Hey Better Babes, welcome back to Getting Better. This week we're talking about conversion therapy

with none other than a conversion therapy dropout, which is also the name of their debut book,

Tim Schrader Rodriguez. Because we have 330 million Americans in this country and so many small

towns, conversion therapy is a really big topic. A lot of people are interfacing with this day

in and day out in ways that we wouldn't even know about it. We're seeing it a lot in the news right now

because there's currently a Supreme Court case, which is called Childs v. Salazar. So we wanted to

have Tim on today to discuss his story, to discuss how conversion therapy impacts people, how survivors navigate life after

conversion therapy, and what even is conversion therapy? How can we understand it better? And how can we

empower people to see conversion therapy for what it is, which is abusive? And how can we make

sure that we create a safe welcoming space for the survivors of said conversion therapy?

So for this week, we're asking, how did you survive conversion therapy with author Tim

Schrader Rodriguez?

Tim, welcome to getting better. How are you?

Thank you. I'm so good.

You are a conversion therapy dropout. You are a survivor of conversion therapy.

Yes, yes. Now, can I just tell you my really quick brush with it? Please. Okay. I'm going to do it really fast. Yeah. So it's 2012. I'm in the throes of meth addiction. And I'm like, maybe the thing that 12 step isn't working for me is I need to find a 12 step where Jesus is the pinnacle because I had grown up in these like

ultra-Christian spaces. So I moved back to my hometown. Well, I moved back to St. Louis, which is very close to my hometown in Quincy. Yeah. And I find this 12-step program that like where Jesus is, it's like, it's worth 12-step, but Jesus is are agreed upon higher power. So I go and it's just me and this one other girl. And I walk in, and the guy that was, like, running this place looked like that guy that did those Wothers original, like, advertisements and also, like, the diabetes commercials, remember? Oh, yeah. It was giving that vibe. And so I said, like, one word. And then he looked at me, and he was like, son, do you believe Jesus could deliver you from your homosexuality? And I said, oh my God, I think I left my Starbucks in the car because Starbucks had not that much before opened in Quincy. And so I was like really excited to be like having my Starbucks. And I was like, oh my God, I think I left my Starbucks in the car. So I ran out to the car and I drove home and I never came back. And I said to my mom, Jesus Christ, that place was a fucking conversion camp. Like I didn't do enough match to make me think that was a good idea. So I ran for the hills, but I just couldn't believe that I found myself in a like in a literal place like that. So yeah, I just, what do you think what do you think is the most damaging thing about conversion

therapy that happens? Everything. I mean, there's not a single thing. I think the biggest thing is

that it teaches us to hate ourselves and to question our every motive that our first thought is the

wrong thought, that our first instinct isn't right because

it tells us that who we are is broken and that what we've become and how we're living our

lives is the result of trauma or something that happened to us. And so it rewires your brain.

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