Quiet On Set: The Cost of Childhood Abuse

Join me this week on a heart-wrenching yet uplifting journey with our latest episode, where we peel back the layers of the poignant documentary, Quiet on Set. 🎥

Listen as we not only explore the film's intricate development but also its profound impact on shedding light upon the hidden scars of childhood trauma.

In this episode, we are diving deep into the often-unseen long-term effects that complex trauma imprints on individuals and, by extension, society at large. How do these formative experiences shape our adult lives? 🌱 What can we, as a community, learn from these narratives to foster healing and understanding?

We'll also engage in an honest and eye-opening conversation about the role of parenting in filtering the world for the vulnerable life of a child. Are we, perhaps unknowingly, contributing to the cycle, or are we the gatekeepers of resilience and hope?

Can awareness be the first step towards healing? 🤔

Prepare to be moved. Prepare to be inspired. Most importantly, prepare to walk away with a renewed sense of purpose in how you engage with the personal stories around you.

After soaking in the insights from this conversation, turn your spark into a wildfire of change. Share this episode with friends, family, or anyone you know who can benefit from its messages. 

And for those hungry for more, join my TikTok Subscription for FREE live coaching sessions and deep dives into topics that touch the soul and foster personal growth. 🌟

Isn't it time we take a collective step forward towards understanding and compassion? Listen now and be a part of the change. 🎧✨

Listen to the episode

Join TikTok Subscription

Remember, your story matters, your healing is paramount, and your growth is our mission. 🌿

#ChildhoodTrauma #PersonalGrowth #Podcast #QuietOnSet

Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring the Impacts of Childhood Trauma
• 14:31 Parental Vigilance in Preventing Child Abuse

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Practical Growth Podcast with me, eb Johnson, author, nlpmp and cognitive reappraisal coach. This is the podcast created for people like you, people looking for more, more health, more peace, more happiness. Each week, I explore a new topic in pop psychology and help you build a better life and better relationships psychology and help you build a better life and better relationships. Join me for special guests, exciting ideas and practical advice that you can use to improve your life from the inside out. Let's get into it. Hello, hello, hello my lovelies, it is me, eb, your favorite podcast host, your favorite NLP MP coach and maybe, more importantly, your favorite mediumcom and TikTok writer, author and friend. And we are back back back today with. I got to tell you it's a heavy one today, folks. It's a heavy one. So if you were here thinking you were going to get something cuddly, you were going to get something fun, inspirational, I don't know about it, folks, because we are going to be talking today about Quiet Onset that's right, the crazy world-shaking documentary that has recently revealed the costs to children who suffer this kind of complex mental, physical, emotional, sexual abuse. How does that shape them, how does that damage them? How does that form their adult lives and, more importantly, what role do parents play in that? Before we jump in, though, I do have to give a little shout out to TikTok. A little shout out to TikTok. I am opening my TikTok live subscriptions over on my TikTok account, therealebjohnson. What this is is it's a monthly subscription, extremely low. It's the most accessible way to work with me and you can basically hang out with me every week on lives. You get free coaching, direct one-to-one access with me. You can come along, ask me questions, get some advice from me. You know, pick my brain, pick my brain, find out what I know about relationships, find out what skills I can give you to kind of help you better yourself and better your future. So if you're interested in that, if you just want to kind of come and find some community, get some good advice, that will be starting next week, next Thursday. So if you would like to be a part of that, it is going to be a subscriber only live. You have to be a subscriber in order to log on, watch me ask questions, interact with everyone in the comments. So if you would like to be a part of that, head over to TikTokcom at the really be Johnson that is my username there and click on subscription at the top of my profile. Um, go through the steps. You can see more information about my subscription, what we're going to be doing when we're going to be doing it, and that's all you got to do. Bada boom, bada bing. You and I will see each other next thursday. All right, here we go. Let's jump in. Folks, quiet folks, quiet On Set, quiet On Set.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Wow, let me tell you this documentary I'm not surprisedon, which was a children's cable channel, still is but in the 90s, in the early 2000s, they were bigger than big than big. Right, this is what I grew up watching. Things like the Amanda Show, all that Drake and Josh was one of the last shows I kind of watched on the channel before I aged out. And this documentary is all about those shows. It's all about this 90s period of Nickelodeon, when they had you know Splat and the, you know the Crag and all the games like that Nickelodeon. That represents childhood for basically anyone who's over the age of 25.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Okay, and this documentary essentially exposed horrendous, horrendous abuse that was going on on these sets, all the way from like manipulation and coercion and harassment and alienation and ostracizing, all the way up to the most horrific sexual abuses you can imagine happening to a child, and that's basically a direct quote. It's extremely painful to watch. It's extremely hard to watch because you see all these children who are failed and failed and failed again by the adults around them Most of the adults, not all of them and also the systems that were basically designed to take advantage of them right In the ways of making money, but also in a lot of other harmful ways. And it's an incredible documentary. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you go and see it. It came out March 18th and let me tell you it has dropped like a bomb. That's what everybody is talking about, because it goes so deep into these abuses that were taking place right, and these are people like Amanda Bynes, drake Bell you know Britney Spears' little sister hasn't been on it yet, but she's been implicated in it and she definitely was unfortunately being victimized on camera. It's horrified. It's horrified Anybody who watches it, right, it's horrible.

Speaker 1: 5:17

But the real whores happen when Drake Bell gets onto the screen. And Drake Bell essentially tells a harrowing story that, sadly, is going to be familiar to too many of you, and that is that he was groomed by a producer and dialect coach, an acting coach on one of the shows, and eventually his protective parent was isolated and alienated. Protective parent was isolated and alienated and then he was handed over to the predator who, over a number of years, did the most horrible sexual abuses imaginable to this young man. Okay, so I'm not going to go into any of that. The documentary, to its credit, does a very good job of not getting too graphic. There are some court documents that are shown on the screen, but thankfully Drake is not forced to go into his abuse.

Speaker 1: 6:08

But it becomes very, very clear that these Nickelodeon sets that were creating this ideal childhood for so many of us, these funny television shows, these amazing characters, these these actors, these child actors that we resonated with, that we connected with. They were going through the most horrible and traumatic times of their lives while we were laughing at them, and it's it's heartbreaking. But almost the more heartbreaking part of it is that it's not a unique story. We see this every day. We see children exposed to consistent, brutal abuse, whether that is mental or emotional, or physical or sexual or a combination of all of them. We see it all too often. So many of us ourselves have been victims of it and that's what makes it all the more heartbreaking. So many of us, ourselves, have been victims of it, and that's what makes it all the more heartbreaking.

Speaker 1: 7:03

Now, I will confess, while I was watching this documentary, I could not stop thinking about the bomb, essentially, that was set off in the adult lives of these children who were abused. Because that's what happens, that's what happens when children because, make no mistake, this was not a one and done scenario these children were victimized over and over again, some of them consistently, for years. And when that happens, I can't help but to think of the cost, because there is a cost, right? Children who experience that that is complex trauma, right, children who experience that, that is complex trauma. And there is a cost with complex trauma. Okay, there is a serious cost, and that's on so many levels. That's a mental level, that's a physical level.

Speaker 1: 7:45

You know all of these things children developmentally, when they experience complex trauma, it changes them Psychologically. It can create a lot of problems, right, it obviously fractures their developing sense of self. It destroys their self-esteem and their self-worth. It creates confusion and delusion about the world. It changes their perceptions. You can have depression and anxiety and all other kinds of mental issues that are a result of this abuse. And that's just, that's just on the mental level. And you see lashing out and stuff which would kind of be like a combination of emotional and physical.

Speaker 1: 8:24

But these children just all of a sudden are swallowed up in these huge, huge emotional concepts that they can't balance, that they can't realistically make sense of or ration, and it's rationalized, sorry, and it's horrible, right, and that's just internally. Externally, these kids have problems as well. When a child is subjected to that kind of abuse the abuses that were being described on these Nickelodeon sets they stop sleeping, well, right, they can have insomnia. That leads to cognitive deficiencies, like problems with memory. They run into developmental issues as well, right, because children develop over time, from the time you're born to the time you're 25. There's all these different stages of development that are happening to you mentally and physically, and when these children are exposed to abuse, it upsets that, it upsets those developmental milestones and they can end up with aches and pains and failure to thrive. I don't know, I mean sure those of you who are parents you should know about failure to thrive. It's just when children just kind of collapse in on themselves and there's not necessarily like a physical reason, like cancer. It's because they're so stressed and they are so overwhelmed by their environments that they just start to like wither and disintegrate literally. Right, this is what happens Failure to thrive. So all of these things are the costs of this extreme kind of abuse.

Speaker 1: 9:54

And the whole time I was watching the documentary and watching these, they were. They were stars to me. Right as a kid, I was watching them on TV. I wanted to be them. I loved them. I watched these people all the time and now I'm sitting there looking at them. They're the same age as me and you. There's such a heaviness and there's such a they're not broken people because they are still alive and they're working and they're doing for themselves and they're trying to heal, but internally, emotionally broken. You can see it in them. You can see it in them and then we can see it in the people that didn't even take part in the documentary. Right, bynes? She did not take part in the documentary, but after all of this comes out and you hear about what was happening on the Amanda show sets and on the sets of all that which she was also on, it suddenly puts Amanda Bynes in perspective. And for those who don't know who Amanda Bynes is, google her. She was a again a big child star 90s, early 2000s. She was heavily involved with these producers and acting coaches and dialect coaches that were involved in all of this abuse, and if you've seen her in the last 10 years, she's going through something. Okay, it's been pretty hard to watch, it's been pretty horrible, but it kind of makes sense when you start putting the pieces together from the documentary and why she's falling apart.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Now, within all of this, I was thinking what is the worst cost? What is the worst cost of childhood trauma? It might seem like a strange question to ask, but it's an important one because the answer is important. As I was watching this, I was thinking like there's Amanda Bynes, you're watching Drake Bell suffering on camera. These children are talking about what's going on behind the scenes and I was like, well, what is the worst of this? Because this is horrible. This is horrible. But what derails a child the most when something like this happens? And it hit me. It hit me while Drake was talking about keeping silent and so many of these other children were talking about. Well, I didn't want to talk about it, I didn't want to tell anybody and I realized that the worst part of all of this is the internalization. The internalization Because you see children, the front of their brain is not fully developed, the frontal lobe.

Speaker 1: 12:22

The frontal lobe is the part of your brain that helps you rationalize things. It's how you kind of understand and perceive the world right. So, for instance, you and I listening to this, we're adults, we have a fully developed frontal lobe because we're over the age of 25. If you're under 25, hello, I love you, you'll get there. But for those of us who are over 25, I love you, you'll get there. But for those of us who are over 25, 26, and we have a fully developed frontal lobe, we have a better ability to say if someone treats us bad. Take my mother, for example. As I grew up and became more aware, there were times when my mother would do something and I could look at my mother and go all right, I'm not going to take that personally, I'm not going to get upset about it. That was a trauma reaction on her part. You can see the. You know that little girl abandoned, who's been abused. You can see it. Fine, I could rationalize that. I could rationalize things and not take it onto myself and not get emotional about it and not let it derail me.

Speaker 1: 13:11

Children don't have that. Children don't have that. You see, their frontal lobe is not fully developed, but what is pretty developed is their limbic system, which is your lizard brain, and their spinal cord, which is, you know, fight, flight, panic, danger. Things are crazy. So, children let's say me as a child, when I was teeny, tiny, experiencing my mother, I couldn't go. Oh, she's got depression. I had to internalize it. That's all children can do. Their only reference point is them and their parents, and they love their parents. Their parents are God.

Speaker 1: 13:47

So when a bad thing happens to a child, the child goes well, it must be my fault. That's how things work. If you're good, you get good. If you're bad, you get bad. So if this person's done something to me that I don't like, that doesn't feel good, it must be my fault. I must have done something to bring it on. That is internalization and that is what children do. When that brainstem is triggered into fear and that limbic system starts working out panicked emotions, they internalize it because that frontal lobe is not developed. So they go. It's my fault and that's all I could think of. That's all I could think of when Drake Bell was telling his story. I'm sorry I'm getting a little bit choked up because you know, you guys know I've been through not what he went through, but you know I've been a victim of sexual abuse as well.

Speaker 1: 14:31

But Drake was telling his story about what this man did to him, brian Peck, who isolated him and abused him sexually for years. He said they're like well, why didn't you tell? And he was like well, who was I going to tell? I didn't want my family to lose their jobs. I didn't want to lose out on this new show I was going to get. I didn't want to lose out on opportunities. I felt bad. He said that you know he would never let it happen again. He felt so bad and I felt bad for him. So I just assumed well, you know, I must have just put myself out there and that's it. That's horrible. That's horrible. And the reason I think it's the worst is because this alone, this internalization, it touches everything in that child's life for the rest of their lives. That internalization that this must be my fault, which sidebar the courts also tried to blame Drake for what he experienced. There were like some 50 letters from people in favor of the man who abused him, saying well, he must have tempted him.

Speaker 1: 15:44

This internalization touches every part of that child. It changes their self-esteem, it changes their perception of the world. It changes their perception of self, the way they relate to others. It changes what they think they deserve, the job opportunities they think they can go after, the choices that they make as they grow into adults. Children who don't have this internalization corrected lovingly and age appropriately by their parents grow up to be adults who think they're responsible for other people, who chase other people, who accept abuse from others because they think that's all they're worth. They struggle to know who they are. They struggle to care for themselves, they struggle to see themselves in any kind of positive way because for their whole childhood they have built their castles on the foundation of I am bad because all of these bad, miserable things have happened to me, and so if I'm miserable it's because I deserve to be miserable. All right, and to me that's like the worst and the most horrifying part of all of this when these kinds of things happen to us and those child stars on the television.

Speaker 1: 16:50

You know this is the stage in the podcast where we usually sit down and have a talk about, like step one this is how you don't do this. Step two this is how you fix this. It's going to be a little bit different today because as I was sitting down to write this episode and I was trying to prepare that portion, it kept coming back to me that it's parents, it's parents, it's parents, it's parents. Now, in the Drake Bell story, are Drake's parents responsible for Brian Peck, like himself doing the act? No, brian chose to do those things. Brian chose to harm those kids. Dan Schreider chose to abuse, manipulate, coerce, harass those parents and those children. They chose to do that.

Speaker 1: 17:25

But as I was trying to make this list of like three to five steps that you could use to prevent this for your child or help this for the child, it just came back to parents have to be, have to be diligent at all times, because that's what killed me about this right, other than the internalization, this thing with this documentary, you guys, is, when Drake was telling his story, so much happened to him, so much happened to him, there was a lot of open, inappropriate touching on the set with this Brian Peck guy who eventually went on to become his abuser. His father lodged several complaints with producers, with Nickelodeon executives. He confronted Brian Peck, drake's dad did several times and the more of a stink that Drake's dad kicked up, the more he got in the way of this predator, the more he was pushed out and eventually he was completely cut out of Drake's life and Drake's mother was put in charge of Drake. Okay, and within a very short period of time she completely handed Drake over to the predator. She was warned. Her husband, before he was cut out of Drake's life completely, said I will give you complete control, here's all of his things. But please, the only thing I ask is do not ever, ever, ever, ever leave him alone and unsupervised with Brian Peck, which she did, as Drake describes, because she didn't like to drive. Once she had control of Drake, she told Brian, will you drive him? That's okay, he'll spend the night at your house tonight. It's too far to bring him back. He'll stay there for a couple of days. He's got a couple of auditions. She completely handed him over.

Speaker 1: 19:08

And this is what brings me back through all of these Nickelodeon stories, all of these stories that you will see in this four-part documentary series fifth part's coming soon is that time and time again, the parents failed. There was another little girl that got taken advantage of by a 30-something year old producer. She was sitting every night on her computer talking to this 30-year-old man on instant messenger and her mother said well, I just thought that was normal. He was going to another little girl's house and going upstairs into her bedroom with this nine-year-old girl by herself playing video games. And the parents allowed that to happen. A 30-something-year-old man hanging out with a nine-year-old child.

Speaker 1: 19:51

Every single one of these Nickelodeon stories, these abuse stories, could have been prevented had the parents refused to allow access to someone who had no right to access their child. And time and time again it happened. And it didn't have to. If the parents had been diligent, vigilant, if they had been willing to sacrifice the money and the fame, the prestige, their child would have been safe. If they had been willing to sacrifice the money and the fame, the prestige, their child would have been safe. And you see it on the documentary with a couple of parents who did just that. And, yeah, their child got fired. Their child didn't get to be a Hollywood star, but their child also didn't experience sexual abuse. Right, and this is what I mean when I say so much of this, so much of preventing sexual abuse happening to your child comes down to you as a parent and those of us who suffered sexual abuse. You go back and turn the pages and you find out pretty frequently if it wasn't the parent doing it to you, they could have pretty easily prevented it by not giving that person access, it, by not giving that person access.

Speaker 1: 21:04

So this is the point in which I feel like it's important to drive this home to parents. Anytime your child is in an environment in which there are adults present, you need to be vigilant. If your child is in an environment where there are any adults, your child is at risk and it is your job to pay attention, be vigilant and mitigate those risks. Okay, and it's sad to say it, it should not be that way, but that is the truth. It doesn't matter if they're at school, it doesn't matter if they're at church, it doesn't matter if they're at the next door neighbor's house. If your child is in an environment where there is another adult present at any point, you have to act as though there is a risk of a predator If you are going to protect your child, if you want to prevent your child from going through what Drake Bell went through and if you want to know what that is, you can go and look up the court documents because it's horrifying. It's worse than anything you would see on a movie. It's horrifying and I think that has to be the most important part of this and I think that has to be the most important part of this.

Speaker 1: 22:19

So many on that documentary Quiet on Set. So many parents failed. They didn't have to. These weren't extreme, extenuating circumstances. These were parents who decided to put their children to work to make money, who decided to look the other way when they could have simply taken their child home. Right, and as we're healing those of us who have survived this, we have to. I'm sorry, I know it's uncomfortable for a lot of you, but we have to hold that fire and that anger and that energy for that reality that our parents failed us, that they could have done better, because that anger and that energy is what's going to help you protect your children. Who's going to keep that from happening to them? What do you think? It's been a lot of revelations since March 18th when this documentary came out, and there's an episode five that's due to air soon. That's going to have Drake Bell and a few more of the survivors of this stuff in it.

Speaker 1: 23:17

And you know, I think we have to keep all of this in mind. We don't need to just watch this documentary and gorge ourselves in the trauma. We need to keep in mind the real world cost to children who experience this, the kind of adults they turn into and the kind of pain that gets recycled and perpetuated through generations, of this happening when it doesn't have to. It just doesn't have to do that. Children internalize their trauma. They tell themselves that they are at fault. So when you experience this kind of complex trauma at that young age, you tell yourself, well, I deserved it. And that changes everything.

Speaker 1: 23:54

Parents, do you want your child to say that? Do you want your child to look you in the face one day and say, well, I thought I deserved what he did to me? Or do you want a child who turns around and looks at you one day and says, thank you, I didn't get it then, but I get it now. Thank you, because for these kids, the parents the deciding factor. Thank you so so much for being here today, guys. That is going to be the end of the episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it.

Speaker 1: 24:33

Parents, you know, listen up. If you've got kids, you got to be diligent, you got to pay attention, you got to watch out, you got to keep your eyes open and your head on the swivel. Okay, for those who are interested in coaching, I do have a couple spots in my next program, which is going to be starting up in about six weeks. So if you want to be a part of that, if you're someone who wants a brighter future, a clearer mind and the actual like practical skills, literal skills that you can go out and practice in the world, then you need to apply for this two month three phase program with me. It's all about neural health, semantics and NLP, cognitive reprogramming, and it will help you to improve your psychological and your physical well being. So if you're someone who's serious, go ahead and apply now. There's only a couple of spots left. Not all of you can get those spots, so best of luck to you. The most serious ones are going to be the ones who are successful in getting that. So get over to therealebjohnsoncom, click on working with me and fill out those applications Now for everyone else.

Speaker 1: 25:39

Thank you, as always, for listening, thank you for being here. Thank you for reading my mediumcom blog and for following me on TikTok and Instagram. I will be back next week with another episode, so hold on tight. I will see you next week. Thank you again. You guys have changed my life. Love you so so, so, so much. Don't forget to leave a five-star review. Keep your heads up, keep your eyes on the stars. Bye-bye.