29 - Live interview with “Peter”

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Healing for Male Survivors podcast. This is a podcast for male survivors

[00:00:09] of sexual abuse and assault, whether as a child or as an adult. Know that you are not

[00:00:15] alone and the abuse was not your fault. My name is Mike Chapman. I'm a certified recovery

[00:00:21] life coach and also a survivor. Let's find hope in healing together.

[00:00:28] And welcome to the Healing for Male Survivors podcast. I'm Mike Chapman and we have our guest

[00:00:36] today, Peter, who's here to share his story. I'll share his intro in a minute. And if you

[00:00:40] would like to join us live on future podcasts, feel free to go to my website, polar, polar,

[00:00:49] likeconsulting.com slash live to find out how you can join with our live audience. And we

[00:00:57] do have a live audience here with us today as we do every week and they can share questions

[00:01:04] to our speaker or comments and we welcome those. And we would love to have you join

[00:01:11] me. Let me introduce Peter. Peter is a successful businessman and worship pastor. His journey has

[00:01:19] taken him through many ups and downs, including childhood sexual abuse starting at age five

[00:01:26] by family member. He's been a worship director for over 40 years, married for over 43 years,

[00:01:34] and has three children and many grandchildren. He has been on a healing journey for over

[00:01:39] 20 years, but has really been helped since meeting me seven months ago at the husband material

[00:01:47] retreat. This is his intro. Not me. You threw that in. It's like, Oh, OK, great. I'm glad I helped.

[00:01:52] We welcome Peter to the podcast again to our audience members who are here live. If you'd

[00:01:58] like to put a question in, you can do so. You can be anonymous as you would like. We will

[00:02:04] only say your name if you actually manually type it in along with your question or comment. Let's go

[00:02:11] to how we normally start our interviews with four questions. Now it's time for four questions,

[00:02:20] that part of the podcast. When we get to know our guest a bit better by asking a few questions,

[00:02:25] let's go. And Peter, well into the podcast and we'll start with four questions. First of all,

[00:02:33] what is your favorite food memory? I was thinking about this. One of my favorite food memories would be

[00:02:41] about 45 years ago, Christmas and Easter dinners where my family came over to my fiance's family's

[00:02:50] house and there was a big huge crowd of us for Easter and for Christmas dinner. And it was a

[00:02:57] lot of fun back then. So what made it special, just the fact that you were all together or?

[00:03:03] Yeah, everyone altogether and the food was always very good as well. Right. Wonderful. And

[00:03:11] what is your favorite Christmas or holiday memory? So we love getting together with our kids and

[00:03:18] our grandkids at least once. It's usually more than once during Christmas. They'll come over to

[00:03:23] our house or lunch. This year, it was a lot of fun. They came over for Christmas a little bit early

[00:03:30] and Santa Claus happened to come on a Zoom call and the kids, most of them except the older ones

[00:03:36] were really odd, awe inspired. That sounds better. Who happened to be that Santa Claus?

[00:03:43] Well he looked very much like you but he was Santa. I totally forgot that. That was you

[00:03:50] and your family. That's right. Yes, Peter hired me to be their virtual Santa, which is something I

[00:03:56] do on the side if you know my story that's part of it. And yes, I forgot. Yes, I was actually

[00:04:01] your Santa this year coming in remotely via video. That's right. So that's wonderful. It's

[00:04:08] nice these days now that we're post COVID and you can actually get together as a family

[00:04:13] and have a lot more special moments and it's like we cherish them even more now

[00:04:18] because we kind of didn't have that for a few years there. Yeah, that's excellent.

[00:04:23] Next question. What is your favorite church or house of worship memory? They're a musical family.

[00:04:30] My wife and I and our kids and during well it wasn't too long ago. We on my son leads worship

[00:04:36] at another church and when we all get together my wife myself and my son and my other son and

[00:04:45] my daughter and sing together. We've done that at my church as before and at my son's church is just

[00:04:54] really nice and I'm not trying to say that I'm wonderful or anything. I'm just saying that's

[00:04:58] a great experience no matter how flat we are. Oh, I'm sure it was wonderful. That sounds nice.

[00:05:06] Yeah, I've sang in church choirs in the past and different musicals dramas and

[00:05:14] so forth and yeah, it takes a lot of work but it's fun to have that show at the end,

[00:05:23] that performance and knowing you're touching those people in the audience. So yeah, that makes for

[00:05:29] really good memories for sure. And let's see what is your favorite scripture or any inspirational

[00:05:36] quote that has helped you on your spiritual journey and what about it speaks to you?

[00:05:42] For quite a while my favorite Bible verse is in Zephaniah chapter 3. It says,

[00:05:51] In that day it shall be said of Jerusalem. Do not fear Zion. Let your hands be weak.

[00:05:57] The Lord your God in your midst the mighty one will save. He will rejoice over you with

[00:06:03] gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.

[00:06:09] Singing part, I really like that. Think that God is singing over me in all my failures.

[00:06:17] And your successes too. All of those things. Yeah, all of that. Yeah, he loves all of you

[00:06:26] and rejoices just like a father. We rejoice in who our children are, not what they do or don't

[00:06:33] do well necessarily, but just who they are. And yeah, yeah, I like that. That's really nice.

[00:06:42] So let's go with your story. You can start wherever you'd like. I know when I share my story

[00:06:48] it bounces all along the timeline because that's how things unfolded for me. So start

[00:06:53] wherever you'd like and let me know what it was like, what you went through. And then we'll

[00:06:59] talk about your healing journey and what you are doing these days. We're up in a rather strict

[00:07:06] Christian home. When there were guest pastors at our church, my mother was always a first

[00:07:12] to ask them to stay with us for a few days or a whole week. So we had a lot of strangers come

[00:07:17] in and out who was normally a lonely child, had an older brother who didn't pay any attention to me,

[00:07:24] a father who would work all the time. When he was home, he would read the paper. I don't remember

[00:07:30] him interacting with me except to give me the belt when my mother said I deserved it.

[00:07:36] How old was, how old or was your brother Peter? He was only about two years older than me.

[00:07:44] Okay, so not a huge separate, but he was, he wanted nothing to do with you sounds like

[00:07:49] even though that's not a huge gap. No, okay. Yeah, continue. My mother was a good young

[00:07:56] Christian wife. She spent a lot of time at church doing good things, but very little

[00:08:03] time at home and not too much time with me. I don't think didn't really have any friends.

[00:08:09] And when I started learning piano, that sort of made me different. I didn't like sports or gym

[00:08:15] and the other boys often made fun of me. A five years old, this was before they started making fun

[00:08:21] of me, but a five years old, my mother, mother's brother came to live with us as he attended

[00:08:27] university and was studying to become a doctor soon after he moved in. He started to play with me

[00:08:35] and unbeknownst notes to me began to groom me for what would happen in the next seven years.

[00:08:42] My uncle was one of the few males, if not the only one that wrestled with me played cars with me

[00:08:49] and things like that. Then we would start to play down in his bedroom with no one else around.

[00:08:55] At five, my uncle started to make our playing into sexual games. Eventually it was just sex.

[00:09:02] So from the age five to 11, it may have been 12, he and I had many kinds of sexual

[00:09:10] activity. He penetrated every part of me and did whatever he wanted. I remember a couple of other

[00:09:16] guys that did the same thing. My uncle had a few of his friends over to meet me and I thought maybe

[00:09:23] I had someone to play with, but very quickly they began to abuse me. Were they closer to your

[00:09:28] age or to your uncle's age? These these friends? They were a little bit younger than my uncle,

[00:09:33] but not not terribly. They were still closer to his age. So they were still full adults?

[00:09:39] Yeah, they were still adults. One at a time, not together, but they did abuse me. I was left

[00:09:44] to play with one of them and the abuse quickly began. My uncle and his friends were, well my uncle

[00:09:50] was 19. There were a couple of his friends a little younger than that and a little older than

[00:09:56] that. I always felt that I had a tattoo on my forehead that gave everyone permission to use me.

[00:10:02] I hated to go into overnight camp. For at least five years, I had to go for two weeks each summer.

[00:10:09] It was always a Christian camp and Christian counselors, but there was always a Christian

[00:10:14] counselor that sexually abused me for most of those years, if not all. Was it different

[00:10:20] counselors or the same counselor who abused you? The same counselor did abuse me a couple of

[00:10:27] years, but there were other counselors as well. The counselors would talk with me and then get me

[00:10:32] alone, but then force oral sex and sometimes anal. Each of them was probably between 16 and 22 at the

[00:10:40] oldest. They were all studying or planning to study some type of medicine or become a preacher,

[00:10:48] different things like that. How old were you at these at these camps? It would have been when

[00:10:54] I was eight, eight until I was 12. I had to go to these Christian camps. There were at least two

[00:11:01] preachers that also sexually abused me before I was 13 years old. One I remember in the church

[00:11:08] basement. They were traveling preachers. They always stayed at our house overnight. I remember

[00:11:13] a particular kid's preacher. He was a van trail quest and all the kids at the church loved him.

[00:11:19] It must have been summer Bible Vacation School. In the evenings, I was told to go see him and when

[00:11:25] I was there he would sexually abuse me. Different times of the day I was alone with him. Every

[00:11:32] who was able, he would take advantage of that evenings or sometimes the middle of the night.

[00:11:37] He would come and see me and he really stands out as well in my head. Another time I remember

[00:11:44] being downstairs at the church. I was in the men's washroom and a traveling preacher sexually abused

[00:11:51] me. There was a different preacher that found me down in the bathroom, must have assumed,

[00:11:56] oh he was a different preacher, I'm sorry, that he could do what he wanted. And that I remember

[00:12:01] because there was nobody in the basement. Just the washroom was there and when I went down,

[00:12:06] I guess I shouldn't have gone down. I had a junior high Sunday school teacher,

[00:12:12] very nice guy, but he always called me by a girl's name. He thought it was funny. I felt great

[00:12:18] and ashamed whether there were other boys around or not. I felt I wasn't a real boy or young man,

[00:12:25] but maybe I was a girl and he thought it was cute to call me Susie or whatever he wanted to.

[00:12:32] Right. I don't know if he did that to other other boys. I just know he did it to me.

[00:12:37] The church loved to have me there and use my musical ability. I was fine with that. I enjoyed

[00:12:43] playing the piano. Later, I learned to play the organ, the pipe organ and the vibraphone.

[00:12:50] What's a vibraphone? So it's, I think they call it something else. There's about four or five

[00:12:57] octaves of bars like a xylophone. It had a thing in the bottom so it would make a nice sound

[00:13:04] and I'd play it. Actually, that's how I met my wife. The pastor thought she should learn to play it.

[00:13:10] I don't think he did really because she never learned to play it, but he got us together that way.

[00:13:16] See? Yeah. Sometimes pastors know what they're talking about. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah, that's good.

[00:13:23] I never really had any male friends at church, school or anywhere. I still find it very difficult

[00:13:29] to connect with other men. Sometimes I'm too afraid to talk to other men or engage with them.

[00:13:36] I stand off at a distance. I don't believe they will accept me. I'm not good at sports,

[00:13:43] but I've never really played any sports. So that's why I'm not very good or I don't know

[00:13:48] that I'm good. And some of the ways that I've been affected, I believe my need for intimacy

[00:13:53] with other men is a result of the abuse and my standoffishness. I don't make friends easily.

[00:14:00] My body image is not very good, and I'm embarrassed by it. Men don't seem to talk to me very much.

[00:14:06] I worked with many therapists and Christians to work through some of my abuse in the last 25

[00:14:12] years. Pastoral prayer counseling was completely worthless. I never spoke to another pastor

[00:14:19] about my abuse. After that, I tried to get help for my pornography addiction at one of the large

[00:14:27] churches I intended. But I was told instead that I needed to resign or the pastor would tell the

[00:14:35] congregation about my addiction. Five others, therapists who deal with sexual abuse victims

[00:14:45] helped me understand some of the things about the abuse, but didn't help much with my depression

[00:14:51] or acting out with pornography. The acting out was being drawn to gay pornography,

[00:14:58] and I didn't understand why I would rather masturbate to that as opposed to any other kind

[00:15:03] of porn. I didn't mention to most of my therapists about the gay pornography issue

[00:15:10] just about the sexual abuse that I experienced as a child. HMA and the HMA retreat last fall

[00:15:18] have been the first thing to actually help at all, and hopefully the healing will continue.

[00:15:23] I'm learning how to sit with and help heal my inner child. I had never heard anything

[00:15:30] about this until just recently. I've actually met many other men who have the same experiences

[00:15:36] and problems as me. I've thought for my entire life that I was the only one who experienced sexual

[00:15:42] abuse, which turned into same-sex attraction and all the rest that goes with that. I'm continuing

[00:15:50] with Zoom calls and HMA, a triad that I belong to and we meet every week.

[00:15:57] For those unfamiliar husband material, there's the paid academy section, which is what Peter

[00:16:03] is talking about. They have the concept of triads, which is similar to accountability partners, but

[00:16:09] instead of two by two, they look for groups of three or four are larger. That way, if one of those

[00:16:17] people is busy, you have backups to fall back on to support each other through that and they call

[00:16:25] them triads. Please continue. Oddly enough, there are five of us in our group and one of them

[00:16:33] lives up actually not too far from where I am and we have gotten together as well.

[00:16:38] Oh, wonderful. That's great to do, Ian Burr. I know three is a triad, four we call a quad,

[00:16:44] and more than that is a squad. You got a squad.

[00:16:47] Quad? Okay. I'm trying to figure out what five is. I think it's quint. I don't know what it is,

[00:16:52] but it's squad.

[00:16:53] It's squad. Squad works well. That's why it's like, yeah, yeah, it just doesn't

[00:16:58] have a good ring to it. A quintet, yeah, it's so squad. Squad works as in it's five, six, seven.

[00:17:06] Shouldn't be more than that, but sometimes it just happens and that's good because you got this

[00:17:10] huge army that can support each other. One's weak, hopefully another one's strong and you

[00:17:15] can support each other is iron sharpens on your end. So that's wonderful. Please continue.

[00:17:20] The only thing left I had to say was that I'm also in a group therapy, which is almost over

[00:17:27] every Friday night, and that's really good as well.

[00:17:31] Right. Is that with husband material or with a therapist?

[00:17:33] Or it's with, um, it's husband material. It's with wand.

[00:17:38] Oh, okay. Okay. You got a group with one, uh,

[00:17:41] Magia I think is how you say his last name. I think.

[00:17:45] Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. It looks like that.

[00:17:50] Yeah, I've got to ask him, but yeah, he's, he's, uh, like one stayed away from me.

[00:17:54] He is in Georgia, I'm in North Carolina and we're hoping to do some events later on this year,

[00:18:00] the two of us. So anyway, I like what you said about the sign on the forehead. Craig mentioned

[00:18:06] that last week as well, that same concept. And I think it's very common with survivors.

[00:18:12] It's like, I caught like a neon sign victim, victim, victim come abuse me.

[00:18:17] And it's like perpetrators can smell the victim hood on you.

[00:18:22] Once you've already been abused. Once that's why so many who have been abused are at extreme

[00:18:29] high risk to be abused by others. Something about it, they, they, they can smell the victim hood

[00:18:36] on us. I hear that so many times with so many stories and they'll say it in different ways.

[00:18:41] The like sign on my forehead or glowing flashing neon lights, whatever. Yeah, that's how it feels.

[00:18:50] So yeah, did you ever tell your parents about what happened with you either with the uncle or any,

[00:18:56] any of the other abuse? I didn't tell them until about 10 years ago. My wife felt I should

[00:19:06] and I agreed and I told my mother, my father was already passed away

[00:19:12] and it didn't go well. So I never mentioned it again. And it was her brother who was the uncle.

[00:19:18] Yes. Has there been any kind of like family reunions, get togethers and so forth?

[00:19:23] Since your mother knew the truth that also involved the uncle trying to like get you guys

[00:19:29] together in the same room or not even thinking about it and inviting you both to the same event,

[00:19:33] anything like that happened? There was one reunion that my wife and I took

[00:19:39] my mother to he was in there but my wife kept me at the opposite side of the room

[00:19:45] and I didn't have to do anything more than say hi to him. But you did have to say hi? Well,

[00:19:51] actually I think my wife said hi to him so you didn't know. No, I don't think I did but I was there.

[00:19:57] And had you ever confronted him about what happened or talked to him about it?

[00:20:02] It was a therapist. I wrote a letter to him and that was in my therapy.

[00:20:07] I wrote a letter to him explaining everything. Did you actually send it or was it just by

[00:20:13] proxy and you just sent it? Oh, I sent it. Oh, you did send it? But I never put a word back

[00:20:18] and then he died. So. Wow. Now what about your wife? When did you tell her about everything that

[00:20:25] happened with you and your struggles and so forth? So that would have been about 20

[00:20:32] some odd years ago when I resigned from a church because of that I thought I'm going to tell

[00:20:38] her and I told her and she was good after a day or two. Yeah. Okay, sometimes they can be a huge

[00:20:46] support but they don't know right away. It's hard for them to understand why we struggle the way we

[00:20:52] do. Let me look at the Q&A really quick. I've got comment from Dan Carlson. He says,

[00:20:58] glad you made it for your interview. Pete, hey, and he reminds us the flashing neon sign

[00:21:04] was his line that, yeah, I'm a broken little boy. Come use me. So yeah, I knew I got that somewhere.

[00:21:09] But yeah, thank you Dan. So now you're starting to get help. How is that going? What things

[00:21:17] are working for you in your healing journey and what things haven't worked very well?

[00:21:22] Like you mentioned talking about the issues with your church leadership and it's like,

[00:21:28] nope, you got to step down. You're out of here instead of actually being supportive.

[00:21:32] Obviously that didn't work. So what other things have or have not worked in your healing journey?

[00:21:39] This point, what has worked has been in a community of men that are very similar to me

[00:21:46] or understand about what I've gone through and that's with the groups on husband material.

[00:21:54] That's really one of the few things that have really done any good in my life. There is

[00:22:00] and that's the main group that's not necessarily abuse survivors, but just those with

[00:22:07] porn addiction or other sexual addictions, general sexual brokenness. But we do have

[00:22:11] the subgroup specifically for abuse survivors and you get things out of both groups, correct?

[00:22:17] Yes, that's right. I do. And counselors that I have had here, although I don't always understand

[00:22:23] what they're doing, like you mean locally where you live in person counselors?

[00:22:29] No, no, just on Zoom. Oh, okay. And it's a concept of sitting with your younger child and

[00:22:35] bringing Jesus into the group. And I mean, it works really well when there's someone

[00:22:41] talking me through it. It doesn't work quite as well when I'm doing it myself.

[00:22:46] Right. I know Drew Boa, who's the founder of husband material, his podcasts and teachings.

[00:22:54] There's one about younger brother coaching where we become the older brother that our younger

[00:23:00] selves never had. And you kind of step into a mentor role for the younger you. And so it's

[00:23:07] all plays out in your head. Yeah, I will share a link in the show notes with a YouTube link

[00:23:14] where Drew explains that concept of younger brother coaching. And that was helpful for my own

[00:23:19] healing as well to go through that. Dan mentions also theopostic approach in the group. Yeah,

[00:23:28] there's a whole bunch of theoposticist type of healing prayer. Then there's several other types

[00:23:33] of healing prayers that can direct it's kind of like a spiritual version of some of the therapies

[00:23:40] that I've experienced with my non-Christian therapist. There's a lot of strong parallels there

[00:23:45] where you're kind of digging into your brain and acting out things and reprocessing memories.

[00:23:54] So they are less traumatic. And it's all part of the concept of neuroplasticity

[00:24:00] that we can even old farts like us retrain our brains and learn new synapses, new patterns,

[00:24:10] and connect things in different ways that can help us heal. So yeah, they're helpful for us old guys

[00:24:18] too because yeah, our brains still retain that neuroplasticity. I love that word. So yeah,

[00:24:28] that's great. Anything else that you found helpful? Yeah, writing out stories is good and it's

[00:24:35] going into your trauma and bringing it forward. And I've been doing that both with our group

[00:24:41] and also with the other group that I'm in, both in husband material. I've been doing a lot of that.

[00:24:49] And it does happen. Yeah, within the CSA support group that I lead within husband

[00:24:54] material, I make it a safe place where you can put posts and you can create articles. Right?

[00:25:02] It's kind of like journaling in your blogging but you do it where you can get comments.

[00:25:06] It's similar to what was in male survivor.org. They've got forums that have been there for

[00:25:13] like 20 years. Mostly non-Christian. There is a little subset of Christians in there.

[00:25:19] I wanted a safe place for Christian men to be able to share from their heart and their faith as well

[00:25:28] where you can, yeah, it's the power of story. Getting it out and getting it out of your head

[00:25:33] and on paper or virtual paper, getting those stories out, it helps to, I know as I type when I write,

[00:25:42] it's like, it helps me process it and then I'll move things around and then I'll think,

[00:25:46] oh yeah, and just getting it on paper and viewing it just helps me process those memories even more.

[00:25:53] And I know right now we're doing the spring story challenge where they are challenging us to

[00:25:59] just come up with one scenario, one event and then write about it in detail as much detail

[00:26:05] as we can about the one event. And it's so helpful to again write things out and then

[00:26:15] you can process it and talk about it and make connections as you're writing. And yeah, that's

[00:26:22] definitely very helpful and like I say, it's the power of story. So anything else that's been working

[00:26:28] for you? I believe that's about it. I just meaning I go to different Zoom calls when I can

[00:26:34] right now. I'm a little busy at work but usually I go to a couple of them every week.

[00:26:39] Right. Going back to the Q&A, Dan again, yeah, story is powerful to process externally,

[00:26:45] like we mentioned. Dan just did one of the spring story challenge as well and I saw that

[00:26:51] that he shared as well. All this is on husband material on the free section

[00:26:56] and it was good getting it down and the feedback as well. So yeah, you post, that's what I like

[00:27:02] about using it to blog or to journal that you get feedback and people will post comments

[00:27:09] very supportive. Sometimes last questions or they'll make connections that I might not have

[00:27:15] made necessarily. So it's great to have, it become a sounding board as well as a place to

[00:27:22] just land your stories. So yeah, that's been very helpful. So I know you can find Peter again on

[00:27:31] husband material and in our CSA sub work group on husband material. Links for all that will

[00:27:36] be in the show notes as well. Thank you so much Peter for being with us on the Healing for Male

[00:27:42] Survivors podcast and I wish you well on your continued healing journey. And again, if you'd

[00:27:48] like to join us on future episodes live, you can go to the website polarlifeconsulting.com

[00:27:56] slash live. If you would like to learn more about my coaching with polar life consulting,

[00:28:05] where I provide one on one coaching and group coaching, both with a focus on healing for male

[00:28:11] survivors reach out to me at polarlifeconsulting.com that is polar spelled P O L A R. I would love to

[00:28:19] hear from you. I want to hear your story. If you would like your story featured on this podcast,

[00:28:25] contact me via my website. If you'd like this podcast, please rate and review because that's

[00:28:30] how other people can find me and I really want to spread this message of healing and hope to others.

[00:28:36] And remember, you are not alone. Healing is possible and the abuse was not your fault.

[00:28:43] Let me repeat that. The abuse was not your fault. See you next time on the Healing for Male

[00:28:51] Survivors podcast.