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. Thank you for listening to my interview with Roy Wooten.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Roy leads the Crucible Project, an international ministry igniting Christ-like change through experiences of radical honesty and grace. I'm a big fan of Crucible and I love Roy. You're going to hear his vulnerable story of how he grew up, experienced trauma and what it has looked like for him to love the boy within him. You're also going to get some insight on the concept of the shadow, which is a really helpful concept for understanding what happens as we're growing up and there are parts of us that we don't like things we've done or that have been done to us that we wish weren't true. So often these things lead us to live in secrecy and hiding, and Roy gives a beautiful vision for what it looks like to come out of hiding, to get unstuck and to heal. Enjoy the episode Today.

Speaker 1: 1:14

I am thrilled to be talking with Roy Wooten, who has become a really close friend. He is the executive director of the Crucible Project and the author of Unstuck Seven Steps to Break Free and Live Courageously. This past year I got to go to a Crucible weekend together with many members of the Husband Material Leadership Team, and we did some really good work. They held space for us in a way. That was beautiful, with being able to go deeper into healing, breaking free For me. I've had some residual addictive behavior that I have been working through, and Crucible has played a big role in giving me exactly what I needed to take my next steps. Roy, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:58

Yeah, it's such a pleasure to be with you, drew. I love what God has you up to. I love how you courageously are going after it. It just blows me away the impact that you're having and honored that you invited me to be with your leaders at a retreat of husband material. That was just incredible and that you trusted us to do some work on yourself at.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Crucible. I love the alignment in many areas that I see between husband, material and Crucible. One of the topics that I love that Crucible emphasizes is the shadow, the concept of parts of our lives that we deny or that we hide or that we're not even aware of. Roy, what is the shadow?

Speaker 2: 2:53

An unconscious part of ourself that is just like part of growing up. We threw things back there in our shadow, which stays with us always. The things we hide, repress and deny can be sinful things. It can be things that were done to us, right, the parts of us that we don't want to think about. We think we dealt with them because we don't think about them as often as we used to, but it's still there and it really is even things that we put in shadow, that may not be sin or sinful, that we just hide. We don't want other people to know. So we grow up and we're creative and we're curious, and our family of origin isn't really into opening or letting men or boys be creative and curious, and so we just take that and we stuff it and we decide we've got to not show that and in fact, over time, we can start to dislike that part of us. Certainly anything about us and our history, anything about our personality, our character, any of the behaviors that we've engaged in or that have been done to, things that have been done to us that we don't want to think about and that we don't want to, even certainly don't want anyone else in the world to know. Those things are the things that are in shadow. And back there we believe in shadow, in secret, you know, away from our thinking, part of ourselves. It actually takes on some power that the more it stays secret, the more we're separated from it and distant from it, the more powerful it is, and that it just doesn't go away. But then it starts to drive some of the things we do. Most of the things that we do that we don't want to do have its origin in those things back there that we don't want to think about ourselves. And one of the other things that happens so frequently happens you know, it was a big aha in my life is when we are judging other people and we tend to see those things that we have in our shadow in them. And the things that we protest the most about usually are because there's some shadow part of me that I have just not accepted about myself. Shadow can drive everything that we do.

Speaker 2: 5:11

So I grew up in a home that was loving and poor, working class, you know, trailer park. My dad worked in the oil fields out in West Texas and a nurturing, warm home turned dangerous when my mom had her first psychiatric break when I was five. One of my memories is sitting in a squad car holding my little brother I had tried to protect all week and watching my dad on the porch with a lawman riding on a pad, cowboy hat and all, and my mom is screaming and yelling. She's tied up in a gurney, being put into an ambulance as she leaves to go to a psych hospital for several months. That's what they did in the 70s and in that moment probably not a small T trauma, but a big T trauma was a message that I took on for myself, probably whispered by Satan that you're not valuable, you're not worthy of being loved. And as my mom returned from the hospital several months later, the secret was you can't tell anyone about this and we have to look normal.

Speaker 2: 6:30

Normal was a big word in my family, so don't tell anyone about all the bad things that happen and let's look normal. And normal for me was a command, an obligation to perform academically and athletically and at church, to be the best that I could be. The more I achieved, the more normal we looked. And so you know, over in shadow, whenever I started doing my work on myself around these things, the discovery was I still had a little boy in me who wondered if he was worthy, and the thing that had driven a lot of my success in my career was this little boy who, part of me that said if I don't perform, if I don't achieve, if I don't accomplish, then I will be rejected and I will never find love.

Speaker 2: 7:28

So it's been a long journey to not just hide it and then start to get healing by recognizing it and see that it's there, but to actually go to the little boy and say, yeah, what did you need in those moments?

Speaker 2: 7:45

What did you want for yourself?

Speaker 2: 7:47

And to become an advocate and care for and love and give the little boy the things that he did not get from his parents in those moments, and to become a champion and a guide and to help him get what he needs through healthy ways instead of some of the ways that they would pop out.

Speaker 2: 8:08

This is what we believe at Crucible, that you got to face it the way that I think you know. Jeremiah has called us to look within ourselves. Ezekiel the psalmist says you know, search my heart, oh God. We have to look within ourselves to face whatever it is that we've been hiding, repressing and denying, that we've been running from in order for it not to control us, but for us to have some control over the way forward, and becoming an advocate for the good things that it wants and needs, so that it can get it in healthy ways. Is that maturing of the faith? It's that continued sanctification process that Paul talks about, and that's, you know, those are the kinds of ways that we think about shadow at the Crucible Project ways that we think about shadow at the Crucible Project.

Speaker 1: 9:07

I love that so much. Heal the boy to free the man.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 9:12

So we can put painful experiences into our shadow, we can put the little boy within us into our shadow. It's like a backpack that gets bigger over the years when we continue to not have a safe place to truly share and be vulnerable. We carry that backpack and one of the heaviest things that we put in that backpack of our shadow is sexual experiences, sexual thoughts and feelings, fantasies, relationship with porn. It truly does have a lot more power over us when we keep it a secret or when we don't really deal with it.

Speaker 2: 9:56

Yes, and shame can not only be a result of our acting out or our fantasies or however we're judging ourselves around those things, but it can also be a driver of those things that I want to separate from and say, well, that's not really me, that's not really like me. And in my shame response to that, we find ourselves going back to the very things that we for soothing, for numbing, for escape, some ways of running and hiding, the very things that brought us the shame to begin with. We get in a cycle and then all of a sudden, it feels like we don't have any control over it. It's an addiction.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Absolutely. Can you give an example of putting something sexual in your shadow?

Speaker 2: 10:52

Yeah, me personally my mom would go to a psych hospital and we would be farmed out to be cared for by others for two or three months and then we'd be all back together. Sometimes it was family, sometimes it was a couple from church. It was different almost every time, and one of the times my uncle, who really hadn't paid much attention to us, invited us to come stay with him and they lived on the wealthier part of town and the first night he sexually molested me and then he continued to do that during the course of my stay. Now being taught at five, we want to look normal and then we've got to keep family secrets set me up for at 12. When that happened it being a secret and not telling anyone there wasn't going to be anyone that I felt safe to tell I went off to summer camp. Some folks at church paid my way for me to go to a summer camp that summer and there was enough freedom in there for my body to express this trauma in my life. I got physically sick and dehydrated so much that I ended up in the emergency room, and it was my body's way of communicating. Something bad is going on in my life, but my mouth never said anything to anyone.

Speaker 2: 12:26

Fast forward to the early years of my marriage. We had three or four years. There was just Debra and I before we got pregnant, and that was wonderful. By the way, 37 years together last May. So you know, by God's grace, yes. And so there's something that happens whenever a woman has a baby it's like every cell in her body is about that baby and that's what I experienced I was having, like we had a lot of fun together in those first four or five years of connecting and, you know, we were free without the kids. And then, all of a sudden, I was second, like I was the leftover of her energy for those first, like that year, 18 months. And it was during that time that I started noticing women at church, women at work, the restaurant waitress, et cetera, that I really hadn't noticed before. I mean, they didn't, they paled in comparison to the beauty of my wife, but all of a sudden I was noticing them sexually and thinking of them sexually and in the absence of much connection in the house, every advertisement was getting my attention that had that was selling sex. Advertisement was getting my attention. That was selling sex. If you could say that Tabloids would come into the mail, would come to our house of the spring collection and the swimsuits, and all of that was getting all of my attention Found my courage and went and talked to my pastor and I said I'm really struggling with this.

Speaker 2: 13:58

I think I'm not the only one. How did you handle it when you were a young father? And he said I really never struggled with this, roy, but I'm going to get you connected to a couple of our leaders. So I met on a Saturday morning here. I was like 24, 25 years old, you know, they were in their 70s and we were drinking coffee and they had their bottles out and we prayed, and then they said what can we help you with? And I explained this to them and both of them denied that they had ever struggled with this before. And it sunk me. It sunk me. It said Roy, you're the only one who really struggles with this and you better not ever tell anyone, because you're that different and something is very wrong with you. So I just put all of that in the shadow and I acted like I didn't struggle for a long time, for a long time.

Speaker 1: 14:57

And I wonder if that season of not much sex at all in your marriage was also triggering the piece in your shadow of not being fully loved.

Speaker 2: 15:09

Oh, absolutely yeah. Anytime that my wife and I have an interaction where some desire of mine isn't met, that's where it usually lands in my heart. After doing so much work on myself, it still pops up occasionally. It wasn't long ago. I went out to eat. I had to run to take care of an errand for the family. They brought my meal home but they went and did some other things. So it was about four hours between when I left the table after I ordered my meal and whenever they got back to the house.

Speaker 2: 15:49

And for me, for Debra, my sweet wife, she was just connecting with her family and enjoying. They did some shopping, they went and saw my son, all without communicating to me. But for me it felt like you just don't love me, right? If you love me, you would have thought hey, I need to let him know we're not bringing him any food. Go ahead and eat.

Speaker 2: 16:11

And it triggers that little boy unloved part of me. That is not her fault, that's my stuff, right? It's not her fault that it triggers me there. And I can still make requests around how I would like for us to move forward around these things, but early in my marriage it was big hurt because I hadn't done any work on this. It was like I can't believe I married someone who doesn't love me, you know, and I've got to try harder to earn her love. And now it's an awareness that this is pinging this little part and I need to take care of my little boy myself. It's not my wife's responsibility to not step on my triggers. It's not her responsibility. It's my responsibility to make requests for what I want, right, to speak up, to set boundaries where I need to. But it's not, you know, it's not her fault that she accidentally steps on one of my triggers. It's my responsibility. What?

Speaker 1: 17:17

I do with it and that is so challenging and good. So what happened when you attended your first crucible weekend?

Speaker 2: 17:24

Yeah. So I had done some counseling in my early adult years you know, late teens and early 20s around my surviving sexual abuse and around the wounds of the abuse of my home and I thought I had really dealt with everything. And I went to a crucible weekend and God started dealing with me on all of that. God started dealing with me on things that were still left unhealed in those things and that's where I discovered that there's a little boy part of me who's just dying for me to come love and to square up with and to care for. I was able to do a piece of work that was just remarkable.

Speaker 2: 18:07

I got to have a conversation with the nurturing mom that disappeared whenever I was five, around all of the painful ways that I had been staying connected to her and the things that the struggle that I had been in around not feeling worthy and not feeling loved and having to earn that love. It was so powerful healing for me. I think if I had done it in a counseling office it would not have been so impactful, because I think part of what I've discovered about my own recovery and that I believe is true for all recovery is it has to happen in community that we need connection as part of the healing process and where they're doing their work too in front of me. The safer my circle is, the more safe I feel to go back into the darkest moments of my life and really look at things and find the little boy in it and take care of him.

Speaker 1: 19:09

That's just amazing. And also at a crucible weekend, everything is physical and embodied Rather than in a counseling office. It might just be talking about things.

Speaker 2: 19:22

Right, right. I think it would be difficult to live like doing a crucible weekend every day of your life. It is a unique place and we're not the only ones, but it is a unique place for that community and that healing, so that you can go back, if you're in therapy, to your therapy office with some clarity, with some motivation, with direction and a big leap in your healing journey.

Speaker 1: 19:53

Yeah, and that's exactly what happened for me when I went through my initial weekend in March. I had anger in my shadow, the way that I was treated being lectured, yelled at, spanked, misunderstood, with undiagnosed ADHD. That set me up to be bullied and that set me up for a lot of what came later and I believe porn is a bully as well. My work was accessing my anger that I had buried, that I had disconnected from and stepping into my power, reclaiming the truth that I do care and, man, it felt so good. I released some trauma and I reclaimed my strength, which was in my shadow. Like I am a strong person, but I have often viewed myself as not strong because I don't have this stereotypical masculinity. I'm six foot seven, but sometimes I feel like I'm four foot 11. And that's a bit of my shadow work.

Speaker 2: 21:06

Yeah, my heart's tender, tender for you and it's it really like sucks to go do work on yourself. It sucks, it's, it's painful and you know, and going into the wound, If it's been a festered wound, it's more painful than if you would have dealt with it in the moment, shortly after. But we got to go. It's through that darkness that we get to the other side, where now the darkness doesn't have the power over me, but I'm walking side by side with it and it doesn't mean I still won't get triggered, but I have a different way of dealing with it going forward. I'm in awareness and I've made my way out before. There's a path. That's new that if I keep moving in that path every time, it becomes the way that I do things going forward eventually.

Speaker 2: 22:02

So think about neural pathway development. You know it's like we revisit the scene of the crime, as it were, and we find a different way out of it than we ever have. And as we get triggered in the future when it pops, when it hits that we have a choice that we didn't have before to start burning a new path. So then it becomes the automatic way that we move eventually. That's so good. Bless you for going for it. Drew I mean, I really think it's one in a hundred thousand men would really go do this hard work right, Would really go back and get at the things that they've been hiding, repressing, denying. And those are the men that walk into a room, that people sense something's different about them. There's some authenticity about this man, and I don't know what it is, but I want to follow him, or I want to get to know him, or I want to be like him. It's going back and dealing with it that gets you to that place.

Speaker 1: 23:04

Yeah, I love how Crucible says if you want to experience radical grace, you need to be radically honest.

Speaker 2: 23:14

Yeah, jesus was full of grace and full of truth. And James 5.16 said you know, confess your sins one to another. I believe just confess the sins that you've done, but also the sins that have been done to you that it brings healing. Right, we don't confess for forgiveness. We confess to God for forgiveness he already forgives us for. But when we confess to others, there's healing in it. And I believe one of the best gifts of Crucible has been this idea that I need to have always in my life other men that I'm living confessionally up to date with that we are not hiding from each other anything and we're able to call each other out as if we sniff any BS. Right that we're able to call each other out on it, because that's how we can stay healed.

Speaker 1: 24:07

Amen, and there is something different about that kind of community, that kind of culture.

Speaker 2: 24:14

Yeah, you think about how he did life. He lived authentically with others as he did life and he taught us that we can not put our sadness in the shadow but cry. He taught us that we can find our anger and use it to accomplish good things. That we can face fearful things and even express fear, but not live with a spirit of fear. Then we can move through and go ahead, see the fearful thing and move with courage through it. I want to be more and more like Jesus in my masculinity, in my masculinity and whenever Jesus encountered somebody who was full of sexual shame he embraced everyone who knew they were broken.

Speaker 2: 25:13

Yeah, embraced and defended. He drew a line in the sand, as it were, and said don't touch this woman, right? Do not touch this woman who got in adultery, protected, saved her life and then, in a way, blessed her. He said yeah, I'm not wagging my finger at you, let's go live a good life. Right, you got a reboot here, a restart, and I think that's what he says to me, roy, in all your imperfections, I love you. You bring me pleasure. I will use you, even in your imperfection, because of your imperfections. And you are pure, you are pure.

Speaker 1: 25:48

Amen.

Speaker 2: 25:49

I know you're doing incredible things the triads and other ways of getting men together to be real with each other. I mean, that's the secret sauce that I think scripture speaks to and that the research says brings healing, and I'm very thankful for what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 26:06

Thanks and Roy, I'm excited about what you're doing too, especially at the Crucible Project. So you guys can go to thecrucibleprojectorg and if you scroll down to the bottom you can get a free PDF of Roy's book Unstuck. Can you say more about it?

Speaker 2: 26:23

Yeah, so Unstuck is our principles around these things that keep us, you know, doing things that we don't want to do or, you know, staying stuck because of fear. I took the principles of our retreat. These are our teachings. I took our teachings and put them in seven steps to break free and living courageously. Now, reading the book isn't going to get you unstuck, but doing the things per chapter that are discussed in the book will, and you'll need community, so we suggest you read it with others. But I would love to give to your community, drew, five copies of my book that if a man wants to get a copy, they can get it from you. Otherwise they can find it wherever they get their books.

Speaker 1: 27:11

Awesome. So if you want the PDF copy, go to thecrucibleprojectorg and we're giving away some physical copies inside the Husband Material community which you can join at husbandmaterialco. Roy, what is your favorite thing about getting unstuck and outgrowing porn?

Speaker 2: 27:38

myself like I was never loved before, and that is in the circle of other brothers who love me and that is in community with God as well. And so when I take a slip, I have a slip that I am able to practice these tools in community. That gets me through it again.

Speaker 1: 27:56

Beautiful. Thank you so much. Totally resonate with you and look up to you in that. Thanks for being on the show.

Speaker 2: 28:03

It was such a pleasure, Drew. Yeah, bless you Thanks.

Speaker 1: 28:07

Gentlemen, always remember you are God's beloved son. In you he is well pleased.