From Nature News, this is an excellent overview of what we know - and how much we do NOT know - about epigenetics. We are beginning to see the degree to which epigenetic variations can be transmitted from one generation to the next, but we still have very little idea how that process works.

[NOTE: the title of this article refers to a study with mice in which male mice were trained to be afraid of acetophenone, a sweet smelling substance, by pairing the scent with a mild electric shock. The male mice were later mated with females who had not experienced the conditioning. Their offspring showed an unusual sensitivity to the acetophenone scent, more so than other scents. And the grandchildren of the original male mice also showed an unusual sensitivity to acetophenone.]

Epigenetics: The sins of the father

The roots of inheritance may extend beyond the genome, but the mechanisms remain a puzzle.

Virginia Hughes
05 March 2014


20th Century Fox/The Kobal Collection
When Brian Dias became a father last October, he was, like any new parent, mindful of the enormous responsibility that lay before him. From that moment on, every choice he made could affect his newborn son's physical and psychological development. But, unlike most new parents, Dias was also aware of the influence of his past experiences — not to mention those of his parents, his grandparents and beyond.

Where one's ancestors lived, or how much they valued education, can clearly have effects that pass down through the generations. But what about the legacy of their health: whether they smoked, endured famine or fought in a war?

As a postdoc in Kerry Ressler's laboratory at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, Dias had spent much of the two years before his son's birth studying these kinds of questions in mice. Specifically, he looked at how fear associated with a particular smell affects the animals and leaves an imprint on the brains of their descendants.

Dias had been exposing male mice to acetophenone — a chemical with a sweet, almond-like smell — and then giving them a mild foot shock. After being exposed to this treatment five times a day for three days, the mice became reliably fearful, freezing in the presence of acetophenone even when they received no shock.

Ten days later, Dias allowed the mice to mate with unexposed females. When their young grew up, many of the animals were more sensitive to acetophenone than to other odours, and more likely to be startled by an unexpected noise during exposure to the smell. Their offspring — the 'grandchildren' of the mice trained to fear the smell — were also jumpier in the presence of acetophenone. What's more, all three generations had larger-than-normal 'M71 glomeruli', structures where acetophenone-sensitive neurons in the nose connect with neurons in the olfactory bulb. In the January issue of Nature Neuroscience1, Dias and Ressler suggested that this hereditary transmission of environmental information was the result of epigenetics — chemical changes to the genome that affect how DNA is packaged and expressed without altering its sequence.

Biologists first observed this 'transgenerational epigenetic inheritance' in plants. Tomatoes, for example, pass along chemical markings that control an important ripening gene2. But, over the past few years, evidence has been accumulating that the phenomenon occurs in rodents and humans as well. The subject remains controversial, in part because it harks back to the discredited theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a nineteenth-century French biologist who proposed that organisms pass down acquired traits to future generations. To many modern biologists, that's “scary-sounding”, says Oliver Rando, a molecular biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, whose work suggests that such inheritance does indeed happen in animals3. If it is true, he says, “Why hasn't this been obvious to all the brilliant researchers in the past hundred years of genetics?”.

One reason why many remain sceptical is that the mechanism by which such inheritance might work is mysterious. Explaining it will require a deep dive into reproductive biology to demonstrate how the relevant signals might be formed in the germ line, the cells that develop into sperm and eggs and carry on, at a minimum, a person's genetic legacy.

A mother might pass on effects of environmental exposures to a fetus during pregnancy. So, to study the phenomenon of transgenerational epigenetics cleanly, biologists are focusing on fathers, and have been looking at how sperm might gain and lose epigenetic marks. “In the past two to three years there's been a lot of new information,” says Michelle Lane, a reproductive biologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia. But proposals for how it all works are themselves embryonic. “It's a huge black box,” Lane says.


Monster plants and obese children
The epigenetics revolution hit in the early 2000s, when scientists began reporting that environmental factors — everything from neglectful mothering and child abuse to a high-fat diet and air pollution — can influence the addition or removal of chemical tags on DNA that turn genes on and off. This idea of an environmentally responsive genome still stirs debate (see Nature 467, 146–148; 2010). But the notion that epigenetic marks are transmitted across generations is even more provocative.

Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus was among the first to spot changes resulting from this phenomenon. In the 1740s, he received a plant specimen that looked very similar to common toadflax (Linaria vulgaris), but with very different flowers. Linnaeus was shocked because this challenged his theory that plant species could be categorized by the structure of their flowers. “This is certainly no less remarkable,” he wrote, “than if a cow were to give birth to a calf with a wolf's head.” He named the plant Peloria, after the Greek word for 'monster'.

In the 1990s, plant biologist Enrico Coen at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, found that in the monster plants, methyl groups litter a gene involved in flower structure called Lcyc, completely shutting it down. (DNA methylation usually turns genes off.) Coen's team also showed that these methyl marks pass through seeds to later generations4.

The public first started to take notice in the mid-2000s, after large epidemiological investigations in Europe began to show transgenerational effects in humans. One study of Swedish historical records showed that men who had experienced famine before puberty were less likely to have grandsons with heart disease or diabetes than men who had plenty to eat5. Similar work with children in Britain reported in 2005 that fathers who had started smoking before the age of 11 had an increased risk of having boys of above average weight6.

But many scientists remained sceptical. Epidemiological studies are often messy, and it is impossible to rule out all confounding variables. In the past few years, however, several studies in rodents have supported these observations and begun to attribute the transmission of various traits to changes in sperm.

Sperm signatures

Male rats fed a high-fat diet, for example, beget daughters with abnormal DNA methylation in the pancreas7. Male mice fed a low-protein diet have offspring with altered liver expression of cholesterol genes3. And male mice with pre-diabetes have abnormal sperm methylation, and pass on an increased risk of diabetes to the next two generations8.

“We and many other people have now shown these paternal effects,” says Rando, who led the low-protein study. “And we're all having a hell of a time figuring out how they work.”

The animal studies have triggered some strong debate. The most controversial results have come out of Michael Skinner's lab at Washington State University in Pullman. Skinner's team exposed pregnant rats to large doses of pesticides and fungicides, which led to organ damage in their adult offspring. The sperm of male offspring showed changes in DNA methylation that persisted for at least four generations9.

But at least two groups failed to replicate the data, and in 2010, federal investigators found that one of Skinner's postdocs had fabricated data for a related paper, which the authors had retracted in 2009. Skinner says that some teams have replicated his results, and that those who have not were using inappropriate protocols. Last year, his own team reported successfully reproducing the results of the retracted paper10.

Methylation mechanism

Explaining how transgenerational epigenetics works has been difficult in part because most studies track outcomes — such as changes in glucose, cholesterol and fertility — that can be affected by a range of factors, making it tricky to tease out cause and effect. By contrast, Dias and Ressler's work with acetophenone takes advantage of specific biology: the chemical binds to a particular receptor in the nose that is encoded by a single gene, dubbed Olfr151. “This is the massive pro of their study,” Rando says.

Dias and Ressler do not claim to understand exactly what is going on, but they do have a working hypothesis. Somehow, the information about the frightening smell gets into a mouse's testes and results in lower methylation of the Olfr151 gene in sperm DNA. The researchers even ran experiments using in vitro fertilization to make sure that the father was not in some way passing on a fear of acetophenone through interactions with the mother. The epigenetic tweak in the sperm is perpetuated in the offspring's DNA, leading to increased expression of the receptor in the animals' noses and, ultimately, enhanced sensitivity to the smell.

But the chain of causation is loose. “There are a lot of disconnects there,” says William Kelly, a developmental geneticist at Emory. “It's not beyond the realm of possibility or plausibility. It's just right now we don't know enough about how information is transferred between generations.”

The first question is how the effects of environmental exposure become embedded in an animal's germ cells — in this case, the mouse's sperm. Germ cells have been shown to express olfactory receptors11. So it is possible that Olfr151 receptors in sperm respond to odorant molecules in the bloodstream and then change the methylation of the corresponding gene in sperm DNA.

Alternatively, after being exposed to the odour and the pain, a mouse might produce RNA molecules — perhaps in the brain — that make their way into the bloodstream and then selectively target the Olfr151 gene in sperm. Many studies in plants have hinted at this sort of systemic RNA shuttling. RNA molecules expressed in a plant's leaf, for example, can travel through its vascular system to many of its other tissues and affect gene expression12.

But creating an epigenetic mark in the sperm is only the first step. To pass down through multiple generations, the signal needs to survive multiple rounds of rigorous epigenetic reprogramming. In mammals, the first of these happens just hours after conception, when most methylation is stripped from sperm DNA in the single-celled embryo. Then, as the embryo develops and divides, and cells begin to differentiate into various tissue types, methylation is gradually re-established. But even if some signal from the father were to survive this process, the embryo's own primordial germ cells, those that eventually become its sperm or eggs, undergo a second round of epigenetic scrubbing (see 'Without a trace').

Some genes manage to escape these periods of major reprogramming. The best example is genes that are imprinted — whereby one copy from the mother or father is robustly methylated and effectively silenced. These silencing marks crop up in the egg or sperm and are retained in the embryo.

About 100 genes are known to be imprinted, but some non-imprinted genes may also escape the scrubbing through a similar mechanism. “There is a growing consensus that there are more regions than previously thought that escape reprogramming in sperm,” says Sarah Kimmins, an epigeneticist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. “Why this is, and how, is not yet known, although studying imprinted genes may reveal clues.”

Then again, even if Olfr151 does escape reprogramming, it is hard to explain how that could lead to a noticeable difference in the behaviour of fully formed offspring. Dias and Ressler reported that in sperm samples from mice trained to fear acetophenone, about 86 out of every 100 sperm show Olfr151 methylation, whereas in mice trained to fear a different odour it is about 95 out of every 100. This difference is statistically significant, but fairly small. And yet the behavioural effects in the second generation were robust: about half of the acetophenone-trained animals' offspring showed increased sensitivity to the odour.

'Something goofball'?

Although many are scratching their heads over the holes in the proposed mechanism, few are suggesting that the underlying phenomenon is a fairy tale. “Impossible things are happening every day,” says Kelly, quoting a line from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.

It is possible, for example, that the DNA-methylation tweaks reported in the odour study are simply a by-product of an altogether different mechanism.

One route might be chemical marks on histones, the proteins around which DNA wraps. Acetyl and methyl groups can attach to histones and affect the expression of nearby DNA. But during sperm-cell formation, DNA is stripped of most of its histones (and their attendant marks) and wraps instead around protamines, which pack it more tightly.

Nevertheless, about 10% of human histones — and about 1% of mouse ones — are retained. These sites might carry information from one generation to the next. In 2011, researchers reported that, in nematode worms, certain histone marks correlate with long life and can be passed down through several generations13. And last December, Kimmins and her colleagues showed that feeding male mice a diet low in folate — a nutrient that provides the raw materials for methylation — led to significantly reduced methylation of histone proteins in the animals' sperm and more birth defects in their offspring14.

Still other studies point to a mechanism involving short RNA molecules latching on to DNA and affecting gene expression. Twenty-eight microRNAs are expressed differently in the sperm of men who do and do not smoke, according to a study reported in 2012 (ref. 15). And these RNA patterns may persist through multiple generations. Last year, Lane's group found that obese male mice show abnormal expression of 11 microRNAs in their sperm — and that they pass on insulin resistance to the next two generations16.

Then there is the possibility that the mechanism is, as Rando puts it, “something goofball”. That might be prions — misfolded proteins that act as infectious agents — which have been shown to transmit heritable traits in budding yeast (see Nature 482, 294–296; 2012). Or it could be something in semen besides sperm. Researchers reported in January17 that mice born of fathers lacking seminal vesicles are fatter and have more metabolic problems than controls, suggesting that molecules in seminal fluid influence gene expression in sperm and the female reproductive tract.

If the mechanism involves DNA methylation, histones or RNA, the field is likely to make great progress in the next few years, Rando predicts. “But if it's something completely novel,” he says, “Maybe it will take decades to Figure out.”

Dias has his fingers crossed for the former. He is going to Boston, Massachusetts, in April for a Keystone meeting on epigenetic inheritance, to get a sense of the most promising mechanistic avenues to follow. “If science has taught me anything,” he says, “it is to not discount the myriad ways of becoming and being.”

Nature 507:22–24 (06 March 2014) | doi:10.1038/507022a

References

1. Dias, B. G. & Ressler, K. J. Nature Neurosci. 17, 89–96 (2014). Article
2. Manning, K. et al. Nature Genet. 38, 948–952 (2006). Article
3. Carone, B. R. et al. Cell 143, 1084–1096 (2010). Article
4. Cubas, P., Vincent, C. & Coen, E. Nature 401, 157–161 (1999). Article
5. Kaati, G., Bygren, L. O. & Edvinsson, S. Eur. J. Hum. Genet. 10, 682–688 (2002). Article
6. Pembrey, M. E. et al. Eur. J. Hum. Genet. 14, 159–166 (2006). Article
7. Ng, S.-F. et al. Nature 467, 963–966 (2010). Article
8. Wei, Y. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 1873–1878 (2014). Article
9. Anway, M. D., Cupp, A. S., Uzumcu, M. & Skinner, M. K. Science 308, 1466–1469 (2005).  Article
10. Skinner, M. K., Haque, C. G.-B., Nilsson, E., Bhandari, R. & McCarrey, J. R. PLoS ONE 8, e66318 (2013). Article
11. Goto, T., Salpekar, A. & Monk, M. Mol. Hum. Reprod. 7, 553–558 (2001).  Article
12. Dunoyer, P. et al. Science 328, 912–916 (2010). Article
13. Greer, E. L. et al. Nature 479, 365–371 (2011). Article
14. Lambrot, R. et al. Nature Commun. 4, 2889 (2013). Article
15. Marczylo, E. L., Amoako, A. A., Konje, J. C., Gant, T. W. & Marczylo, T. H. Epigenetics 7, 432–439 (2012). Article
16. Fullston, T. et al. FASEB J. 27, 4226–4243 (2013). Article
17. Bromfield, J. J. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 2200–2205 (2014). Article

Related stories and links

From nature.com

• Behaviour and biology: The accidental epigeneticist - 30 December 2013
• Fearful memories haunt mouse descendants - 01 December 2013
• Epigenetics posited as important for evolutionary success - 09 January 2013
• Fat fathers affect daughters' health - 20 October 2010
• Neuroscience: In their nurture - 08 September 2010
• Nature Reviews Genetics: Epigenetics
• Nature Insight: Epigenetics

Charlie Glickman - The Experiment That Taught Me What Rape Culture Is

From Role/Reboot, this is an excellent article by Charlie Glickman on how he became acquainted with how women are treated by men in public - the foundation of rape culture.

The Experiment That Taught Me What Rape Culture Is By Charlie Glickman

November 18, 2013

This originally appeared on CharlieGlickman.com. Republished here with permission.

I remember exactly when I first understood what rape culture meant.

I was 19 and a sophomore in college. I was talking with a woman I knew about gender and sexual politics, and I just wasn’t getting it. She was describing what it was like for her to move through the world as a woman, to be constantly under sexual surveillance, to always be worried about whether some guy would harass or attack her, to never know if she could walk down the street without getting cat called. This was pretty foreign to me, because I’d never seen any of this happening.

Partly, that was because I’d never really fit in with most other boys and I didn’t understand how the performance of masculinity encourages boys and men to compete with each other to demonstrate their manhood. I simply didn’t play those games. But more than that, it was because men don’t do the same things when they see a woman with a man. I had no idea that women’s experiences walking down the street were so different when I wasn’t there.

So my friend gave me a challenge that changed my life. She offered to walk down the street on a weekend night and allow me to walk behind her so I could see what happened. I took her up on it and the next Friday night, out we went. She was dressed in pretty standard “going out” clothes and we headed out to the strip of stores, bars, and restaurants that most college campuses seem to have within walking distance. I stayed about 20 feet behind her—close enough to observe without seeming like we were together. And I was shocked at what I saw.

Individual guys whispered or made comments about her as she passed them. They’d ask her where she was going or simply turn and stare at her ass. Groups of guys were worse, though. I could see them checking her out and talking to each other about her body and appearance. A few times, one guy in a group would say something and the rest of them would laugh while staring at her. And twice, one guy said something, followed by another guy escalating either the volume or the message, with another dude chiming in. I could see them all competing with each other to be the most macho, not caring that their games were at the cost of my friend’s feelings of safety.

It was an eye-opening experience for me. It was the first glimpse I got at the crap that women have to put up with, simply for moving through the world. I started paying attention to it more and thought about how I would feel if I couldn’t go anywhere in public without having to think about getting harassed, how I would feel if I couldn’t feel safe walking down the street. If a picture is worth a thousand words, getting to see this for myself was worth so much more.

Over time, I came to see that I needed to do more about this than simply not participate in it myself. In my workshops on sexuality, masculinity, and gender, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, and backgrounds about these topics. And one pattern that consistently shows up is that there are a lot of cisgender men who act like this without realizing the impact it has. Many of them are so surrounded by the Act Like a Man Box that they see it as totally normal. Some of them would like to break out of it, but they don’t know how and don’t have the support to do it. And a lot of them are scared to change because other people will attack and shame them back into the box. It’s not just men who reinforce this prison.

I also started to understand the connections between street harassment and sexual assault. One of the common threads is the belief that one person’s desires for sex, sexual attention, or validation as a man outweighs another person’s autonomy, safety, and consent. Another is that very few folks are actually teaching boys and young men about respect. Most of the conversations that I’ve seen center on shaming them without giving them the skills they need to navigate relationships.

What if we could actually talk with boys about how to ask for sex, or ways to flirt without being creepy? I know some parents who are doing this, but the “boys will be boys” attitude is still common. Just as most people shy away from talking with girls about these issues out of discomfort with addressing adolescent female sexuality, we also avoid looking at adolescent male sexuality with any clarity. So is it any surprise that people grow up confused about relationships? Is it all that shocking that many of my coaching clients struggle with these same issues as adults?

I’m deeply grateful to my friend for showing me what rape culture is about. For helping me understand that the world she moved through was so different from the one I moved through. For making it possible for me to take my first steps toward understanding what she and other women deal with every day.

If you’re a cisgender man, I really encourage you to ask a friend if she’d be willing to do this experiment with you. Trust me. It’ll change your life.

Charlie Glickman is a sexuality educator, occasional university professor, writer, blogger, and coach. In addition to working with individuals and couples to help them create happier sex lives, he teaches workshops and classes on sex-positivity, sex and shame, sexual practices, communities of erotic affiliation, and sexual authenticity. Find out more about him on his website (www.charlieglickman.com), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/drcharlieglickman) and follow him on Twitter (www.twitter.com/charlieglickman).

Know Your Shadow (Robert Augustus Masters) and Master the Neuroscience of Change (Kelly McGonigal)

I don't generally endorse products on any of my blogs, other than books in review, but this is a little different. One of the things I promote and try to embody in this blog is the receptiveness to change and personal growth that can open and make tender the masculine heart.

Each of the Sounds True offerings below are excellent tools for that kind of transformation. If you are a professional, CEUs are also available.

First, integral psychotherapist and teacher Robert Augustus Masters offers a course on Knowing Your Shadow, designed to help each of us "discover and cultivate intimacy with the endarkened aspects of yourself including core wounds and difficult emotions." I've been reading Masters' work for many years now and I can recommend his teachings without reservation - he offers essential tools for transforming ourselves into better men, better human beings.

The other recommendation is for Kelly McGonigal's The Neuroscience of Change, a course in personal transformation based in mindfulness and self-compassion. She explains how to "nourish the seeds of change and transformation by working with inner experiences as the key to making outward change through willingness, self-awareness, and surrender." This feels like a very useful melding of the work of Kristin Neff (mindfulness and self-compassion) and Dan Siegel (mindfulness and neuroplasticity).

If you would like to support this blog, and these courses feel useful to you, please order them through the links below, If you do so, I will make a little coin to buy more of these programs (and books) so that I can recommend for you the ones I feel are most relevant and useful to readers of this blog.

Knowing Your Shadow
Becoming Intimate with All That You Are 

Robert Augustus Masters

from Sounds True

Description

“Why are the people around me so difficult?” “Why do I keep getting in situations like this?” Our shadow side, teaches Robert Augustus Masters, contains the emotions and desires we've disowned, neglected, or hidden from ourselves. If not skillfully worked with, it can easily direct our lives on every level. With Knowing Your Shadow, this acclaimed psychotherapist and author shows us how to illuminate and wisely engage with the endarkened aspects of who we are. Join him to explore in depth the areas where shadow work can most benefit us, including:

• Discovering and cultivating intimacy with the endarkened aspects of yourself
• Identifying and healing your core wounds
• Working effectively with anger, fear, shame, guilt, and other difficult emotions
• Understanding how your shadow influences those around you, often beyond conscious awareness
• Guided practices, meditations, and exercises for developing more authenticity and wholeness in your personal and workplace relationships, your sexuality, and your spiritual path

Our moods and relationships often seem to have a life of their own. Knowing Your Shadow offers exceptional support for taking charge of your life at a deep level, providing expert guidance and instruction to discover and make wise use of what lies hidden or otherwise neglected within us.

Learn More About:

• Becoming intimate with your shadow
• Relating wisely to shame and guilt
• Ending your suffering by entering your pain
• Exploring the presence of your past
• Freeing yourself from your inner critic
• Working with fear, anger, and other darker emotions
• Bringing sex out of the shadows—how we eroticize our unmet needs
• The signs of spiritual bypassing
• Healthy spirituality
• Becoming intimate with all that you are

Music by Diane Bardwell

Knowing Your Shadow - Session Titles

Session 1: Becoming Intimate with Your Shadow
Session 2: Becoming Intimate with Your Reactivity and Pain
Session 3: Relating Wisely to Your Inner Critic, Shame, and Guilt
Session 4: Becoming Intimate with Your Darker Emotions
Session 5: Bringing Sex Out of the Shadows
Session 6: Spirituality's Shadow

6 CE credits available!
» Learn more
» Calculate how many home study hours are allowed per renewal period

Want to buy the CE credits only? If you already purchased this title, you can purchase the CE credits separately.

NOTE: CE credits are available for US customers only.

Course objectives:

• Discuss how to discover and cultivate intimacy with the endarkened aspects of yourself including core wounds and difficult emotions
• Explain how your shadow influences those around you, often beyond conscious awareness
• Define the signs of spiritual bypassing versus healthy spirituality
• Discuss how to free yourself from your inner critic
• Summarize how to become intimate with all that you are
• Utilize guided practices, meditations, and exercises for developing more authenticity and wholeness in your personal and workplace relationships, your sexuality, and your spiritual path

* * * * *

The Neuroscience of Change
A Compassion-Based Program for Personal Transformation 

Kelly McGonigal

from Sounds True

Description 

Personal Transformation Based on Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

What's your most important goal? Why does it matter so deeply? How will you overcome the obstacles? Answer these questions with sincerity, proceed with mindfulness and compassion, and you have just set in motion a revolutionary method for personal change that is supported by both the latest science and traditional wisdom. On The Neuroscience of Change, psychologist and award-winning Stanford lecturer Kelly McGonigal presents six sessions of breakthrough ideas, guided practices, and real-world exercises for making self-awareness and kindness the basis for meaningful transformation.

Practical Methods to Retrain Your Brain to Support Your Goals

Our understanding of the incredible power of the human brain is at an all-time high, with the emerging fields of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and psychophysiology opening new possibilities for greater health, happiness, and freedom from suffering. Drawing on her training as a research scientist and longtime practitioner of meditation and yoga, Dr. McGonigal reveals these startling findings—including the clinically supported methods for training the mind away from default states and negativity that no longer serve us and establishing behaviors and attitudes aligned with our highest values and aspirations.

The First Rule of Change: It's Already Happening

As the world's wisdom traditions teach and science is now verifying, our lives are in fact defined by constant change. Whether you're looking to change a behavior, improve your health or other circumstances, or simply for a way to bring hope and resilience into your life as it is, The Neuroscience of Change will help you trust yourself and unfold your true capacities for personal transformation.

Highlights

• Willingness, self-awareness, and surrender—how to nourish the seeds of change
• Focusing on the process, not the outcome
• How to overcome the “trigger-to-instinct” reaction
• The proven benefits of meditation—and how to start practicing yourself
• How to transform self-criticism into self-compassion
• Why your mind creates habits—and how to consciously create new ones
• Making values-driven commitments
• Visualization and the principle of “encoding prospective memories”
• The power of the vow
• “Deep activation” and the danger of rejecting what is
• Working with inner experiences as the key to making outward change
• Six hours of breakthrough science, practical wisdom, guided exercises, and mindfulness meditations for making positive change that lasts

6.5 CE credits available!

» Learn more
» Calculate how many home study hours are allowed per renewal period

Want to buy the CE credits only? If you already purchased this title, you can purchase the CE credits separately.

NOTE: CE credits are available for US customers only.

Course objectives:

• Discuss how to nourish the seeds of change and transformation by working with inner experiences as the key to making outward change through willingness, self-awareness, and surrender.
• Explain how to transform self-criticism into self-compassion
• Discuss the value of vows, "encoding prospective memories," making values-driven commitments and how to overcome the "trigger-to-instinct" in the process of transformation and change.
• Practice guided reflections based on breakthrough science, practical sensibility, and wisdom traditions, including exercises and mindfulness meditations that for making positive change that lasts.

Mark Greene - Five Terrors of Being a Man

Over at The Good Men Project, Mark Greene examines five common fears men experience around defining their own masculinity. The five "terrors" he identifies are (1) my sexual desire is wrong, (2) I will never earn enough, (3) other men will discover I am weak, (4) I'm getting old, and (5) I don't know who I am.

I can see all of these being issues for a lot of men, but I see one other that is fundamental to these that Greene did not include - nearly all men, at some level, have a fear of not being enough. This can show up in various ways, such as * not masculine enough, * not a good enough lover, * not smart enough, * not strong enough, * not successful enough, and so on. All of these can be reduced to shame at their deepest level - where shame is the sense that I am not enough, in whatever form that takes.

Anyway, this is a good article.

Five Terrors of Being a Man

FEBRUARY 24, 2013

BY MARK GREENE

Men’s wide ranging fears remain hidden behind a facade of false confidence.

We have all heard it said, over and over. That many men do not share their feelings. That these men can be good friends, husbands and lovers but that they remain, on some level, hidden. If this is so, it’s for a damn good reason. Men are taught early in life that hiding their emotions is a matter of practical survival. Men are taught that revealing feelings, especially feelings like grief, loneliness or uncertainty is not safe. It is dangerous. It will cost them. Male emotional withdrawal is the direct result of dominant cultural traditions which value toughness and stoicism over communication and emotional connection.

Millions of men are exploring ways to move beyond old ideas of what it is to be a man. This is a good thing. Because it means men will have more options, both new and old, of how they can choose to live in the world. But millions of others still see no alternative but to keep their emotions hidden. They feel trapped in archaic gender roles that are often brutally enforced by other men, women and sometimes, their own families and spouses. On some level, we are all impacted by these generations old rules of manhood which say: hide your fears or pay the price.

One result of the continuing emotional suppression of men, is an increasing level of anger in our public dialogues (that of both men and women). We see these angry public discourses everywhere, in the media, on Facebook and at the local bar. This is because the expression of anger as a mode of emphasizing one’s point of view is somehow considered socially acceptable while revealing “weaker” emotions is not. But ask anyone who knows. Anger is just fear talking. Fears unspoken and unexplored. Below is a list of some fears that men face. This list is by no means complete. But men’s fears, whatever they may be, must be acknowledged. Because when they are deeply rooted and well hidden, these isolating fears can determine the course of an entire lifetime. Hidden though they may be, they should never be taken lightly.

So what are men afraid of? Here are a few examples. (Please note, I am not suggesting that these fears are exclusive to men but I would suggest that they play out very differently in women’s lives.)

For many men, this central fear that sexual love doesn’t last can lead to a preemptive callousness about sex and relationships. “I want what I want and to hell with you.”

(1) What I Want Sexually is Wrong (In One Way or Another) 

Men carry the deep seated fear that their sexual needs are, in some way, just not right. Whether it’s something as complex as a fetish, or as simple as frequency, men carry the deep-seated fear that sexual love in relationships isn’t sustainable because what they want and need sexually is too much, is too selfish, is wrong.

This shame about their needs is compounded by a lack of emotional connectivity in their relationships; connectivity that can create a vibrant holding space for sexual exploration and generosity. For many men, this central fear that sexual love doesn’t last, can lead to a preemptive callousness about sex and relationships. “I want what I want and to hell with you.” Sexual expression can become intertwined with anger. This, coupled with underlying shame about their sexual appetites, creates a self-fulfilling fatalism, contributing to the collapse of their relationships, time and time again.

(2) I’m Never Going to Earn Enough

Being the financial provider is the central role that many men assign themselves in relationships. Although self-assigned, this role is also encouraged by our culture and sometimes by women. This emphasis on providing money is often taken on by men in lieu of the more challenging task of developing crucial interpersonal capacities like emotional connectivity, empathy, and child-raising skills, (emotional skill sets which can validate men in ways other than financially.)

Initially, being the breadwinner may seem like an easy way out for men. The implication is, “if you bring the money you can take a pass on the messy emotional side of your family relationships.” But this breadwinner mode tempts some men to compound their self induced isolation by leveraging the authority associated with economic control over other family members.

Some other relationship killing parts of this equation? When judged solely on their earning capacities, men can end up being relentlessly tested by a spiral of accelerating consumerism. And, when unemployment or retirement strikes, men have no alternative emotional resources or sources of validation to draw on. Game over.

(3) Other Men Will Find Out I’m Weak 

Men fear their worries and sadness are a sign of weakness; and that if they are found out, they will be rejected and condemned by their friends, family members and spouses.

Men are taught to hide their fears, collectively creating a cultural myth of male toughness. This culture of toughness is deeply isolating. When men have no way to share their stories of uncertainty, grief or fear, those fears can become overwhelming. The suppression of wider ranges of male emotional expression becomes a source of intense internal stress for men, which in turn is expressed as anger or authoritarianism. Although we don’t allow men to cry, we do allow them to express anger. It is this one-note anger mode of expression that can eventually result in alcoholism, addiction, depression and early death for many men. All in the effort to avoid appearing…human.

Because society does not typically encourage the development of soft skills in men, some must face old age without the emotional connectivity that will cushion the impact of aging.

(4) I’m Getting Old 

Men are often judged solely on their economic and physical vitality. Typically, men are not valued for their “feminine” soft skills, like diplomacy or emotional availability. This sets men up for an inevitable decline in value, tied directly to aging. Meanwhile, because society does not typically encourage the development of soft skills in men, some must face old age without the emotional connectivity that will cushion the impact of aging. And that makes aging terrifying.

(5) I Don’t Know Who I Am 

Often men spend their lives battling an uncertain world in order to provide for their families financially. Preoccupied with this struggle, men resist committing time for self examination or emotional growth. Eventually, men come to fear the person in the mirror looking back at them. After a lifetime of putting up a false front of confidence and authority, many men feel they are barely keeping a lid on their emotions. Absent the parallel journey of growing emotional connection with their families and friends, our fathers, brothers and sons are condemned to live lives of isolated desperation, ultimately unsure of who they are and what they might become.

♦◊♦

Being strong and being confident are important parts of being healthy human beings, but strength and confidence comes from the rich and rewarding relationships we create with the people in our lives, not from the economic or physical power we wield, regardless of our gender. Only a rich network of relationships holds the power and flexibility to carry any of us through life’s challenges.

For men, openly sharing emotions like uncertainty or grief should be a socially acceptable way of being, just as keeping these things private is socially accepted. Some men (and women) will always prefer to keep their own counsel. This is perfectly fine. But no man should be forced to live alone with his fears because it is considered weak to admit them. We need a new cultural baseline for men that says sharing our fears is an act of courage; something to be admired and respected. Because doing so in a safe and supportive community can transform these fears into sources of strength, mutual support and ultimately, love. And that is an option that should be open to all of us, men and women alike. 

____________

This article was written in conversation with Dr. Saliha Bava.

About Mark Greene - Emmy® winning animator, designer - Blogs THE BIG IDEAS on society, people and parenting for Good Men Project. You can follow him on Twitter @megaSAHD and Google.

Click here to read more GMP articles by Mark Greene. ALSO, please click here to download a free copy of Mark's fully illustrated children's book FLATMUNDER from iTunes about kid's fears and the power of play. For kids ages 4-8.

—

The Good Men Project is an unprecedented space for hosting conversations about what it is to be a good man. We hope you will explore the wide ranging dialogues here. The voices of both men and women are crucial to the success of these conversations. Join us, and together, we’ll create the dialogues that will make positive changes happen for us all. 

Below are a few more articles from our community that continue the conversation in different ways.

• Five Important Things Women Don’t Know About Men by Noah Brand
• Babies and the Rebirth of Men by Mark Greene
• Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race by Steve Locke
• Why Do We Demonize Men Who Are Honest About Their Sexual Needs by Clarisse Thorne
• The Dark Side of Women’s Requests of Progressive Men by Mark Greene
• The Paradox of Male Honesty by Tom Matlack
• The Conversation About Dads Just Keeps Getting Bigger: A Response to the New York Times on Dad 2.0 by Lisa Hickey

Bisexual Men On the 'Down Low' Run Risk for Poor Mental Health

This makes sense, from my own experience. Bi-men might receive acceptance from family and friends when "coming out," but in other situations (often with female partners) being honest can result in getting rejected, which no doubt negatively impacts mental health.

More importantly, however, the study shows that bisexual men who are concerned about concealing their same-sex behavior also experience lower levels of social support and more internalized homophobia - negative attitudes toward their own same-sex behavior.

Bisexual Men On the 'Down Low' Run Risk for Poor Mental Health

Jan. 2, 2013 — Bisexual men are less likely to disclose and more likely to conceal their sexual orientation than gay men. In the first study to look at the mental health of this population, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health found that greater concealment of homosexual behavior was associated with more symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The study published in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, examined bisexual men "on the down low," a subgroup of bisexual men who live predominantly heterosexual lives and do not disclose their same-sex behavior, a group that has not been studied to date. The researchers studied 203 nongay-identified men in New York City, who self-reported being behaviorally bisexual and had not disclosed their same-sex behavior to their female partners.

According to findings, men who live with a wife or girlfriend, who think of themselves as heterosexual, and who have a lower frequency of sex with men were more likely to conceal their same-sex behavior. Greater frequency of sex with women also correlated with greater concealment. Men with a household income of $30,000 or more per year reported greater concealment about their same-sex behavior than men with lower incomes.

"Our research provides information on the factors that might contribute to greater concealment among this group of behaviorally bisexual men," said Eric Schrimshaw, PhD, assistant professor of Sociomedical Sciences and lead author. "Such information is critical to understanding which of these bisexual men may be at greatest risk for mental health problems."

Nearly 38% of the men reported that they have not shared with anyone that they have sex with men. Only 41% reported that they had confided in a best friend or parent.

Dr. Schrimshaw and colleagues found that greater concealment correlated with more symptoms of depression and anxiety and lower positive emotions. However, disclosure to a few close friends or family did not seem to help; disclosure to confidants was not associated with good mental health.

"The fact that concealment, but not disclosure, was associated with the mental health of these bisexual men is critically important for the way therapeutic interventions are conducted in this population," said Karolynn Siegel, PhD, professor of Sociomedical Sciences and co-author. "Although disclosure may result in acceptance from family and friends, in other cases -- particularly with female partners -- disclosure may also result in rejecting reactions, which are adversely associated with mental health."

The research also suggests reasons why concealment was negatively associated with mental health. Bisexual men who were more concerned than others about concealing their same-sex behavior also tended to report lower levels of social support and more internalized homophobia -- that is, negative attitudes toward their same-sex behavior.

The findings indicate that publically disclosing their same-sex behavior may not be necessary to their mental health, as long as bisexual men have adequate emotional support to cope with other stressors in their lives. Professionals who do therapeutic work with bisexual men may wish to focus instead on helping such men reduce their perceived need to conceal their same-sex behavior and accept their sexual orientation.

Citation:
Eric W. Schrimshaw, Karolynn Siegel, Martin J. Downing, Jeffrey T. Parsons. Disclosure and Concealment of Sexual Orientation and the Mental Health of Non-Gay-Identified, Behaviorally Bisexual Men. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2012; DOI:10.1037/a0031272

Confessions of a Young Therapist

I have been working with clients for about 15 months, and I have been doing so as a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC) for about 6 months. I am daily reminded how little I know and how much more there is to learn, and I wish I could learn it now, or yesterday.

Some days I actually feel like I might be good at this in a few years, with enough continuing education and openness to allowing my clients to be my best and most crucial supervisors (not literally, of course). I have seriously learned more from my clients than I ever learned in school.

And then there are days when I feel like an imposter, a fraud, and that any minute now someone is going to figure out my secret and make me stop seeing clients.

Because of the work I do, many of my clients are incredibly acute. The sense of being a fraud is even stronger when my clients are experiencing structural dissociation, or derealization, or wondering if not being alive may be a better option than another day of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks.

So as I prepared for my next client between sessions today (generally, this amounts to deep breathing and releasing the "energy" of the previous session), I suddenly wondered what right I had to sit in the "therapist" chair and pretend I have the slightest idea what it feels like to be the survivor of such incredibly wounding incest, rape, and/or molestation.

As much as I know that the real benefits of therapy are in the relational realm, in the intersubjective connection between client and therapist - the research repeatedly demonstrates that technique and knowledge are always secondary to the relationship - I still have that voice in my head that whispers, "Dude, you're a wicked fraud. Better quit now before you get caught."

[Yes, my inner voice sounds like Jeff Spicoli some days.]

It's always easy for me to see this in my clients - the sense of being a fraud, never good enough, always wondering when rejection or condemnation will begin - because I know that voice all too well in my own life.

Perhaps, as we discussed last night in our psychoanalytic study group, part of the reason I became a therapist is to better understand and heal those wounded parts of myself. I think it is often true of psychotherapists, as it is of shamans, that we are the wounded healers. And it is our wounds - my wounds - that allow me to feel such empathy and compassion for my clients, and allow me to connect, even for a few moments, in some small way with their lived experience.

When I was the client, through the end of my 20s and much of my 30s, it was those times when I felt my therapist really got where I was coming from that I began to heal. And when she could see through my defenses and connect with my pain, I would cry so deeply, so abjectly, that I was not even aware of the emotions. All I knew was that for maybe the first time in my life, someone else understood me, and cared about me.

If I can offer that feeling for my clients someday, maybe I will get past that voice in my head that tells me I am fraud . . . my father's voice.

Important . . . from The Good Men Project. A lot of boys and men are afraid to tell anyone about the abuse they have suffered for some or all of the reasons mentioned below. That should NEVER be the case. We need to educate people that boys and men are also survivors of abuse . . . and it makes them no less manly, no less straight, and not in any way deserving of shame or judgment.

If a Guy Tells You He Was Sexually Abused…

August 12, 2012 By The Good Feed Blog Editors  

A great new viral infographic from Just Tell for Facebook is spreading the word about the ways in which male survivors of sexual abuse are often regarded. It also offers the information tat 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused by the age of 18 – a startling statistic.

The mission of JustTell is to empower youth to disclose sexual abuse to a trusted adult.

Please visit Just Tell’s Facebook page, and to learn more about the ways in which Just Tell helps teenagers cope with abuse and figure out who to talk to, visit their website, JustTell.org

Military Men Twice as Likely to Be Transgender as Civilians

I found this article on Queerty. According to their post, it seems that military men are twice as likely as civilian men to report transgender identification. They found the article at Courthouse News Service and summarized its main points. However, they neglected to mention that the new results are as yet unpublished (pending presentation at a conference, according to the author).

Still, the researcher involved, George R. Brown, M.D., Capt. USAF, contends that the new research supports his prior study (1988), Transsexuals in the Military: Flight Into Hypermasculinity (available online).

Here are some comments from that paper:

Intuitively, one would assume that the prevalence of severe gender dysphoria and, specifically transsexualism, would be low in the military - certainly lower than in the civilian population. Surely, a male who is gender dysphoric and engages in cross-gender activities and possibly sexual activity with other males would not voluntarily submit himself to a system known for its staunch intolerance of deviancy in any form, whether it be homosexuality, long hair, or wrinkled uniforms.

* * * *

The transsexual "flight into femininity" is well-described by Steiner et al. (1978) as a possible phase observed in middle adulthood applicants for sex reassignment surgery. It is clear that in the cases above, and in others I am aware of anecdotally (e.g., 6 transsexual fighter pilots; Lothstein, personal communication, 1986), a diametrically opposed phenomenon may be occurring: a "flight into hypermasculinity." For some, the mere act of enlisting was not enough. In the first case described above the patient deliberately chose the path of greatest danger while in the service: He elected to leave the relative safety of his laboratory technician job and apply for combat helicopter pilot training at the peak of the Viet Nam war, when this was an extremely high-mortality position. Another patient in this sample graduated second in his class at Officer's Candidate School. He volunteered for Special Warfare School, became a Green Beret, and saw extensive combat in Viet Nam and Thailand, completing 4 years of active duty in the Army. In addition to these cases, the military experiences of several well-known transsexual individuals are well-documented in their autobiographies (Cowell, 1954; Jorgensen, 1967; Morris, 1974; Richards, 1983).

He posits that men who are beginning to sense their "gender dysphoria" would seek out hypermasculine identities as a way to prove to themselves - and to others - that they are "real" men. There is no better place to do that than in the military - and even more so if one volunteers for the more dangerous assignments.

It's sad to me that anyone would feel so threatened by their gender identity that they might risk death to prove themselves "normal," whatever the hell that is.

You can also read the Report of the APA Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance.


Here is some of the Courthouse News Service article:

Transgenderism More Likely in Military, Study Finds

By ADAM KLASFELD
Tuesday, July 24, 2012

(CN) - Biologically male U.S. veterans were twice as likely as their civilian counterparts to identify as female, a former military psychologist told Courthouse News, discussing a soon-to-be-published study of more than 5 million service members.

No information has been released indicating whether the subjects of the study sought sex-reassignment surgery, or more generally disassociate with the sex of their birth.

The study by psychologist George Brown follows up on his 1988 paper, "Transsexuals in the Military: Flight Into Hypermasculinity," which relied on interviews with 11 service members who identify as male-to-female transgender, meaning that they were born as biological males but identify as female. Many prefer the umbrella term transgender over the more narrow descriptor transsexual, which usually implies surgical alteration.

"A striking similarity was noted in the histories of nearly all of the military gender dysphorics," the 1988 study states. "They joined the service, in their words, 'to become a real man.'"

"Flight into Hypermasculinity" speculated that enlistment statistics could bear out the theory that male-to-female transsexuals might enlist as a way of "purging the feminine self."

"Current military policies, in association with the proposed hypermasculine phase of transsexual development, may actually result in a higher prevalence of transsexualism in the military than in the civilian population," the 1988 study theorized.

Brown, a veteran himself with 12 years of service in the U.S. Air Force and 13 years in the Department of Veterans Affairs, now says that his new research backs his 24-year-old hypothesis.

"I have data from a study I did in VA that demonstrates a prevalence double that in the nonmilitary population," Brown told Courthouse News in an email. "It is unpublished data, pending presentation in San Francisco in the fall. It totally supports my 1988 work. The denominator in the study is over 5 million veterans. So, I am now confident that my early theory was correct."

Brown, who has 118 scientific papers and abstracts under his belt, added that professional ethics prevent him from describing the study's data in further detail before its public presentation.

Read the whole article.

NPR - Many Who Are Sexually Abused Keep Quiet

The tendency to stay quiet is especially true of men, although I am pleased to see this changing in only the last ten years. But there is still a lot of stigma for men, as though they, often as boys, should have been able to fight off an adult abuser. Part of the reason men remain quiet is the shame they feel, and the fear of "losing" their masculinity in the eyes of others. The Sandusky case highlights some of these issues - how many of the survivors stayed quiet until someone else came forward?

Then there is the whole issue of sexual identity that comes up for boys who are molested by men or older boys - because our culture still stigmatizes homosexuality, boys fear that being sexually molested by a male might mean they are somehow gay.

The layers of reasons that men stay quiet are deep and profound, but I have seen real healing come simply in being able to talk about it in a safe environment with other men who have been through it as well.

Many Who Are Sexually Abused Keep Quiet

Listen to the Story

Talk of the Nation

[30 min 18 sec]

• Download

 June 19, 2012

Psychologists say many people who are sexually abused as kids carry the secret for decades. Many never reveal what happened at all, and few file charges. Sarah Pleydell, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and clinical psychologist David Lisak talk about the challenges of carrying those secrets.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Last week on the first day of the sex abuse trial of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, a 28-year-old man referred to as Victim Four in court papers took the stand and offered graphic detail of years of abuse.

He also expressed regret for not coming forward earlier. He told the jury he had spent, quote, so many years burying this in the back of my head forever that when he heard there were other cases like his, he felt responsible.

But his reluctance is not uncommon. Earlier this month, an article in the New York Times raised allegations of widespread sex abuse of studies at the Horace Mann School in New York City, most of it in the 1970s and '80s. Psychologists say that many people sexually abused as children are silenced by fear and shame and never reveal what happened. Those who do can carry the secret for years or even decades.

If this is your story, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Later in the program, the art of the ultimate counterfeiter, but we begin with Sarah Pleydell, who joins us here in Studio 3A. Thanks very much for coming in.

SARAH PLEYDELL: Hi.

CONAN: And this is your story.

PLEYDELL: Yes, it is.

CONAN: When did you become aware as an adult that you needed to say something?

PLEYDELL: Oh, well into my 20s and into my 30s. It was an experience that, you know, had lain buried for 25, 30 years.

CONAN: What happened, briefly?

PLEYDELL: I grew up in a household in London, in the '50s, '60s. My parents were professionals. My father was one of those sort of debonair charmers, you know, sort of a Cary Grant kind of type. But he was a profound drunk. And my mother couldn't stand him. He totally exasperated her, and she would, you know, fly into a rage and pack up and leave.

And so he repeatedly abused my sister and me between the ages of eight and 11. I was left to give him dinner and put him to bed. I think one of the most poignant pieces of it is that in that kind of strange, childish heroism, I thought that if I were his caretaker that I could prevent him doing any damage to my sister.

CONAN: So you didn't know at the time that your sister was being abused, as well.

PLEYDELL: No, and when I discovered in my late 20s, it was just horrifying. It was, you know, one of the most devastating things.

CONAN: How did you find out?

PLEYDELL: Well, we didn't talk about it until we were in our late 20s, and by then, I was flooded with the kind of graphic dissociative images that survivors, you know, are flooded with. And I began to share them with her.

But up until that point, you know, none of it had really made any sense to me. I think that people don't speak up because of the way that sexual abuse impacts the body and the mind and the heart. My father was, when he wasn't drunk, my primary caregiver. I adored him. I was the apple of his eye, and the idea that he could betray me in this way was unthinkable. You know, I just couldn't engage it as a complete thought. And so my mind just scrambled up the images, scrambled them all up.

CONAN: And what did your sister say when you started to talk about it?

PLEYDELL: She asked me what I remembered, and I told her the kind of strange, dissociative, graphic images that I had that, you know, they were out of sequence, that didn't make any sense but were very vivid, had, you know, free-floating sort of sensory horror to them, smells and sounds and words. And, you know, she sort of revealed that she had the same things, the same things.

CONAN: And that's the devastating moment.

PLEYDELL: Yeah, well, we helped each other piece together what our immature brains could not do.

CONAN: Were your parents still alive at that point?

PLEYDELL: My father, because he was an addled drunk, unfortunately, well, in some ways fortunately, had a massive stroke in his 50s. So by the time I was ready to talk to him, he didn't really know who I was or not for more than five minutes. But my mother was still alive and still very together.

CONAN: And did you talk to her?

PLEYDELL: Finally in my 30s I made the choice to talk to her. I don't think it's the only choice to be made, but I did make that choice. And I confronted her when she came to visit me. And she at first was very defensive. She was - denied it, and I was very angry. So I can see why, in some ways.

And gradually she accepted it, and then she became incredibly sorry that she had not left my father earlier because she did leave him. And to fair to her, I mean, the symptoms that we were demonstrating would now be considered classic symptoms of child abuse, I mean, bedwetting and anorexia and all the rest of it, but then, you know, she just knew we were being hurt, and she did kick him out.

But we did this over a period of 10 years. Every time she came, we would go through this until finally I felt I'd done it enough.

CONAN: The range of emotions that must have warped back and forth between you and your mother, and your sister of course, too, feeling abandoned, lack of protection, a mother's obligation, her guilt yet her own need to be out of a situation that was clearly - she didn't know what was going on but clearly not healthy for her, either.

PLEYDELL: No, no, but it was the '60s, and it was a hard thing for a woman to get up and leave a husband. And the information wasn't out there. So, you know, I respect her for doing it; I wish to hell she'd done it a whole lot earlier.

CONAN: We want to hear from people in the audience today whose story this is, too. Give us a call if you've kept these memories quiet for years or decades afterwards, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And we'll start with Al(ph), Al's calling us from Phoenix.

AL: Yeah, thank you for taking my call. I was abused by several different people, cousins and neighbors and a few other people, as was my wife. And she was repeatedly abused by someone that she had babysat for, which led to later on choosing I guess abusive relationships as an adult.

And by the time she was really ready to deal with what had happened, when she and I came together, and she sort of started trying to heal and deal with things, the statute of limitations had run out to prosecute this man. And he's now in his late 60s and is now married to a 19-year-old girl, and we have since also found out that in the years when my wife had moved away from where he was, he had abused several other girls.

And to me the statute of limitations is extremely problematic not only because you can't prosecute someone but because it sort of implies that the victim should have gotten over it already.
CONAN: It does vary state to state.

AL: If you haven't done something about it in a certain amount of time, then you really couldn't have felt that bad about it is what it seems like.

CONAN: I understand, just - I don't think you could hear me, Al, but it does vary from state to state. In some states, there's no statute of limitations on rape, as there is none on murder.

AL: Right. Where we are, it is, so...

CONAN: How did you and your wife find each other?

AL: How did we meet, or how did we find each other?

CONAN: Well, how did you find out that you shared this background?

AL: Well, I think I have dealt with mine much earlier. I've lived on my own since I was a very, very young man and also had a lot of friends that had been molested, and I had helped some friends sort of move out of their homes or move out of abusive relationships. And so I think very early on in my relationship with my wife, I recognized the personality traits.

And she and I had been friends for many, many years, and she had been dating someone else, and I had recognized the type of relationship that she was in was also very abusive and a symptom of someone who had been abused as a younger person.

CONAN: Well, David - Al, thanks very much for sharing your story, and good luck to you both.
AL: Thank you very much.

CONAN: And Sarah Pleydell, he raises an interesting question. The effects later on, abusive relationships, clearly in your case it could have led to alcoholism, abusive relationships, a lot of things.

PLEYDELL: You develop a vulnerable personality, and you're susceptible to patterns that have been imprinted from childhood. And it takes a lot of work to change those patterns.

CONAN: David Lisak is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He's a clinical psychologist, a founding board member of oneinsix.org, an organization that serves men who were sexually abused as children, and he joins us today from member station WUSF in Tampa. Thanks very much for being with us.

DAVID LISAK: Thank you, Neal.

CONAN: And this is not just a topic you research, this is your story, too.

LISAK: That's right. I was abused when I was a kid.

CONAN: And when did you come to terms with it?

LISAK: Well, that started really only in my late 20s into my 30s. I either completely repressed the memories for about 25 to 27 years, and then over the course of several years began to come to terms with it and eventually told my surviving parent, my mother, about it.

CONAN: It was your father who abused you, too?

LISAK: No, no it wasn't. It was a babysitter, a boarder who was taken into our house to help pay the rent.

CONAN: So again, the emotions are unbelievably powerful. Your mother, again, is supposed to be your protector.

LISAK: Yes, and one of the - you know, there are so many effects that children who are abused suffer, both at the time and then as the years go by. And for myself, as for so many, when you're five years old, even though your mother does not know what's happening, you inevitably interpret it as an abandonment, as a betrayal, and why isn't she protecting me, why isn't somebody rescuing me from this.

And there's really just no way that a child that young can see it as any other - in any other way. And that really can so undermine the child's relationship with their parents, with adults, with authorities, and that can last a long time.

CONAN: We're talking about carrying the painful secret of childhood sexual abuse for years or even decades. If this is your story, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. I'm Neal Conan. Stay with us. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. Jerry Sandusky's defense team continues to call witnesses in the former assistant coach's trial on dozens of counts of alleged sexual abuse. High-profile cases like this often spur conversations and sometimes revelations of past abuse.

As we've heard, victims often suffer in silence, alone, in many cases blaming themselves. We're talking today about why it's so difficult to talk about childhood sexual abuse and what happens when the truth comes out. If this is your story, our phone number is 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org.

Our guests are Sarah Pleydell, herself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. She teaches writing at the University of Maryland, College Park. And David Lisak, associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He researches the effects of childhood sex abuse. He's also spoken out about his own past abuse.

And David Lisak, some of these effects down the years, they can vary with different individuals.

LISAK: Yes, and they do, and that's an important thing to remember, that - the circumstances of the abuse, the context in which it occurs. You know, in my case, I was abused by somebody who was really outside the family. I had, I at least had a mother who was a good mother in so many ways. And in my other work, I do a lot of forensic work, I evaluate men who have committed serious crimes, most of whom have also been terribly abused as kids.

But most of them had no parents who were there to help them in any way, and that's one of the factors that can really alter what happens over the long run. So despite the abuse, I was able to get an education and get a foundation under me and recover from those experiences, and that's not always possible.

CONAN: That vulnerable personality that Sarah was talking about a moment ago, was that you too?

LISAK: Oh yes, for many, many years, and you know, to this day, you know, I - I'm an adult, I'm a professional, I do all kinds of research, I do forensic work and so forth, but the abuse lives on in me. And you know, there are still nights when I wake up with nightmares because of things that have triggered me during the day, and that's just part of, at least in my case, that's part of the reality that I live with, and it is for many survivors.

They can thrive in many ways but still suffer many of the symptoms.

CONAN: Sarah Pleydell, you were nodding there, yeah.

PLEYDELL: My sister has a very strong image. She says that childhood trauma is like a house with a horrible room in the middle of it, and you do your very best to keep the doors locked, but every now and again you wake up and there you are, and you're eight years old, and your heart's racing, and it's happening all over again, and you have to very slowly and carefully turn on the light and pick yourself up and take yourself out of there, and the room never goes away.

But the house changes, and the house over time can become a safer place.

CONAN: Let's get Tammy on the line. Tammy's calling us from Buffalo.

TAMMY: Hello.

CONAN: Hi, you're on the air, Tammy, go ahead, please.

TAMMY: (Unintelligible) bring back so many memories because as a child going through the same experiences, and coming from an African-American community, sometimes you could be alienated when you're up front about the experiences that happened to you as a child, especially molestation.

And even as an adult with my kids, I'm like very, very protective. I don't do overnights over at a friend's house. Certain smells trigger off, like, depression. And when I decided to finally get counseling, a part of my childhood, when my daughter was asking me about things, what happened to you when you were nine, or - I can't remember anything.

So when I decided to get counseling, and they suggested maybe I should, you know, rethink what happened to me when I went to the court and just get the information about my case, I was denied because in order for me to even - for them to even open the books on my case, I would have to get a lawyer, then the lawyer has to go to the judge. It was just really, really a stressful process. I mean, I'm still dealing with it, even today like with relationships and commitment.

And it's just like a lifelong struggle that you go through on a constant basis.

CONAN: I'm intrigued - smells?

TAMMY: Yeah, just certain smells like the cologne, it just triggers it off.

CONAN: You too, Sarah Pleydell?

PLEYDELL: Yeah, the book I've just written is called "Cologne."

(LAUGHTER)

PLEYDELL: And it's about this very topic, yeah, smells, absolutely.

CONAN: David Lisak, I know smell is a very powerful stimulant to memory. Is this common?

LISAK: Oh yes, it is, and it's just as your guests have been saying. All of the senses record just very sometimes microscopic but incredibly vivid details. And they are profoundly etched in memory, and they come back, sometimes because they're triggered by something that you've encountered, and it can be quite overwhelming when they come back.

CONAN: Especially 'cause it jumps up at you when you least expect it.

LISAK: Exactly, there's no (unintelligible).

PLEYDELL: And they're dissociated from one another. They don't add up. They just, you know, assail you.

LISAK: Yes, that's right.

CONAN: Tammy, are you continuing to get counseling?

TAMMY: Yes, I am. I mean, some people think, you know, I think there are a lot of misconceptions. People think you just go to counseling, and then after a certain period of time it just gets better. It just doesn't. I mean, just - it's a lifelong struggle.

CONAN: There's no cure certificate they hand you after a certain period of time, yeah.
TAMMY: Exactly.

CONAN: Well, good luck to you, Tammy, thanks very much for sharing the call.

TAMMY: Oh, thank you. Bye-bye.

CONAN: And David Lisak, she raises an interesting question. Are cultural differences in different communities - is it more or less - it's always going to be difficult, let's be honest about it, but is - some factors can exacerbate that?

LISAK: Yes, certainly, and there are differences amongst communities and the degree to which a child or an adolescent feels that they can speak about this. Of course there are differences between families and the degree to which a child may feel like they can disclose and speak out.

There are also gender differences, and we have very good data, there's good research that boys who are abused are far less likely to disclose at the time. They're far less likely to disclose over the years. There are many more obstacles that boys seem to have to tell anybody about the abuse and also then to seek help, whether professional help, any kind of help as they get older.

CONAN: Here's an email from Charlie(ph) in Portland: I was sexually abused by two women, first at the age of three or four by a church nursery volunteer, later at the age of 14 by my own alcoholic mother. I haven't been silent about this but have received a lot of denial by those who refuse to believe that women are capable of committing such abuse.

Others seem to think female abuse is somehow a lesser crime than abuse committed by men. The biggest impact of the abuse on my life has been a lifelong aversion to physical and emotional intimacy, leading to four divorces and no children. And Sarah Pleydell, that aversion to physical and emotional intimacy, I don't mean to probe too much, but is that something that has happened in your life?

PLEYDELL: You have to work very hard at it, and I'm very lucky. I have a wonderful husband and four children, but it's been a lot of work.

CONAN: Let's see if we can go next to - this is Debbie(ph), Debbie with us from Jackson, Michigan.

DEBBIE: Yes, hi, Neal. I have five children, and to our knowledge it was disclosed to us about nine years ago that at least three of the five have been molested by family members and by an ex-son-in-law. Now, one is male, the other two are female, and until it was disclosed by the daughter that was married to, you know, to our ex-son-in-law, we had never - we were never aware and had no idea this was going on, you know, prided ourselves on being aware and alert and, you know, thought we would know and thought we had taught our children that they had come to us.

And watching - I've been following - I follow everything I can, but watching the Sandusky trial, especially these brave young men that have come forward, I just as a mom, it's just heart-wrenching. And then to hear I think it was David talking about, you know, you think your mother protects you. And what do you do?

My children have not sought therapy. I've watched their lives, and I've watched alcohol creep into some of their lives. It's very difficult, very difficult.

CONAN: David Lisak, is there any advice you might be able to offer?

LISAK: Well, some of this depends on age. We know that with time, more survivors of sexual abuse become more able and more willing to seek help. It is - it's really impossible to make that happen from the outside. You can do everything you can to make it available, you can do everything you can to, for example, make sure you have the name of one or two good therapists, clinicians in your community that you've researched so that if the time does come where you have a child who's willing then to see somebody, you at least increase the odds that that will be a good experience and it will take, that they will stay in therapy and actually - and get some benefits from it.

But there are also, you know, there are a lot of resources now, online, on the Web, that men and women can go to get information. We know for male survivors that so many of them are loathe to disclose this to anybody, and so we know that, for instance, that the One in Six website, we know we have a lot of visitors to that website from men all over the world who are on their own, completely in private, visiting the site to get information, to begin approaching this. And then we hope, of course, that with time, that they will seek more help.

CONAN: And is it also possible that when, finally, you admit it to yourself, anger becomes so powerful that there is useful recourse to the police?

LISAK: Well, yes. But that's complicated, as I know you know. The - you know, the only sort of really sort of outlet for that anger, other than - you know, I spent months and months. For a long period of time, I put a mattress up on my wall, and I would go up there whenever I had to and just pound on the mattress. And that's useful for at least that - you know, for as far as it goes.

But if you want an actual outlet for that anger, something that you would actually do in the world or something, some way to hold the offender accountable, then the criminal justice system, the civil justice system, they're there. But as your callers have already noted, sometimes the statute of limitations gets in the way.

Very often, the criminal justice system itself is not a very hospitable place for victims of sexual crimes. It's a tough row to hoe. And that's why, I think, as several people have already commented, the courage of these young men in the Penn State case who've come forward to testify is really truly remarkable. And they're doing something for the whole community, not just for themselves.

DEBBIE: And - excuse me, but we discovered that the criminal justice service did us no favors. And then the statute, as far as civil lawsuits, statute of limitations, we're only one year past the age of majority. So that - you know, there's a lot that needs to be changed within the system that we've worked hard to try to get changed. But the - that's a long, long, long road, and has been a long road.

And we've been as active as we can in our community. And we have research and we have tried to seek counseling and made that available and offered it up to our children. But, you know, when they're in their 20s and 30s, and they, you know, they have to come to that - as you know - they have to come to that on their own.

But it's just so hard to sit back and watch their lives and - I'm not saying that they're destroying their lives, but in certain aspects, they are. And they're doing a lot of good, too. But to see that - and to see that - you can just see the, as you mentioned, anger sometimes. One of my children has now started taking boxing. So that's a good thing. I mean, she...

CONAN: The heavy bag taking the place of that mattress up in...

DEBBIE: Exactly.

CONAN: ...David Lisak's attic.

DEBBIE: She's a female, and she's, you know, in there with all the men, boxing away. And it's just very hard to watch, very hard.

CONAN: Good luck...

DEBBIE: Thank you.

CONAN: ...Debbie. Thank you very much for the call.

DEBBIE: Thank you, Neal. OK.

CONAN: We're talking about holding stories of your abuse in for years, even decades. Our guests are Sarah Pleydell, a writer and educator, and David Lisak, associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

And this email from Meg in Chicago: I went to Horace Mann School in New York City. Recently, The New York Times published an expose of decades of sexual abuse. I'm talking about this with fellow students, while more and more victims come forward. I wasn't sexually abused, but I was there. I feel overpowering guilt that I didn't help. I know I was a teenager at the time, but what can I do to support the victims? What can I do to overcome my feelings of helplessness?

And I wonder, Sarah Pleydell, it's not unlike you're feeling - you feeling you failed to protect your sister.

PLEYDELL: Yes. It's a - fortunately for me, I had my sister. I always had my sister to share my story with. We always had one another as touchstones. I always felt that I could - that she was there for me, and I was there for her. I think if I hadn't been abused and she had, it would have been annihilating, totally annihilating.

CONAN: Here's another email, this from Maka(ph): Yes, abused by father, older brother, tried to speak out, told to be quiet. Oddly, the phrase that was given to me was: Loose lips sink ships. I never got the meaning of that phrase until much later. When I finally did speak out as a young adult, family was angry at me for blabbing, for embarrassing them. The last two decades, mom, dad, rest of family rally with abuser. He has the will, I'm guessing is the reason. It's troubling as they know what was happening, yet I was called horrid names like slut or others. I am the ostracized member of the family for daring to speak out and say something.

Of course.

PLEYDELL: Mm-hmm. I know women who go - who've gone through that. I was fortunate to have my sister, as I said. But I know women who have spoken out and been the single voice in the family.

CONAN: It's your fault.

PLEYDELL: Yes.

CONAN: It's your fault.

PLEYDELL: And you shouldn't speak about it. You know, you are abusing us by talking about it.

CONAN: David Lisak, if there's one thing that I think we learn from this is that not speaking about it is the continuing crime.

LISAK: Yes, it is. And I think it - not speaking about it, not disclosing it is ultimately very hard, very harmful for the survivor. But it is also, of course, the cumulative silence that allows this to go on. So when we survivors don't speak out, when we are silenced by family members or by other members of the community, the silence is what these perpetrators rely on, and it's what they are camouflaged in. And that's why we need to speak out about it.

CONAN: Sarah?

PLEYDELL: I've also found that writing is a wonderful vehicle to work it through. It creates a context for exploring a lot of your feelings. In the book that I've been working on, I was able to kill my father.

(LAUGHTER)

PLEYDELL: It's satisfying symbolically.

CONAN: How'd you do it?

PLEYDELL: He dies in a car crash...

CONAN: Uh-huh.

PLEYDELL: ...at the beginning of the book, and at the end. And it was tremendously - I wouldn't say - cathartic.

CONAN: Cathartic.

PLEYDELL: Yeah.

CONAN: A car accident he caused, his own fault?

PLEYDELL: Mm-hmm. Well, yes. I mean, yes. And actually...

CONAN: I don't mean to steal your ending, but...

PLEYDELL: ...the character sort of wills it on him, and she knows she's willed it on him. And she has to struggle with that because, in a way, her fantasy is to kill her father, and she has to live with the consequences that maybe it did impact his ultimate, you know, his death.

CONAN: Well, I look forward to reading that.

(LAUGHTER)

CONAN: Thank you so much for being with us today. Sarah Pleydell, writer and educator, teaches writing at the University of Maryland, College Park. David Lisak, thank you for your time today, as well.

LISAK: Thank you, Neal.

CONAN: David Lisak joined us from member station WUSF in Tampa, where he's an associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I suspect it's not in Tampa, but in Boston. And thanks to everybody who called and wrote. We know these are difficult stories to share. We thank you so much for coming on and being willing to talk to us, and we're sorry we just couldn't get to everybody.

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