Raised by a Baptist preacher who frequently got run out of town and raped by his older sister starting when he was 4, “Tom” has had a lot to work through. A great episode about working through trauma especially in families that can’t or choose not to communicate. Though a serious episode for sure, there is more humor than the title suggests. Not a downer.
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Episode Transcript:
Paul: Welcome to episode 119 with my guest, Listener Tom from Portland. I’m Paul Gilmartin, this is the Mental Illness Happy Hour, an hour or two of honesty about all the battles in our heads, from medically diagnosed conditions and past traumas to everyday compulsive negative thinking. This show is not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counselling – it’s not a doctor’s office, it’s more like a waiting room that doesn’t suck. The website for this show is mentalpod.com – please go there and fill out the anonymous surveys and you can also see how other people have responded to those, you can sign up for the newsletter, you can join the forum, lots of people joining the forum and finding kindred spirits there so please go check it out.
I just wanted to give you an update on week three of the new med I’m on, Lamictal, and I feel like I am moving in the right direction like one step, like 5% better, but it---I’m not sleeping as much which I think is a good sign. And I had something interesting happen today: I went to do Lynn Chen’s podcast – many of you know Lynn was a guest a couple of episodes back who is just a really nice, warm person and she was so open and honest and vulnerable when I was talking with her on my episode that I got really moved and kinda broke down and we had to turn the recording off for a little bit because I just, I don’t know, I just, she hugged me and I cried and then I felt bad about it and was like, ‘what am I, some kind of fucking weirdo’, and when I went to talk to her today and do her podcast, you know, we talked mostly about food and stuff like that, and after it was over we were talking, and we were talking about shame. I guess the reason I want to bring this up is that I’m still struggling with shame but what I’m finding out is that what I’m ashamed of changes. I used to be ashamed of the things that happened to me, the things that were done to me when I was a kid and the ways that I reacted, the coping mechanism that I had, you know, sexually acting out and stuff like that. And I used to blame myself and I am now at the place where now I see that that’s how kids react with feelings that are overwhelming and I don’t judge myself for that now, but what I am judging myself for now is when I talk about that with certain people, people who kind of have that vibe that I longed for when I was a little boy and didn’t have that mother figure, when I talk about those experiences with that person I become… triggered I guess is the right word for it; my heart starts to beat fast—I don’t know how to describe it, but then I feel shame about it because I feel like almost as if I am using that person. Lynn and I were just talking and I was kind of stuck in this—I feel like I’m stuck in this place where I don’t know if this is a part of me processing that or if this is me being stuck in something looking for a hit from it, but I did feel after talking to her today that I felt like I let go of some shame. I helped identify some more of the shame and what form it is now taking on, and that by talking about and shining a light on it, hopefully that will help it dissipate and I was saying to her I hope I can get to a place in the future where I don’t feel triggered when I talk about these things and I don’t feel like I am looking for that compassionate face to make everything okay, that face that I wanted when I was a kid.
I just wonder if any of you struggle with that when you recount stuff from your past that’s painful that sometimes you get—because sometimes talking about stuff that’s painful, I’ll get actually turned on and it feels so fucked up to experience that because part of me is like it was yucky and, anyway, I just wanted to put that out there.
Alright. Enough of my yacking. Let’s get to some of the surveys. Actually, the first thing I want to read is an email from a listener named Ann-Marie and she says:
“Hi there, I was listening to episode 118 where Kulap Vilaysack returns, and you read the survey from the woman who says she wasn’t sure if she had been sexually abused and that she went back to the man who she had told no after to make it her choice. I had to pause for a second to question whether I had written that, because it is so familiar to what happened to me. I was raped on a cruise while so drunk I couldn’t walk. I told the man ‘no’ repeatedly and he said if I didn’t want to, I could leave. I was literally unable to leave and he ignored me saying no and did some really horrible things. I left scratches but he joked the next day that I was “aggressive”. I was mostly blacked out during the rape but I remember bits and pieces of it. He thought it was hilarious to tell me all the things “we” did and couldn’t understand why I was upset. It took me about 11 months to call it rape and I had sex with him later on the cruise, trying to turn the rape into a vacation fling. One of the biggest turning points for me was reading a book called I never called it rape. It is an amazing book full of stories and survey data. I sat down in the middle of a book store and started crying when I read a statistic that said that many women have sex with their rapists afterwards the same way the surveyed woman did and I did. I thought I was crazy and no one could ever understand what I had done and that it discounted what I had been through. Knowing that my experience was “normal” and reading about acquaintance rape really helped me get through a terrible time.
All my best,
Ann-Marie”
Thank you for that.
This is from the Struggle in a Sentence survey, this one is from a guy who calls himself Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other Barely. About his depression he writes, “I just don’t want to do anything but eat, toke or jack off, and even jacking off is getting boring.” About being an abuser he says he raped his ex-girlfriend, “How did I get there? How the fuck did I think that was okay?”
This is also from the same survey. This was filled out by Mary. About her co-dependence she writes, “Constantly reaching out to people in need of a connection that I can never achieve because what I want is beyond what a human can give.” I wish I had read that one better. I could go back and edit it but I am ploughing ahead.
Same survey filled out by Melissa. About her depression she writes “Bipolar major depression feels like God’s foot is slowly and steadily crushing the life right out of you.” About her OCD, “OCD is believing the thoughts in your head can create and destroy the world and everyone in it.” About her PTSD she writes, “PTSD is knowing in my soul that my dead father’s essence can still abuse me.” That is fucking deep. And about being the victim of child sexual abuse she writes “is feeling like nothing more than a receptacle for other people’s filth and scum.” I am sorry that you are feeling those things, it sounds really intense, and my heart goes out to you.
This is the same survey filled out by Courtney. About her anxiety she writes, “I am trying to reach the top of a never-ending Stairmaster but I am constantly freezing and falling to the bottom.”
This is filled out by a guy who calls himself Depression. About his depression he writes, “Everything is wrong in every aspect of my life and I don’t have the energy to do anything about it.” Boy, you put what I feel often into a perfect sentence.
The same survey filled out by Kait. About her bipolar hypomania – and she is young, she’s between 16 and 19 – about her bipolar hypomania she writes, “I am edging close to jumping off a ledge because I believe I can fly. I don’t really think I will die, will never know until I try.” I don’t know if those are lyrics to a song or not, or if she is trying to create a poem, but also about her bipolar rapid cycling she writes, “Exhausted and confused. I love life and feel like I can fly. Hours later contemplate suicide and go so far down I feel like I can’t breathe.”
This is from the Shame and Secrets survey filled out by a guy who calls himself Janis from Space. He’s straight, he’s in his 20s. “Deepest darkest thoughts: I’ve been consistently surrounded by suicidal ideas starting around 14 or 15 years old. I thought up schemes on the best way to do it but I’ve never acted on them. It’s been a consistent part of my mind clutter all these years and I just assumed that’s how my death would come.”—Boy, do I relate to that— “When things are going well I’d only have thoughts like that a few times a week or even a month if they were going really well. I think about it just about all day when things are bad. When I was younger it gave me strength because I could do anything I wanted. I didn’t fear mistakes because I could always just kill myself. Now, however, it makes it difficult to plan or think of the future. I’m 29 and only just started talking about it openly in the last few months besides telling an ex-girlfriend when we were both drunk two years ago. She never brought it up again. Thinking like a teenager, I believed people who talked about it were fakers, that I had to hold this secret precious and never tell anyone or it would lose its power. I can finally let go now that I can envision a future for myself and want all of the things denied me by suicidal thoughts – a career, a wife, old age.” It’s beautiful that you’ve gotten to that place.
And then I wanted to read his sexual fantasy (and he didn’t have any deepest darkest secrets). His sexual fantasy: “I’ve got a thing for hypnosis. I can trace it back to an event that happened in second grade. I was talking and playing with the girl sitting next to me in class. At one point I pretended to be a hypnotist and said the cliché “You are getting sleeeepy” while pretending to wave a watch back and forth. My friend, knowing the role, closed her eyes and pretended to be hypnotized along the lines of “yeees, master” or something. I felt a strange power and a tingle in my groin I had never felt before and that’s that. I enjoy erotic hypnosis porn, but even regular straight old corny hypnosis usually, so long as it’s a pretty woman, will give me an erection. I suspect I would really enjoy being hypnotized by a woman but my fantasy usually revolves around me being the dominant/hypnotist. I’ve never learned how to do it because there never seems to be the time and I never seem to feel confident enough. It remains one of my most potent fantasies because I clearly still have it even if the Internet and its varieties of porn never existed. I view many other kinds of porn in addition but none of it feels as primal or like something I would actually want to do in real life. Another one that comes to mind, I’ve always wanted to dress up as a woman and have a date with a girlfriend. Have her come home, have a romantic dinner, have her compliment me on how I look all night, act like everything is normal before going bed and having sex. Like a cheesy movie with a weird cast. I cross-dress often already and I am very public about it but it’s never been a sexual thing or part of my masturbation habits. It just seems like fun.”
Thank you for that, Janis.
And then I want to take us into the interview from this email that I got from—he or she didn’t leave a name or email so I couldn’t contact them back but I just wanted to read this.
“Hi Paul,
I’ve been listening to your podcast for a few weeks, mainly catching up on older episodes. I have identified a theme of mental illness born out of and/or significantly contributed to by childhood trauma. I work in the child welfare system and see first-hand how our system is failing our most vulnerable children. I cannot help but believe that if we as a society did a better job at helping children who are in crisis, it would affect people in their adult lives. I see every day how we as child welfare workers move from one crisis to the next in a reactive way rather than acting as proactive change agents. That, coupled with the fact that our system is designed in a way that subjects us to having so many cases, it is impossible to interact with our clients until they have already endured the abuse. The damage has been done. It is so difficult to be part of a system that I know is damaging and subjects me to critique by those who do not fully understand that the daily struggles of the nameless, faceless child welfare worker. The fact is that, by and large, we do care and care very deeply. I will continue to try and make small changes where I can. To all those readers and listeners who have been children in government care, we do care. We take you home with us. We awaken in the night with you in our dreams. We try so very hard not to fail you.”
[SHOW PREAMBLE]
Paul: I am here with a listener we’re going to call Tom. That will enable him to speak more freely. We corresponded, when was it, maybe six months ago?
Tom: Yeah.
Paul: Was it you or your wife that contacted me?
Tom: Probably her. Probably her, yeah. I think I’ve sent you a couple of emails, the most recent one just had to do with resources about being a victim of sexual abuse, but my wife I think had originally commented you or emailed you about, actually I don’t know what it was.
Paul: Yeah, anyway, through our various emails we decided that it would be worth a shot to get together and record. I’m up here in your neck of the woods, so I am glad that you were able to come and record. Where would be a good place—you’re how old?
Tom: I’m 31.
Paul: Okay, and you’re currently in school right now, and studying psychology – how does that make you feel?
Tom: Yeah, right?
(Laughter)
Paul: You’ve got a kid and a wife and—where would be a good place to start with your story? Where were you raised?
Tom: We’ll see, I was born in Seattle and I lived there for, well, 10 years or so, lived in Kansas for a while, and northern California, and then back up to Seattle. So we moved around a little bit. My dad was a Baptist Minister growing up and so he switched churches a few times – I don’t know how you would put that nowadays, but yeah, we moved around a little bit. I’m the youngest of three, so I have an older brother and an older sister, and, yeah, that’s probably—I mean, that’s the basic facts.
Paul: Was it the real kind of fire and brimstone, fear God style of…
Tom: Yes and no. Very much fundamentalist I would say, but…
Paul: Gays are bad—
Tom: Yes, very much.
Paul: Drinking is bad—
Tom: Gays are bad, abortion bad—
Paul: Drinking.
Tom: Bad.
Paul: Bad.
Tom: Bad. Smoking bad. Anything fun.
Paul: Bad.
Tom: Unless it’s sports, it was bad. So that was the basic idea. And my parents both were kind of, I think they both converted to Jesus in their teenage years out of pretty horrible backgrounds, and so they really clung to it, like hardcore.
Paul: That was their life raft.
Tom: Yes, exactly.
Paul: Did they convert from something else and just from no religion?
Tom: Nothing, I don’t think, in particular.
Paul: Do you remember what it was or who it was that introduced them to the faith?
Tom: I don’t, you know. Oh you know, actually I think my dad’s mum, my grandmother, was a lounge singer, and her and—
Paul: Which is a sound religion.
Tom: Yes, yeah exactly. (Laughs) Well her and my grandfather, who was in the Air Force at the time, met and apparently—I don’t know the details but they, I’m guessing maybe she got pregnant and they felt guilty and so they turned from all their bad ways, and I think dabbled in Christianity a little bit, and it wasn’t until later that my dad got introduced to it kind of through that experience kind of through that experience again later on. I don’t think they—they didn’t come from anything, they don’t really talk about it though, to be honest.
Paul: Okay. Do you still keep in touch with them?
Tom: No, not really. So, we can talk more about that process, but I should say that I told them that if they want to talk with me they can write me letters.
Paul: Okay.
Tom: But that’s about it.
Paul: You too, huh?
Tom: Yeah!
Paul: At least right now, that’s where—my dad passed away but that’s where I’m at with my mum. So, you were raised in this strict—
Tom: Yeah you know, actually I was—for me it wasn’t as strict. My sister was like the perfect student, the perfect kid. They were pretty strict with her. And then my brother came along and he was more of the black sheep, you know, more rebellious, more outward with his rebellion. And by the time they got to me I think they were just kinda tired.
Paul: You were the baby? Three kids?
Tom: Yeah, exactly. There were so few rules with me. Like in high school, I never had a curfew or anything like that.
Paul: How would they discipline or reprimand you, was it mostly with their words or was it actions?
Tom: (Laughs) I remember, my dad—I got spanked a few times and it was always, you know—thinking about it now it’s kinda comical, ‘cause I remember telling my mum, you know, she goes ‘Do you want a spanking?’ and I said, ‘From you? Sure, I don’t care.’
Paul: (Laughs)
Tom: But my dad was more of an intimidating figure, but the main punishment that I remember was, I think I had said something to my brother, like ‘fuck you, I hate you’ and so I had a write-out. I had to write my brother a love letter, and I had to rewrite the whole Book of Proverbs.
Paul: Wow.
Tom: Yeah. And my brother had to rewrite the whole Book of Psalms at one point which is—it’s long. And so I remember those punishments, but you know, I don’t remember a lot of punishments to be perfectly honest. I was a pretty good kid, so I didn’t get a lot of that.
Paul: And so your mother, was she a home-maker?
Tom: It’s a word you could use…
Paul: Well, he was a minister, so did that put food on the table?
Tom: It did, well, for the most part. I always heard about how poor we were, always growing up. My dad is no longer a minister, he is now a salesman.
Paul: Not much of a difference.
Tom: No, no difference at all.
Paul: (Laughs)
Tom: As a matter of fact, I remember one time I read something that he wrote that said ‘I used to save souls for eternal life and…’, or ‘I used to sell eternity and now I sell something else’ and it gives me just the chills thinking about that, how kinda creepy that is. But yeah, she was a home-maker. She worked part-time when I was older, but the reason I hesitated was because my mum in many ways was a lovely woman but home-making probably wasn’t her strength. I mean, I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for three years so I know it’s not easy.
Paul: By the way, I just want to interject that when I get glib about organized religion, it’s not all organized religion but so much of it is used car sales, and there is good ones out there and people with deep faith that walk the walk that I have the utmost respect for, but they seem to be in the minority.
Tom: Yes, yes, that is true, I would concur with that. And yeah, my dad was definitely a salesman, and a shark. Not really one who walks the walk, I would say.
Paul: For instance, can you give me some examples of the differences between what he preached and how he acted?
Tom: Sure. Well, first off, my dad is a really good narcissist. Like, maybe even antisocial. I mean, I’m not a clinician, so I can’t really speak to that, but when I read through those characteristics it’s just like ‘wow’. It fits in pretty well. But he has a level of sophistication to it, so most people don’t even realize that he is really into himself. I remember, just as his son, I remember was 18 and I was getting ready to go on a trip to Mexico with some friends to help build houses and I needed a sleeping bag, so he said ‘oh, hey, I’ve got a sleeping bag that I got at REI – I’ll sell it to you for $50. And I was like, ‘I could just go buy one for $150’, he said ‘no, no, take this one, you can buy it for $50’. So he sold it to me, and I come to find out that it’s like 20 years old and kind of a piece of shit.
Paul: And how old were you?
Tom: 18.
Paul: So weird that he would sell it to his kid.
Tom: Yeah, right? I know. One of my friends told me that. They said, ‘Why didn’t he just give it to you?’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know’. Later on I look at that story and I think, ‘Oh, ‘cause that was my dad, that was how he operated.’
Paul: He had to get something out of everything.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. And even with his own son, in a lot of ways with his own family, he just kinda had his own interests in mind. But when you were in his family you were kinda under the spell a little bit so until you get away from it you don’t really see the wizard behind the curtain. And it’s once you see it, you’re like ‘oh my god!’ But I mean, that was just one of the little examples, but that’s part of the reason why we went to so many different churches, is because that once his act was kind of up, or he got caught up in something – according to him it was never his fault. He never did anything wrong. But when you leave, like, three churches in a row—
Paul: What were the accusations?
Tom: Umm… I don’t even know all of them, to be perfectly honest. I know one was, he again sold something at a much higher value than it was worth, to the other pastors, using church funds. I know at one point he was giving a sermon about church leadership and what that should look like, and it was a two-part sermon, and then he was asked to leave between the two parts.
Paul: That’s never good.
Tom: No, it’s never good.
Paul: (Laughs)
Tom: And I had no idea. I was young enough and they really kept me away from it, which I’m kind of glad for, but knowing my dad now, there’s no way this guy was 100% innocent. Not a chance.
Paul: Yeah. And you know, it seems like such a dangerous venture to paint yourself as a man of god or a woman of god because we’re all so fucking fallible and we’re all so complicated and we’re all filled with contradictions and the shadow self that Jung talked about, and man, that just seems like a recipe for disaster, ever portraying yourself as anything but a flawed, needy, scared human being walking blindly through a terrifying universe.
Tom: Exactly, when it lacks humility it is dangerous, and I think with my dad that’s kinda how it ended up. Now that I’m an adult and kind of away from it, I can see in many ways there wasn’t a lot of humility or empathy there but he was very good at portraying humility or empathy, just never really had it.
Paul: And I wonder if that’s a quality of the narcissist, knowing how to portray what they need to portray to get what they need.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. I’ve done a little bit of reading about what makes a narcissist, because my whole family, that whole access of personality disorders, you know, the narcissism, the histrionic, or the… not bipolar…
Paul: Borderline?
Tom: Thank you, borderline, antisocial, my family is full of it. There’s so much of all those things everywhere that— you know, it’s hard to distinguish sometimes between the two. No one in my family has been officially diagnosed. I mean, what narcissist goes and gets diagnosed?
(Laughter)
Tom: I mean, who does that? But my brother has been diagnosed, kind of. No one else has, but you can just see it, it just kinda seeps out of everything and that’s part of—
Paul: He’s been diagnosed as a narcissist?
Tom: No, no, as a rule-out, so he’s been a rule-out of both borderline and antisocial.
Paul: What does that mean?
Tom: So, I think a rule-out means that they have to rule out borderline or antisocial, that it’s probably one of these two things that’s part of what’s going on, and they haven’t spent enough time with him yet to rule out one or the other. I may be portraying that wrongly, I don’t know, but again, this is from—
Paul: That’s one of the nice things about this show, we don’t pretend to be experts.
Tom: I’m not a professional. (Laughs)
Paul: Yeah. And we usually get nice emails from people that are mental health professionals that do straighten it out sometimes.
Tom: So yeah, give a definition of rule-out.
Paul: It will give our listeners something to Google, too.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. Well, to be perfectly honest, this is all from my brother’s—what he told me, and he doesn’t tell the truth all the time, at least you don’t know when he is a lot of the time.
Paul: That’s gotta be frustrating.
Tom: Yeah! Yeah, very frustrating because he’s actually the one family member that I really have had a relationship with that wasn’t completely fucked up and we kinda worked through some stuff together, because there were some events that happened that once I kinda talked about them within the family, I kinda got put in his camp of black sheep. So he and I got to really connect.
Paul: What did your sister do to kind of…?
Tom: Well, um…
Paul: Because, by the way, when you mentioned that she was perfect, my first thought was, ‘Well, how did she explode?’ Because that is always the ticking time bomb, the person with the overly controlled parents and they are doing everything to be perfect, that bubble is going to pop somewhere.
Tom: Yeah, well, at first it kinda popped on me, because when I was five, between four and six years old because I’m not too sure, but my sister at that point was like 12, 13, 14, but she actually would come into my room and rape me at night. It was more than once, I remember more than once, but I don’t remember how many specific times it was. But obviously she was at an age where that doesn’t happen out of nowhere, I mean, something happened to her. So it kind of, her perfection or need to explode kind of, she took it out on other people.
Paul: I’m so sorry that you had to experience that.
Tom: Yeah, me too, thank you. It wasn’t, um, it’s a weird—it’s not weird, I shouldn’t say that, but, you know, I really didn’t acknowledge it ‘til I was 18. I remember thinking things along the way. I remember being in fifth grade and in elementary class and having to talk on, you know, your swimsuit areas and where you shouldn’t be touched. I remember thinking, ‘Oh yeah, that happened to me, but I can’t talk about it.’ I remember that. I think I know of a fight when I was a teenager, yelling at my sister, like ‘You molested me, you raped me’ and she just kinda played dumb. It wasn’t until I was 18 that I really kind of realized, I have something to deal with, and that’s what I, you know, I dealt with it I guess is the best way to put it.
Paul: There are so many questions that I want to ask you because it’s so rare that you get—what happened to you is not rare according to the therapist that I have seen and the surveys that I read that people fill out, and the people that I know from my support groups, but because there is an erection involved so much gets misconstrued. Was it misconstrued in your mind, what was happening? Because clearly for her to be able to rape you, you had to have an erection. So can you walk me through in your mind what, as that child, you are thinking and experiencing when something like that is happening, because there is such a dichotomy between what your soul is feeling and what your body is feeling.
Tom: Mhmm, I think confusing is the best word.
Paul: What was her demeanor like? How would she present it to you? Would she say anything? Was it couched in something?
Tom: She was very aware that what she was doing was wrong. I mean, she was 12, 13, 14, so although there is a level of child—childness in her, she very much knew what was happening, what was going on. I loved my sister, and so this was my first exposure to anything sexual and so I didn’t even know. I think she just called it ‘smooching’, and that became a trigger word for me later. Just that word. (Shudders) Just saying it is kinda…
Paul: What do you feel when you hear that word?
Tom: Oh, I go right back. I’m the little boy laying down on a bed again. It’s pretty visceral actually. She would—it was never forced or rough, I was pretty much the silent partner. Now as an adult I know that she was working out trauma on me because I was a safe place for it, but it’s still pretty fucked up. Because, it’s really fucked up, because it obviously was coming at a cost at me.
Paul: Do you think she was doing that to your other brother as well?
Tom: Um, he had told me that she did, and so that’s kind of what I believe, but again, with my brother I don’t quite know sometimes what’s fiction and what’s not. But that’s what he’s told me, yeah.
Paul: Do you—who do you think was abusing your sister?
Tom: No clue. Well, I don’t know anything for sure, but I’ve asked her. I think I asked her, you obviously don’t just get these things from anywhere, and this is all in a letter.
Paul: How long ago was this?
Tom: Oh man, that’s a good question. This had to be 2006, 2005 maybe, around then. Because, you know, the abuse was hard enough to work through, but the way my family dealt with it was almost equally as hard to work through.
Paul: And I say this all the time, it breaks my fucking heart when a kid or a young adult goes to their family with this news that is so fucking hard to talk about, and they get re-traumatized again.
Tom: Yeah, it’s been a lot of work, to be honest.
Paul: I’m sorry you had to deal with that, I’m so sorry.
Tom: Yeah, thank you. It took a whole lot of work. But I don’t know who abused my sister. I asked her and she said that essentially it wasn’t worth sharing because it would hurt us too much, and so your mind can go a thousand different places of what that means.
Paul: Is there anybody listening that doesn’t think it’s your dad?
Tom: Yeah, right. I mean, that’s immediately where you go, right? And, you know I—we might get into this a little later, but I asked my dad, not did he do this, but I said, ‘How come you don’t wonder what happened to your little girl?’ Because being a parent now, you better believe, I’d be fucking figuring out what happened, you know? And there would be a lot more proaction there. But there wasn’t by my parents, both of them. There wasn’t—oh, I shouldn’t say that—their methods of dealing with it were so detrimental to actually dealing with it that, um… But, yeah. I say that also knowing that my mum grew up in a horrible home where multiple abusers, both sexual, physical, emotional—so emotionally she’s like six or seven years old in a lot of ways, and so I wouldn’t expect her to be able to deal with it much. But she was the mum, so responsibility would fall on her.
Paul: You have clearly done a lot of work on yourself, because you’re—I’m struck by the amount of compassion and clarity that you have on something that’s so… intense.
Tom: Yeah, intense is a good word. I wasn’t always so clear though. (Laughs) I think part of what deters people sometimes from being able to look at a situation with the most sober eyes you can, because, I still can’t look at it without being the victim in the situation, obviously because I was, but I had to allow myself to not have sober eyes. I had to get pissed, hurt, kinda live through it again to a degree, with a therapist, with a professional, not just reading a book.
Paul: Not with a rodeo clown.
Tom: Yeah exactly.
Paul: Those are one of the worst people to work through molesting shit with.
(Laughter)
Tom: Well, they just don’t take anything seriously.
(Laughter)
Tom: They’re always just like, bright colors, it’s just annoying. But, yeah.
Paul: Walk me through the arc of it from when it happened to the various—how you view it and process it, because clearly it changes, from the very first instance it may even be, ‘Oh this is nice, I’m getting this attention, because like, when the neighbor kid molested me I didn’t even think that this was an act of, I don’t know what you want to call it, power or control. It was, you know, I just wanted to hang out with him, he was four years older than me, he was 15 and I was 10 or so. And it was like, I just like spending time with this guy, and it started to feel weird and so I stopped it, but how I viewed it—it took me probably 10 years, no probably longer, probably 30 years to go, ‘Oh my god, that was molestation!’
Tom: Yeah, that was molestation, yeah you come to that realization. Even to use that word, by the way, took me a long time. And to call it rape took me a long time.
Paul: Sure.
Tom: At first it was just ‘she inappropriately touched me’ or something. I was still in some ways protecting her. I think part of the reason is that because when I was a kid, I don’t think I could handle processing that, you know. When I was five I don’t think I could handle the fact of what my sister was actually doing to me, and so in some ways I think my brain was protecting me.
Paul: What did you brain tell you back then?
Tom: Uh… To be quiet.
Paul: Did any part of you feel special, or did you feel like you were being tricked?
Tom: I don’t remember feeling special. No, I take that back actually. I did feel special, I did feel that, oh, we get to do this thing.
Paul: Yeah, because that’s what I felt when I was with that guy, it was like ‘I don’t really like this but I feel special.’
Tom: Yeah, yeah, and it felt special until one time. We were in her room. Somebody knocked on the door and I think it was my dad, and I had to go hide under the bed. That’s what I was told to do, go hide under the bed. So I hid under the bed, and then my dad left, and all of the sudden I didn’t feel special anymore, because I realized, like, you know—I knew that I should hide, I knew that too, I knew what was going on wasn’t good, but I was a kid so I didn’t know why it was bad, so it was definitely—I felt physical pleasure, obviously, for sure, and it introduced sexuality at a young age which we’ll get into later, but I did feel special. I also felt kind of spit upon, I guess, in a way. Particularly after that when I was told to hide under the bed. I really didn’t know—I knew why I was hiding under the bed because I knew what was going on was wrong, but I didn’t know why I had to hide under the bed as a five-year-old. Both those feelings at the same time.
Paul: I would imagine, too, that then you think you’re the one to blame because you’re the one that has to hide.
Tom: Oh, yeah! I took ownership over the guilt right away.
Paul: Oh my god, how could you not?
Tom: Yeah, and that’s part of the reason why I never talked about it, you know? Because I had to protect my sister. And that’s part of the reason why I held it so tight for so long, because I didn’t want to hurt her. And you can see how flawed that is, obviously, but at the same time that’s kind of what happens in abuse, the victim both gets abused and gets to carry the weight of it, too. And the abuser sometimes gets to walk away. Well, they don’t really walk away, they’re carrying stuff too but—and that’s the way it was, you know?
Paul: So, you hide under the bed, does that change things for you then? You said that then you didn’t feel as special.
Tom: Yeah, you know, I’m pretty sure it happened more than I remember, but I don’t remember specifically why it stopped. My sister said that it stopped because my mum found out and that my mum told her to stop.
Paul: How many years did it go on for? Or was it not years?
Tom: Between two and three.
Paul: Okay.
Tom: I remember it happening when I was like four or five, and I remember it happening when I was like six, so in that timeframe.
Paul: God, that’s so young. That’s so young.
Tom: Oh yeah, my son is four right now, and I don’t even know how to think about that, you know, knowing that I have a four-year-old now and that’s the age I was. The other day we were in a store and I saw him walking and it hit me that I was that age and I almost lost it in the store, just because of how young I was, how innocent that kid is.
Paul: It’s amazing what comes up for people when they have children and they are able to see their own innocence.
Tom: I, yes. Yes. As a matter of fact, when my wife was pregnant, that’s when I really started to say, ‘Hey, what the hell?’ I started to think the lengths I would go to for my kid, that was still sitting in my wife’s stomach, or uterus, sorry.
Paul: She didn’t have an ass baby?
Tom: (Laughs) No, she didn’t have an ass baby, thank god! I was so worried.
Paul: (Laughs)
Tom: But when I began to realize the lengths I would already go to, all of a sudden I started saying, ‘Wait a minute!’ You know, like, what happened here? Why aren’t you guys asking more questions, what is the deal here? My mum says that she did bring it up with me when I was young, I just don’t remember it. But it was never brought up again. My sister told me that my parents didn’t know, when we were older, so I was under the assumption that they didn’t know, and so that’s how I kinda dealt with them for a while. But yeah, when I started having my own kid, it was night and day. It was like, ‘Whoa, not only is this not okay, but the way you’re dealin with it is so self-protective, not of any consideration of your kids.’
Paul: I wonder how often postpartum depression in women is related to them suddenly having that baby, beyond the chemical, but triggered by the suddenly realizing their responsibility and how much the parent that molested them failed them.
Tom: Yeah, I’m sure, because there is a way to which all of our parents fail, of course, to varying degrees, but when you have your own kid it’s humbling, but at the same time it’s empowering, because I think—I realized just how much I would do for my son, but I also felt incredibly guilty, too, because I’m not a perfect guy. There are many ways where I fall short, you know, as a dad, and I’m like, ‘Man, I’ve been through what it’s like to be on the opposite side of—or being the kid of a parent who failed miserably in a lot of ways, and that’s one of my biggest fears, is being anything resembling that. But I know I have this capability to be that.
Paul: I think the fact that you’re cognizant of the fact that you want to be a certain type of parent that you’re striving for that, that seems to me to be the most important thing is that you’re conscious of that. You’re not wrapped up in all your own bullshit, like it sounds like your dad was.
Tom: Yes, yeah, that’s a good way to put it. He had a lot of bullshit he was wrapped up in.
Paul: So, getting back to the arc of how you viewed what happened to you. What was the next kind of seminal moment in how you viewed it?
Tom: I was in high school the next time that really came up to me, or became a little bit more crystallized in my mind. I was in high school and there was a—I mean, my dad was a pastor so I was going to church in a youth group and we had student-led small groups and the particular group I was in, we had started this, I guess it was kind of based off of Seinfeld in a way, you know, who-can-go-the-longest-without-masturbating-fund, and so we all pitched in like $10 and whoever made the longest without masturbating got all the money.
Paul: You must have really trusted each other.
Tom: (Laughs) Yeah, right? Looking back I’m like, what the hell were we thinking, right? But because in that realm, you know, masturbating is bad, and we’re all like 16 or 17, so it was happening frequently, and so we felt a lot of guilt.
Paul: So you were all Baptist kids?
Tom: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don’t think we were all Baptist kids, I think some of the kids had grown up and hadn’t gone to church at all. We were talking about this and talking about the first time we ever masturbated, and they were all saying like ‘Yeah, I was like 13’, ‘I was 12’, ‘I was 14’, blah blah blah – and I was seven. Because I learnt that rubbing down there felt good. I learned that you could get a lot of pleasure from that because of what my sister did to me. So I immediately—
Paul: Had you had an orgasm?
Tom: Yeah. Yeah, I did. I mean, kind of a fun story is, the first time I masturbated and ejaculated, I didn’t know what the fuck was going on.
Paul: That makes two of us.
Tom: (Laughs) Yeah, right? I thought my bones were melting.
Paul: (Laughs)
Tom: That was my first thought. I was like, ‘Holy shit, my bones are melting, because I masturbate,’ or something, and I got freaked out—
Paul: How old were you?
Tom: Oh, 11, 12 maybe? Round there. I don’t remember the age I was but I remember just being freaked out, because I hadn’t had any—my parents actually kept me out of the sex ed class. It was one of those classes where you had to go home and have your parents sign something saying it’s okay for you to come, and they didn’t sign it.
Paul: Oh, the irony.
Tom: Right?! That could have saved me some heart ache. (Laughs) Just knowing that men ejaculate would have helped me.
Paul: I imagine, too, that if your dad was abusing your sister, he wants to stay as far away from anybody having any knowledge about what healthy sex is as possible.
Tom: Yes, yeah. I should clarify, I don’t know if my dad molested my sister. I would just say I have no evidence to the contrary.
Paul: I’m gonna play Nancy Grace here and try him in a public court.
Tom: (Laughs) I’m fine with it. That’s fine. But yeah, anything healthy—
Paul: And I wouldn’t do this if we were using your real name, by the way, because I would give him the benefit of the doubt.
Tom: Yeah, but since we’re talking about Tom’s dad here. But yeah, anything resembling a healthy sexuality was not really around in our house. Lots of repression was, though. I remember—
Paul: Repression makes for some good fucking.
Tom: Yeah, it does. (Laughs) Well, they didn’t want me to learn about the sexual anatomy because I might get someone pregnant, I guess was the fear, but the irony was, around the same time where I’m having this talk with my friends—this was back when the Internet was first coming up, and so every high school kid knew more about the Internet than their parents did, and so my dad didn’t know about these things called search histories quite yet. So on his computer I noticed he was searching for erotic massages, you know, around town, and I was like ‘huh!’ And at this point I’m kind of more aware of the sickness in the family and so I was like, ‘Well, this is just the cherry on top of everything.’ All this sexual abuse happens in the family and yet here is dad being a preacher and seeking out happy endings.
Paul: How did your friends react when you told them that you were seven?
Tom: I didn’t tell them.
Paul: Okay. Did you feel shame?
Tom: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I felt shame, I felt, oh man, I felt like an idiot.
Paul: At that age, when you began masturbating at like seven, was that your go-to for soothing your feelings then?
Tom: Oh, absolutely.
Paul: How frequently then?
Tom: Uh… Once or twice a week, I think. It wasn’t until I was in high school that it was a more, like, regular part.
Paul: You turned pro.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. Well, I would say that I got to a good amateur level, maybe triple A.
Paul: (Laughs)
Tom: Then the Internet came along and you became a pro. But yeah, once or twice a week. I remember sitting in class, you know in elementary school, and getting an erection and wishing I was at home so I could take care of it, as a third-grader.
Paul: When you were that age and you were masturbating, what do you think about? What kind of fantasies does a kid have at that age?
Tom: I don’t even remember.
Paul: Was it just about classmates, or?
Tom: Well I think—you know, when I was five or six, we were at a friend’s house, and someone tried taking their dad’s porno stash or something, so I thought about women, but I also remember it being a really stressful experience, because I was so worried I’d get caught. There was a lot of shame around it. So I don’t remember really what I was thinking about but I do remember having some attraction to women, I guess.
Paul: How has it affected—was there anything else in the arc that we’re skipping?
Tom: Well—
Paul: Because before we finish I also want to ask you how you think it’s affected your sexuality.
Tom: Yeah, that’s a good thing to—we can talk about that. Because there is more to this story because so much of this story happens in adulthood when we started to talk about it in the family context and, kind of reactions and everything. But as far as it affected my sexuality, you know, I felt immense guilt about sex for a long time. Everyone’s first sexual experience is usually kind of sloppy. Mine was just full of guilt, and also was really triggering.
Paul: What did you think or feel?
Tom: I felt scared, I felt ashamed – probably because it was more like a one-night-stand, and so, it wasn’t even in the context of a relationship, and so it was, yeah, there wasn’t really any connection to it. At that time that just felt like the worst thing ever. And I grew up in a religious household, so…
Paul: You got guilt coming from every angle.
Tom: Yeah, it was. So, I wouldn’t say it affected my sexuality in terms of, like on the continuum of attraction, per se, but I definitely—some of my sexual preferences as far as positions or whatever, I totally can come from that. But I’ve also had enough healthy experience now that a lot of that has been able to be worked through, both in therapy—
Paul: Were you attracted to the positions you learned, or repulsed by the positions you learned?
Tom: Attracted.
Paul: Yeah. That seems to be the case with people that had a sexual trauma as kids. I remember this one survey in particular where this guy, his babysitter made him finger her, and I think she was a redhead, and the only thing he can really cum hard to is…
Tom: A redhead?
Paul: A redhead and digital manipulation, videos of that on the Internet. That’s like his thing. And on and on and on with so many of these people that take the surveys, they mistakenly think that ‘Oh, that means that I must have wanted it, that that’s my thing’, instead of ‘This is a trauma I’m trying to work through.’
Tom: I know I can speak for my sexuality, it was so impressionable, particularly when I’m that young, that of course I might like it on top or whatever it may go to, or redheads and fingering. It’s so impressionable, particularly when you first get exposed to it. I mean, I think a lot of people have such fond memories of their first experiences, not necessarily if they were traumatic, that even though it was like a mutual, you know, you’re teenagers or you’re adults, that those experiences still are really points of pleasure, that you can still draw a lot of preference from those points, even if they weren’t traumatic.
Paul: Yeah. So, what’s the next place in the arc of you dealing with this?
Tom: So, when I’m 18 I’m again at a church event, and the speaker is talking about his molestation, how he was molested as a boy, and I just break down in tears and I realize, ‘Holy shit, this happened to me’. So I go ahead and write a letter to my sister, and as the good Christian thing to do, it was a letter already forgiving her of everything, which later got held against me by her and my mum. I wrote her a letter saying, you know, this is what happened but don’t worry, essentially it was, ‘Hey, you raped me, but don’t worry, I forgive you.’
Paul: Isn’t there a card for that?
Tom: Yeah, right? (Laughs) If there’s not, there should be! But could make it flexible, though, it could be emotional rape, you know, whatever kind you want.
Paul: (Laughs)
Tom: But, yeah, and so my sister responded in a letter and said, ‘I’m so sorry, this is the one thing I hadn’t told my husband’ – which I don’t know if she told him. I don’t know if I was the husband how I’d react to those news.
Paul: She said what?
Tom: She said that that was the one thing she had never told her husband, and so I couldn’t imagine being her husband and hearing the news. ‘Oh hey, by the way, when I was a kid I raped my little brother.’ You know, I don’t know how I’d respond to that exactly. So I kinda said water under the bridge, let’s not worry about it. And then time went on—
Paul: Were you burying your anger at this point or did you genuinely feel compassion and forgiveness?
Tom: At the time it sure felt genuine, but I don’t think I was aware of it really when I was 18. I was more concerned with her being okay and more concerned of my family being okay. That was the role I had growing up – I was usually the peace-maker. When my mum was crying hysterically I was the one comforting her, you know, I was the one who tried to have a foot in everyone’s camp, kind of, so I assumed that role in this situation, too. I was the one who buried the pain for everybody and I was going to continue to do so.
Paul: But I’m the one who can also control this and make this right.
Tom: Right, right. Exactly, yeah.
Paul: Instead of thinking about what my needs are, how can I wrap this up in a neat little bow so that nobody has to feel any discomfort except me.
Tom: You know, my first therapist’s name was Paul, and he said almost that exact same thing. Yes, exactly. I was concerned about how I could make this okay, without any real regard to me. But as time went on I did find myself angry at my sister, and I didn’t know why.
Paul: (Laughs)
Tom: Shocking! And so as time went on I found myself angry at my parents, and I found that when I began to go to therapy and really dive into some of this stuff and go through what was like and talk about these experiences, that I quickly realized that I have very little in common with these people. That I have a desire and a need to dive in and they keep refusing to do that with anything. That is when I began to really try to connect with them on a level that I never had before, and I started to say to my sister again, ‘Can I ask you questions about what happened, is that okay, can I ask you questions?’ And she said yes, so I sent her all these questions about, you know, why did this happen, do you remember this, some of the more particular details, and all I got was a big fat ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to say.’ And that was her later saying, ‘I’ve done everything you wanted, I don’t know why you’re still mad at me.’
Paul: Wow.
Tom: Right, I know. And now I’m like, ‘I wonder why I’m mad?’ There was always this—in that relationship there was always this overarching idea and feeling that I had to be in a relationship with her and that I had to like her, even though she raped me.
Paul: And you know, if she had been open, or will ever be open, it seems, to talk about this—there is so much potential for forgiveness, no matter what people have done to each other—
Tom: Absolutely.
Paul: But so many people make the mistake of thinking they’ve got to lock it down and they can’t be vulnerable and they can’t admit, and the thought that just keeps ringing in my head is, well, then she is going to have to confront what happened to her and that’s why she is locking things down, because that is—if it was your dad, who is probably super manipulative if he’s a narcissist, and he’s good at getting—she knows that she’s going to need the best trial attorney in the world to even get him to acknowledge that there was something, and that has got to be overwhelming on top of the thought of opening up all that pain and thinking more about what she did to you, and so much easier to just say ‘That was in the past, let’s move forward,’ which I would imagine is like the most natural thing in the world for a human being who has no emotional tools to do, to just want to lock that down and move forward.
Tom: Absolutely.
Paul: But it’s a fucking anvil around your feet thinking that you can just compartmentalize that part of yourself and it’s not going to come out some other way.
Tom: Yeah, and you know, she said that she read a book and since she read this book – this was like some kind of Christian heal-yourself-book – things are fine, so she doesn’t need to really talk about it. She claimed that she is 100% healed from all this stuff, which was funny because it never involved saying sorry to me.
Paul: She never said sorry?
Tom: Well, she said sorry in my first letter, but when I began to ask her more questions her responses were always in this angry kind of tone. And so it became like if I ever brought it up, I was still holding it over her head.
Paul: How could she not feel that if she is not ready to confront the person that did it to her, because then she is caught between a rock and a hard place because she is getting it from both – and I don’t mean this as a sexual innuendo – she’s getting it from both sides, you know?
Tom: She’s both the rapist and the victim.
Paul: Right, and she’s getting no comfort or compassion from anybody. Who wouldn’t want to avoid that?
Tom: Exactly. You know, Paul, after I first went to therapy, the first year or so was spent really in that area of what happened to her, and I got beyond that, because I had spent so much time worrying about her that I was still not even acknowledging me. One thing my dad would later say was, ‘She was just a kid’, and my immediate reaction was, ‘Well, so was I.’ I mean, for her a kid means she is not really responsible. For me being a kid it meant victimization.
Paul: Yeah, and I think people miss the point, that they think the dredging of the past is to lay blame and hold it over somebody and make them feel bad but it’s not. It’s to help the victim process it so that they can get to a place of peace and ultimately not hold it over the other person, but it’s hard to convey that to somebody when you confront them about that. Maybe that’s what we need to do, is to say ‘Hey, look, I’m not looking to hold this over your head for the rest of your life but I’ve got these emotions built up in me because of what happened that I need to process and part of that involves talking honestly with you about this and needing questions answered and talking about how I feel.
Tom: Exactly.
Paul: I don’t know if that’s realistic to expect that to be a way to approach somebody or not, but I think people that grow up in silent, shaming households, that fucking bank vault closing is just the way to deal with things because they think everything is about power and something being held over your head and it’s going to be that way forever.
Tom: Right, and it’s, you know, if you believe in defense mechanisms, it’s a defense mechanism, it’s repression, it’s a way to protect yourself, but unfortunately it can be really unhealthy.
Paul: And modern religion isn’t really too great as a model for things not being forever. (Laughs)
Tom: No, it’s really good at guilt and shame. It’s not good at healing things, I guess I would say. I mean, I don’t want to speak to—I can only speak to my experience, but I learned pretty quick when I started dealing with this stuff that I would never be close to my sister. There was nothing that could be done to really do that, I mean, I can’t imagine sitting down having coffee with her.
Paul: If she had reacted differently, do you think that would be possible?
Tom: Absolutely.
Paul: Yeah.
Tom: No question about it. But… I even hesitate to say this, but rapists generally aren’t the most personable folk.
(Laughter)
Tom: You know? And what I mean by that is that we can’t—I can’t say that in this particular scenario—this scenario isn’t—it is a lot like the guy who knocked down a girl and took her into the woods and raped her, you know, it’s a lot like that actually, but in other ways it’s not. I mean, I can’t imagine, generally somebody who’s going to do something like that multiple times and then who is going to keep it a secret, deny it at first, and then bring it up and say ‘Yeah, it did happen,’ generally probably is not going to be somebody that’s going to be able to walk through that path of healing with you. That’s something I had to realize. I remember having to kind of let my sister go, letting that dream of that relationship that I thought we could have kinda die, and really I had to do that with all my family to a degree.
Paul: And that’s another place where I think modern religion fucks people up, because they pound this idea into your head that—especially if it’s a parent that abused you, is that you’ve got to respect them.
Tom: Honor thy Father and thy Mother, is a verse. And you know what, I would say this, I’m not an advocate necessarily of religion per se – I think a lot of the time that it’s really got good stuff in it, but I will say that honoring your father and mother is a really good idea, but honoring them doesn’t mean doing what they say and it doesn’t mean doing everything they did to you. It means taking what they gave you and treating it accordingly, and what my parents gave me was shit, so I treated it accordingly.
Paul: Yeah. And I think it goes back to the thing that, have compassion for others but not at the expense of compassion for yourself, and what a perfect example your story is that you had to save your own skin because—
Tom: Oh yeah. You know, part of the—I ended up, when all this started happening, like me talking about it openly within the family, all these other realities started coming out. That’s when I began to see what with my mum, I can’t really have this conversation with her, probably because of her own trauma. When I began to bring it up, again, one time she wanted to – I lived in Portland – she wanted to come see me. She was in Seattle at the time and she wanted to come down and clear the air. So she came down to Portland to see me and we went out this chain Mexican restaurant and we ate and she was grilling me about religious questions because there was a change in religion for me, and then we went to this park and she whipped out this letter. It was the original letter I had written to my sister when I was 18, and she says, ‘I have the letter right here!’ and it was really kind of this, kind of, ‘Why are you still bringing this up? You forgave her’ and I said, ‘Woah, I’m not gonna talk to you about this. You need to go home.’ So I got in the car and left, and she followed me to my house. One of my roommates came, picked me up, took me home, and I was a mess of course. She followed me to my house. She came in, she forced her way into my room and she began yelling at me. I remember at one point I got really mad at her, I was telling her to leave and I said ‘Fuck you, get out of my house!’ and she says ‘Well, I can say ‘fuck’ too!’ and just was not rational. At one point she started hitting me and slapping me, she threw a picture at me, and it was just like, ‘We’re done,’ you know? This was her way of trying to talk through things. Obviously I’m not going to do that. So I told her to leave. Eventually I said, ‘If you don’t leave I’m going to have to call the police,’ on my mum, which isn’t as uncommon as we think. (Laughs) But once she left I wrote her an email and I said – and this was a sign of my healthiness at the time – I said, ‘Thanks for having the courage to come down to see me.’ (Laughs) I really wonder what I was thankful for.
Paul: And that wasn’t sarcastic?
Tom: No, no, it wasn’t sarcastic. I was genuine, I mean this was me really trying. And then I said, ‘Obviously there is something you want to talk about, so if there is, please write me a letter. I’m not interested in talking about it but please write me because I want to know what you have to say, outside of just wanting to hit me.’ At one point she said, ‘Just go ahead and hit me, I know you want to.’ She’s working out all sorts of stuff.
Paul: Wow.
Tom: Yeah, her childhood was…horrific. Knowing that that’s what I was dealing with, kind of, in a mum, I realized ‘Woah, I can’t go very far with her,’ you know? Like, how can I expect her to really deal with this when this is when—and at that point my relationship with my mum really changed. I began to treat her as a kind of Alzheimer’s patient almost, that I wasn’t really dealing with the mum I thought I had when I was 12; I was dealing with something else. And so—
Paul: And was your therapist helping you—
Tom: Yes.
Paul: —with this, because that’s such a leap for somebody to make on their own.
Tom: No, not alone, yeah. With a therapist. And he’s the one who told me, I mean, I was in tears in his office and he told me, he goes, ‘I think it’s time that we can say goodbye to your mum.’ And then they were kind of turned into tears of relief, because I didn’t know what to do. I still felt responsibility to make this work.
Paul: You felt like a bad person.
Tom: Oh, I felt like a shitty son. And now, having a kid, I will say, it’s impossible to be a shitty kid. Impossible. But it’s amazing how many of us feel like we were. But there’s no such thing as a shitty kid. But I felt like a shitty kid. So he kind of gave me permission to let her go and helped me do that, so I did, and it was such a relief. But that’s also when the relationship also became harder in a different way. It became exhausting.
Paul: Did you, through letters, just through letters?
Tom: No, at that point, you know—I think there was a year-period when there was only letters.
Paul: So you let go of the idea of having the relationship that you wanted to have, you didn’t cut her out of your life?
Tom: No, I didn’t, but when I would see her after that it became nothing but reflective statements, just kind of above bored kind of stuff. Never any depth or anything. And my mum’s the kind of person—
Paul: On her part?
Tom: No, on my part.
Paul: Okay.
Tom: My mum is the kind of person who would say, ‘So, Paul, what are your views on employment?’ and you would get about three words out, and then she would just cut you off and start telling you what her views are. So you just are quiet a lot of the time and normally I was kind of okay with that but now I wasn’t really, but I kind of knew who I was dealing with so I just kinda—the relationship became very exhausting. I had to kind of shut myself off to be around them. But that was the reality. I just—I wasn’t safe.
Paul: And I would imagine, too, with the work that you had done, you began to recognize yourself shutting down, which is such an important thing because most of us that grow up shutting down don’t know that that’s what we do; that’s our normal. But when you begin to get vulnerable with people and to speak in a way that is emotional and you feel heard and respected, it’s then so much easier to compare your unhealthiness.
Tom: Mhmm. Well, you know, it didn’t happen for me, I wasn’t able to see that that’s what was going on with me until dating somebody – my wife now, we were dating at the time – and she went with me to visit them and she got to kind of see the reality of that I would just shut myself off and my parents are really different from me in a lot of ways and when we got done with the trip she actually went to Central America – my wife did – for a little bit, and then for school for a couple of weeks, and came back and I was completely shut off, just emotionally distant. She was like ‘What’s going on?’ and I’m, ‘I don’t know,’ you know. And it’s because I didn’t know how to exist around my parents anymore, and so I go to emotional shut-off mode. Because that was easier than—that’s what I learned to do. It was easier than actually acknowledging how I felt. But yeah, and then through therapy I was able to kind of—
Paul: My wife would do the same thing. She would come home from work and she would say, ‘Did you—did you talk to your mum?’ (Laughs) ‘Because you’re, like, completely shut down.’
Tom: (Laughs) Totally, yeah. Oh yeah, I get a letter or an email—I mean, later on I actually started working with my dad – stupidest move ever (laughs) – I got a job where he worked. He got me a job I should say. And yeah, there were days that if I had had any interaction with him, I smoked at time so I’d walk round the block and just chain-smoke cigarettes, and I didn’t know why. Now I’m like, well, dur-de-dur, you know, I deal with that on a daily basis.
Paul: Yeah. So, is that kind of it as far as the arc of you processing it?
Tom: No, not really, I mean—the kind of culmination of it all was, for a couple of years I had kind of been interacting with them on a very distant level, and trying to make it work that way. And then it was with my dad that I said, ‘Dad, here’s why I’m not close to my sister, here is what she did to me.’ And he responded great, he said, ‘Take all the time you need.’ And I was like, ‘This is awesome.’ A few weeks later, that’s when he said ‘Well, I just keep coming at the fact that she was just a kid.’ And I got pissed. For the first time I got pissed. And I said, ‘What was I? I was just a kid then, too.’ But for me, that just means being raped. For her it means doing something she wasn’t supposed to do. And so he didn’t really have a good answer and just kind of skirted it, and then one time we were having a conversation and he asked me, ‘Well, son, what do you need from me?’ I said, ‘Nothing,’ and he got pissed, really mad at me. He said ‘What do you mean you don’t need anything from me?’ and I said—I had a gotten to a point where I didn’t need anything anymore, and all of a sudden I realized, that’s how our relationship existed and there is no relationship to be had unless I need him for something. And so, at that point it was distant and I began to see more of behind the curtain with my dad. I remember at one point he came over to our house and we decide to see how long he would talk about himself without us saying anything, and it went for, I want to say it was like an hour and a half.
Paul: Wow.
Tom: Yeah! How I existed in that and never realized it, I have no idea. He just went on, and he became a lot more antagonizing, like at one point he said, ‘You know, I can see how’—after I got married, he said—‘I can see how you’re good for your wife, but I don’t know how she is good for you.
Paul: That’s insulting.
Tom: Isn’t it though! And I was just like that—but that’s just the kind of thing he started throwing at me, and so I just said, ‘Well, I think I probably know better than you do.’ But that’s the response – he was trying to throw hooks at me to get me mad, and I just had to stop responding to that. So the relationship became just exhausting. We were supposed to go out there for Thanksgiving. They had moved to Colorado at this point, and I sent both my sister and my mum and dad a letter and said ‘We’re not coming out,’ and gave them kinda litany of very concise, yet very poignant. I didn’t try to throw any punches, I wasn’t trying to be really descriptive, I was just trying to say ‘These are the facts of what happened, this is why I’m not going to be coming out there; from this point forward if you have anything you want to say to me, please’—or I said, ‘I won’t answer your phone calls but you can write me a letter.’ So they wrote me a letter. My mum wrote a letter and my dad wrote me a letter and they sent them as registered letters, actually.
Paul: Odd.
Tom: Well, them typed them out and printed them off and sent them as registered letters to me. It was just so—everything about it was just so weird. There is a level of paranoia there with them that, I don’t even know, exist—but I’m so glad I wrote letters, because I get to go back and read the crazy in black and white. Before I came here today I was reading through these emails and these letters, and holy shit, they are nuts! When you read a letter that I wrote to them and then you read the response to that letter, it’s almost like you’re reading two different conversations. Like, what I say and questions I ask, and then they just go off on something else. Or as my dad was so good at doing, he’d just say, ‘I’m sorry for everything,’ and that somehow solves things.
Paul: Do you—I keep thinking for people like that, that don’t know that emotions are something that can be processed and feelings can be changed, I think for them it’s all about blame and right and wrong and who is in the position of power and who isn’t, which is such a horrible place to try to process things from, because there’s no chance for vulnerability.
Tom: No, there’s no chance. And it was all about power. Particularly with my dad, all about power, all about control, all about making sure that his impression management, he was maintaining this idea. That letter I sent to them saying I’m not gonna talk to them anymore, the responses they gave me were—that is one of the things that keeps me sane when I have second thoughts about not talking to them. If I just go back and read those letters I’m like ‘Oh yeah, that’s what I’m dealing with.’
Paul: And that’s the thing, too, about having been through something traumatic, is our brain—the brain that fought to protect us that said that wasn’t something necessarily bad when we were kids, that part is still there telling us we’re either exaggerating it or we’re making it up or we’re a baby, or whatever, and you’d better have some ammo. I constantly go back to what my wife said when I broke up and I said ‘My mum tricked me, she used me,’ and she said ‘I’ve been waiting 20 years for you to say that.’ On those days when I start to feel like a terrible son I go back to that and it’s really comforting. And I also have some letters from in the 80s when she was writing my brother and I about us not being good about cleaning the house, which I’m sure was true, but she said that was the reason why her marriage was falling apart.
Tom: (Laughs)
Paul: And you know, when I read that I was like ‘Oh okay, I’m not making up that she is kind of crazy and really not healthy.’
Tom: Yeah. My mum actually, she would do almost the same thing. She would complain and cry hysterical and mad at us that the house wasn’t clean enough, and then I would go to help clean it, and you know, this was when I was a kid, and she would get mad at me for not doing it right. So hearing that about your mum, that’s why her marriage is falling apart, because the kids weren’t cleaning enough... Being able to see that, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah.’ Because, well, there is a piece of us too that really wants that not to be true.
Paul: So badly want it not to be true. And we will walk around the globe to find any other explanation for it.
Tom: Yeah, you’ll carry their guilt for them a lot of times to do that. That’s what I did for a long time.
Paul: Anything else?
Tom: As far as the arc goes? Well, I haven’t spoken with them on the phone or anything since that, and that was in 2008, and 99% of the time I am so happy I made that decision. My life is so much better, it’s less stressful, I kinda let go of my ownership of them in that, and so, it’s been wonderful.
Paul: It feels like you put the responsibility where it belongs.
Tom: Exactly where it belongs. As a matter of fact, that was a line in the letter.
Paul: Yeah?
Tom: Yeah, pretty sure I said exactly that. (Laughs) That the guilt and shame belonged to them, not to me, anymore.
Paul: You put the ball in their court. You said, ‘Here are my boundaries, here are the things I require to move forward in a relationship.’
Tom: Exactly. And I so badly wanted them to respond well. So badly. And they just couldn’t do it. Whether or not they are incapable, or whether they are choosing not to, for me it’s kind of neither here nor there to a degree, but they didn’t. And I had to live with that reality, not the reality that I wish was there. Plus, you know, at that point too I wanted to start a family of my own and, based on how they handled the abuse in my family, I wasn’t sure I trusted them to be around my family, based on how they handled situations in their own. Hardest decision I ever made, certainly—
Paul: I don’t know what’s going on in the hallway, but it sounds like fun. Fun, or they’re doing a sequel to The Shining.
Tom: Right. (Laughs)
Paul: We’re in my hotel room in Portland. So did we answer the question how you feel it’s affected your sexuality? If it has?
Tom: Yeah, it totally has. I think I have done a lot of process work with that and so the ways it affected my sexuality was—
Paul: Processing mostly through therapy?
Tom: Through therapy, yeah. And through experience, and having those experiences particularly after therapy, is where the healing happened.
Paul: It must be nice, too, that you have a wife who’s a therapist because I would imagine she totally understands.
Tom: Yes, she does understand, she gets it, and her family has her own stuff so we can relate on a lot of levels, but it’s nice because, even—she’s just a compassionate person regardless, and so, even if she wasn’t a therapist—but her being a therapist, she also understands the reality of situations more so than maybe others would. And it’s huge. My wife, we’re best friends, and it’s probably because we just get it, you know? With her being honest, like when I’ve been triggered—oh, we watched, oh what movie was that? I don’t want to spoil the movie, it doesn’t matter, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, have you seen that? So, you go the whole movie, and it ends with his aunt, right? And once I saw the little boy, once I came to the realization that his aunt had molested him, I broke down in tears. Usually I can watch something like, oh, what was that movie with Denzel Washington? Not Finding Forrester… He was like a naval psychologist…
Paul: Oh yeah, I know what you’re thinking of.
Tom: But, this guy’s babysitter molested him when he was younger, and he goes back and confronts her. I watched that movie knowing that that’s what it was about, so I’m okay kinda doing that, but when I don’t know and this hits me.
Paul: Antwone Fisher?
Tom: Antwone Fisher, that’s what it was, yeah. But when I watched this other movie where it was a surprise, I didn’t know it was coming. I was triggered for at least a week, you know?
Paul: And when you say ‘triggered,’ describe for our listeners what that involves.
Tom: That I become emotionally distant, I begin to feel the shame and the guilt of it all again. Sex is the last thing I want. Even affection I don’t really want, like I don’t want to be touched. I become cold and, not mean, but distant. And so I have to kinda process through that, and the more I do that process, the more I come out of it, the less time it usually takes.
Paul: And how do you process it when you’re triggering, just talking about it?
Tom: Yeah, I talk about it. And luckily, with my wife I can tell her, and it’s not just because she’s a therapist but I can be honest with her, and just say this is what’s going on, and she’s just really respectful, even if we’re trying to get pregnant or something. (Chuckles) I chuckle because I imagine telling someone who’s been raped, ‘No, no, we have to do it.’ But yeah, I talk about it with her, I have really good friends that I can talk about this with…
Paul: And I should mention, too, that there are different types of triggering because sometimes you can be triggered in a way that you feel hyper sexual and you want to act out.
Tom: Yeah, totally. And previously, if I had been younger I probably would have gone and masturbated for three straight weeks, you know? That’s probably what it would have been. Or sought out a one-night-stand of some sort. That’s kind of how it would have been dealt with. But even after those things would have happened, I wouldn’t really have been processed about it.
Paul: Yeah. And a lot of people who have experienced some type of sexual trauma, it becomes kind of like a binary switch when you’re triggered – it’s either on or it’s off, and there’s not a lot of in between.
Tom: Yeah, and through this podcast and other stories I have been able to read, I know that I didn’t get it nearly as bad in that way, as far as triggers go. But I definitely know what it feels like. Sometimes it’s unexpected and sometimes I know it’s coming.
Paul: I had a therapist write me a nice email and she said that she recommends my podcast to a lot of her clients but she warns them that certain episodes may be really triggering. And it had never occurred to me that that would be the case and I suddenly felt terrible because I was like oh my god, the jokes and the this—but I can’t change what this is for that.
Tom: No, and honestly, I will say as a listener who’s been triggered by it sometimes, things that your guests will say, the humor is what gives me air. I get to come up for air, you know?
Paul: Oh, good.
Tom: And I’m at a point too where, I mean, I don’t really joke about being a rape victim per se but I can joke about the other things that have happened, the scenarios, that’s not an issue. But I more see that as a symptom of being okay with it, as opposed to laughing as a defense against it, you know? There is a difference.
Paul: Yeah, there is a difference between laughing while you’re confronting it, and laughing to avoid it.
Tom: Exactly. And I will say that there are worse things to do than laughing to avoid it. So if you were to laugh, laugh.
Paul: Well, dude, thank you so much. You wanna do a fear-off and love-off?
Tom: Yes, yes.
Paul: I am going to be reading the fears and loves of a listener named Kate. “I’m afraid that my childhood dog will die before the next time I go to visit my parents.”
Tom: I’m afraid that I’m as shitty as my guilt-ridden ego inherited from my parents says I am.
Paul: “I’m afraid that I’m gay after all and I made a huge mistake by telling my parents that I wasn’t anymore.”
Tom: That if I just would have made one different choice, my family would have dealt with their issues and I would have parents against and my son would have grandparents.
Paul: Oh. I relate to that, by the way, that ‘Oh, maybe I didn’t play this right, maybe I didn’t handle this, it’s my fault.’
Tom: Yeah.
Paul: I have this feeling that I have read Kate’s fears before, but I’m just going to plough ahead anyway. “I’m afraid that I have cancer.” Just right to it!
Tom: I know, right? I mean, it kinda depends on what kind of cancer I’d be afraid of, but…
Paul: Yeah.
Tom: That the feeling of cluelessness I feel when parenting is just me not putting enough work and my son’s going to pay the price for it.
Paul: “I’m afraid I have an STI even though I have no symptoms whatsoever.”
Tom: That I’m too old for grad school.
Paul: “I’m afraid I will have a panic attack in a public place.”
Tom: That I will become like my father and my son will decide that he doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore and I wouldn’t do anything about it.
Paul: “I’m afraid that no one will want to date me seriously because of my anxiety and my eating disorder.”
Tom: I’m afraid that I’m going to wake up one day and I will be the only one in the world who knows my dad for who he really is.
Paul: Wow, that’s deep. That is fucking deep.
Tom: Yeah, well, I’d be the one crazy one. (Laughs)
Paul: “I’m afraid that I’ll never have kids.”
Tom: I’m afraid that all my friends find me annoying and that any time I call them to hang out they roll their eyes and they only do it out of pity.
Paul: “I’m afraid that I’m crazy.”
Tom: I’m afraid that after I die my family will be standing over me saying ‘We were right.’
Paul: (Laughs) Oh my god! Kate says, “I’m afraid I will always be bulimic.”
Tom: That’s all I have.
Paul: Let’s go into some loves.
Tom: Okay.
Paul: Kate says, “I love spending a lazy morning drinking a whole pot of coffee and eating peanut butter toast.” That sounds good.
Tom: It does sound really good. I love when I have friends or acquaintances who work through their shit and I see dramatic differences in their quality of life.
Paul: Oh, I second that one. “I love getting rid of things I haven’t look at in months and that are just taking up space.”
Tom: I love that when I feel alone or frustrated in a feeling and I find out my wife has the exact same feeling, that we get to talk about it.
Paul: That’s awesome. “I love eating a meal when everything in me is telling me to skip it.”
(Chuckles)
Tom: I love morning sex.
Paul: Morning sex—almost everything done in the morning kinda hits you stronger – getting high, drinking, sex…
Tom: Anything, yeah. And anything that is normally reserved for the night, yeah.
Paul: Yeah. “I love treating with my body with respect.”
Tom: I love when I make contact with a ball no the bat that is so square that I don’t even feel the ball hit the bat.
Paul: Oh, that is so good! And it’s almost like it stays there for an extra split second.
Tom: Yeah, it’s almost like you’re lifting it, like it just, yeah.
Paul: You can almost picture the ball flattening out.
Tom: Mhmm.
Paul: “I love those rare moments when I feel like the universe is reaching out and connecting with me.” Oh boy, do I love that.
Tom: Yeah! I love when I get my son to laugh so hard that there is no sound.
Paul: (Chuckles) That’s a great one. “I love when it takes me less time than I thought it would to get to work.”
Tom: I love delicious, thick-cut bacon dipped in egg yolk.
Paul: That is good. “I love when I watch a movie that I’ve seen a hundred times and I notice something new.” That’s a good one.
Tom: Well, in the vein of not seeing my parents anymore, I love spending holidays with people that I want to spend them with.
Paul: Isn’t that the best?
Tom: Mhmm, yes. (Laughs)
Paul: “I love when I find something awesome and free to do on the weekend.”
Tom: I love playing Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity with friends who are like-minded and have the same level of depravity.”
Paul: “I love when I’m at a concert and the performer does a cover of an old song.”
Tom: I love listening to podcasts on the train.
Paul: Kate says, “I love the end of NHL lock-outs.” I love you, Kate.
Tom: (Chuckles) I love Saturday morning breakfasts with my family.
Paul: “I love taking a day to be a tourist on my own city.” Oh, what a good idea.
Tom: That is a good idea. I love watching an off-the-beaten-path movie with my wife and by the end of it we’re both crying and wondering why more people haven’t seen it.
Paul: “I love going to New England and seeing a high school hockey game.”
Tom: I love unsolicited “I love you’s” from my son.
Paul: That’s beautiful. I can’t imagine how good that has to feel.
Tom: Well, he’s got a speech delay, so it actually sounds like “I sew you much.” (Chuckles) But yeah, it’s wonderful.
Paul: I think you should backhand him and say ‘You’re saying it wrong.’
Tom: (Laughs) Yeah, ‘Say it again!!’
Paul: How else is he going to learn?
Tom: Exactly.
Paul: This is your time to mold him!
Tom: Yes.
Paul: “I love gel manicures in the perfect shade of dark red.”
Tom: Hm. I love seeing my wife and her business partner have success or realizing that what they’re doing is better than they thought.
Paul: “I love pedicures with a foot massage that lasts just a little bit longer than you think they will.”
Tom: I love reading through old emails from my parents and seeing the crazy in black and white.
Paul: “I love blueberry waffles with real maple syrup.
Tom: I love realizing that I am not as shitty as my guilt-ridden ego inherited from my family says I am.
Paul: Well, that’s a beautiful one to end on. Tom, thank you so much. You… You’re just a beautiful human being, you know? I know I don’t know you that well but from this last hour and 20 minutes that I have spent with you, it’s really moving and I’m really touched by what a forgiving, compassionate person you are. I think your kid is going to be really lucky to have a dad like you.
Tom: Thanks, Paul.
Paul: Many thanks to Tom for all of that. That really touched me. What a great example of recovery and what’s possible if you put the work in.
Before I take it out with some surveys I want to remind you guys—blah blah blah… (Laughs) That’s the one thing about when you start to do a podcast 100 times or more than 100 times, the things that you say in each one, the little messages, you know, reminders – you start to feel like a broken record. There are a couple of different ways to support this podcast. You can support us financially by going to the website, mentalpod.com, and making a one-time PayPal donation or – my favorite – signing up to be a recurring monthly donor. It means the world to me, even if it’s only $5 a month it adds up and it helps keep this podcast going. You don’t have to do anything except set it up that one time and then as long as your credit card doesn’t expire or you don’t choose to cancel it, it will just keep going and that really, really helps me. It is the financial foundation for this podcast, so if you’re thinking about it, please, come on.
You can also support us by using our Amazon search portal. By the way, it’s not visible through Firefox, if you’re using that browser it’s not going to show up, I don’t know why. But if you’re using a browser other than Firefox, it’s on the right-hand side on the homepage about halfway down. And that way, when you buy something from Amazon through that portal, Amazon gives us a couple of nickels, and it doesn’t cost you anything. And you can support us non-financially by going to iTunes and giving us a good rating. That boosts our ranking and brings more people to the show. And you can support us by spreading the word through social media. A nice listener has decided to start a mentalpod Reddit page, I don’t think that’s up yet but I know he’s going to work on that. And of course, Tumblr and all that other stuff, Facebook, any spreading of the word really helps.
Alright, let’s get into the surveys. This is from Shame and Secrets filled out by a guy who calls himself Popeye. He’s straight, he’s in his 20s. Deepest darkest thoughts: “rape.” I just get right into it, huh! “Fuck anything in a skirt. Some of the porno I’ve been watching recently has been heading towards jailbait territory.” Deepest darkest secrets: “I’ve had sex chats online since I was like 14. I’ve tried to stop. I’ve chatted to literally thousands of women trying to get myself off. Some of them are below the age of consents, though that was mostly when I was younger. However, it was more because they were female, not an age thing. My urges slow down when on meds but it had ruined several relationships. If I was ever famous I’d be so, so screwed by kiss-and-tells, even though it was all digital.” Sexual fantasies most powerful to you: “Taking control. I had an ex who liked to be choked and gave head like in pornos and I think she set off a trigger in me somewhere for abusive sex.” Would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend: “No, everyone thinks I’m a completely respectable gent.” Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings towards yourself: “It feels like I am living a lie. As soon as I am on my own, and if I’m in a bout of depression, it becomes this compulsion that I am so, so ashamed of. I have casual drunken unprotected sex because I feel so ashamed. Half the time I am so drunk to oblivion I can’t remember the night before. Things have been better on meds recently but I know it’s lurking beneath the surface, ready to ruin me.”
You know, the first thoughts that jump out to me is that drinking to the point of oblivion is something that you might want to address first, because for a lot of people getting to that point of oblivion then gives them the “permission” to engage in the stuff that really brings them shame, and I wouldn’t look to meds to solve all of this because it sounds like there’s anger in there, and there’s something safe about objectifying women that—and you know, porn can really start to warp, when it’s the only way we view sex or sexuality, it can really kinda fuck up our view of the opposite sex or whatever it is that’s turning us on, and we forget that there’s this whole other thing, intimacy and… I sound like fucking old fogy.
This is from the Shame and Secrets survey filled out by a woman who calls herself Sancho Says. She’s in her 20s, she’s bisexual, was raised in a stable and safe environment, was the victim of sexual abuse and reported it. Deepest darkest thoughts: “I often think about what would happen if I said or did something completely inappropriate or hurtful to those around me, especially those I love.” Deepest darkest secrets: “I am worried that being raped when I was 14 has affected me more than I have ever thought before. I’m afraid that the more time passes, the more problems rise to the surface.” Sexual fantasies most powerful to you: “Many of my fantasies involve me being on display for a group of people to use as they wish. I sometimes wonder if this is the result of something that happened to me when I was very young but can’t recall specifically.” The reason I wanted to read this is because something did happen to you, you were 14, you were still young. Even if you were 25 and you’ve been violated, that can still affect your sexuality. I had never had some of the sexual fantasies that I now have until I actually confronted stuff that happened to me, fantasies where I’m 11 again. That’s fucking uncomfortable, thinking about that kind of stuff, but I know that that’s my brain just processing that stuff. And that’s one of the things I was talking to Lynn about today – the first place I go to is shame; what kind of sick fuck wants to be 11 again and have an older girl or a woman do something to him? But that’s the way our brains and our sexuality work, so maybe there’s some more stuff left there to process with what happened to you.
This is from the same survey, filled out by a woman who calls herself Humble Girl. She’s in her 40s, she identifies as straight bi-curious, was raised in a pretty dysfunctional environment, was the victim of sexual abuse and reported it. “Mother did not believe it, father took advantage of his step-daughters.” God, that is just a double fucking whammy. Deepest darkest thoughts: “Being shaved by another female so that the male we both desire will have a better experience.” Sexual fantasies most powerful to you: “Watching my beloved adorable partner enjoy himself with another female.” Would you ever consider telling someone this: “Maybe.” How does this make you feel: “Generally I like myself and think most people do not understand me.” That’s awesome.
This is from the Struggle in a Sentence filled out by Lizzy. I actually have three of Lizzy’s surveys back to back that I want to read, sometimes I like to—when I notice someone is filling out multiple surveys I like to, it gives me a better snapshot kind of, of who my listeners are. “My listeners,” oh, I just all of a sudden hate myself for saying that. And thank you, by the way, for all the emails that you guys send me to tell me you love the surveys, the show’s not too long and that I’m too hard on myself. I really appreciate that. Lizzy is straight, she’s in her 20s. About her anxiety she writes, “My anxiety feels like I am the keeper of a nuclear facility that could melt down at any moment.” About her anorexia, “It feels like a boss who is never happy with the work I have done or the amount of time I’ve put in.” About her OCD, “It feels like being drugged, having your head put in a vice and then being asked to write a doctoral thesis in an hour.” Thank you for those, those are so descriptive.
This is from her Shame and Secrets survey, she writes she was raised in a stable and safe environment, never been sexually abused. Deepest darkest thoughts: “My eating disorder takes priority over people so I think horrible things about my husband and family when they ruin my “eating plans.” I’ve probably thought that I hated many of them in a dark moment. I’ve planned how I would lie to them so I could follow my own plans. I have thought people in my family were disgusting when they gained weight. I have thought that I would probably die before I hit 30. I have had periods where I wish that I were courageous enough to kill myself.” I hate when people use the word “courageous” when it comes to killing themselves. Maybe desperate would be a better word. “I’ve been afraid that I was demon-possessed. I’ve been afraid that I would do inappropriate sexual things to others. I’ve been afraid that I would hurt others.” Deepest darkest secrets: “I have cut myself every once in a while, even though I promised my husband I wouldn’t. I’ve made a life of lying and hiding food so that I could eat and exercise the way I’ve wanted. I’ve been anorexic since college, though that’s not a secret to very many now.” Sexual fantasies most powerful to you: “I’m not comfortable having sexual fantasies as I worry about doing something wrong. As a Christian raised in a Christian home of course sexual sins were huge. I still occasionally have some of that fear bubble up. When I do have fantasies they’re usually involving rough sex with my husband or having him perform oral sex on me. I imagine him doing things like pushing me into walls or having sex with me on the counter. Occasionally I will think of being able to do sexy things, like a striptease.” Would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend: “Since my fantasies are so mild, of course I would. It’s a little difficult to start the topic, but I could talk to my husband about most of it. I do feel more resistant to talk about things that I could do that are sexy. I am not a sexy person and I’m a perfectionist with low self-esteem. That right there explains why it’s hard for me to want to bring up the topic. I’m afraid to be bad at something and I don’t know that I’m capable of being sexy. At least not what most traditional Western thought would consider sexy”—and I can’t imagine how many people hearing that paragraph just said, “me too.” Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings: “I feel small. I feel bad. I feel less than I should be. I’m a perfectionist and it’s easy for me to see what I think I could be, even if most people wouldn’t expect that much of me. I feel disgusting, awful, evil and wrong.” I just want to send you the biggest hug, Lizzy.
This is from her Shouldn’t Feel This Way survey. If you could use a time machine, how would you use it: “I would watch my past to see how my brain, thought patterns and actions got into this twisted mess. Maybe understanding would give me some hope and some relief.” I relate to that. Oh boy, do I relate to that. Shouldn’t feel this way: “I’m supposed to feel disgust about my eating disorder but I don’t; I feel safe and in control. I’m supposed to feel disgusted about my lying but I don’t; I feel in control and relief. I’m supposed to feel driven and passionate about my life but I don’t; I feel apathetic and hopeless.” How does writing that make you feel: “Sad and disgusted.” Do you think you’re abnormal for feeling what you do: “I think that with the problems that I have it’s not surprising. Not what I hope a majority of people are thinking, but I know I’m not alone.” I’m grateful that you know you’re not alone, Lizzy.
This last grouping of surveys is two surveys from a guy who calls himself Paul of Tarsus. He is straight, in his 30s, was raised in a totally chaotic environment, was the victim of sexual abuse and never reported it. Deepest darkest thoughts: “I think about having an orgy with men and women. They are 18-21, fit and of many different ethnicities. I get to come inside the women. The men are girly, sissy types.” Deepest darkest secrets: “I met with an 18-year-old high school man that I found on Craigslist. We had sex, me on top a couple of times. I am married. I consider myself straight because I don’t emotionally like men at all, but so long as I’m the one fucking him.” Sexual fantasies most powerful to you: “I mentioned the orgy in the previous question. I like vulnerability. The more submissive, the better. I like to lick my wife’s asshole. She’s not that into it but I get super hard when I do it. I often think about eating young women’s pussies.” Well, get in line! (Laughs) Would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend: “No, I’m too ashamed.” Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings: “They make me feel like I’m a sicko.” You are not a sicko, Paul, you are not a sicko. And I’m telling that to me-Paul and to you-Paul. This is from Paul’s Shouldn’t Feel This Way survey. How would you use a time machine: “Recently found out that I was adopted, I’d like to see myself being born.” Shouldn’t feel this way’s: “I’m supposed to feel good about my accomplishments, Ivy League degree, six-figure job, decorated veteran – instead I feel like I’m actually very dumb and have been able to fool people for years. I’m good at faking intellect.” Which just goes to show me, when we fantasize about having other people’s lives or their accomplishments it’s like, man, if we don’t feel good inside about who we are and we haven’t let go of the shame from our past, it doesn’t matter what we achieve and what a fucking treadmill that is to be on. How does writing that make you feel: “I held so much in for so long that it feels really good.” Do you think you’re abnormal for feeling what you do: “I know that it is not normal and that God has something better for me.” Would knowing other people feel the same way make you feel better for yourself: “That’s why I’m glad I found your podcast. Intellectually I know that there are others but I still feel alone.” Oh Paul, I’m sending you a hug, buddy, because you are not alone.
I want to take it out, instead of doing a Happy Moments survey, I want to take it out with a—read some ads for a fundamentalist matchmaker site:
“Fun-loving Pentecostal preacher looking for a good time. Turn-ons: Swift and merciless reckoning, denial of worldly pleasures, unflattering hairstyles, and long walks around the Lake of Fire.”
“Fun-loving Orthodox rabbi just looking for a nice girl to walk 20 feet behind me. I want someone to wear black with in the searing heat, to laugh with me when going and try to pronounce our holidays.”
“Fun-loving Quaker maiden looking for the right anemic pallor to churn my butter and fill the hole in my sheet. Turn-ons: Long stoic buggy rides, exhaustion at sunset, joint crushing labor going unrecognized.”
“Fun-loving Wahhabi princess looking for a nice, judgmental mullah to resist progress with. I’m just a simple girl from the Arabian peninsula looking for the right Jew-hater to accompany me into the 8th century. I want a committed relationship – no suicide bombers.”
I thought you guys would enjoy that. If you’re out there and you’re listening, I hope you got a laugh out of that, and I hope you felt something in your soul from this episode, I know I did. I’m so grateful for you guys, and if you’re out there and you’re struggling, don’t give up hope. You’re not alone. There is always hope if you’re willing to get out of your comfort zone and ask for help. Thanks for listening.
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