Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / Overcoming Shame: The Path of a male Sexual Assault Survivor

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Overcoming Shame: The Path of a male Sexual Assault Survivor · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Reviving Podcast.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: We have a guest on with us today that I met via TikTok and I love that somehow that algorithm has finally brought me into the mental health awareness part of TikTok and I met a gentleman named Caleb and reached out to him immediately and was like we'd be a guest on my show and we had some off the record conversations, built like a pretty cool friendship through this, and we've got him on today.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: So, caleb, thank you so much for being with us.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for having me.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: This is my first podcast ever and it is quite exciting.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm excited.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: That's one thing that I love about how I'm still a growing platform and as I'm reaching out to people, like I've been so many people's first and I love to have that journey and experience with them and they get to watch me grow and I get to watch them grow, so it's really cool for me too.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So, thank you so much.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Let's do you mind to give us a little bit of an introduction on yourself and who you?
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: are Absolutely, as David said, my name's Caleb.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I started a website about oh I guess eight years ago now, titled we're Not Powerlesscom.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: It was in response to a video that I'd made that went viral on Facebook, talking about my sexual assault, and I was so overwhelmed with the amount of messages and friend requests and just everything that went with going viral that I was like, hey, I need a central platform or location that I can refer people to, and I think it was mid December of 2014.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: I started a very basic webpage and it has since grown and evolved, changed faces many times and, throughout the course of my healing, it's gone from advocacy focus to an education focus, which leads us to current day, and, like the work that I do on TikTok along with David, is to spread awareness about mental health, sexual violence in general, sexual violence with men, et cetera.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: And of course we'll share all of the websites and everything and of course I've checked them out.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I've watched all your TikToks.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: You probably wake up and say that I've parted a million of them at, but it really inspires me and keeps me going when I meet people like you that self-aware and realize how important mental health is.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: So, if you don't mind and of course we don't have to go into a lot of details but can you tell us, maybe just some clip notes on the traumas that you have experienced, that you really hit on?
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, most recently I am recognizing the impact of my religious trauma that I experienced growing up.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I was raised in a very conservative, fundamental, non-denominational Christian group and I was very isolationist and, like sex education, topics about sexuality, they were just not discussed and, like in adolescence, anything sexual was met with guilt, shame, a lecture more often than not, and that definitely primed me to be easily groomed, which is what happened with my perpetrator.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: I had worked with them.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: He was about three times my age, so I would have been 20 at the time, he was about 60.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: And I had seen him around work and one day he just came up and started a conversation and by the end of that conversation me being pretty naive I trusted him enough to give him my phone number and the grooming process just went from there, went over to his place many times before he assaulted me.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: There was always alcohol involved, which being 20.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: And at that time a budding alcoholic I'm five and a half years sober now I wasn't gonna turn down free alcohol and somebody was willing to buy it, but that was definitely a piece that he used to also get under my garden, past my garden and then.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that would have been June 60,000, 12.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Shit, we just had an anniversary, oh yeah, that's what I was gonna say is, by the time this comes out, it'll probably be a month or so past June, but we're recording this in June, so last week would have been the anniversary of that.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Wow, Wow that's crazy.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Like for that first year and a half I felt just so fucking defined by that experience.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: It felt like I had I was sexually assaulted, branded or tattooed across my forehead which is that's a scarlet letter.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: That's ridiculous looking back, but I was just so overwhelmed with guilt, shame again, heralding back to that religious piece, religious trauma piece growing up, where anything with sex was met with the same, with guilt and shame.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, you also have that compounding effect of trauma, especially with sexual trauma, where there's lots of guilt and shame and self-blame in the aftermath.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I was taken to the hospital when I was in Iowa City.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I moved there in August of 2012.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: That was an attempt on my part to get the hell out of Dodge.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: If you will, I'll leave my hometown and get some space, and I needed this space.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: But in leaving my hometown I left any real social support system that I had.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: So I pretty quickly spiraled, started self-harming a lot and eventually I got to the point where one of my TAs I ended up calling the police to do a wellness check, so they took me to the emergency room.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: That was terrifying, ended up itself, and then I met with triage social work.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: I don't remember if I met with psychiatry or not.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Eventually they let me go and that night was a turning point for me.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: At that point I'd been sinking and was like shit, if I'm gonna survive the rest of my life, I need to start swimming.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I was a baby adult then.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: I'm being 31.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Now I view anyone 25 under as an absolute child.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And then, just maturity-wise, I was much closer to that of early teenage because of how sheltered I was.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: There's just a lot of processing and self-forgiving that took place over many years.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: So I ended up moving back after spring semester to Omaha.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: I'm a twin and my twin brother is a central piece of my support system, so we developed a twin trauma bond through our childhood and then in early adulthood, with some of the shared experiences that we had and then some of the same struggles with mental health, although he had them earlier than I did, which is to say 18 or 19 versus age of 20 and 20 and past that.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I started seeing a therapist in October of 2011.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Why do I remember that, you ask?
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Because actually it was October 31st, because later that day I smoked weed for the first time ever with my buddy and then we were driving back to his grandparents and I'm like, I am a video game and we watched the first episode of the Walking Dead and I couldn't tell you a single thing.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: That happened because I was so stoned off of this terrible weed.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: So Bridget is the name of my therapist.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I saw her from 2011 up and on up until actually 2020.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And then, with COVID, we switched to telehealth and I just did not care for telehealth.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I most recently got back into therapy about six weeks ago, following the breakup of a long-term partner of almost seven years and then realizing that I had some work to do, still to be the best version of myself.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: But I can be, and that is that I deserve to be in real and present day.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So I would like to start out with saying congratulations on five and a half years of sobriety.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: So congratulations which?
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: So the parts that I'll be unpacking and asking questions with you.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: They may be a little scattered versus the timeline, but you had mentioned a couple of, I think, three different anniversaries.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the sobriety anniversary, the therapist anniversary and then the anniversary of which anniversary is not the right word we'd want to use, but, remembering the day that your attack happened, it reminded me of how a lot of questions that I get asked from listeners is why do we remember those anniversaries and why do they create a hard time for us?
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: And I think that I love that question because I think that everyone has a different answer to it.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: So what I guess my question is to you is what, how do you handle the anniversaries?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: What does it mean to you when you think of June 6.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so from a clinical perspective, when trauma occurs, the higher levels of our brain functioning turn off and so we operate on these really primitive structures and the back of our brain called the hind ring, so you have your amygdala and few other little brain pieces that operate solely on emotion.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: And so when that traumatic event occurs it's processed emotionally but never because the higher processing will shut down.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: It's never, there's never logic or rationality applied to the, the situation that, never applying logic to it, it yields itself to like nightmares, flashbacks reliving the experience, your classic PTSD symptoms.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Because in order to overcome a traumatic event, you have to work through emotionally and then you also have to apply rational human thought to it from that's from a clinical standpoint.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: For me personally, those anniversary dates, they're, they're a blip, that's the word that's coming to mind.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: That's not really the word I'm looking for.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: It's not just like a little speed bump in my journey called life.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: It was a significant life changing event Looking back we mentioned earlier, like the scarlet letter.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: So maybe those days looking back were scarlet days for me and that there was a lot of emotion tied into those significant events.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, I just didn't realize or recognize or couldn't even process.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Just how profoundly those days were altered with the course of my life.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I, because I'm one of those.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I remember dates.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: It took me a little time to get there, but now it's nice on the anniversary to look back at the growth that I've had there.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: The first few years I felt like there wasn't any growth and just this shit I was in.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: But now, like the past few years, like looking back and seeing that growth has been, has been a cool thing.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure you're at a place, or at least getting to a place because I don't want to speak for you or assume, but where you're able to look back on the growth that you've had and getting that control back for yourself.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, I it's.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: I guess it's been over a decade now.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: That's insane.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: To think about this being 11 years, yeah.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: At the same time it feels like it was just yesterday.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: But it was just yesterday and yet it was six lifetimes ago.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: And yes, I often tell people now that had you met me 10 years ago, I was a much different person than I am today.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: I was being raised in a conservative Christian upbringing.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: I was pretty judgmental.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I didn't recognize it at the time.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of stereotypes and biases that I held towards LGBT community, people who are raised in poverty, and it's not like those were intentionally taught to me, but it's just Socially there's these biases that we have and then they're perpetuating over time and generations and unless we stop and check ourselves, then we're never going to be consciously aware that, hey, that's maybe not true or certainly not indicative of reality for most people.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to ask because we didn't mention this in the beginning and you don't have to go into detail with it, but say whatever you want.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Do you mind if I ask what your job is, because I feel as if the job that you have also plays a role in your story.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so currently I am a mental health therapist.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: I have my LMSW, so I'm a licensed master social worker in the state of Iowa and I'm working towards my LII SW, my independent licensure.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: There's supervision and continuing education and all that goes with it.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: I'm actually about a third of the way through right now.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: So I mentioned earlier that Bridget I think I mentioned earlier that Bridget, my old therapist, was a social worker and then that night, when the police came and took me to the hospital, everybody that I met with saved the social worker, just at least.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: At that time it felt to me like they're like I don't know how to react to this this male who I was reporting he was sexually assaulted, and it felt like they were just looking at me differently.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Whether or not that's true, I couldn't tell you.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: I was in a messy headspace, say the least.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: But the social worker, she took her time and between her and Bridget, I'm sure they had absolutely no intentions or ideas at the time, but they ended up altering like what I was going to do for a career and so me becoming a social worker is my way of paying it forward.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, hell yeah.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I'm paying back the help that I received.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Without their help I certainly wouldn't be talking to you now.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: I would honestly probably be dead.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that's such a scary thought, but the fact that you're honest with yourself about that because we need to be right.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I know that the reason I didn't turn to drugs and alcohol and anything I could get my hands on to numb the pain is because of the support system that I had, because of my therapist, because of my family, and absolutely I will give myself credit for that too.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: But when I was at my lowest there were people that were stronger than me, that were able to help pick me up, and so I'm glad your community has you.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: And the reason that I wanted to ask you about your job is because you had made a comment about the guilt and the shame that came with the scarlet letter that came with the sexual assault.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: All of that is victim blaming.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: When we feel those things we shouldn't.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: It makes me so mad and I think we talked about this.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: It makes me so mad when someone hears of a female getting raped and or sexually assaulted in some kind of way and they want to say what was she wearing?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: I don't care.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I went through when my story became public is he's a man.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: You can't rape a man.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: You definitely can't rape a gay man?
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: You can.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: And I had that mindset too of maybe I shouldn't have went to a straight bar, maybe I shouldn't have wore pink pants or what.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I don't think I was wearing pink pants, but just throwing that out there, and it took me a long time to realize I was victim blaming and what that was doing to me and how we say these things that are just implanted into us by society, that is victim blaming.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: And so when you were mentioning those words, I wanted to ask you did it?
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Or I'm sure you did have that moment of realization of I'm blaming myself and I shouldn't?
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: So I won't lie.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Hearing the word victim yeah, so that's my teeth on edge.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: I I hate that word because for a long time afterwards I labeled myself as a victim, and I may have not realized it at that time, but like it absolutely impacted how I viewed myself.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: It impacted my recovery, and certainly not in positive ways, and it wasn't until I changed the label that I used to that I viewed myself as from victim to survivor that growth and healing was really able to take flight.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Other than that it was.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: There was some growth and healing happening, but it was very much crisis intervention.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: So, making sure that we get self harm behaviors under control, making sure that we're not recklessly drunk driving Just, I was in survival mode and so it was basic safety.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: That was all the work that I could do at that point in time, and then changing that label allowed me to start digging deeper and has helped tremendously in getting me where I am today.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: I can remember very clearly, even just a week or two after it happened, my therapist telling me what you just said you're blaming yourself, what happened was not your fault, and so I kept hearing my different supports and telling me this, but I wasn't able to grab ahold of it at that time.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: It just went in one ear and out the other.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I guess another way to put it was I wasn't ready to believe it yet that it wasn't my fault.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: And then, after just hating myself, hating the person, the man that I saw in the mirror when I woke up every day, man, it got to me.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: I just it felt so powerless and it was just miserable.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: It was a miserable fucking way to live, and so I couldn't do it anymore, and so that led to the creation of my first video.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: And yeah, it goes from there.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: As far as how hearing like self-playing statements today impacts me, similar to the word victim, it does set my teeth on edge because I'm like, oh, it's not your fault, I wish you could see that and I hope that someday you do see, and I guess it just really gives me I don't wanna say appreciation, but maybe that is the word I'm looking for it makes me appreciate just how far I've come in my own recovery when talking with people that are whether it be just happened a couple months ago, or maybe it happened decades ago and they've just never worked on it and they've gone through their entire lives where that singular event has more or less shaped their life trajectory.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating, at least to look back and just see the threats from the past leading up to the present of self-blame Somebody who's victimized their self-blame.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: They're probably not going to be as confident, or as a sort of which, in turn, probably impacts the job that they're going to have, which in turn impacts their socioeconomic status.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: If you were raised in poverty, you're more likely to continue raising your own children in poverty, and it just goes on and on and just perpetuates this endless cycle of discrimination and an inadvertent oppression that we have in the United States.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: And it's not until we can break off one of the sides of that cycle or circle, rather, that we can stop that from just continuing.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: What I do find common with a lot of survivors is and guest on the show is how upsetting that word victim can be.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: And I went through a phase two where, especially in the beginning, where I was like I'm nobody's victim and hated that word, but then I realized that work can mean completely different things.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I was a victim of something horrific and I can't take away from that, but what I did with it is what is making me a survivor.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: But so many people will use the word victim and a lot of people will have a victim mentality that brings stigma to that word victim and then we end up who have been true victims of something horrific end up feeling uncomfortable or angered by that word.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: So we've got to do the hard work and we've got to talk about the hard things, because not doing it is why we're victim blaming.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Not doing it is why there's so many people out on the street doing the shit and not to justify this for the attackers.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: But I don't think anyone wakes up and says I'm gonna go be mean to a gay guy and kill a gay guy, or I'm gonna go rape a girl, I'm gonna go hurt a child.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: I think that there's so much generational abuse in places that society has failed us, that has led us to that.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: I say that I really hate that word victim, but if I take a step back and from my initial gut like flinching, nasty word, there's really no other word that I could think of to use to describe my mindset with Tatton, I was very much victimized and part of again, this is my own definition of victim.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: As you said, part of being a victim is that feeling of helplessness, powerlessness, like you're not able to move forward, to change, to grow from that event and then, whereas survivor is more, has more positive connotation.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: So, while I was a victim, I have survived and am surviving and someday I hope to be able to label myself as a threat, somebody who has gone through all the stages of grief in whatever way, shape or form they may look, somebody who has put in the work, somebody who can not I guess on some level maybe this is another real way but not see any of those lasting impacts which they any trauma like to leave with a person to be normal.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: But then what is normal?
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So another question that I had that I would love to get your thoughts on is the word grooming.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: You had mentioned you being groomed and as I do these interviews, I try to think of questions.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: People have asked me my thoughts on things, and it's not that there's necessarily a right or wrong in a lot of these cases.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: And so when you mentioned grooming, one of the questions that really stands out to me the most when people write in is how do I know if I'm being groomed?
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: How can I tell if my daughter is being groomed by somebody?
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: So can we talk about grooming and you don't have to go into detail if you don't want to, about the ways that you were being groomed but so, even if you're speaking just from your career path and education, however, you're comfortable doing it.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: But can we talk about signs of grooming and what that means?
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so from a more clinical background, grooming is a term used to define the process where one individual uses their power and control over another person.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: So we'll just give the example of child sexual abuse.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: If it's an adult that is the perpetrator versus a child, there's a huge power differential there between age, ability to communicate, ability to rationalize.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Just the difference between an adult and child is wild and where the grooming like basically desensitizing, like the child to more predatory behaviors.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: So, for example, it may just say they're sitting on the couch together, maybe put an arm around their shoulders and then from the next time maybe put like a hand on their knee and then just like slowly work their way up.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: And then there's also a sense of specialness to the relationship.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: That's something that is we'll often see Like what you and I share as specials.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Don't tell anyone about it so reinforcing that secrecy.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Or on the other side, they may threaten if you tell anyone about this, I'm going to hurt your sibling, hurt your mom, hurt your dad, whatever.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: And so it's just that terroristic use of power and control against somebody that has less than they do.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: In my case I can look back and clearly see that desensitization.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: There was no threats, nor did he ever outright say hey, don't tell anyone about this, but it was definitely more implied I know what we have going on.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: That's something that not everybody needs to know about.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: And I'm just sorry.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I hate that people are assholes and I know that statement's not big and powerful enough, but it just breaks my heart.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: But luckily you are doing the work.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of us out there doing the work to overcome this.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: There was another statement that you had made.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Actually, no, let me backtrack a bit and actually let me say on the word grooming, you had mentioned grooming with a sexual assault situation.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: One of the abuses that you went through, some of the trauma that you have is based on religion.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: So can we talk a little bit about religious grooming and what that meant to you or means?
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a different flavor.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: That's the only way I can think of you describe it.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: So there's never any outright hey, don't talk about this.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: It was implied in sermons, even like interactions with parents.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Whether or not that was their intention I can't say, but that was the message that I was left with that we are the only one true way and everybody else is going to hell.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: And what a terrible thing to tell a child All of your friends that aren't in this religion are going to hell because they're not in the religion.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: That's so isolating, and oh, that's another aspect of grooming is the isolation piece of it From a religious standpoint.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: The church services are always 99% of the time was very small, maybe 30 to 50 people at absolute most.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: And then there's church conventions that we went to, or sometimes there was several hundred people, upwards of 1,000.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: That only lasted a couple of days at a time and then everybody went home and back to their regular meetings.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: So it's different for me religiously and that there was never a specific perpetrator of the grooming, but it was systematically applied, which, holy shit.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever thought of that before until you just started talking about this, but I'm going to have to share that with some people.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: That was actually the word I was going to use with it that I have been, I've had several people on the show that has talked about there was somewhere in legit cult.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Some think Christianity is a cult altogether, whatever your belief is.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: but the whole systematic that's the beauty of therapy is that you have.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Obviously I would consider you a friend, but we've never met in person, just virtually.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: So while we have similar shared experiences, we don't have the exact same experiences.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: So in your story I am able to be more objective, and vice versa.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: So yeah, thanks for pointing that out.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you that question.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know when I would have had the opportunity to sit down and think about it Before we move to a different-ish topic that you said that I would love to touch on is you were talking about sinking and feeling like you were sinking and how you were going to have to learn to swim, and it reminded me of something that I've always said, that I've heard so many people say I'm not the brilliant creative, but it was just an impactful thing that stayed with me, but it's that you have to hit rock bottom to know which way is up.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: And I got to that point in my trauma as well, where I was doing risque things.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I didn't care anymore.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I was down to 98 pounds, disgustingly little and fragile, from depression and just trying to figure out this whole new David and Pac, and that was my rock bottom.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: And I remember that moment of.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I remember the first time I laughed and I was like it just feels so good to feel good again and I didn't want to lose that, but it was something so small that I was laughing at, because we forget the small things along the way.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: And so, finally, when I hit that rock bottom, it was like I didn't choose this path that I was on, but I can drive the car, I can take the wheel and that's when things started going definitely going better for me.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: So when you made that comment of sinking and needing to float, can we talk about the meaning of that behind it to you?
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I felt like there was something with that.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: So whenever I use that phrase, these lyrics pop into my head.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: I'm a huge metalhead, because there's just so many underlying fields in the music that other people don't recognize and the larynx goes I can't drown my demons because they know how to swim, and for a long time I tried drowning my demons, if you will, metaphorically speaking.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Substances, sex, super risky behaviors yeah.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: And so that would have been August, september 2012, when I had that initial hang.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: I need to stop sinking and start swimming.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I had that initial realization, but I know now that recovery is not linear.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I started swimming for maybe a year or so, maybe more, and then something happens, steps me back, and then I swim my way back up to the surface and start swimming for sure again, and I don't know if I guess I really don't know what shore looks like.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'll know it when I get there, but I still feel like I'm swimming.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was well just trying to become the more stable, better comforting I'm not sure all the adjectives here.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: As you're swimming, you're getting stronger, your body's getting stronger, your mind's getting stronger.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Like I want to swim.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I want to be a swimmer and I want to be okay when I'm just going to roll over on my back and just float for a little bit and rest my mind and my soul.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I want that to be okay too.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: What's not okay is the drowning In the beginning we talked about.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: You went through sexual assault trauma.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: You've been through religious trauma.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: What I would love for us to spend some time talking about that I think is going to have I know for sure you're going to have such a brilliant message to give is the impact of trauma.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: There's the saying that I feel sums it up pretty succinctly for people and what's another word for her?
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Traumatized people, her people.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: So traumatized people traumatize others, and for me there's most definitely a cumulative impact of trauma in my story and it's only been honestly within the last maybe years or so that I've been able to recognize that and be okay with it.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of research that shows that trauma begets trauma.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: So if you're a parent who has been physically, emotionally, sexually abused, what have you?
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Your descendants are more likely to experience similar types of abuse.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: So not only does it prime you for more abuse later on in life, but it carries over generationally, and that's that's again part of that cycle that we do and I are working on breaking, and the only way to break it is to have these conversations to one even be aware that it exists and then getting accurate information out there.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: So education, education and advocacy at the end of the day, that's what any social problem boils down to.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: At its core is, in terms of changing it awareness and accurate info.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: I think men have the biggest acknowledging it, accepting it, getting the treatment for it, because of the stigma and everything that goes along with it.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Women are just now getting it in recent 20 years or so, getting to a place where they're believed and they're heard and they can talk about it, but it's so hard as hell.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: It's not that it's easier for them to do it at all, but but it's getting to a place and is at a place that is a little bit more accepted and believed versus men.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Like we were not there with the men yet when I came across you and your platform and what you're doing and how you share those raw, bare, naked truth moments, and I don't think anyone could look at you and say that you're not a man because of that, and so I really admire that you are doing what you're doing.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: And so what can we do to get men to accept?
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: And do you find, especially in your line of work?
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Do you find where the fathers are more hesitant on things?
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: What can we do, dan?
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: That's a loaded question.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: There's so many.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: There's so many layers to it.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: That just makes me think of intersectionality and how even veins are just like onions.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: We have all these different layers that shape up and make who we are as a person.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: On.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Those different layers impact how our life experiences play out in the broader culture.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: The biggest thing that I do on a daily basis when I meet with might be a father who recently learned that their child was abused, or it might just be, you know, a dude that has gone through a really hard time at work, or it has a lot of life stress going on at home.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: That's normalizing it Like hey, my preferred way to say it is one another secret.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: And then typically just look at me and they're like sure, there is not a goddamn person on this planet that is Superman or superwoman, and that includes you.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: So normalizing that, hey, nobody can do this on their own and it's foolish to think that we are strong enough to do it on our own.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: But we're given that subliminal messaging just through gender roles, expectations on a societal level that make men feel like, hey, I can't share my feelings.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: If I do that, I am less than somebody else who doesn't share their feelings.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: If cultural expectations were true, like every male would be a robot incapable of feeling emotion, experiencing joy.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Emotion is what brings color to this life.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's good emotions and bad emotions, but now, without the bad times, we wouldn't appreciate good times.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: And without good times as something to remind ourselves, hey, let's get back to this.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: For struggling, somebody might just give up.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Emotions are a normal part of being alive and we have to normalize.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: That feeling is okay and, more importantly, what is sharing what you're feeling is okay?
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Because, yeah, keep it all inside and it bottles up and you either implode and self-destruct or you explode and hurt others.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Either way, you either hurt yourself or you hurt others, and more often than not, it's both.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: So hurt people.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I always like to end on something good and uplifting, because we do.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: We talk about a lot of heavy shed, so let's end with let's talk about your plans and your goals, as your platforms are growing, with you finding this niche that you've come across with, speaking of mental health.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: What are your goals and hopes and dreams with it?
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I am honored to be a part of this broader movement of society to normalize you know, talking about trauma, talking about emotions, normalizing mental health and all of its aspects.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: They say that one in every two American adults struggles with depression or anxiety at some point in time.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: I then say that statistic is bullshit and it's much closer to probably 85, 90 percent and that remaining 10 percent.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: They probably just don't recognize it or they don't want to admit it to themselves.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: So my long-term goals are to continue to provide education, because education was such a huge piece of my recovery and learning that there are more than just two trauma responses, for example, fight or flight.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: You know, there's a couple others like that.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Getting that information was helped me to shift my mindset over a particular hurdle that I was struggling to climb over on my own personal recovery, like, at the end of the day, knowledge is power and connection is power.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: So I am regaining my power every day and my ultimate dream and goal would be to do like public speaking or some sort of advocacy, education or, as a full-time job, using my website as a platform.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: Will I ever get there, who knows?
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: But you know what, if I don't, that's okay too, because I've had so many amazing experiences on the time that I've started.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: We are not powerless, this just being one of dozens, and had I not gone through this terrible event, I never would have had the opportunity to share and network and connect with others that have gone through similar experiences and learn from them.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: So I guess I want to help people regain their power, reclaim their power.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for being here.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: I love the topics that we discussed and I love the fact that this will be an ongoing conversation.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Like you're definitely going to be back, I'm going to continue to follow you.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: I think we may.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I think we talked about maybe trying to do some lives or something together, so we've got some cool things in store.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Of course, I will share all of your information on the promos and everything your websites, but can you tell everybody where they can find you on TikTok or whatever platform you want to share?
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram at we're Not Powerless, and then there's my website, we're Not Powerlesscom, and on TikTok it's Caleb buyers-1 is my handle, and then you will see in that handle my little blurb we'renotpowerlesscom.