#039: The Anatomy of a Wound & How to Heal | Dr. Bob Schuchts, PhD
As a psychologist, author, and speaker, Dr. Bob Schuchts has dedicated his life to helping people heal their brokenness.
In this episode, he offers his expertise on healing, but he doesn’t stop there. He also shares how his parents’ broken marriage deeply affected him. It took years, but he did find healing - for himself and even his family. We delve into that and more:
The anatomy of a wound
How the healing process works
1 tip you can do today to heal
Register: Dr. Bob’s Healing Retreat
Buy the Book: Be Healed [affiliate link]
Links & Resources
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Books by Dr. Bob Schuchts
Be Healed: A Guide to Encountering the Powerful Love of Jesus in Your Life
Be Devoted: Restoring Friendship, Passion, and Communion in Your Marriage
Be Restored: Healing Our Sexual Wounds through Jesus' Merciful Love
Forty Weeks:: A Journey of Healing and Transformation for Priests
Real Suffering: Finding Hope and Healing in the Trials of Life
Book by Jay Stringer
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
Today, I'm joined by Dr. Bob Schutz on the show. Dr. Bob is a psychologist. He's an author speaker, and he's been a therapist for over 30 years and he is helped so many people to heal and feel whole again, he's very experienced and he's truly an expert when it comes to brokenness and healing, but he's actually also a child of divorce.
And so in this show, we talk about his story. We talk about how his dad's alcoholism was a big part of the reason that his parents' marriage broke apart. There was infidelity involved and he gets into some of that. And he says that when his dad left. To him, it felt like an emotional abortion. And he explains exactly what he means by that.
He also explains how the breakdown of his parents' marriage affected him over the years, and also how he's found healing, not only for himself, but how he helped his entire family to heal as well. But he also gets into how his own struggles within his marriage really were rooted in the breakdown of his family.
And he almost went down the same path as his parents. Then we get into the anatomy of a wound. We talk about how a wound works. Like, what are the pieces of a wound? He explains the three layers of a wound. We also get into the healing process. He explains how healing works, what are the steps and the healing process.
And we touch on some of the barriers that prevent healing as well. And then finally he gives encouragement and advice to, to anyone listening right now who just feels broken, who feels stuck, especially because of the trauma that you've experienced in your families. He just gives one tip that you can do today to begin or continue healing.
This conversation's so good, so valuable. And so keep listening.
Welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 39 and like I mentioned, I'm joined today by Dr. Bob. Shoot Dr. Bob is the founder of the John poll II healing center.
He's a nationally renowned speaker. He is also spoken overseas. Dr. Bob is the author of the book be healed. He's also the author of the book be transformed. As I mentioned, Dr. Bob has spent more than 30 years as a therapist, but he's also taught graduate and undergraduate courses in marriage and family relationships, human development, applied psychology and marriage and family therapy.
He held adjunct professor positions at Florida state university, Tallahassee community college, and the center for biblical studies in Tallahassee, Florida. He's also taught courses at the theology of the body Institute and the August. Institute as you find it in a second, Dr. Bob's so competent when it comes to helping people heal so they can feel whole again, a quick disclaimer, for any of you listening, who aren't religious, uh, just wanna let you know that we do talk about God and faith in this episode.
And if that's you, I'm so glad that you're here. We obviously exist to serve everyone regardless of their background or their faith. But when we bring guests on the show, if faith and their relationship with God has been a big part of their healing, their story, we let 'em talk about it. And so we're not a solely religious show, but we're also not a solely secular show.
We kind of mix between the two. And so my challenge to you is to keep an open mind, go into this episode with an open mind. And even if you were to take all the parts out where we talk about God, you're still gonna gain so much from this episode. So that's my challenge. You keep an open mind, everyone. I'm so thrilled to share this conversation with you.
Here it is
Dr. Bob, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, Joey, it's great to be with you. I love what you're doing. Thank you. You, you as well. And there's so much that we can talk about, you have so much expertise in helping people heal and feel whole again. And I wanna get into all of that, but to start out, I'm actually interested in your story.
Like so many people listening, you also come from a broken home. And so if you're comfortable with it, what happened there? Tell us the story. Yeah, it's interesting. We're having this interview on my dad's birthday. He would've been 86, so a lot of my story involves him and I have a great love for him, but it was a difficult season in our life.
I was, um, I'm second oldest of seven children and then three more by his remarriages, but I was actually very close to my dad and, and remained that way through his whole life. And you know, my whole life mm-hmm . But during the early years of my teenage years, from about 11 to 14, things got tumultuous at home.
I didn't realize at the time that he was beginning to drink heavily and stay away from home and also having affairs at the time, but just finally all blew up when he left, when I was 14 and I didn't see him for two years just crushing, you know, the, wow. I wanted to be like him. I, you know, I loved him. He, he was a good disciplinarian and a good friend.
He used to come in, bless us every night before we go to bed, all the children with me and my mom and taught me about the faith. I would sit next to him at mass and we'd get quizzed on the way home. So mine, isn't the typical story of a lot of resentment towards the parent because they weren't a good parent.
I, you know, I had a deep love and, but I think in some ways it made the divorce harder. I've heard other people say that, you know, as a relief at some level when their dad left or their mom left, because it was so terrible at home. For me, it wasn't that case. Sure. And so if, if for me the best way that I can describe it, It was like an emotional abortion.
Hmm. It was like, it was like a ripping apart of a bond. And, uh, like my dad had died. In fact, you know, I, I laid there at night as a 13, 14 year old. Wondering if I'd ever see him again, wondering if he was alive, wondering if he'd go to heaven or hell or hell if he died. And, you know, so it was, it was just really in that sense, even in the present was really painful, difficult, but the reality is I didn't deal with the pain for many years at, at the time there was a lot of anxiety.
What I now can see as depression is somewhat humorous to me, but it wasn't humorous back then is my uncle. My mother's brother was also going through a hard time. We moved in with them for a little while and he and I painted his entire room black in terms, even his windows. Hmm. I sit there and say, what would motivate me to want paint?
Somebody's. Window black and up with is depression, you know? Right. Uh, it's kind of like in that stage when all the pain is there, uh, you just, your heart shuts down. And I look back and I say, I wasn't aware of being depressed at the time, but I had the symptoms. I was, I, uh, withdrawing from people. I was in sports.
I, I, you know, I wasn't a great basketball player, but I scoring like 20 points, a game down to zero. After that in school, I was a good student, went down to struggling in school for that next year. I began to pull away from relationships. And then for me and all of my brothers and sisters, as we talk about this, and we would have lots of talks later on with my dad.
We all had a lot of feeling of not being safe. You know, it's like my dad. Being present was a protector in the home. And when he wasn't there, there was like this fear and this lack of protection. In fact, when we moved down to south Florida, our house was down to south Florida is broken into a couple times, and we never felt that insecurity prior to my dad leaving.
Wow. I can relate to that in a lot of levels. I remember as a boy, uh, we had this white minivan and I remember, you know, even being really young, like sitting in my car seat and, you know, coming home from a family party or something. My, you know, dad was driving. Mom was in the passenger seat, my siblings and I were all there.
And I remember just feeling so safe and, and like the presence of my father safe in the presence of my family. And that all changed for me too. So I can relate to that. And some of the other things that you said, and it's so interesting how we can walk around in the world, so broken and struggling and never really become fully aware of it or, or never at least become aware of the root cause of it.
We blame something else. Yeah. And it's such a, a lie in our culture right now that divorce kids and divorce do fine. And it's, you know, if, if you were to look at our family and the measures of success of school and sports and work, and all this would say there's no effect, but every single one of us would be able to say, no, the effects were deep and profound, but it took us a lot of years.
to be aware of how much it affected us. Yeah. I couldn't agree more with that. And that's the common trend that we see from the stories that we hear, the research that we read, and it's really unmistakable. Once you start to talk to people like us who come from broken families or read the research yeah.
That this really profoundly impacts people for years, for years and years. And there is a possibility for healing. There's so much hope at which we'll get into, but it, we have to really start with the fact that this is devastating. This is a really difficult thing. Even in those situations where it may be necessary, it's still a really difficult thing to go through.
Yeah. Yeah. Even, even when the situation at home is horrible, there's still a great loss of two parents raising children and loving each other and providing security there. So, uh, I think sometimes the divorce starts way before the parents separate in, in the hearts of the. Absolutely. Yeah, we, we say that it's, it's not like this, uh, random event.
It's not like an Adam bomb that went off and like, oh, I don't know where that came from. Right. It's been building for years. And now it's the, the summit, the pinnacle of a really messy situation. You mentioned a little bit how it affected you. Was there anything else that you observed over the years following the breakdown in your family and how it affected you?
Well, I think the biggest effect was in trust. I remember, again, this didn't come up until I got married and had children, but I remember, uh, well, I, it was actually before, when I was dating my wife. I remember having this insecurity jealousy, particularly when she would relate to men. And she was just a very friendly, loving person, but I would, I would have this anxiety and I, I couldn't identify it as anxiety.
Then I, I identified it as she was doing something wrong in my mind, but it, but it wasn't until I experienced healing in that area. And we can talk about that a little later, but I didn't, I wasn't aware of how deeply the loss of my dad affected my trust levels and my ability to feel secure in relationships.
And it was only after some of those areas were healed and the, the pain was released that I could then trust at another level that I couldn't before. And, you know, to me, that's still ongoing in some ways, you know, the it's, it's like, uh, such a painful loss that it affects trust. You know, it's like I trusted it affected my trust in God and affected my trust in my dad, but it also affected my capacity to trust anybody.
Hmm. I've seen that same thing in my life and the lives of the people that we work with. I, uh, I always say that healing is really an infinite goal. Yep. You mentioned that, you know, you're still dealing with some. I can totally relate too. You know, I've made a lot of progress and I know you've made tons of progress in your personal life, and you're now helping, you know, hundreds and thousands of people heal.
But yeah, healing is certainly an infinite goal. It's like fitness. I think that's the best example. We never wake up one day and say, okay, I'm done. Like I've reached the pinnacle of fitness. I will never work out again. I'll never eat healthy again. I'm done. We of course need to continue on that path, even though we can, you know, make real progress and find closure in certain areas of our lives.
Yeah. Uh, it's, it's real and it's, it's, uh, makes a huge difference. And without it, we can just repeat the trauma in one way or another, you know, without really engaging and healing, we can either go through. In fact, it's part of my story. I was, I never wanted to divorce because I knew the damage, but I got to the place where it felt like I was being swept down this corridor because I hadn't dealt with a pain in my own heart.
It was ho it was terrifying to me. It was really, that was really the darkest time in my life was those year and a half where I was struggling with that. And it was. Only in the healing of that, that I could freely give my heart to my wife, uh, in a way that I couldn't before that. And, and then even though I could always do it with my children, it was, it was a greater security for them when that healing took place.
That's beautiful. Yeah. And it made a huge difference. And then the healing then started taking place with my brothers and sisters, my parents, the whole family together. It's just, it's a beautiful story of God's redemption. And what did you do in. Wow. So the cycle can work in the opposite, um, extreme as well.
AB absolutely. Absolutely. That's really encouraging because I think so many of us who come from broken homes, everyone listening right now, often we see the brokenness past generation to generation and, you know, the cycle of divorce is just repeating and that's really why we exist at store. We wanna reverse the cycle of divorce by helping young people heal and build virtue because the sad truth is that, you know, when you come from a broken family, uh, you're much more likely to get divorced yourself, statistically.
And so we, we believe that if we can help people to heal and build virtue, then they're gonna be these strong individuals who build good marriages and good marriages of course, are the foundation of, uh, strong families and strong families are gonna transform our world. And so it's really, this is so vital that we get this right.
It is so vital. It is really vital. It's the, it's the core of everything, uh, because. So much of what we're dealing with in society is the breakdown in the family. And you can look at almost every social indicator of distress in our society, and it's one way or another, it goes back to a loss of faith and a loss of, uh, secure love in the family.
Wow. Incredible. And I want to get into that before we do, uh, what are a couple things in your life that were really, really helpful on a personal level? I know again, you help people on a professional level now, but I'm curious, like personally you, what, what were one or two things that really helped you to heal?
Wow, it's gonna be difficult to identify one or two cause there's hundreds, but sure. I think right away, I, I really had a, a father void in my teenage years without my dad there. And so right away, good solid men coaches and you know, one summer coaches, one was a professional football player that I worked out with.
That was in the right next to the school I went to, who took me under his wing, brought me to Christian camp fellowship, Christian athlete, camp, summer camp. And you know, those, those had a tremendous impact. I don't know where I would've gone without having those kind of godly male influences. My mother obviously was still in faith and everything, but a mother can't give what a father can give.
And because these coaches and this professional athlete, as men got engaged in my life, it made a big difference in terms of forming me. And, you know, we see this statistic as when a mother continues to go to church. There's only, I don't know the exact numbers, but there's a lot lower percentage of the children that go to church if the father isn't.
But if the father is active in his faith and it's faithful, the faith of the children is like 80% or something like that. It's really incredible difference. Wow. And so having these, you know, having seen my father kind of fall off the cliff and his faith life. It was devastating, created a loss of trust in the whole, in God, the father in, in church and everything else.
But having these men who I could see were genuine in their faith and cared about me and were invested in me that made a big difference. So that's one that's. I would put that in one category. That's incredible. Yeah. And I don't mean to limit you there. What, uh, what were some other, I guess, really impactful, uh, methods or things that helped you heal?
I think the second was getting really coming to understand the church's teaching about marriage and family life. It, it, it all felt so intuitively true when I studied it. But I remember in high school, I had a course by a priest in Catholic high school in south Florida. And, uh, he was integrating faith in, in psychology and marriage and family.
And I had had no idea at the time, but I could see now looking back, that was the spark for my profession, but it was also. A foundation of truth that got shattered before that. And, and so just being able to see and know, and, and, you know, when you, when you see what's true, uh, whether it's in the church or out of the church, it just resonates in their heart.
And that's what happened. It was like, yes, this is the truth here. This is the truth of what I need, what everybody needs. And there's something very grounding when you can, when you can get past the confusion of what happened and just say, okay, but even though this happened, this is still the way of love.
You know, this is still what we all need and it's, and it's true and it's trustworthy. So that helped restore the trust. And then from there, I was able to build a trust in reading scripture, coming to trust the person of Jesus, you know, the person who had the integrity that would never, uh, let me down in that way.
But that was a tremendously important thing. And then from there to be able to trust the church again, uh, even though I was still participating in church, there wasn't a deep trust for the teachings of the church or those things. And then a, again, I could go on and on and on, uh, about different healing experiences, but those are pretty foundational ones.
Incredible. And I know in your books, you elaborate on that and I'll tell you guys, uh, listening at the end, how you can grab those books. If you wanna learn more for anyone listening, who isn't familiar with, you know, the church's teaching on, uh, marriage and family. Part of the reason that it's so helpful is because it offers a very clear roadmap, a blueprint on how to build love that lasts.
And that, that was so encouraging for me too. Dr. Bob. Because one of the things that the research shows, I know, you know, this well and anyone who's listened to the show for a long time knows that the biggest area of our lives that is impacted by the divorce, according to research is our own relationships, especially our romantic relationships and our marriages.
Yeah. And the reason as simple, you know, we don't have a roadmap for love. We've seen a broken model of love and marriage. And so when it's our turn, we don't know how to do it. We feel kinda lost. We feel discouraged, like it's not even possible. And so, uh, it's so refreshing to understand that, okay, God has a plan for this.
You know, if you do these things, if you understand, you know, this is the purpose of marriage, uh, it's so hopeful, clarifying, and it makes it way easier when you're actually enter into a relationship into a marriage, to, to live out that love and experience the joy that we're all meant to experience. Yeah.
It's, it makes a huge difference, even though we still need to heal into those areas. Just having the, the roadmap is, is critical. And for me, probably for you too, but jump all the second teaching on marriage and family, and particularly the theology of the body has influenced me profoundly. And my family, my children, my grandchildren, you know, it's, it's just been, had a huge effect in terms of giving that B.
It's been so helpful for me as well. I really became aware of it through Jason Everett. I heard him yeah. Speak when I was gosh, 14 years old. And I had already made a lot of mistakes when it came to, you know, pornography and Lu. And so his message, which really comes from, you know, love and responsibility yeah.
Was so refreshing. And so hopeful to me, he answered all the questions. I never even knew that I had about love and sexuality and marriage. And so, yeah. Uh, I couldn't agree more. We could talk about that all day. I'm sure. Yeah. yeah, probably any of these things we're talking about could be a conversation by itself.
Yeah. Amen. Couldn't agree. More. I wanna switch gears. I wanna talk about the anatomy of a wound. You write about this, uh, in your book, be healed. You write that, you know, there's various pieces and parts to wound, and I think it's really helpful if we wanna heal to understand that. And so if you would please teach us about that, break that down for us.
Yeah. And, and let me put it in the relation to the, to the divorce, because it'll become much more alive in this way, but. And, and be healed and, and other material, I talk about three circles as like three levels of the heart or three layers of the heart. And on the inside is just the pain from the wound.
So it's, it's trauma. And as we're finding more and more about trauma, trauma stays in your body until it's released and it stays in your mind and it affects the way your brain's organized and it affects the way every cell of your body. And so, you know, it, it affects our physical, emotional, spiritual health.
And typically trauma is too much for us to bear in the moment. That's why it takes us a while to work through trauma, but it's not that the trauma's in the past, it's, it's the trauma remains with us until it's released. And so it's. Through the experience of, of releasing the pain or the anger or the rage or the powerlessness or the fear or whatever manifestation that has.
But, but our bodies and our minds and our souls pulled on to trauma. One of the ways we do that is through our beliefs. And that's the next band. If you will, the next circle in its the beliefs are of two, two types. It's the things that we believe about ourselves, which affect our identity, the way we see ourselves, that's the beliefs we have about other people and about God and about life, which are we call judgements.
You know, they're the ways that filter our perception of reality, both about ourselves and about other people. And so in, you know, in the case of, you know, my, my experience of a trauma of abandonment of my dad and for you two, and there's a rejection in it, those are different wounds. There's a powerlessness there's fear.
So what we call the seven deadly wounds, all have beliefs associated with. . And so, you know, one of the beliefs and these aren't just beliefs as at an intellectual level, there's deep, deeply held beliefs of the heart, which is I'm alone. I'm not loved, I can't trust anybody. And there's a hopelessness that things aren't gonna get any better.
All those get, if you will lodged into the heart at a deep level, even if our mind knows a different truth or understanding knows a different truth, those, those things kind of hold, we hold onto them and they hold onto us. And we actually hold onto them as a way of protecting against the trauma. Believe it or not, even though they keep the trauma in place and keep us in the trauma.
They're, they're in some ways a barrier to that trauma and then the judgements we have to other people, you know, it's like the judgements that I made towards my dad or about marriage or about God, or about the church or about women, you know, or about drinking, you know, all those things that, that form perceptions.
that then play themselves out when you get involved in relationships, you know, a lot of those judgements have unforgiveness related to them. Uh, and so we work through a process of forgiveness, but also of really recognizing and releasing the judgements because they filter everything. They're like putting on glasses, that color, everything that you see.
And then the final outside circle is what we call inner vows or resolutions of the will of ways we're gonna protect ourselves. So one of mine was, I will never divorce like my parents, because I'll never want to hurt my children. Like I was hurt and we were hurt or I'll never want to hurt my wife. Like my dad hurt my mother.
And you say, well, that's a really good vow, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it isn't, it was good when I made it in marriage with the holy spirit. And that's really what I promise and I'm gonna love my wife for better or for worse and sickness and in health. And that vow actually kept us together. But this inner vow wasn't even conscious.
It was made out of fear and judgment. And in that it, it creates this self-protection that actually almost brought me into a place that was a very thing that I feared. And it's, it's hard to describe that, but it's, it's like I was so in fear of hurting my wife and hurting my children, that I didn't deal with the pain, or even with the conflicts that came up, you know, I was afraid of being afraid of rejecting or afraid of being alone or, and so those vows actually led me to insulate and protect and to control, uh, because that's what we do out of fear is we tend to control things rather than trust mm-hmm
And so it creates this whole vicious cycle of destruction. That you're not even aware of until you're face to face with it. And that, that really began my deeper healing process. It was 10 years into my marriage, 10 to 12 years into my marriage. Incredible. And I, I love what you said that it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If we're not aware of these things, if we don't actively work to heal, we can go down the path of the thing that we fear the most. And I know for a lot of us, like you mentioned, our biggest fear is that we would repeat what we saw in our parents' marriage. We're terrified of that. We don't want that. Yeah.
Um, but often, like you said, we're pulled in that direction because we don't deal with the underlying causes that the brokenness there, that would cause us to repeat that cycle. Yeah, exactly. It, it, terror is a great word for it. And you know, you think of terror as a, you know, a nightmare or something. But for me, that was my worst nightmare is bringing my children through what we experienced and it wasn't even conscious.
That's the hard thing is cuz I didn't know how much pain I had experienced. But I knew intuitively that I didn't want anybody else to experience it. Hm. I think it's encouraging too, that it might not be encouraging for you, but for people listening, you know, it took 10 years into your marriage to figure this out.
And so anyone who's listening, who, you know, you've been going at this for a while, you've been struggling. You maybe feel kind of hopeless. Um, it takes time, but, but it's worth it. And you will see results in the end if you stay with it. And so we'll talk about that a little bit more. I love what you said also about, you know, these things being unconscious on, on many levels, you know, we can understand it, like you said, on an intellectual level, but at the level of our heart, we may still be, be stuck and unable to, to move forward in our life, to let things go, to find closure, to forgive, to do all the things that you mentioned.
Yeah. And, and sometimes we, we do kind of a GLI forgiveness of, you know, I forgive you without really dealing. The pain and the, and the beliefs and the judgements and all that. Oh, that's really good. What are some examples of, of those core wounds that kind of cause us to, you know, make those vows to experience that trauma, to have those beliefs that you mentioned, uh, what are some core wounds, especially for people who come from broken families.
Yeah. I mentioned several of them and, and I like to think back to the fall of mankind because all of these happened when we broke our relationship with God at the beginning, you know, at the story of Adam and Eve of, of the rupture that happened with sin, all the Williams happened, then, you know, shame and fear and rejection and powerlessness, hopelessness, and those still happen.
Anytime there's any breaking of relationship. And so whether it's divorce or whether it's a broken friendship, or we can experience those wounds. And sometimes all at once, sometimes some are more visible than others, but. You know, I, I really, when I talk about a divorce is kind of like an emotional abortion, uh, or a spiritual abortion.
There's, there's something to that because if you've ever seen what happens in an abortion, and there's just this ripping apart of an attachment that the mother and the child, you know, the child is short lived, but it's intense pain on their part. But on the mother's part, it's something that stays with her for the rest of her life until it's healed.
And, and the same thing happens in divorce. It's like everybody, I found out later as we went through this healing process, that it wasn't just me. It was all my brothers and sisters, my mom and my dad carried this pain with him. And even though my dad could drink and, and deny it for many years and go through a second divorce and go through the same thing when he began his healing process.
And by the way, our forgiveness and, and working with him, helped him in that. Wow, his pain was just the same as ours, but in fact, as I had an opportunity later, In life to pray with him, for healing and his childhood pain, even though he'd never gone through the divorce was very similar to my pain living in the conflict between his parents.
And so, and so we live with, you know, the words just don't describe the intensity of the trauma, but, uh, yeah, abandonment is this sense of being cut off from vital relationship and connection. Rejection is a sense of, I'm not wanted, I'm not chosen. I'm not lovable. Fear is I can't trust anybody cuz I'm just gonna get hurt.
So I have to protect myself powerlessness. I can't change this. I just feel trapped, stuck, helpless, unable to do something. Hopelessness is things are never gonna change. It's never gonna get any better. I'll never have what I want confusion is I can't figure this out. I don't know what to do. I, I don't know if I've covered all the sure.
All the, all the wounds there, but those, those are the seven deadly wounds that I talk about in. In most of my books. Incredible. I, I can say that, you know, when my dad left the house yeah. I immediately felt abandoned and I felt unwanted. So yeah. You know, like you said, the rejection and I, I noticed, you know, looking back in my life, so many of my struggles, especially with LUS, like pornography, it was just an attempt to feel wanted.
Yeah, exactly. And so, if any of you are out there dealing with pornography or dealing with those things, there's, there's real needs that are unmet in real wounds, underlying that. And when you deal with those deeper wounds and lies and vows and all those things, then, then you lose taste for the, for the thing that's artificial that never satisfies.
I, I would say every one of my brothers and sisters after my dad left, got into some kind of sexual sin. Wow. And there was no more example. And you know, it was just unconsciously following. Uh, the brokenness, like you said. Yeah. And in some cases I know it's an attempt to rewrite a very broken story. We think, well, maybe I can make a different, if I, yeah.
Go down this path part of the way and then change the ending, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which is again, go into powerlessness. We try to control and it just ends up leaving us more powerless. Yeah. So true. I wanna get to the healing process before I do one of the things you say in your book that is just so profound, is that at the root of almost every wound, we probably could say every wound, but let's say almost every wound is a deprivation of love.
And we've touched on this a bit already, but I think it's so profound. What exactly do you mean by that? Would you elaborate a little bit on that? Yeah. And I wanna speak it, bring it back to just what we were talking about is these wounds of our hearts. If you think about our hearts from a spiritual, emotional standpoint, our hearts are the symbol of love and God gave us hearts.
To love him and to love each other. And when we have a wound, there's a place where our level of capacity to love gets wounded. But what causes that wound is a deprivation of love or a distortion of love. And so, you know, whether it's unhealthy kind of love that hurts us, or it's the loss, the loss of love or the, the lost example of love between our parents, all of those things were, were made for that.
It's like, it's like the food that we need to drink and eat constantly. You know, the emotional, spiritual food is love. And if we're cut off from that, uh, in our family, even if we have it in other places, there's, there's a deprivation there that wounds us. And it, it's not just after divorce it's before divorce too.
Yeah. It's it's in any family, wherever love is in present, we're wounded and you know, it's really what sin is. Sin is the. a violation of love and it's the violation of our love with God and our violation, our love with each other. Wow, incredible. And I've always, you know, thought that well, if love is the meaning of life, if that's, you know, one of the reasons that we're here on this earth is to love and to be loved the greater our capacity to love the more free that we truly are, the lesser capacity to love, the less free that we truly are.
And so you can think of, you know, you can think through different habits, different acts, and you can ask the question, does this increase my capacity to love, or does it decrease my capacity to love? And you know, one of my struggles in the past was pornography. And, you know, if I'm honest, kinda looking through that lens of love and freedom, it certainly decreased my capacity to love.
And therefore made me less free because it taught me to use another person instead of loving them. And so that's always been helpful for me. And so this deprivation of love, doesn't just stop at love. It really impacts our freedom. Yeah. And so just to bring that all together, as you're describing it, it's, you know, the broken love is what led you to seek some kind of control over the love that you're missing.
And so there's a fantasy. in the pornography of receiving, being wanted, being loved, being nurtured, whatever those images are in the pornography in fantasy life mm-hmm . And then, you know, going to masturbation, which is a way of just comforting and ING of, you know, of, of changing the chemistry in your body so that you for a minute, get this euphoric release of pain, but it actually adds to a deeper sense of shame, a deeper sense of being unlovable, a deeper sense of being unwanted.
And then as you describe, it's also feeding this using manipulating kind of attitude, uh, where you then with real people, you know, I'm using you in the general sense. You with real people begin to relate to people as objects to be used rather than as people to be cherished. And then we get stuck in this cycle and you see how, when people enter into marriage in those ways, and they don't know how to love with a self-giving.
A mature chase love. Then it just repeats that pain from generational to generation. Absolutely. In, uh, in his book, uh, Jay stringer, he's a counselor out on the west coast, but he wrote a, an incredible book. You probably heard of UN yeah. Unwanted for anyone. Who's not familiar with throw it in the show notes for you, but unwant, his name is unwanted.
How sexual brokenness reveals our way to healing. And just like you said, Dr. Bob, he says that our fantasies and our attractions are actually a way to heal. Like if we really understand, okay, what am I drawn to in pornography? What am I drawn to? And, you know, whatever way I'm acting out, it, it can be a clue to the brokenness underneath the unmet needs that we're trying to fill.
Yeah. Uh, my next book is on that subject and I quote him several times and wow. I've found that as we pay attention to that and really walk into that, it really shows us where our wounds are. And so, you know, when I work with people who are struggling with pornography or other kind of sexual fantasy, I'm always asking.
Okay, what are you envisioning? What are you desiring there? And what's where is that rooted? Jesus. Show us where that's rooted. Holy spirit. Bring us back to the roots. And it's almost always in the places where de deprivation of love has been. Wow. Incredible. How it all comes together. Yeah, really does.
Well, do you have a title for your next book? I wanna make sure that it's called be restored. Awesome. Good name. I love it. Yeah. Be restored at the subtitle is healing our sexual wounds through Jesus merciful. Love. Incredible. That's gonna be so helpful for so many people. We'll be sure to promote it here on the podcast.
And we'll, uh, we'll definitely add it to the show notes guys. Uh, so you can pick that up. If you're listening to this at a later point in time, I wanna switch gears to the healing process. And again, we can do a separate shows on each of these topics, but for someone who's broken, who, who, but, um, you know, who has experienced a lot of trauma and who knows they need to heal, but they're unsure how to, uh, how does healing work?
Like what does that look like? What are the steps in the process? There's, there's lots of different pieces of this, but if I could put it in a simple process, I think the first thing is being with somebody that, you know, loves you, whether that's in marriage or whether that's in, you know, like I mentioned with coaches, whether that's with siblings, whether that's with therapists, whether that's with the spiritual director, whether that's with a good mentor, we all need to have a place where we feel secure and that place where we feel secure.
Has to be grounded in truth. What I mean by that is the love has to be genuine. The love has to have integrity to it because if somebody who appears to be loving us is actually just setting us up to use us, or really is not interested in being there for us. It just increases the wounding. Um, but having people in our life who can see us and know us and are trustworthy and have integrity and really know how to love in a, in a healthy way, uh, is, is healing in itself.
Even if we never do anything else in the process, being around people who love well is healing and nobody loves perfectly, but just in a grounded way. And in, you know, the person for me that, you know, Jesus is the epitome of that to me, I've I've received a lot of healing also in relation to the holy family.
Uh, just seeing what real love looks like. And, and in my prayer life, being able to enter into that even to this day, as part of my morning, prayer is, uh, just allowing myself to be little in union with Jesus, with the holy family and experiencing the love of the holy family. So the, the next pace, the next part of it is feeling safe enough to be able to share our pain and our trauma.
And, you know, for me, that was started with the things that came up in marriage. But then I actually had a, a panic attack, which I didn't know was all this pain coming to the surface, but it was around the threats that I was feeling in my marriage that drove me to therapy. Even though I'd been a therapist, I, I hadn't gone to therapy.
and in that process, I began to express for the first time, my pain, but it was really disconnected. It was just kind of like telling a story that I wasn't connected to emotionally. And I remember the first time I was talking about, uh, what had happened and, and my therapist was a woman and she began to cry and it was the first time I had ever felt somebody's compassion for my pain.
It was just like, wow, wow. You know how to process it. And then in my therapy, she led me, I couldn't go back to my pain from childhood. I couldn't get in touch with it. So she led me to talk about the pain and the present, how I experienced it when I would see my dad. And then he would leave where as a teenager, when he would leave, uh, after coming to visit a couple years after he left.
And I remember the first time in therapy, if she's asking me that and I, I had not cried in 20 years, I cried like a baby. When my dad left, you know, just. For 20 minutes probably. Yeah. And then I've been cry again for 20 years. And as she's asking me about how I felt and what I wanted to say to my dad, when he was leaving at the airport, I heard what felt like a teenage voice inside of me saying, dad, don't leave.
I need you. And one little tier started trickling down my face. And that was really the beginning of thawing. What had been a very frozen place of my heart. And not long after that, I had an experience of going on a spiritual retreat, which was really vital and a group of men that were really honest. And we could share our stories with each other.
It's called Christ news is parish. I dunno if you're familiar with that, but yeah, very powerful. And, uh, I had a, I had in that a time, I won't go into depths here. I talk about it in my NBU, but I had a time of prayer. Where I experienced, God's love, you know, the love of God to father that was profoundly life changing.
And I cried tears of joy the next day. So it was, that was the first time I really released tears, but these were tears of joy. And three months later, I had this healing experience where I relived my dad leaving. And as that's all happening, I just collapsed against a wall. You know, it's hard to describe this, but I just collapsed, sobbing, feeling the pain of me at 14.
And I also went over to that 14 year old boy inside my own heart and could love him where I'd been pushing him away. Uh, before that I also had compassion for my mother's pain and my brothers and sisters' pain. And that really led to a healing that started to transform our whole family. So my dad and brothers and I started going on retreats together after a lot.
Each of us going through spiritual renewal. Uh, my dad went through AA and was able to apologize. We were able to forgive him. We were able to talk about our story together. Uh, then there would be situations where our whole family was together and, uh, my dad would apologize in front of all of us and just beautiful healing times.
It was just God's grace in all of our lives. But for each of us individually, there's still this place where we have to go back and face the trauma and then really deal with the identity lies that got internalized that are still playing themselves out and the judgements releasing the judgments for giving and then releasing the vows and, um, just making, making conscious decisions to release and invite the holy spirit into those places so that we're living in love, not in fear and not in control.
So it's a lot more than all of that, but that's the best way I could put it in a summary. That no, that's super helpful. And I think the simple model, the framework that you just laid out is really helpful. And if people want to go deeper than going on your retreats, reading your books is, is the way to go.
What you said about, you know, the 14 year old, you just imagining saying, you know, dad, don't leave. I need you, man. That just gave me chills and almost made me tear up cuz it's so it's so moving. And I think all of us need to, like you said, go to that place to kind of confront that younger version of ourselves if we wanna experiencing any sort of feeling.
Yeah. And, and you know, there's a lot of resistance to facing those places because we don't wanna feel the pain and we don't want to need, uh, we don't want need, we wanna shut off our needs and just take care of ourselves. And so it took a while to get to that place where I could express that pain from a place of my heart, not just intellectualize.
Speaking of speaking of obstacles and barriers, what are some of the main obstacles that you observe in people's lives when it comes to healing? Things that prevent them from healing from going forward with this fear and control are big barriers, uh, unforgiveness, judgments, uh, vows, all those things we've been mentioning are barriers, identity lies, not feeling safe, not, not having a place where you can go and have somebody really attend to you and you have the room and space talk through it.
All. Those are different barriers. Dissociations also a big barrier for those who, who don't know dissociation. There's a protective mechanism that God has planted in each one of us to help us deal with trauma. And it's a way that we can compartmentalize the trauma and not face it all at once. And it's called dissociation.
So we can have a memory of something without the feelings, or we can have feelings without a memory, or we can just be. Knows something happened without having either feelings or real memory of it. And it's only in the process of trusting and coming to feel safe enough that that dissociation can break down enough for us to begin to express the pain.
So what I was describing is I had lived in dissociation of that pain for many years. Until I was ready in the safe enough environment to release it. And you know, part of the releasing is just grieving, you know, it's, it's going through the grieving process. Yeah. And, uh, there's so much to say there, but it's good to know that, you know, you can't overcome those barriers you have in your own life and you've helped so many people to do that.
I think one big barrier is often an unwillingness to open up to a relationship with God. And I know a lot of people deal with that, especially when they come from broken families. And the, the way that I explain it to people is, you know, when we're kids, the most powerful creatures that we know are our parents.
And so we tend to think, well, if mom and dad are like this, then God must be like this too. And in a very broken home, what often happens is we get this extra distorted image of God. And so we may be very. Sent to this idea of, you know, any sort of relationship with God where, because, you know, we, we just don't trust him.
We don't think that he is actually good. We don't think that he actually wants to, to love us and heal us. Maybe we think he wants to use us or something. You know, we, we project what we experienced with our parents. And so what would you say to someone who, um, really isn't ready for this God stuff? Like, can they still heal?
Like how do they overcome that? Yeah. I, I was looking for a quote here, as you were talking about it, because it's, uh, what you said is so true that was actually from you can't find it right now, but it was actually from former president of the university, went to from Michael scam. And he said, if, if dad was distant or frightening or mean, or absent or abusive, we come to see God that way.
And you know, God is love St. John tells. And so if we have a distortion in law, we're gonna have a distortion of who God is. We're gonna see him as tyrannical or as not present, or as not existing or as not caring or any number of things. And so it's, it's really part and parcel. You know, we can study theology, which helps us know the truth about who God is, or we could read the Bible, which is, you know, a great benefit to, to find out the nature of God.
But we can even read that with a filter. I remember for years I would read the Bible and I would just see this God who seemed distant, or God who seemed angry rather than a God who is love, who sees me and loves me and chooses me and is present with me and is the strength of my life. And so a lot of the healing processes, healing our image of God.
In fact, that's really the core of the healing process is healing our image of God, because if we can't see God, right, we can't see love, right. Incredible. And, and what's the first step in healing that disordered image of God, we can't get into all of it right now, but what's like the first thing you'd say where people need to start to heal that disordered image of God, to look at the people around you who love genuinely, you know, just don't go to God yet.
Just go to the immediate environment and who around you loves you better than anybody in a genuine way. That's, that's pure and true and faithful. And that begins to give you a little glimpse, a very small glimpse of who and what, and what it's like to have a relationship with God. So helpful, uh, about, um, your retreats, your ministry.
There's so much you do to help people heal. Uh, tell us a little bit about your retreats. Like what happens if someone goes on it? Maybe they're not sure. Okay. If I go on this retreat, like what does the agenda look like? How do they work? Yeah, we have a lot of different kinds of retreats, but let's say the most common one.
Is we go into different cities and put on a retreat from Thursday evening, Friday evening, all day Saturday. And it's usually me and my brother and sister Maryam, James Hyland. My brother Bart would walk through this journey with me and, uh, others on our team are there support. And these are also virtual livestream conferences.
Uh, so people don't have to be there to, to go through it, but it's a process of teaching, of sharing our own story of having experiences of reflection, time for reflection, time, for prayer, time to receive healing, uh, in those memories. And so each talk has a different theme. That's bringing us through the process and, and then within each talk, there's an experience.
And so people come through this and have profound experiences and. You know, just over and over and over again, people say these are life changing for me. There are some people who have the experiences while they're there for others. It's it's tools to be able to engage in the process on their own time.
Some people tell us that being home in their living room and doing it virtually created a safe space for them to walk through it. Other people say it was being with other people and walking through it with others and experiencing the presence of the holy spirit in the environment that allowed them to do it.
But whichever way works for people, it just having the time and space and the direction, which is what the conference gives the direction and the invitation to walk through this in a way. Gives a tremendous amount of hope and healing in the process. I think that's one of the biggest barriers. One of the most practical barriers is that we don't make a space or time to do this.
And that's why your retreat is perfect because it, it offers both a space and a time to do this. You said that, uh, people are still finding the virtual retreats just as effective as the in-person retreats. Yeah, it, it, it amazes us at first. We thought there was gonna be a drop off, but time after time, some people do it together with other people watching it livestream other people on their own, in their, in their own home.
And, uh, over and over, they said, we could feel the presence of the holy spirit through the whole conference in our home. And we thought we'd be missing that by not being there with everybody. And some of 'em said, you know, I could turn it off and just stay with what I was going through and experience the healing there and then turn it back on in my own pace.
So it could be really advantageous to do it that way as well. Awesome. And you mentioned transformations that people have experienced. Is there one story that just shows it so clearly that you can think of that shows someone who maybe came to the retreat, they were in a really rough spot, stuck, broken, and then coming out, uh, of the retreat or maybe some time later using the tools that you gave them was able to experience a profound transformation.
Yeah, it's, it's so hard because there's hundreds in my mind and I I'll just try to wow. Think of, think of one. Uh, this, this one actually was a, was a, what touched me is she was an older woman who had been living with her pain for 60 some years. She was in her seventies and on the retreat, she began to face memories of brokenness in the family and then sexually abused by her brothers.
And she had never faced it her whole life. She came through that weekend, working through all of that, having an incredible healing. And she, she was like a little kid. Couldn't wait to share it with us. The joy that she felt. And then the, the outflow of that in terms of the healing with her family, the healing of her heart, the healing and her marriage.
I I'll give you another one. Cause this one just blew me away. Just blew me away. There was a priest who came to our priest event, had tremendous healing. First of all, he read bee big yield. He came to our priest event. He had tremendous healing. Personally just changed his priestly ministry. He sent two people on his staff to come for their healing, but also to lead a healing ministry in their church.
And the husband didn't want to come. He had been suffering with depression for 40 years. Had not been able to work, had been on every kind of medication, been hospitalized. Many times nothing had really made a difference. Huh? I, I talk about him in my book, real suffering, but I call him Patrick in that story, uh, not his real name, but he ends up having this incredible experience of an event that happened when he was 12.
He had never made the connection that that was the source of his depression. But once he had this experience in prayer and actually experienced his 12 year old self receive the healing and also come to a place of forgiving his father for what had happened. Wow. He was released, went back to got off medication with his doctor's approval.
After they found out that it was lasting healing. He ended up talking to his family, his family, his dad wanted him to pray with him. He went and prayed with his dad. His dad received healing of his childhood wounds. And the wounds of that had happened between them, the mother and the sister. The way, it was just like, this just kept spreading and spreading.
And now they're leading a healing ministry and spreading this to thousands of people, hundreds of people just, I could go on and on of stories like that, it just blows your mind of what God can do in somebody's life when they just open themselves and, and how the impact of that just spreads to so many others.
Incredible, incredible. Well, thank you for sharing those stories. And if someone wants to experience this, if they want to go to your retreats, uh, how do they sign up for them? How do they learn more about them? Uh, our website is John Paul II healing center. It's www JP I, I all small letters, healing center.org.
And then there's just a list of conferences that are coming up. Some of them we do that are open to the general public. Some are just for priests or religious or training or for men or for women. We do all kind of retreat conferences for all different parts of all different populations of people. Find the one that that's there for everybody, or if it's a women's retreat or a men's retreat.
and then, uh, you can just sign up online. You can either virtually, uh, live stream or to arrange to go there in person. Incredible. And I know you guys, once a year, I believe you do a five day, uh, intensive retreat down in Florida. Is that right? Yeah. That's actually coming up right as this is being broadcast.
Uh, we're starting that and it's, uh, this year it's, it's virtual. There're gonna be a live Q and a and prayer ministry available for everybody that signs up. Okay. It's called healing the whole person five day and they can get on our website. And even if it's started already, by the time this podcast comes out, it's available for two weeks.
So they can, they can still jump in and, and take part in that. And you'll have somebody praying with you. You also have an opportunity for question and answers. Each day of the week on the first week and then one day on the second week. Incredible. I, I know this is gonna be so helpful for so many people and, uh, I, you know, look forward myself.
I haven't had the chance to come on one, but I, I will be going on one ear retreat. So thank you so much in closing out Dr. Bob, uh, what words of encouragement would you give to, to the person listening right now who feels stuck, who feels broken, especially due to the trauma from their family, the trauma from their parents' marriage, uh, what, what encouragement would you give them?
So being stuck, which all of us who have had trauma understand that that's a wound of powerlessness. So the first thing is just to name it. And then there's also a wound of hopelessness, which is, you know, this didn't get a change. So just to, just to name that, if you're a person of faith, I would just turn that into prayer.
God, this is a place where I'm powerless and I feel hopeless and I can't change myself. I need your hope. If you're not a person of prayer, what I would say. To be able to find some place that you can feel safe enough just to share where you are, because the reason why you're stuck and you feel hopeless is because your heart's shut down in those places and you haven't felt safe enough to go there.
And so if you can find somebody, whether it's family, friend, mentor, spiritual director, therapist, whoever that might be, uh, just to begin to share where you are. You know, I used to have a saying when I was a therapist, uh, you can't get where you're going, unless you start where you are. And, and so it's just being where you are and having a safe place to be where you are and allowing the person or the holy spirit, whatever you can trust to help you move.
Because you can't do it yourself. Dr. Bob, thank you so much for your time through your wisdom and for all the work that you do, helping people to heal and feel whole again. Uh, amen. I, I can be more grateful to, to you and your work, and I look forward to, uh, yeah. Working with you in the future and sending people your way to, to really go through this sailing process with you and your team.
So thank you so much for your time. Yeah, Joey, I love what you're doing and it is such a need and really grateful to have you as a resource for people that we're working with too. So thank you. And one other thing, we have a podcast, Jake, Kim and I, as a therapist up in Canada. We're, it's a, every other week right now where hopefully gonna do it a week, but we talk through this stuff all the time.
So that's another place where people can go if they wanna get in, get involved in it. Awesome. What's the name of that podcast? It's re restore the glory podcast. Restore the glory podcast. Awesome. Are there any other resources that you wanted to mention before we sign off? I know, you know, you can, people can grab your books on Amazon, but anything else that you wanted to mention?
Uh, yeah, we have a lot of talks online also and workbooks and, uh, online courses. People won't be up there pretty soon that people can take and work through on their own. There's lots of other ministries that are doing great work too, like yours and things like Unbound, counter ministries, and just many others around also excellent guys.
We'll make sure to link to those resources, the podcast, the website that Dr. Bob mentioned. So you guys, uh, don't need to remember all of them again, Dr. Bob, thank you so much. Thank you for leading the way you're really that the trailblazer and a lot of this work. So we're happy to follow on your example.
Thanks so much for your time. Thank you, Jerry pleasure.
One huge takeaway that could have been easy to miss. Is this almost every problem? In society is rooted in the breakdown of the family. Wow. That is profound. Like this is it. This is the root cause. This is the core issue of our broken world. And so if we wanna fix our culture, we have to fix our families.
We have to heal from the trauma that we've experienced in our families. So we don't just pass that on. And that single point how this problem is at the root of almost every problem is the single reason that I started restored. I think we'd all agree that there are tons of problems in the world. And, and there's a lot of organizations out there who try to solve all these sorts of problems, right?
You have addictions to alcohol or porn. You have eating disorders. People who've been abused, homeless, starving kids. The list goes on like there's endless problems and all those issues, all those problems deserve our time. They deserve our attention. They deserve to be solved. They're super important in their serious stuff.
And so we need to solve those, but often they're not the root cause they're rather a symptom of a deeper problem. Now we need to treat the symptoms, but we have to treat the deeper problem. Cuz if we don't solve the deeper problem, then the symptomatic problems are just gonna continue. And so at restored we wanna.
The problem at a root level. And so if the brokenness in our families is at the root of almost all the problems in our world, then if we fix that root problem, then we'll begin to fix all those other issues as well. And so that's why AOR are working so hard to help young people from broken homes to heal and build virtue because we believe that strong virtuous individuals will go on and build strong marriages and strong marriages are of course, the foundation of good solid families and good solid families are what are gonna transform our communities, our nations, and ultimately our world as John Paul II said, as the family goes, so goes the nation.
And so goes the world in which we live. And so it's so important that all of us begin our own healing process. If we've been wounded, especially wounded within our families, like we need to heal that brokenness. We need to build virtue so that we can go on and fix our broken world. But we can't heal alone.
It's actually impossible. We need the help of others. And if you want some help, I highly recommend Dr. Bob's healing retreats. You can sign up or just learn more about them by going to his website@jptwohealingcenter.org, that's JP. And then the letter I, the letter I healing center.org, or you can just click on the link in the show notes.
Once you're on that webpage, go ahead and click on the schedule button in the menu. And then on the schedule page, you can just look through the events, find an event that works well for you. Like he mentioned, there are virtual events that you can attend and they're just as effective. He said, and when you're ready, you can just click the register now.
Now, if you're not ready for that, I recommend reading Dr. Bob's book be healed. You can click on the link in the show notes, or just search on Amazon or wherever you buy books, be healed. It's really a great resource and it's helped me personally. And so I recommend it to you. So by his book, be healed. The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 39.
Again, restored ministry ministries, just singular.com/three nine. Thank you so much for listening. I really hope this episode has been helpful for you. And if it has, I invite you to subscribe and to share this podcast with someone, you know, who could use it. Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.
