Shifting Culture
On Shifting Culture we have conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Hosted by Joshua Johnson, this podcast features long-form conversations with authors, theologians, artists, and cultural thinkers to trace how embodied love, courage, and creative faithfulness offer a culture of real healing and hope.
Shifting Culture
Ep. 428 Tim Ross - What Secrets Do to the Body and Why Confession Is the Path to Healing
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In this conversation, Tim opens up about the wound that shaped his early life, the silence that followed, and what the long road toward healing has actually required. We get into what secrets do to the body, the difference between vertical confession and horizontal healing, why accountability that feels like parole isn't really accountability, what grief work demands and what gets stuck when we skip it, and what it looks like to stop letting a younger, wounded version of yourself run the show.
Tim Ross, bestselling author and host of the popular podcasts The Basement and Wide Open, was born in Inglewood, California, and went to college to study administration of justice to become a law enforcement officer. But God had other plans and Tim gave his life to Jesus Christ on January 14, 1996, and he started preaching on February 25, 1996. He's been walking with Jesus ever since. In June of 1997, he moved to Dallas, and in the time he's spent in the great state of Texas, Tim served in several ministry capacities, including youth evangelist, young adult pastor, director of student ministries, associate campus pastor, executive pastor of Apostolic Ministries, and lead pastor. Tim now occupies his time as a podcaster, social media influencer, bestselling author, and preacher.
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In this one night, what should have been filled with a bunch of shame should have been filled with a bunch of, you know, just guilt as a bunch of freedom. Even though I was in a 19 year old body, the eight year old finally got to speak, and the result was it felt like a 2000 pound slab of concrete came off my chest, and I just remember thinking to myself, I don't want to have another secret for as long as I live, like whatever I'm going through, I don't care who knows it, and I don't care what they think about me, I can't go through that again,
Joshua Johnson:I Hello, and welcome to the Shifting Culture podcast, in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson. Now, Tim Ross made a decision at 19 that changed everything. He would never keep another secret for as long as he lived. This conversation is about what it took to get there and what it's cost him to stay there. Tim is the author of The Missing Peace and the founder of The Basement. He gave his life to Jesus at 20 and walked into his first therapy session two years later. He's been in both ever since, and we cover a lot of ground here. What secrets do to the body, the difference between vertical confession and horizontal healing, why accountability that feels like parole isn't really accountability at all. What grief work actually requires, and why you can't skip it, and what it looks like to stop letting a younger, wounded version of yourself make decisions for you is a rich conversation that I'm sure you'll get a lot out of, so join us as we find the missing piece. Here is my conversation with Tim Ross. Tim, welcome to Shifting Culture. So excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me.
Tim Ross:Thank you so much, Joshua. I'm happy to be here with you.
Joshua Johnson:You know, six years ago, when we had 2020 the pandemic, we had more than just the pandemic of 2020 we had a lot of things that traumatized the world. We became dysregulated. It's been really hard to find peace since then. Peace has been really difficult to come by. When did you start to realize yourself that trauma and dysregulation robbed you personally of your peace?
Tim Ross:When did I come to the realization of that? I was probably.. well, I guess I would say 1919. is when it all came to an head, to a head. I knew why I was involved in maladaptive behavior, of course. I didn't know what to call it then, but things started to make sense after the age of 19. But to give context to that, I got to go back to eight. So, I was sexually abused by an older teenage boy that lives across the street from me when I was eight years old, lasted for about six months, and I was one of at least six or more children that were abused, including my younger brother, and so obviously to have that happen when you're eight is wildly confusing, and the only reason why I didn't tell my parents is because in my mind I knew that my dad would kill him and that my older brother would probably bury the body, because he founded a gang in LA. So I kept it to myself, which led to one of the things I write in the book, Joshua, is that whatever doesn't come up and out of your mouth through words will come up and out of your body through actions. And so I was a poor performer in school, wound up at risk as a result. I was, I was a bed wetter until I was probably 16 years old. I got exposed to pornography at 12, that became an addiction. Porn and masturbation became my coping mechanism. Being in LA, it could have easily been weed, gang culture, alcohol, drugs, it just happened to be porn, and when I was 19, my mom actually caught me at 2o'clock in the morning watching porn, and that night slash morning was the night that I finally told her what had happened to me at eight, and then you know she wanted to know if it happened to my younger brother. Said yes, we had to wake him up. My father was at work, he worked for the post office, so he had to come home. And in this one night, what should have been filled with a bunch of shame, should have been filled with a bunch of, you know, just guilt, a bunch of freedom. Even though I was in a 19 year old body, the eight year old finally got to speak, and the result was it felt like a 2000 pound slab of concrete came off my chest, and I just remember thinking to myself, I don't want to have another secret for as long as I live, like whatever I'm going through, I don't care. Who knows it, and I don't care what they think about me. I can't go through that again. And so what I realized was I grew up in a Christian home. I gave my life to Jesus a year later, but what I realized was like the altar calls at the end of church services wasn't going to be enough. And so two years after my salvation experience, I went to my first therapy session, and right now I've been a believer this year for 30 years, and I've been in therapy for 28
Joshua Johnson:That feels like a lot from eight to 19, holding on to that shame and hiding. There are a lot of people holding on to things. There's a lot of silence out there. Silence is really wreaking havoc on culture. People, they say, I can't say anything, I'm holding on to the secret. What does it do to our bodies? What does it do to us when we hold on, when we're silent, when we don't speak
Tim Ross:it well. First, simply, we don't heal, right? We cannot heal from what we don't reveal, and so that winds up playing out in all these other ways again. Whatever doesn't come up and out of your mouth through words comes up and out of your body through actions, and so our bodies act out, and sometimes we act out in our bodies, and sometimes our about our bodies act out on us, and so I have seen people from like the mildest things, like your skin breaking out, to very extreme things, like, you know, ulcers, and your hair falling out, and your eye twitching, and stress, just, you know, anxiety is just built up in the body, because the body wasn't created to hold secrets, you know, we live in a culture that is kind of like it's mafia adjacent, right, it is, I can keep a secret, I'll take that to my grave, I'll never tell anybody, and we wear it as a sign of honor and distinction, and it's really one of the number one killers of our hearts, of our minds, of our psychology, is silence. We were not created to be silent. We were born with the sound. We were born shedding tears. Humans came into the earth, that's how doctors knew that the baby was healthy, is by the sound that it made, by the tears that it expressed. And society, at a very early age, sometimes from our family origin, but sometimes externally as well, society from a very early age, Joshua starts chipping away at our voice and chipping away at our emotions, and so you know there'll be a six year old that's riding his bike and he falls off and skins his knee and blood is running down his leg and somebody will say be a big boy, stop crying, and it's like he's six, what? what do you want from this dude? He's six, right? And I think it's disproportionately more for young boys, but little girls as well. You know, be a big girl, you know, don't cry, don't don't let them see you sweat, all of these things, and it's like you're acting me, you're asking me to go against the way I was created to express myself to look strong for who and for what, and so I'm advocating for the normalization of vulnerability, so that we as human beings can be fully seen, fully heard, fully known, fully loved, even if we're not fully agreed with.
Joshua Johnson:You know, when I was 19, you know, I had an accountability group with an older mentor, some other guys I confessed, you know, there were things I was doing I shouldn't be doing, and I got shamed right away, opening up, and that set me on a path of wanting to hide, of
Tim Ross:course.
Joshua Johnson:So, because as soon as I opened up with vulnerability, and I tried to confess a sin to others that I thought were safe, and they weren't, yeah, we had shame. I started to hide, and it just then became a pattern, right? It's a pattern. My life is like, okay, I'm going to hold on to this. I can't tell anybody. Whatever else comes up in my life, I'm going to hold it. I don't want to be vulnerable. How do we. how do we move away from the the place where it's really going to be difficult. I don't want to do this. I need to find some people to be vulnerable with. I need to find the right people to confess. How do we find those people? How do we move from from shame and hiding into. For the open,
Tim Ross:absolutely. I'm so grateful you asked this question, and I know it's been some time since that happened to you, and I still want to say I'm sorry that you experienced that, because one of the things I write about in my book is that vulnerability is a superpower, and subsequent to that, what I have to disclose and disclaim is vulnerability is risky.
Joshua Johnson:Yes,
Tim Ross:right. You got a 5050 chance that you're either going to be embraced because of your vulnerability or shamed or have your vulnerability weaponized against you, and those, those experiences, the latter can sting so bad that we have to resist the urge to make that experience the narrative for all of humanity, right? Like, I tried to open up once with this group, and you know what, you can't trust anybody, and it's like, well, there's 8 billion people on earth. I'm sure they're not all these guys. We can't trust these guys anymore, but there's got to be some other guy somewhere, right? And we, and I don't want to live in silence, so we got to go find the other guys, and that can be an expedition of bravery and courage to after you've felt that shame or felt that weaponization of your vulnerability, it's like, okay, that hurt, but I can't, I don't want to be hidden, so okay, these guys are not safe enough to tell, I got to find somebody else, and when, when you go find somebody else, it's going to be a 5050 chance with them as well, like you actually don't know until after you're vulnerable, you can't really do a quality assurance check and go, hey, are you safe enough, and they're like, sure, I'm safe, and you say it, and then, like, oh, I didn't know it was going to be that, you know, and so I really.. here's the point that I got to, and this was from trial and error. The agreement I made with myself around vulnerability was I am going to be vulnerable at the expense of other people's comfort. I will not be silent to my discomfort, right, and to the expense of my freedom, I will be vulnerable at the expense of other people's comfort, and if they can't handle it, they can move around, right, and if it's something that they can't really hold and I can't trust them with it, you know, I can't say that I didn't try to invite them in to love all of me instead of diversion that they liked before I told them, you know, whatever I was struggling with, and so I am comfortable to live where other people are uncomfortable,
Joshua Johnson:you know. In James, it says, "Confess your sins one to another and you will be healed, right? That we have to do it with each other, you quote John 1427 Jesus saying,"Peace I leave you, my peace I give to you. Right. Yes, sir. So it's a promise that Jesus gives us peace, but why do we have to confess to one another to receive some of that peace?
Tim Ross:Absolutely, because Adonai said in Genesis chapter number two something that Adam was never going to say, it is not good for man to be alone. That statement is not merely some marital statement, and so Adam gets put to sleep, and he gets split apart, so he could make Eve, and, and then bring Eve back to Adam. No, that was a relational statement. God was saying, as long as you're in this form, I'm not going to be enough. Now, that sounds sacrilegious. I've actually, I've actually preached on this in a, in a church, and a woman stood up immediately and left, because the point I set this, I set this up with that scripture, and then I said, here's point number two, and you guys are going to clench your butt cheeks when I say it, God is not enough, and this woman just stood up and walked out like God is enough, and I can't believe this guy is saying that he's a false teacher, and I'm like, I didn't say it, God said it. It was the statement is not said explicitly, but it is said implicitly. He's literally saying I'm not enough for you in this form, and so when we read James 516 this is the counterbalance to First John chapter one, confess your sins to God, and, and, and He will, for He is faithful and just to forgive you of all of your sins and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. Right, so our vertical confession gets us cleansed and and forgiven. No man can. Do that right. This is what blows up the tradition of the Catholic Church, that you need a priest to go to to confess. No, you don't. There's only one mediator between God and man, and it's the Lord Jesus Christ, right. And so when we talk about vertical confession, that's where cleansing and forgiveness comes from, that will not happen with a human being, but horizontal confession, which is James 516 I really haven't been healed in the areas of my life that that really mattered until I told another person, because I need accountability, I can see, and I need accountability that that helps me to, you know, I remember when I, when I was going through my, my healing process of, you know, porn addiction and stuff. I hated making calls when I relapsed. It made me think, it made me start thinking, what am I, dude, what am I doing? This is this, if this is the third call in a week, am I really trying? Am I even trying to be free, you know? And when in that interaction with another person, I don't know if I could put a positive spin on this, but that's how you get sick of yourself, and that's when you're like, you know what, I really need to grow up. I really need to change. This is not just hurting me, this is hurting people that I love as well. They don't want to see me in this condition. I don't want to see me in this condition. And so you come to yourself, and like the Prodigal Son did, and you come home, you come back to that place of safety with people that love you, that are not going to judge you, but want the best for you, and will tell you the truth in order for that to be the case. So, both are needed.
Joshua Johnson:It seems like, yeah, when you're looking at that, that vertical confession to God, like you get forgiveness, you get cleansing. It feels like that forgiveness is immediate. It's right there, and then the horizontal confession, you're there, healing takes time. It does. It's not that immediate thing, like forgiveness is with God. So then you go, okay, I just confessed it. I feel like, okay, I'm forgiven. I now need healing, that should be immediate, but it's not.
Tim Ross:It's not
Joshua Johnson:so. Then what does after then this confession, this healing process start to to look like?
Tim Ross:Yeah, it looks like rehab, right? Most people in the, in the legacy of sports before we had the modern medicine in the in the surgical precision that we have now. ACL used to be a career-ending injury. Achilles tear or rupture would be a career-ending injury. Now you can come back from an ACL in 11 months or less, you can come back from an Achilles in 18 months or less, things that we never thought possible, but some athletes still opt under those circumstances with those injuries to retire, because rehab is actually more painful than the initial injury to get that part of the body back as strong as it was prior to the injury takes so much work. Some people just opt to, like, hey, you know what, I'm just going to walk with a limp for the rest of my life. I don't have time to do that. So when I talk to people about what healing looks like, it looks like pain, it looks like discomfort, it looks like frustration, it looks like I should be over this by now. I'm, I'm tired of crying over this, I'm tired of talking about this, I'm tired of dealing with this. I thought I was over my father's wound, I thought I was over my mother wound, thought I was over my trauma, and okay, yeah, you are, but if a person has knee surgery, then winters affect them differently than affects other people, the cold reminds them of the scar tissue in a way summer doesn't, and it doesn't mean you're not healed, it just means the season makes that healing more sensitive, and so helping people to understand that just because you're healed or healing doesn't mean you're no longer feeling, healing does not mean that you no longer feel, and so helping people just calibrate that and understand that no, this might be with you, like Paul said in Second Corinthians, chapter number 12. He's like, you know what, I got this thorn in my flesh, I prayed three times for it to go away. Jesus himself responds, right? Not, not, not Gabriel, the messenger angel, Jesus. Jesus comes back himself to say, hey, my grace is sufficient. I believe the reason why Jesus responded, and not an angelic being, is because no one could identify with Paul like Jesus could in that moment, even though he doesn't say this. I believe this is the implication. Joshua, hey Paul, I know you've just asked three times for this thorn to be removed, and it wasn't. I have massive amounts of empathy for you, because I prayed three times to have a cup removed from me, and I still had to drink from it. So, the same grace that was afforded me to go through with my thing is the same grace that's going to be afforded you to go through your thing
Joshua Johnson:that accountability and others and walking with others is important, very important. Just reminds me, you know, Peter in Acts 10, he had a, he had a vision from God, he says go and eat, you could be with the Gentiles and you could eat what the Gentiles eat, and then later at the Church of Antioch he goes, he's eating with the Gentiles, and then some Jews come in and say, What are you doing? You're going to be unclean, you shouldn't do it. So he's like, Okay, I'm not going to eat with the Gentiles anymore. So Paul confronts him, and Paul says, You're being a hypocrite, like
Tim Ross:that's right,
Joshua Johnson:God told you this is good, we need to actually sit with these people, stand up right for what God says is right.
Tim Ross:That's right.
Joshua Johnson:And so Paul's confronting Peter, which can be a really difficult spot, because you're you're looking at Peter, he's really the, the one where the, the rock that the church is built upon. He's kind of like the leader of the church, and then Paul's coming in and saying, "Hey, you got this wrong.
Tim Ross:That's right.
Joshua Johnson:So, where does accountability, and like other people, even confronting us in the midst of our healing process, where we're making mistakes, we're going wrong?
Tim Ross:How does that help? Accountability is one of my superpowers. It's one, it's one of my secret sauces of my success. I haven't done anything in the public ministry that I've had for 30 years that wasn't signed off on by those I'm accountable to, and all my success has been found in the submission of that. Right, one of the things that I feel like had to be corrected in my perspective of accountability is how I saw it expressed early on. I think Promise Keepers was was so good for men, and one of the things that was really important for me to understand about accountability was it's not parole, you know. Accountability used to look like, hey, you check in with your accountability partner every Friday, they ask you five to seven questions, and if you, if you answer them right, you know, you've met your conditions of parole, and we'll see you next week, right. And you know, my mom worked for the LAPD for 30 years, and I thought I would have a career in law enforcement, and so that never sat well with me. I'm like, I don't want a parole officer, I want true accountability, and true accountability is something- if it's something I desire, then I make the call. They shouldn't be checking on me. I should be checking in with them, because this is the relationship, and it's.. I'm not just breaking glass in case of emergency. I call you to talk about the Lakers game, I call you to talk about, you know, what's going on with the Dodgers, and I also call when I'm tempted. I also call when I got the promotion. I also call when I'm sad. I also call when you know one of my kids is is frustrating me, like, like it needs to be a whole life thing, and not just a, I call this person for this thing that gets, that gets for me, it gets a little icky, so correcting that was huge for me, and giving people like my wife, like my best friend Corey, best friend Preston, giving them permission, my spiritual mentor Jerome Lewis, his wife Lisa. I have blind spots. They can check me at any time, right? They don't have to wait to for me to call if they see something or hear something that they're like,'Hey, man, that was out of pocket, that was out of line, you went too far. They get to pull, they get to pull me to the side, send me a text message, a voice note, whatever. Like, hey, calm down now, and I'll calm down. And that has kept me so safe. And so Peter was better because Paul confronted him in Galatians two. He wasn't worse off because of that. He was better because of that, right. And. And Apollo's was better because Aquila and Priscilla pulled him to the side and was like, hey, let me, let me talk to you real quick, you're already a great, eloquent speaker, but let me, let me give you a little bit more context that you might not have, and so we all need that in our life, and those that that kind of push back on that type of feedback, that type of love. I talked about this yesterday in a staff meeting, that you can't say you actually love somebody if you can't risk offending them, you know? If we're walking on eggshells and I can't tell them that they won't like me no more. Well, you can't say you really love them.
Joshua Johnson:My wife and I have been talking a lot in the last couple years that one thing that is, that is missing in the church, in the Western Church, right now, where we see a lot of leaders falling, they've been holding on to secrets for a long time, is the spirit of confession, and having people to confess, you confess like temptation early, if he confessed these things early, we'll catch this, we'll, we'll be healed. We could actually avoid some of what has been going on. Yes, what does it look like to set up places where confession is normalized, vulnerability is normalized, that we can open ourselves up instead of holding on to things. What does it look like within church leadership structures to be able to do that work?
Tim Ross:Yeah, we have to create safe people, right. First of all, we have to have people that are emotionally intelligent. We have to have people that are doing the work themselves. That's what gives us empathy to work with others. Right, when you were, when you were 19 years old, and you walked into that group, and you were brave enough to share, you were not with safe people, and that's why it wasn't a safe space. I don't think they were malicious. I don't think they did it on purpose. I just think when you don't have emotional intelligence, and when you don't, when you're not trauma-informed, you don't know how to respond to people, and that's where we get to throw in what I refer to affectionately as Jesus glitter, right? It's like
Joshua Johnson:Jesus glitter out there. There's
Tim Ross:copious amounts of Jesus glitter floating around. Okay,
Joshua Johnson:yeah.
Tim Ross:And they call it angel dust, but I'm like, no, it's Jesus glitter. Is that's not a visitation, that's just you trying to cover up, you know what human humans are actually navigating. So my mindset has been around again. First of all, creating safe people, because safe people create safe spaces. This is why our community exists. We started a podcast called The Basement. Our community is affectionately known as Dwellers, and we normalize vulnerability for everyone in our community, so that they are fully seen, fully heard, fully known, fully loved, even if they're not fully agreed with, because four out of five ain't bad. And last year we, the Holy Spirit, led us to produce a show called Wide Open, and in 2025 Joshua, five days a week, three hours a day, we took live calls from literally all around the world for people to talk about whatever they wanted, and we heard wonderful testimonies, and we heard horrific stories of what people have been through in their past, what they were dealing with in their present, and how bleak of an outcome they had for their future. And we just held space for them, and then we were, we were able to point them in the direction of the type of care that they needed after that. So, you know what, we thank you for the call. We need you to reach out to the Bond Counseling Center. We have therapists that are licensed that can take you deeper in your healing journey. We have a community on Discord. I know you feel alone, but you're not. There's 7000 people in our Discord community that you can connect with, and people have found safety, they found community, they're being plugged back into churches because people are referring them different churches, so it's been, it's been great, and the template that's being built and formed is for local churches to have these type of spaces where people can really get down to the the soulish matters of the heart, most of our small groups are not, are not equipped to handle anything other than whatever the pastor preached on Sunday, and the small group curriculum. Them that has been produced because of that, right, but at the end, but at the end, when we say, "Okay, does anybody have prayer before we leave? And somebody says, "Well, I'm going through a divorce right now because I just found out that my husband was abusing one of my children. Then we all look like, like deer in headlights, and we're like, "Whoa, please don't bring that up here again, because we don't know what to do, and it's like, well, this is not a safe place. Then small group doesn't mean safe group, and so I just want us as believers to start realizing that we can be as honest as the Bible that we read, the Bible has not redacted anyone's story, starting from Adam and Eve. Dude, nobody's had redactions, right? If the Bible was treated like the Epstein files, it'd be a pamphlet. All we would know is that David is great, and so and so. The Bible's messy, humans are messy, and this is why we need a savior. This is why we need rescuing. This is why we need cleansing. And I know for a fact when the Prodigal came home, he didn't smell good. You can't wake up around pigs and get home smelling like a fragrance, and so I'm committed to the mess that humans leave, because at least I know they're alive. There's a difference between smelling poop and smelling stench of a dead body. When a farmer wakes up in the morning, if he smells poop, he knows everything's alive. If he wakes up in the morning, he smells death, he knows that something's died. And so I am, I'm committed to the poop, because it makes great fertilizer.
Joshua Johnson:Some of the places I think at churches, there they say, okay, we need to be trauma-informed. We're starting to learn this language, we're starting to learn what that looks like, but we're not really equipped to go deeper. We're not trained trauma therapists. How do we, how do we work together with others to be able to help people go deeper with people who know what they're doing.
Tim Ross:Absolutely correct. I'm grateful you brought this up. So the church that I founded, Embassy City Church, my successor, Dr. Tim Rivers, is going through a series right now called Do You Mind, and it's a mental wellness series, and he's taking his time, slow approach, handling with care, giving people theology and encouragement for therapy, and then at the end of every service there are resources that point people to books that are written by therapists at the masters and doctorate level, and to counselors and therapists who have practices in the DFW metroplex, and so the church doesn't have to turn into a clinical institute to help people, we just have to partner and be the bridge that points people to the to the care that they all need. Alter calls are great. I know some people that have had incredible experiences at the end of services, but for the majority of people, they need follow-up care, and that's more than the altar worker can give in five minutes before the next service starts.
Joshua Johnson:I think if people are listening to this conversation, and we're walking through a.. we've had had trauma, we've had a really, you know, difficult thing, you. you walked us through, sexual abuse led to porn, led to confession, led to some freedom, led to accountability, started the healing process, go back, relapse, continue to go healing, and continue to move. One of the steps I think we missed is the grief, the lament step. What happens if we skip the grief, if we skip the tears, if we skip that moment?
Tim Ross:Yeah, one of the chapters in the book is called Cry Me a River, and what I've learned about grief and the work of grief is you cannot properly leave what you do not properly grieve, and so things that we don't properly grieve, they just continue to float around us and in front of
Joshua Johnson:us.
Tim Ross:And even our best attempts to suppress or repress do not aid us in, in being able to move forward, because it just pops back out, and so grief, grief work is incredibly important. One of my life coaches, Nancy Houston, she talked about grief work ad nauseam, like I, my eyes would roll in the back of my head, I'd share something with her, and she goes, "Oh, honey, you have more grief work to do, and I'll be like, "I'm tired of grieving, Nancy. And then I realized that all grief doesn't look like sitting on the front row, you know, four feet away from your deceived loved one and crying your eyes out. Sometimes grief and lament comes across as sadness, it comes across as disappointment, comes across as regret, and if you don't give yourself the opportunity to sit in those feelings, you don't metabolize them, and grief has to be metabolized in order for us to move through it, and so there's a lot of people who are scared, they're scared to be angry, they're afraid of that emotion, they don't like who they are, and anger is an incredibly important part of grief, and to not get in touch with that anger is to rob our bodies from an emotion God gave us, and so sometimes you have to schedule a date with your grief. I've had to do this, like, there's.. there's been some times.. it's like, you know, what? This Saturday, I.. my schedule's cleared, and I'm just gonna grieve. I'm just gonna sit in the grief of the person that I miss the season that has just changed the way my body used to respond at 20 and it doesn't respond at 50, right? Like, it, whatever, whatever it is, it's important to take the time to metabolize it, so that you can move through
Joshua Johnson:it, it's a crucial step, is is grieving, and the process, and sometimes it takes a long time to grieve, and you know, working through different things, and I'm like, oh, there's there's moments when I was five years old that these things happen to me, I haven't grieved it, I haven't healed from it, because it's still like running my life, and sometimes I'm, you know, 47 years old, I'm looking back, and I go, last night we were in a group at church, and we were walking through some emotions and different things, and it, and, and I wrote down, like, I feel like I'm still a child on the playground, and it felt like, oh, I'm back in that, that little body. What happens when we're, when we're older, we're going through this healing process, we're becoming more regulated, are, are there's some, some health and growing, and peace coming, but we're still letting our child self run the show and cause all the havoc within you. Yeah, what do we do with that piece of it? How do we, how do we start to move away?
Tim Ross:Yeah, so I had to learn Joshua a very painful lesson. I was so heartbroken to find out after doing so much work in therapy how mean I was to little Timmy, how much I blamed him, how much I shamed him. I was ashamed of him, and he's not bad. All the stuff he did, he did to survive the best way he could. He wasn't, he wasn't nefarious at 12 years old when he looked at porn. He wasn't being some pervert that wanted to sabotage my life. He was looking to feel something different than the abuse he felt at eight, and he found that in nude images at 12, that's the best he could do, at 51 that's maladaptive, that helps nobody, and so instead of letting him take control of my 51 year old body, I have to go give that little kid a hug and let them know, hey, I know you've been triggered today, I know you're you feel scared or you feel lonely or whatever you're feeling today, but you're safe and come sit on the couch with me. I'm not ashamed of you. I know you used to spaz out, dude. I get it, but you're safe now. We have tools now. There's other stuff we can do. We don't have to look at porn. There's other stuff we can actually do. We can play video games, we can watch party near interruption on PTI, we can watch dinos drive in and dives. It's never going to feel like watching porn, little Timmy. I get it, and we're not doing that today. We just don't do that anymore, right? And so I have, I had to learn to love little Timmy and take away this narrative that he's the reason why so much bad happened in my life. That's not the case.
Joshua Johnson:Last week, something happened in spiritual direction of his spiritual director, and he told me that my truest self is my observable self. It's the one that could actually observe me. That helped. It felt like what you were just doing to little Timmy, is that that wasn't your truest self, the little Timmy? The truest self is the one that can actually observe,
Tim Ross:correct
Joshua Johnson:who you are, what you're doing, and show love and compassion and care, and give a hug.
Tim Ross:That's right.
Joshua Johnson:And, man, that helped me so much. I was like, oh, I could feel the difference between the one that's slouching over there, that is like feeling all the shame and the weight of the world, and then the one that is observing that and just showing love and compassion, and that's really where I should be. What does it look like to get to a place where you, you could actually see ourself and be secure, and oh, I am somebody who is loved.
Tim Ross:Yes, yes,
Joshua Johnson:I am a beloved.
Tim Ross:That's right. Yes, it's, it's um, what you just said is, is, is it right? It's, it's not just the awareness to see yourself see your younger self be able to slow things down and to actually catch the lies or the self sabotaging narratives, but it's also the awareness to understand how needy we are as humans, and to not just acknowledge those needs, but to ask for what we need, knowing that other people are actually capable of giving us what we need, and we're not just talking about, like, five bucks for gas, right, which, you know, in California, that won't even get you a gallon. I'm talking about things like, hey, I need to be celebrated today, like I have threads on my phone where if I need celebration, I have two people that will give it to me right this minute. If I need containment, if I just need to fuss, cuss, and kick up dust, I can do that, and at the end of it, they'll be like, How you feel now, and I'll be like, You know what, I feel good, and they're like, Well, okay, great, have a good day, like they're not going to throw a scripture at me, they're not going to tell me, you know, anything, and so when we can acknowledge, hey, I have needs, I need some things today, when we're aware enough to that this, this is where this is where we can calm all of our inner children down, is to go, hey, I'm gonna take you by the hand, and we're gonna go to the spouse, we're gonna go to the kids, we're gonna go to our best friend, and he's gonna give us what we need right now. You need some attention, I got somebody that gives us some attention right now. You, you need a hug. I got somebody that can give us a hug right now. I promise you, we're safe. I promise you, we're safe. And that keeps them out of the driver's seat.
Joshua Johnson:Building that self-awareness is really key, like knowing what you actually need. It takes a lot of work to get to a self-awareness place, it does. It does. What's one step to help us grow in self-awareness that you have found?
Tim Ross:It's a great, it's a really good question. Um, one step to help us grow in self awareness, curiosity. I think it's, I think it's a, it's a huge first step, the ability to be curious about the things you do, good, bad, or indifferent. Just start getting curious about them all. Why do I do that? Why do I do this? Why do I lock up every time somebody asks me a question that I feel like sounds accusatory. Why does my heart palpitate only when my spouse asks this question? It doesn't. It 1000 other people can ask me that question. It doesn't bother me. What goes on inside of me, as opposed to why is my, why is my wife always nagging me, or why is my wife. no, no. Get curious. Curiosity leads you internal curiosity, my word, it just happens to rhyme, it doesn't mean anything, but curiosity leads you external, because we want to point, you're the reason why I'm like this, you're the reason why I keep acting out, you're the reason why I'm not happy, you're the no, that's. You're furious, and that leaves you external, and it doesn't give you any information about you. It only gives you this made-up information about them. They're out to get me. You hate me. You never love me anyway. You're only with me because of the kids, right? Whatever, right? But the more we start getting curious about ourselves, Joshua, the more, the more we start finding like some really helpful and useful answers.
Joshua Johnson:What hope do you have for the people who pick up the missing piece, the readers of this book?
Tim Ross:Glad you asked. At the very least, I'm hoping that people get words for their feelings, that I'm hoping that things that have only been felt now can have expression through words, because our body and our brains, they need words to heal our emotions, are our little informants, they come to just tell us how we're feeling, but those feelings have to be turned into words for us to start healing, so at the very least, I hope people get language, and that they use that language at the most. The most wildly successful thing I can happen that can happen from somebody reading the missing piece is they share it with somebody else, they share what they have been feeling with somebody else.
Joshua Johnson:Couple quick questions I like to ask here, Tim. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?
Tim Ross:You don't have to hide 21 years old. Yeah, you don't have to hide all of these, because I gave my life to Jesus at 20, so I would tell my 20 year old, 21 year old self. Hey dude, these guys are lying to you. They don't have it all together. You are not the only one who is is sitting over here, and God is having the biggest problem trying to fix you. You are not the problem, I promise you, you're not the problem. Their, their lack of self, self-disclosure is the problem. It ain't you, dude. It ain't you. You're fine. They're lying.
Joshua Johnson:Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend?
Tim Ross:I can't say I can recommend it, but I'll tell you what. What I, what I just finished watching, I just went back through the Godfather trilogy, and the reason why it's fascinating to me is because organized crime, as it is constructed and constituted, is nothing but the apostolic paradigm subverted. The enemy has nothing new. He's a created being. The kingdom is the only blueprint in the universe, and the enemy has just been running a counterfeit blueprint off of that. And when I watch the Godfather series, I'm like, well, this is nothing but apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. What are we, what are we talking about here? Right, the Don is the Apostle, the Conciliator is the Prophet, the Underboss is the is the Evangelist, and your pastors and teachers are your captains, and all the other people that are up under it. They, they try to take territory, they want to expand, but they threw it. They do it through violence, intimidation, and fear. Where we know the real blueprint is based on love, authenticity, and vulnerability, and they both have principles of honor, but it's theirs is really dishonor, ours is honor to God. And did the linchpin Cosa Nostra was supposed to be governed by the all encompassing value core value of Omerta, which means silence, and we know that in the kingdom the all encompassing rule and value is confession. It's the ability to speak, so I mean, I don't know if anybody else would get the spiritual principles out of Godfather one, two, and three, but there you have it. There, they are there, they are absolutely there.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, I mean, you just did a really a master class for people to think through and discern what people are watching, and doesn't make you know Godfather horrible to watch it. It means that, hey, Cern, how does the world work? What is going on here? How does Kingdom work? That's right. That was, that was fantastic. And actually seeing the five fold, and that was really cool. I worked at 5q organization, so we did the five hold a lot and did loss training on that. So it's kind of fun to think through the five folds. Godfather, I'm thought of this way. It was good. Thank you. Fantastic. Well, the missing piece, Tim, is fantastic. It's out available now anywhere books are sold, and people could go and get the missing piece. Is there anywhere else you'd like to point people to? How could they connect with you and what you're doing
Tim Ross:on social media, upset the talk on TikTok, upset the gram on Instagram, and our YouTube is The Basement with Tim Ross.
Joshua Johnson:Perfect, Tim. Thank you for this conversation. Thank you for going deep and what it looks like to find some peace when you are dysregulated, when you've had trauma, and what healing looks like confession, looks like accountability. It was fantastic. Really loved our conversation.
Tim Ross:Thank you, Joshua. I appreciate you. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
Joshua Johnson:Thanks.
Unknown:Bye.
