Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 - Program Announcer
This prerecorded voice introduces Breaking the Silence, summarizes Dr. Gregory Williams's professional background, provides the call-in number, and returns after the host's closing remarks with contact and scheduling information. The announcer's personal identity is not stated.

Speaker 2 - Dr. Gregory Williams, Host
The speaker identifies himself as Greg Williams, hosts the anniversary episode from Houston, discusses the program's history and past guests, reads from his book, and presents a seven-part trauma-recovery roadmap.

Speaker 3 - Prerecorded Book-Promotion Voice
This voice delivers the commercial for Dr. Williams's book Embracing Your Scars. The speaker's personal identity is not stated.

Speaker 1: Welcome to Breaking the Silence with Dr. Gregory Williams. Dr. Williams is the author of the acclaimed book Shattered by the Darkness: Putting the Pieces Back Together After Child Abuse. Dr. Williams serves on the senior leadership team at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He travels throughout the United States, speaking to and training professionals, parents, and victims about the importance of confronting abuse and personal trauma directly and not being afraid to break the silence surrounding personal pain.

Feel free to call tonight's show at 888-627-6008 and speak with Dr. Williams and his guests live on the air. And now, your host, Dr. Williams.

Speaker 2: All right, good evening. Welcome to Breaking the Silence. This is Greg Williams.

My light just went out on my little spotlight here, so we may be fading into the darkness, but that is quite all right. Welcome to the program tonight. Here I am in my home in Houston, Texas. I can look out the window as the sun descends over the beautiful Texas Medical Center.

More people are employed within this section of Houston, in the Medical Center, than are employed in the entire city of Dallas. It is awesome to be this close to the Medical Center, and it is great to be with you tonight.

You are stuck with me this evening, and we will talk about why in a second. That makes this a perfect night for you to get involved by calling 888-627-6008. The awesome people at BBS Radio - Don, Doug, or TJ - will answer the phone and patch you through to me tonight.

It is going to be a different evening. We were going to have an expert named Anthony Gurley with us tonight, but he was just admitted to the hospital, so we will reschedule him. He has written a book about suicide called Deadly Dilemma. I was halfway through it, and it looks like an awesome book.

September is Suicide Awareness Month. We were going to discuss the need to stay connected with people who are going through life's ups and downs, how to support people with low self-esteem, and related matters. We will reschedule him because of his health emergency. I told his publicist earlier this afternoon that I would be glad to speak on my own this evening.

We did not have an opportunity to celebrate our seven years on the radio, so that is what we will do tonight. I will share a few things about how we started years ago as we begin our eighth year on the awesome BBS Radio TV network.

I have a feeling that the great people at BBS Radio TV will be doing exciting things in the near future. I have been reading about the changes, and I think you will see the network broadcasting to even more corners of the world.

It was interesting that, just a week or two ago, I received an email from someone who keeps track of these things. It showed that this podcast is one of the top ten in Australia. I do not know what Australia is doing listening to me, but welcome to everyone in Australia. I would love to visit sometime and meet you. Thank you for listening every week and for making us one of the top radio programs in the country.

It is exciting to be part of such an awesome network. Although I have never personally met Doug, Don, and TJ, I consider them true friends. We have been in the foxhole together, week after week, for more than seven years as we enter our eighth year.

I have not looked up the figures, but it would not take a brain surgeon to investigate how long radio shows, podcasts, and similar programs typically last. I think the average podcast lasts only about nine to twelve months. We have been on for more than seven years and are beginning our eighth year. It is awesome that God has blessed us with such a great listening audience.

There are several ways to get involved. I believe we are currently streaming on the Shattered by the Darkness Facebook page. You can go there and comment. Better yet, because this is our anniversary celebration - the actual anniversary was a couple of weeks ago, but we are celebrating tonight because our guest had to cancel - you can call 888-627-6008.

You might want to tell me which show or episode was one of your favorites. I will talk briefly about some of those episodes. I also want to read a chapter from my book and announce an upcoming book that I hope will be released within the next few weeks.

I wanted to finish it by my birthday at the end of July. I hope to send it to the publisher this week and receive it back by the middle of September. This is my first children's book, and we will talk about it a little later.

You can also text me at 832-396-6525. I will read the messages during the commercial break at the bottom of the hour. It is great to be with you this evening.

I remember the old days when we started. I do not know whether Don, Doug, and TJ remember, but we were audio-only. Later, we gained the ability to broadcast both audio and video. That gives us the capacity to appear on platforms such as Spotify and YouTube, where people can watch the program.

I believe our largest audience is still made up of people who listen on the radio while driving. You can hear the program on radio stations and connect in whatever way is available in your area. You can also ask an Apple iPhone to play it, and Siri will do that for you. I do not want to say that name too loudly because my phone will activate and ask what I want. I think the program is distributed on more than 150 platforms every week.

These seven years have been special to me for several reasons. I never really thought I had the ability to do this. Probably eight or nine years ago, I cohosted a show out of Dallas. I began to enjoy speaking, talking, and sharing my thoughts and feelings. People started texting me and saying, "Why don't you think about doing your own show?"

I contacted a couple of people and joined a couple of platforms, but I was not pleased with them until I met the people at BBS Radio. At the time, they were located in California. Now they are on the outskirts of Houston, Texas. They finally saw the light and came to Texas, the best place in the world to be - especially the Houston area. I love this area.

We connected and launched the program here. In the old days, BBS Radio also broadcast our church services live. That was especially important during the COVID years because it kept us connected with our church family when churches across the country were shut down and we were not permitted to hold in-person services. BBS Radio was there for us. It has been an absolutely awesome relationship that we have built over the years.

Some of my favorite guests over the years have included Dr. Bruce Perry. I loved having him on, and I believe he appeared twice.

Another favorite was Lisa Jakub, who played the oldest daughter of the characters portrayed by Sally Field and Robin Williams in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. Lisa gave us a great program. I have tried to bring her back, but she is working with veterans and helping them with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Recently, we had Micah and Diana LeCert, who are doing wonderful things. They have written a book called The Breaker. It is underneath a stack of books here, but you should read it if you have an opportunity. You can get it on Kindle or buy the hardcover. They are conducting conferences and sessions around the world, and they were awesome guests to have on the program.

One person I still wanted to interview was Dolly Parton. Now that Dolly Parton has died, that will never happen.

Before he takes his last breath - he is almost one hundred years old, if not one hundred - I would love to have Dick Van Dyke on the program. I have reached out to him and his wife many times. She has said that he is busy and still involved in activities, especially where they live.

I have also reached out to two other people whom I greatly respect and honor: Bill Gaither and Sandi Patty. I contact them at least once a month and ask them to come on the program. Before the day I die, I would love to have each of them here to discuss how they endured what they experienced, how they became who they are today, and the strongest moments of their lives. I hope that one day I will be able to announce that we have them booked.

One of my favorite guests was the former child actor who played Little Ricky on I Love Lucy. That was a great program. He discussed his struggles with substance abuse, what it was like to grow up in Hollywood, and what it was like to work with Lucille Ball.

He still contacts me, and we occasionally communicate by email or text. He is a great guy. He runs a dance studio somewhere in Mississippi, or somewhere in that area, and does a wonderful job.

Over the years, it has been awesome to connect with people. As long as we continue this show - and I can see it continuing for a few more years, as long as I am able and still have a voice - I want the program to remain a platform where people can share their stories.

Chief Matt has been on, I believe, three times, including the other Sunday night. We will have him back when his new book, Unconquerable, is released. I hope it reaches number one as quickly as possible.

I want people to be able to share their stories in an environment that is noncritical, believing, and accepting. I want to allow them to describe what they have endured because I wish I had possessed such a platform when I was going through my own experiences.

There is a chapter in my book that I want to read. The book is Shattered by the Darkness, and you can get it on Amazon or elsewhere. Every now and then, they put it on sale and almost give it away. I do not know how they do that; it is above my pay grade. The book has sold almost 400,000 copies.

This is Chapter Eight. I want to share it because it addresses something I needed to confront, and people listening to the program may need to confront it as well. This chapter comes after I tell the horrific stories of what I endured as a child, beginning in Chapter One.

I begin Chapter Eight with an italicized reflection. It is not poetry, but a collection of deep thoughts that were in my mind as I prepared to write the chapter:

"Darkness has a way of hiding the ugly reality of destruction in the midst of light. Even on the darkest of nights, the moon has the privilege of reflecting illumination from the sun that is completely out of sight.

"The raw truth about darkness is its ability to penetrate the depths of a person's heart, a person's mind, and a person's soul. But even as the moon reflects the sun's light on a cloudless evening, there is a brutal truth: On one side is a surface mirroring light, while the other side of any given night is often hidden, forgotten, never addressed, and never visited. It is called the dark side of the moon."

Then the chapter begins. Its title is "Freedom?"

This was after I pushed my father away. I was almost seventeen; it was June, just before my seventeenth birthday. Dad came into my room and wanted to abuse me that night. For the first time in my life, I pushed him back and said no. I told him that if he did not leave me alone, I would tell everyone in the world what was happening. This was the moment after that:

"Freedom. Finally. But now what?

"I remember feeling a tremendous sense of excitement and exuberance during the first few weeks after I pushed my dad away and said, 'No more.' For months, however, I still could not sleep through the night. I feared that the darkness across the hall would once again enter my room. Black memories haunted me continually and still linger in my life, even to this day - almost forty years later when I wrote the book and now more than fifty years later.

"I felt like a prisoner released on parole after being imprisoned for sixteen years. I had been released without guidance, wisdom, or a map showing me how to take the next step."

That is why I am discussing this now: At the bottom of the hour, I am going to give you a road map for taking the next step.

"I felt lost, confused, and totally bewildered about what to do now that I was free from the abuse. My father literally shut me out of his life. He hardly spoke to me, looked at me, or even acknowledged that I was in the same room. I became totally invisible. For a long time, there was little or no communication between us, even though we lived in the same house.

"Probably one of the strangest thoughts I experienced after the abuse was the desire to continue receiving affirmation from my dad for months and even years afterward. It was as if something deep inside me missed his presence, even though he had been abusing me. Believe me, I have received therapy about that.

"I have asked several guests on this show whether I was completely crazy for wanting that affirmation after enduring years of abuse. I was alone in the aftermath, surrounded by emotional, mental, and psychological damage, with nowhere to turn.

"One thing I wish I had done during that period was find someone I could talk to. I needed somebody with whom I could share my fears without judgment. Unfortunately, I did not have anyone like that in my life as a sixteen-year-old.

"The nights became increasingly lonely. Although the physical abuse was no longer happening, the emotional abuse continued through complete neglect and my father's refusal to acknowledge that I was even alive. It was the complete opposite of what I had been accustomed to.

"So many emotions, feelings, and fears rushed through my mind that I was filled with helplessness. Helplessness soon blossomed into hopelessness inside my heart.

"The damage sexual abuse inflicts on a person is so deep and complicated that it would take volumes of books even to scrape the surface. It is like taking a sledgehammer to a glass heart and driving the heavy metal through its center. The pieces scatter everywhere and cannot simply be picked up and glued together. Progress toward putting them back into place requires patience and meticulous handling of those shattered emotions.

"In my mind, I often asked myself these questions: If I walked into the light and let the world know, what would happen to me? Would anyone believe me? Was the abuse my fault? Why did I not stop it sooner? What would everyone think of me? How would my family and friends view me? Would they ever accept me as a normal person? Would people blame me? Was I too damaged ever to be truly loved?

"I kept asking myself dozens of other questions and doubts. The constant fear of rejection, ridicule, and being labeled a liar was always present.

"My dad's words remained in my mind and played repeatedly: 'No one will believe you.' He told me that time and again. After years of hearing that whispered in my ear, I began to accept it as fact - an indisputable fact. I honestly thought no one would ever believe me.

"The abuse had been hidden and covered up too well. After at least a dozen years of daily sexual abuse, not one person ever approached me after noticing something was wrong. How could a father abuse his son more than 4,300 times without anyone becoming suspicious? That weighed heavily on my mind and, to be honest, it still does today.

"Although the abuse was over, its lasting effects would ripple through my life for many years. I often wonder what kind of person I would be today if I had never been abused for all those years. There is no way to answer that question fully or even come close to the truth.

"The only thing I could do was begin sweeping up the pieces of my life and try to make sense of everything. But there were so many pieces. I kept asking myself, 'How am I going to do this?' The answer was painfully obvious: one tiny piece at a time."

That is Chapter Eight, right in the middle of the book and in the middle of my story about how I dealt with the aftermath. The book then discusses the different ways I responded.

The next chapter, following its opening reflection, is titled "Putting on the Mask." That is when the damage happened. Was the abuse terrible? Absolutely. Was the aftermath worse? Absolutely.

After the abuse stopped, corrosion and erosion set in as I put on a mask and pretended it had never happened. That is when my body began to rot on the inside. That is why I have some of the problems I have today: I did not express what had happened.

When we return from the break, I would love to get you involved at 888-627-6008. In celebration of seven years of allowing people to share their stories, I am going to give you a brief road map of seven things you can write down and use to take off the mask and confront reality tonight.

We will be right back after this short commercial break. Do not leave us. You will not want to miss the final half of the show.

Speaker 3: Get ready for a life-changing journey. From the bestselling author of Shattered by the Darkness and When the Dark Clouds Come, Dr. Gregory Williams is back with his highly anticipated third book, Embracing Your Scars: Learning How to Turn Life's Pain into Life's Power and Purpose.

Have you ever wondered how to transform your struggles into strength? Do you want to stop hiding behind the pain and heartache and instead turn those scars into the fuel that propels you toward greatness?

If so, this book is for you. In Embracing Your Scars, Dr. Williams shows you how to take the negative experiences of your past and turn them into a source of future success.

Do not miss out, because your transformation begins here. The book will soon be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever great books are sold.

Speaker 2: Welcome back to the program.

I just read Chapter Eight from Shattered by the Darkness. The subtitle, which appears here beside my kindergarten picture, is Putting the Pieces Back Together After Child Abuse. That is how cute I was. This is what happens to you fifty-eight years later; the world does awful things to your looks. But I was cute back then.

Putting the pieces back together meant that ignoring the pain and hurt was not the answer. I want to share a road map that took me personally from surviving to success and strength.

First, I had to recognize what had happened to me. It took years before I did that. I pretended it had not happened, and that was the worst mistake of my life. I did not tell anyone. I held it in, kept it inside, buried it, and put it in a closet.

In the book, I explain that there are many things I have not told you and may never tell the world. Since writing that book, I have let a couple of those skeletons out of the closet. I put a few more into the second book and still more into the third.

There are still a couple of closets I may never open because the contents are too horrific. I do not see a reason to disclose them. I have dealt with them with my Lord and Savior, but I do not see anything positive that could come from revealing something so horrendous. I will probably keep those things hidden until glory.

Who knows? I might disclose them if I encounter someone whom that information could help. That is probably the only reason I would do it.

I had to recognize what had happened and name it without minimizing it. Simply naming it was enormous: I had been sexually abused.

I did not discuss this in the first book, but one closet I opened not too many years ago involved trafficking. I was trafficked. For three to three and one-half years, from age eleven until I was almost fourteen, I was sold out of my own bedroom every Monday night.

That is why I am now involved in human-trafficking awareness, red-flag training, and teaching people how to communicate with and respond to someone when trafficking is suspected.

I needed to identify and recognize what had happened to me. Whatever your situation may be - violent domestic abuse by a wife or husband, date rape, a crime committed with a gun to your face, or another form of abuse, hurt, pain, or neglect - you need not only to name it but also to identify its effects.

I wish I could verbalize those effects more effectively to the people around me even today. I need to recognize and identify my stressors and triggers: things I see, hear, experience, think, smell, or encounter in a person's face that remind me of someone and automatically return me to flashbacks.

I also need to identify unhealthy behaviors that may be hurting my current relationships. I am working on those behaviors with the people who love me, but it is sometimes difficult.

Do you ever completely get over being hurt? No. You learn, hopefully, to deal with it in a better and healthier way.

I need to identify controlling relationships and intimidation. I need to identify the threats I perceive in my world, whether they are deliberate threats or situations I interpret as threatening. I need to determine whether something is neglect or abuse and understand what I am feeling.

Then ask yourself: Are you safe? That is the second step.

First, recognize what happened and say it. Personally, I would say it aloud, write it down, and confront it, along with everything it caused. Then ask: Am I safe right now? What do I need right now?

If abuse is still occurring, safety comes before any attempt at reconciliation. I have been in counseling sessions in which a wife told me, "My husband only hits me when I deserve it." I responded, "What? We have to deal with this now. Are you safe right now?"

Do not worry yet about reconciling, repairing the relationship, or confronting the person. Move to a safe place with safe people. You have to be safe.

The third step is regulate. Calm your body before attempting to solve the problem. You need to bring your system under a protective umbrella and regulate it. If I do not regulate myself, I may simply go off, and it will not be pretty.

Whatever that process is for you, remember that stress and anxiety can rapidly place you into fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop responses. You need to understand what stress and anxiety do to your body.

Lisa Jakub taught me how to breathe and tap. Whether tapping looks silly or not, she said it helps her. If you remember that episode, which is available in the archives, she had experienced so much emotional trauma that the snap of a shampoo-bottle cap closing in the shower could jolt her and cause trauma to take over.

She had a number of calming techniques. In that program, she teaches breathing and offers many other tips. You can also take a walk, exercise, sleep, or rest.

Another tool is the five-four-three-two-one grounding exercise. Go outside into nature and slowly identify five things you can see: a tree, a jogger, a park bench, a dog, or anything else around you.

You may think the exercise is silly, but it shifts your brain and forces your attention into a different mode. After identifying five things you can see, identify four things you can touch, such as grass, a fence, concrete, or a sidewalk. Then identify three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.

The five-four-three-two-one process can begin lowering anxiety that is so elevated it has you shaking, bringing everything back toward a manageable level.

It is like driving a car that is overheating when you are only five miles from home. You are traveling at seventy-five miles per hour on the interstate when you notice that the temperature gauge has reached its hottest point.

What do you do? You begin turning things off, even the radio and air conditioner. You roll down the window and slowly lift your foot from the accelerator to calm everything down. The temperature gauge may not return entirely to the cool side because something is obviously wrong, but it can begin to fall from its peak.

That is what regulation is about: regulating your system and telling yourself, "I need to focus on something else right now."

The fourth step is reach out. We have recognize, get safe, regulate, and reach out. You do not have to do this alone.

When you sit in a chair or on a couch and begin thinking, "I am all by myself. Nobody cares. Nobody loves me. Nobody wants to talk to me. I have no one," that is probably not true.

I receive calls from people around the world who do not want my awesome advice. They simply want someone to listen, hear them, and validate what they are experiencing and feeling. If you need that, I will share my number again before the end of the program. The number is also announced at the close and appears on the program's archive information page.

You do not have to do this alone. Build a support system around a trusted friend, counselor, teacher, physician, pastor, mail carrier, or anyone else you trust, and engage that person in conversation.

The fifth step is process. What happened is part of your story, but it does not have to control the rest of your story. What happened to me is part of my life, but it does not have to control the rest of my life.

I finally came to understand - I believe this appears in Chapter Eleven or Twelve - that it was not my fault. It is not your fault. Do not fall for the wicked lie whispering, "If only," "If you were just..." or "You should not have...." It was not your fault.

You need to process what happened. It is part of your story, but it is not the whole of your story moving forward.

People think I am crazy, which is all right; I hear that all the time. But I can almost say, "Thank You, God, for allowing me to go through this, because it made me who I am today."

Whatever you are going through right now, do not damn it or ignore it. Process it, and then embrace it - especially those things that are beyond your control and those that are in your past. You cannot change them.

You cannot pull out a bottle of liquid Wite-Out, unscrew the cap, and brush it over a typed note to cover what was written incorrectly. You cannot cover up what happened. Process it now.

Work through the experience at a pace that is comfortable and manageable for you. Explore your triggers, thoughts, emotions, losses, fears, and beliefs connected with being hurt, traumatized, abused, or neglected. Process all of it.

The sixth step is rebuild. Take back what stress, anxiety, or abuse has taken from you. Rebuild.

When you rebuild, restore safe boundaries. We have discussed boundaries week after week for a long time. Rebuild your routines, confidence, decision-making ability, interests, goals, and sense of control.

I will not allow my father, who has been dead and in the grave for years, to continue affecting and abusing me in 2026. I refuse. I have rebuilt.

Does the abuse still affect me? Yes. It will affect me until the day I die. It affects the way I shower, work, and dress in the morning. It affects almost everything, but it does not control me. I am in control, I establish boundaries, and those boundaries protect me.

Learn the difference between boundaries and walls. Ding, ding, ding - there is a big difference. Boundaries are healthy guidelines you establish to protect yourself. Walls keep people completely away and shut everyone out.

Build boundaries that say, "Wait, I am not going there. I will not let you cross that line." Do not build walls that keep everyone away.

There is one more step. We have recognize, get safe, regulate, reach out, process, rebuild, and seventh, grow.

Move from surviving to living. Healing does not require forgetting what happened, because that is probably not going to happen. Recognize your strength, rediscover your purpose, and realize that you are an absolute treasure - a masterpiece. Only one of you was created. You are special. Recognize and embrace that truth.

Practice saying yes to some things and no to others. It is all right to say no.

When anxiety and stress suddenly rise inside you - which happens to me three or four times a week - remember SAFE.

The S stands for stop. Do not react immediately. Pause and stop.

The A stands for assess. Ask: Am I comfortable? Am I safe? Am I all right? Assess the situation.

The F stands for find support. Reach toward a safe person you can trust. Believe me, there are not many people in my life whom I trust. There are only one or two whom I truly trust.

The E stands for engage the next step. Do not solve your whole life today. Take it one step at a time.

Stress says, "I have far too much to handle." Anxiety says, "Something bad has happened to me, and I am dealing with it." Trauma says, "Something bad is happening to me," because the mind and body are still responding as though the danger remains. Abuse says, "Someone is harming, threatening, exploiting, controlling, or violating me."

That is the road map. Those are the steps you can use to work through whatever you are facing.

I hope that, during the last seven years as we enter our eighth, we have provided things you can apply to your life. I hope they allow you to approach next week with a different set of eyes and another tool in your tool belt.

This is not the answer to everything. I may be wrong many times, but these are the things that helped me, and they may help you.

One thing I truly believe in is journaling. It has been enormously important for me. Another thing for which I would give my life - and have given my life - is my love for and trust in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. You ought to give Him a chance, too.

Thank you for supporting this program and for being here. We do not ask for or want donations. That is not what this is about. This is about helping others and leaving a legacy that can remain for years to come when somebody needs help.

If you need me, call 832-396-6525. Thank you for your love, support, presence, emails, texts, calls, and everything you have done to make this show a success.

We look forward to several more years on the most awesome radio and television network in the world, BBS Radio TV. Join us here next week for another live edition in our eighth year, broadcasting from Houston, Texas.

God bless you. Have an awesome week, and never, ever forget - I have said this every week since day one - there is always, always hope.

God bless. Have a great week. Good night.

Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Breaking the Silence with Dr. Gregory Williams. To contact Dr. Williams, call 832-396-6525 or email shatteredbythedarkness@gmail.com.

Do not forget to join us each Sunday night at 8:00 p.m. Central Time, 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time, on BBS Radio Station One for the next episode of Breaking the Silence.