Ep.4-Opening Up About the Past To Your Loved Ones with Laban Ditchburn

I know you, you're afraid to speak up. You're scared of what other people think of you. And you blame yourself for what happened to you. I know how it feels. Because I've been there. If you found me, I'm so grateful you're here. This podcast will give you hope. And I'm your host in America Nova. And I'm going to hold your hand and provide the guidance. It's time for you to find your why. And turn your experience into your biggest power. This is your time now. So lock your door, put your headphones in, and enjoy.

Laban Michael ditchburn Welcome to the world's best charmer recovery podcast.

And American over. Thank you very much for having me on as a very special guest of this very special podcast.

Thank you, Yvonne. And my question to your layman, and it's a very, very tricky question. Why is it so important to open up about your childhood trauma? Any kind of?

Wow, you are not kidding. Thanks for a really powerful and confronting question that I think it had you asked me this. Five years ago, I would have really, really struggled to come up with any kind of answer. But thankfully, through some of my own experience, I'm in a much better position to answer this, in my own words, at least in my own experience. And I think, to answer your question, why it's so important is that when I was at the depths and the of my depravity and my gambling and my drinking, and my drugs, and my philandering and my negative self talk, and my limiting beliefs, and my autoimmune disease, and not finding the person of my dreams, and not finding my purpose. I found myself at home on a Tuesday night with my laptop open, and I had three bottles of appropriately priced Pinot Noir coursing its way through my vein and into my liver. And I was gambling at a horse race. In a country. It was an end spinning money that was not mine. Wasn't even watching it on the television, I was gambling on the laptop. And I had this moment of epiphany. And I was like, this is not the life that I imagined for myself. This is not the life that I imagined as a young man that I would be doing at 35 years of age. And as I hit that thought, and I looked in the bottom left hand corner of my laptop screen, and there was a phone number. Now I've been on that bet screen many many times before, never seen this number never even saw it. And it stuck out like dogs balls to me. And it was the number for the gamblers helpline. And I call the number without even thinking. And this beautiful voice clicked picked up the phone and said, Hello, this is your guardian angel speaking. Now that may not be the actual words that this darling woman used. And her last name I'll never know. But her first name was Mary and I call her my Mary Magdalene because she became my guardian angel whether she knew it or not. She She's listened without judgment. And that experience of being able to share what I was carrying with the world was one of the most profound powerful experiences of my life because I was able to release what I call the tether of burden. So fearful of what my friends and family and colleagues would think of me if they knew how much of a degenerate I was. Because on the surface of it my life was friends. Family messages on Facebook wishing people happy birthday, a good job money coming in. But underneath I was a deeply wounded young man affected really poorly by divorce. But that conversation with Mary flowed through into some counseling that I got for free through a professional gambler gamblers psychologist and spoke about the link between incredibly high rates of suicide that affect problem gamblers versus all the other hedonistic behaviors for drinking and the drugs because of how quickly you lose everything as a gambler So now I've reclaimed my power. I've reclaimed everything now, and I use it as my superpower. And so that is why I think it's super important

that we share our traumas with people. This is so powerful. Amen. Thank you so much for sharing. My in, you're right, the first step doesn't need to be HUGE step, you just need to have a courage to do the baby step. And that's how everything would start. So what was it where these trauma where were these escaped ism was coming from?

Well, I love that you asked that. And for me, and it was amazing. It's nothing more innocuous than being a child of divorce. And I had a mum and a dad who did the best they could with the tools they had available. But they were ill equipped at times in their life, to esteem themselves to set boundaries for themselves, let alone their children. And I grew up without the necessary tools to be a functioning, functional man. And I had a lot of resentment towards them for a long time for what they did to me. But the real breakthroughs was when I started to forgive them, and I have forgiven them. And by forgiving them and allowed me to forgive myself. And when I forgave myself, I was able to love myself. And when I finally got to a point where I love the person that I am, I was then able to be loved. And then that's when you came into my world.

And I'm so grateful to be in your world, because what you showed me is the power of vulnerability. And I was able to feel safely enough to open up to you Leyburn, before I jump into my, my main question, I want to ask you, what are the biggest challenges you're experiencing with people at work in the family after you were opening up to them?

Well, I I remember distinctly the fear of being found out the shame. If people knew what kind of man I was on the surface of it, I was so well adjusted. I dressed well, I wasn't in the gutter. I wasn't a homeless person. And I don't even want to say that out loud. Because it's not fair for me to judge what a homeless person does. They might be they might be there by choice. But the fear of being found out was so scary for such a long time that it stopped me from asking for help. And what happened was I spiraled and spiraled and spiraled, and I ended up crashing into rock bottom, and skidding and bouncing along the floor of rock bottom. And then the pain of being on the floor outweighed the pain of being found out by my friends and family. And that was the point where I decided no more. I'm going to ask for help. And I'm going to ask for help so I can remain strong. Not so that I appear weak and I'm going to keep asking for help until I get it.

Thanks livan. But what would be your ideal situation? How would you love your family and friends receive this news that you're you're struggling that you had a trauma? How would you love like them to react in the ideal world?

In an ideal scenario, I suppose everyone wants the same thing. They they want to be embraced and told it's going to be okay. They want the intervention to to end with group hugs and Kumbaya. And the reality is that, although that can happen, it's not often the case. And I think the more prepared people are for what to expect when they go through these experiences. The better handled you know, the most fearful things in our life are often the things that we don't know about. And I'm willing to share shed as much light as I can on that experience of Asking for help and just what how wonderfully liberating it was. And in terms of sharing it with friends and family I'm in I'm, I've moved into a place in my life where what people think of me is not any of my business anymore. That don't pay my bills, they don't put food on my table. They don't, they're not inside my head, I gotta look after myself, because no one's no one's coming to save me, no one's coming to save us. But by asking for help, to the right people. Intuitively, you know, you can get that leg out that you need, you can get that person to put that face mask on with the plane that's lost, or it's cabin pressure. And your arms are paralyzed, you can get that mask put on you. And then once you got the oxygen back, then you can start looking after yourself.

Wow. Laban would you love to share how your life changed after you opened up completely, and decided to take your life into your hands?

Well, the most obvious first place to start would be becoming consciously incompetent. And we go from a place of being unconsciously incompetent, where we don't know that we are making mistakes. And when you get to consciously incompetent, you become aware that you are making mistakes. And then you want to try and move to consciously mastered. But that takes some time. But when I had some wonderful advice from the gambling psychology spoke about the link between escapism behavior, and coping mechanisms that children develop as a result of growing up in a less than nurturing environment, which is a real fancy way of saying, you grew up in a traumatic environment, and you use coping mechanisms to survive. And when I was young, it was computer games and hours and hours and hours nonstop of television and movies and immersing myself in a world that didn't hurt. And when I got access to the psychologist, she gave me a gift, she gave me the gift of what I like to call reverse engineering my problems. I need to understand how things work before I do them, and before I understand them properly, it's just how I learned. And with the knowledge that she gave me, it was enough of a spark for me to go on this journey of discovery, self discovery, self care and self love. And the more that I understood what went on, the better I could address it and the faster I could heal. And I'm very proud to stand before you today to share that it's been five and a half years since I had my last drink six years longer for gambling and drugs. The negative self talk the limiting beliefs, the autoimmune disease before mission, found my purpose as the world's best courage coach. Well, on my way to becoming the world's most positively influential speaker. I started running ultra marathons out of the blue and started breaking through the glass ceiling in my mind of what was possible after I could put my body through a 60 mile event or 100 Kilometer event. Our brains and our minds and our souls and spirits are far stronger than we give them credit for.

Later on. This is so powerful, because I've experienced some of the feelings, some of the emotions that you you've been going through in my healing journey. And I haven't been drinking for nearly two years. I quit coffee, no smoking, no drugs. And you know what my biggest drug right now is to hear some really wonderful messages and feedback from people how I help them to change my life. So and that's what you do label right now. You share your experience with people, you share your struggles, and you share your amazing achievements to show that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And it's in your wonderful book, but on you did you have any any fear or shame or some sort of concerns before you publish your book? Look that your friends gonna find out about you.

Oh my God, Father, well, I might be the world's best courage coach, but you are the most courageous person I've ever met in my life. And if you haven't had an opportunity to hear, and his story, then there'll be an episode available that you can be get on and watch that. The book, the book is bigger than me. The book chronicles my life from really since I was born till about three years ago, which, you know, 2018 2019. And it's like a memoir, self help book. And I deliberately created the book in vivid detail, storytelling that will capture the mind, the body and the soul of the, of the listener, and the reader. And I realized that once I had gone through enough healing, I realized how powerful my gift of sharing this knowledge, sharing my experiences, and I will preface one thing, you and I have been together for three and a half years. And when you and I got together, I said, something to you that you can vouch for. And I said, No, I've lived a life. And you can ask me anything you want about anything that I've ever done. On the one caveat, and that is that you must be prepared to hear the answer. Whatever it is, and I think why no, that that created a bond of trust with us. That liberated me of being found out for anything, because a lot of us keep secrets from our partners that that little wee lumps of coal in their back pocket. And I think after a while with the friction and the pressure, everything, they catch fire, and they glow, and they burn, they're always here, you can feel them. That discomfort that you can smell the flesh burning metaphorically. And so that set up a really wonderful platform, when I got an opportunity to be inspired to write this book, that I knew that I could be raw and real and authentic and not leave anything behind in the book. And I think it's a great lesson for for anyone really, the truth will set you free, you know. And so when I shared some of my stories with you and spoke about putting them in the book, you were like, you're my ride or die, you're like hell yes. And by me setting that boundary early on, you having the confidence because of me sharing the truth. We're able to put something out into the world that is now helping a lot of people. And so I'm really grateful to have such a wonderful understanding and loving, supportive partner. No matter what I told you about my hedonistic backgrounds is as tough as it was at the time. It is paid massive, massive dividends in our relationship. Would you agree?

100% Labour's? Probably if you wouldn't be open and honest with me upfront. I don't know how I would react on some of your crazy and outrageous stories that you can read in his book, My dear listeners. You're gonna love it. Well,

let me ask you a question. In your healing, and your ability to share your pain, your trauma, your shame with the world. How important was it that I had been brutally honest with you from the get go?

I think it was everything. It was a such a pivotal moment for me that someone can be so raw and authentic and open with me. It said our relationship on the right path. It was free of free of fear of judgment. It was free of shame. And well I didn't open up to you at the beginning. Because with a trauma like a sexual abuse it's something to do with a such a huge, such a big shame response that it's not easy to open up. It doesn't matter how, how good the person you are. It's something about people and so looking at you and being in the environment where everything is on the plate There is no judgment, you're always telling me there is no judgment. It really helped me to realize, you know what, I can't kill myself from inside with this with this burden of this knowledge. And I know I just spewed it unexpectedly to you. And I'm just I was wondering Claiborne, and I was always wondering, is there a best way to open up to your partner? Is there a brace? Is there a better words to tell to your partner that you hate? I am actually I child of sexual abuse survivor?

Well, the first question you asked, is the most important one, the rest become irrelevant. Because once you get to a point, in a relationship in a new relationship, depending on how far you are through your healing journey, and I can't speak from a sexual abuse, thriver point of view, and I call it thriving, because I believe that's what everyone can do, no matter what they've gone through, doesn't have to be that. But if you're early on, let's say you're in a similar position, you hadn't told anyone apart from one school friend when you were 15, when it first happened. So you weren't used to sharing this. But when you shared it with me, it explained my intuition, it explained, in my own mind, a whole heap of subconscious clues that had been given to me given to me from you. And it wasn't until you opened up and shared that with me that our relationship was able to rise, supernova levels of intimacy, trust, and adoration and love for you from my end. Because I was able to truly understand the person that I was with. And I felt guilty, I think, early on a little bit, that I wasn't able to provide a safer, more secure feeling for you, to for you to feel comfortable to share that with me. And, you know, that quickly passed you very quickly took that away, and, and I realized there was, you know, I don't know that I could have done anything else. Being myself being truthful, and being honest about my demons gives people the power to feel not so bad about what they've done in their life and, and the power of vulnerability. And I think one of my superpowers, one of my many superpowers. And I say that sincerely, is, I have a really amazing ability to connect to people very quickly, and they share things with me in life that I've never told anyone in minutes of meeting me. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that since you opened up with me, and you gave me the feedback, that vulnerability from my end was the trigger for you to open up to me, I now see the power of vulnerability in a whole new light that I've never seen before. And my God, when you do that with people, they like and trust you faster than any other way on the planet. And anyone that works in any sales capacity, if people are going to buy from you, it's when they like, and trust you.

Leave and I love you so much. And you my dear listener, you can understand why I love him. But it wasn't so great at the beginning. Look, it wasn't so scary to open up to open up to you as I thought. But how? How did you deal with this knowledge? Because we did went through some challenges.

Would you like to share? We did we did it was it was initially brutal. Because I was in two states. So I was in I need to support this person through this. Because it's such a serious sounding event that handled incorrectly the person might take the life what would my life look like if my dream woman took her own life because she didn't feel like she was supported and they know then I've got to deal with my own preconceived notions that I had at the time about the stigma of sexual abuse. And what I understood about it and what I had learned in the media and just that had been subconsciously programmed into my mind. But I remember immediately when you shared with me feeling, certainly a huge wave of relief, because I rely heavily on my intuition now, if not entirely, and I knew subconsciously, that something wasn't right. And you freed me of that, that quandary. And for that, I'm really grateful. And I think, you know, people are doing the best they can with the tools I've got available, but who might a judge who might a judge, I can't ever have known exactly what went on, I wasn't there. Put yourself in the other person's shoes for a minute before you say anything. And I think anyone in that situation who's sharing such a heavy burden just needs the space to be heard. I worked in recruitment for 14 years, and people would much prefer to be acknowledged at work, then a pay rise of $5,000. You'd rather be acknowledged and given $5,000 a year. And I can see the power in that. And I acknowledge you for having the dyno balls. Because what's bigger, bigger than regular balls there? To share that with me.

And I'm grateful to you label that you have this passion to just sit down and listen. Not trying to solve my problem, but just listen, and be there for me. So I think this is so important. Laban that was a such a wonderful conversation. And what would be your best advice for women to met a man of their dreams?

So this is probably the most popular question on the planet, right? And one that I feel like I've got a reasonable insight now. And so if the question is Hana, women made the man of their dreams, well, let's just flip it in reverse. Otherwise, I'm going to get myself in trouble, right? And then I'll let let our heterosexual ladies reverse engineer, how are they want to go about it? But from my point of view, when I learned about being a functional man and embracing my masculinity and not being a beta, male or cuckold, Little Bitch, and stepping into my masculine, I understood more about women, I understood more about the dynamics of sexual energy. And I thought, What kind of man do I need to be to attract my ideal woman? What is my ideal woman look like? And I wrote down in explicit detail. When I say explicit, I'm not talking about like, pornography learners, I'm talking about, like specific, very specific specificity of the characteristics physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. And a month later, I'm walking down the streets of Melbourne, minding my own business, on my way to a meeting and I'm dressed for success because men, if you're listening out there, and you're looking for your dream partner, you want to make sure you look good. And I spied you from 40 meters away. And I can only describe what happened next, as being struck by a bolt of lightning picked up, levitated towards you plunked down in front of you, and I looked you dead in the eye with the courage of 1000 Spartan warriors.

I said, Excuse me. But you are standing. And I wanted you to have a drink with me one time.

Can you remember what you said?

Of course I do. Like it happened yesterday. I said, you look good to.

Now for all the men out there in the women. If you get a response like that, you know, you're gonna have a good day. And what happened that day, triggered this amazing chain of events and, and you're the woman that I knew that I wanted to meet my whole life, but was beginning to think at 38 years of age that I would never do And I thank Allah Buddha, Jesus God, the universe, every single day, for the gift in my life that is Anna, maiden over the most courageous person, I've elimate

labeled I'm so blessed to have you in my life. And I'm so grateful for providing your insights for for this podcast. I'm sure it will help a millions of people Laban we can we find you?

Well, I can tell you where you won't find me and you won't find me on Tinder days, those days are long, long gone. I have the most unusual combination of names that exists on the planet. And so much so there's only one of me it's under Laban ditchburn.com labanditchburn.com As in dig a ditch and burn. I'm related via marriage to Winston Churchill. And I don't know why that's important to mention, but it'll help you remember me. And Laban Laban means to two different things that I'm aware of means yogurt in Arabic, which explains why I'm so cultured. And it also means to show fight in the Filipino language to show fight. So it's yoga and yoga@fight.com noses layvin ditchburn.com. I'd love to connect. I'd love to hear from people that are impacted by Anna's podcast and her message in the wonderful, courageous work that she is doing inspiring men and women all around the world to be brave to step into cut their own courage to become their own world's best courage coach. Because when I say that it's not from a position of ego. It's the commitment that I make to myself every single day, and how would the world's best courage coach conduct himself. And so if you're listening to this and you haven't subscribed, you haven't left a review do that now for Anna's podcast. She's she's making massive waves. And we need to replicate the work that you're doing to help as many people as need this message. So thank you, my darling.

Laban my lover. I love you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, Labon Michael Ditchburn.