When we are forced to endure tragedies, abuses and stresses during our childhood, it forces us into a black hole of despair and despondence. As we grow and we are trying to process what happened to us, we try to fill that black hole, that emptiness, with anything to avoid facing it. We fool ourselves into thinking we are fine, but we aren’t and it manifests in self-destructive tendencies.
Sean was a kid just like any other until a series of devastating events derailed his entire outlook. His father passed away when he was very young. He and his siblings coped as best they could.
Like all young boys, Sean needed his dad to show him how to be a man in the world. Instead, Sean’s innocence was stolen from him by a neighborhood boy. In addition, his step father goaded and verbally abused, ridiculed and emotionally tortured him.
Sean coped the only way he knew how; he internalized everything, became the clown everyone loved to laugh with, and began using drugs & alcohol to numb his pain. By the time he was 8 years old, he was self-destructing and nearly lost himself, he nearly lost his life. By the time he was in his twenties, he had transferred his indulgence to drugs and alcohol to soda and fast food. Filling the void and dealing with the pain.
He traded one destructive coping strategy for another, and the potential consequences were just as deadly. Reaching a documented weight of 687 pounds, Sean finally realized that his life had more meaning that he was giving himself credit for. He was a husband and a father, who NEEDED to be there for his children. He had to allow himself to be there for them, and he had to do it by denying himself the coping mechanisms that were essentially killing him.
He knew he wanted to live, he just needed help in figuring out HOW he could stop the destruction and take back his life. He had to face the emptiness and face the tragedies of his childhood so he could work through it and help others as he worked through his pain.
His pain has become his platform to help and validate others who have gone through childhood trauma.