Every Day Business Featuring Brett James Bishop
this is the everyday business show i'm going to do it to the best of my ability because if i fail that means i feel for my entire female nation i call it is that possible that was the question for myself and it is absolutely possible good afternoon australia good evening america and welcome to everyone listening across the planet i'm your host tony lontos and this is the everyday business show where we talk about life business and the universe and that's precisely what we're going to do today and in a moment i'm going to introduce you to an amazing young man but before i do that just a reminder if you're listening on linkedin facebook youtube twitch or twitter my beautiful va's hannah and renee are listening and waiting for your comments and questions and to send you any links for things that we talk about today and a big reminder too that we would love you to subscribe to our youtube channel um you can find us under tony lontis on youtube if you just search in the youtube search bar we're also visible on bbs radio and thank you so much to my amazing hosts bbs radio tv out of houston texas usa and the gorgeous tj who is the comforting voice i hear every week and every show before we go live to air calms my nerves and preps me for the show now a reminder that the replays of these shows the videos are available on binge networks usa and tony tv across all lg samsung and roku smart tvs across the planet now i've been doing a welcome to country each and every week and this week is no different it's a special acknowledgement of the part that our traditional and indigenous communities play in the development of our cultural identity so i want to respectfully acknowledge the people of the ugemba language region that is the gold coast queensland australia the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respect to the elders past and present and all aboriginal and torres strait islander people listening here today now i just want to say before i introduce you to the lovely brett james bishop that this morning i had the privilege of doing my first international virtual press conference announcing the collaboration between everyday women's network streaming tv the tony tv channel and zondra tv networks usa what a privilege it was to be the in the presence of such amazing women and please look forward to this space as gender sondra and i continue to expand the bounds on which you think about traditional tv linear tv and its replacement streaming tv which provides platforms for you to speak your truth and share your message and the reason i mention that today is because one of my passions is in life is giving voice to people who are courageous enough to talk about that story and my wonderful guest today is no different before i start the show though just a short warning that topics and discussion within this show today may trigger people listening and it's important for you to remember that there is help available for anything that this triggers in you today we will be talking along adult themes and having adult discussions and whilst predominantly we are a business show we are in the business of life and in life things happen so i want to introduce you to a very special young man brett james bishop and he's a filmmaker director writer he is a son a brother and an amazing friend and he and i have been online friends for quite some time now and we started a conversation back in 2019 around the documentary neverland talking about michael jackson and the neverland documentary had just been released and i'd been very vocal in commenting around my thoughts uh alluding to michael and the documentary and that's how brett and i started our conversation and back then i wanted to talk to brett um talked about his experience and and how triggering neverland in particular was for him and i made him a promise back then that if ever he wanted to talk about his story then i would give him space and time to do so and i want to remind the audience and want you to be very cognizant of the courage it takes a young man to step up and talk publicly about the trauma of life and so i want you to keep that forefront in your mind as i introduce you today to the wonderful brett good morning brett good evening in the us thank you for joining us today yes it is uh it is definitely evening but good morning or good afternoon to you it's it's it's morning afternoon evening somewhere across the planet isn't it we started a conversation as friends quite a while ago and um i was looking back over our conversations yesterday when i was um preparing for the show and wanting to remind people that it's really really important that we continue to have these conversations so i want to start at the beginning and with your permission i'd like to talk a little bit about growing up are you okay with that yeah ask away ask questions i'm here to answer okay so let's talk about what it was like growing up for you i am in utah in the united states utah is known to be very dominantly um um lds it's the latter day saints the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints so i was raised in the church um but the household i was raised in was pretty abusive um yes and i you know i i didn't know why when i was a kid i didn't know through childhood that things this was abuse i didn't know that this was trauma uh until high school and then starting to piece things through but growing up was you know you're presented the world that's given to you you exist in that reality that your parents create for you or maybe even lack thereof sometimes but it was it was it was it was all right until i realized what wasn't all right later on and that's the thing when we're children we only know the family and the environment to which we were born and it's often not until we grow and start to experience life as an adult that you start to question exactly what it means to you and the way you grew up so i want to talk briefly bret and for you to explain to the audience some of the fundamentals around the mormon religion if you're okay with that i don't know if i'd be the best person to talk i i mean i i guess i could try let's but uh the fundamentals is uh just where the church came from uh joseph smith was a it was a prophet and he was visited by heavenly father and jesus christ the holy ghost and was asked to create this this true church that had been left off the planet for a very long time and through there this dynasty has has been created uh and you know since the 18th 1860s and yeah now it's just the dominant religion it's it's it's very much in control of a lot of things here that some it shouldn't be uh but yeah so culturally though that's that's really where you can almost remove it from what the church is and what the church teaches to what how the members have taken it and how they have kind of cultified it in a way i don't even know if cultify is a word that is not altify is actually a great word yes okay i think it's i think it's a good word to use because in cults there is life only as the cult sees it and once you step out of sight of that you become estranged from the cult principles and practices and brett growing up did that mean for you that you didn't know much outside of the mormon church teachings until you got older definitely 100 100 it was all it's all about the culture and again there is a separation from what the church is to what the culture is and if you go anywhere outside of utah and you go to and you're part of the i'm just gonna say lds if that's okay uh the lds faith uh anywhere else it's a completely different community uh so it's mainly i i think the the stigmas are really big in utah more than anywhere else and brett is there any i'm trying to get an understanding of why this seems to center on poor old utah is it just because that's the home base for the religion yeah so um joseph is from the east coast and they were kind of persecuted once the church started gaining members at that time and they were forced to leave or refuse brigham young i apologize i know there's going to be a bunch of mormon uh specialists on on me with this i apologize the point being is at one point the church was was over east coast and they traveled and once they got to utah that's where the there's a famous saying where i believe is brigham young said this is the place and that's where they established themselves and have ever since so so utah seems to be the epicenter for the religion and help me understand some of the things that you experienced as being born into the mormon religion things i experienced basically were social what were social norms you could say uh within that um i remember like the first time i met i had a friend i think he was in fifth grade that was catholic and that was like a big deal because everyone else as far as i knew as far as i associated with was lbs so it was it was just kind of being in a bubble and of at certain ages you go through certain steps in the church and you you gain certain you know your advancements i'll say because i again i don't really want to speak for the church per se but it's you know there's that but again it's the culture that that is you know you you must be baptized at eight years old there's there's no question that you wouldn't choose they say you choose it but you're also eight years old um that you wouldn't choose to be baptized and then you become an official member of the church and whatnot and so yeah there's so those are the type of things uh growing up as far as what was expected i think is probably the best way to put it yeah brett um if i may um you talked about growing up in an abusive home can you explain to me what that meant for you in particular to explain that because i think this will be an ongoing thing today uh to explain that you have to go into the cycle and where did the cycle start so it didn't start with me or what happened to me it honestly it started with my mother and she was she was the oldest of all her siblings she was verbally physically spiritually abused from since the get-go her father was a raging alcoholic and abused her mother in front of her to the point where even her mother would yell out for my mom as a young girl to try to help so that that type of trauma and stigma like and again we're talking decades ago now we're barely getting to the point where we could have this conversation so imagine going back 50 years and dealing with that even maybe even longer and growing up so she was it's kind of a long-winded answer i apologize but she is she is again the oldest of her siblings so she in a way raised the siblings because the mother had her own situation going on but this was something where it's very hush-hush again culture now is tough in utah if you're kind of outside of the lds uh culture not to use the word again but but back then it was quiet they call them wards so that you gather together and you have your own wards of group of people depending on where you live and then there's those are those words make up stakes and anyway so when you're in your ward you put on back then mainly you put on your happy face and and nobody else is going on it i mean that's kind of probably how it was back at that point in america regardless maybe elsewhere as well yeah so she never got to talk or understand exactly what she was going through and she went straight from living with parents if you want to say parents to being married and when you get married uh especially back in that that time you were to be there very early and you were to have kids immediately and you were to have a lot of kids and i don't i'm sure that's very cultural versus i don't i don't remember reading in the book of mormon that you're supposed to have you know seven eight nine ten kids so i think that's mainly culture but it was so for her she went from raising her own siblings and then being expected to have her own kids now she had seven of her own i'm six so i'm i'm in the lower half but so with her i i think that that cycle of abuse happened because i don't i don't know how she yeah i don't i don't know i don't think she abused her siblings the way that she abused her own children and i think that i don't think she will ever understand that she was the abuser i think it's she is so gone with trauma and so absolutely broken that there's no way she's you know she would therapy would never be an option and all of that you know that that's available now that we can talk again as we are right now so i with what happened with me i have to go back to the cycle of that and i'm sure with her father i'm sure there is all sorts of stuff him growing up so you know that's what happens with that like you know as it does with any of these i'm just going to say no no please please don't apologize it's important i'll tell you why it's conversations because for many people they don't understand that what they're doing is abuse until you step outside and recognize oh my goodness i was abused and therefore unless i heal my own abuse it's gonna be perpetuated in my life going forward and so i know that you have done that and started on your healing journey and it's been incredibly difficult for you brett i know that um and and in sharing part of my own history around trauma is that you are only you're responsible for your own healing but you're not responsible for the healing of your parents your siblings or anyone else you can only do your own stuff um and it's incredibly hard to remove yourself from that cycle isn't it right absolutely the reason why i was saying sorry is i'm bobbing around a lot i actually just cut my leg open so i'm sitting here trying to like be very like i'm not you know good but it's it's not bad no it's not that it's i just really i really scraped it we're good by the way i am i am also we got to get this out i am also a super sarcastic and funny guy so if i had any points again i know that there are those watching and we talked about trigger warnings if there's at any time where if i laugh at something with abuse you're gonna see that it's really a defense mechanism okay good it's just gonna remind so bret just try not to though no no no but i this isn't a really important concept for the audience to grasp because recently we have a very prominent uh female in the public eye and her trauma is pretty recent when i say recent within the last 10 years and she was hounded by true by traditional media when she gave the prime minister the side eye and there was a whole range of conversation about the inappropriateness of her behavior i'm telling you from my perspective and from many experts perspective that side eye she gave the prime minister had zero to do with disrespect and everything to do with her trauma so from her trauma perspective he is a white male big guy in her space and the similarities between a man a white man in power and the similarities to her perpetrator were evident to me and anyone else who works in trauma and that's something we have to talk about brett that people who have suffered trauma may not react in the way that people think that they should or or that is acceptable in the community and that should be okay people need to understand that people in trauma recovering from trauma healing from trauma will have defense mechanisms that they have no control over that they may down the track be able to mend and mold to suit certain social norms but we should not expect that from them in the first instance and you're very vulnerably saying this is what happens for me the only way i can cope with this level of trauma is that i'm sarcastic and i laugh inappropriately and i think that as society we need to accept this in trauma and it's about trauma informed care and we need to be having the discussion more often don't you agree i do and i think the sarcasm started with not being able to approach the subject and and not being able to even even within myself you know approach the subject i have and i'm sure we'll get to this so i'm kind of jumping to the end here um you know but through my own meditation my own coping skills learning coping skills and going through alcoholics anonymous i have learned to settle that down and kind of you know put a little put a little lid on it but so i'm much better with with all of that because i've been able to go through it uh like that but i mean there's even siblings i have now that well can't even bring up or just flat out deny you know what what we went through and i i think the the bottom half of the kids kind of got it worse than the top so i don't know i wasn't around for all of them but that's kind of seems from story time and sharing what what they're willing to share seems like we kind of got it i didn't get as bad as my older brother like my older brother right above me he got it bad i was kind of i could i learned how to fly under the radar probably because of that yeah but so brett tell me about the moment that you sort of were conscious that what you'd suffered was abuse can you walk me through that yeah absolutely so it was it was high school so i went it's long story long but i you know middle school i didn't go to the middle school that i in the town i lived in i went with my dad he was a school teacher but he he there was a canyon in between my my middle school my backyard so i didn't really have a lot of friends and i just kind of stuck to myself but once we moved and i actually went to high school where i was living that's when i was able to start getting friends so i was no longer living in that little bubble per se and then when you're in elementary school you don't i i couldn't for me you only i didn't know yeah yes and that was and that was traumatic and i mean we can if you at some point if you want to talk about what even happened in childhood that was that was abuse i'll let you know i am totally i am i am happy for you to talk about that if you're comfortable breathing just for the audience again i'm issuing you a trigger warning but it's important that we have these conversations so people can recognize behavior for what it is so i'm going to hand over to you bret and in your own words let me rant i'm just kidding see that's the sarcasm that's the moment now um so to finish the thought with high school so i was able to get friends and when they would see first of all how very closed off my house was nobody was really allowed inside the house and for them to kind of see behavior and and i started getting feedback from them that hey this isn't normal you know it kind of felt like a full house episode i'm sure you all know full house you know where all of a sudden the kid from the outside comes into their perfect world and he's being abused and they're like wait this isn't right so i was that kid coming into their world and they're kind of like what you know what happens and i mean i even had like i even had a moment with with a sibling that beat up another sibling but i mean it wasn't like you know brother's fighting it was my my brother who was it was he was of out of school for two weeks and i had to lie about why he was at a heist and why he was not attending school so i was i and everyone that comes with threatening but i mean so we can even move backwards my mom did a lot of things where she expected a lot from my dad my dad was a marine he then army reserve was a mechanic and a school teacher at the same time so he wasn't around too much which that was kind of the staple i want to say culturally or expected that the dad works and the mom stays home and raises the kids and does the cooking and all that now we're going back to this you know the cleavers type you know leave it to beaver type idea but yeah in a more realistic deranged type of way and so you know my dad and i never i never really had a dad in the traditional sense i mean i had a dad and he was when he was there it was fine but it wasn't ever a bonding you know type thing ever and so anyway so she would expect a lot from him put a lot on his plate put a lot of expectation and pressure and when he didn't deliver it was all out hell and a lot and there was times where i would wait i would we would wake up when we were first grade second grade third grade young kids you know six seven eight nine years old and the my mom would be on the floor crying saying that my dad did something where if you if you come home and the furniture is gone if you come home and your bed is gone and you know when you are a second grader you're hoping that's hard and so it is yeah that i mean it's true so i'm going to school and i'm not doing well well because i'm thinking am i going to have a house to come back to and it was really all of just playing it's almost like they were divorced without being divorced and kind of using the kids so it was a lot of that but my mom was also very again for whatever reasons you know i want i don't want to justify it but for the for the reasons that it happened was she would abuse in a way of physical she had a yardstick that she would yes rail on us um if it was there's a shoe that's next to her that she can throw an open unopened cola cans i mean ouch and it's to the face it's not it's not too anywhere and i actually realized that even as we got older into high school the violence got worse because it became less close combat because we're bigger and it became more of what can we throw you and i remember i took that yardstick and i broke that into as many pieces as i can one day i buried it in my backyard i remember that that was that was cathartic i suppose but um anyway but uh yeah there it is and so with again high school having those friends and you start realizing oh this isn't right okay yeah the reason why i stayed outside so much when i was a little kid wasn't because i had a great imagination which i do and i was playing outside of stuff but it was really a way of just staying away and seeing the radar and not being part of things and it's i mean that's continued on and so that's where the complex ptsd comes in that too because that complex ptsd is is rough i wasn't diagnosed with that until even after even after we we've been talking that yes anyway i don't know if i'm jumping here so no no that's fine i i wanted to have an organic conversation about trauma in general so in talking about uh ptsd i guess the simplest way is that you have experienced trauma and from a young age that has created pathways in your brain that trigger you to react when you're in certain circuit situations and it's fear-based because your body is trying to protect you from what you perceive as fear because what you experienced as a child was fearful and scary and so going forward into your adult life it keeps happening even though you've moved out of the family home you're living an independent life it still happens your brain keeps trying to protect you and you have to learn how to deal with that don't you brett right well yeah that's a that's a very that's there's a lot with that there is a lot with that i mean and even i was just going to say in talking about trauma you people have to understand that decades of trauma takes double decades to heal and move out of so one of the important conversations that we should be having in society is when we know and find children from uh suffering from trauma our first point of call should be counseling and therapy because statistically if we don't help immediately then you and i are dealing with these things as adults and in adulthood it takes decades to navigate through as you know brett yeah absolutely and the thing about that is if if the cycle continues so you so with my dad not my dad sorry my mom my mother's getting confused and then her and she carried on the same cycle correct um there are i i can't speak to my other siblings i don't know how they parent i know that my brother are older than right older than me that had it really bad i gotta read that yes made a point and i remember we had conversations as we were kids saying we will never raise our kids this way so we actually didn't recognize to yeah a very small extent that there wasn't something exactly right uh and he's done an amazing job with his job he has absolutely switched it the the thing with me is i can i didn't realize this until recently i continued the cycle of abuse but it wasn't outward it was inward that's the next that's the next thing that we need to talk about wherever alcoholism drug abuse promiscuity uh anti-social behaviour exist unless there's a diagnosed uh psychological reason for that it usually goes back to trauma in most instances if you go back far enough there will be trauma driving drug abuse alcoholism sexual abuse childhood abuse it's not inherent in human nature for these things to happen they happen for a reason and for and as bread is demonstrating sometimes this is intergenerational multi-generational and it takes courage and acceptance to move yourself out of these cycles and to start to heal it takes courage to heal it takes courage to talk about it it takes courage to have conversations about what this looks like for me it takes courage and vulnerability to talk about what it's like living in that depths of blackness and despair because of trauma right and to add to that i'm multi-layers here so for me of course i beat myself up all the time i don't know oh yeah i believe myself and yeah i was actually going to send you a little meme that i saw earlier but i was like i don't want to harass her so i'll just tell her later you never harass me never and yes that's the thing and that's the thing too inherent in all trauma is that lack of self-belief and i know in for me it's taken 50 years to have some level of self-belief and all it takes is a mistake on an email tech messing up and i go back to that place of i'm not good enough who the hell do i think i am who the hell do i think i'm why am i trying you know i know those stories in my head i know what it comes back at me and it's a constant no you're okay you're safe you're supported life is okay now this is just a glitch nothing more than a glitch yeah and well that's perfectly said cause what the beam was saying i'm going to just paraphrase it with some of the long lines of like when you're feeling that you're struggling when you're feeling like you're at your lowest somebody else is admiring how strong you are and so it's like that goes both ways and so like you're feeling like that but i look at you like you're amazing you've done look at what you've done look at all the accomplishments and then vice versa you know you you yeah i know i'm i think i'm equally yes i don't know see and from my perspective i think that if all you ever do is get yourself out of that trauma cycle that's enough like because that's a big deal that's a really big deal and i think there's getting out of the cycle and then they're staying out of cycles so i i know that's like two different things but it's it's working on it every day and it's unfortunately that's your life and it sucks but the thing i want to i kind of want to bring up and kind of put a spotlight on is i don't know if that was and this is just something i got in me that i wanted to that told me to kind of bring it up i'm wondering if there are listeners that have never considered that the cycle of abuse can't continue with with them but within themselves i i think with us yeah we've worked through that but at one point that would have been mind-blowing for me to be like oh that's why i do that that's why i drink so much or even even if you don't drink say you stay away from drugs and what everything's bad you there'll be something there'll be something that's why i can't connect you workaholic a workaholic or i can't connect emotionally with with someone that i i'm dating or whatever they don't date and flurry things so it's you know once you once you can step back and draw that line back to where it started or those things you know that's that's where so i just i i really want to put polyline because that again would have been 15 years ago 10 years ago would have been mind-blowing i agree i agree um things that i talk about in and around trauma now had i known back then they would have been life-changing so it's why i feel so passionately um about making sure people understand about the trauma cycle and inheritance it comes through your dna um the trauma sits in your dna so you have to first use awareness next is counselling and healing and then third is to keep continuing your life and what that looks like and doing what you're passionate about now before i get on to what you do now i just wanted to quickly touch on what it was like discovering that in amongst all of this trauma that you discovered that you were gay how did that play out for you because again that's just another element of the way society treats us and it should be just a normal part of life oh i'm heterosexual oh i'm gay oh i'm bisexual it's okay you know you love who you love right uh it was kind of second nature it was always there and i don't i remember my my family was super racist and also very big with anything and so yeah there it was just across the board it was such a good time and again yes i'm sarcasm but it was very traumatic traumatic but um i just i i didn't really ever second-guess it i was again i was i learned as i said earlier i learned how to fly under the radar and not really you know know if it's long if i wasn't yeah if i was on that radar then i was fine now don't get me wrong i was on it a lot i did a lot of i was a hyper hyper kid i was all over the place to get into trouble all the time but i learned how to kind of balance that but yeah with with that being said um i just remember watching i don't know if you guys have saved by the bell out where you're at or yes you know yeah so i know saved by the bell yeah yeah so i was always like i i want to be like kelly not that i want to be female but it's like i want to have a guy like zach when i'm in high school and that was just it it wasn't anything i remember i never paid attention to gender and i never paid attention to its sexuality so as much as i played superman which was primary um i would play wonder woman just as much and it was more about storytelling to be real with you it's more about me sculpting you know different different episodes and that's something my parents always made fun of me for no not in a bad way but just you know pokes fun because i was like most kids are on playgrounds and they kind of just do you know it's a bank robbery whatever i would go out and i would play you know an episode i would have a first act second act conflict and then there were you know resolution i'd have commercial breaks i would you know and i just admitted to what i saw as a kid amazing from from three four or five years old it was it was insane but wow i would love to talk about our initial our initial thing that brought us together which was the levy neverland documentary yes because i don't know if we were going you know that's fine because i had such a powerful reaction to that and i know that you did too and that's actually what started our conversation so yeah over to you brett oh okay um first of all i was the biggest well i want to say biggest i was a huge michael jackson fan yeah michael jackson i had the posters and all of you i had had dvds and like music videos they're kind of like rare as far as i could tell but i mean i had everything it didn't matter how many copies were released i had that i had all the copies and whatnot i remember when he died i i remember exactly where i was i remember like the feeling of loss because i was kind of closeted because michael jackson wasn't very super popular at least in the united states when he died uh or especially the decade before so yeah if you were a michael jackson fan unless you had like you know a really good self-esteem of thick skin you were kind of a closeted michael jackson fan so i would listen to his music when horrible things happen if i went you know i had a friend die or whatever it was i'd always go back to his music and then i i did in the in the beginning of june of 2009 i had a really close friend of mine passed away from suicide and i would listen i was listening to michael jackson straight through and then three weeks later michael jackson died and that's almost like what do i do now so that's just i i really have to make sure i really put a point on that so then when leaving neverland was coming out it was coming to sundance which is here in utah i go to park city every year so but when i heard you know wade robson was one of the guys i was like dude this guy used to dance with him like this guy's a liar like there's no way that this is real and yeah i did kind of i did boycott sundance because i thought it was ridiculously added because i was just you know the michael jackson fan that's going to defend no matter what and then i think it was the beginning of march or something was on hbo or that year yeah 2018 and i i said okay i'm gonna go into it because i i even had court documents that were public that i just had to print it out in a binder so i would know my stuff like i said i'd go to go you know toe to toe with somebody with it and as i watched this documentary the more it fell in line with so many things that weren't even being discussed but yeah timelines yeah and how they brought the receipts i mean that's that yeah that's that phrase they had the receipts they brought it and even if there's a few little tiny moments that they may seem like memory or whatever there's there was way too much there was not to have happened yeah so i remember i turned off i think i went through because it's four hours i i believe i'm with you yeah and i was i remember us talking about that bret that you couldn't watch it all the way through because how triggered you were but i did and i did it all one night but yeah i had to i had to take like an hour break and i and then after that i didn't talk to anybody for three days and i know that sounds incredibly dramatic but it's here's this here's the thing from my childhood i felt safe yeah michael jackson and i didn't realize this until later and that safety's just been taken away from you yep yep he was all about children he was all about as far as like i'm here for you heal the world you know that's what i grew up with within an abusive household so there's a lot of reasons why that shouldn't once you know that you know my reaction doesn't seem too dramatic it seems pretty nice pretty pretty as expected yeah but the thing with with james and this is the main thing i was talking to you about james safety is the other guy and this is what really got me is that it actually made me remember a sexual assault i had when i was five or six and this is really what we we initially talked about and i didn't realize that it was sexual assault i am how old am i i was like 37 37 like or 38 you're now 36 37 doesn't matter you know really late to my in my 30s finally realizing that 30 years from now oh no that this was actually a sexual abuse thing because of the way it happened and i can go into that story but it's you know i was never it was just it was a sexual assault by yes my friends my friend's dad and yeah they my friend okay this is a trigger warning i know you did it but this is yes we'll keep doing it that's fine and i'll still kind of paint her out a bit i'll i'll give you enough um my friend and i were we're playing we're around same age and we're young five or six and then he started wanting to play a sexually charged you know kind of not a role play but kind of a thing that we did back and forth and had to do playing with with areas and things like that and i you know i'm a little kid i did yeah you don't know you just don't know yeah and so i was like uh okay i'm like well i'm like i don't know how a bro obviously i'm not gonna tell you how it was brought up i remember that somehow he told me that his dad would play with him and that's that's and then he started to explain how his father looks in you know that private area versus and yeah things like there's hair you know and things like that and that's that was actually my introduction to that and i was like that's interesting because i'm a kid i'm like that's weird i wonder what that looks like and i had i guess you know that he told his dad at some point and then and we were playing sometime later weeks yeah months maybe i don't know and his dad came home and he goes hey i heard that you were interested in this and so he revealed himself to me and actually had me touch him and that's the extent it went not that that's not horrible by itself so was there was never anything beyond that but he made sure i knew hey you were interested you asked me to see it this is all on you i would have never done this if you didn't ask for it and so but you are age six-year-old i thought okay well i'm not gonna say anything i don't want any trouble my little brain's not gonna go super deep and tonight it's just oh i'm not getting in trouble but it seemed to just not have i don't want to say it didn't bother me cause it really did when you look back on how things progress but but once the leaving never landed it was something with james safe safe chuck yeah i'm trying to remember where it was but i can't remember but there was something how he said it yeah i think it's about the rings the microwave yes yes and when i saw i first of all i wanted to be james's best friend at that point i still hope to meet him someday they were getting closer to some day but um but then it was very much of like oh no yeah oh that was that that's because he was a good guy he was a nice guy he was i don't want to hurt him get into trouble and that's really what it was even now i'm feeling like like yeah that anxiety of i don't want to get him in trouble yeah exactly no but that that's part of the reason why these crimes happen is because little people don't want to get big people in trouble and we forget that that adult is the power in the situation not the child it's got nothing to do they have no power they have no ability to get themselves out of that situation it's the wrongdoing of the adults and the adult in turn may have had that happen to them as a child but it still doesn't make it right and as you said brett often times for many many many many many many people they don't realize the trauma until decades later you know people have written to me about being 75 and realizing because they've read a book or watched something and they've been triggered and thought oh my goodness that's what happened yeah and it's it sorry and it's and it's because they've popped it down so deep and buried it so deep and it impacts on their lives in ways that they don't know until they start that journey of healing and discovery and to live your life and and and the thing is brett that lack of healing in trauma robs you of your best life do you know what i mean so from my perspective little brett could have been um a global filmmaker of note yes and the trauma robs that potential and that's not to say that it can't happen because i actually believe that it can still happen and you are producing great content and movies now and there's nothing to say that you won't continue to do that and build on that for the rest of your life but the potential that you had as a six-year-old is robbed from you because of trauma which is why it's so important to recognize the what can happen and what it robs a child of unless they get help and assistance counseling and therapy right there's no other way around it is there brett no and i think just having the education kind of as what you're saying having the education of what that is and what child and sexual abuse is so i didn't i'm gonna assume i didn't recognize it as abuse because it wasn't like i was it wasn't these graphic horrible like the main like mean correct no type things and so i don't know whatever abuse but it's still abused it's still abuse and even when i thought about it when i when after watching the documentary even as i still was processing it i the first person i told i can't remember such a blur but i was just like you know this is what happened with me but i don't feel like that was that's not molestation because i i asked for it and he cut me off is my friend blake actually he's he's a psychologist now and he comes out and he said yeah you were a child in the situation end of story there's no other that's it end of story end of story and it's and it's not just children it's it's women if there's someone in a position of power be they male or female are they are the power holders they are the ones that either perpetrate a crime or they have a decision to make around whether they um abuse someone and it's about power and so the person in power has the control so the other person doesn't so it's never ever ever your fault i don't care what anyone says no one asks to be abused or raped assaulted no one and if you are abused raped or assaulted it's not your fault it doesn't matter what you say it doesn't matter what you do it doesn't matter what you wear it doesn't matter where you're at it doesn't matter about your age you are the victim the other person has the power they are the perpetrator they are at fault and we in as a society we need to stop blaming victims we mean because because victims bash themselves up enough because i know what goes through your brain why was i there why did i ask that question if i hadn't done this this wouldn't have happened if i hadn't said that we bash ourselves up enough without society doing a pile on as well and i remember particularly in the aftermath of the michael jackson documentaries people saying oh but those kids the parents shouldn't have let the kids be there no michael is the adult in the situation he has the control by virtue of celebrity and power and money and gaslighting yeah yeah and like we could have a whole show on what gas lighting looks like and how it we absolutely i was just i'm looking at the time going i just haven't quite have enough time with no no no no no no we'll do it later we'll do it another show another time i'll get back get bracket bret back again because people need to understand that these people in in powerful positions that perpetrate these crimes they just want to get away they that they just want to get away with what they're doing and they will lie they will gaslight they will cause you to believe that it's your fault and what i'm saying is never ever ever blame a victim always believe a woman always believe a child and yes i can hear the naysayers going no but they lie do you know that actual percentage of people that lie about crimes like that one percent so if you believe a hundred percent then 99 of the time you will be showing your love and support for that person that that person that's just disclosed and i'm telling you that the first time someone discloses if you don't believe them you triple the impact of their trauma so your listening audience someone discloses to you you fuse to believe them for whatever reason you triple the cost to them mentally and that's not okay it's not okay you can you you can um if you go from the perspective of always believing them then down the track you can you can change from your mind but if it isn't true in that one percent of cases then you've actually damaged the whole process for everyone else does that make sense and i think let me add to that that's okay and see if you see if you agree um even if there's a moment or there's something new where you don't necessarily believe them or it's something that's kind of hard to believe i might say i would say take a step back and look at them and think to yourself what do they need right now in this situation other than absolutely i might not believe it but what can i provide them that they need in this moment and if it's something like attention and they're not not a negative way but attention of just needing to get off their chest if it's something where it's something violent has just happened we need to get authorities involved or you know they want to go back support it even if you don't necessarily believe it right off the bat absolutely absolutely i i think that that is just one of the keys that people need to remember that in that instance when someone discloses or tells you about something of of this nature you need to just listen to them because whether it's true or not is actually irrelevant irrelevant part of their healing journey is that disclosure that point in time starts their healing yeah but yeah hopefully yeah yeah you know it at least gives them someone they're not one person anymore they're two you know they have somebody that's listening to him so and the other powerful thing about that is that those stories whilst they remain untold hold power over you the moment that you open yourself up and talk about that story it ceases to hold power over you and your life starts the healing process and i know this works because not only have i seen brett's journey not only have i observed on the sideline brett's journey i've observed and seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other people walk the same way and i know that these concepts we're talking about are important and i know that people we need to treat trauma in a different way brett because we need to have whole adults i don't want any more little breaths being robbed of their potential because we didn't manage their trauma correctly in the first instance you know because someone would have known that little six-year-old brett was suffering in some way someone would have picked it up a mother a friend a school teacher someone would have had a moment that caused them pause that what that they would have said oh gosh something's not right in brett's life someone but they didn't act on it yeah they didn't act on it with the cultural how we talked about that earlier of how you're supposed to be as a family yeah we we hit it well we ever if you knew my mom outside of the household she was the nicest and she she is nice yes yes yeah some great things for people but i really wish you a lot i am so grateful that you are here that you do have the courage and vulnerability to talk about this it lights my soul when young men have the courage to have these difficult conversations because they make it better for all the young men across the planet and the older men too to have these discussions and we need strong men we need recovered men we need healed men if ever in humanity now's the time for men to seek healing and tell their stories brett james bishop i am so privileged to have you on the show today we are completely out of time we are going to do we are going to do this again and make sure that we have further conversations because i believe it is so important wonderful audience please thank my desperate james bishop today we will be back again thank you for listening to the everyday business show i'm your host tony lontis and we will be back next week with another show thank you so much brett thank you appreciate it bye for now everyone i'm going to do it to the best of my ability because if i fail that means i feel for my entire female nation i call it you
2022-05-25 13:24
