Confident Conversations: Teaching Children Healthy Intimacy, Connection, and Emotional Safety (Episode #120) (with Dan Oakes)

Something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh. Something's around.

Welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with my friend and colleague Dan Oaks. So we're gonna be, uh, excuse me, Marianne today. I'm gonna be talking with my friend Dan Oaks. Dan, I'm so glad to have you with us today. Tell me a little bit about yourself, what you're doing. And then we're going to talk a little bit about your book that you've recently released.

Sure. Well, first, before I introduce myself, Kevin, I want to just tell you what an honor it is to be with you. I've admired you from afar. We've crossed paths a few times, and it's a real, real honor to be with you on your podcast to talk about these sensitive issues sometimes. And I'm just excited. So yeah, so I'm, I'm Dan Oaks. I'm a licensed professional counselor. In Arizona. I'm the director and founder of a group of wonderful therapists there that we're, we're called the Arizona Family Institute. We specialize in human relationships, in human emotional regulation. Several of us have special training in sexual addiction. We're CSATs and we do lots of marriage work, lots of counseling around betrayal trauma. In men's issues, women's issues. We just have a great team that can serve a family, can serve those human relationships that where human intimacy gets wounded and hurt and how to heal it. So that's our, that's our practice, the Arizona Family Institute.

Great, great work that you guys do. So when I get a, somebody who needs help in Arizona, I often refer to you guys. So the other thing, Dan presented at our recent Human Intimacy Conference on attachment and addiction. And as I was talking with some of those who were in attendance, they said, this is a fantastic presentation. So I thought, you know what, let's have Dan back on with us here to the podcast just to get kind of the word out about something that you've been working on that I too care a lot about, and that is prevention. And Dan, I know that you've worked on a book. Tell us a little bit about the book and its purpose.

Yeah, so the purpose of the book is to provide parents with a little bit of guidance and in how to talk to the kids about intimacy and sexuality, how to broaden the perspective. It's not just a sex talk, but the name of the book is Confident Conversations. And it's about teaching your children— the subtitle is Teaching Your Children to Develop Healthy Intimacy. I just have this experience so frequently where my clients will say, well, my parents never said anything, or parents will bring a 15 or 16-year-old boy into the office, and I can tell how uncomfortable they are talking about sexuality, talking about intimacy, and the scope of human emotions around those themes. Right? I don't just do it for them. The role is very sacred as a parent. No, no kid needs a therapist. You know, kids need courageous parents, willing to talk about scary things, right? And the culture, culture intimidates parents. They're not sure what to say. Is what I'm going to say too religious? And what I'm going to say too liberal? Is it too this or too that? They get very nervous that they're going to step on something or get it wrong.

You know, and I think that's such an important point from clinical experience. Very rarely have I ever had somebody come to my office and say, oh yeah, my parents were really good at talking with me about sexually related issues. And so they bumble and stumble, and they learn about it in locker rooms, or they learn about it from their peers or from, you know, the things that they're exposed to. But what they're not getting it from is a relational place where the parents can teach healthy sexuality. And I guess that most parents would like to do that, but they struggle knowing how to do that, kind of as you were referring.

They really do. The goal is to demystify it a little bit, to really help them feel like, oh, this is not as scary as I think. Most parents understand sexuality, but they don't know how to mix it and help it connect it to real intimacy and closeness and connection. And that's its primary function and purpose, right? Sometimes we silo it or parecilo it down to the sex. Like, that's sex education, is to talk about the sex. Well, it's so much, so much more than that, right?

So that's what I'd like to talk about, Dan. I'd love you to kind of expand on that because I think many times it's like, yeah, we think about it as the act of sex, but what about the other elements that really lead up into a deeper attaching bond?

Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think the key is to help, help parents know, right, that the urges their children have, that they have, those powerful sexual urges have a unique purpose, right? They're designed to signal us and push us to emotional connections. And too often in religious communities and others, those initial urges that humans get—sexual urges, hunger urges, thirst, sleep—that these are self-care driven. They're extremely positive. They're designed to take care of us, right? And sometimes we overly attribute negative beliefs to core human urges, right? And so we're trying to make a shift for parents from some kind of negative view of urges into a positive view that the urge is a positive trait signaling to their child, signaling to them, signaling to humans. We have those sexual feelings that we have a need for connection. It's going to keep us out of isolation. So we want to shift the language to positive language.

And almost normalizing it because we know that the natural sexual development, there is curiosity and there is arousal. But if I'm confused by arousal and I think it's a bad thing, exactly. Then what happens is I begin to internalize something like, oh, is there something wrong with me? And so that shift into positive sexual feelings could actually be a game changer for so many people that I've worked with. right?

And in the book, one of the things I talk about there is that when a negative belief gets associated with core human urge, it creates a shame structure. And the shame structure, it's the fly in the ointment. It's the poison, right? It's not the later, the porn that's the problem. It's the shame around feeling sexual, right? And so what happens, and we talk about it in the book, is that once I associate that negative view of sexual feelings. And here's what happens. I start to feel sexual. I panic and think I'm bad. And so initially I will restrict, right? Hold back, hold back, hold back, hold back. And therefore the need that the sexual urge gives me goes unnoticed. Connection need that drives it is unseen. Right? And so I will restrict, restrict, restrict. And then eventually, kid will binge, they'll look at porn or masturbate. And then they'll see, oh, I'm bad. Right? And they'll suddenly reinforce that system. And there continues this shame cycle around sexuality. In the book, I talk about hunger works the same way. And it's a better metaphor because people tend not to moralize Some do, but most don't. If I thought, if I was raised in a home where I thought that hunger and eating was bad, what would happen? As soon as I got hungry, I would try to restrict eating. Don't eat, don't eat, don't eat, don't eat. Right? And what's going to happen to that urge? It's going to grow for sure. And then eventually, I'll eat. When I do, what kind of eating will I do if I've been restricting? I'm going to binge. right? And then what am I going to feel? I'm going to feel horrible about myself. And I'll go right back to restricting. So this binge-restrict cycle is the nature of what happens anytime we pair a negative belief with a core human urge. The hunger version of that is what motivates eating disorders, right? The sexual version of that is what motivates compulsive sexuality. But the shame is the problem. It's not so much the sexuality. We have to de-shame and reconstruct and help understand the basic need for that to make a change. I love that.

And I would add to that, when I feel shame, and I like getting into the human body and what happens in the body, because when you feel shame physiologically, your body feels like a threat. And so you're more likely to become anxious. And when you look at the amount of anxiety that many people who struggle with their sexual— how to deal with sex anxiety— is almost always a part of it in some version. Shame, anxiety mixed together, and all of a sudden you have somebody who's more anxious than maybe they really are anxious, but they feel this anxiety like, something's wrong with me, I don't fit. And those— that language, that shame-based language, is always relational. Right? I don't want to be seen. I don't want connection. I'm afraid of connection, which is exactly the opposite direction of where we're trying to channel the energy.

Right? Absolutely. That's exactly the issue. And it's sometimes it's hard for parents. Parents never learned the positive view of sexuality, even when they were young. They still have negative views. I say this thing quite often that I get some pushback from other clinicians about it, but I say, All sexual feelings are a signal from your body that you need emotional connection. It is the driver that gets us— if Kevin and I were cavemen and our village was only full of our sisters and cousins, the sexual drive would drive us to leave the village. It's got to be strong enough to get us to go and connect somewhere else, right? It's the driver. Pushes us to connection. And that's the positive belief we want to try to shift their awareness to.

And, and I think what the reservation with most people here is, well, then what are you saying they do with their sexuality, right? That's going to be the confusion of like, so what do you do? How do you manage that? Because are you saying just go unbridled? Right.

And that's why parents often think when I talk about those things, so let me Let me give you an example of this. I was working with a boy, he's 19. I've been working with him. He was deep into porn, porn and masturbation 3, 4 times a day for 4 or 5 years, right? And he's working really hard to come out of it. We're decreasing the shame. And what we talked about was when sexual feelings arise, we're taking them to those that we trust, right? Go to your parents, say, man, I'm having a hard day today. Really struggling. Then I worked with the parents about, look, this conversation is not just about sex. It's about feeling connected. It's about a shift that happens in your biology from the urge into a resolved, connected state with somebody that I feel safe with. Right? And so the reason I'm telling you the story is because they came in the other day and he said, I did it. I did it. Felt it. I'm like, what? What? And he said, well, it was Sunday afternoon. And my mind, I just wanted to look at porn so bad. I was so preoccupied. And I walked in my parents' bedroom and I fell on their bed and I just said, how come Sunday afternoon is the biggest sexual feeling day of the week? They laughed with him. They said, because you're bored and there's not a lot going on and you're so normal. They did all the things we had talked about, about normalizing it. And he said, a few minutes into our laughter and conversation, I realized the tension was gone. He said the sexual feeling was still there, but the tension had broke. And I felt it, damn, I felt the connection helped me regulate. It doesn't replace it. It doesn't eliminate it, but the tension associated with a negative compulsive urge, right?

And what's so beautiful about that story is the vulnerability, the response, and the awareness that the tension had gone down, right? That just reinforces this is the proper channel. This is the way to do it. Because the alternative to that is just to keep doing what they've been doing, acting out, not talking about it. And then here we go through the same cycle again. So when you interrupt that cycle and you get that, I call it, it's an attachment bond, right? A meaningful bond. That's true human intimacy.

It is. It is the antidote for so much that ails the human soul, whether it's addiction, right? Or just loneliness. It is such an antidote. And just as we connect with others, what we learn from that, especially as a child and we grow up, we learn from that, how to connect to ourselves. Right? We understand the difference between feeling good and feeling good about ourselves. We learn self-connection, self-care, right? And that can be achieved in those moments as well.

And what's interesting about what you're saying there is now I gain a greater sense of internal confidence. Yes. That internal awareness of like, oh, I see what my need is. Now it's not just this is controlling me. It's I can understand what's happening internally and channel that in the direction that's going to be meaningful.

Right. And you know what the research calls that? The language there in the research talks about co-regulation and auto-regulation. And the reason those two are really important is because as children, the day we're born, our whole life is co-regulation. Our parents are the safe place. We, we get our emotional stability from them. And over time, as we learn to wander through the backyard or through the living room and we come back to them, we start autoregulating and developing a sense of self. And when things get scary, we come back, right? And so we keep moving in our life till we have a sense of stability and sense of self. But nobody— what the research says is nobody develops autoregulatory experience, ability to sense self as positive, good, without a reflecting positive, secure base to have learned it in, right?

And that's why the critical part is having that other people to mirror, to give us back that. So I, again, I think about the parent's response there. That may not have been their original natural response, like, oh wait, wait, I'm concerned, what's wrong? Rather than normalizing, oh sure, right? You're bored, you're experiencing this. That validation can help regulate it, co-regulation. But the fact that he went there, imagine him now learning the skill to, oh, I understand what's going on. I can do this, that auto-regulation, as you say. Those two things combined give you a sense of self-mastery. Yes. Self-confidence.

There are pedagogies and learning models that say you can't get one without the other. You can't do it on your own until you've done it with other. Right. And we do that in multiple relationships when we have healthy people in our lives. Exactly right. Absolutely. You know, it, it, it shows up later, right? So I, on Monday mornings, I run this men's pornography support group and the primary focus of the group is how they do brotherhood connection work with each other outside of the group. That's the whole purpose is that they can reach, connect, right? So we're learning those skills our, our whole life. We're learning to apply them and utilize them in the context of human intimacy.

The stronger the relationship, and I say this over and over, the stronger your relationship bonds, the less you're going to deal with this other world that's going to pull you into isolation, shame, addictive behaviors. And things that you— again, you're going to cope when you don't have attachment. It's not optional. It's just how are you coping? Correct. Right. And then when we put into that a group, a family member, somebody who can support us and be meaningful for us, everything else can thrive when we have those bonds. But when we don't, we're going to be coping in unhealthy ways. That's why secrets are so damaging. That's right. Because it prevents us from connection.

100%. It shuts the door, puts a wall up to that. You know, in the book, the other thing that I talk about is I want parents to— I want to demystify pornography for them. They see it as just this evil force taking their kid away or something, you know, and we talk about porn is made by people, right? People who study and learn how to trap young eyes, adult eyes, and You know, one, one of my favorite educational elements there is that the people who make porn studied the work of a guy named Niko Tinbergen. I think it was a Dutch biologist who studied what attracted animals to each other. And in the book, I tell them this story about how he was studying butterflies, right? He was pretty sure that the males were attracted to the female butterfly. Pattern on the wing. And, and so what he did to test that was he took a piece of cardboard and he made a fake female. He made it 3 or 4 times bigger than the actual females, and he made the pattern on the wing brighter but still the exact pattern. He puts it in the cage, and what happens? Well, all the males flock to the fake female. Hidden. And I was, I would just tell the parents, imagine if we could interview the butterfly, say, Mr. Butterfly, how are you doing today? And the, and the butterfly would say, not doing very well. I seem to be very attracted to this female, but I'm not mating successfully. Tim Bergen and others have, have coined this phrase for what that is called a supernormal stimulant. And, and this is what's in pornography and food. Food and porn represent supernormal stimulants, things that are, are designed, our biology wants, our kids want them. And they exaggerate them to the extent where it creates a triple— and some research says 2 to 5 times the amount of dopamine associated with the natural process.

Right. Unbelievable. Right. Unbelievable amounts of just supernormal stimulus.

Exactly right. Exactly right. And so that supernormal stimulant then paired, then paired with high novelty. Right. And so, you know, some, some porn sites focus on the supernormal stimulus. It's one woman with exaggerated, what we call sexual dimorphic body parts, right? Other porn websites attract from novelty. And there's a German biologist who talks about the part of our brain right on the top of our brain is right where the novelty center is. And I always tell people the only thing we like more than food and sex as human beings is novelty, novel versions of those two things, right? And it's a survival and a learning mechanism to need novelty. And so when these supernormal stimulants show up in our culture and they show up in highly novel ways, whether it's sexuality or when alcohol first came out or social media, they become fly traps for all us wonderful little humans. Looking for stimulation, right? I take a lot of time in the book to try to demystify porn, right? To help them understand it's biology. Their kid is not bad. Its brain is in fact doing exactly what it's designed to do, right? The trap he's fallen into is what any boy in our culture falls into. They just need help. They need a little guidance. They need some direction. They need a little protection. Right? And you're just trying to demystify some of that.

And really, as you demystify it, you're still teaching the concept, and I'm confident it's going to be coming back into attachment. Replacing that supernormal stimuli, which again, it's hard to compete with that, but teaching relationship skills, how to have meaningful conversations, how to really be open and honest and transparent and not in a shaming way, talking about this in a productive way. Again, when we do that properly, then we start to look at what is the purpose of pornography. Really, is it, is it an unmet need of, for human connection?

Right? It's absolutely using that need in us. Right? Absolutely. I try to demystify this one strategy, you know, even some old school therapists, but parents often do this thing where they say, Avoid, distract, avoid sexual feelings. And if you get them, distract yourself, right? Avoid, distract. Well, that I try to help them understand that just never, never going to work. We want to expect sexual feelings. We're smart enough to know they're here. They're not going anywhere. They're only getting stronger. Expect them and respond. And what respondability becomes really doable when they know what the need is. So we drill down on the need and the need is connection, connection with self, connection with others, and connection with God or a higher power, or with my atheist clients, it's always the same. It's purpose, a greater purpose, right? They have to connect with something greater.

You know, as you say that, it reminds me of many years ago and I was asking individuals, they were filling out a survey on their pornography use. And this individual, I asked the question about how pornography had influenced their life and if they'd be willing to share with me. And this is just one of those saddest stories. He said, 40 years into my married life, he said, my kids won't talk to me. My wife doesn't want anything to do with me. And it's all because I couldn't get away from this supernormal— he didn't say supernormal stimulus, but that's it, right? I couldn't get away from this thing that controlled my life. And I've thought so much about that story and that response, and my heart hurts for everybody involved there. We're trying to say early on, like, let's teach and educate early on what we're really looking for, because if we don't do that, when are we going to eventually wake up and realize, am I living my life, or am I, am I a fly in this trap, stuck?

Exactly. Exactly. Let me share 5 steps I give in the book for parents. That'd be great. 5 strategies that help them prevent their kid from getting in, becoming a sex addict or getting overly exposed to excessive pornography or those kinds of things, whether it's social media or anything. But here are the 5 steps that I point out in the book. Number 1, you've got to build trust. Above all else. Early in the early stages of their life, your kid has to know that if they have a problem, they can come to you, that you see them do it. If the chain comes off their bike, they're going to come to you and want you to help them, or are they going to be like, I can't go to Dad, he's going to be too angry or busy? But then you've lost them already, right? Right. So this trust you have to build, this is not passive parenting. It's calm parenting. It's the ability— they know you help them. They know that you know things. They know that you care. They know that you will guide, right? And that, that's the first, first step is to build trust. And we start really young, right? And, and so we build trust above all else.

Sue Johnson says, are you there for me in relationships? I think the same concept holds true to what you're saying there. You know, are, are you available? Will you be there for me?

Absolutely. Does your kid unconsciously, can he predict you'll be available? Not just time-wise, but your engagement, as Sue would say, your engagement and responsibility, right? Is there trust? Is there a foundation of that? Once you have that, the next part is, it's a little interesting. I always tell them, you have to protect your home almost in silent ways. Don't broadcast to your kids what they can't do. Just protect them. Shut down the internet. If you, if you're not techie enough to help that, find a friend, find somebody that knows those things and filter your router or do something to make sure at an early age, you know, I can't tell you how many times an adult 35-year-old man who's a full-blown sex addict will say to me, well, my parents bought me a, it was full-blown internet and the parents did not realize. They thought it was just music, right? Anyway, and he said, I took that in my room. And when I realized it had the internet on it, they never knew. I spent years, the next 4 years, in my room with that looking at pornography, right? This is really daunting for parents, right? And I don't— I'm not enough of a techie guy. The book doesn't give tech responses, but it encourages parents to go beyond yourself, find help, get a little education, get the things you need. Don't, don't buy them wide open smartphones unless you know how to regulate them, especially too early. And then we talk about timing and all of that in the book, but the, the kid, our kids need protection to a certain extent from those things. And the third thing is to teach them early progressive developmental facts. So sex talk is not a one-time talk you give before, right before they get married. It's not a one-time talk, puberty, that 5 you're doing maybe good touch, bad touch. At 8, with our kids, 8, we did birds and bees biology. We want them to know how babies are made, right? And our real reason, we were setting ourselves up as the authority. When you hear stories, you can come right to us. We will tell you anything. We'll talk about anything. And here's the basic facts, right? And then we do pre-puberty talks. We talk about what's happening in their body. And so in the book, we just spell out that it's not a one-time talk. We teach early, we teach progressively, we teach developmental facts, and we teach it calmly, right?

And what that does is when they hear slang, when they hear it in the locker room, or they hear it in their peer conversations, they're like, I understand, I already know this, right? It's not taboo. It's not a secret. It's out there. And my parents are comfortable talking with me about it.

Yes, absolutely. 100%. I'll never forget our youngest. When she was 8, we thought, hmm, She's not quite ready. We're gonna wait on this one. And then within a week of us deciding that, she came home one day and said, I know how babies are made. And she said, well, you go in the closet with a boy and you kiss, and that's how babies are made. And we were like, oh my gosh. So now her, her information was so bad. We like, now we have to do it. You know? And you know what's kind of fun is my wife will go back, we'll go back and reflect on the responses from each of them. Right? So every kid will be different and that's okay. Right?

And, and may I suggest the only way that really works is if you're comfortable yourself as a parent, you've got to look in the mirror and say, am I comfortable talking about this? Am I ashamed of it? I mean, what did I learn about it? Because again, as a parent, it was probably the night before your wedding.

Right.

Maybe. And so yes, we have to be comfortable. And if we're not comfortable, we really need to ask the question, why am I not comfortable talking about this? What's my concern?

Exactly. No, that's my number 5. So I'm gonna— I'll restate that. But my number 4, number 4 is that your kids have to see you modeling affection in your home. They need to see mom and dad hugging and kissing. They need to see— they need to know, hey, when the door's locked, don't, don't knock on the door. They need to understand that intimacy is alive and well. And I had one, one lady that said, well, Dan, I'm not, I'm not married. And I said, that, that's okay. Right? Do you model affection for your kids? Do you hug them? You kiss them on the cheek? Does grandma and grandpa hug them? Do they see affection? We want our kids to see healthy, healthy, loving affection. You know, I always tell the story, but one time my oldest daughter had a boyfriend and he was at the house and he was sitting on the couch. Over there. I was on this couch and my daughter wasn't home from work yet. My wife right there in the kitchen. And I heard her say something like, I need a cup of flour. I need some sugar. I said, I need a cup of Shannon. And that's my wife's name. And she trots around the island, comes into the living room, she jumps on top of me and we kind of canoodle and giggle. And I look out the corner of my eye at the boy and he's just shrieking. Down at this affection. And I remember thinking, you look, you look good. And you watch, if you end up marrying my daughter, which he didn't, I want you to know what healthy love and affection looks like. So I was emboldened. I was not ashamed at all. And I wanted him to see what healthy love and affection looks like.

And, and what's so interesting about that is when you see it, the kids, especially younger, ooh, yuck. Until they realize, you know what, that's just mom and dad. They still love each other. Yeah, they care about each other. And that is a model our society needs over and over and over again. I often say we're only as strong as our relationships as a culture, as a society. If we are strong as a society, then it's going to be because our relationships are strong.

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then, you know, that number 5, the number 5 really is to respond with calm, right? Your kids are going to have sexual experiences. Parents get into a little bit of this denial, especially religious parents, that it's not going to happen to my kid. And then when it does, they break down, right? The worst scenarios that they are angry or that they cry or— your kids are going to have those experiences. And you want to be ready. You want to know how to talk about it. You want to stay really calm. You want to anchor that talking about it's the right thing, the good thing, right? And that you educate yourself and can respond with kindness and a sense of connection. A 14-year-old comes to talk about— no different than when they were 3 and we would childproof the living room and let them go play on their own while we did the dishes, right? They want to come back to us when they struggle. They want to come. And if we're calm, they will. I'm just gonna— I'm gonna say those 5 things really quick. Trust above all else. Protect the home. Teach early progressive developmental facts. Model affection and respond with calm. Those are the 5 things I talk about in the book to help parents. And you know, the the further we get in our culture, it's not just about pornography, it's about social media, it's about all of the things. The world is getting better and better and better at grabbing the attention away from humans into a digital resource, away from real human intimacy. And that's the greatest loss. That's why our depression, anxiety rates in youth have, have skyrocketed in the years, and why Societality rates have gone way up. Loneliness is stronger than it's ever been. Right. And that's why.

Yep. Absolutely. Dan, do you have any final thoughts for our listeners today? Just if you could give any words of wisdom. Yeah.

I think on this topic, right on the topic of parents, if you're, if you listen to this, don't be afraid to be afraid. If you're nervous about talking to your kids, that's okay, but do it. Pull them in, talk to them about how their intimacy and sexual feelings are going. We know that they have them, and your kid may deny it at first. It just means you may not have quite the trust yet, but keep building that trust. Tell them, hey, I know you will. I know you might. Please come talk to me. It's not bad. You're not bad. You're wonderful. Induce the goodness that they— in their humanity. It is like human experience. Yeah, we want to nurture and help that process. Ah, thank you so much.

It's so good to be able to get this information to your parents, and may I even add grandparents. Yes. You know, take this podcast, share it, because we need a culture that's educated and understands ourselves sexually in the right ways, in the healthy ways. Because if we can channel this into meaningful relationships, we're talking prevention for generations that can occur by having these meaningful connections now and creating them now. So that's our invitation to you. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure. Honored to be here.