June 15, 2025 • 17 mins
The word “trauma” is often misunderstood. It’s not just abuse… Trauma can be a result of advice, mentorship, or any event for that matter.
Parenting is not about being a “good” parent. Oftentimes, it's “good parenting” that results in the most trauma to the child.
Kids don’t need someone to tell them who to become, what to believe, and how to live their lives. In fact, overparenting can sometimes be worse than neglect.
Why??
Because kids who have been overparented often believe that they had a “perfect childhood.” Whereas the neglected child knows that they had flawed parents, and they are often more open to being wrong and seeking out new ways of thinking.
This episode may be helpful when looking back and identifying where some of your sex addiction may have stemmed from.
If you want help identifying the root cause of your sex or porn addiction, visit my website: successfuladdict.com
It can be challenging to identify the flaws in your upbringing without a group to help you discover where your problematic beliefs came from and which ones are causing you to act out sexually.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If you were born before the year 2025,
you experienced childhood trauma.
You are listening to the sex addiction podcast
for high achievers, business professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs.
This podcast is designed to apply sobriety and
recovery principles specifically to the mindset of the
high achiever. I'm your host, Roland Cochran, founder
(00:22):
of The Successful Addict, a recovery group for
high achieving men struggling with sex and porn
addiction. For more information about joining our group
or attending our next retreat, visit successfuladdict.com.
And now, enjoy the rest of the episode.
I'm gonna say that again. If you were
born before 2025,
a k a everyone listening to this,
you experienced childhood trauma.
(00:44):
And, you know, it's it's one of those
things. Right? We hear the word trauma and
we think that we had bad parents, abusive
parents. Right? Verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse.
You know, they call those big t traumas.
But, you know, my definition of trauma, and
I've bounced this off of a ton of
therapists
and they all like my definition.
My definition of trauma is anything that alters
the natural course of who you are supposed
(01:06):
to become. Right? So anything that alters that.
Right? So somebody could give you advice.
Somebody could give you advice, good advice,
right, to become, you know, get into some
sort of successful career and become extremely wealthy.
Right? Buy everything in the world. Right? Win
all these awards.
That could be trauma. Now hear me out
here. Why do I say that? Well, because
let's say you were supposed to become
(01:28):
a musician or a poet
or, maybe you were supposed to open up
a daycare.
Maybe you had a passion of of having
a fly fishing company or a rafting, company
where you would take people rafting down the
Colorado River. You know, whatever it is, if
if that was your dream, that's the thing
that lights you up inside.
And then your mentors, your parents,
(01:49):
you know, television idols,
icons, influencers, whatever. If these people convince you
that you will be happier, that you will
be,
more connected, and you'll have more friends and
more people will like you if you became
a lawyer, doctor,
hedge fund manager,
Wall Street,
stock trader?
You know, any of that if that if
(02:10):
that influenced you to go that route because
you listened to them. Right? Oh, I wanna
have more friends. I want to, win more
awards. I want people to remember my name.
You know, that that kind of influence can
alter the natural course of where you were
going to go, the person you were born
to become.
That is trauma. That is trauma. It's none
of those people's business. They should stay out
(02:31):
of your business. I always say this. Parents
should keep you from dying, keep you from
getting arrested, and keeping you from having a
child before you're ready ready to have a
child. Those three things,
arresting,
having a kid, or dying. Outside of that,
stay out of your kid's business. Here's the
thing. You know, we we see these bad
kids, rebellious kids, breaking the rules, whatever.
(02:53):
That is a maladaptive behavior from something they
learned. You know, here's the thing that we
know about all humans. Humans don't ever intentionally
do anything to harm themselves. Right? They would
never jeopardize their their their full potential
or harm the potential of another person. Humans
just don't do that. A healthy human whose,
you know, brain's operating correctly, they don't hurt
themselves, they don't hurt others.
(03:14):
So if we see somebody intentionally hurting themselves
or it looks like intentionally and we see
somebody maybe hurting another person, you know, your
first instinct shouldn't be to judge that individual.
You should ask what the heck happened to
them to get them to make that decision.
Right? And it's it's part of the reason
why, you know, I I get I get
so fired up when I when I see
people judging,
or or talking poorly about somebody struggling with
(03:35):
sexually compulsive behavior, porn addiction, sex addiction. You
know, really lights me up because,
I'm I run groups
full of very successful men who give give
I mean, some of them donate half of
their income
to different charitable causes. Right? They're on boards
of nonprofits. I mean, these are good people.
They care about others. They care about the
community. They care about their family, their spouse.
(03:57):
Right? So to cast judgment on this individual
based off of their actions and say that,
oh, that's a that's a measure of their
character, I just completely simply simply I disagree.
I think I think people's actions are a
byproduct of their upbringing, their environment,
the people who are around them. You know,
it's it's a byproduct of the things that
influence them. I I don't think it's a
(04:17):
reflection of their character. I think that's extremely
inaccurate. But back to kind of the trauma
piece. Right? We talk about this in the
in the sex addiction world that, you know,
most,
if not all people with compulsive sexual behavior
came from their childhood trauma. Right? You'll hear
that over and over again.
And it's true, but I think a big
barrier is the word trauma. You know, There's
so many people who think, oh, I had
(04:38):
great parents.
I used to say that. I always said,
oh my gosh, I had great parents because
they loved me, they did everything. We were
poor, but they did everything
that
they could,
even despite
how how poor we were, to have us
have a good life.
But me having a good child is is
complete nonsense. Right? Just because they loved me
(04:59):
and just because they wanted to love me
doesn't mean that they did a good job.
Right? And I think the most common trauma,
especially amongst high achievers and successful men
is a is a performance based household. And
you'll and you'll see you'll see two different
kinds of parents with successful men. Right? It's
either a a performance based household full of
what people would call good parents. Right? You
(05:19):
know, maybe they're fine they have financial means,
you know, they're home a lot, they're attending
all their kids' sporting events, they're coming to
all the kids' after school activities,
you know, they're very involved in their kids'
lives,
you know, the the the child's under the
impression that, oh, wow, I have great parents.
Right? And usually these parents are kinda tooting
their own horn. Right? They're bragging about, oh,
(05:39):
I would never miss any of your sport
games, honey, or, oh, you know, all those
other parents, they they're very, very busy and
they work and we don't do that. We
spend time with you guys. We wanna go
on great family vacations. Right? So a lot
of the times these parents are kind of
reinforcing
that their parenting strategy is the best parenting
strategy or or a good parenting strategy. But
again, I I think that just depends on
(06:00):
the measure. Right? You know, if if the
measurement of good parenting is how many wealthy
kids and financially successful kids that you can
raise,
okay, then maybe they were good parents if
that's the measure.
But, you know, to to to me, what
what's more important? A child who grows up
to become financially independent and is able to
retire in their late forties, is that really
(06:22):
success?
What if they're miserable? What if they're empty
inside? Right? What if they end you know,
spend their whole whole life selling something or
or doing a career that they hated,
Right? All to what? Retire early and get
a bunch of money. Is is that a
successful life? Is that what you want for
your children? Right? So when we're thinking about
us, wherever you're listening to this, right, you
know, when we're wondering, hey. Why am I
(06:42):
engaging in this unwanted behavior? Why am I
why have I become addicted to sex or
pornography? How did I get to this point
where I'm paying for sex, hiring prostitutes, using
women, run nightstands, cheating on my wife?
It is from the child from your childhood
trauma. Now, you know, this is a huge
rabbit hole, and we could talk about this
for days and days and days. I mean,
I could have an entire podcast around
(07:02):
childhood trauma and and and the sex addiction
and porn addiction that would follow. But my
point of this particular recording was to just
open everyone's eyes to the fact that, you
know, I don't I don't think there's a
a a person out there who didn't experience
a degree of trauma. Right? And they had
to course correct. You know? And some of
them had great parents and maybe they accidentally
(07:23):
traumatized their kids by, you know,
forcing their beliefs on them or over and
overly encouraging them to go do something and
then they think, ah, shoot. Should we have
really forced them to do that? Right? Was
that kind of wrong? And then you can
always course correct, but that but those are
but those are still traumas even if you
course correct. Right? Somebody knocking you off the
course because you feel like you would be
more loved or a better person,
(07:44):
that's traumatic. That's not your course.
Right? Your parents' job was to have you
become you. Right? Figure out what your unique
abilities are, what your passions are, the things
that motivate you so you can live this
really life filled,
fulfilled life that's full of, you know, abundance
and opportunity. Right? That's their job. But we
don't do that. Right? Between school, television,
(08:06):
you know, the the the different, influencers out
there on social media, there's so much information
coming at people these days convincing them who
they need to become. Right? And so it's
it's to the point where, you know, we
don't raise kids to think independently. We we
raise them
to be successful, to, you know, fulfill their
full potential
according to us. Right? Our definition of success,
(08:28):
our definition of a good life. But that's
not our job. Right? So so to come
back to kind of how this affects,
men, right, it's
a bunch of different ways. Right? If you're
led to believe that the more money you
accumulate and the less debt you have, that
that makes you a good person, that's the
measure of a good life, then you're going
to put a ton of focus on that.
(08:49):
Right? And that could create other voids in
your life. Right? You might spend too much
time working and not enough time,
connecting with others or or get, giving love
or receiving love from others. And so what's
it gonna do? What's that what's that void
you're gonna
going to turn into? Well, it could turn
into a sex and porn addiction. It could
turn into a substance addiction. It could turn
into,
(09:10):
a series of divorces and broken relationships from
your inability to connect. Right? Let's use another
example. Let's say that,
let's say that you, your girlfriend broke up
with you when you were 12 years old
and she decided to date your best friend.
And your best friend was more muscular than
you, he was more tan than you, his
teeth looked better than you, his parents were
rich and your parents were poor. Right? That
(09:32):
breakup could carry with it a very significant
conclusion. Right? You could draw your you could
draw a conclusion that she left you because
your parents didn't have enough money. Right? She
left you because your clothes weren't the right
brands. Right? Your clothes weren't nice enough. Right?
I mean, who knows the story that this
12 year old boy is gonna tell himself
about why his girlfriend left him and chose
his best friend. But again, that story he
(09:53):
tells himself is trauma.
I think, you know, and that's what I
really what I really wanted to get at
here was I lived my whole life
thinking that I was not traumatized, that I
had a perfect childhood. And the dangers of
that is that anything that screwed up is
your fault. You blame yourself.
Right? That's where the shame comes in. I
am a bad person. I'm a stupid person.
I'm a irresponsible
(10:14):
person, whatever the story may be. And that's
your conclusion based off of the data that
you're getting. And that's that's what we're talking
about here with trauma. It's I I want
everyone to stop thinking about the big t
traumas. Right? Sex abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse,
and think about just lessons that you would
learn. You know, one of the one of
the stories I always tell people about my
own trauma was
I, we had this we had this very
(10:34):
wealthy family friend. And I was over at
his house, and he was up in his
office. And he said, hey, Roland. Come over
here.
And he showed me his computer, and his
computer had all these red and green numbers.
And he was showing me, hey. See all
the green on there? You know, that's that's
how much money I made. And he was
saying he said, hey. While you since you
and your family have been here, we were
only there for an hour. He said, since
(10:54):
you and your family were here, I've made
$18,000
doing nothing. Right? And he was he was
trying to teach me about the concept of
compound interest, right, and and investing in the
stock
market. And,
while he meant well,
I all I heard was, wow. This guy
knows way more than my poor dad knows.
Right? So I'm I I and everybody loves
(11:16):
this guy. Right? Here he is. We're at
his 13 bedroom mansion
for this for this party. He's got everybody
over. Everybody loves this guy. He always throws
the best parties.
Everybody at church, you know, love this guy.
Right? They looked at him differently than they
looked at everybody else. So what was the
story that I was telling myself as a
young man?
Watching that, I was thinking, wow.
If I'm gonna become a somebody,
(11:38):
I need to learn how these red and
green these red and green numbers work. Right?
And so that that was trauma.
Right? If he had not gone there and
encouraged me to, hey, Roland, you need to
figure this out if you're gonna become a
somebody. He didn't quite say that, but that
was kind of what was insinuated was look
how special I am. Hey, you, you know,
you should go learn how to make passive
(11:58):
income so you can be super rich. Right?
Again, he didn't say that, but that was
what I concluded.
And that's why, you know, I I I
say this for two reasons. One, so you
can honor some of those life experiences that
happened to you, the things that you might
not consider trauma that actually changed the way
you thought because of the conclusion that you
drew.
This could be as simple as I I
(12:18):
think a a a more simple story that
I always tell is I had these three,
these these two best friends. It was the
three of us. And, one summer, they decided
to just unfriend me out of nowhere. They
didn't return my calls. They started hanging out
without me and not inviting me. You know,
and I can't remember what I concluded, but
I felt I felt very rejected. I felt
unwanted. That was the second time that that
(12:39):
had happened.
Right? So now I was thinking something was
wrong. People people don't wanna be friends with
me. Right? And there's some sort of reason
for that. I'm I'm not cool enough. I'm
not funny enough.
Again, I I grew I I we were
poor and a bunch of rich people built
around us, so I accident I accidentally
grew up in a very wealthy neighborhood. So
a lot of the the stories that I
told myself was I'm not rich enough. My
(13:00):
clothes aren't nice enough. Right? I'm not cool
enough. My my parents don't drop me off
in a nice enough car.
My our house is too small and too
poor. Right? And so,
you know, I I I grew up I
I had an LDS family, and we were
I was always getting made fun of for
the religion that my parents had chosen. So
I hated the the Mormon church because, again,
(13:21):
you know, everyone's,
making fun of me and calling me names.
So my point of all of, saying some
of these examples is
the,
the conclusion that you come to
has has consequences. Right? As you can hear
some of my stories, I became obsessed with
money. Right? I thought money was gonna be
the answer. I thought it was gonna solve
all my problems. Right? I thought money and
being able
(13:42):
to get girls was gonna be the answer.
And, look what happened to me. Right? It
created all the problems and nearly destroyed my
marriage right now with my soulmate. Right? So,
you know, the the I wanna say one
more quick story for people kinda wrestling with
what's childhood trauma. I had a perfect childhood.
Oh my gosh. I cannot tell you how
many times I've had people tell me they
had a perfect childhood.
(14:03):
Again, this isn't just about your parents. You
know, the story I'm about to tell you
is about kids. Right? This there was a
guy at one at one of my retreats,
and he was just sitting there. We have
this little exercise that we do to kind
of, identify some of the traumatic things that
happened in your life, and his was blank.
And he was just saying, oh, I had
a great childhood. Nothing nothing nothing really happened
to me before I was 10 years old.
And then as we're kinda sharing stories, he
(14:25):
raises his hand. He's like, actually, hey. I
remembered something.
He said, hey. There was this older kid,
and he kept he kept messing up my
hair and and picking on me and bullying
me. And and this next day, I I
I I didn't wanna take it anymore. I
wasn't gonna let him. And,
so he spent time sharpening a little piece
of metal and he hid it in his
mouth.
He hid it in his mouth because he
(14:46):
knew that bully was gonna come and he
was gonna pull this little thing out of
his mouth and he was gonna slice him.
And he did it. And then the bully,
you know, ran off and never bullied him
again. Right? But but this is a kid
who told me I I had a perfect
childhood.
Tell you you told me this. Like,
is sharpening
a blade and hiding it in your knife
a normal childhood? Right? Going to school feeling
(15:08):
like you need to bring a sharpened piece
of metal to defend yourself. I mean, imagine
imagine what it's like to be that kid
wondering when you're gonna get bullied, who's gonna
bully you, Right? To feel like you to
to feel like you're justified in slicing this
kid with a sharp sharpened blade.
That's an example. Like, you know, I I
think it's really hard to remember life before
(15:28):
we were 10, but at the same time,
those are the most formative years. So I
I hope this I hope this I I
know this podcast was a little scattered,
but it was my best efforts to really
just kinda shine light on what trauma is.
You know, trauma can be things that look
really, really good. Trauma can can be really,
really bad things. It can be anything in
between. But remember the definition. Right? It's anything
(15:49):
that somebody or someone or something's gonna do
to you
where you're gonna draw some sort of conclusion
that you decide to become someone else besides
who you were born to be. And every
time I see somebody do this, every time
something bad happens,
It might be,
sex or porn addiction. It might be horrible
money habits. It might be poor self esteem.
(16:09):
It might be poor body image. But, you
know, some problem, you know, ruined marriages,
poor parenting, blah blah blah. Some problem is
gonna happen when you are off course.
Something bad will happen.
So, again, explore your traumas because sometimes you
don't even know you're off course until you
really start tracing back into life. Why do
(16:29):
I believe what I believe and what events
in my life made that happen? And that's
when you really start to wonder, how much
of the person I'm supposed to become am
I today?
Thanks for listening to this episode. If you
are a high achiever with a sex addiction
and you're looking for a recovery group full
of like minded men, visit successfuladdict.com.
We provide men with a recovery mastermind group
(16:52):
using four day retreats,
weekly group calls, and daily accountability check ins.
If you wanna achieve long term sobriety and
save your marriage, go to our website and
fill out our application. If you enjoyed this
episode, please pass it along to a friend
in recovery who would benefit from listening. It
is my mission to get this information out
to as many high achievers as possible, and
I can't do it without your help.
If you were born before the year 2025,
you experienced childhood trauma.
You are listening to the sex addiction podcast
for high achievers, business professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs.
This podcast is designed to apply sobriety and
recovery principles specifically to the mindset of the
high achiever. I'm your host, Roland Cochran, founder
(00:22):
of The Successful Addict, a recovery group for
high achieving men struggling with sex and porn
addiction. For more information about joining our group
or attending our next retreat, visit successfuladdict.com.
And now, enjoy the rest of the episode.
I'm gonna say that again. If you were
born before 2025,
a k a everyone listening to this,
you experienced childhood trauma.
(00:44):
And, you know, it's it's one of those
things. Right? We hear the word trauma and
we think that we had bad parents, abusive
parents. Right? Verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse.
You know, they call those big t traumas.
But, you know, my definition of trauma, and
I've bounced this off of a ton of
therapists
and they all like my definition.
My definition of trauma is anything that alters
the natural course of who you are supposed
(01:06):
to become. Right? So anything that alters that.
Right? So somebody could give you advice.
Somebody could give you advice, good advice,
right, to become, you know, get into some
sort of successful career and become extremely wealthy.
Right? Buy everything in the world. Right? Win
all these awards.
That could be trauma. Now hear me out
here. Why do I say that? Well, because
let's say you were supposed to become
(01:28):
a musician or a poet
or, maybe you were supposed to open up
a daycare.
Maybe you had a passion of of having
a fly fishing company or a rafting, company
where you would take people rafting down the
Colorado River. You know, whatever it is, if
if that was your dream, that's the thing
that lights you up inside.
And then your mentors, your parents,
(01:49):
you know, television idols,
icons, influencers, whatever. If these people convince you
that you will be happier, that you will
be,
more connected, and you'll have more friends and
more people will like you if you became
a lawyer, doctor,
hedge fund manager,
Wall Street,
stock trader?
You know, any of that if that if
(02:10):
that influenced you to go that route because
you listened to them. Right? Oh, I wanna
have more friends. I want to, win more
awards. I want people to remember my name.
You know, that that kind of influence can
alter the natural course of where you were
going to go, the person you were born
to become.
That is trauma. That is trauma. It's none
of those people's business. They should stay out
(02:31):
of your business. I always say this. Parents
should keep you from dying, keep you from
getting arrested, and keeping you from having a
child before you're ready ready to have a
child. Those three things,
arresting,
having a kid, or dying. Outside of that,
stay out of your kid's business. Here's the
thing. You know, we we see these bad
kids, rebellious kids, breaking the rules, whatever.
(02:53):
That is a maladaptive behavior from something they
learned. You know, here's the thing that we
know about all humans. Humans don't ever intentionally
do anything to harm themselves. Right? They would
never jeopardize their their their full potential
or harm the potential of another person. Humans
just don't do that. A healthy human whose,
you know, brain's operating correctly, they don't hurt
themselves, they don't hurt others.
(03:14):
So if we see somebody intentionally hurting themselves
or it looks like intentionally and we see
somebody maybe hurting another person, you know, your
first instinct shouldn't be to judge that individual.
You should ask what the heck happened to
them to get them to make that decision.
Right? And it's it's part of the reason
why, you know, I I get I get
so fired up when I when I see
people judging,
or or talking poorly about somebody struggling with
(03:35):
sexually compulsive behavior, porn addiction, sex addiction. You
know, really lights me up because,
I'm I run groups
full of very successful men who give give
I mean, some of them donate half of
their income
to different charitable causes. Right? They're on boards
of nonprofits. I mean, these are good people.
They care about others. They care about the
community. They care about their family, their spouse.
(03:57):
Right? So to cast judgment on this individual
based off of their actions and say that,
oh, that's a that's a measure of their
character, I just completely simply simply I disagree.
I think I think people's actions are a
byproduct of their upbringing, their environment,
the people who are around them. You know,
it's it's a byproduct of the things that
influence them. I I don't think it's a
(04:17):
reflection of their character. I think that's extremely
inaccurate. But back to kind of the trauma
piece. Right? We talk about this in the
in the sex addiction world that, you know,
most,
if not all people with compulsive sexual behavior
came from their childhood trauma. Right? You'll hear
that over and over again.
And it's true, but I think a big
barrier is the word trauma. You know, There's
so many people who think, oh, I had
(04:38):
great parents.
I used to say that. I always said,
oh my gosh, I had great parents because
they loved me, they did everything. We were
poor, but they did everything
that
they could,
even despite
how how poor we were, to have us
have a good life.
But me having a good child is is
complete nonsense. Right? Just because they loved me
(04:59):
and just because they wanted to love me
doesn't mean that they did a good job.
Right? And I think the most common trauma,
especially amongst high achievers and successful men
is a is a performance based household. And
you'll and you'll see you'll see two different
kinds of parents with successful men. Right? It's
either a a performance based household full of
what people would call good parents. Right? You
(05:19):
know, maybe they're fine they have financial means,
you know, they're home a lot, they're attending
all their kids' sporting events, they're coming to
all the kids' after school activities,
you know, they're very involved in their kids'
lives,
you know, the the the child's under the
impression that, oh, wow, I have great parents.
Right? And usually these parents are kinda tooting
their own horn. Right? They're bragging about, oh,
(05:39):
I would never miss any of your sport
games, honey, or, oh, you know, all those
other parents, they they're very, very busy and
they work and we don't do that. We
spend time with you guys. We wanna go
on great family vacations. Right? So a lot
of the times these parents are kind of
reinforcing
that their parenting strategy is the best parenting
strategy or or a good parenting strategy. But
again, I I think that just depends on
(06:00):
the measure. Right? You know, if if the
measurement of good parenting is how many wealthy
kids and financially successful kids that you can
raise,
okay, then maybe they were good parents if
that's the measure.
But, you know, to to to me, what
what's more important? A child who grows up
to become financially independent and is able to
retire in their late forties, is that really
(06:22):
success?
What if they're miserable? What if they're empty
inside? Right? What if they end you know,
spend their whole whole life selling something or
or doing a career that they hated,
Right? All to what? Retire early and get
a bunch of money. Is is that a
successful life? Is that what you want for
your children? Right? So when we're thinking about
us, wherever you're listening to this, right, you
know, when we're wondering, hey. Why am I
(06:42):
engaging in this unwanted behavior? Why am I
why have I become addicted to sex or
pornography? How did I get to this point
where I'm paying for sex, hiring prostitutes, using
women, run nightstands, cheating on my wife?
It is from the child from your childhood
trauma. Now, you know, this is a huge
rabbit hole, and we could talk about this
for days and days and days. I mean,
I could have an entire podcast around
(07:02):
childhood trauma and and and the sex addiction
and porn addiction that would follow. But my
point of this particular recording was to just
open everyone's eyes to the fact that, you
know, I don't I don't think there's a
a a person out there who didn't experience
a degree of trauma. Right? And they had
to course correct. You know? And some of
them had great parents and maybe they accidentally
(07:23):
traumatized their kids by, you know,
forcing their beliefs on them or over and
overly encouraging them to go do something and
then they think, ah, shoot. Should we have
really forced them to do that? Right? Was
that kind of wrong? And then you can
always course correct, but that but those are
but those are still traumas even if you
course correct. Right? Somebody knocking you off the
course because you feel like you would be
more loved or a better person,
(07:44):
that's traumatic. That's not your course.
Right? Your parents' job was to have you
become you. Right? Figure out what your unique
abilities are, what your passions are, the things
that motivate you so you can live this
really life filled,
fulfilled life that's full of, you know, abundance
and opportunity. Right? That's their job. But we
don't do that. Right? Between school, television,
(08:06):
you know, the the the different, influencers out
there on social media, there's so much information
coming at people these days convincing them who
they need to become. Right? And so it's
it's to the point where, you know, we
don't raise kids to think independently. We we
raise them
to be successful, to, you know, fulfill their
full potential
according to us. Right? Our definition of success,
(08:28):
our definition of a good life. But that's
not our job. Right? So so to come
back to kind of how this affects,
men, right, it's
a bunch of different ways. Right? If you're
led to believe that the more money you
accumulate and the less debt you have, that
that makes you a good person, that's the
measure of a good life, then you're going
to put a ton of focus on that.
(08:49):
Right? And that could create other voids in
your life. Right? You might spend too much
time working and not enough time,
connecting with others or or get, giving love
or receiving love from others. And so what's
it gonna do? What's that what's that void
you're gonna
going to turn into? Well, it could turn
into a sex and porn addiction. It could
turn into a substance addiction. It could turn
into,
(09:10):
a series of divorces and broken relationships from
your inability to connect. Right? Let's use another
example. Let's say that,
let's say that you, your girlfriend broke up
with you when you were 12 years old
and she decided to date your best friend.
And your best friend was more muscular than
you, he was more tan than you, his
teeth looked better than you, his parents were
rich and your parents were poor. Right? That
(09:32):
breakup could carry with it a very significant
conclusion. Right? You could draw your you could
draw a conclusion that she left you because
your parents didn't have enough money. Right? She
left you because your clothes weren't the right
brands. Right? Your clothes weren't nice enough. Right?
I mean, who knows the story that this
12 year old boy is gonna tell himself
about why his girlfriend left him and chose
his best friend. But again, that story he
(09:53):
tells himself is trauma.
I think, you know, and that's what I
really what I really wanted to get at
here was I lived my whole life
thinking that I was not traumatized, that I
had a perfect childhood. And the dangers of
that is that anything that screwed up is
your fault. You blame yourself.
Right? That's where the shame comes in. I
am a bad person. I'm a stupid person.
I'm a irresponsible
(10:14):
person, whatever the story may be. And that's
your conclusion based off of the data that
you're getting. And that's that's what we're talking
about here with trauma. It's I I want
everyone to stop thinking about the big t
traumas. Right? Sex abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse,
and think about just lessons that you would
learn. You know, one of the one of
the stories I always tell people about my
own trauma was
I, we had this we had this very
(10:34):
wealthy family friend. And I was over at
his house, and he was up in his
office. And he said, hey, Roland. Come over
here.
And he showed me his computer, and his
computer had all these red and green numbers.
And he was showing me, hey. See all
the green on there? You know, that's that's
how much money I made. And he was
saying he said, hey. While you since you
and your family have been here, we were
only there for an hour. He said, since
(10:54):
you and your family were here, I've made
$18,000
doing nothing. Right? And he was he was
trying to teach me about the concept of
compound interest, right, and and investing in the
stock
market. And,
while he meant well,
I all I heard was, wow. This guy
knows way more than my poor dad knows.
Right? So I'm I I and everybody loves
(11:16):
this guy. Right? Here he is. We're at
his 13 bedroom mansion
for this for this party. He's got everybody
over. Everybody loves this guy. He always throws
the best parties.
Everybody at church, you know, love this guy.
Right? They looked at him differently than they
looked at everybody else. So what was the
story that I was telling myself as a
young man?
Watching that, I was thinking, wow.
If I'm gonna become a somebody,
(11:38):
I need to learn how these red and
green these red and green numbers work. Right?
And so that that was trauma.
Right? If he had not gone there and
encouraged me to, hey, Roland, you need to
figure this out if you're gonna become a
somebody. He didn't quite say that, but that
was kind of what was insinuated was look
how special I am. Hey, you, you know,
you should go learn how to make passive
(11:58):
income so you can be super rich. Right?
Again, he didn't say that, but that was
what I concluded.
And that's why, you know, I I I
say this for two reasons. One, so you
can honor some of those life experiences that
happened to you, the things that you might
not consider trauma that actually changed the way
you thought because of the conclusion that you
drew.
This could be as simple as I I
(12:18):
think a a a more simple story that
I always tell is I had these three,
these these two best friends. It was the
three of us. And, one summer, they decided
to just unfriend me out of nowhere. They
didn't return my calls. They started hanging out
without me and not inviting me. You know,
and I can't remember what I concluded, but
I felt I felt very rejected. I felt
unwanted. That was the second time that that
(12:39):
had happened.
Right? So now I was thinking something was
wrong. People people don't wanna be friends with
me. Right? And there's some sort of reason
for that. I'm I'm not cool enough. I'm
not funny enough.
Again, I I grew I I we were
poor and a bunch of rich people built
around us, so I accident I accidentally
grew up in a very wealthy neighborhood. So
a lot of the the stories that I
told myself was I'm not rich enough. My
(13:00):
clothes aren't nice enough. Right? I'm not cool
enough. My my parents don't drop me off
in a nice enough car.
My our house is too small and too
poor. Right? And so,
you know, I I I grew up I
I had an LDS family, and we were
I was always getting made fun of for
the religion that my parents had chosen. So
I hated the the Mormon church because, again,
(13:21):
you know, everyone's,
making fun of me and calling me names.
So my point of all of, saying some
of these examples is
the,
the conclusion that you come to
has has consequences. Right? As you can hear
some of my stories, I became obsessed with
money. Right? I thought money was gonna be
the answer. I thought it was gonna solve
all my problems. Right? I thought money and
being able
(13:42):
to get girls was gonna be the answer.
And, look what happened to me. Right? It
created all the problems and nearly destroyed my
marriage right now with my soulmate. Right? So,
you know, the the I wanna say one
more quick story for people kinda wrestling with
what's childhood trauma. I had a perfect childhood.
Oh my gosh. I cannot tell you how
many times I've had people tell me they
had a perfect childhood.
(14:03):
Again, this isn't just about your parents. You
know, the story I'm about to tell you
is about kids. Right? This there was a
guy at one at one of my retreats,
and he was just sitting there. We have
this little exercise that we do to kind
of, identify some of the traumatic things that
happened in your life, and his was blank.
And he was just saying, oh, I had
a great childhood. Nothing nothing nothing really happened
to me before I was 10 years old.
And then as we're kinda sharing stories, he
(14:25):
raises his hand. He's like, actually, hey. I
remembered something.
He said, hey. There was this older kid,
and he kept he kept messing up my
hair and and picking on me and bullying
me. And and this next day, I I
I I didn't wanna take it anymore. I
wasn't gonna let him. And,
so he spent time sharpening a little piece
of metal and he hid it in his
mouth.
He hid it in his mouth because he
(14:46):
knew that bully was gonna come and he
was gonna pull this little thing out of
his mouth and he was gonna slice him.
And he did it. And then the bully,
you know, ran off and never bullied him
again. Right? But but this is a kid
who told me I I had a perfect
childhood.
Tell you you told me this. Like,
is sharpening
a blade and hiding it in your knife
a normal childhood? Right? Going to school feeling
(15:08):
like you need to bring a sharpened piece
of metal to defend yourself. I mean, imagine
imagine what it's like to be that kid
wondering when you're gonna get bullied, who's gonna
bully you, Right? To feel like you to
to feel like you're justified in slicing this
kid with a sharp sharpened blade.
That's an example. Like, you know, I I
think it's really hard to remember life before
(15:28):
we were 10, but at the same time,
those are the most formative years. So I
I hope this I hope this I I
know this podcast was a little scattered,
but it was my best efforts to really
just kinda shine light on what trauma is.
You know, trauma can be things that look
really, really good. Trauma can can be really,
really bad things. It can be anything in
between. But remember the definition. Right? It's anything
(15:49):
that somebody or someone or something's gonna do
to you
where you're gonna draw some sort of conclusion
that you decide to become someone else besides
who you were born to be. And every
time I see somebody do this, every time
something bad happens,
It might be,
sex or porn addiction. It might be horrible
money habits. It might be poor self esteem.
(16:09):
It might be poor body image. But, you
know, some problem, you know, ruined marriages,
poor parenting, blah blah blah. Some problem is
gonna happen when you are off course.
Something bad will happen.
So, again, explore your traumas because sometimes you
don't even know you're off course until you
really start tracing back into life. Why do
(16:29):
I believe what I believe and what events
in my life made that happen? And that's
when you really start to wonder, how much
of the person I'm supposed to become am
I today?
Thanks for listening to this episode. If you
are a high achiever with a sex addiction
and you're looking for a recovery group full
of like minded men, visit successfuladdict.com.
We provide men with a recovery mastermind group
(16:52):
using four day retreats,
weekly group calls, and daily accountability check ins.
If you wanna achieve long term sobriety and
save your marriage, go to our website and
fill out our application. If you enjoyed this
episode, please pass it along to a friend
in recovery who would benefit from listening. It
is my mission to get this information out
to as many high achievers as possible, and
I can't do it without your help.
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