Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If I can help someone realize that you can do all that I've done, and I've done a lot of shit, but it does not have to define you. If you really want to change and grow and get curious enough to answer questions that have led to the choices you've made. There's so much neuroscience today that points to the hope that people who have done things for a long time absolutely can change.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: I'm Diana Earley, and I've spent most of my life learning firsthand what privilege actually costs.
The legacy control, the family expectations. The guilt of feeling trapped in a life everyone thinks you should be grateful for. If you've ever wondered why having everything still feels like something's missing, you're in the right place.
Welcome to Pressures of Privilege.
I've known Mark Drax for years. We met about 10 years ago at addiction conferences in London and Cape Cod.
I just saw him again at the Oxford Transform Trauma Conference. He's hard to miss. Here's what you can't see on a podcast. He's about 7ft tall with a chiseled face and white hair pulled into a ponytail. He is striking from the outside. Mark had a very good start. A secure home, private schools. And then he was sent away to boarding school at 8 years old.
Today, he's an addiction recovery coach, certified by the ICF, a disciple of Dr. Gabor. Mate, here's what surprised me about his story. Mark was never into drink or drugs. Not at all. So what was he recovering from? I'll let him tell you. He told me nothing is off the table. Mark, welcome.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Thank you, dad. Lovely to be with you. And thank you for the glowing introduction. Six foot eight is quite tall enough, I can assure you. Not seven foot, but, hey, it's still
[00:01:49] Speaker B: word round it up, right?
I mean, I saw you in Oxford from across the street. It was really easy to find you.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Yeah, my mother used to have the same. Same benefit in supermarkets.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: So, Mark, like most people, hear addiction and they think drink or drugs. And that was never really you. So what were you addicted to?
[00:02:08] Speaker A: And thank you for making. That's a. I think that's a really good way to start this chat because so many times in the last. Since I came into this industry, in January 13th, when I came into this industry, it was still very much. If you mention the word addiction, people defaulted to drink and drugs. When I actually entered my very first treatment center in July 2004, I did so because my girlfriend at the time had been in OA for eating issues. She knew of the addictive cycle. She'd started to witness me tragically mess around on her, betray her. And eventually it all exploded in my face, as every relationship used to.
But she was the first woman in my life who didn't get angry. And she didn't get angry because she. She had recognized my addictive patterns. And she left on my darlingham table the information for saa, which is, I'm sure you know, many people will stands for Sex Addicts Anonymous. And I was so curious. I'd never heard the words sex and addiction in the same sentence prior to that fated June morning in 2004. So I got curious and I attended my very first SAA meeting on the 21st of June, 2004. And I was in for a long ride. And that was over 20 years ago.
Back then, the work of Gabor Mate was still in its infancy. People were not talking about trauma. People were not too bothered about what happened to you as a kid. Yeah, there were some people talking about it, but it wasn't really in mainstream mental health, addiction recovery circles.
And so I was dropped into treatment center. I mean, I actually chose to go in. I wasn't forced. I was so curious to figure out why I was messing up my life. I entered a treatment center voluntarily, and the first thing they did was just slap me. Almost like a sort of standard ticket. Yes, Mark, we reckon you're a sex addict. And of course, the following five weeks of treatment in that particular treatment center was very much the message was, you just have to stop it.
Right? You just have to not do these things anymore. You just have to not and betray. You just have to be a good boy was very much the vernacular in those days. And of course, as we know today, it is not quite so simple to just stop any addiction.
Why I'm 20 plus years, I can tell you that. With much more incisive help through the last 10 years in particular, I can tell you that my. What. What an amazing therapist who still holds, who is staying here in England. Paul Sunderland was the man who's helped, literally saved my life. And he has helped me come to realize that if you actually want to drill down to the deepest levels of my pain, my addiction was not specifically to sex. It was to secrecy and rage.
And that comes from wounding long before I was sent to my first boarding school. It comes from the nanny I was handed to the day I was born.
And it's a long, complicated story. I don't know whether you want to get into this, but I didn't discover until I was 50 what that nanny actually did to me. And it took a trip to the Amazon jungle on the recommendation of Gabor Mate, funny enough. And spending three and a half weeks with Saint Shaman in the depths of the Amazon jungle in northeast Peru and drinking ayahuasca every. Every third night for three weeks. And finally got to the truth of what was done to me from the age of zero. Not my trauma didn't start when I was sent to a boarding school. That only added to it. And the ritualistic beating and torture I suffered in that school, yes, didn't help. But the real damage which, which led to what people will now refer to as complex ptsd that was done by my nanny who beat me for the first four years of my life completely beyond the knowledge of my parents. I absolutely do not believe my parents knew what was going on. But I do believe that if they had figured it out, they would have stopped it. So I hold no malice towards my parents today. In fact, quite the opposite. I miss them both terribly. And I have found a wonderful looking back, respective love and gratitude to my parents, which I did not have through many of my past 59 years, I will admit that. But we got there and before both of them died, I found peace with them.
So that's a long answer to your first question.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: I can skip to question five you already given me.
But being dropped off at boarding school at the age of eight. I mean, Americans aren't used to going to boarding school that early. We usually go at 13 or 14. What do you remember about that drop off?
[00:06:40] Speaker A: That's amazing.
Bizarre. Suddenly. Suddenly had a rush of emotion, which is never a bad thing, by the way. I love it. But.
So it wasn't expecting that. It's.
To think back to those days and sometimes when I have conversations like this, it's almost like someone, some kind person, you in this instance, opens a trap door and I get a download of memories which get stashed quite neatly away for most of my working and loving life these days. But every now and then you open that portal and suddenly, wham, I'm right back there.
And you just did that. Which is beautiful in its own way. Well, I'm happy today that I can actually do that because I spent most of 50 years avoiding doing this and that's what addiction did for me.
But yeah, it was. It was. It was bizarre. It was terrifying. I was eight and I can. And also my boarding school. If you Google West Downs School in Winchester, you will find a. You'll find it hard to find pictures of it because it's now business school.
But if you can find one from the 70s, you will find a building that looks much more like a prison than a school. It was a daunting, huge, scary red brick building.
And for all intents and purposes, it pretty much in those days was a prison. Because 50 years ago, things that were going on in that school today, I would say at least 75% of the Masters and sadly, possibly even mistresses that were teachers at that school when I was there would now be sent to prison.
That's the depth and breadth of the extreme behaviors that were perpetrated upon children in the school which I was a recipient of. And I witnessed big dropped off there the first time was bad enough by the time I did my first semester and things started to get terrible.
Then of course, subsequent semesters became ever more terrifying.
And I think that's where I learned to love darkness.
Because the only way I could get away from the people doing things to me was to leave. We were in dormitories of 24 people.
And that's big. That's huge. So you had a dorm captain which was a 13 year old prefect who they seemed to think was a suitable person to maintain law and order over 23 other young boys ranging in age from 8 to 12.
And he was supposed to maintain discipline. Well, of course, it's rather like Lord of the Flies, isn't it? That extraordinary movie where you put someone in control and wow, they can very quickly rather enjoy that level of control.
And the prefects at that school, they issued endless beatings and they sexually molested young boys, including myself. And that was just the boys.
All right, then you factor in the masters who violently assaulted me on many occasions, grabbed me by the hair on many occasions, ripped it literally out of my head on several occasions. One master called Mr. Blair, who I happen to know is dead, because when I tried to kill myself in September 2018, the police got involved and it all came out finally. And they offered to do some research and try and see if the two particular masters who were called Mr. Morrison and Mr. Blair, not Tony Blair, I'm hastened about, were still alive and they discovered they were both dead. But Mr. Blair on one occasion ripped the ear half off the side of a boy's head.
Yeah, that's what was going on at my boarding school in 1970.
I was born 73 in 1975. Between 1975 and 1980, I was at that school. And that's what was going on on a regular basis at West Town School in Winchester.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Wow, that's horrific.
And I. I listened to a video on your Cliff Talk website where you talk about feeling that you were a monster, that there was a monster inside of you, and then through your healing, you realize that, no, there wasn't a monster inside of you. It was actually a frightened little boy.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: Thank you, Danny. Yeah. I mean, that's beautifully put. Yes. So what tends to happen, what certainly happened to me, I think it's fairly, probably fairly classic. You know, you get treated like that for the first 12, 15 years of your life. You reach a point. And of course, I did grow up to be quite a large man. I was very skinny for the first 15 years of my life. So I was completely as a bean pole, useless at things like football because I was so tall and gangly. I couldn't coordinate my feet from my head, let alone balls. But I hated that kind of thing. I discovered the gym age 15 and started to pump on and that finally started to change my life and I discovered I could throw things away. So I joined the athletics team in the last few years of my high school.
That gave me some respect because that's what boys respect. They don't respect whether you can program a computer or not. They respect whether you can run the 100 or throw a discus. But I mean, what happened to me through. Through my mid teens was very much a sort of move from being the victim to. To Obviously something inside me would eventually say, you know, I've had enough of this shit.
And of course I became a bully. By the time I left my high school, I wasn't thumping and beating on little boys like people had done to me. But I probably wasn't treating some of the junior years with a great deal of respect, and I'm not proud of that. And then through my 20s, I'm very conscious of the fact that. But I led life with a very much an F U C K attitude because I believed by then that I could just. My attitude was defi. It was defiance. That's the polite way of saying I'm incredibly defiant. And so I learned to be defiant and literally defy the world and to disprove my beloved father, who didn't. Who was. He was a bit Victorian and an ex naval officer. And if you didn't stand pretty much stand to attention and do what he said and demanded, he just didn't care. He didn't want to know. He. What he never did was what I spent my life doing. Now, he never asked why. Why did you do that, Mark? I spent my life now asking my clients and why and helping them ask why about the behaviors that they're exhibiting. That's why I do for a living. But he didn't ask why. And so I got lost in this system of terror, far too frightened.
I did tell on someone in the early days of my approach school, age 9. And of course if you told you ratted out a bully, you got beaten to palp even worse. So you learned pretty correctly. You don't ask for help. I certainly didn't ask my father for help because he spent 10 years from aged 8 to 18 looking over his old horn rimmed glasses at the end of every school holiday, going through those dreaded school reports telling me I was a complete waste of his money.
So when, when the one person that is supposed to be protecting you and asking why and helping you understand yourself better actually is sitting there for 10 years through your most formative years, saying, well, I don't know why I'm wasting my money on you. You're wasting my money. You, you learn, you, you, you, you come to the conclusion, well, I must be a waste of daddy's money, otherwise why would he be saying these things to me? So of course come my twenties, it matters. You was sol and I'm being polite now. You know, I'm going to do it my way, my way or the highway and no one's going to hurt me again. And of course, unfortunately, that meant leading a life which was based on rage. I, I, I had a rage inside me. And let's, let's state the most, the most chilling rage that was inside me. It was a rage towards women because it was a woman who first abused me, that nanny. If I showed you a picture of that nanny today, you would shiver.
She looks like a woman who would not have been out of place in a concentration camp.
And she was big, physically big and muscular. I mean, I found pictures of her in my family albums when I went looking for this information about 10 years ago.
Very, very scary looking woman. And this is who I was entrusted to it from the age of zero. So of course, because I wasn't able to fight back, I was internalizing everything. There's a wonderful meme I share with the clients which is a picture of a, a photograph from the sign. There's a tear coming down the child's face. And the caption is, a child who's being abused by its parents does not learn to hate its parents, it learns to hate itself.
And of course that's where the monster is born. When things are done to you you have no comprehension of why things are being done to you other than the fact you say to yourself, well, it must be me, because why would they be doing these things to me if I wasn't a rotten egg, if I wasn't bad?
Well, then you multiply that through, you know, several decades. And by the time I got to that cliff on the night of the 6th of September, 2018, I absolutely, by then, well, for a start, I had destroyed every relationship I'd ever tried to have to that date. And on the morning of that day, I was busted by an amazing woman called Suzanne who, who helped me find myself long term. She did find on that day enough evidence to prove that I had been long term lying to her. And she left. And that's the night I almost killed myself. So, and I, as I drove from my house in London to the. We have cliffs on the south coast of England called Beachy Head in San Francisco. And if you want to kill yourself, it's sadly common knowledge, you probably would try and jump off the Golden Gate Bridge in England. The cliffs of Beachy Head are a very similar venue. And you drive there in a bad mood, it's not to see the view.
And so I drove down there that night and I remember feeling immensely calm because I was done.
I'd been busted yet again from someone I thought I loved and convinced myself that I loved. But clearly the way I was behaving can't have been loved. You don't betray.
Love is not betraying.
So I drove to that cliff thinking, you know what? I'm done.
I was at peace and winded up into the darkness.
That was alluring to me because wind the pot back to that prep school and I would run and hide in the changing rooms to get away from the bullies. I'd be hiding in there for hours through the pitch black of the night sometimes because they couldn't find me. So the darkness became my friend. From age date onwards, I'd probably still actually be in dark room. I find comfort in darkness. And as the sun was setting that night, I was very ready to jump into darkness.
And I suppose in some warped part of my brain, I was thinking, well, I'll just be safe in darkness forever.
So, you know, that was a pretty heavy night. And a policeman and a chaplain talked me off that cliff. And today I'm here I am and able to share this with you and anyone that wants to listen.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: How did the chaplain and the policeman find you? Did somebody just see you standing there?
[00:17:36] Speaker A: No, sadly, it had been a Bad day. I put a knife to my chest earlier in the day and tried to get my girlfriend to, to stab me. I mean it was a very, very black day, the blackest day in my life, bar none. And at about 4pm I suddenly went, I'm sort of catatonically silent and decided to stop screaming and shouting, stop trying to defend the indefensible.
And, and I got into my car, she was trying to stop me. I pushed her away and got into my car and just left and I, I drove to, down to the south coast of England. Took about two and a half hours and I got there, I think it's about 7:30, 8 o' clock at night. It was just, the sun was setting and I thought, you know what, I'll just send my girlfriend one more message. She had been messaging, several people had been messaging. She'd called God knows how many people. The phone had been ringing off for the entire journey and I'd just been ignoring it.
Even one of my brothers had been called in and I wouldn't even respond to him.
And eventually I got there, I sat by. There's a very famous lighthouse at Beachy Head. It's quite a famous, it's quite a popular tourist attraction. It's have gotten some wonderful views off the cliffs. And I got there and I sat down and I sent her a message and I, I could, I could actually dig it out of my phone now if I wanted to because I've never deleted it. And it basically said, there's a gorgeous view here, you'd love the sunset. And sent it and then she sent one back saying, where are you?
And I said I'm by, by the lighthouse at a place called Beachy Head. What I didn't know was that she was on the phone as I was typing this text message to a mutual friend. And as soon as she told this mutual friend where I was, this mutual friend said to Suzanne, get off the phone right now and call the police. And Suzanne, being American, had no idea what beat your head was. And so she did. And within 10 minutes of sending that message to Suzanne, a four by four starts driving up the track towards me. I have a sitting by the lighthouse about 10 foot from this cliff thinking, who the hell's that? And about 50ft away, this 4x4 stopped and a very bright light appeared from the drop from the passenger side and started scanning around the ground. And of course I wasn't hiding, I was just sitting at the foot of the lighthouse. And of course he saw me and came towards me and he started screaming my name. And I remember so clearly thinking, who the hell is this?
And who. How the hell they know my name? And it was all.
I suppose it was all such bizarre wonderment.
And he approached me and he said, hello, mate.
My name's Andy, and we've had a message from your girlfriend, and we have reason to believe that you're not very happy.
Never forget his words. I mean, I'm giggling now because I'm just smiling from my heart today with what this man did for me. And I looked up at him and I didn't move. And I said, yeah, you could say that. He said, may I sit down next to you? And I said, yeah, all right. So he sat between the cliff edge and me, which in itself was either foolhardy or brave or both.
And he said, so he didn't touch me, didn't lay a finger on me. He just said, what's going on, Tom? Do you want to talk about what's going on? So I said, yeah, why not? And so for the following hour, I sat there and I poured my heart into his mind. And I. Eventually, there I was. I was lying with my head in his hands.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Oh, my God, that's beautiful.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: He held me like a baby. He held me like a baby on that cliff edge for almost an hour.
I howled and I howled and I howled. I mean, he just held me. He didn't try and drag me away from the cliff. He just held me like. I guess in a way, like, I wish I'd been held as. As that baby.
And eventually I cried myself to exhaustion. And by then it was getting bloody cold. I was sitting there, pair of jeans and a T shirt on a September evening, which wasn't warm. And eventually he said, mark, you're shivering.
Can I suggest that we go and grab a cup of coffee? We got a little room at the tourist center just down the road. How about it? And went, yeah, all right. And there was a policeman there as well, but he never came near to me. He let Andy, the chaplain, a vicar or a priest, whatever you want to call him in whatever religion you come from, a holy man.
And he. And I just got up and walked to the police car with Andy, and the rest is history.
And so, yeah, they talked me off that cliff. And about within 24 hours, I was on the phone to a friend of mine who owns a very, very good treatment center in Tennessee called Onsite.
I'm sure you've heard of it, and I've sent clients there before. So I got on the phone To Miles. I said, miles, I'm in a world of shit.
And he said, mark, get on a plane. Don't even hesday. Get on the plane. We'll make room for you. Just get your ass over here and we'll take care of you. And I did. And I spent six weeks there and literally the rest of my life started to finally unfold in the right way. I got the right help. After years of searching and getting the wrong help, I sadly have to say, not blaming the therapist that tried to help me. But I to this day, don't think she had the depth of background to actually ask the right questions. And unfortunately, she definitely painted me as a naughty boy. I got told I had to stop it. For many years working with this particular. I'm not going to, obviously not going to say who it was or you can tell if it was a man or a woman. But this therapist, long term, did not help me. But I played my part. So I didn't tell her the whole truth either. I was very economical with the truth. I told her what I thought she wanted to hear, not what she needed to hear. With Paul today, I tell him everything.
And my advice to anyone seeking therapy, working with a therapist. If you are not telling your therapist the whole truth, you are wasting your money.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: I've had relatives who come to me with things on their minds and I asked them, well, have you told your therapist? Oh, no, I could never tell them that.
Yeah, it's a total waste of money. You're absolutely right. I love that story at the lighthouse, though. Thank you for sharing that.
That vicar sounds like a godsend. Literally.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Well, I drove there to kill a monster. And by that night I had absolutely come to believe that there was no good in Mark Drax at all. I was totally at peace with slaying this monster. And yes, now, then, since then, in the last seven, eight years, whatever it is, now I absolutely can sit here and say, the only person inside me was a very frightened, lost child.
That's what I was about to kill. So anyone thinking of doing something rash, remember that you're not killing a monster. There's no monster.
There's just a terrified little you who needs to be heard. That's what I would say today.
Lovely.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: I was just thinking back when your father saw your bad grades.
I'm wondering, what do you wish he had maybe asked you?
[00:24:42] Speaker A: So many things, Diana. So many things I do. I can remember sitting, looking at him for a start. I was very frightened by Father, because I was then little. I was not 6 foot 8 then he was about 6, 2, which of his generation was a big man. And, and he had a way of looking at me, which. Listen, you, you didn't question my father. You, you didn't answer him back. If you did, you even thought about it. You, you know, you, you just, you just didn't. It's simple, right?
And so I sat there in fear and when he would ask me a question, something like, why aren't you working harder? Why?
Why do you continue to defy me?
Or statements like, you're a waste of my money, I mean, what do you say to that?
Unfortunately, unwittingly, what he was doing is. He knew no better.
What he was actually doing was just almost pouring more concrete over me. He was suffocating me without realizing. I was too afraid of him and I didn't know what questions to ask. So all I could do was literally sit there in like a rabbit in headlights and take it.
But looking back now, I mean, clearly my work failed very early on. I mean my, even before I went to that boarding school aged eight, my work at my day school wasn't brilliant. I can remember this.
The work I've done, especially in the jungle in 2017 has brought a lot out of long term memory. Ayahuasca has been an immense help to me. It's opened portals to memories. I were vague at best. And so I can sit here and tell you today the behaviors I did at that day school which were naughty at best.
The work results were not good. My work results through the whole way through my schooling were not good because I had this attitude of so dual, I'll do it my way.
The concept of authority figures to me were terrifying because they didn't help. But today I would have said, dad, why do you think I'm my results about?
Could you stop and explore this with me?
Here's the thing out of Gad Mate's playbook. I watched him many times sitting on stage, as I'm sure you have, and sometimes when he opens it up to questions, he'll pull someone up on stage and I've seen this pattern, he's brilliant at this. And he'll have someone disgorge their darkest fears in front of a thousand people. Guitar which thinks it's amazing in itself. And he'll let them disgorge to a certain degree and then he'll put his hand up and he'll say, right, hang on a second, stop.
And they'll stop and he'll ask one. And I've seen him Ask this question multiple times, and it's the same question. He looks this person in the eye and says, when all this was happening to you, who did you tell?
And the answer is always the same. No one.
And I think this is a massive tragedy. This is something we are really missing with an entire generation of children.
Our children do not feel safe to offload to their own parents, let alone school teachers, coaches. So what do they do? They offload to their peers, who then say, hey, well, don't worry. Come down to the, to the barn tonight and we'll give you something to make you feel better. And by the age of 12, they're snorting something or drinking whiskey or whatever because they're too frightened to talk to their parent for whatever reason. And Gabon nails it every time. And that was my problem. I was too frightened to talk to anybody.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it happened to me in boarding school. There was a boy, our choir master was molesting him. He told us, like, the, the other choir kids, while we were waiting for him to show up, he said, oh, yeah, he put his hand down my pants or something like that. And I was horrified. I already knew that, you know, having been sexually abused, knowing that there are these, See, these are not secrets that you, you need to keep. You need to talk about it with a grownup.
I went to the headmaster and told him, and the headmaster said, well, I can't take action until the boy tells me, you know, to, to my face. So I encouraged the boy to go to the headmaster. And the headmaster did the right thing. He got rid of the choir master within a day.
And I found out a year later that the choir master committed suicide after failing to adopt a boy. So I, I, I see that as a victory, you know, that I. But it's true. He went to his peers. He didn't go to the teacher. Yeah, unless I, you know, because I coaxed my friend, my, my friend Lex, and I co. Coaxed him to go to the handmaster. I hope other people maybe will do the same if they listen to this. Well, I was lucky. The person in authority did the right thing.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: You can impress on people seeking help enough that the importance of overcoming the fear of asking for help. I have a client I was speaking to literally two hours ago.
I had a phone check in today.
Similar age to me, comes from a very different background to me, and we've had some, done some fantastic work together, but he continues to not call me when he gets triggered.
We've discussed the reason he is terrified of authority figures. And however much however gentle I may be with me, because when he did ask for help as a child, he was savagely beaten. He has a terrific childhood. Either he was savagely beaten or there was no one to ask for help. So of course, why would he ask for help today in his 50s, he's been, he's. He's got such lifelong training that A, if he asks for help, it brings pain, and B, well, this wasn't what. There was seldom anyone around to ask for help. So, you know what? Sod it, I'll figure it out on my own. And figuring out on his own continues to occasionally leave him reaction.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Well, imagine if you're a child and you're. Or a teenager and somebody is mistreating you and you, you, you're afraid to tell people. Like, how do you know if somebody's saying safe?
[00:30:35] Speaker A: First of all, I bring in how we parent children.
I think we spend a lot of time, still spend a lot of time teaching a child two plus two. What I've experienced and what I observe is that there's not enough teaching a child that it is absolutely beautiful. Its curiosity is welcome.
When it does something through curiosity is not bad or it's not wrong. It's just curious examples I use with my clients who often come across. We often discuss this very topic because a lot more of my clients have never felt safe to talk to anybody. And I say, you know, I ask a client, how many times have you tragically been in the supermarket and you've heard a parent screaming at a child? And they say, yeah, sadly, too many. I go, right, so let's think about what's actually going on there. You know, little Jimmy pulls one apple and another hundred come tumbling down.
And so often the parent's initial reaction is, oh, you stupid little boy. Right?
And of course, there. And that's the first tragic piece of this puzzle that is immediately attacking the soul.
It is not addressing the behavior. When you call a child bad for doing something through pure curiosity, a child doesn't know that if it pulls the bottom apple out of a pyramid of a hundred, it's going to fall down. It just sees a beautiful pile of apples. Crowds won.
But when you then attack the soul of the child and tie the soul to bad behavior, you tell the child it is bad, which is not true. No child is bad, right? No child until it can walk, at best, at earliest, is bad.
No one on earth will ever convince me that any child is born bad.
Every child ever born since we crawl out of swamps is amoeba, was born Beautiful, innocent, deserving of love and deserving of safety. And they are, they are born with one abiding thing that adults tend to lose, and that is unbridled curiosity.
So because what they. When they. When. When a child wanders towards a power socket in a wall with a coat you've left lying around, and you scream at it because it's about to stick the wire coat hanger into a power socket, which could kill it.
But if you scream at that child in fear, it thinks it's bad, what you have to do is get down and talk to the child and say, you know what, dude, that's not a good idea. I love you, you are precious to me. You are amazing. But what you're about to do there, not such a good idea. And with the apple and supermarket, you get down and you scoop up your child and you hug it and you love it and you laugh and you giggle and you say, oh, my God, look at that. You know what? Diane's probably wasn't the best idea. I love you, you're amazing. But let's not do that again. What do you think the chances are that you're going to convince the child that it's lovable by doing that rather than screaming at it for doing something out of curiosity? So my answer is those are simple, concrete examples to paint the picture that what I think we do as a society, as a planet, is teach children that they are worthy. Worthy. They're worthy of love, they are beautiful, they're innocent, that they're cur. We want their curiosity. Right? When you have a child comes into a family which is dysfunctional and parents arguing and screaming, the first thing that child is going to do is shine like a bright light, like a dimmer, like a light to its dimmer on full brightness. But if that child is born into a dysfunctional family where it's constantly told to shut up and stop making a noise, right, just because it's being curious, it will shut up. It will learn to isolate. It'll learn to run to its room, it'll learn to button its lips. So what you're doing is you're now dimming it to curiosity. And if you do that enough over the first 10 years of its life, you will teach that child to suppress a beautiful part of itself. I spent a lot of my life playing a role to satisfy the needs, the emotional and the societal needs of my parents.
It wasn't until my mother died in February 20, 2019, I walked out of the memorial service after, when we said goodbye to My mum. I walked into the middle. It was held at a school down in Dorset, near where we met. Our parents lived. I walked alone just for 10 or so minutes before joining, you know, the 100 or more people for drinks. And I just stood there. And I remember so distinctly looking across this beautiful part of Dorset where my parents lived and thinking to myself, right, dad died two years ago.
Mom's gone now.
Who am I living for now? I remember thinking this actively the day of my mother's memorial service. And I stood there, I thought, well, might as well live for me now.
And, you know, I wish I'd been able, if I have the courage to live for me 40 years ago and my life would have been different. But I didn't have that courage because my family was too. It was too much of a cocoon of regimen.
Love was conditional. Again, I don't want if people sit there, hear me, attacking my parents. Well, I'm not.
I miss them and I love them for what they gave me, what they did give me. But unfortunately, they only gave me what they were taught to give me. So I didn't blame them. I have to be real. I have to discern the difference. And this is why I teach my clients. I don't teach. I say to my client, if you end up hating your parents, I have failed. I failed you. But if I teach you to recognize them for their weaknesses, to have compassion for them, to learn to love them before it's too late, as I was helped to do, and have some form of friendship before they die, which I luckily did, you can now live free of guilt and shame. This is what I do today. I live loving my parents, missing them, recognizing their. That what they were not able to give me, but so grateful for what they did.
So that's a long answer to the question, how can we. How do you know if someone's safe? We have to teach children that they are safe with us.
That's what we have to do.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: That's nice. And I was also thinking that, you know, it's been known that the prefrontal cortex goes offline when someone's in fear. So if your whole childhood was in fear, that part, that thinking rational part of the brain wasn't thinking, it wasn't able to. You were in constant survival mode because you did end up going to university. You went to Australia, right?
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I flew down to Australia in September 1990 and it was to just have a bit of fun with the then girlfriend. And I decided, did some scuba diving.
Guess what? That relationship didn't last. I found myself stuck in Cairns and. And then met another lady who turned out to be a doctor or a trainee doctor at the time. And through the whole of 91 I ended up teaching scuba diving and having an amazing fun time with this doctor when it went, when she wasn't busy with her doctor duties. And by the end of 91 I thought, you know what, I might actually just get interested in doing a bit more work because I got a bit bored of filling other people's scuba tanks and I ended up going to university.
None of it was planned and the irony is, because I chose to do it, I talked my way into a private university on Australia's Gold coast on the east coast, called Bond University. It was in its infancy, it'd only been open, it hadn't been open less than two years.
So my father was a little concerned I was going to pay private fees to a brand new university. While happy to say it's still going and still doing some great work and I got a good degree. But because I chose to do it, because it wasn't daddy sending me there, making me feel guilty when I didn't and I wasn't top of the class, I ended up with a distinctive degree because I just, I chose, it was my turn. I wanted to work. I was a mature age student. I didn't get there till I was 23.
A lot of my peers in England had been through university and moved on. Some were working on master's programs by then. I was late, I was late. There'd many things in life but my education finally came good and I got a good degree. Yeah. And I enjoyed good process.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: And then you were a yacht broker and auntie, but cabinet maker. You were 16 years as a managing director.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: You're very kind. You make it sound very glamorous. Yes, I mean I did all those things but my main job for a while was I ran my own electronics company and I enjoyed that. And we put electronics into people's houses and put in everything from home cinemas, the security systems. And I had a company of 14 people for 16 years and it was a lot of fun. And I cherish those days of learning how the world can work well and also learning how not to get ripped off by greedy developers.
But the recession of 2008 was not good to me because of course I was dealing in luxury goods. And post 2008 things went rapidly downhill. And by 2012 I was ripped off by one particular developer to the tune of over £100,000. And that absolutely Basically brought me to my news and eventually I was getting so fed up and angry with being ripped off, I thought, you know what, I'm done with commerce, I'm done with the competitiveness of this, this life. I want collaboration.
And so I went seeking collaboration and I turned to my then therapist who thought it was a great idea that I move into the mental health world with everything I had by then learnt or was still learning. Very early days But I mean 2004, 2013, it was nine years of trying to get a handle on recovery and learn more about myself. And then of course I fast tracked it by getting into the mental health industry in January 13th when I actually started and I decided rather than going back to university, I would and get on a plane and I would go to conferences and I would start meeting people and I met, including you, a lot of people through that time. And people when I started turning up at one conference after another, especially the big ones in America, people started to notice me. As you kindly said at the beginning, I'm, I'm 6 foot 8, I tend to get recognized. The people started to smile and say nice to see you again and they started to take me seriously. And then I got invited to go and work in some of the treatment centers in America. Well, I started interning and all for free, I just gave my time. But I mean that was an amazing training actually going to treatment centers, sitting there for weeks or even months at a time and watching and learning and being allowed to put my voice in certain sessions with clients and stuff. And then I then I discovered that I wanted to become a coach because I love the concept of really intimate hands on guidance in a way which, I mean the therapeutic industry does some amazing stuff but there's also a lot of boundaries in the therapeutic industry.
Therapists, I mean, I own therapist, I remember I was not allowed, well, not allowed but I, it would not have been appreciated if I'd made contact out of hours. And so you have, you sit on a therapist's couch one hour a week. Well that leaves you with 167 other hours in the week. What do you do with them?
And as a coach, my practice today, when I take on clients and I don't take on that many at a time because I make sure I do have time for my clients. And yes, I charge per hour like most people, but what I don't charge for is interim calls. So the reason I chose to do this is because I thought, first of all I looked back at what I didn't have when I went into that first treatment center in 2004 and what I didn't have have, especially back then, was anyone to talk about it. Bearing in mind back then I just assumed I was a full blown lost cause sex addict. You know, who the hell do you talk to sex addiction about? You don't. Nation average dinner parties. You might. You know when you say I'm on the wagon, when someone offers you a drink, they clap you on the back, right? Oh, good for you, old boy. I mean, you don't sit at a dinner party and tell someone you're a sex addict. They look the other way for a start at best and at first they think you're a pedophile or they're going
[00:42:40] Speaker B: to think, oh, what's wrong with that? You know, like they, they actually think it's, they glorify it.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: Well, some people, yes. On rare occasions in I have had someone say, oh, lucky you.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You have no idea.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So that was when I sort of, I remember thinking, what's missing? And I thought, what's missing is aftercare to someone who's really there for a client, not just for that one hour a week. So with my clients, they have my phone number and if they want to call me or send me a WhatsApp and say, Mike, just checking in with you. Had a bad argument with my wife just now, or my boss just screamed at me and I'm feeling really triggered, I just messaged back saying, okay, I'm here, do you want to chat? And more often than not they say no. But every now and then we do. We get on the phone for five minutes. They hear my voice, I hear theirs, they get on with their day. I've taken away that trigger. I've eased their ease, their frustration. They don't act out, I don't charge for that. So that's. My coaching practice is really full on now that might make me sound as I'm exposed to random calls at 3 o' clock in the morning. I can tell you that since 2013, I've never, never had one call between the hours of midnight and say 7am never but one. I offer it and they know that I'm there for them if they really need me, but they don't. But just the knowledge that I'm really there for my clients, that I think is a big, big difference in what I offer to what I hear other people.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: Wow, that sounds really lovely. What a great service you provide. How does somebody know if they're a sex addict? I mean, I have an Answer. But I'm curious to know what yours is.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Well, first of all, let's just look at those two words for a start. Sex addiction. There are many people who don't even like putting those two words together in a sentence.
I personally think there's way too much argument about what is or isn't.
If someone has an issue, deal with it. If you want to call it compulsive sexual behavior, sexual compulsive, blah blah blah, sexually, I don't care what someone called it. People will even. There are even naysayers that will argue doesn't exist. Well, I would beg to differ.
I've helped enough people now to know that when someone sits at a computer surfing pornographic images or whatever it might be for hours a day, to such a degree they cannot drag themselves away from the computer. When a client cannot stop seeing prostitutes for all the tragic reasons that we uncovered together, I know that there is such a thing as sexual compulsivity. So I don't care what you call it. I think like any addiction, one simple way to to figure out for yourself if it is a problem is try stopping it for a week. Try stopping it for three weeks and see what happens. See what comes up. And if you get antsy, frustrated, bad tempered, start shouting at your children.
Then guess what? Whatever was calming that tendency, that's suddenly been taken away, well then you might just have a problem. Right? But I don't care what someone's problem is. Addiction is a symptom of a problem. My channel is to ask why? And help them figure out what is the real problem. Which is the problem that they, that they so bad in their life that they need to do something with alcohol or drugs or prostitutes or gambling or whatever it might be.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very simple. Yeah, because I remember there were like five sort of check marks. One was the one that you described, the emotional regulation part. One was maybe your bank account. If you're spending ungodly amounts of money money on it, if you're losing friends over it, it's not the number of times that one has sexual acts. I've heard if there's withdrawal symptoms and if there's a craving.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: What really did dawn upon me, prostitutes were not my thing. My thing was simply getting bored or what I thought was bored. What I now know was frightened because what would happen was I would get into a relationship and of course as a woman grew to try and love me and rightly and fairly deserve me to be present with him. I got pregnant and we now know why? I've explained it. In this very session with you, I was terrified they would start to get to see the monster. So, of course, as I felt someone getting close to me, I started pulling back because I didn't want them getting to know me that well. Sex, fine, yeah, sure, let's have some good sex. But if they wanted more than that, I started getting frightened. And that's where things would then go tragically wrong. And, of course, that became a tragically repeating pattern over decades, unfortunately.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: So there's a difference between physical intimacy and emotional intimacy.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: I think there's a huge difference. And you said it's not the frequency I can recall now. And I've shared this with clients. I've talked about this in lectures, and I'll show it right here and now. Really important thing to think, to remember about any addiction, but sex addiction in particular or sexual issues in particular. If you are planning to act out, let's say you're in a bad relationship and things are going wrong. For whatever reason, you're angry at your wife and you're pissed off in life and you want your fix. And let's say prostitutes is your thing, okay? Which it commonly is. So you arrange your fix. And now let's say it's Monday morning and you know that the following Saturday you're gonna meet up with Ms. X, right? For that whole week, you are high. That whole week, you are actually acting out, even though you're not actually with your prostitute of choice until the following weekend. The whole time through that week, you know it's coming. It is buoying you up. It is giving you that energy. It is giving you that high. You have the secret. You think you're in control. You know something your wife doesn't. You know something nobody else does. It is a driver, that. It is a tragically powerful driver until it happens. And then, of course, as I can report from, again, prostitutes weren't my thing. But just meeting up with people, doing sad things with people that weren't my girlfriend. I can tell you that when you finally get to do the tragically wrong deed, it is so disappointing. And then, of course, you get the shame. And then you go home and you have to look some in the eye and try and justify where you've been for the last five hours or whatever it might be. And so you lie and you gaslight and you try and convince them that they're mad. And how dare they think that. I mean, Jesus Christ. I mean, it's painful. I can still feel.
Not shame, but immense Sadness. But the number of times in my life I have told made up incredible stories and gaslit people to try and convince them that they are mad to cover my ass. And of course I'm proud and happy to say that since that amazing lady Suzanne finally busted me on the morning of the 6th of September, 2018, I have not told one lie. I have not betrayed another living soul. And since that day, my life has never been cleaner. And I have to live that way to do the job that I do today. And it is with an immense amount of relief that I can sit here and say that, because I now know inside me that I have got nothing to hide. I have no shame sharing this level of detail with you and anyone that wants to listen. Because if I can help someone realize that you can do all that I've done, and I've done a lot of shit, but it does not have to define you if you really want to change and grow and get curious enough to answer questions that have led to the choices you've made, which are not good, of course, if you're an active addiction. So there is hope out there. You've mentioned brain chemistry, you've mentioned frontal lobes. There's so much neuroscience today that points to the hope that people who have done things for a long time absolutely can change.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Yeah, you say there's only one truth. So what does ruthless honesty cost you day to day?
[00:50:37] Speaker A: God, Dinah, there is only one truth, isn't there? There's only one truth that is the truth. And I sometimes laughingly say that to a client and they giggle and I giggle and I go, but you know, that is the truth. There is only one truth. And when it dawns on them and I smile and we smile together and I guide my clients out of telling lies into the truth. And it's not easy. They may have to go through, they have to get worse before it gets better to come and face what they've done.
But truth does set you free. I flew to America in March 2019. So before the pandemic, I was invited to give a lecture to a group of women in San Francisco, all of whom were CEOs managing directors. And I was set up by someone who'd been helping me with my mental health rebirth. So I said, yeah, I'll come and give a talk. And it was a talk not dissimilar to one you're not having now. I shared some of my life and some of my thoughts and this, that, the other. And I remember when you think there were 15 or 16 of these very highly intelligent, highly successful women in the room. Now think about this flicker. I spent my life terrified of women because of what Nat Nanya did to me. I spent my life, a large percentage of my life, betraying women because I couldn't give a whatsit about women because I was still so full of rage towards what woman did that I took it out through revenge on every other woman that tried to love me until September 18th. Right then I found myself fresh from the cliff and this immensely a good treatment center. And within months after standing in front of these women and I gave the lecture and I got back to the car with the friend of mine who stood it up and I was literally putting my paperwork on the roof of the car to unlock the door. And we were in an underground car park in San Francisco and I said, oh my God, it's just hit me. And she went, what? I mean I've been trying to work out all night for the past four hours with you and these women why I wasn't nervous.
He said, right, and why weren't you nervous? I said, because finally I have nothing to hide. And I didn't give a damn what they saw in me. Cause as far as I'm concerned, I'm clean.
And it was an amazing moment in my life. And I've been walking this earth since that night, since that lecture, knowing I'm clean, knowing that I don't care what someone sees or what thinks they see in me. I know I'm clean, I know I'm safe.
And I walk this earth with that much peace in my heart that I'm no longer ashamed of anything. I can get very sad and I could even still feel some guilt if I want to about things I've done. But I'm not going to let it ever again convince me that I'm a monster or I am a bad person.
[00:53:23] Speaker B: Beautifully said, Mark. Wow, wow, wow, wow. So you met Yvette in 2024.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: It's one of those weird extraordinary things. I'm lucky enough to have a lovely big home in just southwest of London and I sometimes lend my house to friends rather than them spending money on the venue. I say, hey look, have your party here. Hey, it's a win win, right? They, they bring a bunch of mutual friends to my house and I get to go to bed in my own bed. So it's a win win. And this was a friend of mine called couple Tony and Paula. And she had her six years and Yvette was a very long standing friend of Paula.
And that is how we met. She came to my house that night and I never forget her pulling up on my forecourt as she reversed her car into my forecourt. I saw her smile through the rear left window of her car.
And from that was the second I thought, hello, that's a really amazing looking, jolly smile. And this is bearing in mind I had been told by Koila that Yvette might be a little bit, let's just say, nervous because she had lost her beloved husband two years earlier to cancer.
This is the first time she'd had the courage to step out and go to anything since that tragic event. So I was warned about this because. And I therefore had a very natural. The Leo in me rose into protection mode. And I thought, okay, well. And I said, well, look, I'll give Yvette her own bedroom. And so she needs to retreat and just take some time to herself. She won't have to show up anybody and we'll do. I'll do whatever it takes to look after her. Well, from the moment she pulled up on my forecourt, this smile was like a ray of sunlight. And she never stopped smiling for the whole weekend. And I remember watching her thinking, my God, you really are amazing if you can go through what you've been through and you can bring that level.
It still gets me today because what's so incredible, Diana, is that I do finally, because I know I'm safe and I believe I finally understand what it means to love someone.
And she trusts me and she loves me right back.
And I've never in 59 years felt who I feel by A, being safe, B, honoring this relationship, and C, getting it right back and therefore feeling so at one, finally with myself and with one trusted woman. And so, yeah, it's been an incredible journey. And we're almost two years in now. 22nd of November will be two years since we met and I have never been happier. I'm just at peace. So, yeah, it's been an amazing. I've got all my wisdom I can now bring and use it to honor this brave, amazing lady.
[00:56:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw that at Oxford. You both looked very happy. Not just your white hair, it was the smiling.
[00:56:28] Speaker A: I mean, it's funny, a lot of people have said over the last two years, I got some really long standing friends who I've known for long decades, and they say, mark, there's a difference in your happiness today. And I go, yeah, there is.
[00:56:41] Speaker B: That's wonderful. If you could sit with that 8 year old on his first night at school, boarding school. What Would you tell him?
[00:56:48] Speaker A: Well, what would I tell him? I mean, my first immediate gut reaction is I just want to hug him.
I just want to keep him safe in a way that no one did.
So I don't know whether it would be so much about telling him as doing it.
I just hug him down and I wouldn't let go. And I would walk him through the following years and teach him that he's beautiful.
His gentleness as a superpower, his sensitivity, his femininity, his inner beauty was something to let shine like a sun, not to bury, to please my parents, who absolutely did not do femininity, long hair sort of things that weren't 100% typical English gentleman manly bullshit. What is a man anyway? I mean, you don't have to answer that question, but we could spend six hours debating what a man is and a woman.
I think that we actually share so many beautiful commonalities, but society loves us to be so different. You know, you get blue toys for boy, pink toys for girls, you know, and then you grow up and you wear this thing if you're a man, you wear that thing if you're a woman. Well, what about just being a human being? What about just being a person?
What about loving the soul of someone just because you love that soul, irrespective of whether they've got breasts or penis, what does it matter if you feel safe with someone, Just tell them, love them.
So I would just sweep up that eight year old, I would hug him, keep him safe, and I would not let him be beguiled and tortured by the masters and boys who did.
[00:58:41] Speaker B: Thank you, Mark. Thank you so much for being here. How can people find you?
[00:58:45] Speaker A: Clifftalk.com www.cliftalk.com is where I am. And you will find me. And you'll find a few videos. You'll find one video of me just talking to camera telling you who I am and why I love what I do. Which is which is there for that purpose. If anyone wants to know who I am, it's right there. I hide nothing any more than I have nothing to hide now. So yeah, log on and take a look. And if you need me, I'm right there. So me.
[00:59:09] Speaker B: Is there a book?
[00:59:11] Speaker A: Oh, well, there will be. When I left that amazing treatment center in 2018, I sat and I wrote. I started writing and I started writing and I started writing. You could almost call it a redone step four in the 12th macular. And what I thought would be about a 10 page, you know, little thing turned out to be a 120 page manuscript. And it's sitting on the very computer I'm talking.
And I now am ready to take that manuscript to flesh it out and to turn it into something which I hope would be an inspiration for people.
In the same way I hope that my truth today is it'll be a book that women can read and go, oh my God, I had no idea that kind of language or treatment was called gaslighting. If they ask of suffering such. And I'd love men to read it and go, bloody hell, I had no idea that when I say that to my wife that she suffers pto. When I betray my wife, she suffers ptsd. Now I want to wake people up. So. And what I don't want to be is a poor me tome from some rich kid that got sent to an expensive boarding school and then tortured. Because that's not my life story. My life is about so much more than that. Yes, it happened. I don't these only sleep over it today. I use it for good and I use it like I'm doing now. Try and inspire people and say, you do not have to be defined by your past if you don't want to be.
[01:00:35] Speaker B: And you only really work with men.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I work with men because I find I have an uncanny ability to call bullshit and love and, and, and, and with compassion. And I think I'm better off teaching men how to stop hurting themselves and abusing others, especially women. I think that's my calling. I will stand in a lecture theater and talk to a thousand women and I have no doubt I could be inspirational to women as well because I could help women recognize some of the shit they might be enduring and invite them to stop it. Stop enduring it. And to say, you've got to find the courage to say enough. And yeah, I've loved. I love helping women and I do occasionally help the wives of some of my clients find help, but I don't work with them myself.
[01:01:20] Speaker B: All right, thank you, Mark.
If this episode landed for you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. But here's the real thing. I want you to know if you're carrying something you can't talk about, if you have every resource except someone who actually understands what wealth costs. I work one on one with people, people like you, navigating exactly that. You can reach me@diana oehrli.com. thanks for listening.
