Dr. Paul Conti

that we'll look anywhere but at that.

What ends up happening is when the person puts words to it, right?

It could be in writing, it could be talking to a trusted other or with a therapist, right?

Things start to change.

I mean, just the fact that you can talk about it, you can put words to it and other people don't recoil.

That example of the person who says, okay, I was abused by a coach when I was a child.

And once they start talking about it, then they start talking about how,

you know, they were just innocent kids, right?

And like, they didn't know.

And like, they really wanted to be on the team where this coach was treating them as special.

And now they can look at themselves from the outside, right?

They can look at themselves like they would look at someone else.

You think it's so easy.

for us to see what's real and true if it's someone else, right?

If you ask someone, what do you think of someone who's 10, 11 years old, who's abused and manipulated and abused by an adult?

We say, oh my goodness, I feel compassion for that person, right?

But if it's us, right?

Then, oh no, it's guilt and shame and we have to hide it away.

And when the person starts looking at it, they can sort of see it from the outside and it starts to take the energy out of it.

All the guilt and shame inside the person gets juxtaposed to like, what really happened there?