New Life LIVE

Guest (Male): Welcome to the New Life Live podcast. We hope to provide help and hope in your life through God's word, counselors, and psychologists as we answer questions from listeners who call with the challenges of life. Let's go to today's episode.

Brian Perez: The doctors are in and ready to speak with you. Second day in a row that we've had Doctor of Marriage and Family Therapy, Sherry Denham-Kepper and clinical psychologist, Dr. Alice Benton. I'm your host, Brian Perez. Welcome to New Life Live. One call to the show could change everything for you. Jill, Mary, Matthew, we're going to talk to you and everyone else in just a moment. Alice, how do you want to start off today's show?

Alice Benton: I had one plan and then God gave me another as I drove to the show. So this is for someone who's listening and probably many people who are listening. If you wondered if God heard you, saw you, heard your prayer, please take this as a potential sign from Him.

I worked in a substance abuse treatment center early in my career. It was what I moved to California to do, to work here and do my internship. It's actually where I met my husband; he also worked there. We provided services for people from the entertainment industry. Some stars came into our treatment center. Some stars from the pornography industry also came to our treatment center.

We got to hear the backstories of how they came to be in that career, and it was not usually by choice. There have been researchers who have interviewed those in the pornography industry and over 77% report a history of abuse, of sexual abuse prior to entering the industry. Hypersexuality is usually a sign of sexual injury.

I bring this up both for those who have been victimized by sexual abuse, but also for those who consume pornography, which I myself have done. If we're consuming pornography, we have to ask the question: are we participating in the abuse of those we're watching? The answer is usually yes. That's not the intent, but it is the outcome.

People don't choose extreme lifestyles because it's just fun, just glamorous. They usually choose it out of pain, coercion, or being tricked into the industry. I heard story after story of young women, men as well, who were coerced by what seemed like a romantic relationship that promised to save them from poverty, from a broken home life, from the abuse that they were already going through. It quickly turned into sexual trafficking.

God sees all those involved, both the abusers and the victims and the consumers, and He wants salvation and healing for all of us, no matter what our part has been in that equation. I ask that if you have suffered from any part of this, whether as an abuser, as a victim, or as a consumer, we care about all of you. We're available to help all of you. Everyone in that equation is enslaved to something, whether it's those being abused, those who are enslaved by lust, by greed, by money, by power. God loves you all, He wants to help you, and He's equipped us to help you. We're waiting for your call.

Sherry Denham-Kepper: Wow. That was really thoughtful. I had no idea, Alice, that 77% of those in the porn industry are actually victims. That hyper-sexual because of sexual violation, that makes so much sense to me. I just respect the work that you've done, and we are here to help. There's a wound underneath the sexual acting out.

Brian Perez: We are going to go to the phones when we come back here on New Life Live. Thanks for joining us today on New Life Live.

To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life Live.

And starting now on the telephones with Jill in Atlanta, Georgia, who listens to us on the New Life app. Thank you, Jill, for downloading the app and for calling us today and also for being a 99 for the One partner. How can we help you today?

Jill: First of all, thank you so much for taking my call. Don't tell the others, but the two that are on today are really my favorites. There's so much wisdom behind you.

Here's the deal. We have three children, my husband and I. Two of them are in their early 30s and they haven't spoken for four years. The younger one, who's a girl, is getting married this weekend. I need to know how to show up in this. They live on opposite coasts. It was over a business deal, and I could explain that a little bit if you want to, but I just don't know. My husband's fighting cancer. It might be, who knows, the last time we're together. We used to be a really close family and now they can't even be in the same room.

Sherry Denham-Kepper: My heart is breaking for you, Jill. What incredible loss that you're dealing with, one with your husband's cancer diagnosis and walking into this going, "This may be the last time we're all going to get photos together." That in itself is overwhelming.

Jill: Well, can I just say one other thing? We've had 16 deaths in five years of cousins, uncles, my mom, my baby sister, her husband. I mean, it has been even my daughter was widowed four years ago. We've even lost the son-in-law. We're thankful that the Lord has brought another man into her life, but you cannot even imagine the amount of grief. And then on top of that, they're gone, but these boys are still alive and they're not talking.

Sherry Denham-Kepper: This is the deal and it's going to sound very simplistic. I'm so sorry about 16 losses. That is a village. That is so big. That might be even why you're primed for heartache. You're kind of wondering if another shoe is going to drop at the wedding.

Let me tell you something that I want you to seriously think about. You and your husband, I want you to align on this. I want you to kind of go to the wedding with this image in your mind. I want you to see you and your husband, and I want you to have your backs together. Move as a unit, like synchronized swimming. You guys have got each other's back because it would be so easy to get polarized between the boys and your daughter.

There is one goal for the day and that's to celebrate her win. That's to celebrate her new life. If you come and your focus is on trying to repair this breach that happened because of the business, you're going to be off track. You're going to focus on the wrong target.

If you get polarized or you start feeling anxious about "Okay, they haven't talked and where are they going to sit and how are they going to..." you're going to just need to let your boys go. Let them be adult men even though they've got this chip on their shoulder for whatever happened, which I imagine it was something. I just want you to focus in on her and this new beginning and this new husband. It's her day. Family drama can rob you of those moments you'll never get back. You need a tight team with your husband. You need to be able to tell him when you're feeling disrupted or you're sad or you're looking at your boys and they're kind of over there and they're not talking, to just look at him and say, "Honey, I got your back, you got mine. We're here to celebrate our daughter, and this other stuff is going to be dealt with later."

Jill: Yes, that's very wise and that's what we're going to do. I want to know, though, if there's some wisdom between us talking as a group, like the two of us, my husband and myself, about anything in the future because we may never get them in the room again unless it's another funeral.

Sherry Denham-Kepper: No. You're not going to do that on the wedding day. You're not going to do that. It's a week away. That's catastrophizing panic. That comes out of 16 losses and your husband having cancer and them not talking. It's like your Coke bottle inside is shook up and you're thinking it's the last chance. Honey, slow down.

There are many moments in the future that you don't know yet, that haven't happened yet, but this is not the week to talk about it. It's not the week to plan, it's not the week to be distracted by it. Period. That's my two cents and it's bold, but I just think a lot of families get tripped up at weddings and there's sadness that just comes into the day. It's like a little bit of cancer itself and it doesn't need to be. You can guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Everything you do flows through it, and you've got to guard your heart on that day.

Alice Benton: I give my clients, Jill, a visualization when there's something bothering them that they can't control. I have them imagine a substance like a black cloud or tar or gunk in their head and heart, and it's that topic that just keeps them mulling over. You pull the substance, imagine pulling it out of your head and heart. You take a deep breath. You put it into a container, any container. People pick Tupperware, safety deposit box, a trash can. You take another deep breath.

You turn that container into an image of God that feels safe and protected or imagining a person that you love and trust that you can give that container to. You do that exercise over and over again every time the distressing thought about your sons comes up. With practice, it helps your brain to slow down and to settle down. It's really acting out the serenity prayer. It's turning into God what you cannot control, what you have limited power over.

I want you to make sure that you have an outlet, a person outside your family that you can talk about all this with, that you can cry and be as angry as you need to be so that you can safeguard the wedding from this topic as much as you have power to do so. But then afterwards, start to generate the plan of how you might invite your boys and your daughter into a family therapy session because it is a great idea for after the wedding.

Jill: Is that something you can do on Zoom or something? Because one lives in California, one's in New York City. I live in the middle of the country, so does my daughter. How do you do this, get them all in the same room?

Alice Benton: Yeah, that is a little complicated for licensing issues for clinicians, but it is something that by Zoom and even by a family coach, coaches don't have the same state's restrictions that a licensed psychologist has. It is certainly a possibility and we could look for a clinician within our network for you.

Sherry Denham-Kepper: I would love her to get the copy from our store, Jim Burns's book on adult children, "Doing Life with Your Adult Children." I'm telling you, girl, I would read that because there is so much wisdom that he shares in that book. I just think as a precursor to anything, you want to gobble that resource up and get your head clear about how to enter into those conversations.

Brian Perez: Jill, thanks for calling us today on New Life Live and we're all praying for a great weekend wedding. And now we're going to talk to Mary in Littleton, Colorado, who watches us on NRBTV. Hi there, Mary, welcome to New Life Live.

Mary: Hello, thank you for taking my call. I have a question about grief, betrayal, and trauma. Are they all intertwined? I'm just trying to process and get to the core of my issues. I mean, I just don't know if it's grief, betrayal, or trauma, and I'm sure I've experienced a little bit of all those. I'm kind of being repetitive in the process and idealizing the turnout once I figure all this out. My main question is why. I always come back to why, why, why was this done to me? I don't know if I'll ever have an answer to that except for some things that transpired where that person betrayed me and so forth and so on. But I'm not sure if that's a grief process or if that's betrayal, okay, or trauma, or do they all intertwine to a degree?

Sherry Denham-Kepper: Just one quick question. Where are you stuck? Are you in the relationship with the one who betrayed you? Are you out of the relationship? Was there any resolution? Just so we have a little history.

Mary: Similar to the lady that called earlier that said she's kind of wanting to make amends with her sister because that's her only family, and that's where I'm at. But she took a lot of money from me through a will and didn't disclose to me how much money there was. Now I'm paying a heck of a lot of interest on a reverse mortgage I had to take out had the money been available to me.

I'm kind of stuck there. She's trying to pay me back a little bit of money and I said, "Well, wonderful," but I don't know that I can trust her. She's always been very suspicious of who I've been talking to in the family and how I vote. "If you vote for that person, I'll find out." She's very manipulative and I feel like when she came out here, I was having a problem with the neighbor a little bit about some boundary things and she went straight to the neighbor and said, "Oh, she gets anxious. Don't worry about her." Then she completely sides with everyone else but me. She's even tried to call my doctor and say, "You know, she has said that you reminded her of Hitler to a degree." She told the doctor that. That was just something I said; she goes beyond and beyond to just side with everyone else and has turned off the whole family against me.

Alice Benton: And Mary, are you financially dependent on her to some extent?

Mary: No, I'm not, but that's money that she does owe me. So she's making reparations to send me snippets of the money and I thank God she's doing that and forgive her and let's move on. But I keep having these repetitive thoughts about do I just stop the relationship with her?

Sherry Denham-Kepper: Older sister, younger sister?

Mary: Older.

Sherry Denham-Kepper: All right. Well, you clearly have a sister who is a boundary buster, right? I mean, who does that? Who calls your doctor and tells him things about himself that you said in private? Who talks to neighbors? She has a delusional relationship with you in the fact that she believes that she needs to curtail you, fix you, control you, change you. She's just not okay with you being you and letting you go. It's at a very scary level, like pathological level. But she's in your business.

So my question is, you're wondering about grief and betrayal and trauma. I'm not trying to change the conversation, I'm just like, how are you doing with your boundaries these days with her? Because she's clearly violating those, and of course that would bring you sadness. Of course you'd be struggling with trauma.

Brian Perez: So many good calls on today's episode of New Life Live. Hope you've had a chance to listen. We're speaking with Anne right now, and Dr. Alice, what would you say to Anne?

Alice Benton: Anne, as you shared with us that you don't totally feel ostracized by your family, we're glad to hear that although they are critical, there's also perhaps some kindness and some connection with your family. But you sound like you're isolating yourself from men and yet you want to get married someday and hope to have a very healthy marriage.

Because you're uncertain about that, I would suggest a checkup from the neck up, meaning taking these worries you have along with the difficulty of trying to live according to your faith in a family that doesn't fully support that. I'm sure that makes you uncertain about interacting with other people. Are they also going to criticize me? Are they going to think I'm weird and old-fashioned because of my choices? A checkup from the neck up is when you talk with a therapist and you lay out some of your life story and you lay out your concerns about dating and marriage and you get feedback from someone who really's able to listen to your full story.

You also might get a medical exam. Have you had a physical lately? Bring your question to your doctor so that they can check that you're healthy. Lastly, I would say that dating works best, both waiting for marriage and then holding to your standards in dating work best if you're with a group of sisters, not necessarily biological, sisters who can love you, support your faith, hear your worries, and cheer you on. We can connect you with a New Life recovery group if you don't have a sisterhood like that.

Brian Perez: Stay on hold and we will connect you. Thanks for calling in today, Anne. Now we're going to Canada. Here is Ladia, who's listening to us on the New Life app in Toronto. Welcome, Ladia, to New Life Live.

Ladia: Hi, thank you for taking my call. My question today is I'm trying to find some coping mechanisms or strategies, however you may call it, in terms of getting these expectations of others out of me. I'm recognizing that I am getting really angry with my son's dad and my mom and even my son. The root of it is the expectations I have of them. It really gets me so flustered and I become outraged. I start doing and saying things that I don't like to see in myself. But the root of it is just simply expecting him to be a better father for his son and not showing up the way he needs to and how that affects my son, that gets me angry. And also my mom when I'm expecting her to be more giving or have more gratitude and when she just finds the little thing to complain about or whatever, it just picks me off. And now I'm passing it on to my son and I see the pattern of just wanting him to support his grandmother more like I do.

Alice Benton: Ladia, yes. I think you're struggling with wishful thinking. I believe all three of these people have shown you time and time again that they are who they are and they're not interested in changing. The hope you have that they'll be better, that they'll be as generous and kind as you are, as responsible as you are, it's a good desire you have, but you're not allowing their past history to inform you of what they will likely continue to do, which is be who they have been all along.

You have righteous anger that they're not picking up the slack like they should. But one of the ways to adjust your expectations is believe who they show you they are and expect that they'll continue showing up that way. Then increase your self-protection because I think you keep overexposing yourself to them, so it just rips your heart out when they do what they always do. I would have you consider limiting your interaction with them, going to other safe people. People that want to be in reciprocal relationship and want to treat you well because these three seem like they're not able to right now, they're not choosing to right now. Believe them.

Brian Perez: Ladia, thanks for your phone call. Sue in Cooperstown, New York, welcome.

Sue: Hi. I've been dealing with a situation on and off for about 15 years. My husband gets involved with women online, other states. He then becomes very abusive, at times has violently raped me. I've been talked out of—I even went to the police and they said there's nothing they can do because he's your husband. Going through another situation here in the last month or so. This time, he's even gone to his mother and asked her how much she would charge for rent for him and his girlfriend. He's telling me my disabled daughter should be dead; she's going to be 36 this summer. I know as a Christian you're supposed to help those that are sick. One minute he'll turn around, "I don't need help, I've got the right to do this, I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm not physically touching them." But how do I get help or do I go for a divorce? Is this just going to continue behavior with him? He'll say he wants help and then he doesn't do it.

Alice Benton: I'm so sorry and angry that the police said there's nothing we can do. I'd have you contact a domestic violence shelter because I think you need several different resources. I think you need a really good attorney who knows how to deal with an abusive spouse like your husband is and who could also consider the complexity of your disabled daughter and what the legal needs are and the financial needs are. Because I think you'll need a team around you, Sue, who can help you figure your out, your escape route. You may feel stuck with him because you have to depend on him, maybe financially dependent on him, and a domestic violence shelter will help you start to plan for your way out so that you can get yourself and your daughter away from all this mistreatment.

Sherry Denham-Kepper: Yeah, I want you, Sue, to get a copy of my book, "Intimate Deception: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Betrayal." You might ask why. Because you're married to a lying sex addict. He's lying to you when he says he doesn't touch this girlfriend that he wants to move into his mom's house with. Trust me, he's lying. The vulnerability that you have is you believe the lies. When he asks for help, you believe them. I don't want you to trust his words; I want you to trust his behavior. The abuse, the threat wishing your daughter was dead, honestly, he's not going to change and you have got to get safe. You've got to draw a boundary and I would recommend highly you do what Alice said and talk to an attorney because he's just playing house with another woman and he has no intention of being faithful to you. It's sad, but it's a reality and I want you to get safe.

Brian Perez: "Intimate Deception," that's available in the NewLife.com store. Sue, thank you so much for calling us today on New Life Live. We've run out of time on today's show, unfortunately, but we've helped a lot of people who were calling in and even I'm sure you got some words of wisdom because of a situation you're going through from Alice and Sherry today. It's your financial support that keeps us going. Please become a monthly 99 for the One partner. You can find out more details at NewLife.com/99fortheone. Or if you just want to make a one-time gift, you can do that too. Find out more at NewLife.com or by calling 1-800-NEW-LIFE or by texting NLM to 28950. We'll be back tomorrow here on New Life Live. What do you do when your adult child wants to come back and live with you? What do you do if your adult child is hooked on meth or alcohol and you keep wanting to help them but you're enabling them? We'll talk about that and more on tomorrow's episode of New Life Live. God bless you guys.

Guest (Male): Thanks so much for listening. We hope something you heard will help you live in freedom today. If this content was helpful for you, we would love it if you would take a minute, leave a review, post about it, and rate it. Remember we have resources and workshops online for you as you continue your journey. Go to NewLife.com to find more information. And thank you for being part of the New Life community. We know that God desires all of us to live a life of wholeness and healing, and we're so glad that you're here.