This YouTube discussion (participants: Louie, Ted, Diane) examines why revisiting painful past events is necessary for healing. Ted frames therapy as "connecting the dots," noting childhood messages of shame and avoidance that persist until addressed; Louie gives a personal testimony about deeply concealing trauma for decades, fearing his partner would leave, and reaching active suicidal planning around an impending polygraph; Diane highlights the paradox of choosing secrecy over disclosure. The chunk centers on shame, fear, men’s tendencies to minimize trauma, and the therapeutic value of confronting buried memories.
Yeah.
I think for all of us, there are parts of our story or our past that we're just like. It's messy, it's complicated. We. We probably know it's there. We're aware that it was something that impacted us. But I think especially men can move forward and want to disengage from that, be, okay, that's the past. Or that was a different part of my life. You know, now I'm this. And I've described my counseling experience as like, connecting the dots. I knew pieces of my life were there, but I had never connected, even in a small way, that that might be a significant factor in my present behaviors. And the things I was using to numb out, to avoid pain, to deal with stress and anxiety, like, it was all connected to negative messages from some of these childhood traumas that I had just. And I think sometimes our church upbringing can teach us, well, the past is in the past. You know, forgetting what is behind, straining towards what is ahead. Those things don't matter. And to find out like, oh, those things do matter. Because there are messages that started in some of those moments of shame, of worthlessness, of not being good enough, not measuring up, that have just been like, getting passed forward year after year after year in my life. And until they were dealt with, they were just going to keep getting passed forward to the next year and the next year and the next year. And it's like that willingness to decide, like, okay, enough is enough, like, it's there. And even if at the inception, we don't see, like, how could this help me? And that was my attitude, like, how could it do any good to go back to that painful stuff, like, just leave it alone. But to have someone say, if you'll trust me and trust this process and go back there, there's a lot of incredible good that can come out of it. And then watching that happen, it's like, oh, my goodness, why did I wait so long? Because there's been such positive growth that came from that. But it does start with that willingness to go to some places we maybe don't want to have to revisit.
I didn't want to revisit that so bad that I began to plan my death.
Wow.
And I told Laurie as we got closer to the polygraph, because, you know, I live and work at home on a dairy farm. So I went home at about 8 o' clock when I knew Laurie was eating her breakfast, and. And I said to her, I, I can't. I'm not doing this. And it was either I didn't do it. And the only way I could get out of it was.
Was death and was this fear around the polygraph in particular, knowing that you couldn't hide it.
It was fear in that when I had. When I would. I was convinced that if my trauma story came out, Lori was going to leave me. And so for 40 years, I believed that lie. And I shoved so deeply down into my brain the trauma that happened. It was as if it never happened. That's what I thought and what I wanted to believe, that if I just ignore it, it'll go away. But. So the next thing I know, Laurie's on the phone with Diane, and Diane comes busted into the Zoom conference that Dr. Ted and I are having and says Louie's suicidal and all my guns are locked up. And it was a real sobering time for me just to admit that I had come to that point that I would rather die than tell my story.
Wow.
And.
It'S interesting because you said that your fear was that she would leave you if it came out, but you would rather voluntarily leave and keep that story hidden than to let it come out and to have her leave you voluntarily.
Right?
Yeah. Well, I think it reveals the pain that we can be stuck in and why we work sometimes so hard to try to leave it there. Because that is the level of shame, fear, regret, remorse, whatever's wrapped around that story that's there. And it. It speaks to the importance of addressing it. Because if there's that level. Right. That you would consider taking your own life, if there's that level of pain and shame around it, that speaks to its importance. And the interesting thing I find for a lot of. And again, men in particular, but I'm sure for women, too, is there's kind of this dual mindset that can be taking place where on the one hand, we're trying to convince ourselves and sometimes other people, oh, it's not that big of a deal. It doesn't matter. We don't need to go there. The past is, you know, so we're minimizing it. But on the other hand, there's so much pain that it would lead us towards suicidal thinking and ideation. Like, and that discrepancy, I think a lot of people haven't really realized that their brain is doing both and at the same time. And that really is crazy making and can help us see, like, wow, there's a big level of unhealth here. And why am I. Why am I willing to live in that? What could happen if I was willing to walk in and face some of that with the help of people that have. Have done this a lot before.
Yeah. The body keeps score.
Yeah.
And it kept score on me. I was. I was not healthy. And because of keeping the secret.
