Healing the Trauma of the Soul with Nancy Houston (Part 1)

00:00 - Speaker 1
Hey, this is Paul Louis Cole and you're listening to the Brave Men podcast. This is a in-depth, remarkable, brilliant conversation today with Nancy Houston. She's a great friend. She is a professional counselor, certified sex therapist. She helps people through sexual trauma and she helps people through trauma, grief, the issues that we face, disassociation, dealing with childhood trauma. It is a remarkable, healing, powerful conversation and, in fact, we just went in depth. We sat here in this studio, here at the CMN Global Media Center and we just talked for a couple of hours and we went through things having to do with mental health, depression, her own story, then how to build our story.

00:57
Part two of this, the second podcast we're doing of this conversation, broken into two parts. We'll deal more with sexual issues, get into things that couples deal with, but this is some. This is one of those ones that you need to share with somebody. You need to just say, hey, I know some guys who need to hear this, because Nancy walked through extremely deep waters herself. We get into that. I asked her about it. I said what's off limits? She said nothing. I said well, I've seen your podcast. Obviously nothing's off limits.

01:29
And she wrote a book called Sex and Love or, excuse me, it's called Loving Sex. I always do that Sex and Love. So Loving Sex. It's like the books with Christian Men's Network that we have the resource materials for discipling men and have them around the world, in every language. In fact, I'm headed after this broadcast with Nancy, we're headed down to Peru, then to Bogota, colombia, then into Monterey, mexico, helping pastors, teaching training pastors with Robert Berger how to disciple men, how to rescue the family, and it couldn't be something. There's not anything more important right now than helping raise up fathers in a fatherless, orphan culture, right? But she wrote these two books and Loving Sex, and then she wrote this book. Then God made a woman, unwrapping female sexuality, which really is. I'll just tell you, this is a book you need to get and every woman in your life, from 13 and up, needs to read that. But it was you know. So in Christian Men's Network we've got this book. So back on that. Communication, sex and Money that's the name of the book. Communication, sex and Money three issues that every man and woman face, whether married or unmarried, in a tension between men and women communication, sex and money. And it's a true story when Bruce takes calls Bruce Robach, who handles all our product resources in an online store when he gets calls about it. It's a true story To this day, no matter which language, whether it's. You know whether in four over 40 languages, no matter what language, men will ask for that book on sex and money and women will ask for the book on communication, and he knows, based on a man or woman, which book they're talking about. Oh, you mean communication, sex and money? Yeah, yeah, that one. So funny stuff.

03:32
How we are right and so pray for us with Christian Men's Network and what we do around the world. Just had Alex Metalla here in our studios. I did a special report with him on what's happening in East Africa and the ministry to men in East Africa. Throughout Uganda, rwanda, tanzania, southern Sudan, different areas, difficult areas, a lot of orphans. Alex feeds 2600 orphans a day and so he's our director there for East Africa, great partner, head of the Born Again churches, over 35,000 churches across East Africa. So those are. That's the type of man that we're working with on the ground all over the world. We work with allies, friends, brotherhood. We talk about hashtag CMM brotherhood. If you go on social media and look up hashtag CMM Christian Men's Network, CMM brotherhood, you'll find a lot of our postings of things happening around the world.

04:30
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05:08
And there's also Monday Night Men on the Christian Men's Network, YouTube, monday Night Men. It's on every Monday night in which we discuss current issues, and right now we're doing teaching on building strong men in strong churches, and the next session is on identity. Hey, thanks for being with us today on the Brave Men podcast. Thank you, nancy Houston, for this remarkable conversation. In a moment I go through, basically as we start, I go through all of her background and all that and then we get right into some of the key issues. It is a fascinating conversation.

05:43
This is part one of Nancy Houston on the Brave Men podcast. Hey, so, nancy, I'm reading your bio, it says author, speaker, executive leadership coach, licensed professional counselor and certified sex therapist, helping people grow into their full potential, empowering them to be truly alive. You do a lot of stuff, you know, and we have dinner together as friends. I know Judy and Ron, but this is that's a lot of stuff there. I'm looking at your website and it's pretty amazing, and not only that when I look up Nancy Houston like you're the Nancy Houston, I am oh yeah, I had no idea.

06:25
Yeah, you didn't know that. On Google there's like 500 of us who? Knows Well, there are probably like thousands, but if you look up Google it's you are the Nancy Houston. So, as we discuss these things, is there anything off limits?

06:40 - Speaker 2
No, anything Never.

06:41 - Speaker 1
Because I've watched your podcast and it seems like there's nothing off limits. And then reading the book. Then God made a woman. Yes, yeah.

06:50 - Speaker 2
Yeah, it's a good thing.

06:52 - Speaker 1
It didn't come with like diagrams or something.

06:54 - Speaker 2
I know no pictures.

06:58 - Speaker 1
You know. But they wouldn't be able to actually print in the Middle East, that's for sure. But this is amazing, Amazing book. Love and Sex is the first book you wrote.

07:09 - Speaker 2
Yes, it is.

07:10 - Speaker 1
And so that was awesome. I always refer to it as a book on sex and love.

07:16 - Speaker 2
Exactly, I know you do. You're so funny that way, but I've had several men say it's Nancy's book on sex and love. Yeah, actually it's love and sex. But either one were Right, you know.

07:27 - Speaker 1
So you know, when we have gotten together and talked about things and we have a great time, a lot of fun laughs, you and Ron, when Judy had cancer a few years ago, one of the most remarkable time I wasn't going to do all that, I didn't even know, I wasn't even in my notes, but I just want to say publicly thank you for you and Ron came over and Ron had a prophetic word over Judy.

07:53
He taught me yeah, it was so precious and Philip and Kerry, yeah, and you guys came over and prayed over Judy, I think, the night before her surgery.

08:03 - Speaker 2
Yeah, we did.

08:03 - Speaker 1
And which we had a miracle in that. So you guys have been dear friends for about a decade now, it seems like At least. I know.

08:12 - Speaker 2
Kerry introduced me to Judy.

08:14 - Speaker 1
Yeah.

08:15 - Speaker 2
And had me speak at one of her women's events, and that's. We've been friends ever since.

08:20 - Speaker 1
And then I'm looking on your website and says it has a thing about speaking and the first photo is you speaking at our Lines Roar Conference.

08:29 - Speaker 2
Oh my gosh.

08:30 - Speaker 1
So here's you speaking, and the whole background is all these men. Oh my gosh.

08:34 - Speaker 2
That's great. I love it, Paul.

08:36 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's fantastic. So I always, when I tell people about our friendship, ron and Nancy and Judy and I will talk often about you guys because you've had a great impact on our lives, both of you, but particularly your materials and what you've done and been a blessing to our family and my son Bryce. But but I always I always say, yeah, nancy's our sex therapist and Judy will go no, she's not Well, I don't know. I've been reading the book You've read my book. That's helped.

09:08 - Speaker 2
And we just, you know, talk nonsense around the dinner table.

09:10 - Speaker 1
But other than that, yeah, but there's that layer right, that layer of things that you know and that we speak about. And this, what's amazing, we prayed just before we started this and I prayed. It's like beauty out of ashes. So tell me, what is the phrase not in the head Mean?

09:33 - Speaker 2
where did that come from? Not in the head.

09:35 - Speaker 1
Yeah, because you shared that with us in dinner.

09:38 - Speaker 2
Oh, do you mean one?

09:39 - Speaker 1
time. Yeah, your mom yelling out.

09:41 - Speaker 2
Yes, yeah. So my dad was a World War II vet and he was on three ships at Sank and he was one, I know, on one of them. He was one of 13 survivors and he would say you know, nancy, you'd think all the guys in the Navy would know how to swim, but they didn't. And so one of his stories was that the ship sank and some of them were able to swim to shore, but only 13 of them made it up the cliffs because the rest were beaten to death by the power of the ocean. And so my dad had a lot of trauma he had.

10:28
He ran away from home at 15. So he had trauma from the house, he was raised in the home and then he had trauma from the war and then, when he got out of the military before he became an attorney, he went back to riding bulls in the rodeo, busted open his head and was in the hospital for four months with a brain injury. So you know, later on in life, when I became a therapist, I'm like learning all about brain trauma and trauma and head injuries and I'm like, oh, now I understand my dad, because he always seemed just like a wild man to me, like he could be violent and full of rage and anger at the drop of a hat. He could also be brilliant and amazing and funny and fun and witty and delightful.

11:19
And so I loved him. Annie terrorized me and my siblings. I never saw him lay a hand on my mother. It wasn't. This is so funny, paul. You know I always thought domestic violence was like a husband beating up his wife or a wife beating up her husband.

11:38
You know, but I'm like, oh, I grew up in tons of domestic violence. It was just dad towards the kids, and then mom was just very neglectful and didn't have the courage to protect us. And so the one time she did was dad had gotten mad because I was playing the piano, which was a confusing message because I was supposed to practice. But when I practice, if it disrupted him and I think probably because he had a lot of hangovers, didn't like the noise.

12:09
And so he kicked me and punched me and I fell on the floor. And my mom the only time she ever said anything was in that day, in the kitchen, she said, bill, don't kick her in the head.

12:24 - Speaker 3
Wow.

12:26 - Speaker 2
And I thought, yeah, because that wouldn't look good. If you kicked me in the head, I'm probably gonna have a broken nose and brain damage.

12:33 - Speaker 1
I've never forgotten that and I think about you and Ron and you speaking to people's lives. Both of you do Ron's in construction in a brilliant builder in the Dallas Metroplex area and working with one of your sons in that business, and then here you are doing the therapy work that you're doing and he went through some rough things and I think about it. It's amazing to me. It seems like I was talking with somebody the other day and they were talking about their daughter and she'd gone through some really traumatic things. So what's she doing now? He said well, she's in college and I said, well, she's probably taking psychology. He said how'd you know?

13:14 - Speaker 2
Right, right yeah.

13:15 - Speaker 1
Well, it seems like that seems to be the path. It's like trying to figure out what happened to you, right? When did that penny drop?

13:24 - Speaker 2
Well, for me, I'll never forget it, paul. So we have four sons, and when our youngest son started first grade, I think I finally had a little bit of space, and one Saturday it was pouring down rain, because usually we were at sporting events all day.

13:43 - Speaker 1
Saturdays All day.

13:44 - Speaker 2
Saturdays yeah, but this day we weren't because it was raining and I just, I cried all day.

13:52 - Speaker 3
Wow.

13:53 - Speaker 2
I cried all day and I couldn't stop and Ron was out cleaning up the garage and I went out and would say, hey, are you okay, honey? And it's like, yeah, I'm great, I'm so happy I'm getting clean up this messy garage, which nothing makes him happier and I'm like, but there's gotta be something wrong with you. Because my thought was there can't be something wrong with me.

14:17
But I was 33 years old and it's like I had held down my childhood for as long as I possibly could and it was like that was the day it was going to start coming out of me, Because when we got married at 18, so we got married right out of high school he had had a lot of neglect.

14:35 - Speaker 1
Well, your marriage. In some ways maybe it was survival.

14:39 - Speaker 2
Oh, I think God spared us both by giving us each other. And creating a home where we were both safe, because Ron had a very abusive older brother who's a golden gloves boxer who would beat up on Ron all the time, and his mom ran a daycare of 25 kids many through Friday. He had six siblings and they had foster kids.

15:01 - Speaker 1
Well, and there was a lot of blended family stuff going on.

15:04 - Speaker 2
Well, there was just a lot of neglect and abuse that was overlooked.

15:09 - Speaker 1
Didn't he live in a tent in the back?

15:12 - Speaker 2
You know, when I met Ron in high school, his parents had sold their house in town and moved out to a farm and they were going to build a house, but in the meantime he was living in a tent and I'm like, oh well, and then they built a barn and sometimes, when he's like not having the best manners, like dude, were you born in a barn?

15:35 - Speaker 1
Yes, you grew up in a barn.

15:36 - Speaker 2
Yes, I did. Yeah, like we raised in a barn and that'll be our joke and lived in a tent. Right right During high school.

15:42 - Speaker 1
I know for a while yeah, difficult those are, and all the, as you mentioned, neglect. So neglect is actually a form of abuse.

15:51 - Speaker 2
It's a horrible form of abuse and it's usually the most unidentifiable.

15:56 - Speaker 3
Really.

15:58 - Speaker 2
Yes, because if dad's punching you in the nose, you know you're being punched. And if there's sexual trauma, you can identify those things. But neglect there aren't really words for neglect. It's just something that's happening inside of you, it's something that's happening to you emotionally and psychologically, and so there aren't really words to say.

16:18 - Speaker 1
This is like a hidden little virus in you that's kind of eating you from the inside out.

16:24 - Speaker 2
And most of our abuse I think all of our abuse happens when we're preverbal. Now, I don't mean we don't know how to say words, but we don't have the language until we're adults to describe what was happening in our childhood. So it's not until we're adults that we go. You know what? That wasn't normal.

16:41 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's not right.

16:43 - Speaker 2
Like somebody should have been protecting me.

16:45 - Speaker 1
I've talked to so many guys who will say I didn't realize I wasn't in a normal home until later when I had some friends. Other guys just tell me that the other day he said I didn't know what was happening in my house was different until I was 15. I went over to a friend's house and stayed overnight and it was so different.

17:05 - Speaker 2
Yes, yes, and then again, most of us don't have language for it. Like for me, I was 33 and like you mean none. Of this is OK.

17:15 - Speaker 3
Wow.

17:16 - Speaker 2
You know, because when I got married at 18, I'm like OK, this is my before life, this is my new life. This life is over. I wanted to just divide myself and I think, when I got to, you, so you pushed it down. Yes, oh my gosh. And whenever I'd have what I would call bad feelings towards my dad, I'd become a Christian. So I would just say I forgive, I forgive, I forgive.

17:38 - Speaker 3
Right.

17:39 - Speaker 2
And then when I later on in life I realized like oh, all through my 20s I practice fake forgiveness.

17:46 - Speaker 1
What does that mean? What does that mean Because we are supposed to forgive, and it is something we talk a lot about with Christian ness.

17:53 - Speaker 2
But I think we miss it, paul. I think we miss what comes before forgiveness, and it's deep and profound grief when we look at what Jesus did before he went to the cross and said Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. First he went to the garden and he grieves so deeply, so profoundly, that the disciples couldn't even handle it. They slept because grief is very tiring and they couldn't even handle it, so they just fell into a coma. And Jesus is grieving so deeply and profoundly that it's coming out of His body.

18:37 - Speaker 1
He came back three times to them. Third time is when Jesus showed up Right Fascinating.

18:42 - Speaker 3
Wow.

18:43 - Speaker 2
I wanted to avoid the grief part of my story.

18:46 - Speaker 1
I think we do. I think as men, because we compartmentalize. We talk a little bit about that, however you want to describe that different drawers, compartments, all of that. We do compartmentalize and we tend to do that more than women. What was that book about? Women are like spaghetti, men are like waffles, and I think it's a great description. I always remember that because everything seems to be connected.

19:14 - Speaker 2
Well, I think we all find our ways to disassociate.

19:17 - Speaker 1
But we all do that.

19:18 - Speaker 2
We all Women. We all figure out. When you're raised in environments that are not healthy or helpful, we all learn the skills of disassociation.

19:29 - Speaker 3
Wow.

19:30 - Speaker 2
You know it's a survival technique, and it's what I call what the adaptive child does for us. The adaptive child is that part of us that figured out brilliant ways to survive, and so some of that is disassociation, and it's brilliant in childhood. But what's adaptive in childhood can become maladaptive in adulthood.

19:52 - Speaker 1
Wow. So because, having been one, I studied a lot of history and I read a lot of first personal accounts and that disassociation is what men do during torture men or women, yeah, and they're being tortured and they somewhat disassociate what's happening to their body from who they are. And for instance, james Stockdale, the Stockdale paradox, in which he was not he. They asked him, they said were you optimistic about getting out of the Hanoi Hilton, about the torture in North Vietnam? He said no, he said, but I had faith. He said the optimist died because they kept thinking this will get better, this will get better.

20:32 - Speaker 2
This will get better. Never did.

20:33 - Speaker 1
No. So in a sense, what he did, is he disconnected? He said my faith is who I am. What's happening to my body right now? Being hung, being whipped, being fingernails pulled out by pliers, all of those things? That's not me. And so, if you will, emotionally we do the same thing right here at a local high school or in a family or wherever it may be, and we disassociate, and then we become a Christian follower of Christ and we just forgive everybody. But you're saying there's a stage between that we haven't gone through, and so that's why that thing keeps coming back up.

21:12 - Speaker 2
I actually after I'd practiced my dozen years of what I call my fake forgiveness, and it wasn't working. And I finally just sat down with God and said hey, listen, god, this isn't working, so teach me how to. Honestly, I'd like to genuinely forgive my dad. I really would, but all this stuff just keeps popping up. So I went through years of therapy and started getting it all up and out, but I was an internalizer Like I blame myself for so much. Anything that went wrong, I blamed myself.

21:49 - Speaker 1
It was you, yeah, I must have been a bad girl or dad wouldn't get angry.

21:54 - Speaker 2
Or if I'd do this, he wouldn't lose it. And so I was such an internalizer and I could get in touch with my sadness, but I could not get in touch with my anger, because I made a vow as a kid. My dad was a rageaholic, so I'm like I will never be angry.

22:13 - Speaker 3
I will never rage.

22:15 - Speaker 2
And so I didn't know how to get in touch with my anger. So I felt like God said to me Nancy, I want you to hate everything your dad did to you. I want you to hate it. And I remember saying to God well, that doesn't sound very nice, or Christian.

22:29 - Speaker 1
That doesn't sound very Christian.

22:30 - Speaker 2
It doesn't sound very Christian, but I think, well, it's totally biblical though.

22:34 - Speaker 1
God hates evil, hate evil.

22:36 - Speaker 2
And what my dad had done was evil. Sexual trauma from your own father is evil. It's just pure from the pit of hell, and so, as violence towards your own children, it's evil, and so I got in touch with my anger and even my hatred during those six months.

22:56 - Speaker 1
So now, OK. So now, OK, we're going to come back to some other things. I'm going to come back to some of this. You went through years of therapy. You'd already been going through therapy.

23:07 - Speaker 2
Yeah, ok.

23:08 - Speaker 1
Yeah, were you studying therapy? Were you going to college? What was happening at this, during this stage? You guys got married at 18.

23:15 - Speaker 2
You know I got through a lot of my own process before I actually went back to school to become a therapist. Oh, OK it really wasn't my goal. I just you know. But the Lord does love to take the most broken parts of our lives and turn them into something for His glory and goodness. Like he loves to take our horrible stories and turn them into His story.

23:38 - Speaker 1
Yeah.

23:39 - Speaker 2
And so.

23:40 - Speaker 1
And it becomes something healing for someone else.

23:42 - Speaker 2
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and alcoholics anonymous. The last step is now turn around, give it to somebody else. And so that's basically what happened in my life, Like he did so much healing and redemption. So I get to the end of the six months and I'm like well, God, I think, maybe I mean, who knows, but I think I got. I have most of it up and out now.

24:04 - Speaker 1
This is what started on that Saturday. Yeah, no Well, no Well, really.

24:08 - Speaker 2
I had to spend years just letting my sadness up and out, Paul.

24:12 - Speaker 1
OK.

24:13 - Speaker 2
Like the first day I went to therapy. Well, so then that was a Saturday, the next day at church I walked up beside there's a man on our staff who was a therapist and I said hey, brock, I think something's wrong with me. I didn't know what.

24:30 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

24:31 - Speaker 2
I had no clue what was wrong with me, Paul, because I was so disassociated from my own story yeah. And so he said well, it comes to me tomorrow at 1. So at about 12.50, I'm sitting in his waiting room and I'm thinking, I'm fine, I'm great.

24:48 - Speaker 1
And why am I here?

24:50 - Speaker 2
I don't need to be here.

24:50 - Speaker 1
With all these people.

24:52 - Speaker 2
I need to. I should go. It was a bad day and now everything's going to be just fine, because that's how I was taught to cope my family. We belonged to all the country clubs. My dad was the city attorney, the city judge he. You know they were, I don't know.

25:12
My friend said your mom, dad, were the jet setters of our community. Right, I think that's an exaggeration, but anyway, do you know what I mean? So I was taught by my mother you make everything look good and you better be just, it's all about appearances.

25:26 - Speaker 1
You better be just fine.

25:28 - Speaker 2
And so for me to let myself kind of like fall apart was completely unacceptable. So anyway, I got into his office about the time I was thinking about running and he came got me and we sat down and he said, well, tell me your story. And so I just told him really, matter of fact, they not a tear, no feelings no, nothing. The man has the nerve to sit there and cry.

25:51 - Speaker 1
Really.

25:52 - Speaker 2
He is just bawling over my story that I feel nothing for.

25:57 - Speaker 3
Wow.

25:58 - Speaker 2
And I'm like oh my gosh, I go, I'm fine. Like then I try to console him Like I'm fine, I'm going to be OK, I survived. You're therapist is losing it and his tears are like saying girl you are not fine. And then he said Nancy, you have PTSD, so bad. Which now we'd call complex trauma.

26:21 - Speaker 3
OK.

26:22 - Speaker 2
And there's a difference. And my dad had complex trauma and so that then he traumatized me with his complex trauma, and so then it just becomes intergenerational.

26:36 - Speaker 1
You know, and he didn't, yeah, and so okay, well, this is really fascinating, because really this would have been passed down. Oh, totally, totally, you know if you hadn't found, first of all, this faith in Christ. I wanna come back to how that happened and then found somebody who was a therapist, who not only had empathy, but they have the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit to be able to speak life into you. That isn't just a go. Do these three things.

27:12 - Speaker 2
Absolutely. I mean thank God, he didn't. And for me to receive that kind of empathy from a male was probably just like oh my gosh, I didn't know this was possible right. Because my grandfather was so shut down my dad's dad was so shut down. He must have been a terribly traumatized man. My father's mother's mother died giving birth to her little sister.

27:41
So, my grandmother, at 18 months old, was put into foster care because her daddy did not want her. He was still alive, but he was a womanizer, is what I've been told. This story I've been told. He was a womanizer and did not want these two little girls, so he put them in foster care in the same town where they would see him.

28:03 - Speaker 4
Wow.

28:04 - Speaker 2
And daddy didn't want them. Wow, and so you can imagine the trauma my grandmother had, so my grandparents have trauma. My dad has trauma.

28:13
He passes it on to me and I get to decide Okay, I don't treat my sons the way I was treated and I had received Christ and I could love my sons, and I also had a lot of my own trauma. And until they say that if you wanna be a great parent, you've gotta put together your own story, or else you'll pass it on even if you don't mean to Right Wow. So yeah.

28:47 - Speaker 1
So how did you found Christ? How did that happen?

28:50 - Speaker 2
So well, it's funny. You know, way back when, Paul, they didn't have public school of kindergartens and my mother wanted me to go to kindergarten and the only kindergarten in town, which was the best kindergarten in town.

29:07 - Speaker 1
I guess Apparently you would only have the best Apparently, I don't know.

29:11 - Speaker 2
It's such an oxymoron, but it was a kindergarten at First Assembly of God.

29:16 - Speaker 3
Really.

29:16 - Speaker 2
And so I went to this kindergarten and the first day there are two classes of kindergartners, and the first day they put me in with a man teacher, and the next day I was in with a woman teacher. And I came home and I said mom, today I had a different teacher. And mom says you don't remember yesterday. And I said no, what happened? And she said well, you absolutely melted down, said you could not have a man teacher.

29:44 - Speaker 3
Wow.

29:45 - Speaker 2
I was so terrified of men.

29:47 - Speaker 3
Really.

29:48 - Speaker 2
And so I had this huge meltdown. But apparently the school maybe they were the first ones to ever hear me and listen to me and take me out of that class and put me in the class of the woman and I'm like, oh, that must have really. I must have felt heard. I must have felt safe and it must have been a place where I could give a cry for help.

30:10 - Speaker 4
My goodness I know it.

30:12 - Speaker 3
I know it.

30:15 - Speaker 2
So I'm sure when you're five you don't know all these things but, I'm sure that I receive Christ in that little school.

30:23 - Speaker 3
Yeah, you did.

30:26 - Speaker 2
And so I remember just praying. Like God, if you're alive, I wanna know you Cause when you're in a non-Christian home, and you're living in hell and even though I imagine I'd invited Christ in my life at five, but there's nothing to feed that, and so I would pray God if you're alive. I don't know if you are, but if you are. I wanna know you and that was kind of my constant prayer.

30:52 - Speaker 3
And.

30:52 - Speaker 2
I think they'd given me a little Bible and I would hide under my covers.

30:58 - Speaker 1
I'm gonna cry.

31:01 - Speaker 2
I would hide under my covers with a flashlight and read my Bible.

31:04 - Speaker 1
No, you didn't.

31:05 - Speaker 2
Yeah, cause dad would say religion is a crutch and we don't need it. We are self-made people and we do not need God. Do kids get this?

31:23 - Speaker 3
Wow.

31:24 - Speaker 1
I have. I've never heard that story. I think about our friend, karen, who went through such abuse and her safe place was every afternoon after school, rather than go home, she would go to this little chapel and it was open and they would let her sit in there and she would go to this little chapel and she would just sit there and she learned some of the songs from that little church and she would sit there in her safe place for a couple hours before she had to go home. She did that every day for years and but I've never, and it's always. This marked me that that was Karen's journey. But I didn't know that you would. You had a little Bible study gave you and you would sit there with a flashlight under your covers and read this little Bible. You know man.

32:22 - Speaker 2
And I didn't know if it was mythology, cause my mom would love to read us kids Greek mythology at night, and so I didn't know if it was real or if there were just like stories, you know.

32:35 - Speaker 1
Yeah, but you felt different about it. I did. There was something. It was the Holy Spirit, it was true that was speaking to you.

32:40 - Speaker 2
And then, when I was 14 years old, my parents went to Europe for a month, which is amazing to have them out of the house.

32:47 - Speaker 4
A month off. A month off, it truly was.

32:50 - Speaker 2
Like cause I could never sleep in the household I was raised in, and so if if dad was out of the house, then I could maybe relax a little bit and sleep. But my sister disobeyed the rules and went to church with our Baptist neighbors and came home and said Nancy, I received Christ. And I said well, how'd you do that? I've been wanting to do that forever.

33:17 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

33:19 - Speaker 2
And so, it was oddly enough we went up into my parents' bedroom, which had blue-shade carpet, and I cried a bucket of tears because I hated them so bad and just cried and cried and received Christ. Wow. And so my sister who had just received Christ was made of the Lord. And then, yeah, and then there was this, a youth pastor who lived across from the junior high and I heard that he had a Bible study. So I would sneak over after school and go to his like, go to Bible studies.

33:55 - Speaker 1
Yeah, see, this is the opposite of my upbringing, really, Because I grew up in church right, oh, yeah, you did so we didn't sneak over to go to a Bible study. We snuck out of Bible studies in order to go do bad stuff.

34:07 - Speaker 2
There you go. Well, of course, yeah, so why not?

34:10 - Speaker 1
It's like you know, you're sneaking into a Bible study.

34:13 - Speaker 2
I'm sneaking it because Dad would scream at my sister and I, and say yeah. I will not have Jesus freaks for daughters.

34:21 - Speaker 3
Do you hear me yeah?

34:23 - Speaker 2
And so then, one day, my sister witnessed to my dad for like five hours. Wow and really, if you could have steam coming out of the top of your head, fire. He did Veins, popping face, beat red, cursing furious. I thought she was crazy to talk to him for that long a time about the Lord, but she did, and eventually he accepted Christ. And then eventually my mom did Wow.

34:52 - Speaker 1
Thank you, Lord.

34:53 - Speaker 2
Yeah, how did now.

34:54 - Speaker 1
Now you met Ron in high school. Yeah, you guys. And in for people who don't have met your husband he's a man's man. He's a construction guy, motorcycle rider, four sons, all outdoorsmen, doing stuff you know, and growing up in Oregon, you know outdoor sort of thing. So where did, where did Ron become to be a follower of Christ?

35:19 - Speaker 2
Yeah, Well, you know, I would like to say that I just when my dad became a Christian, I think what happened to him really was he traded all of his addictive behavior for religious addiction.

35:36 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

35:36 - Speaker 2
And so then he started preaching at us nonstop.

35:41 - Speaker 1
Yeah, Same with my.

35:42 - Speaker 2
You know, Judy's father did the same thing and became very rigid I mean before that like I could do whatever I wanted to do pretty much. Right.

35:51 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

35:52 - Speaker 2
I got to make all my own choices and. But then when he became a Christian he got really rigid, really legalistic. I remember sitting at the dinner table one night and he's preaching at us and I said listen, god, I love you, but seriously, I think I'm going to have to rebel. You know because teens have to find a way to differentiate.

36:17 - Speaker 1
Yeah Right, it's healthy. Yeah, of course it is.

36:21 - Speaker 2
And so I'm like God, I love you, but man, I can't, I can't do all this preaching. And so that's when Ron and I met. We're kind of wild childs together, truthfully, but he did accept Christ, like a couple of months before he got married.

36:35 - Speaker 3
Really.

36:36 - Speaker 2
Yeah, he did, he did, and you know like we got married.

36:40 - Speaker 1
Did he go to youth group with you, or what?

36:42 - Speaker 2
No, we just started talking about Christ.

36:44 - Speaker 1
Really.

36:44 - Speaker 2
Because I really did love the Lord. I just didn't love all the preaching at me and all the rigidity.

36:48 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

36:49 - Speaker 2
You know, no teenager loves that.

36:50 - Speaker 3
No.

36:52 - Speaker 2
And so, yeah, so he just accepted Christ. One time when we were talking, my sister had been talking to him about the Lord and you know it was really sweet and, like when we got married, one of his buddies handed him a joint. I didn't know that he smoked as much pot as he did back then.

37:10 - Speaker 1
He didn't do that.

37:11 - Speaker 2
You just thought he was mellow and always had the munchies, my mom would always say Ron, he's such a nice boy, but why does he have such red eyes?

37:17 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and why is he always hungry?

37:19 - Speaker 2
Right, and so we got in a car and Every time we have popcorn he eats Right and we're driving down the road to leave town and he pulls out this joint and he's going to lie at it and I said, hey, honey, I probably didn't call him honey at 18. I said, hey, it's, it's either me or that, and if you choose that, I'm getting out of the car and we're done.

37:41 - Speaker 3
Wow, wow.

37:42 - Speaker 2
Because I'm like I'm not.

37:44 - Speaker 3
Wow.

37:44 - Speaker 2
I'm not going to be married to an addict because I'd grown up with one.

37:48 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and it's hell, and you knew that's where that was headed.

37:51 - Speaker 2
Yep.

37:51 - Speaker 1
It always does, yep.

37:53 - Speaker 2
And I'm like I'm not doing that.

37:54 - Speaker 3
I love you.

37:55 - Speaker 2
I must spend my life with you, but I am not doing addiction, yeah, so he threw it out the window. He threw it out, he threw it out.

38:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that was that.

38:04 - Speaker 2
That was that.

38:05 - Speaker 1
Yeah, way to go, ron. I know, give him some props on that one, ooh because, man, I don't know Okay. So now fast forward. And, by the way, you know if if you're just listening and not seeing this video, but talking with Nancy Houston, and if you look up Nancy Houston, houston like the city, you know there's all kinds of stuff about who you are speaking engagements, life coaching. You've got an awesome podcast. What's the name of the podcast?

38:34 - Speaker 2
It's called the in between with Nancy Houston.

38:36 - Speaker 1
The in between with Nancy Houston. Yeah, but if we look up Nancy Houston, it'll. The podcast will come up too.

38:42 - Speaker 2
Hopefully, who knows?

38:43 - Speaker 1
Yeah, we're working on. No, there's all kinds of stuff Is there, oh, okay. We're.

38:46 - Speaker 2
I never look.

38:48 - Speaker 1
We're working on a new website and stuff, no, but you see one of your son who's working with you on this stuff. One of your sons is working with me.

38:53 - Speaker 2
So two of my sons are now working with me. Yeah, jonathan is kind of like the CEO of this new company we're forming and Micah is an executive coach. So we've been working together for years.

39:07 - Speaker 1
Yeah, now Micah lives in Oregon. Yeah, jonathan's here. Yeah, the Dallas area, and isn't that awesome. Yeah, all of this happening.

39:14 - Speaker 2
We're launching better lives coaching because really we feel like our call is to help people live better lives.

39:19 - Speaker 1
Really, yep, better lives coaching. Yeah, love it. Yeah, and we'll be able to find out by going out to Nancy Houston. Nancy houstonnet, yeah. And these are your website. Yeah, and then you've written two books got more on the way.

39:32 - Speaker 2
Yeah, and this first book, love and Sex, is really, honestly, we need to retile it and re-release it, because it's really a book on sexual trauma. Yeah, it really is.

39:43 - Speaker 1
Yeah. So when it first came out it was like, hey, let's not push this Right Too much and it's kind of be safer. Yeah, and maybe the publisher had something to do with that?

39:51 - Speaker 2
Yeah, for sure.

39:52 - Speaker 1
Right, yeah, with the church you were working with at the time, and then God made a woman. Yeah, this booklet. You just let it all out. You're like all right, we'll just talk about everything, which is what you do on your podcast. That's what I do, because yeah, judy will have the podcast on and I'll be like what was that? What was it? What did they just talk about?

40:11 - Speaker 4
What did they just say what was it?

40:13 - Speaker 1
Has there been ever a guest story where you went? Did we just talk about that? Have you ever had that moment?

40:20 - Speaker 2
You know, I really don't, because I think we Christians can avoid having open, honest conversations and I don't think it helps anybody.

40:29 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

40:30 - Speaker 2
I think we need to have really open conversations about sexuality, about how is our psychology, what traumas do we have? Let's just face it. Yeah, you know, because that's when we find health Right.

40:44 - Speaker 1
Yeah, true, All right. So this one and I don't know if I turned down this page or if my wife did, but it's page 49, chapter 8, sex is God's idea.

40:58 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

40:58 - Speaker 1
And I went, so maybe I flipped that down and it gave it to Judy. I don't know. Yeah, who knows? But you know now we're healthy. But the thing is is that these are things that quite often we don't talk about.

41:10 - Speaker 2
Well, and you know, I would.

41:11 - Speaker 1
Song of Songs is a good one. Yeah, I've always. I've always taken Song of Songs and underlined pomegranates.

41:18 - Speaker 2
Right. Things like that All the hidden lingo.

41:21 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, when we yeah, we would always do that, especially when we were younger. But this really is Song of Songs and of course we know spiritually it's the bride and you know the bridegroom, Christ, yeah, but we also know that he made us human, yeah, and we have these drives, yeah, right.

41:42 - Speaker 2
Yeah.

41:42 - Speaker 1
Yep, but they're. They're God-given drives, totally. It's just that we, we humanize them and make them something we don't talk about in the church. So then, as a young guy, we turned to friends in the street or whoever yeah, or porn, you know, in this age in particular. Yeah, to find out what that is. And then pornography gives us this fake image of what it is. Yeah, it does. And now we're all confused because we're trying to be good it will not and then we got these, these images right, right, totally Yep.

42:13
And that friends is flying around. Testosterone is like taking that and painting these pictures and then and then we're trying to figure out what we're supposed to do in a relationship.

42:22 - Speaker 2
I know it's so confusing, isn't it Paul? Yeah, and that's why I I wrote this book, just both of the books, to help give us some healthy perspectives. I think oftentimes females are taught, especially in the church, like to shut down their sexuality.

42:44 - Speaker 3
Mm-hmm.

42:46 - Speaker 2
Sex can become dutiful sometimes for women Like you. Better give that to your husband if you want him to stay faithful, if you want him to be loyal and so, and it's really very demeaning messages to both men and women Right.

43:00 - Speaker 1
Because then it's transactional.

43:02 - Speaker 2
Oh, everything's transactional, yeah. And here here's something we know about, like child development. Like if a little boy asks a girl to play, if he says to her, do you want to play? And she's like, yes, but if he says to her, we're going to play house and you're going to be the mommy, mm-hmm, well then she has lost all of her freedom to choose. Oh, wow. And she no longer wants to play.

43:29 - Speaker 3
Mm-hmm yeah.

43:32 - Speaker 2
And so when we turn sex into a duty, then somebody's losing their freedom, and they've lost their ability to volunteer, wow, and they've lost their ability to play. And that's when sex doesn't work.

43:47 - Speaker 1
And there's no joy. No, yeah, we've lost the joy in it.

43:49 - Speaker 2
And so if we're in churches where the message is wives.

43:54 - Speaker 1
Submit to your husband.

43:55 - Speaker 2
And be dutiful about sex yeah.

43:57 - Speaker 1
Because that's your job.

43:59 - Speaker 2
Mm-hmm, then she has lost her choice.

44:04 - Speaker 1
Because then it becomes functional. It functional and transactional.

44:07 - Speaker 2
And it's not playful. And good sex happens in a playful atmosphere.

44:12 - Speaker 1
Right, I love. It was Kevin Lehman that wrote that book. Sex Starts in the Kitchen, yeah, yeah, which I've always thought was such a great title.

44:20 - Speaker 2
I think he wrote what called sheet music. Right, literally, and he's sheets like in a bed.

44:26 - Speaker 1
New Kevin for years and the best titles you know of things. But it's true, you know, I there's, you know, because we talk about foreplay. We talk about these things sexually, yeah, about how we're supposed to be as a man, yeah, and what we forget is men, that some of this foreplay, if you will, really is about security. Yeah, it's about. It's about words that speak affirmation. Yeah, you know, because guys need affirmation, mm-hmm. Sometimes we forget that. You know, respect that whole thing, but, but it's words of affirmation, it's words of respect for your wife, it's, it's some of foreplay. I tell this to men all the time. Some of it is hygiene.

45:10 - Speaker 2
For sure.

45:11 - Speaker 1
Like dude seriously.

45:12 - Speaker 2
Dude, seriously, really Take a shower.

45:14 - Speaker 1
Yeah, take a shower. At least wash your hands Brush your teeth. Okay, so you know. And then the one that, the one that got me recently. It was a conversation over dinner and in which you talked about you were talking about something you had been teaching, or I can't remember. I don't think it's in this book where women are not turned on by the side of a man's body.

45:39 - Speaker 2
Right Right. This is just brain science, it's neuroscience. And that just really screwed me up, I mean.

45:46 - Speaker 1
Ron and I both are like really it's terribly disappointing. Seriously, I know you mean walking around, didn't do anything. I know, I know.

45:53 - Speaker 3
Well, you know how men will get all muscled up. How men will get all muscled up.

45:57 - Speaker 2
Like overly muscled up thinking that that's a turn on to women.

46:03 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

46:03 - Speaker 2
It might be for a few, but for a lot it's a turn off. Our brains are different, especially sexually.

46:11 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

46:12 - Speaker 2
And it's so helpful if we knew this. So if a man seizes wife getting out of the shower naked, there's something that lights up in his brain.

46:20 - Speaker 1
Dude yeah.

46:20 - Speaker 2
Yeah, and he's like oh.

46:21 - Speaker 1
You need a hand drying off.

46:23 - Speaker 2
I want sex, right, he needs a hand Like right this minute. If he's naked getting out of the shower and she sees him. We don't have the light. The light does not come on. I hate to say that. I know.

46:34 - Speaker 1
I know it's disappointing, and so Ron had the best light. He said you mean when I just kind of towel off with my foot up on the commode, that doesn't do anything?

46:45 - Speaker 2
Right, right, I'm like well, Pammy, maybe for you yeah.

46:49 - Speaker 1
So anyway, yeah, but no, I mean because I remember Lindsey, my daughter. She goes what is this? Because she has a son now, like her first was a little girl, reese, and then she has a boy and then she's like what is this? Where guys is like walking around with their junk hanging?

47:04 - Speaker 2
out Right, right. What is that Right?

47:06 - Speaker 1
What is that thing?

47:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, what is it?

47:07 - Speaker 1
I don't know, it's just a boy thing.

47:09 - Speaker 2
Yeah.

47:10 - Speaker 1
Boys are like.

47:10 - Speaker 2
Totally, totally.

47:11 - Speaker 1
You know it's out there, yeah, and we celebrate it. Mm-hmm, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, but we are different. Men and women are different, yeah they are.

47:19
And for us to understand that. And so, when we talk about foreplay, part of that is security, yeah, affirmation, yeah, right, what are some of the other things that you would tell guys? Hey, if you want to really release your wife Right Into sexuality, yeah, some of it might be just the images we have, because so many of us have been into porn. Yeah, you know, we've seen things which we know. We had Joshua Brumon. You had him on your podcast.

47:51 - Speaker 2
Yeah.

47:51 - Speaker 1
The guy's unbelievable. He's just fantastic. Yeah, what he came through with, his trauma and so forth, yeah, but he was in pornography and he was an actor and he talks about all. Everybody's a victim, everybody's a victim Everybody, everybody. Yeah, the men, the women, everybody.

48:07 - Speaker 2
I think when little boys see porn, I think they are being victimized.

48:12 - Speaker 1
Yes, absolutely so. Even the viewers are victims.

48:15 - Speaker 2
I think we have to very much change our perspective on even how we help people who have struggles with porn, and instead of a condemnation, I think it has to start with empathy, Like hey because, most of men I've worked with and I've worked with. I used to work with a lot of men who struggled with porn addiction and I'd always ask well, how old were you when you got exposed? And the typical ages were eight to 12.

48:47 - Speaker 3
Oh wait, I mean, I can almost say like always I wish I couldn't.

48:52 - Speaker 2
I wish they were older. I mean, if they got exposed at 20, they'd have more of a brain to know what to do with it Well, yeah, everything would not be as malleable.

49:02 - Speaker 1
No, yeah.

49:03 - Speaker 2
But when you think about being exposed to powerful adult sexuality when you are a child that is being victimized by adult sexuality that should never be out there for children to be exposed to.

49:20 - Speaker 1
So for a man coming back to this, helping a man be healthier in how he approaches sexuality with his wife affirmation kindness. Oh, it's just to me there's little things. Like a lot of guys, we feel a victory if we load the dishwasher, if you have one in your home. I don't know if everybody does, but it's the unloading that actually tips things over, like you actually put things away.

49:47 - Speaker 2
Well and the funny thing, is about household chores is sometimes we can relegate those out of the women and it's like well, but you live here too.

49:55 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

49:55 - Speaker 2
You dirty dishes just as much as I dirty dishes, you know. And so, ron and I, I love how we've worked through all that and we just treat like all that upkeep and chores of our home are like, okay, who's going to do what? Because it doesn't fall on me and then fall on you.

50:12 - Speaker 3
It falls on us.

50:13 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's us. And then teaching our children that too right, yeah, and your children, your sons all had yeah, here's the stuff.

50:18 - Speaker 2
Like hey guys, we all live here, we're all in here, we're all gonna do this, it's not mommy's job.

50:22 - Speaker 1
Okay, so now, how does it, you know? So again, coming back to it now, I think there is a couple of things, paul, I think.

50:30 - Speaker 2
like what you just said, if he's replaying images and acting that out on his wife, that's going to be a big turnoff for her.

50:39 - Speaker 1
She's going to feel, that, she's going to sense it Like he's the reason why is because he's not really being present.

50:46 - Speaker 2
His mind is somewhere else. Okay, there you go, and so you know true, true love making requires two people bringing themselves to the bed. So it's eye to eye, person to person. But if one of the people is up in their head replaying images, then you're not truly able to bond, and God created sex so there would be a bonding between a husband and wife and a man and a woman.

51:13
It's meant to be a deep release of God's pharmacy, which includes dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin, and it's meant to cause us to bond to one another and that gives, that becomes part of the glue of our marriages.

51:28 - Speaker 1
Oxytocin such a remarkable oh, it's incredible. Chemical.

51:34 - Speaker 2
Yes.

51:34 - Speaker 1
Because it actually I call it the brotherhood chemical too, because it's the bonding of people in a deep friendship it's. And so somebody said something a number of years ago, and I can't remember if it was a marriage thing that Judy and I went to or whatever they talked about. Keep your eyes open.

51:54 - Speaker 3
Yeah, and it was.

51:56 - Speaker 1
it was such a thing. I had never heard that before and I it's got to be a 25 years ago. And as you practice that, this eye open thing, eye gate, you know, this eye to eye thing is your. Yeah, as you're coming to a climax in your relationship, man, there's something that happens there, that and so that is being present.

52:21 - Speaker 2
Totally.

52:21 - Speaker 1
Like you're totally present.

52:23 - Speaker 2
Totally present, right yeah.

52:24 - Speaker 1
And so when a when a guy's like replaying these images, closing his eyes, she can sense that Totally Well, he's not present with her. He's not there, so where are you? She's doing this.

52:35 - Speaker 2
Where are you, wow you know when I was working through sexual trauma, ron, and if Ron I were making love, he could sense if I disappeared.

52:46 - Speaker 3
Okay, because I might get triggered.

52:48 - Speaker 2
And it's a hey babe, where are you? I'm like oh, oh, my gosh, I've just gone into probably disassociation or I've been triggered. Yeah, and so he would be so sweet. He would I could say, ham triggered and he would just, which means suddenly like I'm not with my husband, I'm with somebody who's hurting me.

53:09 - Speaker 1
So triggered. Yeah, that's. It's almost a Instagram phrase.

53:13 - Speaker 2
Yeah, it is.

53:14 - Speaker 1
You know what it means? Yeah, but it's real.

53:16 - Speaker 2
It's. It's very real. It means what it means Something has happened, and now you are in two places at one time. Yes, your body is here, but you are back in the past, this association, and it is.

53:32 - Speaker 1
It's the way I see it is. I've reframed my present, I've gone to a different lens.

53:39 - Speaker 2
Well, yes, yes, you have reframed in that sense, not that you chose to. Right right it happens to you, automatically the lens changed.

53:48 - Speaker 1
It's like a yeah it's like those lenses on those old cameras where you could flip them and they would go to different colors or to different, like ones like they didn't used to be zoom lenses. There used to be lenses that flipped, yeah, and all of a sudden it's a different perspective.

54:04 - Speaker 2
There you go. Yeah, that's exactly what happens.

54:07 - Speaker 1
Wow.

54:08 - Speaker 2
And so I could say to him hey, I'm triggered, and he would just stop and hold me and pray for me.

54:16 - Speaker 3
Wow.

54:17 - Speaker 2
And then that was so well, it was because it communicated to me like oh my gosh, I am with a man who will stop in the middle of having sex.

54:29 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

54:30 - Speaker 2
It means I am more important to him than him having an orgasm He'll stop, he'll just stop and he will care for me. And that itself was super sexy for me, right.

54:42 - Speaker 3
Like oh my gosh, I'm so safe with you. Yeah, I'm so loved by you.

54:47 - Speaker 2
Like right now you will put this very traumatized part of me on the front burner and care for me more than you're caring for what's going on with your body.

54:58 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

54:58 - Speaker 2
And it was really man. So like I just trust Ron, you can see why?

55:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you know, I man, this is something that we as men because 99% of the people listening or watching right now are men, you know, with brave men, with our podcast, and that's a that's an eye opener right there. That's a freedom moment for a lot of us as men. And nobody taught, because I think I was an idiot the first decade. It's so sweet because nobody taught Ron how to do that. Yeah, that was just a total.

55:30 - Speaker 2
God.

55:30 - Speaker 1
Like a Holy Spirit thing just happened, A total.

55:33 - Speaker 2
Ron, let me teach you how to heal your wife. Wow, you know, because I had so much trauma so strong. And he doing that for me, I'm like, oh my gosh, I am. I am so safe in my own skin with this man and so good. That was such a redemption for me man, yeah, please do.

56:01 - Speaker 4
Safety for women. If you want to kind of repeat this, would safety be the most cherished thing for women?

56:10 - Speaker 1
Well, that's what I was saying Security yeah.

56:14 - Speaker 2
I think that both the husband and the wife need to feel safe if you're really going to have great sex.

56:24 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

56:25 - Speaker 2
And and both need safety, Like if. If I'm critical of my husband and controlling, he's not going to feel safe with me.

56:36 - Speaker 1
Okay, and that is a great, because here's the little thing that's happened to my mind. Yeah, as a man, I have to know my safety. Part of my safety is you're not telling your girlfriend how screwed up I was having sex the other day.

56:53 - Speaker 2
No.

56:55 - Speaker 1
So my safety is you're not putting all this stuff out there.

56:59 - Speaker 2
No, there's got to be total safety and sex is a. Honestly, it's a very delicate area for a man. Yeah, it's a very tender area. And sadly, men have been taught like you're supposed to prove yourself in that area, and it it's. It breaks my heart because performance ruins sex. And so if males have been taught, hey, especially through porn, sex is a performance. Men, you better perform.

57:27 - Speaker 1
And not only through porn. It's through what other guys say.

57:30 - Speaker 2
What other guys say, implications or for that matter, music, that's coming out today, yeah.

57:39 - Speaker 1
You know in which, in particularly certain types of music, when they talk about their conquests or talk about women in a demeaning way, and they talk about how, how many you know, women have sex with, or whatever the thing is, it does become a conquest performance thing, absolutely, you know, and really a lot of that is, is hiding trauma in her own heart.

58:02 - Speaker 2
Oh for sure, to cover up, Well, like our friend, joshua became a porn star.

58:08 - Speaker 1
Right.

58:08 - Speaker 2
He had trauma.

58:09 - Speaker 1
Out of his own trauma. He had trauma Wow.

58:11 - Speaker 2
He had unresolved trauma. Yeah, and so you know, whenever we go ashamed as one of two things for us, Paul, it either causes us to go low, where I'm less than I'm, completely unworthy you eat worms and dirt and then you die or you go one up, and that's where you have the conquests You're seeking to be. That's where you get a lot of the big ego, you get a lot of the grandiosity, but it's still shame. All of this is shame. You go high, you go low, it's all shame.

58:45 - Speaker 1
You know we talk a lot about. You know we'll talk a lot about. The stronger a man is on the inside, the more gracious, loving, kind he could be on the outside. And with Jesus Christ, humility was was often misidentified as passivity, when in fact it wasn't, because the humility of Christ not preferring himself, came to be a servant was also that part of him that loved so much that he went into a church and just beat a bunch of guys up, which happened more than a couple of times and he did that out of love for those who are being hurt. Right, yeah.

59:23 - Speaker 2
Well, because those who've gone high with shame need to hand down. Those who've gone low with shame need to hand up.

59:29 - Speaker 1
So it's the weaker a man is on the inside, the less formed he is, if you will, the more he has to prove himself on the outside. So he proves himself, conquest, proves himself with, with you know, sports, athletics, business something he does with his hand. So he's trying to prove himself on the outside in order to cover up what he has, if you will, this deficiency, what is it?

59:54 - Speaker 2
The deep insecurities the insecurity the deep feeling of toxic shame, you know, and so I try to. I love to do the work of what I call the adaptive child, where I help people. I did that this weekend. I did a marriage conference and just Ron and I did kind of a role play where because kind of one of our areas where we can bump in our marriage, you know, we all have our bumpy places.

01:00:20 - Speaker 1
Judy and I have a bunch of them.

01:00:21 - Speaker 2
Yeah, we all do, and so one consistent theme is money, and Ron grew up with a complete lack of it. I grew up with with. My dad's attitude was I'll spend all of it, just make more.

01:00:36 - Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:00:36 - Speaker 2
Right. So very different economic circumstances. So Ron can get very anxious about money. And then he wants to get anxious with me about money and like, well, you just need to tighten your belt and I'm like well honey, you know, is that really what needs to?

01:00:53 - Speaker 1
happen, I just go put it in another kitchen.

01:00:55 - Speaker 2
And so the other day, when we were just having coffee and like we'll pray together and read our Bible together in the morning.

01:01:03
And I'm like, hey, sweetheart, what does that little boy inside of you need? He gets really nervous about money, he gets really scared, yeah. And I'm like, hey, here's an empty chair. I pulled it up in front of him and I just said, hey, why don't you talk? That little boy, he needs some reassurance. And so Ron, just he was so sweet, he just said, I said, just really talked to him, like he's right there in the chair, and he said, hey, little guy, I'm sorry there was enough money for you growing up. I'm sorry, like you felt, like you had to feel like you. You felt like you had to figure out money on your own. And so, like, as early as you could, you got a paper route. You worked really hard, you saved every dime. It felt scary and out of control. And I just want to tell you now that I, the wise Ron, the adult Ron, has you, you're back, and Nancy does too, and God's got us both, and so you can relax and you have to worry about money anymore.

01:02:14
And there were tears. We both had really tender tears and I am telling you that was probably about two months ago. We have not had one single bump about money since then. So I think a lot of times, paul, what needs to happen is you know, the Bible is so brilliant and it says love others as you love yourself. Well, a lot of times there's this adaptive child inside of us that is carrying around all this toxic shame that says you're either less than, or you better prove that you're better than. And if we can learn how to take that little adaptive child under a lap and say hey, sweetheart, hey, buddy, I'm so sad that you got exposed to porn and that you were taught that this is what real men do, that they conquer females, that they perform sexually, and that's what makes you a man, buddy. I'm so sorry. You saw that. I'm so sorry, and now, as a wise adult, I'm here to tell you that that's not what makes a man.

01:03:30
You don't have to perform.

01:03:32 - Speaker 1
So how do we deal with? Because shame seems to be let me just put that a different way Shame is a major issue in our culture.

01:03:41 - Speaker 2
Oh, it's universal.

01:03:43 - Speaker 1
Yeah, no, around the world, every place. I go. And I think for me, in one sense you're the therapist, the expert, but I talk to a lot of people and shame seems to stop men from being able to embrace. I've got a friend who's a very I mean, he's a great pastor, he's a great guy and he's got two teenage sons and he's never hugged them.

01:04:11 - Speaker 3
Aw.

01:04:13 - Speaker 1
And I look at that and I go okay somewhere, cause he's a great guy and I know that he loves them deeply and dearly and I think that's a product of that stuff, something I think so too Okay. So how do we deal with that? I mean cause, rather than just go, okay, I'm gonna push it down like the fake forgiveness thing. How do we deal with shame?

01:04:39 - Speaker 2
I really do think it is learning how to work with your adaptive child and take it.

01:04:44 - Speaker 1
What does an adaptive child mean? What's that mean?

01:04:46 - Speaker 2
It's a part of you that adapted to the environment you grew up in.

01:04:50 - Speaker 3
Okay.

01:04:52 - Speaker 1
So this adaptive child was like a coping thing like we coped with it you adapted, so we became that it was brilliant. Okay, like for me.

01:05:01 - Speaker 2
I adapted to becoming a people pleaser cause you sure as heck don't want to tick that off.

01:05:07 - Speaker 3
No, right, yeah right.

01:05:08 - Speaker 2
So be as pleasing as possible and then be nurturing and take care of people.

01:05:13 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

01:05:14 - Speaker 2
And so that was my adaptive child. The thing is, it's brilliant and strategic in childhood and then it becomes maladaptive and adulthood, right. So we've got to go back and say to that part of ourselves like, hey, sweetheart, like I'll do this, I'll do this with myself when I find myself going into people pleasing to this day, really Right. And I'll just pause and go hey, honey, people pleasing was how you kept yourself alive. Thank you, it was brilliant.

01:05:46 - Speaker 1
I was saying alive, we're done with that.

01:05:49 - Speaker 2
No really Like it was. Really. Yeah, it was brilliant and strategic and thank you for keeping me alive and now you don't have to work that hard.

01:06:00 - Speaker 1
I wrote a. We have a motivational email that comes out three times a week called Brave Men Motivational. I wrote one the other day. It comes out this week. That is real short and it basically has to do with whenever you get overheated, when you ever get to this little place and you're gonna make a wrong decision, just need to stop for a minute. And because you know you're and you have to essentially make a decision against yourself. And the way you make a decision against yourself is the way I do. It is I just say to myself you know what, right now, somebody has to be the adult in this conversation and I'm gonna choose to be the adult. Somebody has to choose to be the adult right now and dang it, it has to be me. Yeah.

01:06:50 - Speaker 2
Yeah, that's good. I might even advocate for even you to say that maybe a little kinder Okay.

01:07:01 - Speaker 1
All right. So in other words, I shouldn't be the freaking adult with that yeah, I am Right. You idiot. Yeah, no, we do talk a lot about that. How speech can actually profile ourselves.

01:07:14 - Speaker 2
It does.

01:07:15 - Speaker 1
And I play golf with guys or do other sports and guy'll miss a shot. It's like, dude, you made five out of 10, that would make you one of the best, and yet you say to yourself you idiot. And it's like, no, don't speak death over yourself, speak life.

01:07:31 - Speaker 2
I say like psychologically, I don't know exactly what the number is, but I think people say about 5,000 cruel things to themselves a day. It's astronomical.

01:07:40 - Speaker 1
No, yeah, oh yeah, really, and it's just like this ticker tape. Yeah, cause self-talk? We talk about that a lot. Self-talk's about 500 words a minute, something like that, oh, so you think about your day.

01:07:51 - Speaker 2
How many yeah.

01:07:52 - Speaker 1
See, what I know is cause you're a public speaker and you get up and speak, and so I'm a public speaker and I would get up at men's events or whatever, and I know, if I'm speaking let's say 160 words a minute, that some guys sitting out there listening to me, but he's got another 300 words that are screaming along about.

01:08:11
He's gotta go fix something, he's gotta stop get his oil changed, and I'm trusting the Holy Spirit to pierce into this thing. And it's part of the art of public speaking, if you will, so that you can. And it's again, it's something we talked about in love making, but it's also part of being the adult in a conversation which is becoming present, getting present, getting like let's come to reality right now, so let's get back, so let's do this shame thing, so this, so what is shame?

01:08:42 - Speaker 2
Shame is a belief that it's just this deep feelings of I'm not enough, I'm bad.

01:08:50 - Speaker 3
There's something wrong with me, yeah.

01:08:53 - Speaker 2
I am inherently inadequate, insecure, bad, maybe even evil.

01:09:01 - Speaker 1
Insufficient. That's just who I am.

01:09:03 - Speaker 2
Unlevable.

01:09:05 - Speaker 1
So guilt. This is in a book we're writing called Giddiness Descent and speaking of Peter and Jesus. When Jesus released Peter from the chapter 21 of John and basically releases him of not only his guilt but a shame. Guilt is believing and knowing you made a mistake, but shame is believing you are the mistake.

01:09:30 - Speaker 2
Well, have you noticed how people the apostle might call himself have names for himself, but he doesn't say hi, I'm Peter the betrayer, right, I mean right.

01:09:42 - Speaker 3
Yeah.

01:09:43 - Speaker 2
Because, if he, I mean like I was with somebody this weekend. We were out of speaking at a conference and one of the speakers says he had an infidelity decades ago and he still calls it my sin, my infidelity, my and I'm like buddy, you're still lost in toxic shame over that.

01:10:02 - Speaker 3
Wow.

01:10:03 - Speaker 2
That's toxic shame. I've got to call him and go hey.

01:10:07 - Speaker 1
So he's defining himself based on that.

01:10:09 - Speaker 2
He still is. So he's keeping that definition as part of who he is, it's become his narrative.

01:10:14 - Speaker 1
Whereas, whereas when we become a follower of Christ Bible says he says, when we become a follower of Christ, paul says he said we become a new creation. All things have passed away, all things become new. In other words, we're redefined. The process. The process is we are immediately. If you become a follower of Christ. When you do, you are immediately grafted in as part of the body of Christ. That whole God, as your father, comes alive. Right, it's so hard, but there's a process of conversion.

01:10:49 - Speaker 2
There is, isn't there.

01:10:50 - Speaker 1
Our speech still needs to change. We still get have some of these same things. And so now the process, and I look at it this way we, as men in particular, we have a tendency to feel like pain is something wrong happening to us, and so when the sculptor comes in and tries to chisel something, we push back on the hand of the sculptor.

01:11:13 - Speaker 2
Yeah, we want to run away from pain.

01:11:16 - Speaker 1
Because we don't want to play.

01:11:17 - Speaker 2
It can be the greatest.

01:11:18 - Speaker 1
Pain is a teacher.

01:11:19 - Speaker 2
Yeah, pain is such a beautiful teacher.

01:11:21 - Speaker 1
Right.

01:11:22 - Speaker 2
Like that day of excruciating pain I was in. That's the last thing I wanted to feel.

01:11:27 - Speaker 1
That whole day of crying.

01:11:28 - Speaker 2
Yeah, it's because pain was coming up. I'm like, oh, I can't feel pain.

01:11:32 - Speaker 4
Thank you. Brave Men is a production of Christian Men's Network, a global movement of men committed to passionately following Jesus on the ground in over 100 nations worldwide. You can receive the Brave Men motivational email, find books and resources for discipleship and parenting at cmn.men. That's cmn.men. Your host has been Paul Lewis Cole, president of Christian Men's Network, and if you haven't yet, please make sure you subscribe to the Brave Men podcast wherever you're finding podcasts or downloaded. Thanks for hanging with us today. We'll see you next time on Brave Men.