Therapist Tim Arrigo talks with a male survivor of childhood sexual exploitation about how early pornography exposure and family trauma created shame that shaped his behavior. Seven out of ten men experience unwanted sexual encounters but stay silent. Arrigo argues that men sharing their stories with each other can break that silence and help others feel safe to speak.
Your innocence was exploited when you were shown the pornography, which caused you to then replicate and play that out with somebody your age, and then caused you to then further rehearse it with other people, which created a lot of toxic shame. And, you know, God wants to show you where that all began, to show you that it didn't begin with you.
You know something else that happened, Tim? And, and this might be something that new for you to hear, I don't know. But one time my dad left his safe open and, uh, me and my other best friend got one of the videos out and watched it, and it was my mom and my dad. And I, I think that for a long time as a kid, I lost a lot of respect for my mom because of it. Um, sure, sitting here with you right now, I'm— it's been a lot of sexual trauma in my childhood. I never really pieced it all together until now. No wonder I'm so ashamed. This is good stuff. I can, I can move forward now.
What do I do now? I encourage you to open up with the guys about it, because where there's empathy, shame struggles to exist. So all that shame that you feel, when you open up about it and you get nothing but empathy from the guys, it's going to significantly reduce the shame that you feel. And believe it or not, you'll probably give another brother permission to do the same thing. Because 7 out of 10 guys have had some type of unwanted sexual experience in their life and they never talked about it. But it takes one bold, courageous guy like you to do that, to break the ice.
