Real Men Hug Episode 3

Jim: [00:00:00] Welcome to real men hug a podcast for men and the women who love them. I'm Jim 

Ben: and I'm Ben. 

Jim: Last week, I had a chance to dive into my story a little bit and it was. A lot more difficult than I thought it was going to be this, the whole podcast idea. People are out here listening to this. That's a new concept to me.

And it's not lost on me that a whole lot of people could listen to this anxiety. Sweats, whatever you want to call it. It's, it's not easy to wade through that stuff, but I do it because I want to help people. Yes, but it's real. This is my life. And that's, it's something that I've had to process and wade through.

And it's like reliving a lot of this stuff over again. 

Ben: Yeah, 

I can feel that. As you were telling the story of the dog and the VCR, first of all, I kind of [00:01:00] chuckled to myself a little bit as I heard the story, because it is kind of funny. 

Jim: How dare you,

Ben: but I could totally see myself in your shoes having a similar experience and I think that's what caused me to chuckle.

Then you talked about how traumatic that was and how that moment was like it sealed your destiny almost for your siblings in a really weird and powerful way. That was likely unexpected. I think we each have those memories that taunt us. 

Jim: Of course it brought up all of this anxiety for me and I had to relive some of these moments.

So I thought, why not do an entire episode on childhood trauma? It seems like a good idea, right? We're diving into this just because it's so important and I think a lot of people, when you're trying to figure out what's going on in your life, why you act a certain way, where your anxieties come from, it's that old adage, right?

The [00:02:00] counselor always starts talking about like your mother or your father and the role that they had in your life. It's sort of when you look at the old sitcoms or whatever, it keeps coming up as a joke. There's a stark reality to that. When you stop and think about why things bother you, why things give you anxiety, why you're depressed, it almost always goes back to your family of origin and childhood trauma.

Ben: I happen 

to live with three people who have experienced some significant trauma in their lives. Of course, my wife, who grew up in a very dysfunctional home, her biological mother did not make raising her children her priority. Raising her kids was the lowest priority on her list. So Andy essentially became the mother figure for her two siblings, which is devastating.

Jim: It sounds like Andy's mom was [00:03:00] more interested in other things than raising her kids. 

Ben: Yes, a hundred percent. My wife is incredible and has risen above that upbringing, but she didn't have anybody to teach her about finances or to teach her about what it means to be an adult. She didn't have anybody to teach her or talk to her.

On the level that she needed about any subject material. She had to figure it out for herself. So that's my wife. And then I have two kids that we adopted and they both came from the foster care system, which essentially means they're biological parents. were unable to be the parental resources that they needed.

That's probably the most traumatic thing that somebody can go through is that separation from your birth parents. Separation from the very woman [00:04:00] who birthed you. It's a wound that honestly I don't think ever Truly heals this side of heaven. And that's what my kids walk around with every day. So when we talk about generational trauma, that's my life.

Jim: I think it's great that you're here though, Ben, because that is a story that doesn't often get told. I think now is probably a good time to do our disclaimer. If you haven't already guessed, we are going to be diving in a lot of childhood trauma right now. These are. Tough things to talk about it's important to say that we've been given permission to tell these stories We're gonna be talking about whether it's a wife or a kid.

It's another heavy episode 

Ben: We have gotten 

deep on our first two episodes. It's just feeling like we're jumping into the deep end. 

Jim: Yeah 

suicidal ideation divorce childhood trauma [00:05:00]

Ben: I think we need to talk about puppies on episode five, because things are getting pretty serious around here. 

Jim: I have a dog at home I would love to talk about.

Keanu Ruffs is the name of my dog. I named him after Keanu Reeves and he is the cutest cockapoo on the planet. I love that dog so much. 

Ben: Another suggestion for a light hearted episode in the future. You like dungeons and dragons, correct? 

I am a D& D nerd, sure am. I even paint the miniatures. 

Wow. It's even nerdier than I thought it was.

Jim: Oh, it gets nerdier. I even go to Renaissance fairs and dress up, Ben. 

Ben: You're kidding.

Jim: Did you know this? 

Ben: I did not. 

Jim: With my adult siblings. Oh yeah. Minnesota was the last one we went to. I have a sword that is a replica of the sword from princess bride that the dread pirate Roberts wears. I got the whole, the whole costume.

I get. All sorts of [00:06:00] compliments, and people always want me to quote the movie. 

Ben: This must be like an adult gym phenomenon, because I have no recollection of you in college being The least bit nerdy. Correct me if I'm wrong. 

Jim: I had already played Dungeons and Dragons by the time that you had met me, but it is a relatively new phenomenon that I started doing it with my brothers after I came back from South Carolina.

Talked about that. A little bit in episode two and actually my, my brother who hugged me like a stiff board, he, I think he just realized like I really needed a social gathering space. And so he actually decided to host a dungeons and dragons thing with my adult brothers. I have three brothers and we meet.

Weekly to bi weekly to sit down and play Dungeons and Dragons together. And it's phenomenal. You talked about unpacking the, the word [00:07:00] sensitive. I think nerd is another one too, that who cares? Like if you're having fun playing Dungeons and Dragons, painting miniatures and going to Renaissance fairs, have at it, you have to have something that.

Brings you joy and just a hobby. Yeah. I think there's this, I don't know. I think there's this societal pressure that your hobby has to somehow be productive, but I think it's productive if it's helping your mental health. My wife is very much that way where her hobbies include baking, cooking, and canning jam.

Candied jalapenos, things like that. That's what she likes to do, but then she has a product and an end result of her hobby. But that's just, that's honestly part of her childhood trauma. I think that she feels like she [00:08:00] has to be doing something productive. 

Ben: Hearing your comment about her trauma experience. That makes a lot of sense. What's Melissa's story? 

Jim: A huge part of who she is, is because of childhood trauma, she is a product of how she was raised and so much of who she is, I think, stems from that. And so you can't ignore it when it, when it comes to all of that. And really for me to do the story justice, you can even go.

A step further, right? When you go back and you look at Melissa's grandparents, I think that shaped Melissa's mom to be the mother that she was, which in turn has now shaped Melissa good and bad to be the mother that she is. I've seen that in my grandparents as well, both on my side of the family and on Melissa's side of the family, that [00:09:00] it seems like there was this different.

Set of priorities, right? Yeah. Kids were to be seen, not heard. Women were supposed to do all of the work. You don't talk about your feelings. You certainly don't talk about money. And then that generation is raising this. It's new generation of kids that don't know anything about money or their feelings, and they have kind of been put on the back burner of life.

I love all of my grandparents present and deceased. I had fantastic grandparents, love them all. 

Ben: Do you still have living grandparents? 

Jim: I have a living grandparent. My. My wife's grandmother is still alive and I actually talk to her most days.

Ben: That's amazing. 

Jim: Not over the phone. There's a, [00:10:00] an app called Marco Polo.

It's, it's kind of like text messaging, only it's video based. So you can send a clip of a video and then the person can watch and respond to it at their leisure. Hmm. I love it. It's, it's great because I don't always have time to chat necessarily. It's just easy to do when you've got a minute. She lost her husband a few years back and I had seen that she got on Marco Polo and I thought, you know, I'll just send her a nice message and just to say like, Hey, welcome to the platform or whatever.

And. The response that I got was just so much gratitude just for saying hello that I thought to myself, I can't not respond to grandma. What I thought was going to be just this one off thing turned into a near daily conversation that I have with Melissa's grandmother. 

Ben: That is fantastic. The thought of you doing that for Melissa's grandma [00:11:00] just makes me smile.

Jim: She makes me smile. She's a great lady. Interestingly, Melissa's grandmother actually grew up with a disability, which I think kind of shaped how she raised her own daughter. Melissa's mom, Melissa's mom's dad was a truck driver and he was gone all the time. Mom was home, but disabled. And so, so she's grown up with this.

Mentality of grin and bear it. You just have to do things. Don't complain, get stuff done. So already I think there's that sort of generational leaning towards not talking about feelings, but man, imagine growing up with a disability. Now it's like you don't talk about it. You just move on with your life.

And so I suspect that there, there wasn't a whole lot of attention given in that regard, and probably a lot of expectation as [00:12:00] well. Like you're, you're a woman in this household. I expect you to do work. This is something I haven't talked with my mother in law. About a whole lot, which I guess we can get into a little bit later, but I suspect it wasn't super easy for her growing up.

And so my theory anyways is that there was some rebellion there. When you're forced into responsibility at such a young age, you kind of want to do your own thing. So she ends up pregnant at 14 years old. Kid at 15 and then married at 16. So just a lot, a lot all at once, right? You're forced into responsibility and God bless her for, you know, keeping her kid and raising her and doing her thing.

And that, that would be Melissa's older brother. Um, was the firstborn, she didn't really get to have those teenage years. [00:13:00] And so I think she kind of got locked into that phase of her life because she felt like she was robbed of some of that stuff. And then just like there's sort of that expectation in her family that the women are supposed to be the ones that do the stuff around the house.

It didn't feel like a mother daughter relationship. It very much felt more almost like co parenting, if you will, or just parenting mom wasn't around. She was off doing her own thing. Sometimes it might've been work, but a lot of times it wasn't. And Melissa was left to fend for herself. She grew up in a family where she really, she was the oldest female.

She raised her younger brother. She was the one who was cooking his meals and getting them ready for school and wiping his butt and exactly all of that stuff that she was doing. That family system was so fragmented because her siblings are [00:14:00] actually all half siblings. All of them have different fathers, but they grew up, you know, raised by Melissa's mother, her siblings were treated differently than her.

And unfortunately, sometimes some of the like bullying behavior or neglect from siblings. Sometimes there was behavior that mom really should have come along and said, Hey, that's not okay. Right. And it just kind of got ignored because you just have to deal with it. Right. That's, that's life for you. It's not easy.

And I think along the way to, unfortunately, Melissa observed a lot of self destructive behaviors. Uh, as a kid that really scarred her and pushed her towards, I want to make sure that I am not like that when I grow up. So mom was very absent, you know, down to even like permission slips needed to get signed and just, well, Melissa is forging her [00:15:00] permission slips or just not getting the permission slip signed.

There was definitely a financial aspect there too. They grew up with not a ton of money. So sometimes I think there are things that you just had to pass on because you just had to. But then there are times where it's just, you have to sign this slip and it wasn't happening because for whatever reason, she wasn't being seen or prioritized.

Like you said. 

Ben: It's so sad when those seemingly so basic expectations, like the lowest bar possible for parents, sign a freaking permission slip. It's so hard to hear stories of kids who grew up where that was like the highest level that their parents could aspire to was signing a slip. 

Jim: A couple other things that she had to go through is waking up in the middle of the night, having to pack up and really, yep.

And 

Ben: because there was some criminal [00:16:00] activity happening or, 

Jim: so again, you'll have to forgive that this is Melissa's story and not mine for what, from what I recall, I believe it was just nonpayment for a lease or something like that. With the, either the boyfriend or maybe it was the husband at the time and they just, they didn't have the money.

And so they had to pack up and leave at the middle of the night. And they're in a small car with all the kids and the adults and all the stuff, you know, imagine one of those like old geo Metro style cars. And actually Melissa had mentioned she had a bike that got left and they pack up and they all take the 40 hour.

Car rider, however long it was to Texas and just sort of left everything that, you know, in the middle of the night, it gets worse. I mean, even after all of that, Melissa doesn't know her dad. 

Ben: That is such a crazy. Crazy [00:17:00] concept. Wow. 

Jim: She doesn't know who her dad is. So that was part of her upbringing too. Is it's, it's just her mom who to her felt very absent, very irresponsible.

It's a miracle that Melissa is even still alive. I don't think she realized how dangerous it was that she was wandering through the sewers of Texas. They would pop out. In the middle of the city, miles from where they had started. Cause they'd just been wandering now. I don't know how much this, maybe that's the first that mom's hearing about some of this stuff, but there just wasn't a lot of supervision.

And unfortunately there wasn't a lot of pushback. I mentioned some of that bullying behavior from siblings, but honestly, the worst of it was how she was treated by some of the boyfriends or husbands at the time. There was, there was some mental abuse for sure. You can debate about whether or not spanking is okay or not, but it gets to a point where the power behind that stroke is [00:18:00] just straight up abuse, especially when it comes from place of anger.

And it's not even corrective anymore. And that was happening. This is something that I'll never forget Melissa telling me because I just couldn't believe it. There was a point where something happened where one of these guys got so upset with Melissa that he went to Punch her in the face and were it not for the fact that she dodged out of the way, I don't know what would have happened because he literally broke his hand punching the wall behind her.

That's how hard he went to punch this little girl in the face. 

Ben: Listening to you tell that story. I don't have a whole lot of grace for that dude who punched the wall, but as I sit here and think about the show we're doing right now, perhaps. Um, even he had his own childhood trauma and the cycle of [00:19:00] abuse repeats itself.

If you are the victim of a form of abuse, you are at an increased risk of being a perpetrator yourself. It's just the way that abuse works. 

Jim: And that victim abuser. Codependency, Melissa was just as mad at her mother, if not more for staying with a guy, right? That would be okay with that. But you do have to give some grace to that person in that position.

You have to consider The position that you're in, because that's such a common story, isn't it? That somebody, they know that it's not a great situation, but sometimes people will continue to come back to an abuser. There's a psychology behind that, that I know that Melissa's mother loved her then and loves her now.

She, she wanted the best for her, but she just made a lot of poor decisions along the way. And she was a teenager. She [00:20:00] was. She was trying to figure out how to be an adult herself and now she has to raise these kids along the way and so it almost attracts some of these Nefarious people in your life that how do you get out of that system?

That's what I mean When I talk about how it's shaped Melissa to be who she is, because there was this huge. I don't want to be like my mother push, but I think there also was a part of her that really felt like she needed to earn love. And so that's where some of her perfectionism came through. That's where some anxiety disorders came through.

Body dysmorphia and eating disorders came through some of that. The OCD, I think she's gotten better over time, but a huge part of who she [00:21:00] is is if I can control Everything in my life, then I can avoid anything like this happening again. If I am a straight a student, if I volunteer, if I go to church, if I do all of the right things, then I won't end up like my mother.

Ben: It's a noble pursuit to not be like her mother. But, I've seen this in Andy too, sometimes that effort to be the best, to be perfect, it serves as vindication. Instead of trying to be perfect or trying to do your absolute best at everything because you find great satisfaction from doing that, it's almost as if they do those things to prove once and for all that I am not like my mother.

I just feel bad that Their pursuits so often [00:22:00] have more to do with differentiating themselves from Their mothers than it does about their desire for personal growth. Does that make sense? 

Jim: Yeah. Is it for me or is it because of that person? 

Ben: It's a burden enough to have that pressure to be perfect, but to add the layer of having to be perfect because you have to prove something, it's got to be exhausting.

Jim: Sure. There's nothing wrong with being high achieving, but when you. Hang the hook of your identity on being perfect. It's unattainable. So unfortunately when it comes to. Mothering our kids, some of those behaviors kind of seeped through the cracks. Melissa is a great mother. Don't get me wrong. She is phenomenal.

She does not give herself enough credit, but one [00:23:00] of the ways. That her childhood is being mirrored in how she raises our kids is yelling. Yep. When my kids aren't listening, you yell. She learned that from childhood. When you don't listen, you get yelled at. It was modeled to her and it was the one thing that I think just caught her off guard that she wasn't prepared for when you have those kids.

I mentioned at the top of the episode that you have these things that go back to childhood trauma. Melissa's yelling is an echo of her childhood, and we've had to process through this and, you know, tearfully, she has talked about how. Upset she is that she does these things, but you, nobody's perfect and all you can do is your best.

Ben: And when that is your [00:24:00] growing up experience, that is how your brain was wired like trauma. rewires your brain in such a way that when you encounter a situation that makes you feel something akin to what you felt as a child, it might even be the smallest little thing. Like Maybe it's a smell in a room and suddenly it just takes you back to that trauma and suddenly you start yelling at your kids or suddenly you're just super anxious and having just a terrible time.

Those triggers, it's so hard to see because our wives do want to do better, but when that's how your brain has been programmed and the littlest thing can snap you back to that trauma. Of course, that's going to be your go to response. [00:25:00] As you said, nobody's perfect. I would take it a step further and say, yeah, nobody's perfect because nobody has perfect wiring in their brain when they're dealing with trauma.

Like, there are neurological things that shift and change. In your brain, when you face a traumatic event and how you respond to that traumatic event informs how you're going to respond to similar stressors, and it's just so painful to watch 

Jim: my wife is way too hard on herself. She. Is such a phenomenal mother, but she can only focus on her failures.

Yes, we do that. All of us do. Don't we, you miss all of the victories that you have. Our kids have a better childhood than either of us ever did. 

Ben: That's a [00:26:00] huge win for you. It's a huge win for your wife. It's a huge win for your kids. They won't have to go through that experience of what you and Melissa had to walk through. 

Jim: I'm really interested to know because you have a very unique position that you are stepping into somebody else's childhood trauma. You've got a daughter who had preexisting trauma that you literally adopted. I'm curious as a dad how you've had to process these things.

But Um, Yeah. I think our listeners would really benefit from hearing this story and how it's impacted your daughter and how it's impacted you as a father. 

Ben: She certainly did have some incredibly traumatic things happen in her past that were unfair and that should have never happened. My wife and [00:27:00] I also have an adopted son who, though different circumstances, at the end of the day, he too should have had the opportunity to grow up with his birth family.

But he didn't. So when you have trauma in your life, it just adds this burden that each of my kids carry with them. The most traumatic thing that can happen to a child is to be removed from their homes, to be uprooted from their family system, to be taken from everything that they know. So my experience as a father, it's loaded because At the end of the day, I live with the reality that my kids shouldn't be my kids.

They should be with their biological families, and ultimately they would [00:28:00] be better off with their biological families, but there's a big if here if their biological parents were capable of taking care of them, but they weren't. 

Jim: That's so tough for me even to hear that your kids were put in that position and even to hear you talk about that.

I don't think I've ever heard somebody say it quite like that before that they shouldn't be with me. They should be with their biological family. Yeah, but there's a big if there is or a big, but depending on how you want to say it, they are lucky to have you as a dad. 

Ben: It's been difficult. I would caution anybody who hears about the beauty of adoption and foster care.

It's not all sunshine and roses. It is a daily exposure to trauma. It's [00:29:00] a daily exposure and a daily walking alongside of kids who didn't get what they needed at the most crucial time in their life. And that's the reality that I walk with every day with my kids. Are they lucky to have me? I can argue that.

I can see why people say that. But at the end of the day, I feel like I'm the lucky one. Each day I get to see two kids who, despite being ripped from their families of origin, are finding a way to morph their identity. They're finding ways to develop their passions and their interests. And at the end of the day, they're finding their own way into identifying with my wife and I as their parents.

So I'm the lucky one here. 

Jim: I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. I love that you are highlighting the resilience of your kids, and I think that is [00:30:00] Absolutely true, and it is amazing to be able to celebrate that with them, but you are providing the environment that allows them to thrive. But I am telling you, Ben, having a parent like you is a great leg up in that process.

A parent that cares, a parent that listens, a parent that's involved and just shows up on a regular basis. I have. Taken a backseat a little bit to some of what you've been through, but yeah, I just think you're selling yourself a little bit short for just showing up and being there. It might've felt like a failure in the moment, but that you're still around and haven't just abandoned these kids to the roadside.

It's why they're doing as well as they are because, because of you, because of Andy and. And the trauma that you have overcome in your own life so that you can help them overcome theirs. 

Ben: That's good perspective because [00:31:00] frankly, it's exhausting raising kids from the foster care system, but it's also. The most beautiful, redemptive thing I've ever done.

And so as we talk about childhood trauma, that's my daughter's story. And I'm going to focus on her because it's just so relevant to today's episode. And again, I want to be really sensitive and this is her story and not mine. Just a few bullet points so you can understand how amazing my daughter is. She was taken into foster care with her brother at a young age because their mom had some criminal activity she was involved in.

There was some drug use potentially. It was not a safe environment for children to be growing up. She spent some time bouncing around some foster families. She landed with an auntie, she chose to adopt my daughter [00:32:00] and her biological brother, but over time grew a sense of resentment against my daughter and that resentment caused this woman to lie and to make up stories about my daughter that were just blatant outright lies, lies that That really can mess a person up for life.

You were talking about punishment. My daughter's auntie who adopted her just did terrible things as punishment and things that my daughter is still sorting through and dealing with triggers from. That was her reality. So imagine being in a situation where you are [00:33:00] adopted by this person who's like an anti figure to you.

You feel like you can breathe at least a little bit. You feel like there's some stability, like you know what to expect, like you're not just bouncing around home to home to home. But then imagine that, that auntie suddenly starts favoring your brother. over you and starts making up lies and all kinds of crazy things and is abusive to you and yet continues to love your brother.

And that's my daughter's reality. It was heartbreaking. So, my daughter ultimately was not wanted by her auntie. Her auntie reached a point where she had no desire to parent my daughter anymore. And so, somehow, through a colossal failure of the justice system, she was able [00:34:00] to go to the courts and petition to have her parental rights.

Typically when that happens, you surrender your rights to all children, but somehow in this instance Because of the lies she spun and the story that was twisted about my daughter, she was able to relinquish rights to just my daughter. 

Jim: That doesn't even seem like It should be legal or allowed. How does that happen?

Ben: Again, a lot of it has to do with the stories that were spun about things that my daughter apparently did that never happened. She was accused of a level of depravity that would cause the courts to. Raise an eyebrow and think, Oh, well, if that's the case, then yeah, that this isn't good. 

Jim: So the lies led the court to believe that auntie was unsafe if she had your daughter in her house 

Ben: or that the brother was unsafe.

Yeah, absolutely. 

Jim: [00:35:00] Unbelievable. 

Ben: And that led to a repeat trauma. My daughter had already experienced this from her birth mom being ripped from her birth mom. 

Jim: So does she not get to see her brother anymore then? Yep. Yep.

Ben: No, he is no longer in the auntie's custody either. And we've been trying to locate him.

Last we heard, he's not doing well and he was in a group home. 

Jim: How old were they when this happened? 

Ben: My daughter was eight when she came to us. And her brother, I think, was probably a few years younger. 

Jim: So she has this memory of her five year old brother. That she never got to see again. Because of these lies. Yeah. Talk about childhood trauma. She's got a brother out there that could be within arm's reach that she just can't even find. 

Ben: Because [00:36:00] of the trauma she endured and the repeat traumatic separation from the person who's supposed to care about you and be your mother figure, it's She experienced that pain twice.

When that happens, there are so many things that trigger you and set you off. And that's my daughter's story. She had a lot of anger. Again, it's her story and not mine to tell. But we've been in places, we've been in courts, we've been in facilities, that the majority of parents will never have to enter.

We've been in those places with our daughter. 

Jim: Did you know that these lies were lies when you started that process of bringing her into your family or were you blind to that at the time? 

Ben: We had the documentation of the lies that were told and our case workers said, we don't [00:37:00] have anything to really justify this or prove that this is accurate, but this is what's on file. They called it a full disclosure meeting. So, yeah, it was brought to our attention that this was reported, but the source is not reputable. My daughter was eight when she came to us. That's eight years of instability, trauma upon trauma upon trauma, rejection, separated. So we've been through it with her.

Jim: You've talked about your daughter's resilience. How is she recovering from this childhood trauma? How is she having victory over that? Trauma today as a teenager. 

Ben: She's 15. She every Sunday lately is helping with the kids program at church. She has such a heart for kids because she knows what it's like to not have anybody in her corner.[00:38:00]

And so she's just naturally gravitated to the kids in our church, many of whom come from similar backgrounds. We really felt like we needed to be in a church community that represented her culture.

She's black, we're white. Uh we wanted to be in a faith community that valued adoption and foster care and made that a priority. And so that's where we started going and my daughter started getting plugged in to the children's ministry and helping out there and she's like reached almost an assistant director level.

It's just crazy to see. 

Jim: Phenomenal. 

Ben: And she does that because she wants kids to know how deeply they are loved and how they're seen and how they do matter. No matter what they experience, when they go home, they can come to church on Sundays and my daughter's going to be there to meet them. [00:39:00] That's huge.

That's amazing. And she also is an incredible dancer. So gifted. And there's this old nineties worship song. Uh, one of the lines is dancers who dance upon injustice. And every time I hear that song, I just think of my daughter. Her first eight years were nothing but injustice and trauma and she dances. She dances on injustice.

She has not allowed that trauma and darkness to envelop her. She has found ways to cope. She has plugged herself into an incredible dance community. She surrounded herself with amazing people at church. She has opened herself up. She shouldn't have the capacity to open her heart like that because of everything she went through, [00:40:00] but she does.

Jim: It's interesting to me that a big part of her healing process has actually been being vulnerable with other people and helping other people. And the church. It sounds like, am I wrong? Like it sounds like the church has been a huge part of 

Ben: her. It has been. Yeah. 

Jim: So we always add this caveat, like if you're not a 

church goer, that's okay.

But I think what we're trying to say here for us, that's been a big part of our journey for your daughter. It's been a big part of the journey, but I think being a part of a community that accepts you is a big part of healing from that trauma. It is whether that's church or a running club or, uh, Dungeons and Dragons group, you know, whatever, whatever that is, you have to find a community.

Ben: Yeah. Find your people. 

And as I share my daughter's story, I think of all the [00:41:00] friends that she's made who come from similar backgrounds. So I think the, the worst thing that can possibly happen. When addressing generational trauma would be to continue that trend of isolation, of feeling like you're the only one who went through that and nobody can understand me because of the pain I went through.

Like, that would be the worst case scenario with this episode, is if after hearing these stories, You still feel like nobody can understand my trauma. A big reason that we have this show is to encourage you to make those moves. Find your people. 

Jim: And let me tell you, it's a lie, right? That nobody can understand.

I had somebody very close to me talk about a significant issue in their life that it was sort of the no one [00:42:00] understands mantra. And I was able to turn around and be able to say, well, actually. My story is remarkably close to what. You're going through, it wasn't exactly the same thing, but I was able to say, I can relate to you because I have been Very close to where you are right now And I have felt those same feelings and I was able to walk through that person with some of that stuff You have to be able to break the cycle and that's never gonna happen if you don't talk to somebody Yes, talking about it is a is a big deal, you know for and I know for My wife, you know, we talked a little bit about how your daughter has been able to work through some of this childhood trauma.

I think I want to make sure if you're a mom who has gone through a lot of this trauma, if, if you heard your story and my wife's story, or if you're a guy and, [00:43:00] and you're, you're hearing your story in my wife's story, I want to tell you a little bit about how my wife has overcome some of that. Trauma and a big part of it is just spending time together as a family.

I didn't realize that Most families don't sit around a dinner table together. That's actually an uncommon thing today. 

Ben: It is. We don't. I'll be the first to say it. 

Jim: You heat up your dinner and you go to your corners of the house and you do whatever. We intentionally sit down together as a family and have a meal together.

And we actually have these fun little comment card things or whatever. Nice. That have really neat prompts. Uh. Questions that you can ask and the kids even enjoy them. Sometimes they're silly. Sometimes they're serious. Sometimes they're really thought provoking in a way that the kids or sometimes even my wife and I aren't quite ready for, but that's what I really like about them.

[00:44:00] We only, we only pull one or two cards per meal, but it's a prompt to start talking about things and, and we've learned things about our kids that I don't think we would have. Figured out without these cards, we ask them about their day. We ask them about things that they've gone through, and it's a great time that we're able to come together as a family and hear about each other's day for me saying, I love you on a daily basis.

Is a huge thing that you can do giving that hug, showing up to those sporting events and choir concerts. And honestly, this is one that I don't think a lot of people think of, but we actually fight in front of our kids, not all out brawls and screams, but we'll have disagreements in front of the kids and the kids will say like, are you guys going to get a divorce or like, like I'm trying to think healthy.

I'm trying to think of how they say it, but [00:45:00] sort of like a, why are you fighting? Or sometimes they'll mimic one of the abhorrent behaviors that's coming from the parents. And I'm not saying that we always have perfect conflict, but that's kind of the point because we are able to say, you know what, we're having a disagreement on something, but we still love each other.

We're trying to work it through and come to a resolution. We don't tiptoe to another room and have a fight about something every once in a while when it's a particularly sensitive or something that have to, it's a boundary, right? If we're really fired up about it, then we might go into the other room because.

We don't want to model the negative, but sometimes it just comes out. And I actually think it's a good thing when kids see you fail in conflict, as long as you turn around and say, you know, when I, when I said that. I should have done a better job of listening to your mother [00:46:00] or now this isn't us and I'll get into that a minute, but like I shouldn't have said that to your mom.

We actually very intentionally and I would say without exception, we don't say nasty things to each other just to hurt each other. Yes, that has been like rule one in our marriage. Uh, my wife, she's going to hate that I'm saying this, but when we were dating, that was what was modeled to her growing up is that you just say things to hurt people when you're losing an argument.

And so she at least perceived that she was losing the argument. And so she said something just to hurt me. And I said, Is that how you're going to talk to me, which sounds really, I don't know, arrogant or whatever, but that's not how I said it. It was like a almost surprise. Like, does that make sense? It was not.

Yeah. It was like, uh, is that really, is that how this is going to work? So I hope that doesn't read as like a, how dare you [00:47:00] woman know your role. It was more of a. Wow. Like, I didn't realize you were capable of that. Is that how you're going to talk to me? And she just says, no, she said it as a question because she literally was questioning her own world.

Right? Like, wait a minute. Why? Wait. You're not supposed to do that. And I kid you not since that day, I'm not saying she's never hurt me, but she has never once said something intentionally to hurt me. It's so good. 

Ben: Wow. Yeah. 

Jim: Coming from the family that she's coming from. So circling back to modeling conflict in a healthy way.

Avoiding it and walking away from your kids seems like the right thing to do, but how are they supposed to know how to do conflict? Well, if they never see you doing that, so acknowledging and processing your emotions in the moment. And when we screw up, [00:48:00] because Melissa does still occasionally yell at the kids, she loses her temper.

She knows she's not supposed to do it. She's working on it and she is, Oh, so much better than she was before. But when she yells, she'll. Individually, come to the kids and she'll say, I'm sorry, that wasn't about you. That was about me. I was losing my patience. She might explain the steps along the way where you made it difficult for my not to yell at you, but that's not an excuse for the behavior.

And I think that's almost better than never yelling at all. 

Almost.

Ben: No, it certainly is because it's modeling for your kids. It's going back to the comment that one of your kids made. When they saw you fighting, are you going to get a divorce? Like if you don't provide that context and that modeling of how to fight respectfully, then yeah, it's going to create a ton of questions like that.

It's going to produce the anxiety of wondering, Oh no, I saw my [00:49:00] parents fight that never happens. Are they getting a divorce? It's like you neutralize the situation by just allowing yourself to have those tough conversations in the presence of your kids. Yeah. I think that's awesome. Yeah. And going back to the dinner table, man, I miss, I miss those days when we were all actually here at mealtime.

Jim: That makes a difference. 

Ben: The thing with teenagers, oh my goodness, like there are so many things in their lives. It's drivers training, work, youth group, uh, helping out with kids, ministry, dance. It's like you have to be in five different places at once at parents of teenagers feels like. So we don't have the regularity of being at the table, but man, when it happens, it's so good.

And we also. Ironically, or not ironically, depending on how you look at it. We have a deck of cards with talking points and they [00:50:00] each have a question on them. 

Jim: So I was walking through your house and I think I saw that same box. I think we're talking about the same thing. You have the teen version, but it's talking points is the name of this card.

So if you're listening to this and you're curious what Ben and I didn't realize we were both using, 

Ben: Jim, we live parallel lives. 

Jim: These talking point cards are really, it's well thought out cards and yeah, Ben and I both recommend those talking point cards. You can find them on Amazon. I know. I imagine they probably have a website too, but they do check those out.

Those are a neat resource when you're around the table or in the living room for your family. Talking points. If you want to be a sponsor for the show, contact us at show at real men, hug. com. 

Ben: Nice. Another takeaway. Bye. See a therapist. If you have any sort of trauma in your life, regardless of how big or small it feels to you, get yourself in [00:51:00] therapy, because it really does make a huge difference.

I can't say enough good things about therapy, and how it has helped. Not only my wife overcome her trauma, but it's helped my daughter overcome hers in some pretty huge significant ways. I've been seeing my therapist for going on four years and it's essential because As I shared earlier in the show, my life is anything but orthodox when it comes to parenting.

It's loaded. Every day, we're facing trauma. I need a space where I can deal with that. And it's not even my trauma necessarily that's the cause of my stress. Get yourself a counselor, a therapist, a mentor. Somebody that you can open up to and talk about your trauma with. It is the way to find healing. 

Jim: Let me add an important caveat as well.[00:52:00]

If you go to a restaurant and have a terrible experience, you don't just keep, yeah, don't go back to that restaurant or like, say you go and get a massage and you absolutely hated the masseuse, like it was too hard and they weren't listening to you or whatever. Find a different masseuse. It doesn't mean all massewers are terrible.

A lot of people, I think maybe you already had a bad experience with counseling or Ben tells you to go to counseling. You go and you have a bad experience. It's because you didn't have the right counselor, right? It's not because counseling is bad. It's because you need to find a counselor. That's a better fit for you.

There's some great counselors out there and there are some bad counselors out there. There's some great counselors that. Just aren't your cup of tea that you need to find one that fits well for you. So if it doesn't work out the first time, find a different counselor because it really is transformative to be able to sit down with a counselor and talk through your issues.

Ben: 100%. 

Jim: I think a [00:53:00] support group can be helpful in that process for some people who maybe counseling is just something you don't have the mental capacity to tackle right now. Getting in an exercise group, a running club, weightlifting club, a pickleball club, exercise can be so healing and you're getting to know other people in that process.

I think that trauma thrives in isolation. So if you're getting out there, you have a good habit of sleeping, eating properly and exercise. You're already on the route to recovery. Just getting those things under control. 

Ben: It doesn't matter how big or small your trauma is. At the end of the day, if it's impacting your life in a negative way, you deserve relief from that.

You deserve to have that resilience. It [00:54:00] doesn't matter if you perceive your trauma to be big or small. Trauma has a deep impact on every person that it touches. And so don't feel like you don't deserve help because your trauma is not as bad as the other person's. No, we all have trauma. In some way, deal with it and experience the relief because it's incredible.

Jim: If you're looking for a deeper dive into the topic of childhood trauma, when I was doing some research into this conversation that we were gonna have, honestly, there wasn't a whole lot of helpful information I found out there, but I did stumble across a YouTuber by the name of, I'm gonna say Teehan, I think it's actually pronounced Teehan, but.

But, but it's spelled T E A H A N. He's on YouTube and he had some great stuff to say about childhood trauma [00:55:00] processing that. For instance, your parent is this kind of toxic parent. There's sort of labels to it that, hey, the situation that you went through, you'll find falls into one of these four or five categories and you're not going to feel so alone anymore realizing that.

It's honestly not that uncommon for people to have gone through this childhood trauma. And if I'm not mistaken, I believe Patrick himself is estranged from either one or both of his parents. I think one of them has since passed away, but that's kind of what led him to be who he is. And now he's helping people through childhood trauma.

So just goes to show that again, sometimes helping others. Is the best way to get through that, but I would recommend him. I think he's got some great stuff to say. I watched several of his videos cause I found them to be really informative. 

Ben: For me, this episode was honestly a lot more difficult than I thought it was [00:56:00] going to be.

I think because of the family situations that we're in now, it just causes me to have some blinders. And if anything, I think on this episode, talking about this stuff with a good friend. It helped me, maybe for just a moment, take those blinders off and see the bigger picture. And so the mental block that I had coming into this episode, I honestly feel like I just had a therapy session to work through it.

And I feel a lot better as we wrap up this episode than I did. When we started 

Jim: this scary thing for me is that childhood trauma doesn't go away. And we are inflicting childhood trauma on our kids. We're trying our best to do better than our parents. We're trying to do our best to do better than in your case, their parents did.

But we are going to do things that will shape who our kids are. In the [00:57:00] future, the same thing with Melissa's story, I don't relish sharing that story about my mother in law, but the fact of the matter is that childhood trauma impacted who Melissa is today, and now she has an opportunity to make a decision with what she's going to do with it.

That has been something that has really been sitting with me as I take on the responsibility of raising my own kids. What if I screw it up? 

Ben: You will, but you'll find your way out. 

Jim: All you can do is your best. You're going to have to forgive yourself for the failures that you will inevitably make and move on from them and do your best to learn from them.

What else can you do? 

Ben: One final recommendation that I know both Jim and I are passionate about is actually what we're talking about on our next episode. We're going to be diving into setting boundaries and if [00:58:00] you've experienced trauma in your life. You don't have to constantly surround yourself with your traumas.

When you set boundaries, you are valuing yourself, and you're protecting yourself. It's okay if you want to put up some boundaries, some walls, some, you know, guardrails like they have on the freeway. It's okay to have those. Allow yourself to have boundaries, and to set limits, and to say what's good for you and what's not.

Jim: We're so grateful that you were able to join us today and listen to this story on childhood trauma. These episodes really have been cathartic, haven't they? 

Ben: In a way I was not expecting. 

Jim: Yeah, cathartic, but also, uh, you're reliving trauma talking about it.

Hopefully this is something that has helped you walk through your own journey. I hope it's been healing for you and I hope that you [00:59:00] found some resources along the way that have helped you figure out what your next steps are going to be to process your own childhood trauma. Thanks again for joining us on Real Men Hug, and we'll see you next time.