After all you put me through You think I despise you But in the end I want to thank you Cause you made me that much stronger Well I thought I knew you Hello this is Martha Nix-Wade With Anne Exposed Secret Thank you for tuning in Thank you for caring about your health And the health of others As we look at people working through sexual abuse And how we can best help them And be advocates for them Before I go on I need to give a shout out to my family And say I'm missing being with you Easter Sunday And Corinne you especially wanted me to give you a shout out Bailey and Ryder So here it is You get your shout out on Anne Exposed Secret I have another friend who left his family To be with us tonight And I'm always grateful to have psychotherapist Wayne Brazil Sharing this time with me He is an amazing asset to our organization A Quarter Blue He is not only a psychotherapist But an artist And so leads our art therapy groups With our families And we have just amazing products That come out of all of these individuals As they're working through very difficult situations And we are getting to know them And getting ready to celebrate these artworks At two different art exhibits One at City Hall in Whittier, California And another at the Women's Club in Orange City Hall April 1st through May 9th And our installation art will be on April 9th In the evening at City Hall And then at the Women's Club in Orange Will be April 11th and 12th We'd love for you to come out and join us And Wayne don't you think what these families are putting Out of their minds is truly amazing? It truly is Just reminded of that when I saw the display That we had at the art gallery in Whittier This last weekend It's tremendous What fun that was to see that And to see the healing that's coming Basically to people because they're getting a chance To express themselves In these really, really powerful ways And everyone that comes to the exhibit Is truly moved And sometimes they don't even know why They just know they're looking at a piece And there's so much power in it And there's so much power in it And there's so much power in it And there's so much power in it And there's so much more Beyond those paint strokes Than they could even imagine And so much of what we're doing Is looking at two different sides of these people One side of course being What the molestation has produced in their life And the other then is the coming out And coming to some place of victory in their lives And when those are both expressed in the same piece What fun that is It is What victory that produces And I'm so looking forward to seeing our doors Right You know we've had two of our Sessions working with our families On creating these doors That are going to be exhibited There are 22 full-size doors Actually there are two that are smaller But one's a shower door And one's representing the babies Who are molested And so it's smaller But truly powerful To see the one side of the darkness And then the other side Being the hope that these families Are achieving together It's really been fun And to sit with these people As they're creating those doors And watching what they do It's really fun One of the things we've noted Is that sometimes the kids Will do a door And it'll be really pretty expressive On the side where the molestation They're expressing the molestation And before they're through They'll take paint and cover that door Almost completely Absolutely I remember one where We didn't even realize it at the time Until we went back and looked at the pictures And he had painted S.A.D. Sad And you won't see that in the display And one of the young men I remember he was talking about He was talking about He was talking about His door And he said I'm without hope And by the time he got through It was really interesting Because he said I think I have hope now Yeah I can see my way out of this And I've talked to him a few times after And he says You know because of that day I have a smidgen of hope Isn't that amazing And it's just spectacular To know that You know for him specifically He goes to a group two times a week That's with another organization And he's unfortunately not receiving any hope Out of being in that group And spending a lot of time Spending one day Expressing himself On the large pallet of a door Just truly amazing To watch him go from Truly hopeless To being able to Catch a glimpse of hope And it's remaining And it's nearly been a month I know If you get a chance to ever come And see the display His is the one with the road That goes up between the two areas On either side of fires His whole forest is on fire As he drew that And the other side The hope that it comes out And shows that he really has hope Right It's amazing being part of our community And every time Especially when I leave Our art therapy days I'm like I love my job Really it's the best It is truly amazing And you know And we're really seeking To ultimately have a center In the city of Orange Because it's really central To so many freeways And people can come from L.A., Riverside, and Orange County And be together And even if you want to come from somewhere else You'd be welcome But we want to create this location Where we can continue With art, music, dance, yoga All these therapies That really are striving To heal the whole person Yes and the groups that we're running And the individual therapy That's being offered A lot of them are by Practicum students from the universities Who are learning to be therapists But the work that's being done Is as good as you're going to find anywhere It truly is Because really what we're going to talk today About is About addictions Which is often a direct reflection Of our sexual abuse And our whole philosophy is There are a lot of places That are treating the symptoms The addiction Maybe the physical effects And other areas But very few places Are truly getting to the core issues And focusing on how to heal From the sexual abuse That's true The addictions The whole addictive idea Of treating Addictions with AA Is really really powerful But we're beginning to really learn Some new things about addictions And I think it's really important For us to understand That childhood trauma Actually changes brain function For children And produces Unrelenting difficulties for these kids A huge wound in their lives Talk about what you're seeing In the transformation of the brain When there's early childhood trauma Well what we're seeing is A real problem with the pleasure pain cycle That the brain actually does It's really interesting Because our brains are really designed To be pleasured And to understand And to realize what pain is And think what a tragic thing happens When a child is introduced to sexuality So very very young Often times in a really Terrible kind of way Because the child is Told that this is good for them Or they may even experience Something that's akin to pleasure At the same time They know it's wrong And their brain really begins to Shut down in an area It's really really really important For us to recognize that that happens I know it's really confusing When your body The endorphins are acting And telling you that this is a pleasurable experience But the whole time you feel like you're going to get in trouble Oh totally You're waiting for someone to come through that door Or all that But you don't know what to do Because this is typically someone who's taken A long time to develop a relationship with you And becomes I hate to say The person who first loves you It's your first real Confusion of love experience But you feel this sense of wanting to protect this person But being confused Because somehow you know It's not right But your body Is sometimes telling you That there's pleasure in it So it is It's absolutely confusing It really is The thing that's happening in the brain Is the brain is really designed As I say to receive the feel good hormones Or neurotransmitters in the brain These chemicals that tell us That this is a good feeling And it's really interesting That the Chemical that actually is produced Actually is the same chemical That is produced when we're feeling Anxious about something So it really does become a real big problem When we can't tell the difference between the two And so what's happening to a child's brain When this is happening? Well what's happening to the brain is The brain is actually receiving A signal that says This is what pleasure looks like And the problem with that Is that it begins to shut down The brain's natural Ability to think through these things And of course when it's happening to a child It's not just a thing that's happening to a child They can't think about it anyway They're not grown-ups They're not adults And so a lot of the Thought processes that happen In the I don't want to get too technical But in the prefrontal cortex or the frontal lobe Actually that part of the brain That does our thinking for us And helps us make decisions Is being bypassed By the amount of adrenaline Or epinephrine in the technical term And dopamine that's being produced And so we bypass that part of us That says this is wrong This is something we shouldn't be doing We shouldn't be participating in this This is a bad thing I know I probably made some people angry When I said this is your first experience with love Because you and yourself Were not personally a victim Can you please explain to people Who haven't been victims of sexual abuse Why it may be perceived as This is the first love experience Because people are going that's not love I know I do know that But that's how it feels as a child Can you explain that to our listeners? Well it's so hard to explain Because the process of that Is so neurochemical in nature It's not out of our logic Remember children are not rational Logical or reasonable In fact our emotions are not rational Logical or reasonable If it would be Then we would all have the same kind of values And we don't have And we would all fall in love with the same people Because of those values And we don't I've had in my practice a man Who weighed 500 pounds And he was married to a woman Who was of regular size and weight At the same time I had a woman Who weighed 480 And she was married to a man Who had regular size and weight And I'm going well why doesn't the heavy person Find and marry the person who is heavy And the people that are of normal weight Find the people I don't know why I have no idea why one person Falls in love with somebody else I know that it's not rational It's not logical It's not logical It's not reasonable It is just based on What people are attracted to And how they feel And how they feel So when those feelings are confused As little children They're already not rational Reasonable or logical But when they're confused as little children It sets up a whole raft Of very very difficult And confusing feelings within the person Because it's very few instances that take place Where a perpetrator starts this relationship with sex They go through a period of grooming Where that child's falling in love They think with that person But they're really falling in love With how they're being treated And how they feel By being given gifts Or by having someone spend time with them It's grooming is building that platform Of what a child understands as love And then as for myself I ended up checking out When the stuff happened that I didn't like Because I knew ultimately I'd get a reward And that was really hard for me to do That was really what I enjoyed Of course And so when that confusion sets in We end up with all kinds of mood altering Kinds of experiences And when that mood altering experience Actually produces some kind of sexual act Against the child The child then is going to be confused About what pleasure really is And when we start doing that That's the same thing we get When we start using cocaine If we start using cocaine or marijuana Excuse me But any of those kinds of things Actually the part of our brain That feels pleasure begins to shut down And it only becomes stimulated When we use the drug You can imagine what happens in a child When they only become stimulated By acting out in some sexual way And so we produce then In a child Another predator And we know that to be true Now is everybody a predator Who's been molested as a child? No, certainly not Why that changes And why some are and some are not We don't know the reasons for that We just know that some do And many do And in fact the preponderance Is that they do That they molest somebody else Because that's how they learned what love was Right And you talked about needing that feeling To come back And having to go back to that place And I've talked to people Who have to be strangled In their intimate moments To feel any sense of stimulation They have to get to Almost feeling abused Or those acts which were Perpetrated against them as children To have any sense of feeling Can you describe I mean you have described But why is it that we need to experience Such graphic things in a normal What would be considered a normal reaction Relationship That we have to go so far As to be strangled or something else What is that? Well again it's because the brain Is not prepared To! To understand and to respond To normal kinds of sexual feelings It's the same thing with the cocaine Everybody knows the old statement about cocaine You're always chasing the first high Because after you've once experienced the cocaine When you first take it at any one setting Then the next one is not going to produce the same result But you keep chasing it Keep hoping it will be the same If you keep taking it Pretty soon you cannot feel pleasure without cocaine It won't allow you to As I say you know about drugs You know you may say well there's a little cocaine I'll go do a little cocaine No no no After a while the coke is standing on the corner So there goes Wayne let's go do him There's marijuana let's go do Wayne There's alcohol let's go do Wayne You're not doing it anymore It's doing you And that's the same thing that happens with children who are molested Is that they do not learn a healthy way Of expressing their sexuality And do you have any idea I mean I heard you say you don't But is there any understanding of why Some go to that extreme And then we have the others who want absolutely no physical touch Because there's really hardly any people in the middle Unless they've had extreme therapy Where they've really gotten help And come to a place of health But is there anything that you see in brain chemistry That some choose to hate any physical touch And the others become addicted to unhealthy touch Well that's a thinking The whole idea And we've talked about this before That thoughts precede emotions And if my thinking is distorted Then my emotions are going to be distorted And so it's the way we think about something Is going to control how we feel about it We know that some people adopt behaviors I call them coping mechanisms That they put in place of real strategies for their lives In other words they'll try denial That works You know how long is that going to work Well that's a thought You know how long is that going to work Well when denial runs over and drowns you Then you know you're really in trouble But if somebody else might choose over controlling somebody else Somebody might choose shutting down and not feeling There are people who actually experience childhood molestation Who become dissociative In other words when the molestation happened They went away So now without even bidding Without even wanting to do that When they're experiencing any kind of trauma They absolutely go away They're not there any longer And I've seen that in my office Actually a girl I was talking to her about her fear of a nightmare that she has Which is a bar of light about an inch high And about 30 inches wide And she says I see that bar Every time I see that bar I can become really frightened And I thought and said out loud Stupid me, therapists sometimes do these things I made an observation Oh my goodness That's the bar of light underneath your door And you're watching for your grandfather's shadow To break that bar of light And then you know he's coming into you And at that point I looked up at her And she was no longer in the room I mean her body was there But she was not there She had completely dissociated She had dissociated And she was gone And it took me about an hour and 45 minutes Until she came back And when she did she told me that When her father, grandfather came She became a 15 year old boy And she went to a tree That was not far from her farmhouse And climbed up into that tree near a creek And stayed until he left And that's what she did in my office And that's a coping mechanism At one time it worked Like most coping mechanisms they do work Alcohol works for a while Cocaine acts for a while Works for a while But so do these dissociative kinds of things Denial works for a while Catastrophizing black and white thinking All these kinds of coping mechanisms work for a while But they don't continue to work And pretty soon they're working They're being used in all kinds of situations And we call those things non-adaptive Maladaptive kinds of things that happen to a child To an adult Who is a victim of childhood molestation So many people who have experienced childhood molestation Lead an addictive lifestyle Totally And what's happening in the brain And it sounds like it's the same exact thing Where we have that lack of clear thinking Because it was bypassed during the molestation But what is leading victims of sexual abuse To these addictive behaviors And what are you seeing in this world of addiction? Well in the world of addiction There's you know of course we What we do is we use AA as a way of doing this We use all kinds of groups Special groups To be able to confront these things But the problem is So much of what we know And what we deal with Goes untreated Because molestation is such an unpopular Subject matter to be dealing with And so what happens is we get People in these relationships that are failing We get people who are addicted to pornography Which is failing them We get them in cyber sex We see them that are using prostitutes We find them that they're doing indecent things They're exposing themselves in public They're voyeurs They involve themselves in rape and in incest And so forth and so on Now I want to make sure that you know That I do not believe that everybody Who's experienced molestation Are going to become a rapist Or participate in incest I'm glad you don't think that of me I really don't I appreciate it I really don't I was married to a very nice lady Who had been molested And she certainly wasn't that But and we know that We also know that everyone who is Technically a pedophile And a pedophile is somebody who is attracted To children under the age of 12 Not everybody who's a pedophile Is going to act that pedophilia out Not everyone who is an alcoholic Is you know I'm a dry alcoholic I don't drink But I know I've got the tendency to that And that's the reason why I don't drink I don't go near the stuff Because I don't like what it causes in my life So there are people who are drunk And they're drawn to children Who do not act that at all So I'm not saying everybody who is attracted To somebody who's under the age of 12 Is going to be actually acting out pedophilia But we know too That people who do Produce tremendous pain and suffering And the loss of self image in children And the result of that Is going to be all kinds of problems They have with relationships as adults Even in the middle of the night Even for those who do well And really have dealt with their issues Are going to find themselves Really having a hard time with relationships So what do you think is unique in a person That possibly would have the tendency To act out with a child And yet stops the behavior I mean obviously they have a certain level of thinking Where there's a natural or unnatural However you want to put it Attraction to someone younger What is it that they're doing That is helping them stop And not act upon those behaviors Or those thoughts Well I have a kind of a metaphor for that Is that we have each one of us in us A whole raft of what Freud called the id Which is passions, wants, needs and desires And I call them At one time I called them the kid You know the id All that part of us Is like an eight year old or less It's a five, six, seven, eight year old Has language I say some place between two and eight Has language But it still hasn't Isn't able to handle the abstract Kind of concept yet It's at eight years old We say oh mom and dad are Santa Claus Oh my goodness guess what I didn't believe that before Because I sat on Santa's lap And looked out there And there was my mom and dad So my mom and dad couldn't be Santa Claus Because I'm sitting on Santa Claus's lap And that's the way our brain works And so what we do is As people who have been abused So forth and so on Is we develop a Really bad self image Self concept And we put the locus of control Or the area of control That I can be controlled By someone else Like my own passions, wants, needs and desires So if a person is going to get control over this Then instead of using a lot of Compensatory behaviors You know or depression Or alcohol and so forth and so on We develop a really bad self image Or any of those I'm going to instead I'm going to try to embrace The passion, want, need, desire The hurt child in me One of those children that's in me And bring that to me And embrace that child And say to that child What is it that you're trying to say Tell me more about that What is it that you're wanting right now But like little children Just because they want to drive the car We don't let them I don't give them the keys to my life I've got to be able to say to that little child Gee you're really hurting right now You're really scared right now You really feel that That God's not going to be able to provide for you This woman that you want in your life So you want to go get somebody else's woman Or you know there's a child down the street You could probably have a relationship with And you didn't intend to hurt her Or hurt him but you did Rather than doing that You begin to look at your life in terms of What it is that that child part of me wants And then help that child to get a different job No your job is not to be passionate for that child Your job is to remind me how lonely I am That's your job So what I try to do is I say these children within us These inner child or inner children That what we want to do is to embrace them And tell them it's going to be okay I'm big enough And I'll take care of you But I'm not going to let you act that out And so people who have been successful In protecting themselves and people around them From these passions wants needs and desires Are people who have actually listened to What those passions and needs and wants and desires are And then help that part of you To see it for what it really is I think so often because You've lost sight of that That was an innocent child That you have difficulty going back And finding that child And so often I hear people say I hate her meaning themselves Because she didn't protect me She could have you know kicked him and ran Or she could have So to go back and identify with our inner child A lot of people struggle going back there Because they really don't like that child Well so many times I hear people in the office talk about If I've got this little child He's such a bad child Why don't I send it into a closet Why don't I lock it away But I find that when you do that That that child then makes friends with rage And comes running back out And gets all over me and everybody else You know so I want to make sure that That whatever I've experienced Doesn't become a part of my behaviors That attempt to escape To change what has happened to me Some way or the other In this really negative awful way And I found that we Went through something with our women And we had them bring a picture of them Before the abuse And a picture after And usually you can see the difference You really can There is an amazing meaning scary Look of vacancy That happens in photographs What we're looking for is a mood altering escape If I can escape into this It will change my mood Alcohol does that It changes your mood Unfortunately it's a depressant And it'll end up dropping you It may feel You may feel elevated at the beginning But it will drop you New research into marijuana Showing the same thing That pretty soon the brain no longer can be Self-passing Or passionate about anything Or self-mood altering It won't happen by itself It takes the alcohol It takes the marijuana It takes the cocaine It takes the heroin To be able to actually help you To be able to cope with life So what we're all I think we're always doing this All of us are trying to find some way To mood alter And when we use escape to do that Into any of these addictions We're in really really big trouble It leads to narcissism And a sense of entitlement We get all wrapped up in Our warped sense of reality And you know if I want it I ought to have it You know the first words children say Is mama, daddy, and mine Right Isn't that what happens Mine, mine, mine, that's mine And we see the child You know before the age of three When they add why You know they can say mine And they feel entitled to it It's theirs And we do that When we've got that warped sense of ourselves We fail in efforts to control Our own world and ourselves You know that's really And then we move into areas of denial And delusion This really does You know where do you think This man boy stuff comes from We're delusional You know Every man ought to have a boy to love And you know If he wants to And I want to What's wrong with that That's delusional It's absolutely delusional And I think part of the challenge with that Is that so often these men Personally experience their first What they believe love encounter With a pedophile Absolutely And so they believe that To be true love And so if you were to tell them that This man boy relationship Is not a relationship at all It's forced sex They're going to call you a liar And they do They say you are accusing us Of ageism And that's as bad as racism How dare you do that But it's because if we sat them down And said When were you loved They'll describe when they were loved By a pedophile And they will not be able to say it In those manners But if you say that was not love And this relationship you have created right now Is not love They're going to have to come to the reality of They have not been loved They have never experienced unconditional love And that is overwhelming Well you get this delusion And you miss something that's really important in recovery We need healthy shame And when I'm deluding myself into believing That whatever I'm doing is okay We're not going to get to the place Where we have healthy shame Now I realize there is such a thing as unhealthy shame The unhealthy shame that brings self-blame And if we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place Where we can just get to the place and she had a little boy, and I said to her, I said, what would happen if you went to the beach with your little boy, and he had to go into the men's room, and you took him, and you waited outside, and you watched him go in, but the thing you didn't know is there's a door on both ends of that men's room, like a lot of them have, there's a door you put him in on the beach side, but there's also a door on the parking lot side, and while he was in there, a man came in there, and your little boy seduced him, and he molested him, how would you feel about that, and she said, I would kill him, I said, your little boy for seducing that man, no, the man, I would kill him, I said, wait a minute, you would kill the man who molested your little boy, because your little boy is incapable of seducing that man, he's sick, she said, I said, yeah, and so is the guy that molested you. Exactly, and that's why we ask our... That conversation, by the way, changed our life. Did it? It did, it did. Well, and that's because people, as they dissociate, don't understand the connection with their own inner child, and that's why we have the adults in our group write a letter to the child, and often, you know, you have to picture the own child you're raising, but you're speaking to your inner child, the child who you were, and speaking love and hope, and what I realized in writing my own, was, dang, I was really creative. Really? I was creative to survive in spite of what was happening, and to create that sense of escape, and I'm really dang proud of myself. Sometimes what I have the person do is they write a letter to the child from their dominant hand, and they get a picture of themselves, hopefully prior to the molestation, and they hold that picture in their hand, and write that letter with their dominant hand, and they write that letter with their dominant hand to that child. Right. And then they write back to themselves, the grown-up person, from that child with the non-dominant hand. That disconnects them from that logical, you know, left brain kind of, well, wait a minute, this is not really that bad, and all that kind of illogical logic that is used, and have them write back, and say to that part of them that is now grown up and older, why didn't you protect me? When that happens, then you write back, and quite often what happens, this person who's writing back comes to pieces, really, as they try to explain, I was little too. Right, and that's what we strive to have our adults speak to us, because they've lost sight of the beautiful innocence of who they were, and they need to hear that, and a lot of times we have to talk to them, and we need to talk to them, and we need to talk to them, and we need to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, to talk to them, talk around it to find those little bits of the seed of who they honestly were. And it's so encouraging when we can start to hear the beauty of who they were. But it's really the beauty of who they are. Who they are, right, right. One of the young ladies, she said, well, who am I? And I said, you're a divine child. You're a divine princess. And she said, but I'm not. And I said, I think you are. So she went out and she got a necklace with a little fairy princess on it and started wearing that. Before you know it, she had little princesses everywhere. On the inside flap of her purse, she had this decal that she had put on there. When she opened it up, there was this princess. And she began to call herself the princess. And how really wonderful it was that she began to come out of all that and began to leave the distortions of her life and those old coping mechanisms that she had had in her life. And she began to leave that behind because she was a sexual addict. She was living out her distortion, that confusion that resulted from the molestation. She was beginning to leave that behind. Plus, we know a lot of people who are molested are what we call comorbid. They have cross addictions. And that was something that she was experiencing. She was involved in self-abuse. She cut herself. What for? So she knew where the pain was. She had literally riddled herself from her panty line. To the elastic band with a razor. And it somehow gave her some kind of feeling of being in control when she saw the blood in the shower. You know, that kind of thing. And then her unhealthy family dynamics. She had married a narcissist. This guy talked awful to her. She left him on the day that she finally said to him, you're not going to treat me that way anymore. And he told her, get on your hands and knees and take all your clothes off. I'm going to beat you with a belt. Until you submit. And she said, that's not going to happen. And if you try to do that, I will call the police. And he left the house that night and didn't come back. And was she in therapy at that point? Is that where she was able to muster up that courage? That's where the courage was coming from. Because that's the princess girl. And she was saying, I'm a princess. You cannot talk to me that way. I will not bend to you any longer. The being able to set up boundaries. I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? I say, what? Other people have boundaries. You don't have any boundaries. You are my slave. And you will do what I tell you to do. That sets all that up. And the secrets and the silence, we see that in our groups. These people come for the very first time. They say, I was molested as a child. And they say it out loud. We had that happen not too long ago with somebody we both know. You know, it said, I haven't said this to anybody. I was molested as a child. Right. And that's powerful when that happens. But, you know, if we're not careful, we minimize and we deny. And we live in this false belief system. What do you think is the positive about saying it out loud? Oh, it removes the, you know, in AA we always say, we're only as sick as our secrets. You know, and that's it, truly. We deny, we hide, we put it away, we don't talk about it. It's so embarrassing and so shame producing. I say to people who say, well, I'm over it, you know, it's okay for me. I said, okay, let's go out and tell everybody then that you were a molested victim as a child. Well, I don't want to do that. Why not? I'm willing to go out and tell everybody that I'm Irish. Why wouldn't you tell them that? Well, because it's shameful. Right. That's why you don't. And you can't have the same. You can't have shame. And I've moved on. Right. They don't. You can't. That's right. You can't. And can you be clear about where the shame lies? Who should be owning this shame? Well, the shame's got to be in the person who's the perpetrator. You know, it's got to be. I mean, we've got two things going on here at the same time. One is the victim, of course. There's the other is a perpetrator who is also a victim, a victim of what they're doing. They really are. And so who are we going to feel sorry for? We've got to feel sorry for the person. We've got to try to offer services. For at least what we think it is for the for the victim. The perpetrator needs to go to jail. I'd be glad for him to go to jail. I'd be glad for her to go to jail. I'd be glad for them to get whatever help they can get there in that place. But but we've got to be concentrating on the victim and we've got to help them not become a perpetrator, not to get wrapped up into this thinking about sex all the time, because, you know, a sexual addict thinks about sex all the time. It's constant with them. You know, somebody who is healthy, sexual kind of an attitude occasionally thinks about sex. But but they move on. They think about it and move on. They have the sexual addict masturbates all the time. It's habitualized use of self medicine, self medication. It's this makes me feel better. It makes me feel important. Makes me feel safe. It makes me feel good. Look at look at what I can do. And and the person with a healthy sex attitude, I don't think there's anything necessarily in the Bible against it. I mean, we've some people have tried to make it against against God's law, but I don't see anything in there about that. In fact, I quite often laughingly say, you know, God looked down and saw Adam and said, he's lonely. And I say, well, how does God know that Adam was lonely? I said, caught him masturbating. And a woman appears. I got to get, you know, I've got a got a solution for that. Let's give him a mate because all the other animals has mates. And and so and so we have Adam and then we have Eve. But so so people who are not addicts experiment, but it's not their whole life. You know, they they it doesn't become a pattern of their behaviors, you know. So what are the downfalls of if my addiction is a quiet one that's not hurting anyone? What's the problem? Well, the problem is, again, that the addiction, if it's an addiction, it's going it will escalate. That's all there is to it. It will escalate. It will come out in some kind of really negative way. It really will. Whether it's whether it's you move from masturbation to some kind of sexual violation of somebody else. You go through a whole cycle of guilt about it and shame and then repeated behavior. And that's going to happen and happen and happen until it begins to interfere either with your relationships or with your own safety. The guy who is a voyeur, you know, and what does he do? He goes out and he hangs around and looks in windows. The next thing you know, somebody's caught him looking in a window and pounds a living daylights out of him. That has happened. I know that man. He's been in my practice or somebody else who's in the theater business. And what does he do? He goes and waits in the wings because he knows where the actresses are going to change their costumes. You know, that's quite often done. Not in the dressing room. No, it's right on. It's on stage. Exactly. And he's a he's a guy that he's a guy that handles. The. Presidium and of the other kinds of stuff on stage. And so he positions himself to be able to see these girls. And that continues to go on until all of a sudden he's also out watching for. He said to me, I can go into anybody's house and find their pornography within an hour. I don't care who they are. He also said, and I can wander around the neighborhood and find somebody making love in a car. I know where those people go and where they are and I can go watch. He does that and masturbates. All he has to do is get caught and picked up. What are you doing out here? And he will be getting in trouble. He will get arrested. And he will get a record. And those kinds of things do follow those people around. It's it's really interesting to me that that we don't prosecute those people because they are headed for some really bad stuff. Possibility even of acting this out even further. Their their marital sexuality is. You know, is healthy with between a couple between a married couple selflessly. Expression of love and concern and an emotional spiritual intimacy. You know, that's all really precious. But marital sexuality in somebody who's an addict is selfish. It is. It is. It's an arousal to meet needs and to avoid intimacy. And that kind of thing also happens. We just know that it will continue to act up. In the worst case. It will. In the worst cases, it can actually cause somebody to rape, to to create incest and so on. So now not all people who do incest or molesters are at heart. They're not pedophiles. Quite often there are other things going on in their lives that cause them to molest a child. Lots of them their own child. That doesn't make the offense less. Does it make the offense less? I'm not excusing the offense at all. Except I'm just saying that that's why it happens. It happens. It happens. The lack of intimacy within the relationship. Maybe mom is sick and you know, pretty soon the little girl is sitting on daddy's lap to make him feel better and so on. So the next thing you know, something really awful has happened. Just because it happened doesn't excuse it. Because it just happened. Yeah, we don't use the word just. Just happened. I didn't intend for it to happen. I never intended for this to be this way. I'm really sorry and all that kind of stuff. Well, it's justification. Yeah. Generally speaking. People who that happens to. It happens once. Once it's discovered, they never molest again. They're not pedophiles. But the pedophile who is wrapped up in these behaviors, these constant over and over again behaviors. Molest over and over and over and over. Who knows? Who can count the number of times a pedophile actually molests before he's caught? Well, statistically it's about. It's about 350 victims that a pedophile has in a lifetime. As in a lifetime. Yeah. And that's, I mean, staggering. Totally. And the problem is it's, you've affected 350 lives, but really you've affected more lives than that. Because you have a whole family who's directly affected by this now. And then you don't know what's going to come of those 350 children. What addiction are they going to have? What addiction are they going to choose? That's exactly right. We don't know. Are they going to choose drugs as a way to cope? Are they going to choose using prostitutes as a way to cope? Molesting other children as a way to cope? It's all about coping. It's all about what can I substitute for a real relationship? With real pleasure. With real joy. So how do you start to rebuild? A person when their brain is so negatively affected by a childhood trauma? Well, we've got to affect what they're thinking. It's the thought processes that we've got to start with. Because like I say, thinking first, emotions next. I know it feels like it's the other way around, but that was a thought I just gave you. You know, it just, yeah, no, I think first, then I feel. And we know that our feelings is what we expect. Our feelings is what we behave out of. We act out of our behaviors. So it doesn't matter between male or female. No. Both males and females think first and then feel. And then feel. It does, yeah, this is not gender driven. This is a process driven thing. It starts with our thinking. When we begin to think, we're not going to get caught. Really, the whole process is about, you know, we go from thinking to feeling. We go from feeling to behaviors. We go from behaviors to outcomes. We go from outcomes to character. Character is who we are when nobody else is watching, right? That's our character. And our character is what we begin to act out of. Again, if my character says I can do this and not get caught, this is a big secret. Guess what? That's a distorted thought. I'm now on a cycle. I'm just back up to thinking wrong again. My wrong thinking is going to produce wrong outcomes and wrong character. And so we want to, first of all, think wrong. We want to, first of all, get to that thinking process and begin to change the way we think. And how do you do that? We got to get them in therapy to do that. And we put, and there's other things we do. We put them in accountability groups. We get them in accountability. I've got a guy, we've got him in an accountability partnership agreement. He's got three guys that he has to report to all the time. In the church where we attended years ago, we had two pedophiles come into the church. Convicted, bracelet-wearing pedophiles. And these guys were both guys who had been convicted of this crime against their own children. So they came in and they were not mandated so that they couldn't come actually to a church where children are. But they came and made themselves known to us. And we held them accountable. You will be, anytime you're on the property, there are men who are going to watch you. And you have to report into them the minute you step onto the property. And the minute you leave, you need to tell us that you're leaving. And you need to report to these men, not just weekly, when you're on the property, every day. If you're willing to do that, we're willing to allow you to be here. If you're not willing to do that, you're not allowed to be here. And both of those men decided that's what they wanted to do because they really needed what the church brought them. And even though the whole church was against them, they were against the church. And even though the whole church was against the church. Even though the whole church knew. Now, did you feel that was wise? As long as the structure was strong enough. And as long as he was not a pedophile. This is a man who was convicted of molesting his child for the very reasons I said a minute ago. You know, wife was sick, you know, he's a young man. Daughter came along and said, poor daddy. And the next thing you know, something really bad happened. He was caught. He was convicted. He went to jail. He did his three years and he came out and he wanted to have some kind of someplace where he could go where he would receive some kind of spiritual blessing. And he chose the church. And we watched him. And we watched him a lot. And he stayed celibate and clear. And he didn't have any children of his own after that. He did divorce his wife, of course. And didn't have any children after that. And he didn't teach Sunday school. And he didn't hang with children. And we watched him and watched him. The other fellow the same way. We did the same thing with him. Was it wise? I think it was okay. But we were very, very cautious and very conscious of these guys on the property. See, I'm not a real fan of them being any place where children are. That's right. I'm like that. Yeah. Now we had another man that showed up on the church property who was a convicted pedophile. He had molested, I think, 8, 10, 15 children that he had been actually convicted of. He couldn't stay there. We didn't want him on the property at all. Now do you think this is sending a mixed message to, let's say there's a daughter who was molested by her father. Do you think at this moment, and I think if I were listening and that were my situation, I would feel like my abuse was being minimalized. Oh yeah. Yeah, I could understand that. That maybe there weren't 8 to 15 other girls. That I know of. And that I am not enough and therefore I need to stop overthinking or, and I just feel like. Well certainly if that girl, if either one of those daughters had been on the property at all had been there, he wouldn't have been there. That's for sure. If there had been anybody at all who had said, this is really making me uncomfortable, he wouldn't have been there. That's why it was so, no secret, didn't want a secret on the place at all. None. None. And minimizing, yeah, that's really a big issue, isn't it? Am I not enough? Because they already think they're not enough. Right. Right. I mean, I know that for years, that's how I dismissed it was, I'll be the sacrificial lamb. It was only me. Yeah. It was just, and it didn't end up being only me, but that's how I literally survived and kept the secret. Because really. There's the secret. You know, I'll get in the way of what the, all the good he's doing. If I say anything. Yeah. But I was enough. Absolutely. One was enough. Absolutely. And so I, any of our listeners, if you believe you are the only one, that was a travesty that you endured that abuse. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, for one moment, do not think that because one church chose to hold two men accountable to try to reshape their lives. And to something different. That your abuse is somehow being minimalized right now. That is absolutely not the intention. No. These men also were subjected to counseling, made sure that they were actually in counseling. That they were actually in a group that was, that specialized in this area. That they were, there was a lot of restrictions on these, these, these men. This is not just, this was not taken lightly at all, at all. And certainly not at the, at the cost of some charge. Not at the cost of some child who had been molested on the campus either. You know, that was, that was for sure. And I know we got derailed from where we were going with how do you start to transform distorted thinking. Was how we got on this and you were saying accountability. Yeah. We, we want to make sure that, that one of the things that we get, we get an accountability. We get, we get, we got confession and repentance, you know, basically. We get, we get an accountability. We get an accountability situation going with this person. We get, I think with anybody who's doing this, we got any chance at all with them. We've got to, we've got to use times of, we've got to build on the times of strength for this person. And begin to really treat the times of weakness as, as really important for us to know. If there are weaknesses, then we need to know it. We've got to make sure that they're in addition, that we're going to build something new in them at all times. Avoid environments where something might happen. You know, like I say, these, in no way should any of these people be around children. They just shouldn't. Of any kind. I don't care whether it was their daughter or whether it was a stranger. No way. Not around children. And of course in our, in our culture, we have, we have a really big dilemma happening around children. Right. Right now in the, in the state level, the legislature level. Because these guys are finding less and less places where they can live because they've been told they can't live within a certain number of miles from a park, a school, or a church. Any place where children might congregate. A park or any place like that. They can't be there. And there's fewer and fewer in places where we're building these communities where there are churches and parks and schools on every other corner. Where are they going to live? Which is a real big problem. And so there's a big push, you know, to relieve that law. I wouldn't even begin to relieve that law. I don't care where they live. If they're not doing, if they're, if they're not really, really, really working on their issue. Well, and I've always felt if there is a faith-based, whether it be church or temple, that really fills a heart to help people who have lived a life of a pedophile or a molester of one. That, that needs to be a church. That needs to be a church or a temple just for them. Just for them. Yeah. And I believe that with, I think we need to find an island where they can go with no computers, no telephones, no televisions where they can all live together. And I think that somebody who's been molested has got to treat somebody like that as though they are contaminated with the, you know, U-238 or something that they're really contaminated. Um, in order to, to, to live. Yeah. In order to, to, to be protected from them. It's, it's like there's a man down the street who has an atomic bomb and he's a crazy guy and threatens to blow up the whole community with this. An atomic bomb is enough to scare you off. So what do you do? Well, we go down and tell him, don't blow up the world. No, gosh sake, I run. I get out of there. I, I, you know, if there's something like that going on in your community, you feel uncomfortable with, for gosh sake, move, leave, you know. Children need to be protected. Children need to know. It's everything possible to protect a child. And that's the thing. I think so often we've lost a vision of how important children are. They deserve to be heard. They deserve to be protected. Well, isn't that why it happens in the first place? They're not listened to. Uncle Charlie touched me. Oh, you know, your uncle Charlie, he's just whatever. And there's that just thing again. Yeah, we don't like that word. No, we don't. We don't. But I want to, um, just quickly come back and say, Okay. Wayne, if you could tell a woman or a man who has experienced sexual abuse, who's struggling with addiction, what are two activities or points that they need to start doing right now to help to heal? What are those two things that you would tell them? I think confession and counseling. And I would say, you know, I think. And I would add a group process work of some kind, some kind of group in which they are actually being held accountable. Because you are important and addiction can lead down a very ugly path, just as Wayne has described. You might think that's ridiculous now that it could possibly go there. You just don't know. That's addiction. It loses. You lose control of it. You lose control of it. And it begins to control you. It does you. And we want you to treasure your life and understand addiction is not an option for you. You're someone who deserves to tend to the needs of your brain, which is like a garden. And yes, it was wounded and there's some weeds there. It's time to start to get rid of that distorted thinking and start to heal. And if you have any questions for us, please send them to info at info. Send them to info at a quarter blue dot org. If you need to get plugged into a counseling center, you want someone to confess to and or you want to start being part of a group. Let us help find you that place to begin to heal. For this is not a secret you need to live under. There's no shame that's yours to bear. It's start time. It's the time to heal. It's the time to speak out and to stand up. And produce a new garden in yourself and grow mightily and allow beauty to come out of the ashes, which you have become comfortable in. But now it's time to watch new beauty arise. Thank you for being part of an exposed secret. We're here for you. And we want you to reach out if you need us. At info at a quarter blue dot org. Have a great night. We'll dance. We will see. With our own eyes. All these ashes. Beauty will rise. For we know.