ll right, happy November. Already we're in November, can you believe it? 

So today we're going to get into a little bit of a heavy topic, and there's a reason for that. A trigger warning on this, there may be some discussion of abuse, sexual assault, child and family issues, child molestation, child pornography, that sort of thing just so that you know that's going to come up. It's not going to be in great detail, but I don't want you to be surprised by that. If that type of thing does trigger you or bother you. 

So today we're going to talk about the logic of shame.

Basically, shame itself, what some of the adjacent definitions are for it, would be humiliation or embarrassment. And How it seems to be used, especially as a child, but then there are other types of situations that come up when you're a lot older. Mostly though, this is going to be based on [00:01:00] childhood.

Coming from elders and people that are caregivers in our lives, right? These are the people that can cast shame on us, can create shame based on their particular issues. And so discussing, and I have my paperwork with me, so I stay on topic here cause there's just a lot to it. There's all types of shame.

There's just regular personal shame. Shame of self worth or shame of something that somebody did or that you've done and that you feel bad about. There's also marital shame. There's visual appearance type shame. There's abuse shame. And then what is shame made up of? It's something where somebody makes you feel like you're going to be cast judgment. I'm going to be more interested in shame that other people are throwing at you for stuff that they have done to you, which is extremely [00:02:00] common and unfortunate and the older I get, the more I realize that most people I know have gone through this in one form or another, whether it was child abuse, whether it was neglect, sexual assault or pedophilia or something that went on with someone who messed with a kid as an adult and made that kid feel that it was their fault, that they brought it on themselves and that they should keep the secret of what's going on. 

And of course, as an adult, if you do something like that, then there's a huge amount of judgment and responsibility that comes with that. Of course, you don't want anybody to know it. There's some really horrible manipulation tactics that adults will throw at children in order to make them quiet. In order to make sure that they don't say anything so we did this podcast in the first season. A friend of mine, Christina Vitagliano. So she wrote a book called Every Nine Minutes. And [00:03:00] that book, if you ever get a chance to read it, is basically about her life and some of the stuff that she went through as a child. And, there was a large amount of shame involved with that.

The the show that I wanted to bring up would be, called A Great Photo, Lovely Life. This is a, an HBO documentary. And it's basically about a woman who is trying to track down information about her grandfather, who was an extreme pedophile. He basically was a chiropractor in the town that, that they lived in and did a lot of damage in that town.

And, It's, tied in with her trying to go back through her family history, talk to everybody in her family about it, and how they dealt with it, how everybody around her, she, of course, was also a victim, and several of the children and women in her family were victim at some point, especially when they were young, and then a lot of the patients [00:04:00] that he had in the stuff that he did, so her tracking down people over the years that had you know, Go on through this abuse from him and trying to rectify the situation from being a family member of a person who would do such a thing, to find people that had been messed with by this guy to somehow apologize, she felt as a family member, that she should try to make it right for these people. 

She made mention to something that I didn't really think about in this documentary; she was like, you keep a secret for somebody that does something to you, you're keeping their secret. This is their shame. This is their issue. You're somebody that they ran across to do whatever that they did to you, but you've nothing to do with it with the exception of that you were the victim of it.

It is not your burden to carry. It is not your shame to cover. It just isn't. And so as you get older, within a supportive system and in a safe space [00:05:00] around people that will understand, you should absolutely tell people about it because it is not something that you should keep a secret .

As a matter of fact, the more you keep this secret, the more that person gets away with what they did it's a powerful thing for them to have that secret kept. And so we've been watching several documentaries over the years, as the Gen X generation, even the boomer generation and some millennials have seen several documentaries from I'd say even like as far back as the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties of things that we thought as children were just perfectly fine stuff that we saw on TV. And there would be this syndrome that would happen where somebody on some sitcom or some musician or some child star, the thing that's funny to me as a child stars were always known to be problematic for me as a kid, right?

This is what they taught us that child stars have [00:06:00] such a hard time transitioning into adulthood and these type of things for them are so tough that they become troubled children and they Do drugs and they drink and they run away from home and they become promiscuous and all these things that they Go through to become adults I just remember as a kid that We were taught that the child star thing, that them becoming an adult was just a hard transition, and we just accepted that. And to be honest with you, I've not seen one documentary in the past probably ten years that didn't debunk that theory. Because this child star was, of course, dealing with either being neglected by a parent, having financial abuse going on, where the parent was basically taking all of the child's money and forcing the child to work 14 hours a day to make it, and then It's the weirdest thing to see some of these parents and the stuff that they did to their children because they came [00:07:00] into a lot of money based on that child acting or singing or whatever it was.

And unfortunately, there's not a lot of responsible, I'm sorry, there were some, but most of the time these parents weren't responsible people. And when they got this money in their hands, they just turned into kind of assholes. And these children suffered at the hands of that and a couple of these children that I can think of off the top of my head divorced their parents, they had to go into court and wanted to become, emancipated because of the fact that their parents were just destroying their lives and taking all of their money and Irresponsibly spending it and that kind of thing.

And so you see that and you think, okay, that's not good. But also a large amount of these children were left to the wolves to people in this industry. And this thing that with Diddy is going to be one of several things that are going to come out that are going to really force us to look at what we thought we were seeing or hearing about as kids 10 years ago, [00:08:00] 20 years ago, that we were being told.

These people that were having problems were just having problems because of their own what have you. And I bring up Justin Bieber because this kid went through a typical transition. Every single one of them up until now, back to the kids on Different Strokes and back to Shirley Temple and a lot of child stars went through this transition, Judy Garland, another one that was typical. They started drinking and doing drugs and being promiscuous and then the industry would look at them and say look at this person. This person has got to get their shit together. Otherwise they're not going to work anymore.

Let's put this person in rehab 18 times. Why would the stick these kids in a situation where they felt they needed to drink and do drugs? They had the money to do it, or they were around these type of people. And you see a lot of these documentaries with children that were born and raised in homes with people that were just on drugs all the time.

And they were part of these parties. [00:09:00] And you can go look at Drew Barrymore's life and see what I'm talking about when it comes to that. A lot of these children were in nightclubs before they were 10 years old. That's just insanity. When you have somebody that isn't even. A teen, not even a preteen, which developmentally is just like crazy that somebody would have that much responsibility on them and would be doing things like that, but because they were exposed to that sort of thing and because they were raised around it, what do you expect these children to do, right?

So some of them have committed suicide. And some of them have ended up in rehab and some of them have been given gag orders and can't speak and all kinds of stuff like that. I say, I go back to Justin Bieber and say he took that typical transition of he went from a kid who was making a lot of money at somewhere around his early teens, stuff started to go off track for him.

And everybody just looked at him and went typical child star, he was too young when he became famous and blah, blah, blah. This is the way it works. And we [00:10:00] all just accepted that like we do everything else. Like Amanda Bynes and like some of these other kids. And technically a lot of these children were messed with.

They were just messed with. Molested or something by somebody who should have been paying attention. By somebody who should have been taking care of them. And neglected by somebody who should have been watching what was going on and wasn't. And that's the end of it.

And as far as I'm concerned, anytime at this point I see a kid go off the rails, I'm going to point to that as a reason why. Because no child with a regular childhood is going to come up and be doing all of that. Sometimes they're exposed to that, and I get it.

But there's something that went into it. Horribly wrong at some point for these kids. And so that's, I always say that with celebrity, cause that's what we have. That's something that we all universally can see happening, with somebody that is famous to several people, but also so many of us. As [00:11:00] children, and so many children before us, and so many children after us, have gone through something like this.

I think it's almost normal that children have grown up in dysfunction. And I think it's very abnormal and rare that children have grown up in these wholesome backgrounds and homes. There's always been something, say, evil, lurking destructive, dark, but Anywhere that a child would go where they were supposed to be happy to be children, it's almost like any of these places when I was a kid and a little before my time and a little after my time a lot of these kids end up just vulnerable in places that they're supposed to be safe and they're supposed to be having fun and It's almost like all of these places where children were supposed to be in good hands were the exact places where stuff went wrong.

And this is Disney, and this is Nickelodeon, and this is the Boy Scouts, and, young girls in [00:12:00] church and religious schools and places where this is not supposed to be happening, were the, it seemed like the places where The most of it went on, right? These predators gravitated to places like this.

 I wanted to bring up something called thought terminating cliche. You've got a family member, you're going through something that's happening to you. You're five years old, six years old, seven years old, and you're being told All kinds of stuff to keep you from saying anything.

The things that you deal with your family, you find out as an adult, a lot more people knew about this thing you were going through than you thought. You get isolated by the person that's doing whatever they're doing to you, and you're being told, nobody else knows about this is our little secret, and if you say anything, and then they unleash all kinds of retribution on you that, as a kid, you shouldn't be dealing with, right?

Your family will leave you, their family will think it's your fault, I'll kill everybody in your family, whatever it is that they say that you're afraid of [00:13:00] because they know you well enough to know what your fears are, they throw at you. And then your family Not you specifically, I'm saying you collectively, obviously, not you personally, but a lot of these people at least when I was a child, the family buried stuff like this.

And you'll see in several documentaries, people that have been through stuff, their families buried it. Knew about it, but buried it. Turned their heads. There are several women who married, men that were stepfathers to daughters and sons that they abused, that where they either physically abused or sexually abused, where the other parent was just they go into this. I don't know. I don't, it's not, it's so horrifying or it's so unfortunate or it's so inconvenient for me to deal with this. I'm just going to act like it's not happening. And I'm just going to act like I'm shocked, like everybody else, when there's nowhere to go and everybody finally finds this out.

I'm just going to either tell people I didn't know about it. Or whatever. But when it's [00:14:00] happening, for some reason. It seemed to be so easy for these people, these adults that should be protecting their children to turn their heads on stuff like this. Some kind of psychological evaluation can happen there and somebody could explain to me. why that's the case. It just seems like willful ignorance or weaponized incompetence for somebody to just be like, you know what, it's just so much easier for me to act like I didn't see it than to try to do something about this because there's too much to do. If I make a phone call, there's just too much involved.

Family will be aware of this and people in the neighborhood will be aware of this and the person doing this will have to be removed from the house and child services will get involved. God, that's just all so inconvenient for me. I really do believe that some parents just figure day by day stuff's going to change and some of them let this stuff go on for 20 years.

So protecting the family at any cost is a very old trope that most of [00:15:00] us have heard. In one way or the other. Let's protect this family at any cost. We got to make sure the family is protected. We got to keep, one of my favorite phrases, and I don't mean favorite because I like it, favorite because it's our total sarcasm, is we need to keep this within the family.

We'll handle this ourselves. We don't need other people to know what's happening here. We'll deal with this within the family. Sure, that makes total sense. But I've heard that several times from my own family, in fact, at times. Maybe they fear identity issues, these adults. If I'm the type of person that allows this to happen, or I'm the type of person who brought somebody into this environment, I have a shitty sense of who I should date and who I should marry.

I don't pick very good people. Maybe I'm the a victim of abuse. Maybe I'm a victim that can't screen properly for the right person in my life as I get older because of what I've been through. I don't know what a real relationship [00:16:00] looks like. So I pick somebody and bring them into my house t hat is doing damage to my children, not to mention me. It's very, obviously there are people who are in fear of somebody who's abusing them to the point where they're worried about being killed. That's a whole nother story. And I'm not saying that doesn't happen because it does independent of that.

The person is probably if I admit this, or if I, realize this or if I act like this is happening, then that makes me have to question my judgment and myself and what kind of people I bring around. So if I just act like I don't see any of this, then I don't have to face my own choices for who I brought around my children.

Maybe identity issues are part of this - identity issues are part of a lot of shame for people, whether it's political, which we're dealing with right now, because we just had the election where somebody chooses a candidate and they doubled [00:17:00] down several times on that candidate and you're just like, how could you, here's a bunch of stuff that you know is going on here.

How could you just continue? And it's almost because I chose this person, so my identity is at stake. If I change my mind, if I concede, if I, give in and tell you that I'm wrong, then that puts my identity at risk. I Think a lot of people honestly are very worried about their own identity in their own perception.

Who am I to me if I change my mind about this? Everybody has to belong to something. And if they change their mind about something, then they don't know where they belong. And that's just like a horrible thing to some people to put themselves in a position where they don't know what they're affiliated with and they don't know who they are and what they should be doing.

So there are people that will double down on stuff that doesn't make any sense, just because it's easier to double down and scream at the other person than it is to question yourself about what you've been aware of and unable or [00:18:00] unwilling. to change based on new information, right? 

Indirect judgment is also something that parents have a problem with.

I'm being judged indirectly by somebody outside my family. My own mom has done this. Where, depending on what I wear out in public, I've had my say to me what kind of person would I be if I let my daughter go out looking like this? A pair of shoes that I liked, and I didn't want to get rid of . She would have a very big problem with somebody knowing that she was the person that gave birth to the person wearing these shoes. This was a thing for her and I would say I don't think anybody that sees these shoes are gonna know who you are because you're not gonna be there. I don't think a lot of people know who my mom is that are gonna be seeing the shoes. I don't think anybody's gonna be looking at my feet. I'm gonna be honest with you So we used to go back and forth about stuff like that if I had a pair of shoes like I said that I wore too much because I loved them and I needed to get rid of them and she thought I did [00:19:00] she would have a thing about people seeing these shoes on me , even in my twenties, when I wasn't living at home, it's one thing when you're living at home, when you're in your teens and you're wearing a pair of shoes that are bad, that your mom could be looked at as somebody who doesn't buy you new stuff I get that. But in my twenties, I was having this conversation where it's I live on my own and these shoes are shoes that I bought. Or you bought for me when I was 18 and maybe I'm now 21 and I'm still wearing them because I like them. Nobody's going to judge you based on that. They're going to wonder what my problem is. Not you. I don't even live at home anymore. But anyway, we would have these arguments. 

There's indirect shame involved with stuff like this. Where they have the shame of what's happening to their children or what's happening in their household. But then they've got the additional shame of the rest of the family or people in the neighborhood. Or people at school, or at church, or down the street at the grocery store, somebody knowing indirectly that you did something that caused your children harm you made a decision that brought that into your house, [00:20:00] and then you also made a second decision not to do anything about it for however long.

And the longer it goes on, The worse it gets, and the more shameful it becomes, right? There's denial as well, because some people don't want to face the truth. And it goes back to the beginning of it being inconvenient. It's called, the ostrich syndrome of, I'm just gonna act like I'm not here and this isn't happening.

Because it's just easier for me to just put my head down and act like I don't see it. Maybe the person that they marry and bring into the house puts them in a different tax bracket. Maybe you don't have as much as a child. Maybe you don't have toys on Christmas or you, maybe it's not as easy to buy food, put on the table, that kind of thing and when you meet somebody that can give you all of that, you just decide it's a trade off for you. It's just to have this crap going on because you're living better. And some people really do. Maybe they think they can't do any better or whatever the case may be. Of course, I don't care because you put your children at risk.

[00:21:00] And so it's too bad if you feel like you can't do any better, like your children are innocent and have nothing to do with this. And so now they become, they go under the bus tire just because of something you think you deserve. So it almost doesn't matter how you feel about it. It's if your children are suffering, your children are suffering, deal with it.

But anyway, also timeline issues. There are people that when you get older and you say, Hey, like this thing happened to me. People will shame you with timeline and tell you oh, that was 20 years ago, why didn't you say anything then? That's a thought terminating cliche right there to say -it shuts you up. They don't want to hear about it. If you tell people what happened to you, you get a very interesting mixed reaction. People that don't like what they're hearing and feel bad or whatever the case may be, they'll push back on you because you're telling the story. And when you think about that, it's a common response but when you think about it It's insanity that you're telling somebody, listen, [00:22:00] when I was five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, I was molested by somebody, my uncle, my stepfather my actual father, my grandfather, and they start throwing at you accusations that they don't believe you because it was so long ago.

You're seeking attention. That's a fun one. Why would you want that kind of attention? Why would anybody seek that kind of attention on purpose? I don't know why anybody would be accused of that but some people will say that to you yes, it was 20 years ago. It was 15 years ago. Why didn't you do anything about it?

Or hey, listen, I was getting my hide tanned by some guy that I was with In my 20s and he damn near killed me, and I eventually got out of it Why didn't you get out of it sooner? Why couldn't you just leave? There's a guy by the name of Steve Hassan, and there's a piece of literature called the BITE Model.

And it's just a scientific explanation of how somebody gets wrapped up in something that they wouldn't have signed up for if they had known about it going in but over time they got worn [00:23:00] down by different things and the bite model is B. I .T. E. 

There's four different stages of the bite model that show you from the beginning how somebody isolates you and brainwashes you and at some point psychologically, you just feel like you can't leave and it's an ability to do that.

Most of the time it gets used in cult talk, but it's also what they call cult of one something where you can be with an abuser and they can do this to you directly. And it's the same effect. Anybody that does anything that they think is okay and makes sense, if you notice, they don't come right out and do it when you first meet them.

Because you wouldn't bother with them if they did that. So they know, in my opinion, logically, they know it's wrong, so they don't do it right away, because they know that there's no investment on your part. And you could just turn around and say I don't need this. Now, when you get smart enough, and you've been through it enough, you can see it right off the bat, even if they don't come out with it, you can see enough tendencies in them to sidestep it. [00:24:00] But if you don't know any better, and they tell you what you want to hear and you're a little naive about it, you can absolutely get caught up in a trap like that, right? If you're abused by your parents, which in my case I was, and so it was really easy for me to see abuse in other adults, only because I as a kid, I was, I had to be real vigilant about it, right?

Same thing with emotional manipulation and some stuff like that. Now, did I end up by myself most of my life? Yes. Why? Because to me, it's just, not worth it. If I'm on the fence about somebody and I don't know that they're that type of person, I just as soon walk away. I don't even want to know. I don't want to find out if I think that's how they are. I'm done. Because of what I went through as a kid, because I had no power and no control and no ability to leave. I was in a position where somebody was, clothing me, bathing me, feeding me, and I was dependent on them and that person was supposed to be the person [00:25:00] that took care of me abused me instead at different times.

I don't ever want to be in a position like that again. I'm probably not going to be, but it's strong enough for me that if I see it 10 miles down the road and it even looks like it's not legit. I'm not sticking around to find out whether it is or not. And if somebody ever tries to leverage me by saying, Hey, I'll leave you if you don't give me what I want my response is, "can I help you leave? Can I pack a bag? How quickly can I help you do that?" I have no problem with you leaving. You're not going to get me on that. I can take or leave somebody that uses that kind of language with me to get me to conform to anything. 

I'm a rock. I'm an island, right? 

When you're used to being by yourself and you're content with it, nobody can leverage it against you to manipulate you or to blackmail you, but if you are the type of person who doesn't have experience with that, and you don't have a childhood like that, or you haven't had a previous relationship with [00:26:00] somebody like that, you can get caught up in it because they know how to do it. They know how to get you when you're invested. They know how to wait until the right moment. Some people, it's when you get married and they know you can't leave illegally. I don't know. There's a certain point in time based on how they feel you out, where they know they can be their true selves and you're not going anywhere.

But the fact, logically, that they wait until you're invested should tell you that they know damn well that if they tried to be who they were from day one, you wouldn't put up with it. And right there, that's just something that's important to remember. That if it wasn't a big deal and if everybody was okay with it and it was alright for somebody to treat you that way, they'd do it from minute one. and if they don't, that means they know that the investment has to be there first for them to get away with it, basically. So thought terminating cliches are just ways to shut you up. So when you tell somebody, "Hey, listen, this happened to me as a kid." A lot of victims that don't come [00:27:00] forward while it's happening, they're worried about their lives. They're worried about their livelihoods. There's something about. What's happening that's causing them to keep it a secret because they've been threatened about it, retribution. You fear retribution. You've been told straight out, you're going to get hurt. You're going to be killed. Somebody, is going to be killed. Somebody is going to kill your pet, your kids, your parents, whatever it is that they think is going to work. And if you're scared enough of them, they know you're going to believe it. And to be honest with you, some of these documentaries you've seen, and some of these true crime cases, they're not kidding and this person actually does what they say they're going to do.

Whether it's killing the victim themselves. Or, killing somebody in the family or something like that happening. It's definitely a threat that some people do keep their promise on and the people involved know damn well that they're capable of it and so they don't say anything. Retribution is a big deal and that's [00:28:00] people that threaten you directly, "if you say anything about what you, what I just did to you, you're in trouble." You'll see a lot of that in this whole thing with Diddy lawsuits. Where he's just had the power to be able to say to people, if you say anything about this, I'll ruin your career, I'll kill you, whatever. People knew he was crazy enough to do it and kept their mouth shut at the time.

Now everybody's coming out because they're more aware that it's going to be believed that he did these things and something like 250 lawsuits, if not more are in the works. And so now everybody's " okay nobody's going to point at me and tell me I was crazy. I'm going to say something because now I know the odds are good that I'm not going to get blamed for it. I'm going to be believed for it because of everyone else that's come forward", right? 

That happened in the Bill Cosby case, right? Where one or two women came forward and it is a brave thing to come forward against somebody like Bill Cosby. I mean it just is because we were so fooled by Bill Cosby, like I gotta tell you that like my life [00:29:00] changed when I found out about Bill Cosby. It really goes to show you what good promotion and marketing and somebody who can really fool people can do for you, especially years of us thinking he was the most wholesome thing on the planet and of course, now there's no way we know otherwise with so many people that have come forward. 

So there's also a fear of loss of support. You're going to fear the people around you that care about you are going to disappear if you say something, and I know that firsthand.

My mother wasn't a monster, we all got our asses kicked as kids in, the 60s and 70s, so it's not like I was the only one, but there were people who loved my mother and thought she was the best thing since sliced bread, and if I said something about her, they would argue with me. They would say, there's no way your mother's like that. They would. And it gives you that fear of wow, my friends and some of my family will like, ostracize me if I tell the truth about what's happening when nobody's around. 

 If [00:30:00] you ever notice that abusers or people that are manipulators they're really social people and they're very gregarious and they're wonderful people when everybody else is around and they just do a Jekyll and Hyde when everybody leaves, so Joan Crawford would be an example of that. They're entertainers and, they have people over the all the time and they're these social butterflies and everything's wonderful.

They can do this flip of a switch when everybody leaves. Okay. So I grew up with that. And there were people that I had as friends that really thought I was full of shit when I told them stories about my mother because of how wonderful she was when they were over she fed them and gave them anything they wanted and sat and talk with them and all kinds of stuff like that, that she couldn't be the way she was behind closed doors if she was that way around them and that does happen. 

So loss of support is a true [00:31:00] fear where, Oh my God, if I tell people this isn't as perfect as everybody thinks it is, it's going to fall back on me. People are going to start. not believing me and my support system is going to go bye bye. I'm going to be isolated. You don't want that when you, I think of a school bully, right?

Let's say there's some kid that keeps following you around in school and I don't know how it is now. It's a little bit different, but when we were kids, it would be some kid that everybody was afraid of and there was this dynamic that went on where the person who they bully somebody, who was obviously less savvy than they were weaker than they were.

There was always some would always go after somebody that like clearly couldn't defend themselves. And the bully topic is another story, but that's a dynamic of power and lesser power, right? That's something that happens in the schoolyards, but it's the first kind of, example of something like that that keeps on [00:32:00] going throughout your life with different people but that's where you first really see it on the schoolyard. Maybe when you're in elementary school there'd be some kid that you fall under their radar, lucky you and then they start harassing you and you deal with this for the school year sometimes they redirect it to somebody else. Sometimes they don't but based on how you respond to them they will adjust their behavior and if they come after and you go and tell someone else, that they're bullying you, it just makes things worse for you. What ends up happening is that person takes them aside, sits them down. I don't know whether they tell the person that's bullying that you came to them or not. But for the most part, I've noticed that no matter who goes and tells the principal or one of the teachers or whatever, the kid will just take it out on the person they're bullying more.

There's always going to be a point where you're by yourself and nobody's around. It's just the way it is. So you can have all the teachers and parents you want defend you, but at some point this person is going to catch you. [00:33:00] Now, bullying is more online. I don't know if it's how it is now; I know when I was a kid there was no other way for it to be. It was in person because that was all we had. And if you turned a corner, sometimes, you would get lured into a place. Somebody else would lure you and if the bully was, good enough at bribing someone else to get you somewhere, eventually you were going to have to face this person one on one, and that was it and there'd be nobody there to defend you, or to make sure that you were okay. 

So the best way to deal with a bully is to just turn and go after them. You're afraid to do that because you're afraid you're gonna get your ass kicked, right?

 I went through this with my sister. There was somebody bullying her when she was getting off the bus, I remember this -and she did tell my mother and I think she did tell somebody at school and it just continued and got worse. I got her on the phone one day and I said, listen, I think I'd moved out by that time and maybe it was like, Her and I are 10 years apart so she was like in her early teens. I think I was like in my early twenties so I just said, " what you need to do is just turn around and just kick the shit out of the person behind you, that's bullying you". 

Cause usually there's a group of kids, right? There's the bully, and then there's a bunch of kids [00:34:00] that like hang around the bully and they taunt you along with this bully probably because they're worried about this energy getting pointed towards them so if they become, accomplices, then they're free. They're in the clear if they like help the bully out. So that's what they do. And I said, "you don't want to say anything. What you want to do is just turn around and if they're all harassing you, just turn around and beat up the first kid behind you. Don't say anything about it, just do it. Then say, okay, who's next? Just do that."

Because what's going to happen is if you tell people, and you get parents involved, it's, it is, you do want a record of it, obviously, because if this kid is going to be a douchebag his whole life, you obviously want some kind of record of everything that he's ever done, right? You want people to know about it. But at the end of the day, your parents can't come to school with you. The teachers can't come home with you. There's just like this point in time where nobody's going to be around and this bully is going to get you anyway. And the best way to do it is just diffuse it and go after it, [00:35:00] right? That will change the dynamic. They'll probably leave you alone at that point, but the more you run from somebody, the more they chase you. And it's that's the dynamic I'm talking about. 

But the loss of support, it leaves a dread. And if you're a child that's dealing with adults that are abusive there's a fear of telling people around you because you don't want your abuser to get more upset. You want support from your friends and family and people that care about you, but you don't want them to disbelieve you or do something to remove that support system because once you're isolated, especially as a kid with an abusive parent. And they know you've said something, that's dangerous for you as a kid.

But I brought up the bully just to to bring up like that feeling of when you're being bullied as a kid, that fear, at least when I was a kid, [00:36:00] How somebody in person could corner me somewhere, in a school, in a hallway, on a bus, somewhere, walking home, something. That weird fear is what makes you not want to tell people that somebody's bullying you, whether it's a teacher, a parent, or whatever. Obviously with a bully it's different because it's more of an even playing field with a kid. 

You do not want to put yourself in any jeopardy as a child and go after your abuser, that's not what I'm saying, that's definitely the wrong thing to do, but there is a fear of telling people what's going on and them believing that this is happening to you, More than likely you would be believed, but when I was growing up there were families that straight out did not believe children about stuff like this or they didn't want to or they did But they didn't want to do anything about it I don't really know but it just seemed like it was real hard to tell people what was going on back then it was just easier for your abuser to be defended by their family .

And [00:37:00] of course, if they threatened you on top of that, there were a lot of kids that just didn't say anything, especially when it came to physical and sexual abuse, so that's just something that you have to really think about when somebody says to you why didn't you say anything, but the fear of loss your support system, and then you being told or somebody telling you that you're elaborating stories trying to blame you for making up shit, if somebody physically abuses you or sexually abuses you, why on earth would you make up a story like that? What would be the point of that?

But for the longest time in the years that I grew up, it was very common for children to be blamed for making stuff up like that, to get away with whatever it was the Menendez brothers is another story that I went back and looked at a second time. And I'm just as guilty as everybody else when that happened, I was probably around 21 years old to be honest with you, I wasn't sitting in front of the tv watching every little thing. [00:38:00] So I didn't really know the whole story I saw bits and pieces of it at the time because I was just that was like Prime time for me to be out clubbing and working and stuff like that So I knew of the story but it wasn't something that like I knew from beginning to end everything that happened I just saw it on the news and saw parts of it.

Anyway, you know Those kids explaining that they were being molested by their father, and that their mother wasn't doing anything about it, there was a point in time where they were accused of making that shit up just because they spent the money. And when you think about it, it's crazy how many of us just totally bought into the fact that they were, like telling a story.

And, that they would, go to jail for something like that. And years later, people in the family explained how the father was, and it was completely believable that he was doing something like that, but, the prosecution said what they said, and [00:39:00] I'm sure that there were people in the family that went along with it at the time or whatever, I'm not really sure, but think about having that going on your whole life like that, and then trying to explain that this is how you decided you were going to end it because you couldn't take it anymore. And then having to go through a trial like that and explain what's going on and somebody just telling you that you were making it up, right? We should believe people about stuff like this.

I'm hoping that with all the documentaries and all the stories that are coming out and going back over stuff from years ago, people are going to have a little more understanding for this type of thing. And give kids that are coming forward some kind of credibility and some kind of believability that they might be going through this kind of thing nobody would want to be seen as the type of person who was a victim of this, right? The trope was well shame them for it and tell them they could have left. Sure, they were in their 20s, but they were kids that could have been scared to death to leave or tell anybody about what's going on.[00:40:00] 

So You know if that's I would say what happened psychologically to somebody who's been through that; a lot of these child stars you know Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. One of them, maybe crazy as far as everybody's concerned and I guess it's easy to dismiss Corey Feldman as crazy, but he went through the same thing Corey Haim did and Corey Haim's way to deal with it was different but they went through the same thing by the same people.

And so what is the right way to deal with that? What's the right response for that? Sometimes you have to ask what do you expect kids to do? Do you expect them to be complete? What is the reaction that you think is appropriate for somebody to go through something like that as a child star?

Do you think, okay, suicide's not the answer. Okay. Everybody feels bad for Corey Haim. Why? Because of the way he took care of this situation for himself, which was horrible. If Corey Feldman decided not to do that and his way of dealing with it is trying whatever it is that he's doing [00:41:00] makes sense to him because of the trauma he's been through and how fucked up he is. Why is that not acceptable to you, right? Why just say he's crazy or something's wrong with him and he's always been a problem? Dismissing what he's been through as something that's happened to him and that this is a response to that, think of it that way. 

So there's several child stars over the years but like I said, Hollywood's crazy and if anybody goes through that machine, and comes out normal, it's not unheard of, but it's pretty rare, right? Let's try to protect them, to be honest with you first of all, let's just get some people around these kids that are gonna protect them from anything happening to them.

And then, once they get through it, then, let's give them some grace for the stuff that they've gone through, right? I guess if they've got all the money in the world and they're children, I guess we decide that they don't deserve to be human beings. I don't know. 

Some thought terminating cliches are, "hey, let it go", " what will it help to say [00:42:00] anything now?" Now, this is something that families are very known for saying to kids or known for saying to young adults when they get old enough to remember what the f happened to them, "Hey, what good will it do? What will it help now to say anything? It was so long ago. Why bring it up now? Why put the family through this," right? 

So you have somebody that's treating you like shit for 20 years, molesting or abusing and then you decide you're going to come forward and say something about it because you finally, after 20 years of dealing with the trauma, if you didn't completely block it out, your brain decides one day," "hey, here's some information from you being a kid that you should maybe know now because you were too young to deal with it at the time."

And you decide you want to come forward and you want to start talking to people in your family about it. And they say to you, "it was so long ago. What good is it going to do to put the family through this?" Doesn't matter what you went through. What [00:43:00] matters is that you're going to "put the family through" something.

Think about that. For a minute and how there are so many people that are worried about what their family is going to go through and how their parents are going to react and how their siblings are going to react or how somebody's going to react the family that didn't know anything and we're finding out there a whole lot more family members know stuff than we think. But the feeling of that person that was victimized and how they're actually protective of somebody in their family finding out about another member of the family doing something like that.

Think about the pressure on a kid that, that's what they're walking around carrying. And when they do finally come forward and say something that somebody would say to them, you're going to put the family through this. That's all I'm going to say. But that's horrible for me to know that somebody would be told that.

After everything they've been through, that they would come [00:44:00] forward. There are some people that have parents and family members that straight up tell them "that didn't happen. I don't know what you're talking about. Don't bring that up again". Again, that's them dealing with their own what have you because they were too stupid to see it, or they saw it and didn't do anything about it, and that puts it on them. But if you were a kid that went through any of this stuff, and somebody tells you that you're gonna put them through hell, by telling the truth that's bullshit. That's just bullshit. 

Collective shame is another thing. If you're a kid that, whether you come from an addictive type family, where you have alcoholics in your family or drug addicts in your family, and somehow or other you end up drinking or doing drugs or whatever, and then you deal with addiction, because it's pretty genetic sometimes, there's a collective shame that others feel typically your family or, if you're sitting in group therapy with a bunch of people who've been through addiction, whether you go to an [00:45:00] AA meeting or something similar, and there's like a collective shame that falls over the group about what they've been through just in my opinion, talking more about it eliminates that shame to some degree. It seems like it's going to be worse if you talk about it. But I personally think that talking about this situation makes things better. And at the end of the day, I just want to say that... oh, I have to go back to marriage for a minute. 

There are people who have failed marriages and they think this is their fault and I don't know if you marry somebody that's an asshole or you marry somebody let's say in your early 20s and you and that person match for a little while and you guys have a nice life and then at some point one person grows and becomes a better person; the other person just doesn't and there's something that goes on that makes that person stagnant. You know let's say, you both [00:46:00] marry each other young when you're working as cashiers, working, part time jobs, living at home or whatever and then when you start to become adults and go out into the world, let's say you land a job that has more money, whether you're a male or a female or, the husband the wife or whatever you make more money than your spouse does. And your spouse is resentful of that or something that makes your spouse insecure where they decide that they're just going to make your life living hell because they don't like where you're at and you're not where you used to be - that kind of thing. You marry somebody like a straight up abuser or alcoholic or a person who's cheating on you or whatever you can't control that. That is not your side of the marriage. 

Now, somebody may cheat on you because of something you did, but it's still on them that they handled it the way they did. If things aren't going right in the marriage, and they decide they're gonna cheat on you, that's their choice. So they're doing that. You're not making them do [00:47:00] anything. I really believe somebody making somebody do something is bullshit. You know what I mean? If you're having a problem in the marriage, you're cheating on somebody because you think it's fun, and they cheat back at you, and I honestly still don't think that's right.

I still think that's their choice. They may want to get back at you and cheat on you back, but still, their choice is their choice. How they choose to handle something that's happened in the marriage is the decision they made. So when somebody says "you made me do this" I don't buy that.

 Communication is something that can happen. Sometimes people cheat for the fact that they want somebody outside the marriage where the issues don't exist between the two of you or whatever their excuse is for cheating, they still handled it in that way and you did not make them do that. It's not your fault that they did that. 

If they abuse you, it is not your fault that they abuse you. If there's something wrong with that person and they do something to you, it is not your fault. So the marriage isn't [00:48:00] really yours to succeed or fail and you can put work in to a marriage between two people but if you're the only one rowing the boat, I always say this if you're the only one rowing the boat, if the person in the boat with you is rowing in the opposite direction, you're going to stay in the same place.

It takes two to make the marriage work, and if you can't make it work because the other person refuses to be part of it, it's not your failure. You can't really take that as your responsibility. There are people that, I don't know that it comes from religion or a social construct that we have as kids or you just don't want people to know that you got into a marriage and it didn't work; there's some kind of overall shame for that people feel. I don't believe any relationship you're in a marriage is legal and there's a whole different story, but because there's a whole lot more shame to it not working out, you just can't make somebody else a better person. They have to do that; that's on them. And so you could only put yourself [00:49:00] out there and make yourself better and try to work on your part of it. But if the other person has no interest in it, in the end it fails. It's just really not your failure. As a matter of fact, it's their failure. It's, if they don't want to be in the marriage at all, or they don't wanna work on it, or they expect it to be easy, and they have no interest in making an effort with things that go wrong.

Obviously, if you're in a good marriage, it shouldn't feel like work, but sometimes things go wrong and stuff happens in marriages and nothing's perfect, right? So when something does happen and if you don't work on it together as a team and one person is trying to work out and the other person decides to check out and the marriage fails, it is not your failure.

That's all I can say. There's just no way logically that it can be Something that is your fault, right? I just wanted to say that because I have friends older than me that come from that generation where they think the marriage not working out is like a on their head. It's like they think they get this x [00:50:00] next to their name because of it, and sure the next person you meet and you talk about your life, I guess it can look like a downer to explain that you have had a marriage before and you're divorced.

 You don't want to go in ripping somebody else apart that you used to be married to, but to some degree, you can't possibly be responsible for both people. It can't be your fault, right? 

 If you're the one that doesn't work on the marriage, and you're the one that wants to check out, then sure, maybe the marriage is on you unless you're dealing with somebody that doesn't want to change, doesn't want to improve, or wants to do something in this marriage that you want no part of. Wants to cheat and wants you to be okay with it. or wants to live on the other side of the country, and you don't want to be apart from them in that way then that's a decision the both of you make, but it's not your failure.

 The other thing that I brought up earlier was appearance and self worth and self, insecurity and shame around that. [00:51:00] If you're, the type of kid that came from a background where somebody made you feel ashamed about something that you couldn't control, you can't, you shouldn't carry that as your shame as an adult. It just isn't on you. It's really on the person who did that to you. Somebody who wielded shame on you to get whatever it is.

Maybe they wanted something. Maybe they wanted you to feel inferior to them. And usually that's due to insecurity. When somebody wants you to feel worse than they are, it's because they don't feel like they can be better. So they gotta make sure everybody around them is worse, and that makes them feel elevated, and it's really weird, but, for some reason, people feel like it's easier to do that sometimes, to put you down, to make themselves feel more superior.

And it's terrible when this is done to children by their parents or by their caregivers, whether it be foster care or whatever the case may be. If you're someplace where you're a child and you should be taken care of, and somebody that should be taking care [00:52:00] of you is treating you like shit it just can't be on you. 

So that's the end of my shame episode. I just wanted to go into that only because I've been seeing a lot of I just watched a Whitney Houston documentary where there's something going on in her childhood. It's it seems that everybody's coming out with it but to be honest with you, I just think it was really common and so many people didn't talk about it. That it's like, everybody's talking about it more now because they're older and things are different now where you can come forward and say things like that. It seems like it's happening a lot, but I think it's just because it was so common and it was taboo 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and it isn't now and so people can come forward and say, "hey, listen, this happened to me". and they get a better reception now than they would have gotten 30 years ago by saying something like that. 

It does make people feel better to talk about their truth. There's no reason why they shouldn't. It is not something they should be ashamed of; it's something that happened to them. That person [00:53:00] who did it to them should be ashamed of it. Just remember that most shame is just not something that the child, especially the person who doesn't have, any way to defend themselves that is completely at the mercy of the adult who has more power and more strength that person is the person who should be ashamed of what they did and never should it be the child that's victimized, right? Or the woman that's victimized, or whoever is the victim that doesn't have the ability to defend themselves and that you know that where their life is at stake, or they're, they're physically unable to, or mentally unable to leave a situation, those people are, those are the victims, and they should not be shamed for it, regardless.

If it's you, just remember, it is not your shame. Make sure it falls on the head of the person who did that to you, right? 

Alright that is my podcast for today, I will have another podcast soon as do have a [00:54:00] couple of topics in the can. 

 So I will just wish you well, tell you to go to our website, www.lanaanddave.com. 

That is where all of our social media and podcast platforms are. And yeah, still holding the fort down for Dave and I will talk to you soon. 

Have a great November. 

Bye bye.