Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go. Hey man, thank you for listening to my interview with Burke Atkerson. He tells his story with radical vulnerability and amazing insight, and he has started an awesome ministry called Fire Nights, which I'm excited for you to learn more about. Enjoy the episode. Today. I have the deep joy of introducing you all to my friend, Burke Atkerson. He is the author of Fire Nights Forging Brotherhood that Heals, and, in his words, Burke is a recovering addict, a failed missionary, an unemployed entrepreneur, a novice author and an undeserving husband and grateful father to six children. More importantly, you guys need to know that he is an amazing man of God. He is a coach who does deep, transformational work with men, and I am excited that he will be joining us at the Husband Material Retreat in September. Welcome, Burke.

Speaker 2: 1:13

Thank you, drew. Thank you so much, brother. I thoroughly appreciate your friendship. I appreciate you bringing me on to chat and share story. But I just want to take a moment to just acknowledge you and what you do and how you do it. First of all, I love how you show up one-on-one. I experienced transformation and healing from your friendship one-on-one. And then what you're doing with other men and what you've chosen to dedicate your life to Most people are too covered in shame to even bring up in conversation. The stuff that we talk about day in and day out and that you talk about with other men and that you help them understand, and just the level of healing that you're bringing to other men and into this world is tremendously important. So I'm full of gratitude for it and I just have so much admiration for you. Thank you, burke.

Speaker 1: 2:02

It's remarkable how aligned our lives are in many ways. Yeah, it's beautiful, yeah, so I'm just really excited for everybody listening to get to know you better, burke. You've done a tremendous amount of work. How would you describe your experience growing up? Thanks for asking that. Well, I was the second born out of work. How would you describe your experience growing up? Thanks for asking that.

Speaker 2: 2:27

Well, I was the second born out of four. There were three boys and one girl. I think it was overwhelming for my parents to raise us. They did a good enough job that we're still alive.

Speaker 2: 2:38

Man, early on, when I was seven years old, I felt like I heard the voice of God. On when I was seven years old, I felt like I heard the voice of God and I know I know his voice. I feel very familiar with it. This was my first moment of experience with it and it kind of tainted the rest of my childhood. That's why I'm bringing it up.

Speaker 2: 2:55

I went to a little Christian school. At the bottom of the coloring sheet there was this verse um Mark 16, 15, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every nation, king James Version. And as I was coloring on the sheet, I felt the voice of God speaking to me. I felt like, wow, that's what I'm to do with my life. I found my sense of worth and importance in going to be a missionary someday. And then when I got overseas and I was a missionary and I wasn't very good at it, I felt tremendously unimportant and it ended up being more of a greenhouse for even more addiction. Yeah, we were overseas for seven years but, yeah, my childhood was very marked by you know, only I was. It was a golden child syndrome. I only felt loved when I was performing. So I would perform and I would act like I had all my shit together and hide everything else.

Speaker 2: 3:48

What did you feel the need to hide? As a kid, I was constantly walking on eggshells and I would get in trouble constantly. So really, this is a wound of play. I wasn't able to just play and be present and be myself if anybody else was around, because I had to put on a show. I had to walk on eggshells and my father loved me well, but at the same time he was volatile.

Speaker 2: 4:14

He had unprocessed anger, issues and rage, and it wouldn't be physical abuse most of the time, and when it was, it was confused with scripture and discipline masked by these good things. So it was extra confusing. The downside is I wouldn't have to hide any actions, in particular until I discovered pornography at the age of nine. But it was play that I had to hide. I couldn't just be a kid, I had to act like an adult so that adults would love me. I hate this. The problem with conditional love is that? It's not love at all, and that was my childhood, wow. So it really took decades and it took my whole life falling apart before I was actually able to unravel that and realized I was just a, you know, living a life of performance and as you grew up performing hiding in this volatile environment.

Speaker 1: 5:19

What did porn do for you?

Speaker 2: 5:33

porn do for you. Porn did so much. It was a bandaid on a deep wound and I became very fond of it, like a friend, right Like a counselor. I would run to porn when life would get hard and it was my comforter, it was my soothe, it was my escape from pain. And then eventually I re, I learned to just run from things that were discomfort, uncomfortable or painful. Uh, negative experiences and Enneagram seven. So I don't like negative experiences, I immediately want yeah, you too right One of the other thing we have in common so much overlap.

Speaker 2: 6:05

So I immediately want to put a bandaid on it and don't feel pain or numb it. Go do something fun instead. And so porn was just an easy decision. Of course it was habitual. Of course there was trauma associated with it. I experienced some abuse as a 10-year-old that taught me that intimacy couldn't be experienced outside of sexuality. And then, as I got older, in my teen years, I never felt loved and connected with somebody unless sex was involved. So, of course, the rest of my life it was confusing. Intimacy had become sexualized and porn was this place where I could play, it's where I could be comforted, it's where I could be soothed, I could get this vicarious sense of being seen. So I remember for years I'd search for hours through video after video after video, until I found a girl gazing into the guy's eyes, whatever they were doing, if she was looking at him like she needed him and desired him. Then it's like oh, now my template is fully fulfilled, now I can climax, or whatever.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Could you say more about that need to be seen?

Speaker 2: 7:28

So there's three parts to this. Humans, I think, are three deepest needs. They're core to us having healthy emotions and resilience and connected relationships as adults and as children, their core for early childhood development, as well as to be seen, to be safe and to be soothed, and when those are lacking, we can't be mature spiritually, we can't be mature emotionally. My need to be seen as a child was never met, or rarely met, maybe I should say more specifically Therefore, I brought that same woundedness into my adult relationships. Therefore, I brought that same woundedness into my adult relationships, into my marriage. The whole performance act is a desire to be seen. Right, it's like a peacocking of sorts. It's saying, hey, look at me, and I have this thing where I have a tightness right here in the back between my shoulder blades that if I'm around people all day, it's sore. And not so much anymore, but it's sore because I'm literally peacocking. I'm putting on a show as if I've got my shit together, and that was my whole life for decades. But it was so much like, hey, look at me. It was so much of a deep wound that said I need to be seen and so much of my life has not been seen. And so, yeah, it started early childhood and then now it goes into adulthood with just tons of brokenness and it's just this constant underlying issue. And then also there's situations around safety where I felt like I was in eggshells, where I wasn't safe through a lot of life. Right, I couldn't just let down my guard.

Speaker 2: 9:08

And then the third part is, soothed, which you're asking about seeing. But I think all three are core. I quickly found unhealthy ways to soothe myself in life. I found out that I wasn't breastfed as a baby, or maybe for a very short period of time. My mother went back to work and I was bottle fed, which is fine, but there's a deep level of soothing that happens for a child just being held at his mother's breasts. Um, the skin on skin contact, the, the sucking, the.

Speaker 2: 9:42

I mean it sounds almost sensual the way I'm describing it, but a lot of sensuality is very soothing and it is a core need that we have. There's a part of it that becomes play and, especially if it becomes over-sexualized, it loses the deep emotional connection. That's healthy and should be there, right, but we need to be soothed and I just didn't find it in healthy ways as a kid. The other thing is, I wasn't fed enough from the bottle and so I had this feeling like I was always hungry as a baby. I still remember that feeling and when I'm still around my parents as an adult, I start overeating and grasping for everything.

Speaker 2: 10:22

And I realized just a few weeks ago, after they left, I realized, oh, I'm grasping because I'm scared I'm not going to have enough. I'm scared that I'm not going to have my needs met because they don't care about my needs. I've got to go out of my way and meet them, which is part of the issue of the seven right Like I will meet my needs. Yeah, and that ties in directly to my childhood as well. Thank you so much for your vulnerability.

Speaker 1: 10:49

So you've told us a lot about the origins of life falling apart. When did things start to burn down?

Speaker 2: 11:02

Good question. We were overseas with the navigators. We'd been on staff with them for a decade. I'm full of gratitude for them. They handled everything so well. But we got to a point where we were burned out and we didn't know it yet. We didn't know it till we were doing intake forms after everything kind of burned down. And one of the things is we did a burnout survey and I aced it. I got like a hundred percent. I'm definitely burned out beyond what's healthy and I had no idea I wasn't overworking. I was just living with a daily level of anxiety and stress that was too high to be long-term sustainable. It led to me making some bad decisions. I claimed full responsibility for I don't blame it on burnout, I don't blame it on Jill. I made some bad decisions.

Speaker 2: 11:49

I crossed lines with other women through text message, through sexting, through Instagram, social media stuff, and then eventually in person. And at the time I was. It's such a long story to tell the details, but I was shooting photography all around the world. I've shot on five different continents doing fashion productions for sustainable and ethical fashion brands. I had traveled for a month and I was shooting for a number of magazines and for four brands. It's one of those things that's invite only, so it's hard to get into. I was like, yeah, I'm going to prioritize this and make it happen. And it required me to travel for a month away from my family.

Speaker 2: 12:29

I met a girl who hung on to my every word, like I was the most interesting man in the world, and that was like cocaine for me, man, for a woman to give me that level of attention. And we ended up staying up till 5 am, and then we walked through the town as the sun was rising, hand in hand, and I just felt loved although it's not love, I felt wanted. And she was the one pursuing me for more. And I remember her saying like, hey, let's go back to the hostel. I have a room all to myself. And I told her hey, I can't do that. Even if we did that and had a great night, it's not going to be enough for either of us. Both of us are going to want more and we're still going to be unsatisfied on the other side of it. And so there's still a little bit of prefrontal cortex lit up. But, man, her attention for me was intoxicating, and so we didn't end up going any further, but that was far enough to burn things down, man.

Speaker 2: 13:43

The next night I actually moved to a different hostel because I felt like if I stayed there I was going to fuck things up. I was covered in shame the whole day. I met another girl the next night and she paid attention to me and we flirted and then at night she was in the bunk beneath me and pursued me for a lot more and we crossed a lot of lines there which in hindsight in my body felt so much like the abuse of when I was 10 years old and the girl climbing into my bed and I remember just feeling like facing away and my whole body just tight and not wanting to be there and not having the strength to walk away because I was so aroused and stimulated by the situation. So for me it was just a reliving of that exact same abuse and at the same time it was my decision to stay. So, yes, trauma kept me stuck and, yes, I decided to stay.

Speaker 2: 14:48

I came back home, I immediately confessed to my wife, like I said, I didn't keep anything hidden, didn't keep anything in the dark. And we called the navigators and they sent some. They flew somebody down to talk to us and they said tell us your whole story. We told them everything. They went back, prayed about it and invited us to do a restoration process in Colorado and it was the hardest thing of our lives.

Speaker 2: 15:14

We lost our funding, we lost our titles, we got pulled off field. We almost lost our marriage. We were hanging on by a string, but they took such good care of us over the next few years, helping us get on our feet and get into a healthy place in our marriage. Wow, I'm full of gratitude for it, because it was hell, and now I know my way out of hell, and now I know my way out of hell and it reset the trajectory for a whole marriage. Now it's a lot more connection, it's a lot more repair, a lot more healthy stuff, and then both of us it's given us a space for both of us to do our work.

Speaker 1: 15:53

Thank you for sharing your story, Burke, as you started healing at a much deeper level. What role did brotherhood and community play?

Speaker 2: 16:02

I did get some really good help from therapy dealing with trauma, talk therapy and EMDR, and that stuff has to be dealt with. Shame is absolutely fundamental work that we have to go through if we want to know any kind of deep, real, lasting sobriety or wholeness. Early into the journey, a buddy and I I found out he likes to light a campfire and he was 10 years sober AA at the time. But I was like well, let's just meet over a campfire. We had just done this experiential retreat with Michael Cusick Restoring the Soul.

Speaker 1: 16:42

Which is where I met you.

Speaker 2: 16:44

Yes, I'm so grateful for that. So we met at this retreat. We're in the same little group together and he happened to live in Denver, just an hour away. So I would drive up to Denver and I would meet him in his backyard and he'd light his fire and we'd drink root beers together and smoke pipes.

Speaker 2: 17:09

But because of the nature of our, the way we related at the Restoring the Soul weekend is we quickly started talking about the heart, so everything below the waterline, and I'd never really done this in another man outside of that weekend or with another counselor. And so this was just this relational, hands-off, nobody's getting paid environment, and we began to develop a deep, healthy, beautiful relationships through it and then we started inviting other men into it and from there it's just been growing. We'd call it fire night, like hey, you want to do fire night this weekend, and so we've been doing that for eight years now. Now it's been growing and spreading and I wrote a book on it last year. Now there's about 12 groups around Colorado that I'm aware of, and then in Texas and Georgia and Arkansas as well as well.

Speaker 2: 18:00

However, for me I began to heal at a deep level because I finally stopped holding men at arm's length. I finally started realizing that men can be safe, that they could use their strength to hold my weakness. And as I began to experience that and it wouldn't have worked to just read about it in a book, I had to actually taste it so as I began to experience that, I began to be healed at a deep level. That couldn't have happened from talk therapy, because it was experiential and it was relational.

Speaker 1: 18:33

Wow, Like Psalm 133 says how good and pleasing it is when brothers dwell together in unity.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Yes, it's so beautiful.

Speaker 1: 18:46

The thing is, all we know is like pancake Saturdays with a bunch of other men or you know youth group shit, where we'd go to a theme park together or go camping group shit where we'd go to a theme park together or go camping, or porn recovery groups that are very surface level or shaming, or they just make you feel more inadequate as you're comparing yourself to other guys in the group. Behavior focused porn recovery groups are also part of the problem.

Speaker 2: 19:18

Because it's just the top 10% of the iceberg. Yeah, and then the other thing is they might be involved with the Bible study or something at church with other men, but 90% of the time they just talk about that top 10%.

Speaker 1: 19:31

Or we stay in our heads and we're talking about God and we're talking about things, but we're not getting into our bodies, yes, which is where experience happens. So how are fire nights different?

Speaker 2: 19:42

There's a few different elements to that. It has very little structure. So it's nice to go somewhere that's not structured. A lot of men's programs are maybe designed around a book study or a Bible study or a word study or a topic like porn, but this really is very open-ended. I have three ground rules that kind of just set the tone, but the general structure is really open-ended and it's really about the relationships, and so it's giving a safe place for men to open up, but it's not forcing them to and it's not even telling them where to go.

Speaker 1: 20:17

What are your three ground rules for fire nights?

Speaker 2: 20:20

Number one is confidentiality. So it's like the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club. The reason is we have a lot of pastors that will join them, or counselors that will join them, therapists, and then just the everyday person can be in there too, and it's important for anybody. But for those people, they want to know that they have a safe place to share their story. If I meet one-on-one with any man, but especially somebody who's a leader, I want to tell them hey, listen, nobody's going to hear about this conversation, not even my wife. This is between you and me, and I'm going to honor your story with confidentiality. And so we're doing the same thing in fire nights. We're bringing that same presence of mind and honoring each other's story by not sharing it with other people. That's what you're going to experience at work, talking with a boss or, if you are the boss, you might even be really good at that and ask five questions like well, why, well, why, well, why? And then you can really do some good problem solving, but it's still only level one listening, and that's where most men get stuck or capped. We want to go deeper, where empathy is involved and curiosity is involved in kindness. So we don't talk about politics or theology or sports. But somebody might say something that reflects their political opinion, so somebody could get triggered. But if you could practice radical acceptance and just say you know what, I love this person as he is, no matter what he believes, no matter what he thinks and no matter whether or not his theology is correct or politics are correct, I'm just going to love him as he is, then, uh a, we're learning how to love each other, we're learning how to listen, and then it gives us the ability to be curious instead of defensive.

Speaker 2: 22:15

Um, rule number three is um, lean into vulnerability. So for every man that's different. But I've had nights where I'm driving to go see the guys for fire night and I'm thinking in the back of my head like, ooh, you know I don't want to bring up this topic. Well, for me, then, that's exactly what vulnerability is is to go ahead and bring that up and say, hey, guys, I've been struggling with X, y, z. You know, we could talk about the top of the iceberg, like if you masturbated 40 times this morning before getting to fire night. Let's talk about that, that's fine. Don't let anything stay in the darkness, let's have it in the light, but let's go deeper than that. Let's talk about well, why, what were you wanting? What were you longing for? What were you not getting? What were the stressors in your life? What triggers were activated that blindsided you? You know, let's go deeper than just you know I did this. Well, what about all the background behind that decision? That's where vulnerability and connection are.

Speaker 1: 23:17

Burke, I love all of this so much, and some of you guys might be thinking to yourself hey, that sounds a lot like husband material. Exactly, we are both wanting to create these kinds of spaces, and Burke's Ministry of Fire Nights is a fantastic resource for you guys to be able to not only receive that kind of healing space but also maybe start one of your own. This is a peer-led project. It's not for experts, it's not for professional counselors. As Burke said, no one's getting paid. So I would highly recommend Fire Nights for any of you guys who want to create and be a part of something like that.

Speaker 2: 24:01

I love that, Drew. I think the question in their heads is how would I start a fire night? That sounds like I'm not qualified. I don't know if I can guide guys to depth. A lot of the resistance I hear from men is like well, if people start talking about politics, I don't know how to bring them back into the deeper space which I could teach you that kind of stuff. It's actually really simple, but what I've found is everybody who's hosting them and finding success. It's so simple.

Speaker 2: 24:30

A, they're just lighting a fire and opening up the invite to a few men that they trust, and then maybe one or two men who probably just need it. So you're just inviting men into it. You're lighting a fire pit in your backyard which is what the cost of wood like $5 for two, you know, $10 for two bundles of firewood and light the wood. You're good to go. Or a lot of people have gas fire pits. That's totally fine.

Speaker 2: 24:54

And then we have a few times where the weather's so bad we'll just hang out indoors and we'll light a candle. I love the symbolism of that, but we'll go ahead and light the fire because the biggest reason is it symbolizes God's presence. He's here with us. We're not alone in this. We have the presence of the Father, just like the pillar in the desert, the pillar of fire or the burning bush so often Hebrews and Jews throughout history would have seen fire and been reminded of God's presence it's just this potent symbol throughout scripture that we get to have in front of us, between us men, and then it's this thing that is really soothing. If you've ever sat around a campfire, you hear the crackles, you smell the air. The other thing is it is a place where it's safe and it's a place where men can feel seen deeply in ways that they can't in most other areas in life. If you're going to work and performing really well, you're getting seen for something you're doing, but you're not getting seen for everything else below the surface doing, but you're not getting seen for everything else below the surface, and so this is one of those places where you do get to experience seen, safe and soothed.

Speaker 2: 26:08

So, going back to hosting, you don't have to provide food, you don't have to provide alcohol. Some guys will bring. I always tell people it's BYOB. If you want to bring something, bring it. If somebody doesn't drink, let's honor that fully. And then usually I'll light up a cigar. Usually one or two other people will, but none of that's a requirement. It's really about the relationships, not cigars. It's not about drinks, it's not about snacks.

Speaker 1: 26:32

It's about just a campfire, with men who are willing to go there learn more about fire nights, go down to the link in the show notes and, of course, you can also reach out to Burke if you're interested in working with him. Burke, what is your favorite thing about healing and freedom from porn?

Speaker 2: 26:50

What I love is to be fully alive, and I can feel not only the pains in life which is part of being fully alive but also the joys.

Speaker 1: 27:01

Absolutely beautiful, the full range of human emotions. We need it, amen, burke. Thank you so much for being with us. My pleasure, brother. I'm really excited about Burke joining us at the Husband Material Retreat in September and in part two of this interview you are going to hear more about Burke's training and expertise in breathwork and how that can help you outgrow porn. Go down to the links in the show notes if you want to connect with Burke and always remember you are God's beloved son In you. He is well pleased.