Why hurt people hurt people?

My name is Andrea and this is Adult Child.

Welcome back to Adult Child, where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family.

And today, we are diving deep with Nathan Spittari, the author of the newly released memoir, Hoi Cars.

One man's journey from triumph to trauma.

And Nathan is out there doing the Lord's work.

This book is raw, it's real, it's insightful, and it is shining a light on some very heavy yet important subject matter that needs to be discussed, which I will get to in a sec.

But first I want to say, now Nathan may not be the typical guest that we would have on here.

Yes, he endured trauma and abuse as a child, but it was not at the hands of his family.

In fact, he grew up in a rather healthy and functional family.

I guess those do really exist, guys, who the hell knew that?

But while not at the hands of his parents, the trauma and the abuse that he endured as a kid resulted in the same characteristics in adulthood that growing up in a dysfunctional family often has.

I had him listen to the first episode of the pod and his comment back to me was that he could really relate to all the characteristics.

So Nathan, I am deming you an adult child, so welcome to the damn club.

Now this book is so good, I highly recommend it.

However, it is not a beetry, this is not some light breezy reading, this is a heavy story.

It is the story of surviving the unimaginable.

This is a story of child sex abuse, of grooming, of manipulation, of trauma bonding, of Stockholm syndrome.

And this is also a story of how hurt people hurt people, of how the pain that Nathan endured as a child caused him to harm others in adulthood.

And I'm going to let him share with you all about this, but what I want to make abundantly clear is that I am not sane or implying that he subsequently sexually abused children when he became an adult.

He did not do that, so just making that very clear.

So we've talked so much about healing and how this requires that we examine the past, that we look at the stuff that we've avoided looking at, talking about, feeling, feelings towards our entire lives and how painful that can be.

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