Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
What Is Sexual Neglect: Fostering Healthy Childhood Development
108 Plays6 months ago
Welcome to another episode of The Integrated Man Project. Today, we're joined by Clint Davis, a seasoned expert in the field of mental health and healing from trauma. Clint's extensive experience as a licensed professional counselor, author, and founder of Clint Davis Counseling and Integrative Wellness has equipped him with invaluable insights into overcoming adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and sexual neglect. In this crucial discussion, Clint will unpack the often overlooked topic of childhood sexual neglect, its vast implications, and the essential steps for prevention and recovery. His profound knowledge and personal journey offer a unique perspective on the importance of proactive communication and education to foster healthy emotional and physical development in children.
Clint Davis, a licensed professional counselor and the founder of Clint Davis Counseling and Integrative Wellness, is a profound advocate for understanding and healing trauma. Author of "Building Better Bridges" and a recognized speaker, including a notable TED Talk on sexual neglect, Clint brings both his professional expertise and personal experiences, including overcoming PTSD from military deployment and personal trauma, to highlight the necessity of addressing childhood adversity and fostering open dialogues about mental and sexual health.
Three Key Points:
1. **Impact of Childhood Sexual Neglect:**
2. **Role of Technology and Parental Education:**
3. **Need for Open Conversations and Healing:**
This episode is not only a deep dive into the specifics of how we can protect and educate our children but also a guide on how parents themselves can recover and grow from their own past traumas to positively influence their children’s lives.
JOIN THE MAILING LIST & GET INVOLVED!
WATCH ON YOUTUBE:
Connect and Support Clint:
Book: Building Better Bridges
Connect and Support Travis:
YouTube: Travis Goodman
Instagram: @integratedmanproject
Check out the Website: TBD
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Men's Group Coaching Program
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of the Integrated Man Project podcast. Before we get to the show, just a quick announcement about some upcoming new offerings I'll be having. Under the Integrated Man Project wing, I'm gonna be launching my first men's group coaching program. Those, if you're new to the show, I practice as a licensed marriage and family therapist. I've been practicing for about 10 years.
00:00:22
Speaker
in California and I'm going to be stepping into the coaching world and having my first men's group coaching program here launching. If you are interested in getting involved with that, go ahead and email me at integrated man project at gmail.com. Again, integrated man project at gmail.com for more information.
00:00:41
Speaker
I could send you a quick questionnaire asking a few more clarifying questions. We could set up a quick voice and or video chat to clarify any questions you might have. And this initial offering will be for men to work through a six-week program designed at reducing stress more effectively.
00:01:01
Speaker
teaching some practical skills and tools to effectively navigate stress. So again, if you're interested, email me at integratedmanproject at gmail.com. And without further ado, let's jump into the show.
Introduction to Clint and the Importance of the Conversation
00:01:19
Speaker
Welcome everybody to this week's episode of the podcast. I'm so stoked to have this gentleman on, Clint. And we are newer friends met through a mutual friend, Ellie. Hi, Ellie. If you're listening, hopefully you are. If not, that's okay. Well, we touch base anyway, outside of this realm, but we'll judge you and we'll send you aggressive texts.
00:01:36
Speaker
But we met through Ellie and he connected us and when we had our first conversation a few months back, I think right before the holiday season, kind of sprung upon us. We really disconnected quickly and I knew right away that I, one, wanted to connect with Clint Moore just as a building of friendship and relationship. But two, I really, what he has to say in his work that he's doing is so vitally important.
00:02:02
Speaker
And I knew I wanted him on the podcast because this conversation is one that I relate to, I think a lot of us relate to, of maybe having some something here that he's going to talk about that we might relate. I'm not going to, you know, I don't want to get too far ahead of it, but this this this conversation that doesn't happen enough and it's something that causes so much hurt and pain and disintegration within individuals, within relationships, within families. And when we have this conversation, we can have healing and we can have integration and we can create
00:02:32
Speaker
healthier communities, healthy relationships, healthier families. But before we jump in, I just want to welcome
Clint's Journey and Integration of Faith and Psychology
00:02:37
Speaker
Clint. So hey, welcome to the podcast. Hey, man, I'm so glad to be here. Glad to have you have me on Travis. And I felt the same way just, it's rare to have men in the therapy world in general. You know, it's usually lots of ladies and which is great, but it's nice to have other men that we can talk with about these things and in process. And so connecting with Ellie, connecting with you.
00:02:57
Speaker
It's been a fun time and man, I'm just excited to get to talk about things that are usually not talked about very much. Same here in the whole, I could relate to that. I remember my graduating class was 10 to one ratio, female to male. So, you know, most classes I was the sole male, maybe there's two of us in a class. So it was, we were the minority. So I always love reaching out and connecting with other male clinicians and creating that bond and understanding and kind of working this together.
00:03:22
Speaker
So Clint, can you tell us a quick bit about what you do and then we'll jump into the topic for today.
00:03:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm a licensed professional counselor with a master's in marriage and family therapy. I went to Fuller Theological Seminary out in California to get my degree. Before that, I grew up in a, you know, very poor country, you know, out in the sticks neighborhood and Deville, Louisiana lived in a trailer kind of growing up. Me and my sister, my parents divorced when I was eight. And I say that because, you know, when you, when you see speakers or writers and podcasters, people think, oh, they, you know, they've, it's always been a certain way or, you know,
00:03:56
Speaker
And I say that to say that anybody listening anywhere you come from, right, you can change and grow and God can really move you in the way that he wants to move you. But my parents divorced when I was eight. That was very traumatic. I mean, obviously didn't realize that at the time. Grew up, had some sexual trauma around 11 or 12. Obviously didn't know what that meant either. Went into high school, doing my normal thing, going to church, kind of living the life, but not really knowing what that meant.
00:04:20
Speaker
And I didn't make great grades. I was just doing the best I could. I really didn't care about studying in her school unless it was a subject that I was really passionate about. So in 2000, I joined the National Guard, Army National Guard, and went to basic training. And so 9-11 happened and turned my world upside down. The training was really rigorous. So we did 9-11. Then I got deployed to Afghanistan. And then a couple years later, it was in the Superdome for Hurricane Katrina.
00:04:48
Speaker
And that was a worse than Afghanistan on some levels we could do. I should do a whole podcast on that at some point, but, um, PTSD really hit me. I was doing, you know, drugs and alcohol and women and whatever I could do to cope with all that pain hit a wall, had a meltdown, started going to therapy, got back into church. And, you know, God just started really working on me. Community started working on me. Therapy started working on me.
00:05:11
Speaker
And after, you know, a year or so, I realized like, this is something I want to do for other people. It's always been something that I felt was kind of in my pocket, like being vulnerable, sharing, being real, being open with other men, but of course, didn't have any guidance and didn't know what I was doing. And so that's what kind of led me into the psychology world. And along the way, just being in church, my mom works at the Louisiana Babies Convention, which is a huge organization in Louisiana. It covers all the youth events and college events.
00:05:37
Speaker
Go to all these events and never hear the word trauma never hear the word abuse never hear the word PTSD and I just started wanting to really be passionate about integrating those two things faith and psychology and what's good about this one and how do they come together and and where are the truths and
00:05:55
Speaker
So that's kind of where I've, where I've come from.
Addressing Sexual Neglect and Education
00:05:57
Speaker
And now I want to practice Clint Davis counseling and integrative wellness. We have about 25 therapists, social workers, licensed professional counselors, marriage and family therapist, biblical counselors, doctor, chiropractor, you know, some integrative wellness members that help with the holistic treatment and do a podcast. And I just wrote a book and just trying to do things in the world to make it better. So married, I've been married 14 years and I have two boys, Grady and Jude, who are six and nine. And so they're kind of my,
00:06:24
Speaker
My family is my first priority and then everything kind of falls out after that. So that's a story, Clint, right there. And, you know, that whole journey and like you said that no matter where you come from, I think we do make these preconceived notions and assumptions about certain people and what it should look like or must look like if they're, you know, an author, podcast or whatever.
00:06:46
Speaker
But the reality is everyone has a story. And I think the thing that really hit me in the topic of today really is around your book, Building Better Bridges, which everybody, this is the book. If you're watching on YouTube, this is the book. If not, the link will be in the description directly to buy this book. I can't speak more highly of the necessity of this book.
00:07:07
Speaker
because it really is around education. And it's around the topic that set to me listening to your TED Talk and those that don't know, Clint gave a TED Talk around this topic and has been speaking about this for years. And the thing that set up to me in the whole TED Talk is this notion of sexual neglect.
00:07:24
Speaker
Sexual neglect and I think that's what really hit me as I was going through this book and this this idea and so I think that's where I want to sit with this conversation today and what it is I would love to have you define it Clint what that is what it looks like and and kind of
00:07:39
Speaker
What's the antidote to that? How do we begin to address that so we can and not have to have always a reaction to this, but we want to plan ahead. We want to be ahead of the, you know, we want to be ahead of the curve. So we aren't having to come out and kind of fix and pick up the pieces, but we are equipping people along the way. So they're able to kind of navigate this conversation much more holistically. So first and foremost, what is sexual neglect? Can you define it for us?
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah. So I think it's helpful to go back to the ACEs study. So adverse childhood experiences and help people understand that if they don't, you know, if they don't look back on childhood and realize that the things that happened to us in our childhood, according to research, you know, it affects our whole life affects our, our body, our mind, our soul. It impacts our epigenetics. It impacts our, you know,
00:08:33
Speaker
are what we pass down to our children in the future. So these things that happen in childhood are really, really important. And on the ACE study, it's things like physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Physical and emotional neglect, mother treated violently in the home, substance abuse, incarcerated relative, mental health issues. Those are the main ones. And I've learned about that, you know, being a clinician and working through therapy. I love trauma work and helping people go back and heal and see kind of root causes. But personally and professionally,
00:09:02
Speaker
What I noticed on under neglect was there wasn't a term for sexual neglect for childhood. And I say childhood sexual neglect because a lot of times people hear this and think sexual neglect means like you they need more sexuality. And that's the opposite with children. You know, if you're in a marriage and you're working with somebody, they say I'm sexually neglected. It means I'm not getting enough sex. The neglect is the conversations about sexuality, about consent, about body safety.
00:09:29
Speaker
about proper terms for private parts and about just sexual development in general outside of eroticism right puberty is really scientifically where eroticism becomes a thing where we where we start to think in erotic ways and what most people say sexual ways but sexual development is things like
00:09:48
Speaker
an erection or menstruation or masturbation or any of those type of things. How do I play with another child and explore with another child and stay safe? Who can touch me and who can't? Who can see me naked and who can't? What images should I look at and which images should I not when it comes to other people's bodies and private parts?
00:10:11
Speaker
40 years of my life, you know, I'm 41 now, 40 years of my life, nobody's ever talked to me about any of that stuff. And as I asked my friends and my peers, whether that in the military or whether that's in church or whether that's as a clinician, a resounding 90 plus percent of them were like, yeah,
Technology's Impact on Sexual Education
00:10:27
Speaker
me too. Like no one's ever talked about that. So as I went around the country,
00:10:30
Speaker
in the world in some cases. One of the things I would do when I get to this concept is I ask people to raise their hands if their parents taught them about masturbation. And I started polling people and kind of doing some research. And I've had a bit in front of 7,000 people and never had more than three people raise their hand. And, you know, the pushback could be, well, they're embarrassed. They don't want to raise their hand. Okay. Well, sure. Some people might not have raised their hand. As I've continued to have these conversations and do the research, it's wrong, resoundingly true that very few people
00:10:58
Speaker
have had their parents walk them through those things. And so the neglect is that. And the analogy I use in the book is, and really updated version already since the books come out, is a couple things. One is we teach our children how to cross the street, right? Like we tell them to look at the sidewalk, we tell them to hold our hand, we tell them their car's coming. When it comes to sexuality, what's happened is that we've grown up as a society where we've had our first sexual experiences or erotic experiences or
00:11:25
Speaker
just normal developmental, what every single human being is going to go through. And it's like we walked out into the street and got hit by a car we didn't know existed. And so let's, you know, you have your first erection as a little boy at three or four years old from playing in the bathtub or playing with your friends or, you know, itching it. And as parents, we,
00:11:45
Speaker
We are at least as adults we a lot of us have been growing up to like ignore that don't touch that that's bad don't do that like and Definitely not gonna name it what it is or talk call it a penis or have a conversation about an erection in fear of Overly sexualizing our children right are it's rightly so that we should be mindful about that but what we've done is we've neglected to have appropriate age appropriate conversations and
00:12:09
Speaker
So that our kids know what our morals are, what our values are, and what they should or shouldn't do with their bodies. And so we, in order to protect them, we have neglected them. And we would never do that with like a gun or with, um,
00:12:23
Speaker
a car, for example. We teach them these things along the way. We mentor them along the way. We protect them. We give them the safety mechanisms. We teach them all the things, and then we send them out into the world. But when it comes to sexual development, we've neglected to do that for several generations. And one more point, and then I'll let you ask me a question. But the world's changed.
00:12:43
Speaker
For hundreds of years, the margin for error was very small and still lots of trauma happened. But now we have with the onset of the phone and social media and the internet and the home and our culture becoming hypersexual, even more so than ever before in 15 years. Our margin for error as parents is very, very small. And if we make errors, even though abuse is terrible and exposure is terrible on any account,
00:13:07
Speaker
If we make errors, the amount of exposure and what they're exposed to is at such a different level than ever before in history. And so we've got to make some changes. Yeah, absolutely. And you said something in your TED talk, you know, we are, and I'm about the same age, I'll be 40 this year, so I'm coming up.
00:13:25
Speaker
on that, that we are analog to digital journeyers. But our kids are digital natives and I think that's so key because we have to change our mindset. We as adults need to catch up and understand that it is different and that the exposure is so rapid and so quick. I remember you gave the example of the dial-up and the computer used to be in the living room.
00:13:49
Speaker
and so people knew if you're on the internet because they'd hear the that sound that we all know well not we all know people our age know that sound of the dial up connecting an aol and that whole thing and if you picked up the phone you'd be like and so it was it was more risky to look up you know for example pornography as a kid on the internet
00:14:08
Speaker
Nowadays, it's no risk. People are doing it on their phone everywhere, anywhere, and it's instant. It doesn't take an hour to download an image. And I know this because I tried that back then when I was a kid. Let's download an image or try and see that you gave the fuzzy lines. What can I see? It's like nowadays, there are no fuzzy lines. It's a click away. And unfortunately, it's constantly being advertised too. And so you gave the example. And I remember my wife, she was an elementary school teacher before she stayed home with her kids.
00:14:37
Speaker
And, you know, she would have the police come and talk to parents about internet use and phones, just constant education and the police officers, their analogy was like, it's like giving your kid a loaded gun and expecting them and not teaching them anything about it and expecting them to be safe with it and not shoot themselves, essentially.
00:14:54
Speaker
And so the reality is we need to adapt and have these conversations and if the conversations aren't happening, which for the most part they are not, our kids are left to figure it out on themselves and whatever their first experiences and I can't tell you how many people have had in my office where their first experience was pornography or something.
00:15:12
Speaker
maybe abuse, and so that begins to shape and wire their brain in a way that that becomes this is what it looks like or should look like or normal. And so as they grow up, it becomes to have this disillusion or confusion of what it should look like or how it should go around this topic. And so this book is so needed because we need to have this conversation. And I relate to this topic in my own story that I think that I don't remember really having a sex talk other than, hey, wait till you're married. I think that was the
00:15:41
Speaker
that was the conversation. I do remember a couple times, you know, I think when my dad caught me on the internet and we had a conversation, you know, hey, don't look at this, it's not healthy. So I remember those, but it was very, it wasn't a, I don't remember, kind of an ongoing conversation, really. Yeah. And education around this, it was kind of like when I got caught and. Reactive. You know, or reactive. And so I think we want to shift that, like you said, getting away from reactive.
00:16:06
Speaker
right? And we want to be preventing it. We want to be ahead of the curve. We want to be educating well, which is what I do with my kids now. We talk about penis, vagina, all those things constantly. This is kind of what we talk about because I want to be having my kids talking about this, knowing this and what's appropriate, what's not.
00:16:22
Speaker
because we're laying the foundation where it's a regular talk, it's not taboo, because I think for a lot of us it was taboo, right? Or shame, like you said, shameful, or negative, or wrong, and in some religious circles it was very shameful to have this conversation, some hyper conservative circles, whereas like, nope, this is, or you're going to hell. I mean, people would get this message too, so there's another layer to that, and that could even be abusive of what we say to ourselves, and so,
00:16:46
Speaker
When we think about that, what have you seen with the clients you've worked with now or adults who've had maybe sexual neglect? What's some of the impact you've seen in their lives? Well, I think one of the major impacts is what you were talking about is the inappropriate wiring of arousal templates.
00:17:04
Speaker
So an arousal template is like the neurology around like what turns us on? How do we get our needs met? How do we feel safe? What do we use to cope? And you know, we've been wired as human beings to use sexuality to do that in a healthy way. But when we our first experiences are with other children are with other older siblings or with another adult or with violent pornography, because that's the other thing is like they're not just looking at it's not
00:17:30
Speaker
that children are watching people make love and that's causing lots of problems, although that's not good for children to see either. It's that what they're watching, especially in 2024 or the last 10 years, is extremely abusive violence, not real, highly dopamine-fueled videos. So when they're watching that and they're masturbating to that and they're thinking about that,
00:17:51
Speaker
Excuse the way they see humans it changes women and men into objects that are to be used for pleasure it changes sexuality into this chase for orgasm and chase for pleasure instead of a chase for connection and intimacy and i think if we look at our society we look at the dating world and we look at the way we pursue those things in film and movies and music.
00:18:14
Speaker
That's a root cause. We ask all the time, like, why is it getting so wild? Like, why is it so crazy? Why in the last 10 years can you see anything late at night? It's because our appetite as human beings has gotten so depraved and so we need more, we need higher levels of things to turn us on and to make us feel alive. And I think that starts with children being exposed to porn, children being touched by another child, even, you know, play.
00:18:43
Speaker
For that child, it's abuse. For that other child, it's, oh, I'm acting out something I saw on television, or worse, abuse from an older teenager or adult. And those things devastate a person's sense of safety, their identity. I've worked in human trafficking for 10 years, and we have a program called Purchase Not For Sale. We have 10 women or so in their families who have been removed by the FBI or local law enforcement out of trafficking, and they live in a couple houses,
00:19:12
Speaker
we've served and counseled them and I started counseling them 10 years ago. So hearing their stories, it's like, it's all the same. It's all a lack of communication and education and prevention. And so those are the consequences. I mean, anxiety, depression, PTSD, drugs and alcohol, right? If we look at the consequences of the ACEs scores, it's like, well, this sexual neglect thing is right along with the rest of it.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, and so I think we need to acknowledge that, like you said, you gave a, you know, the TED talk, they flashed an image up of like the ACE score, and you had a little arrow of where they should pop in the little icon or symbol for sexual neglect, because it is something that I think they, if they redid the ACE score, which was done through Kaiser Permanente, you know,
00:19:57
Speaker
look it up everybody it's a really helpful score to understand trauma and the impact it has is that we need to i think they should do that again and but add in sexual neglect i'd be curious to see how the impact that's going to have on the the data it was i mean just a little historical it'll take two minutes to kind of say this because i don't think it's in the book but i've thought about it even more recently it's like
00:20:18
Speaker
Well there wasn't anything to really neglect for hundreds of years because people didn't have televisions they didn't have magazines they didn't have like they didn't have time for entertainment and they didn't have wealth to entertain themselves so even when we've studied these things pornography addiction is a new thing.
00:20:36
Speaker
I mean it people have always been addicted to sex were been able to wire their brains a certain way towards that but like with alcoholism you have to drink a lot of alcohol to become an alcoholic so it's you have to really put your time in well there wasn't a there wasn't a big you know.
00:20:52
Speaker
statistical number of people who had access to pornography ever. Yeah. And so when they study it till like 2000 in the boom, right? Right, right. The boom. Yeah. But even then, like it was again, like we said, like there was a computer in the living room, you know, and so it's like, that's very, very limited. Really, I think the peak happened in 2000, I would say 2009 or 2010 when children first got cell phones in their hands.
00:21:17
Speaker
where the parent had had a phone for a couple of years, maybe they got their iPhone in 2007 or 2008. And then 2009, 2010, really, they probably upgraded to their second phone and handed their first phone to their kid. And since 2010, right, and there's been much smarter people than me, but Jonathan Heights, one of those guys who wrote Calling of the American Mind,
00:21:38
Speaker
Why good people fight over religion and politics both great books but the research is like okay so the suicide rate is increased a hundred and seventy six percent the self harm rate is increased two hundred percent.
00:21:49
Speaker
The addiction rate has increased 49%. The anxiety, clinical anxiety rate for college freshmen has increased almost 23%. All of that's happened in children since 2010. Well, what happened? It's like, well, they had access to all of the information that you could ever want, all of the levels of sexuality and violence, all of the adult content that no child would have ever been able to listen to or hear. And I'm not even talking about sexual or
00:22:16
Speaker
violence which is definitely part of it. I'm just talking about as a child being able to have access to adults talking about anything. All of a sudden you can go to YouTube or Instagram or Snapchat and just listen to hours of adults talk about adult things. And I think children aren't wired to handle that.
00:22:33
Speaker
And I would say to some degree, adults aren't either. No, 100%. Adults
Parental Roles and Prevention Strategies
00:22:37
Speaker
aren't either. Why are to have this amount of information constant? Because as you do too, I work with plenty of adults that the device has so much negativity attached to it and they're stuck with it in a way they're addicted to it. Yeah, we can't manage it. No, and if we can't manage it, kids cannot.
00:22:56
Speaker
And I think I see a lot of that too, the untethered, the lack of boundaries, the lack of, hey, we need to have rules and limits around this, how often I hear that more than I hear that there's rules and limits around the device.
00:23:07
Speaker
Yeah. I think the stats, 87% of parents have no rules for their devices in their home. And so going back to that gun analogy, like we would just never do that with a, with a pistol. Nope. I want to talk about why that is just for a second. And I obviously dive deep into this in the book and then we'll talk about what to do. But I think, I think if we realize that what I'm saying and what the research shows is true, then we have to all as adults realize there's really two things we're talking about prevention for children 12 and under and recovery for everybody else. So.
00:23:35
Speaker
Because if all this is true in the research true most people are gonna need to recover their own view of sexuality their own shame their own anxiety and depression around what they've done what they've experienced and what and why that is and we have to realize that a child before puberty doesn't think erotically.
00:23:52
Speaker
And so when we use the terms penis and vagina, when we talk to them about their body safety, when we bring up sexuality in an age appropriate way, they're not weird about it. They don't think crazy things. They're not, they don't have presuppositions or images or memories that they pull back up, but we do. So when we use the word penis or vagina, we think of a penis and a vagina, and then we think erotically and we, and things pop in our head or go, you know, turn us on or whatever that we've been experienced and been exposed to.
00:24:20
Speaker
A child doesn't have that. Praise God. And so we want to keep them from that stuff until they're ready. But we want to educate them on, hey, this is what's happening with your body. This is what's about to happen with your body. That's normal. This is healthy. Here's what our family thinks about it. And here's here's how you can talk to me about it. And so that's the concept of building the bridge. It's
00:24:40
Speaker
you're building a bridge between you and them that can hold heavy things. And these conversations are the heavy things, right? These conversations are the bridges that hold the heavy topics. And for us, we have bridges made out of straw. So by the time we were 15 or 16, and my parents want to talk to us about porn because they catch us or masturbation or sex or alcohol or any other thing, right? We're talking about this, but insert any topic. We're like, why are you talking about this? You've never talked to me about anything serious or anything emotional or anything difficult. And now you're basically just getting onto me or guiding me or directing me.
00:25:08
Speaker
And I've already done all this. I've had four years of masturbation. You're trying to talk to me about it now. I already have these experiences and these arousal templates and these neuropathways. I can't just quit. And so what I'm proposing is the prevention wing is talking to our kids along the way in an age-appropriate way and building that up in all of our kids from 2 and up, from 0 and up.
00:25:31
Speaker
That's not saying talk to your three-year-old about masturbation. That's saying when your child has an erection, call an erection and move on. Then when they're six or seven, talk to them more about it. Then when they're nine or ten, talk to them about sex. Then when they're 11 or 12, talk to them about puberty and masturbation and how all that works. So that by the time they're 14 or 15, you're the source of all their information.
00:25:52
Speaker
You're the person they can trust where they feel safe and there's no shame. And then when they mess up or they screw up or something happens, they're more likely to come to you and say, hey, help me. You know, all these things you've talked about are true and they have affected me this way. And I want to process those things. That's the concept of the.
00:26:08
Speaker
And why is that important? Why should parents do this? Because when they don't, our first experiences with these things is with shame, fear, and surprise. And we're going to, let's use a nocturnal emission, right?
00:26:24
Speaker
girls and boys, but mostly boys have their first like erection or arousal in their, in their sleep. And they have, you know, an orgasm in their sleep somewhere around 12 to 13 or 11 to 14, or, you know, maybe they've been aroused all day or they masturbated before. And at night, all of a sudden they get an erection and they have an orgasm.
00:26:42
Speaker
And they wake up in the middle of the night going, what is happening to my body, right? Like, am I dying? If your parents have never talked to you about that or prepared you for that, you have no clue it's about to happen. And so you feel shame and you feel scared, but it feels good. And so you either try to replicate it or you go Google it, or you go talk to a friend about it, or you keep it a secret for the rest of your life.
00:27:03
Speaker
What we want is the opposite of all those things. We want a child to go, we want to say, hey, you know, in a couple of months, you're looking like you're growing some hair underneath your arm. You're starting to hit puberty. We've talked about this. You know, we've talked about erections. We've talked about like your body changing and that God made you to have babies. Okay. Well, part of that is this, right? Part of that is this science of how we procreate and how we make this.
00:27:25
Speaker
And so this may happen to you in the middle of the night and that's totally normal. There's no shame there. Let me know about it. We'll clean it up. We'll talk about it. We don't want you to feel shame. And if you have any questions as you go, we'll process that. We also don't want it to be weird. So we don't want to have to have 45 minutes conversations about it. So, but there's this, there's this kind of just general sense of grace and conversation where you go, okay, I'm your person and I'm representing that by being confident in this information and preparing you for it, for when it happens.
00:27:52
Speaker
That's not erotic, right? That's not hyper sexualizing our children. That's not like giving a moral stance to any of that. It's just preparing them for what is literally going to happen. And so when we don't, I think we abdicate our role and what we communicate to our children without communicating is I'm not to be trusted in this area.
00:28:09
Speaker
And this is a conversation that we don't have because we've already not had it. And that, I mean, obviously makes a host of problems that then I think if you're not gonna talk to me about literally what's going on with my body and my soul, why should I listen to you about all kinds of other things?
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah, bingo. Yeah, and that causes, if we don't, right, that's the neglect pieces that they're left to own devices, and that's when shame creeps in, like you said, or doubt, or they look somewhere else, and where we tend to look, especially kids, it tends to be from another peer who may not be educated, well, either have good understanding, or the internet, or whatever, and you could find a whole slew of things, just like the gut, get the gut analogy, we need to teach proper use, because the impact it will have if we don't, and I think of,
00:28:54
Speaker
you know, if we have this neglect growing up, it creates a level of disintegration, meaning emotionally create, you know, suppressing of certain emotions or shame. It can cause a disintegration between mind and body where maybe some kids might think their body is bad or wrong, right? So that it creates like this self-criticism. And so that creates like this distancing and disconnect from their mind and body.
00:29:16
Speaker
And obviously if they turn to more porn use or something else or drugs or alcohol, that can create more pain and suffering and that can lead them down to more traumatic experiences or if they've already had trauma from actual abuse, like they've been sexually abused or physically abused.
00:29:32
Speaker
and there's no safe person. So it creates all this, this rat's nest of pain. And so being as parents, the importance of us is helping really our kids integrate, integrating the understanding of mind and body, having a healthy discussion, understanding the emotions that might come with it and being a sounding board for our kids and saying, hey, this is normal to feel, but it is okay. Like you don't need to be scared or it's normal and normalizing it in a healthy, effective way. It creates healthy development in this area for the kid and actually,
00:30:02
Speaker
in other areas too, emotional health, relational health, social health, you know, like bodily health. So it's this, this piece is, it's like if you take this out, like how it's been, it impacts everything else in an, in an unhealthy, negative way. It, it weakens the wheel. Like if you take this spoke out, everything else starts to collapse under the pressure. But if you have this strong spoke of sexual health,
00:30:27
Speaker
and understanding along with the others, you're going to have a strong foundation and it's going to impact everything else for the better.
Healing from Neglect and Abuse
00:30:34
Speaker
And so, you know, with that said, what do we do? How do we begin to bring integration into this topic, especially if we're in recovery or if we want to do prevention? What does that look like for you? And what are you teaching?
00:30:45
Speaker
Yeah. So one, just helping people understand like normal developmental stages for their kid. I would say people spend hours looking up a new gun or a new car, a new laptop or a new purse or a new whatever. And our parents would have said, there's not a book for parenting. Well, we have them.
00:31:02
Speaker
There's a lot of really good books out there on how the brain works, how the body works, what a child can learn, when they can learn it. And yet we as parents like kind of just fold it in and act like we're going to just figure it out along the way because that's what, again, this generational trauma of what happened to us. So I think get educated, you know, listen to podcasts, listen to books, listen to things like you put out on being dads and being moms and how to function so that we can understand. So I lay that out in the book, zero to five, five to 12, 12 to 16, 16 to 22, like just kind of
00:31:31
Speaker
where are they at emotionally what can they learn what can they learn and then when and how and where and what should we talk to them about during those stages and obviously it's not a there's not a black and white hard way of doing it because every kid goes to people a little earlier has some some things but.
00:31:48
Speaker
It's a guidebook to that. It's like, if you want to know when your kid's six, go look and it's going to tell you, hey, somewhere within this range, this is going to be happening. They can learn it this way. And here's the conversations you should be having. And here's some examples of how to have that conversation. Like here's some starting conversation points. Here's some, what if they say this? What if they say that if they push back about this? So you have a general idea of, man, I mean, I literally have someone helping me walk through this.
00:32:15
Speaker
So that leads into if you have, that's the prevention piece, right? And it tells you exactly what to do with all those. The recovery piece is for parents listening to this or adults listening to this who are like, oh, this is so validating, but I haven't done any of this. This is the recovery piece. So we have to start by doing our own work, healing from our own neglect and acknowledging that it happened.
00:32:38
Speaker
And then recognizing how that impacted us and then starting to do some behavioral changes in our lives and some heart changes to where we have a healthy view of ourselves and others as we do that, then we need to talk to our teenagers or even our college levels, you know, children and say, Hey, I'm sorry.
00:32:56
Speaker
this thing happened to me and i didn't know that i was supposed to talk about it i've been ashamed of it and no one helped me but that's not an excuse for me not to help you and so we're gonna start to have some conversations and kind of walk this stuff back. Hey i've given you a phone and so the book goes into that once we get past kind of the body of this it's like okay well that's the problem with social media and the phone right now it's it's.
00:33:19
Speaker
It's that all of these people have experienced sexual abuse and sexual trauma and neglect. And all of those people now have phones in their hands and iPads in their hands at 6 or at 15. And they have no clue how to navigate it. And they have all this preset trauma that is affecting how they can cope and how their impulse control and what they're aroused by. And so we've got to really retcon all of that and go, hey, let's walk this back and let me teach you that.
00:33:47
Speaker
And so I think that's a huge thing that we need to do is teach children how to use technology and social media appropriately along the way, just like we need to teach them about their body instead of basically what we're doing now is here's an iPad, good luck. And that takes time, right? And it's going to take... And support. And support. And it's going to take the adult to begin that. And I would say if that's where you are, there's no shame in it.
00:34:12
Speaker
That's one of the best things you can do. And depending who's listening to this, you may have a history with sexual abuse and at the very least minimum sexual neglect, but you might have something more serious and that takes time to heal too. And there are plenty of modalities that can help bring healing to that and recovery and reintegration and kind of letting go of the pain and the trauma of that all.
00:34:35
Speaker
And at least from my perspective and probably Clint's too, there's no shame in it. In fact, that's part of our job is we want to help people heal from that and not be stuck anymore in that kind of their hypervigilance or fear or shame or doubt or, you know, or things they turn to to cope, whether, you know, quote unquote, an addiction like, you know, alcohol drugs or maybe porn still to this day or, or overworking or whatever is going on.
00:35:01
Speaker
And part of your healing, no matter what age you are, is gonna, actually that's gonna trickle down to your kids, no matter what age they are. Because they're gonna, you're the model, they're gonna see you. Even if they're in college or older, it would still have an impact because they're looking, wait, dad now at 60 is doing this, huh? Or, and obviously the younger the kid, of course it's gonna, I think, speed it up because there's less to deal with versus a kid who's in 25.
00:35:26
Speaker
But it doesn't matter, healing is healing, and it's never too late to do this. Because here's the thing, no matter what aid you are, if you begin to heal, you gotta think the long game, the generational changes that are coming. It's not just the now, but it's what are your grandkids, great-grandkids, great-great-grandkids, how is this gonna trickle down to them?
00:35:48
Speaker
and having these conversations and normalizing this as this is just as important as talking about our physical health, our social health, hopefully now and more our mental health, our sexual health, our spiritual health, all these things are normal part of our conversation and to use the resources that are out there for us. Because like Clint said, 100 years ago, we didn't have books. People weren't talking about this. So it was different and some degree we have to adapt to the times. Because if we don't, that to some degree is on us.
00:36:18
Speaker
as the adult now yeah i think i'll say two things about that one i think what we we can do is therapist and for people listen to this you you you are a victim right like you were a child who was victimized by either neglect or abuse or exposure and that's real
00:36:33
Speaker
and sitting in that victim's seat and processing what is that mean about you what identity do you have in that what responsibility you have in that and finding the freedom to break free from that is so important yeah and after we do that we have to move out of the victim's seat into empowerment we have to realize that our parents were victims and their parents were victims and that.
00:36:54
Speaker
Two truths can happen at the same time. One is your parent might have done the best they could with what they had. And the second is that impacted you significantly and is not fair and is not right and you didn't deserve it. And learning to hold those two truths actually brings freedom because when you realize like we are our parents, everybody is capable of horrible things depending on where they're at and what circumstances and resources they have.
00:37:17
Speaker
then man, we can start to really heal and then bring healing to other people. And so I think that's super vital. And I would say the other thing is, like you said, recognizing that our kids
00:37:29
Speaker
long for us to connect with them and to repair the ruptures. And even as adults now, like if our parents, let's say they took a couple of years and went to therapy, they got some insight, they got some healing, and then they come to us and say, hey, I've been in therapy. I realized some of these things about my childhood. I realize I passed that down to you. I'm so sorry.
00:37:49
Speaker
The mass majority of us would throw the door open and say, let's reconcile this. Let's have a different relationship. Praise God. Hallelujah. You know, like, let's do this. That's not saying that if your parent did nothing and they just came to you and were like, Hey, I'm sorry. Let's get over it. That you're supposed to just wipe your hands of it and say, okay, well now my parents, sorry. So let's just make amends. But the same for us. If you're a, if you're a parent, you're listed this and you have a kid.
00:38:12
Speaker
Man, they want you just to be authentic, apologize, do the work. And that's a simple thing when you've done the work. But if you try to do it before you've done any work, just because now you're aware, because you listen to this podcast, they're not going to receive it unless you can show like, hey, I didn't make this about me. I made this about you. And I've put this work in. So I think those are two points I'd like to kind of nail down.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think needed points and I would agree in second that that the second point of how many clients I've seen in my office longing for their parents to just do that and that would like hey if they I would so listen to that because
00:38:52
Speaker
I think as we get older, we begin to realize that the dialectics of the two opposing truths at the same time, but we can still hold a boundary because, hey, my dad or mom is still doing this very thing, but there's this longing for it, but I want the healthy relationship. I would so love that.
00:39:08
Speaker
And so I know, even from my experience, because me and my dad didn't talk for a number of years, and now we have, you know, it's not, I know this isn't the story for everybody. Now we have probably one of the best relationships because of the work that he began to do on himself. And he is such a healthier version of self. And I don't blame him for his past, but there's things he did in the past that I was like not okay with. But he's healed him because of that. And I saw it.
00:39:30
Speaker
You know, we reconciled that took years. It wasn't like, okay, we're done wash over. It was years of reconciling about three years of like having conversations regularly and spreading it out. And then, you know, now it's probably the best relationship we've ever had. And it's really amazing to see. So I know it's possible.
00:39:47
Speaker
And that's the power parent. If you're here and you're like, gosh, I can't, I've done so much harm. Just start. I can't tell you what will happen with your relationship with your kid. I can't predict that. But what I can say is that you doing the work in healing will have an impact. Absolutely. 100% will have an impact. And to what degree? I don't know. But my hope is that you decide to do that.
Resources and Conclusion
00:40:08
Speaker
So as we wrap up, gosh, I mean, there's so much I want to talk about in this book, but I think it's a good intro. So where can we find you if people are in your area, if they want to do integrative healing in your area or work with me by your book, et cetera, et cetera. Where are you? Yeah. So if you want to find me, you can find me on Facebook or Instagram at at Clint Davis counseling. We post stuff every day in reels and videos and try to put out education and equip people so that
00:40:31
Speaker
would be very helpful. Amazon, you can get my book, Building Better Bridges, a guidebook to having difficult conversations that can save our children. Yeah, you pick it up there. Some, some Barnes and Nobles do carry it. It's better for me if you pick it up on Amazon and quicker for you to get it. And then I have a podcast asking why, which I'm going to have you, I think you're scheduled or getting scheduled to come on, which I'd love Travis, but we cover the same topics of integrative wellness and talking through these things. And, and I go through
00:40:57
Speaker
some of the book on their working on the audio book from audio book people but i'm doing the doing it myself and so it's been through the holidays i keep getting a scratchy voice or my kids get sick and it just keeps pushing it so but those are the places you can find me i speak all over the place so all over the country so if you have a church or school or who would like me to come in and teach kind of the building better bridges philosophy.
00:41:18
Speaker
We have a book a speaker page at ClintDavisCounseling.com. If you want therapy, we do online counseling. We have 25 therapists who kind of understand these things and do EMDR and trauma and equine therapy and somatic work and all of that. So they can look us up at Clint Davis Counseling.com for that as well.
00:41:35
Speaker
dude awesome and by the way those listening or watching all these links will be direct in the description clickable to take you exactly where you need to go for the book for for Clint's resources for his website if you want to book him for you know also to speak that's gonna be linked directly to I think we need more of this we need more conversations we need more awareness and then to do it right we need to move into empowerment which like you said is moving from
00:41:59
Speaker
gaining the awareness and understanding to that. Let now let's do something. Let's make an impact. And so thank you, Clint, for today and dude, blessing to all the work you are doing in our world. Cause it's so needed. So have a great rest of your day, man. And we'll talk soon. Okay. Thanks man. Appreciate you.