July 5, 2025 • 44 mins
Hiding inside every man is a little boy. For some, this kid is healthy and strong. For others, he’s insecure, afraid, and angry. On this summer best-of Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author and speaker Patrick Morley addresses what he calls “the fraternal order of broken boys.” These men suffer silently from an unbroken cycle of childhood pain. Hear the hope for these men on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman.
Featured resource: From Broken Boy to Mended Man: A Positive Plan to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Break the Cycle
Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/buildingrelationships
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
Hiding inside. Every man is a little boy. He can
be healthy and strong.
S2 (00:07):
Or he can be afraid, angry and broken. He's never
really gotten over the wounds of his childhood. Is there
a way to break the cycle of pain? The cycle
of rage? Is there a way to go from.
S1 (00:24):
Broken boy to mended man?
S3 (00:33):
Maybe your parents were nice like mine. And so the
idea of forgiving them seems a little easier. But maybe
they were just mean people. Maybe they were toxic. But
the point is, is that healing is definitely possible. Men
are being healed.
S4 (00:51):
Welcome to building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman, author of
the New York Times best seller The Five Love Languages. Today,
author of man in the mirror, Doctor Patrick Morley describes
his healing journey from broken boy to mended man, and
he'll give a positive plan for you or a man
you know on how to heal from childhood wounds.
S5 (01:11):
And this is a summer best of broadcast. You can
find our featured resource at the website Building Relationships. Our
guest is Doctor Patrick Morley, author of From Broken Boy
to Mended Man A Positive Plan to Heal Your Childhood
Wounds and Break the Cycle. And it looks like I
know the fella who wrote the foreword to this book. Gary.
(01:33):
Why do you think this is such an important topic
for such a time as this?
S6 (01:37):
Well, you know, Chris, there are a lot of wounded
men out there. I'm just going to read you the
first paragraph in this foreword that I wrote, because I
really feel this is true. I say through my 40
years of counseling men who have experienced childhood wounds, I've
never read a book that I've found more helpful for
those men than the book you hold in your hands.
(02:00):
It is practical, understandable and doable, I think because it's
written by a man who has walked the road. Uh,
so I'm excited to have Doctor Morley with us today,
because I think this is a topic that's gravely needed
in our society today.
S5 (02:17):
Well, let's meet him. And we promised him we're going
to call him Pat. But I'll say it one more time.
Doctor Patrick Morley is founder of man in the mirror,
a global ministry impacting thousands of churches, millions of men.
Motivated by his own search for meaning and purpose. He
started a Bible study with a handful of guys in 1986.
And that study is still going. It now reaches men
(02:39):
around the world every week. He's written some 23 books,
including The Man in the mirror, which was named one
of the 100 most influential Christian books of the 20th century.
And our featured resource today, as I said at Building Relationships,
is from Broken boy to Mended Man. Just go to
building relationships.
S6 (03:00):
Well, Doctor Morley, welcome to building relationships.
S3 (03:03):
Well, Doctor Chapman, thank you for having me. It's such
an honor. I, I just cannot get over the fact
that I'm able to actually be on your program. Uh,
you've been a hero of mine forever. And so thank
you again for the gracious words of that forward to.
In fact, after you read it, I was thinking, well,
(03:26):
we could wrap it up right now.
S6 (03:30):
Well, I've given my opinion when the when the program's over,
they're going to have their own opinion. Okay.
S3 (03:36):
True enough, true enough.
S6 (03:38):
As we start, uh, let's talk this a little bit
about the global impact of the man in the mirror
and how that all got started. Give us a little
background on that and your perception of how God has
used that.
S3 (03:52):
Well, it's interesting because my background is business. I was
a real estate developer, My first life philosophy was that
money will solve my problems and success will make me happy.
I quit high school in the middle of my senior year,
so there were some problems at home. Nice, very nice parents,
but very passive and permissive. And so, um, I was
(04:14):
a broken boy. I didn't understand any of that at
the time. I really just felt like I, and I,
pretty much from about 8 or 9 years old, had
the sense of feeling like I was on my own
to figure out life. Uh, and I became very successful
in business. You know, broken boys tend to become especially irresponsible,
(04:35):
or they become the responsible son, uh, depending on whether
they want to prove that their parents were right or
wrong about them. And so I became the responsible son,
became quite successful. And I was just sitting around one
day I said, wow, there's just got to be more
to life than this. It just there just has to be.
And so that's when I started the Bible study that
Chris referenced and started teaching men about the problems that
(05:00):
we face. And it wasn't until quite some time later, though,
that I actually had the revelation, the epiphany, that the
reason that I was struggling so much personally with all
the demons that came in the middle of the night,
was because of childhood wounds that had never really been
properly processed.
S6 (05:19):
Well, no question about it. That book made in the
mirror tremendously helpful to a lot of people, and I
think this book is going to be the same. You
say there's an epidemic of lonely, hurting men carrying unresolved pain.
How do you know that's true? And what does that
look like today?
S3 (05:38):
Well, Gary, my favorite thing to do, uh, you know,
we write books, we teach churches. You know, we do
all these different things. But my number one favorite thing
to do is to meet with men one on one.
And I've literally met with thousands of men one on
one to hear their stories. And, you know, for a
period of, you know, 40 years meeting with 2 or
(05:58):
3 guys a week like that, it adds up. And
so when men try to put into words what they
feel like is holding them back, what's keeping them from
feeling fully alive? And if they're a believer, fully alive
in Jesus, they will inevitably mention one or more seven things.
You know, I just feel like I'm in this alone.
(06:20):
I don't feel like God cares about me personally. Not really.
My life doesn't feel like it has a purpose. It
feels random. I have these destructive behaviors. They keep dragging
me back down. My soul feels dry. My most important relationships,
they're not healthy. And then finally, I just don't feel
(06:40):
like I'm doing anything that's going to make a difference
and leave the world a better place. I kind of
my organizing paradigm is, is that what do men want
that they need, that I have to offer? And so when,
since I am a broken boy, and since I have
a theological education and a doctorate degree and all these
different things, and I've studied this and I've been through
(07:02):
it personally, I've just really felt a calling to go
ahead and put this all out there. And it's not
the normal thing that someone would do, but I just
felt like called by God that it was something I
was supposed to do.
S6 (07:19):
Well, Pat, this is your 23rd book, but it took
you six years before deciding to move ahead and write it.
What took so long?
S3 (07:29):
Well, net net, my mom and dad are were really
nice people, and I believe that they wanted to do
the right things. Uh, but they were never trained, equipped
or discipled to be godly parents. My dad was abandoned
when he was two years of age, and so he
(07:52):
never felt the scratch of his father's whiskers. He never
heard a father reading him a bedtime story. He never
tossed a ball in the backyard. He never had his
hair tussled, never wrestled on the living room floor with
his dad, never heard a truck door shut in the
driveway at the end of a day, signaling that his
dad was about to re-enter the family orbit. And so
(08:15):
basically what it meant to be a man, a husband
and a father was unexampled to him. And so he
was left to guess at how to be a dad
to me and a husband to my mom. And, and, uh,
so net of all that is that he did the
best he could, but there was this intergenerational dysfunction that
(08:35):
got transmitted to him. He never was able to do
anything about that, so I didn't want to. So the
answer to the question is I and my mom and
dad and I, we did reconcile. And and for the
last half, uh, for the second half of my life
and the last part of their life, we had a
very loving and hugging, affectionate relationship that we did not
(08:57):
have for the first 35 years of my life. So
I didn't want to throw them under the bus, and
it just took me six years to figure to to
to noodle around to figure out how I could honor them. Uh,
but yet still tell the true story. And so I
finally got it. Got it all sorted out in my head.
But it took like six years to do that. And, uh, yeah,
(09:18):
that's the answer to the question.
S6 (09:19):
I can understand that. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't want
to put them down. And yet you want to be honest.
And when did you personally begin to realize that your,
your childhood wounds and how they had impacted you?
S3 (09:33):
Well, there are kind of two answers to that question. Um,
I when I left home, I washed my hands and
my parents, I joined the Army. And, um, if it
wasn't for my wife, I probably would have had no
contact at all. But I became a follower of Jesus
through the influence of my wife at the age of 24,
when I was 25 years of age, my parents invited
(09:55):
us to come out to their home for dinner. My
brother had been off at war. The family had not
been together for several years. It was Thanksgiving and so
my mom and dad were there. My three younger brothers,
my new wife and myself. And we were that family
that would say grace, but we would say, God is good,
God is great, and we thank you for this food. Amen.
(10:15):
As quickly as we could, you know, and so on
this particular day, though, my dad said, I'd like to
pray today. And so we bowed our heads and he said, Lord,
mom and I would just like to say thank you.
And then he started blubbering and he excused himself and
went into the master bedroom. I went in after him.
I said, dad, dad, are you all right? What's the matter?
(10:37):
He said, no, I'm okay. I just need a minute.
And I said, well, what's going on? He said, well,
it's just that your mother and I never thought that
we would ever see our four boys together in the
same room again. And, uh, something softened in me that day,
and because I was a new Christian and starting to grow,
I just chose to unilaterally forgive my mother and father
(10:58):
that day for everything that had gone before. And it
was real. Now, I didn't have the I didn't know
what I was doing okay at the time, but that
began did begin a process that, uh, took me another
28 years to come, full circle. And in fact, that's
why I wanted to write the book, because I do
(11:19):
now know that a man can do in a few
months what took me several decades to do, if he
will apply himself and actually do this book, not just
but actually do the book.
S5 (11:29):
This is a summer best of Building Relationships broadcast.
S4 (11:33):
For more ways to strengthen your relationships, go to Building Relationships.
You'll see our featured resource by Doctor Patrick Morley. From
Broken Boy to Mended Man, a positive plan to heal
your childhood wounds and break the cycle. Find out more
at building relationships.
S6 (11:52):
Well, Pat, as you've described already, you were one of
those herding men. Do you really think it's possible for
men to go from broken to mended, which is really
kind of the theme of the book?
S3 (12:06):
Yes. And the answer is absolutely yes. In fact, you know,
the book's only been out a little while, so it's September,
but it's came out in March, so not that long.
But I'm getting I'm getting correspondence like every single day
from from men. I got a text last night from
a guy who had mentioned, uh, the, the book to
(12:27):
to a man. He got it. He's a pastor. He
got it. He he was reading the book on an airplane,
and he was crying because he was identifying with everything
that was being said. He had to stop reading the
book on the airplane and finished it when he got home.
And it's had a tremendous impact because he's, for the
first time able to understand all of these emotions or
(12:50):
where these emotions are coming from that have always been inexplicable.
And that was my case, too, as a as a
broken boy. I talk about nine characteristics of broken boys
in the book. Just the first one is you have
a hard time believing that people really care about you.
And so if you have experienced a sense of abandonment,
or if your parents are always angry and demanding, or
(13:12):
if they were overly permissive or even maybe enabling parents,
then there's a good chance that you struggle with trusting
people or a sense of feeling abandoned. That's certainly true
of me. Another characteristic is you are easily angered. I
never lost my temper. Not one time did I ever
(13:33):
lose my temper at the office. But what I would do.
Because there the stakes are so high, you know, in
terms of your prestige, getting what you want done in
terms of projects or sales and so forth, or even
job security itself could be at risk. So I would
bottle it up and bring it home, and then some
little thing would set me off and boom. Just like that. Uh,
(13:56):
hair trigger and, uh, but I had no idea what
was going on. You see? Yeah. And so, uh, when
this really, uh, got sorted out is when my mother
died at the age of 53. And I didn't feel anything.
I didn't cry. I wasn't sad. I didn't miss her.
(14:17):
And I thought that was odd. So I made an
appointment with a counselor, and she helped me to put
into words the father and mother wounds that I had
never been able to articulate. It was from that point forward,
from the age of 53 on, that I've spent a
couple of decades now studying this and and working with
(14:37):
men on this issue. And I know that men can
be mended, can be healed Because healing is all about pain,
and pain can be identified. It can be faced. It
can be grieved. Wounds that have been made against us.
(14:58):
By the way. These wounds. These are things that they're
not your fault. If you're listening today and you have
childhood wounds, it's not your fault. But you're really the
only one that can do anything about it now. But
you can get to a place no matter how toxic.
I know this sounds crazy. Maybe your parents were nice
like mine, and so the idea of forgiving them seems
(15:19):
a little easier. But maybe they were just mean people.
Maybe they were toxic. Maybe they still are. Maybe when
you invite them over to dinner, they're making snide remarks
about your wife, and they're bossing your children around. And
maybe you do need to set up some boundaries. And
I'm showing you how to do that in the book
as well. But the point is, is that healing is
(15:40):
definitely possible. Men are being healed.
S6 (15:43):
Let's go back to your own childhood hood again, Pat,
and describe a little more fully. What was it like?
I mean, you say your parents were good parents, but
what were the things that were either missing there or
what was going on there?
S3 (15:57):
Well, I would say that they were.
S7 (15:59):
Nice parents in terms of, uh, good parents. They really
had never been trained. So if you're listening today and
you could say my parents were encouraging or my parents
were affirming, then that would be a sign that you
had had, you know, good parenting. But what if you
(16:21):
can't say that? Uh, in the book, I identify seven
negative parenting styles, and I'll tell you mine in a moment.
But you might say, if you can't say that they
were encouraging, you might say, well, my parents were passive
or my parents were absent. That could be death, divorce, workaholism,
(16:42):
you know, or addictions. Predictions. My parents were permissive, you know,
like just let you have the run of the place
and didn't have enough structure. Or maybe you would say
my parents were enabling, and that means, you know, all
parents are supposed to help their children, but enabling is
doing for children things that they should or could be
(17:04):
doing for themselves, or maybe not holding them responsible when
they do something they shouldn't do. Or maybe you might
say my parents were, um, demanding. Uh, or my parents
were angry. I had a guy put a fence in
our yard here a little while ago, and he said,
I felt like I grew up in Auschwitz. He said,
just I had to walk around on eggshells. So if
(17:26):
you grew up in an angry home, that's probably, you know,
maybe if you played at your friend's house all the
time instead of your own home, that might be the case.
Or my parents were belittling as the seventh negative parenting style.
And this is your parents making fun of you, and
sometimes in public shaming you for body parts, things like this.
These things are so destructive and demeaning in my own case.
(17:51):
My parents were very passive because they had never been
equipped to train, as I said earlier. And then secondly,
they were very permissive. I pretty much could do whatever
I wanted to do. And so I used that permission
to get into a lot of trouble, as some of
our listeners probably can relate to as well. And what
(18:12):
made my childhood so confusing is that my parents were
really nice people. They really were. But as my counselor
pointed out, that doesn't mean that they were good parents
just because they were nice people. She said that I
think that you have been, uh, abandoned. Gross abandonment. Possibly
(18:33):
even abused. And when she said that, I went ballistic,
to be honest. And I began defending my mom and dad.
But over a period of eight sessions, it only took
eight Eight sessions. She was able to help me really
understand and look at things in in a more professional
way and really understand what had been happening in my
in my family.
S6 (18:54):
Now, the book you have divided into three parts. So
tell us what those three parts are and why you
structured the book in that manner?
S7 (19:02):
Yeah. So, Gary, I'm all about giving men the practical
help they need, the practical help that they've been looking
for and very much focused on solutions, not problems. But
here's the here's the situation. If you're trying to solve
the wrong problem, you can only succeed by accident. And
(19:23):
so I see this all the time. Men don't really
understand what the problem is. And so the first part
of the book, the arc of this book. Part one
is unraveling. What happened to you? Really understanding childhood wounds,
what you should have gotten the right cocktail of love, structure,
roots and wings. And when that goes awry, you end
up with one of these seven negative parenting styles that
(19:46):
I mentioned. And then also that evolves into adult behavior
and nine different characteristics of adult children with unprocessed childhood wounds.
And so in part one, just really helping a man
understand how he got to the place where he is,
you know, just a sidebar in in our Christian world,
(20:07):
it's a normal process is, is that we help someone
become a follower of Jesus and get forgiveness for sins
and salvation. And then we begin to help them, equip
them and disciple them to move forward. But what I've
discovered in many people, and I know you have too,
is that if you don't process the problems that got
(20:30):
you into the dire situation that made you want to
turn to Jesus in the first place, that doesn't mean
those problems go away. They don't just disappear. So you
have to work through them. And so the purpose of,
of this second part of the book is to show
men a biblical healing process that's been around for thousands
of years. And there's seven different stages of this. And
(20:56):
everybody's different. And the stages are not necessarily one right
after another and sometimes. So like getting out of denial
and facing the truth, that's one of the stages. Grieving
what the childhood that you should have had that you
deserved to have. And and actually come to a place
where you believe that you did deserve to have a
(21:18):
different childhood. You know, one of the problems that men
who grow up with childhood wounds is that they feel
like they deserved what they got. In some cases, not
all cases. So anyway, the second part of the book
then is about that healing process. So understanding what happened,
healing it. And then the third part of the book
is about breaking the cycle for the next generation, for
(21:40):
your wife, if you're married or or if you ever
do get married, and your children if you have them
or ever do have them. And then also for your
friends and colleagues and other people around you that may
also be struggling with, uh, these kinds of childhood wounds.
So that's it. The three phases of the book.
S6 (22:01):
So describe, like, the kind of damage that a man
carries from childhood into adulthood. I don't mean you can
go into everything, but just give us an example of
that kind of thing.
S7 (22:12):
Yeah. Well, one of the characteristics is that you are
oversensitive and frequently misread what people intend. You're prickly. You
take things the wrong way. I have a friend. Uh,
he's doing better now, but when he had four young children,
he would walk into the the family room, and 15
minutes later, he'd be sitting by himself. He was so oversensitive.
(22:37):
He took everything the wrong way. And then he made
these prickly remarks. Even his own family didn't want to
be around them. So that would be one of the
one of the ways. And then, of course, uh, you know,
anger is, uh, a very profound response mechanism for men
who have childhood wounds that have not been addressed. It's
(22:58):
just a it's a way of self-defense, if you will. Yeah.
Just simply not knowing how to process conflict. And then
also having had childhood memories of their parents, uh, being
angry with them and lose their temper with their children.
So they, they themselves grow up with this bottled up anger,
(23:20):
and then they pass it on to everybody else.
S6 (23:23):
Yeah. What steps do you teach someone to help them
shift their perspective to being compassionate toward their parents, instead
of just blaming them and being angry with them for
the bad things that happened?
S7 (23:38):
One important concept that Jesus teaches is the concept of
unilateral forgiveness. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus said, forgive us
our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.
When they humble themselves and come to us in bowed
need and beg for forgiveness. It doesn't say that. It
(24:00):
just says, forgive us our sins as we forgive those
who have sinned against us. Parenting is a. It's a
privilege and a sacred responsibility to give children the right
cocktail of love. Structure. Roots and wings. And to give
them the emotional and relational and the spiritual. It's not
(24:22):
just putting a roof over the head. Of course, we
all know this, but it is protection. In fact, the
essence of manhood is to identify and protect sacred things.
There's nothing more sacred that needs protecting than a man's family.
S6 (24:36):
Well, Pat, let's talk to the man who sees what
you're saying. They understand what you're talking about, but they
don't have a clue as to what to do. That
is where to begin. So what's a first step in
breaking destructive family cycles?
S7 (24:51):
Yeah. Here's the big picture. If you're listening and you've
identified with anything that we've been talking about here today
and you maybe are suspicious, maybe you know, that you
have childhood wounds that you've never processed, maybe you're just
suspicious that that might be the case, or maybe you've
(25:11):
been in a deep state of denial. We all compartmentalize
bad thoughts, but denial is something different. It's emotional amnesia.
We literally block things out and literally cannot remember them.
But now your interest has been piqued a little bit.
So the first question to ask is, I would like
you to picture yourself 5 or 10 years down the
(25:33):
road and then look at the behaviors, the unwanted behaviors
that you have right now, or the fears and anxieties
that you'd like to get rid of right now. And
ask yourself what will be different 5 or 10 years
from now, unless you take some action to do something
about them? That's why I wrote this book. I wrote
(25:53):
it for you. I'm. I'm known for personal vulnerability, but
I'm also known for giving men practical resources. And that's
why the book is filled with practical exercises, reflections, discussion,
and reflection questions at the end of each chapter. So
you can do that by yourself or in a small group.
There are several writing exercises to help you put down
(26:18):
on paper. Some thoughts to help you clarify your own
thinking about what happened to you, and then some positive
steps that you can take with your own wife and
your own children, and with your friends to be that
cycle breaker, to be that that guy, that the other
men hope that they can become someday too.
S6 (26:39):
So I hear you saying, the first of all, you identify,
you know, what are you going to be like in
ten years if you don't deal with some of this stuff? Yeah.
And then you decide I'm going to take some steps.
And when you do, this book is going to be
a guideline for you. That's that's what I see. And
that's what I hear you saying. Right.
S7 (26:58):
That that's it. That's it. And I'm also telling men
and women, women are reading the book too. So this
is my 23rd book. And usually I know that when
I do an interview like this, most people are not
going to go out and buy the book. So I
always try to give value in the interview. So this
(27:19):
is something that they can take away because even if
they don't end up with with the book. But guys,
this is different. This is you can't just listen to
this interview today and get what you need to heal
your childhood wounds. In fact, you're not going to be
able to get enough to heal your childhood wounds just
by reading the book and getting the intellectual knowledge about it.
(27:42):
I'm telling men and women, this is not a book
that you read. This is a book you do. You
have to do the book. But if you will do
the book, God will show up. It may be that
you go all the way to healing. If if your
childhood wounds have been on the more mild side, you
might go all the way to healing, or you might
(28:03):
go a certain distance down the road. It might incite
you or encourage you or and I do this in
the book. Encourage you if you do feel like you
need to get professional help is to seek out a counselor.
In fact, even have a link on how to find
a counselor in the book. So it's a just it's
a book filled with practical, practical help.
S6 (28:26):
Now, Pat, you alluded to the spouse of a man,
you know, who has the these these pains. What do
you say to to that wife who's caught in this
kind of cycle? How does a woman married to a
wounded man become an instrument of love and help for him?
S7 (28:45):
Hmm. So it's not a simple answer in one sense,
but it is in another. I mean, because the woman
herself might be a broken woman. You see a broken girl,
or she might be a person who's not a follower
of Jesus, and her own temperament might not be well
suited to to be a coper. Uh, with these kinds
(29:08):
of things. But here's what I would say, and I
would encourage women to do. If you have a husband
and you suspect that because of his behavior or your
knowledge that he has some childhood wounds that have never
been dealt with, is that you would not try to
(29:28):
fix him. So that is absolutely the worst thing that
you can do. And you probably already know that because
you may have already done it or you've seen somebody
else do it. So I'd encourage you not to do that.
I would encourage you to most of all, pray to
our Savior and our Lord and our God to help
(29:48):
your husband. But then on a practical level, I really
encourage you to get a copy of this book for
yourself and read it so that you can understand what
he's going through. That will give you more empathy toward him,
and it also give you some practical ideas to understand
how he could be helped. And then the final piece
of prayer, you know, read the book for yourself, for
(30:09):
your own knowledge or for your own personal life. If
that's the case. But then consider suggesting that your husband
read the book. Do not give the book at him.
Does that make sense? But do give the book to him.
I have a friend who, uh, got a copy of
(30:30):
the book. Didn't read it. His wife read it, and she, uh,
she just said to him one day, and she had
that tone of voice. She said, you know, I really
think you should read this.
S6 (30:42):
And he got and.
S7 (30:43):
He and he understood what she was saying, and he
read it and it really did help him.
S6 (30:49):
Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. I've sometimes said to women ask him
if he'll read the first chapter. Yeah. That's good. If
you read the first chapter you'll probably read the rest
of it you know.
S7 (31:01):
That is very good.
S6 (31:03):
Now your book gives, uh, as it were, a game plan, uh,
to process pain and then come to the place of
forgiveness and then building better relationships. Uh, give us some
examples of the action plans that have that have helped men.
S7 (31:20):
Okay, well, I mentioned that there are these nine different characteristics, um,
of broken boys. I mean, I could write a book
on any one of these things, right? But instead, what
I've chosen to do is give the guy that's reading
it a page or two of information so that he
(31:41):
can identify with it. For example, characteristic number four. You're
not sure what healthy male behavior looks like. And then
I tell the story in there that when I did
join the Army, I rose to the rank of specialist
four in the minimum amount of time. And then when
(32:01):
I would have been promoted to E5, which is a sergeant,
I didn't get the promotion in the minimum amount of time.
So I started bugging my master sergeant every day and
asking him, you know, when are, you know, what did
I do wrong? When are you going to promote me?
And finally he sat me down and he said, son,
let me give you some advice. The more you pester me,
(32:23):
the less motivated I am to promote you.
S6 (32:27):
So. But. Yeah.
S7 (32:29):
My my, my. So you can see my launch in
the manhood. It was just very, very awkward. I had
no situational awareness, very low emotional intelligence. I was I
just I floundered, and that's, uh, you know, if you're listening,
maybe you were not fathered or mothered or mentored or
coached about what it means to be a man. And
(32:49):
so as a result, you know, you're like me. You
were unprepared for adulthood because your parents just didn't know
how to equip you or didn't equip you to become independent.
So it could be, you know, college advice. It could
be vocational advice, uh, some information about the opposite gender. Well,
first of all, I never heard the words I love
you or I'm proud of you, or we believe in you.
(33:13):
No recollection of of any of those kinds of words.
And so I just didn't have the nurture to enter
into adulthood as, as with healthy male behavior. And so
in the book, I spent a couple pages on that.
And then at the end of this I have a
reflection exercise for you, the man, to evaluate yourself in
(33:37):
this area. And I'll just read it. It says, how
often do you feel like you know what healthy male
behavior is in a given situation? And then you have
five choices. Never. Rarely. Sometimes. Usually or always. This is
helping give a man a map of where he is,
(33:59):
how he got there, and then moving forward. In this
healing process. There are also exercises for him to do,
to actually pray, prayers, to go through acts of forgiveness.
Just every every chapter has different kinds of exercises and
reflections for for the man to do, to be make
it very practical.
S6 (34:21):
Pat, you mentioned earlier that this is a process. It's
not something that can be done overnight, Eight. But typically,
how long do you think a process is? If a
man seriously sees, you know, these wounds and hurts and
really wants to move in the right direction, how long
might that process take?
S7 (34:41):
Well, Gary, it's going to be different for every man.
Of course, you know that, uh, the depending on the
severity of the wounds. And, but I would say that
most men should be able to make immense progress in
as little as 2 or 3 months. And I say
that from personal experience. I experienced about a 70%, or
maybe even 80% improvement just by going through eight professional
(35:05):
counseling sessions. The feeling that I had at the time
was I knew that I was a follower of Jesus,
but somehow I just felt dull. I didn't feel that
the luster of the gospel I didn't. When I read
about the abundant life, I didn't. I didn't feel abundant
when when it says in scriptures that Christ came to
(35:27):
make us alive. I didn't feel fully alive and, uh.
But here's the thing. In a matter of of of
a of a couple of months, that radically changed. Now,
that doesn't mean that everything was, was, was fixed or
made well or made whole right away. In fact, even today,
(35:48):
I still walk with a limp. Erik Erikson's famous child
development theory. The first task of that is trust versus mistrust.
And so if a child in the first few months
or years of its life makes the decision that the
world is not a safe place, then even when you
(36:09):
heal your childhood wounds, you're still going to be dealing
with some of that first characteristic that you have a
hard time believing that people really care about you. So
I still struggle with that when I walk into a
room today, unless I'm filled with the Holy Spirit, I
still my natural tendency ANC is to be suspicious that
people are really not going to not going to like me. Now,
(36:30):
I don't actually act on that that much anymore. But
every now and then it does rear its head. So
you're going to walk with a limp. Let's be, you know,
completely transparent about that. But that doesn't mean that you
can't feel fully alive in Jesus. You can.
S6 (36:47):
Mhm. Absolutely. What do you say to the man who
sees he needs help. Maybe he is working through this book.
He's making some, you know, progress. Uh, but let's say
that anger is one of the characteristics that he's exhibited
and he's tried to deal with. And so he's made
a few steps forward, feeling good about himself. And then
(37:09):
something happens and he has an outburst of anger and hurts,
you know, his wife or kids or whomever it is.
How might he feel at that point? And what does
he do at that point?
S7 (37:21):
Well, he's going to have different voices in his head, right?
He's going to have the Holy Spirit who's going to be,
first of all, loving him, but also encouraging, convicting him
to to make it right. But he's also going to
have the voice of the devil in his head as well, saying, see,
I told you, you your mother was right. You're going
(37:42):
to end up just like your dad. You know, you're
never going to be any good. So you're going to
have those voices in your head. So it's a little
bit of a whack a mole kind of a thing. Uh,
but here's the thing. The way I look at it,
and my experience proves this out, is that each time
you have an episode, you go through the process of,
first of all, repenting or changing your mind about it
(38:05):
and asking for forgiveness. And it's like cutting a piece
of string in half. So half is gone, but half
is left. But the half that's left is not as
big as it was before. And then the next time
you have, uh, an episode, you cut the string in
half again. So a little bit of it goes away
when you apologize and ask forgiveness, but half of the
(38:28):
string is still there. But again, it's not as long
as it was before. And so you do. And you
can make progress, uh, over time with this.
S6 (38:37):
Yeah, yeah. What about the man who denies that anything
really bad happened in childhood? Or he recognizes that there
were problems back there, but. But it doesn't affect me.
It doesn't affect me. Uh, what do you. What do
you say to that guy?
S7 (38:53):
He's probably not ready for the book. It's a fascinating
thing that would happen when I was, uh, writing the book.
When I was in college, I used to race motocross,
and my mom and dad came to see me race
one time. One time? That happened to be the day
that I got into a nasty accident and got flown
to the hospital in a helicopter. Well, my mom and
(39:15):
dad didn't come. My mom and dad didn't come to
the emergency room and they never called to check up
to see how I was. Well, now you you would
think that that would be that would be such a
devastating memory that it would just have, you know, really
ripped me apart. Right. Yeah. But here's the thing. Until
I was literally until I was writing the book, I
(39:36):
literally had no recollection of that. It was by writing
the book, reliving everything. You know, that memory came back
to me and I. But. And that's what that's how
powerful denial is. Yeah, but the the process of of
facing the truth then, is what I'm trying to help
men do so they can get out of denial. And
(39:59):
that's really to actually try to help men remember the
man who does read the book. I'm going to guide
him through a process of remembering the goal of getting
out of denial. Facing the truth is remembering what we've
been trying to forget, or what we have forgotten.
S6 (40:19):
As we come to the end of our time together today.
Can you tell us a story about someone who has
taken a similar journey to yours and has now found freedom?
S7 (40:29):
Yeah. My best friend for 17 years was a man
who ran our Bible study, the one I teach. I
made a deal with him. I'll teach. And you do
everything else. And so we would go out to lunch
and a movie every Friday. And we did that for
17 years until he passed away. And he grew up
in a home that was extremely dysfunctional. And his father
(40:52):
was a belittling and demeaning person. So one day, my
friend Jim, uh, when he was about ten years old,
had his friend in the neighborhood, Timmy, over to play.
And as Timmy was getting ready to leave my friends,
Jim's father opened the door and in front of my
(41:13):
friend Jim, who's ten years old at the time, says
to Timmy, Timmy, you can come back anytime. I sure
wish I had a son like you.
S6 (41:22):
Hmm.
S7 (41:23):
Well, I mean, how do you get over that? And
then all the other things that the father would have
said as well. But here's the thing. Jim was able
to process his childhood wounds and was able to, you know,
come to a place to a forgiveness. His father in
particular was toxic. And so he was never really able
(41:45):
to have a relationship with him again. Unlike me, I
was able to have a relationship again with my dad.
That happened at the age of 35 for me, but
never happened for Jim. But he was able to, uh,
become a follower of Jesus, to get married, to have
his own family and be a loving husband and father
(42:06):
and a man of service. He just who loved to
serve other people. That never would have happened, though, if
he had not found rest for his soul by becoming
a follower of Jesus. You know, Jesus said, come unto me,
all you who are weary and burdened, and I will
give you more work to do. I know. He says,
(42:27):
come unto me, and I will give you rest. You'll
find rest for your soul. And Jim did find that rest.
S6 (42:33):
Yeah. Well, my prediction is that God's going to use
this book to help a lot of men look to
God and walk with God through this process of finding
healing from the wounds of childhood. And I also want
to say this, I think a lot of counselors who
may be listening today, this book is going to be
a great tool for Christian counselors to use in the
(42:56):
process of helping men walk through this journey. So, Pat, again,
thanks for being with us today.
S7 (43:02):
Thank you, Gary, and thank you Chris and Andrea as well.
I appreciate it. And to all you men out there,
I pray every day that God will give you.
S3 (43:11):
A.
S7 (43:12):
All the fullness of the abundant life and that you
would feel fully alive in Jesus. And that is my
prayer every day.
S5 (43:19):
Well, what a great resource for any man listening who
has some unresolved hurts and for the people around him
love him. If you go to building relationships, you'll see
that book by Doctor Patrick Morley, from Broken Boy to
Mended Man, a positive plan to heal your childhood wounds
and break the cycle. Just go to building relationships. Well,
(43:42):
that's it for our summer Bestov broadcast for today. Next week,
if you are lonely or you know someone who is,
don't miss the conversation about cultivating deeper connections.
S4 (43:54):
Before we go, let me thank our production team, Steve
Wick and Janice. Backing. Building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman
is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers,
a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.
Hiding inside. Every man is a little boy. He can
be healthy and strong.
S2 (00:07):
Or he can be afraid, angry and broken. He's never
really gotten over the wounds of his childhood. Is there
a way to break the cycle of pain? The cycle
of rage? Is there a way to go from.
S1 (00:24):
Broken boy to mended man?
S3 (00:33):
Maybe your parents were nice like mine. And so the
idea of forgiving them seems a little easier. But maybe
they were just mean people. Maybe they were toxic. But
the point is, is that healing is definitely possible. Men
are being healed.
S4 (00:51):
Welcome to building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman, author of
the New York Times best seller The Five Love Languages. Today,
author of man in the mirror, Doctor Patrick Morley describes
his healing journey from broken boy to mended man, and
he'll give a positive plan for you or a man
you know on how to heal from childhood wounds.
S5 (01:11):
And this is a summer best of broadcast. You can
find our featured resource at the website Building Relationships. Our
guest is Doctor Patrick Morley, author of From Broken Boy
to Mended Man A Positive Plan to Heal Your Childhood
Wounds and Break the Cycle. And it looks like I
know the fella who wrote the foreword to this book. Gary.
(01:33):
Why do you think this is such an important topic
for such a time as this?
S6 (01:37):
Well, you know, Chris, there are a lot of wounded
men out there. I'm just going to read you the
first paragraph in this foreword that I wrote, because I
really feel this is true. I say through my 40
years of counseling men who have experienced childhood wounds, I've
never read a book that I've found more helpful for
those men than the book you hold in your hands.
(02:00):
It is practical, understandable and doable, I think because it's
written by a man who has walked the road. Uh,
so I'm excited to have Doctor Morley with us today,
because I think this is a topic that's gravely needed
in our society today.
S5 (02:17):
Well, let's meet him. And we promised him we're going
to call him Pat. But I'll say it one more time.
Doctor Patrick Morley is founder of man in the mirror,
a global ministry impacting thousands of churches, millions of men.
Motivated by his own search for meaning and purpose. He
started a Bible study with a handful of guys in 1986.
And that study is still going. It now reaches men
(02:39):
around the world every week. He's written some 23 books,
including The Man in the mirror, which was named one
of the 100 most influential Christian books of the 20th century.
And our featured resource today, as I said at Building Relationships,
is from Broken boy to Mended Man. Just go to
building relationships.
S6 (03:00):
Well, Doctor Morley, welcome to building relationships.
S3 (03:03):
Well, Doctor Chapman, thank you for having me. It's such
an honor. I, I just cannot get over the fact
that I'm able to actually be on your program. Uh,
you've been a hero of mine forever. And so thank
you again for the gracious words of that forward to.
In fact, after you read it, I was thinking, well,
(03:26):
we could wrap it up right now.
S6 (03:30):
Well, I've given my opinion when the when the program's over,
they're going to have their own opinion. Okay.
S3 (03:36):
True enough, true enough.
S6 (03:38):
As we start, uh, let's talk this a little bit
about the global impact of the man in the mirror
and how that all got started. Give us a little
background on that and your perception of how God has
used that.
S3 (03:52):
Well, it's interesting because my background is business. I was
a real estate developer, My first life philosophy was that
money will solve my problems and success will make me happy.
I quit high school in the middle of my senior year,
so there were some problems at home. Nice, very nice parents,
but very passive and permissive. And so, um, I was
(04:14):
a broken boy. I didn't understand any of that at
the time. I really just felt like I, and I,
pretty much from about 8 or 9 years old, had
the sense of feeling like I was on my own
to figure out life. Uh, and I became very successful
in business. You know, broken boys tend to become especially irresponsible,
(04:35):
or they become the responsible son, uh, depending on whether
they want to prove that their parents were right or
wrong about them. And so I became the responsible son,
became quite successful. And I was just sitting around one
day I said, wow, there's just got to be more
to life than this. It just there just has to be.
And so that's when I started the Bible study that
Chris referenced and started teaching men about the problems that
(05:00):
we face. And it wasn't until quite some time later, though,
that I actually had the revelation, the epiphany, that the
reason that I was struggling so much personally with all
the demons that came in the middle of the night,
was because of childhood wounds that had never really been
properly processed.
S6 (05:19):
Well, no question about it. That book made in the
mirror tremendously helpful to a lot of people, and I
think this book is going to be the same. You
say there's an epidemic of lonely, hurting men carrying unresolved pain.
How do you know that's true? And what does that
look like today?
S3 (05:38):
Well, Gary, my favorite thing to do, uh, you know,
we write books, we teach churches. You know, we do
all these different things. But my number one favorite thing
to do is to meet with men one on one.
And I've literally met with thousands of men one on
one to hear their stories. And, you know, for a
period of, you know, 40 years meeting with 2 or
(05:58):
3 guys a week like that, it adds up. And
so when men try to put into words what they
feel like is holding them back, what's keeping them from
feeling fully alive? And if they're a believer, fully alive
in Jesus, they will inevitably mention one or more seven things.
You know, I just feel like I'm in this alone.
(06:20):
I don't feel like God cares about me personally. Not really.
My life doesn't feel like it has a purpose. It
feels random. I have these destructive behaviors. They keep dragging
me back down. My soul feels dry. My most important relationships,
they're not healthy. And then finally, I just don't feel
(06:40):
like I'm doing anything that's going to make a difference
and leave the world a better place. I kind of
my organizing paradigm is, is that what do men want
that they need, that I have to offer? And so when,
since I am a broken boy, and since I have
a theological education and a doctorate degree and all these
different things, and I've studied this and I've been through
(07:02):
it personally, I've just really felt a calling to go
ahead and put this all out there. And it's not
the normal thing that someone would do, but I just
felt like called by God that it was something I
was supposed to do.
S6 (07:19):
Well, Pat, this is your 23rd book, but it took
you six years before deciding to move ahead and write it.
What took so long?
S3 (07:29):
Well, net net, my mom and dad are were really
nice people, and I believe that they wanted to do
the right things. Uh, but they were never trained, equipped
or discipled to be godly parents. My dad was abandoned
when he was two years of age, and so he
(07:52):
never felt the scratch of his father's whiskers. He never
heard a father reading him a bedtime story. He never
tossed a ball in the backyard. He never had his
hair tussled, never wrestled on the living room floor with
his dad, never heard a truck door shut in the
driveway at the end of a day, signaling that his
dad was about to re-enter the family orbit. And so
(08:15):
basically what it meant to be a man, a husband
and a father was unexampled to him. And so he
was left to guess at how to be a dad
to me and a husband to my mom. And, and, uh,
so net of all that is that he did the
best he could, but there was this intergenerational dysfunction that
(08:35):
got transmitted to him. He never was able to do
anything about that, so I didn't want to. So the
answer to the question is I and my mom and
dad and I, we did reconcile. And and for the
last half, uh, for the second half of my life
and the last part of their life, we had a
very loving and hugging, affectionate relationship that we did not
(08:57):
have for the first 35 years of my life. So
I didn't want to throw them under the bus, and
it just took me six years to figure to to
to noodle around to figure out how I could honor them. Uh,
but yet still tell the true story. And so I
finally got it. Got it all sorted out in my head.
But it took like six years to do that. And, uh, yeah,
(09:18):
that's the answer to the question.
S6 (09:19):
I can understand that. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't want
to put them down. And yet you want to be honest.
And when did you personally begin to realize that your,
your childhood wounds and how they had impacted you?
S3 (09:33):
Well, there are kind of two answers to that question. Um,
I when I left home, I washed my hands and
my parents, I joined the Army. And, um, if it
wasn't for my wife, I probably would have had no
contact at all. But I became a follower of Jesus
through the influence of my wife at the age of 24,
when I was 25 years of age, my parents invited
(09:55):
us to come out to their home for dinner. My
brother had been off at war. The family had not
been together for several years. It was Thanksgiving and so
my mom and dad were there. My three younger brothers,
my new wife and myself. And we were that family
that would say grace, but we would say, God is good,
God is great, and we thank you for this food. Amen.
(10:15):
As quickly as we could, you know, and so on
this particular day, though, my dad said, I'd like to
pray today. And so we bowed our heads and he said, Lord,
mom and I would just like to say thank you.
And then he started blubbering and he excused himself and
went into the master bedroom. I went in after him.
I said, dad, dad, are you all right? What's the matter?
(10:37):
He said, no, I'm okay. I just need a minute.
And I said, well, what's going on? He said, well,
it's just that your mother and I never thought that
we would ever see our four boys together in the
same room again. And, uh, something softened in me that day,
and because I was a new Christian and starting to grow,
I just chose to unilaterally forgive my mother and father
(10:58):
that day for everything that had gone before. And it
was real. Now, I didn't have the I didn't know
what I was doing okay at the time, but that
began did begin a process that, uh, took me another
28 years to come, full circle. And in fact, that's
why I wanted to write the book, because I do
(11:19):
now know that a man can do in a few
months what took me several decades to do, if he
will apply himself and actually do this book, not just
but actually do the book.
S5 (11:29):
This is a summer best of Building Relationships broadcast.
S4 (11:33):
For more ways to strengthen your relationships, go to Building Relationships.
You'll see our featured resource by Doctor Patrick Morley. From
Broken Boy to Mended Man, a positive plan to heal
your childhood wounds and break the cycle. Find out more
at building relationships.
S6 (11:52):
Well, Pat, as you've described already, you were one of
those herding men. Do you really think it's possible for
men to go from broken to mended, which is really
kind of the theme of the book?
S3 (12:06):
Yes. And the answer is absolutely yes. In fact, you know,
the book's only been out a little while, so it's September,
but it's came out in March, so not that long.
But I'm getting I'm getting correspondence like every single day
from from men. I got a text last night from
a guy who had mentioned, uh, the, the book to
(12:27):
to a man. He got it. He's a pastor. He
got it. He he was reading the book on an airplane,
and he was crying because he was identifying with everything
that was being said. He had to stop reading the
book on the airplane and finished it when he got home.
And it's had a tremendous impact because he's, for the
first time able to understand all of these emotions or
(12:50):
where these emotions are coming from that have always been inexplicable.
And that was my case, too, as a as a
broken boy. I talk about nine characteristics of broken boys
in the book. Just the first one is you have
a hard time believing that people really care about you.
And so if you have experienced a sense of abandonment,
or if your parents are always angry and demanding, or
(13:12):
if they were overly permissive or even maybe enabling parents,
then there's a good chance that you struggle with trusting
people or a sense of feeling abandoned. That's certainly true
of me. Another characteristic is you are easily angered. I
never lost my temper. Not one time did I ever
(13:33):
lose my temper at the office. But what I would do.
Because there the stakes are so high, you know, in
terms of your prestige, getting what you want done in
terms of projects or sales and so forth, or even
job security itself could be at risk. So I would
bottle it up and bring it home, and then some
little thing would set me off and boom. Just like that. Uh,
(13:56):
hair trigger and, uh, but I had no idea what
was going on. You see? Yeah. And so, uh, when
this really, uh, got sorted out is when my mother
died at the age of 53. And I didn't feel anything.
I didn't cry. I wasn't sad. I didn't miss her.
(14:17):
And I thought that was odd. So I made an
appointment with a counselor, and she helped me to put
into words the father and mother wounds that I had
never been able to articulate. It was from that point forward,
from the age of 53 on, that I've spent a
couple of decades now studying this and and working with
(14:37):
men on this issue. And I know that men can
be mended, can be healed Because healing is all about pain,
and pain can be identified. It can be faced. It
can be grieved. Wounds that have been made against us.
(14:58):
By the way. These wounds. These are things that they're
not your fault. If you're listening today and you have
childhood wounds, it's not your fault. But you're really the
only one that can do anything about it now. But
you can get to a place no matter how toxic.
I know this sounds crazy. Maybe your parents were nice
like mine, and so the idea of forgiving them seems
(15:19):
a little easier. But maybe they were just mean people.
Maybe they were toxic. Maybe they still are. Maybe when
you invite them over to dinner, they're making snide remarks
about your wife, and they're bossing your children around. And
maybe you do need to set up some boundaries. And
I'm showing you how to do that in the book
as well. But the point is, is that healing is
(15:40):
definitely possible. Men are being healed.
S6 (15:43):
Let's go back to your own childhood hood again, Pat,
and describe a little more fully. What was it like?
I mean, you say your parents were good parents, but
what were the things that were either missing there or
what was going on there?
S3 (15:57):
Well, I would say that they were.
S7 (15:59):
Nice parents in terms of, uh, good parents. They really
had never been trained. So if you're listening today and
you could say my parents were encouraging or my parents
were affirming, then that would be a sign that you
had had, you know, good parenting. But what if you
(16:21):
can't say that? Uh, in the book, I identify seven
negative parenting styles, and I'll tell you mine in a moment.
But you might say, if you can't say that they
were encouraging, you might say, well, my parents were passive
or my parents were absent. That could be death, divorce, workaholism,
(16:42):
you know, or addictions. Predictions. My parents were permissive, you know,
like just let you have the run of the place
and didn't have enough structure. Or maybe you would say
my parents were enabling, and that means, you know, all
parents are supposed to help their children, but enabling is
doing for children things that they should or could be
(17:04):
doing for themselves, or maybe not holding them responsible when
they do something they shouldn't do. Or maybe you might
say my parents were, um, demanding. Uh, or my parents
were angry. I had a guy put a fence in
our yard here a little while ago, and he said,
I felt like I grew up in Auschwitz. He said,
just I had to walk around on eggshells. So if
(17:26):
you grew up in an angry home, that's probably, you know,
maybe if you played at your friend's house all the
time instead of your own home, that might be the case.
Or my parents were belittling as the seventh negative parenting style.
And this is your parents making fun of you, and
sometimes in public shaming you for body parts, things like this.
These things are so destructive and demeaning in my own case.
(17:51):
My parents were very passive because they had never been
equipped to train, as I said earlier. And then secondly,
they were very permissive. I pretty much could do whatever
I wanted to do. And so I used that permission
to get into a lot of trouble, as some of
our listeners probably can relate to as well. And what
(18:12):
made my childhood so confusing is that my parents were
really nice people. They really were. But as my counselor
pointed out, that doesn't mean that they were good parents
just because they were nice people. She said that I
think that you have been, uh, abandoned. Gross abandonment. Possibly
(18:33):
even abused. And when she said that, I went ballistic,
to be honest. And I began defending my mom and dad.
But over a period of eight sessions, it only took
eight Eight sessions. She was able to help me really
understand and look at things in in a more professional
way and really understand what had been happening in my
in my family.
S6 (18:54):
Now, the book you have divided into three parts. So
tell us what those three parts are and why you
structured the book in that manner?
S7 (19:02):
Yeah. So, Gary, I'm all about giving men the practical
help they need, the practical help that they've been looking
for and very much focused on solutions, not problems. But
here's the here's the situation. If you're trying to solve
the wrong problem, you can only succeed by accident. And
(19:23):
so I see this all the time. Men don't really
understand what the problem is. And so the first part
of the book, the arc of this book. Part one
is unraveling. What happened to you? Really understanding childhood wounds,
what you should have gotten the right cocktail of love, structure,
roots and wings. And when that goes awry, you end
up with one of these seven negative parenting styles that
(19:46):
I mentioned. And then also that evolves into adult behavior
and nine different characteristics of adult children with unprocessed childhood wounds.
And so in part one, just really helping a man
understand how he got to the place where he is,
you know, just a sidebar in in our Christian world,
(20:07):
it's a normal process is, is that we help someone
become a follower of Jesus and get forgiveness for sins
and salvation. And then we begin to help them, equip
them and disciple them to move forward. But what I've
discovered in many people, and I know you have too,
is that if you don't process the problems that got
(20:30):
you into the dire situation that made you want to
turn to Jesus in the first place, that doesn't mean
those problems go away. They don't just disappear. So you
have to work through them. And so the purpose of,
of this second part of the book is to show
men a biblical healing process that's been around for thousands
of years. And there's seven different stages of this. And
(20:56):
everybody's different. And the stages are not necessarily one right
after another and sometimes. So like getting out of denial
and facing the truth, that's one of the stages. Grieving
what the childhood that you should have had that you
deserved to have. And and actually come to a place
where you believe that you did deserve to have a
(21:18):
different childhood. You know, one of the problems that men
who grow up with childhood wounds is that they feel
like they deserved what they got. In some cases, not
all cases. So anyway, the second part of the book
then is about that healing process. So understanding what happened,
healing it. And then the third part of the book
is about breaking the cycle for the next generation, for
(21:40):
your wife, if you're married or or if you ever
do get married, and your children if you have them
or ever do have them. And then also for your
friends and colleagues and other people around you that may
also be struggling with, uh, these kinds of childhood wounds.
So that's it. The three phases of the book.
S6 (22:01):
So describe, like, the kind of damage that a man
carries from childhood into adulthood. I don't mean you can
go into everything, but just give us an example of
that kind of thing.
S7 (22:12):
Yeah. Well, one of the characteristics is that you are
oversensitive and frequently misread what people intend. You're prickly. You
take things the wrong way. I have a friend. Uh,
he's doing better now, but when he had four young children,
he would walk into the the family room, and 15
minutes later, he'd be sitting by himself. He was so oversensitive.
(22:37):
He took everything the wrong way. And then he made
these prickly remarks. Even his own family didn't want to
be around them. So that would be one of the
one of the ways. And then, of course, uh, you know,
anger is, uh, a very profound response mechanism for men
who have childhood wounds that have not been addressed. It's
(22:58):
just a it's a way of self-defense, if you will. Yeah.
Just simply not knowing how to process conflict. And then
also having had childhood memories of their parents, uh, being
angry with them and lose their temper with their children.
So they, they themselves grow up with this bottled up anger,
(23:20):
and then they pass it on to everybody else.
S6 (23:23):
Yeah. What steps do you teach someone to help them
shift their perspective to being compassionate toward their parents, instead
of just blaming them and being angry with them for
the bad things that happened?
S7 (23:38):
One important concept that Jesus teaches is the concept of
unilateral forgiveness. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus said, forgive us
our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.
When they humble themselves and come to us in bowed
need and beg for forgiveness. It doesn't say that. It
(24:00):
just says, forgive us our sins as we forgive those
who have sinned against us. Parenting is a. It's a
privilege and a sacred responsibility to give children the right
cocktail of love. Structure. Roots and wings. And to give
them the emotional and relational and the spiritual. It's not
(24:22):
just putting a roof over the head. Of course, we
all know this, but it is protection. In fact, the
essence of manhood is to identify and protect sacred things.
There's nothing more sacred that needs protecting than a man's family.
S6 (24:36):
Well, Pat, let's talk to the man who sees what
you're saying. They understand what you're talking about, but they
don't have a clue as to what to do. That
is where to begin. So what's a first step in
breaking destructive family cycles?
S7 (24:51):
Yeah. Here's the big picture. If you're listening and you've
identified with anything that we've been talking about here today
and you maybe are suspicious, maybe you know, that you
have childhood wounds that you've never processed, maybe you're just
suspicious that that might be the case, or maybe you've
(25:11):
been in a deep state of denial. We all compartmentalize
bad thoughts, but denial is something different. It's emotional amnesia.
We literally block things out and literally cannot remember them.
But now your interest has been piqued a little bit.
So the first question to ask is, I would like
you to picture yourself 5 or 10 years down the
(25:33):
road and then look at the behaviors, the unwanted behaviors
that you have right now, or the fears and anxieties
that you'd like to get rid of right now. And
ask yourself what will be different 5 or 10 years
from now, unless you take some action to do something
about them? That's why I wrote this book. I wrote
(25:53):
it for you. I'm. I'm known for personal vulnerability, but
I'm also known for giving men practical resources. And that's
why the book is filled with practical exercises, reflections, discussion,
and reflection questions at the end of each chapter. So
you can do that by yourself or in a small group.
There are several writing exercises to help you put down
(26:18):
on paper. Some thoughts to help you clarify your own
thinking about what happened to you, and then some positive
steps that you can take with your own wife and
your own children, and with your friends to be that
cycle breaker, to be that that guy, that the other
men hope that they can become someday too.
S6 (26:39):
So I hear you saying, the first of all, you identify,
you know, what are you going to be like in
ten years if you don't deal with some of this stuff? Yeah.
And then you decide I'm going to take some steps.
And when you do, this book is going to be
a guideline for you. That's that's what I see. And
that's what I hear you saying. Right.
S7 (26:58):
That that's it. That's it. And I'm also telling men
and women, women are reading the book too. So this
is my 23rd book. And usually I know that when
I do an interview like this, most people are not
going to go out and buy the book. So I
always try to give value in the interview. So this
(27:19):
is something that they can take away because even if
they don't end up with with the book. But guys,
this is different. This is you can't just listen to
this interview today and get what you need to heal
your childhood wounds. In fact, you're not going to be
able to get enough to heal your childhood wounds just
by reading the book and getting the intellectual knowledge about it.
(27:42):
I'm telling men and women, this is not a book
that you read. This is a book you do. You
have to do the book. But if you will do
the book, God will show up. It may be that
you go all the way to healing. If if your
childhood wounds have been on the more mild side, you
might go all the way to healing, or you might
(28:03):
go a certain distance down the road. It might incite
you or encourage you or and I do this in
the book. Encourage you if you do feel like you
need to get professional help is to seek out a counselor.
In fact, even have a link on how to find
a counselor in the book. So it's a just it's
a book filled with practical, practical help.
S6 (28:26):
Now, Pat, you alluded to the spouse of a man,
you know, who has the these these pains. What do
you say to to that wife who's caught in this
kind of cycle? How does a woman married to a
wounded man become an instrument of love and help for him?
S7 (28:45):
Hmm. So it's not a simple answer in one sense,
but it is in another. I mean, because the woman
herself might be a broken woman. You see a broken girl,
or she might be a person who's not a follower
of Jesus, and her own temperament might not be well
suited to to be a coper. Uh, with these kinds
(29:08):
of things. But here's what I would say, and I
would encourage women to do. If you have a husband
and you suspect that because of his behavior or your
knowledge that he has some childhood wounds that have never
been dealt with, is that you would not try to
(29:28):
fix him. So that is absolutely the worst thing that
you can do. And you probably already know that because
you may have already done it or you've seen somebody
else do it. So I'd encourage you not to do that.
I would encourage you to most of all, pray to
our Savior and our Lord and our God to help
(29:48):
your husband. But then on a practical level, I really
encourage you to get a copy of this book for
yourself and read it so that you can understand what
he's going through. That will give you more empathy toward him,
and it also give you some practical ideas to understand
how he could be helped. And then the final piece
of prayer, you know, read the book for yourself, for
(30:09):
your own knowledge or for your own personal life. If
that's the case. But then consider suggesting that your husband
read the book. Do not give the book at him.
Does that make sense? But do give the book to him.
I have a friend who, uh, got a copy of
(30:30):
the book. Didn't read it. His wife read it, and she, uh,
she just said to him one day, and she had
that tone of voice. She said, you know, I really
think you should read this.
S6 (30:42):
And he got and.
S7 (30:43):
He and he understood what she was saying, and he
read it and it really did help him.
S6 (30:49):
Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. I've sometimes said to women ask him
if he'll read the first chapter. Yeah. That's good. If
you read the first chapter you'll probably read the rest
of it you know.
S7 (31:01):
That is very good.
S6 (31:03):
Now your book gives, uh, as it were, a game plan, uh,
to process pain and then come to the place of
forgiveness and then building better relationships. Uh, give us some
examples of the action plans that have that have helped men.
S7 (31:20):
Okay, well, I mentioned that there are these nine different characteristics, um,
of broken boys. I mean, I could write a book
on any one of these things, right? But instead, what
I've chosen to do is give the guy that's reading
it a page or two of information so that he
(31:41):
can identify with it. For example, characteristic number four. You're
not sure what healthy male behavior looks like. And then
I tell the story in there that when I did
join the Army, I rose to the rank of specialist
four in the minimum amount of time. And then when
(32:01):
I would have been promoted to E5, which is a sergeant,
I didn't get the promotion in the minimum amount of time.
So I started bugging my master sergeant every day and
asking him, you know, when are, you know, what did
I do wrong? When are you going to promote me?
And finally he sat me down and he said, son,
let me give you some advice. The more you pester me,
(32:23):
the less motivated I am to promote you.
S6 (32:27):
So. But. Yeah.
S7 (32:29):
My my, my. So you can see my launch in
the manhood. It was just very, very awkward. I had
no situational awareness, very low emotional intelligence. I was I
just I floundered, and that's, uh, you know, if you're listening,
maybe you were not fathered or mothered or mentored or
coached about what it means to be a man. And
(32:49):
so as a result, you know, you're like me. You
were unprepared for adulthood because your parents just didn't know
how to equip you or didn't equip you to become independent.
So it could be, you know, college advice. It could
be vocational advice, uh, some information about the opposite gender. Well,
first of all, I never heard the words I love
you or I'm proud of you, or we believe in you.
(33:13):
No recollection of of any of those kinds of words.
And so I just didn't have the nurture to enter
into adulthood as, as with healthy male behavior. And so
in the book, I spent a couple pages on that.
And then at the end of this I have a
reflection exercise for you, the man, to evaluate yourself in
(33:37):
this area. And I'll just read it. It says, how
often do you feel like you know what healthy male
behavior is in a given situation? And then you have
five choices. Never. Rarely. Sometimes. Usually or always. This is
helping give a man a map of where he is,
(33:59):
how he got there, and then moving forward. In this
healing process. There are also exercises for him to do,
to actually pray, prayers, to go through acts of forgiveness.
Just every every chapter has different kinds of exercises and
reflections for for the man to do, to be make
it very practical.
S6 (34:21):
Pat, you mentioned earlier that this is a process. It's
not something that can be done overnight, Eight. But typically,
how long do you think a process is? If a
man seriously sees, you know, these wounds and hurts and
really wants to move in the right direction, how long
might that process take?
S7 (34:41):
Well, Gary, it's going to be different for every man.
Of course, you know that, uh, the depending on the
severity of the wounds. And, but I would say that
most men should be able to make immense progress in
as little as 2 or 3 months. And I say
that from personal experience. I experienced about a 70%, or
maybe even 80% improvement just by going through eight professional
(35:05):
counseling sessions. The feeling that I had at the time
was I knew that I was a follower of Jesus,
but somehow I just felt dull. I didn't feel that
the luster of the gospel I didn't. When I read
about the abundant life, I didn't. I didn't feel abundant
when when it says in scriptures that Christ came to
(35:27):
make us alive. I didn't feel fully alive and, uh.
But here's the thing. In a matter of of of
a of a couple of months, that radically changed. Now,
that doesn't mean that everything was, was, was fixed or
made well or made whole right away. In fact, even today,
(35:48):
I still walk with a limp. Erik Erikson's famous child
development theory. The first task of that is trust versus mistrust.
And so if a child in the first few months
or years of its life makes the decision that the
world is not a safe place, then even when you
(36:09):
heal your childhood wounds, you're still going to be dealing
with some of that first characteristic that you have a
hard time believing that people really care about you. So
I still struggle with that when I walk into a
room today, unless I'm filled with the Holy Spirit, I
still my natural tendency ANC is to be suspicious that
people are really not going to not going to like me. Now,
(36:30):
I don't actually act on that that much anymore. But
every now and then it does rear its head. So
you're going to walk with a limp. Let's be, you know,
completely transparent about that. But that doesn't mean that you
can't feel fully alive in Jesus. You can.
S6 (36:47):
Mhm. Absolutely. What do you say to the man who
sees he needs help. Maybe he is working through this book.
He's making some, you know, progress. Uh, but let's say
that anger is one of the characteristics that he's exhibited
and he's tried to deal with. And so he's made
a few steps forward, feeling good about himself. And then
(37:09):
something happens and he has an outburst of anger and hurts,
you know, his wife or kids or whomever it is.
How might he feel at that point? And what does
he do at that point?
S7 (37:21):
Well, he's going to have different voices in his head, right?
He's going to have the Holy Spirit who's going to be,
first of all, loving him, but also encouraging, convicting him
to to make it right. But he's also going to
have the voice of the devil in his head as well, saying, see,
I told you, you your mother was right. You're going
(37:42):
to end up just like your dad. You know, you're
never going to be any good. So you're going to
have those voices in your head. So it's a little
bit of a whack a mole kind of a thing. Uh,
but here's the thing. The way I look at it,
and my experience proves this out, is that each time
you have an episode, you go through the process of,
first of all, repenting or changing your mind about it
(38:05):
and asking for forgiveness. And it's like cutting a piece
of string in half. So half is gone, but half
is left. But the half that's left is not as
big as it was before. And then the next time
you have, uh, an episode, you cut the string in
half again. So a little bit of it goes away
when you apologize and ask forgiveness, but half of the
(38:28):
string is still there. But again, it's not as long
as it was before. And so you do. And you
can make progress, uh, over time with this.
S6 (38:37):
Yeah, yeah. What about the man who denies that anything
really bad happened in childhood? Or he recognizes that there
were problems back there, but. But it doesn't affect me.
It doesn't affect me. Uh, what do you. What do
you say to that guy?
S7 (38:53):
He's probably not ready for the book. It's a fascinating
thing that would happen when I was, uh, writing the book.
When I was in college, I used to race motocross,
and my mom and dad came to see me race
one time. One time? That happened to be the day
that I got into a nasty accident and got flown
to the hospital in a helicopter. Well, my mom and
(39:15):
dad didn't come. My mom and dad didn't come to
the emergency room and they never called to check up
to see how I was. Well, now you you would
think that that would be that would be such a
devastating memory that it would just have, you know, really
ripped me apart. Right. Yeah. But here's the thing. Until
I was literally until I was writing the book, I
(39:36):
literally had no recollection of that. It was by writing
the book, reliving everything. You know, that memory came back
to me and I. But. And that's what that's how
powerful denial is. Yeah, but the the process of of
facing the truth then, is what I'm trying to help
men do so they can get out of denial. And
(39:59):
that's really to actually try to help men remember the
man who does read the book. I'm going to guide
him through a process of remembering the goal of getting
out of denial. Facing the truth is remembering what we've
been trying to forget, or what we have forgotten.
S6 (40:19):
As we come to the end of our time together today.
Can you tell us a story about someone who has
taken a similar journey to yours and has now found freedom?
S7 (40:29):
Yeah. My best friend for 17 years was a man
who ran our Bible study, the one I teach. I
made a deal with him. I'll teach. And you do
everything else. And so we would go out to lunch
and a movie every Friday. And we did that for
17 years until he passed away. And he grew up
in a home that was extremely dysfunctional. And his father
(40:52):
was a belittling and demeaning person. So one day, my
friend Jim, uh, when he was about ten years old,
had his friend in the neighborhood, Timmy, over to play.
And as Timmy was getting ready to leave my friends,
Jim's father opened the door and in front of my
(41:13):
friend Jim, who's ten years old at the time, says
to Timmy, Timmy, you can come back anytime. I sure
wish I had a son like you.
S6 (41:22):
Hmm.
S7 (41:23):
Well, I mean, how do you get over that? And
then all the other things that the father would have
said as well. But here's the thing. Jim was able
to process his childhood wounds and was able to, you know,
come to a place to a forgiveness. His father in
particular was toxic. And so he was never really able
(41:45):
to have a relationship with him again. Unlike me, I
was able to have a relationship again with my dad.
That happened at the age of 35 for me, but
never happened for Jim. But he was able to, uh,
become a follower of Jesus, to get married, to have
his own family and be a loving husband and father
(42:06):
and a man of service. He just who loved to
serve other people. That never would have happened, though, if
he had not found rest for his soul by becoming
a follower of Jesus. You know, Jesus said, come unto me,
all you who are weary and burdened, and I will
give you more work to do. I know. He says,
(42:27):
come unto me, and I will give you rest. You'll
find rest for your soul. And Jim did find that rest.
S6 (42:33):
Yeah. Well, my prediction is that God's going to use
this book to help a lot of men look to
God and walk with God through this process of finding
healing from the wounds of childhood. And I also want
to say this, I think a lot of counselors who
may be listening today, this book is going to be
a great tool for Christian counselors to use in the
(42:56):
process of helping men walk through this journey. So, Pat, again,
thanks for being with us today.
S7 (43:02):
Thank you, Gary, and thank you Chris and Andrea as well.
I appreciate it. And to all you men out there,
I pray every day that God will give you.
S3 (43:11):
A.
S7 (43:12):
All the fullness of the abundant life and that you
would feel fully alive in Jesus. And that is my
prayer every day.
S5 (43:19):
Well, what a great resource for any man listening who
has some unresolved hurts and for the people around him
love him. If you go to building relationships, you'll see
that book by Doctor Patrick Morley, from Broken Boy to
Mended Man, a positive plan to heal your childhood wounds
and break the cycle. Just go to building relationships. Well,
(43:42):
that's it for our summer Bestov broadcast for today. Next week,
if you are lonely or you know someone who is,
don't miss the conversation about cultivating deeper connections.
S4 (43:54):
Before we go, let me thank our production team, Steve
Wick and Janice. Backing. Building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman
is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers,
a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com