196 | Your Story, Deep Brotherhood & Types of Trauma (Chris Bruno PART 1)

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Chris Bruno

There is nothing more exciting to me than the intersection of transformation and adventure. This is why I founded Restoration Counseling - a place where we daily engage the power of restoration and epic re-storying. As a Licensed Professional Counselor, I specialize in men and masculinity, sexual addiction, trauma and abuse. My experience as a men’s therapist and my work with men at Restoration Project provide me a wealth of experience when navigating the landscape of a man’s heart.

As I work with clients, my focus is on discovering and “reading” the narrative of their lives and guiding them toward the transformation that comes through adventurously and honestly engaging our sorrows AND our glories. This, to me, is what I was created for.

Episode 200 Party:

• Tuesday, January 9th from 8-10pm we are gathering 200 dadAWESOME friends for a couple hours of fun. Spikeball, Cornhole, Music, dadAWESOME Giveaways, Food Trucks and some Vision/Mission/Hopes for what's next.
• We're hosting this party in NE Minneapolis at Ninth Street Soccer and Coffee: 801 SE 9th St, Minneapolis, MN 55414
• Here's the RSVP Form: https://forms.gle/R3ApseRfsX49Kuk26

Make a DONATION to FATHERS FOR THE FATHERLESS

Show Notes:

• Episode 200 Party: https://forms.gle/R3ApseRfsX49Kuk26
• Text “DAD” to 651-370-8618 to join the dadAWESOME Nudge to become an intentional dad
• 6:58 -Parallels from a Rafting Guide to a Father
• 7:02 - "It's our first time down this river when we're fathering our kids and it's not our first time down the river."
• 07:14 - "We can still guide our children down the river that we've never been down before because we've been down rivers before."
• 7:46 - "What I've experienced in the past, my kids won't experience, but they may experience something similar. And that just gives me the freedom to kind of journey down a river and see what comes."
• 9:02 - "we became the men that we are today because of the men that were with us before and the guidance of the men that we had or the lack of guidance of the men that we didn't have, that that's so impactful for who we became."
• 9:16 - "the most important person in our lives as far as men goes is our dad. If he was there or if he wasn't there, that's important. And there's a shaping that happens inside of us in his presence, his intentionality, his wisdom, his guidance, just like we were talking about with the raft. All of those things are super important for how we've navigated life."
• 9:47 - "There are two ways I think that fathers bring destruction into their children's lives. It's either in their absence or in their violence and in his presence, He brings life and he brings words and, you know, attention and affection and intention. But when those you know, whether it's violence or there's absence, there's going to be something significantly kind of shaping in the life in our lives. And the fact is that all of us have that to some degree, because we don't live, we don't live in the Garden of Eden.
• 10:22 - "all of us have some level of wounding and pain that we've experienced, and therefore we bring that in. So in order for us to be the kinds of dads that we want to be that are dadAWESOME dads, right, that it's not that we muster something up, it's more that we need to read our story and it's more that we need to read our story of where have we come from?"
• 10:45 - Kurt Thompson says, "the number one variable for children to grow up with the ability to connect in a secure way in relationships, the number one variable for that to happen is the parents investigation of their story" their own story.
• 12:30 - TEDx talk from Chris Bruno about his childhood - https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_bruno_restory_how_to_live_your_truest_story
• 14:02 - "There is something beautiful in my parents that just decided we're not going that route. (Special Needs Sister) We're not going that route and we're actually going to keep her at home and we're going to find ways to love on this child and bring her up in the context of our own home."
• 15:24 - "My horse died and there was something about that experience where I was in the house watching the vet with with the horse outside, they were outside in the corral and I watched my horse collapse and it was in that moment that something inside of me collapsed as well. And I couldn't do anything. I couldn't get out to the horse. My parents had said, Don't go out there, and I was 13 years old."
• 15:52 - "something inside of me collapsed. And I remember distinctly kind of making a vow inside of my own soul this little 13 year old boy vow of I'm not going to give my heart to another like that again because he had become my companion..."
• 16:22 - "...And that collapsed inside of me is actually something that I have had to work on pretty hard to to trust God for to move into, to explore my own story so that I can then be present, not collapsed, but present to my wife and to my kids."
• 17:29 - There was something inside of me that shut down and closed off, walled off, pulled away. And it was almost like I felt myself just, you know, pull into myself. And it wasn't like I was going to offer that part of myself to someone else again, because it was far better to be distant than disappointed.
• 19:35 - big T traumas and little t traumas
• 20:16 - "It's the little tiny traumas that also need someone to come alongside of you and help you process."
• 20:25 - "we are heaps of undigested experience where heaps of undigested experience and and if we have it, just think about indigestion. When you have indigestion, there's something unwell about your body. And so if there's undigested experience, there's something unwell about your soul and we need someone to come alongside of us and to be with us and partner with us and and talk through those things with us to digest the experience so that in that moment, we can make meaning in a way that that won't be a traumatic meaning. It won't be one of those collapsed or vows or walled off moments in a life.
• 21:08 - "If a parent walked back into the house... if I had a mom or a dad, come back to me and sat with me on my bed and let me cry it out and and listen to me and share it with me and empathize with me and all that. I probably wouldn't have walled off maybe a little bit, but not as not to the degree that I did.
• 21:38 - "What makes a trauma is the is the actual event causing the trauma. But what makes it a kind of an overwhelming, ah, traumatic ah, tragedy over a lifetime is that there is no one to process or digest experience with you."
• 22:28 - We were never meant to parent alone. And I think there's something that we can learn from our international brothers and sisters who who are in communities of of a lot more tight knit, a lot more connectedness than we are in America.
• 23:39 - "We are our best father when we have our best brothers with us. And so we need those guys and those are the guys that you came in and went rafting with, you know, with me... Those are those guys in my life and we need our brothers. But then also sometimes we need someone else who's on the outside who's got some training is a professional in some ways to come along side to create a safe space for a child to unfold.
• 24:25 - "I don't know about you, Jeff, but my kids trigger the heck out of me. They trigger the story in me to know degree. Like there is there, there are only a few people who trigger me. So significantly it is my wife and it's my kids."
• 24:53 - "I can't actually be as available to my kids as I want to be. And so I need help. I need someone to come alongside of me. And there have been people in my kids lives that have been there for them in some really hard places. Mentors, counselors, coaches, teachers, my friends who have taken them under their wing for a season. It's so, so important for for people to make that available to their kids."
• 26:04 - "our friendships that are kids can benefit from. First, have to be friendships that we benefit from."
• 26:22 - "we need to move from buddy and to brother and and to go from buddy to brother requires the two of you men or the three of you, the five of human to be willing to engage those parts of your lives and your stories that we've been talking about today."
• 26:39 - "those men know my story and they have offered their compassion. They've offered their empathy. They've offered their question, their curiosity. And they've also and they've also when they see me walling off. Now, they know where the story comes from and they're able to not like, hit me upside the head with a two-by-four, but more so. Gently come alongside of me and asked me the question, is this what you would like to do right now?"
• Episode 200 Party: https://forms.gle/R3ApseRfsX49Kuk26

Episode Links:

• https://www.restorationcounselingnoco.com/
• Man Maker Book - https://www.amazon.com/Man-Maker-Project-Born-Made/dp/1498206158
• Restoration Project: https://www.restorationproject.net/
• FATHERS FOR THE FATHERLESS
• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team

Conversation Transcript

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