then the word of hope to end. We have to end with hope always.
• 1:08:37
  That I have experienced healing in my own life.
• 1:08:40
  Am I perfect? No.
• 1:08:41
  Do I still have room to grow? Of course, but I've experienced
• 1:08:44
  it. The Lord has healed my heart.
• 1:08:46
  Mary has touched my heart. Friends and family have touched
• 1:08:49
  my heart. I need more healing, but I'm on
• 1:08:51
  my journey and that I've witnessed other people on their
• 1:08:54
  journey, and you can be on your journey of healing too.
• 1:08:57
  God calls us out of our wounds into adopted sonhood or
• 1:09:03
  daughterhood or childhood, whatever the words would be for
• 1:09:05
  that and that calling into our adoption as children of God.
• 1:09:10
  It just has to anchor this conversation because healing is
• 1:09:14
  real and is possible. Beautiful.
• 1:09:17
  Thank you, Michael. Thanks for making your life
• 1:09:19
  about that. It's awesome.
• 1:09:22
  It's beautiful. Thank you.
• 1:09:23
  Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Lila Rose
• 1:09:25
  Podcast. As always, don't forget to be
• 1:09:28
  subscribed if you're not already subscribed.
• 1:09:30
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• 1:09:32
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