Welcome back to the place we find ourselves podcast. I'm Adam Young and this is episode 14

titled How to Overcome the Shame of Sexual Abuse. In today's episode, I talked to a fellow therapist named Scott.

Scott leads groups for men who have a history of sexual abuse. And today,

Scott talks about part of what it looked like for him to engage his own story of sexual abuse.

In particular, we reflect on the importance of listening to our bodies in the battle to overcome the shame,

inherent in all sexual abuse. We end by talking about the necessity of coming to bless our bodies rather than curse them.

I'm glad you are listening to this vulnerable and important conversation.

Can you start off by just sharing a bit about when in your life did you learn that you first had a story?

When did that concept start to become something important to you?

I mean, I think as it looked back, I don't think it was a conscious thought first, but I think I grew up in a family that told lots of stories.

I had a story, but I knew others had stories, certainly.

But I think then it was probably as a therapist,

before I was a therapist, I got into therapy, just started dealing with some of my own issues.

And then they have someone sitting in a room with me to start engaged with what was going on with me, what happened.

That's where I think I really started to realize that those other stories are great and beautiful,

but I think my body has a very different story at the time that I started engaged with.

So you said a real interesting word there, your body had a story.

Say a bit more about it, it sounds like in your 30s something shifted.

Yeah, I mean, I had got married kind of early on in my early 20s.

I had, you know, we were married for 36 years now, kind of my best friend.

And so imagined what marriage would be like, imagined what our relationship would be like kind of thing.

But then when I got into relationship with my life, Becky, things just didn't go the way I thought they were going kind of thing.

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