Domestic Violence: Breaking the Silence Men Are Taught Not to Break
From The Life Shift | Conversations About Life Before and After by Matt Gilhooly
March 17, 2026 · 48 min · Season 4 · Episode 238
About this episode
Eugene Z. Bertrand shares his journey of overcoming childhood trauma from domestic violence and the healing process through therapy and acceptance.
Some of us spend years learning how to look okay when we are not. We get good at reading rooms, making ourselves small, keeping quiet. Not because we want to, but because it felt like the only way to stay safe. If that sounds familiar, this episode might feel like someone finally said the quiet part out loud. Eugene Z. Bertrand grew up navigating a home shaped by domestic violence. For most of his childhood and into early adulthood, survival meant masking. It meant saying he was fine when he was not. It meant watching and waiting and staying alert. And then, just days after graduating college, something happened that nearly took his life. And the most unsettling part was how calmly he described it afterward. In this conversation, Eugene talks about what it felt like to say it out loud for the first time, to sit with radical acceptance, to forgive not because the other person deserved it but because he did. He talks about EMDR therapy, about the friends who held space for him, about vulnerability as a superpower, and about the book he wrote, five to ten pages a day, just to keep moving forward. What You'll Hear: What it felt like to grow up in a home where uncertainty was the…
People in this episode
Host: Matt Gilhooly
Guest: Eugene Z. Bertrand
Topics covered
- domestic violence
- mental health
- trauma
- vulnerability
- EMDR therapy
- radical acceptance
Keywords
- domestic violence
- trauma
- EMDR therapy
- radical acceptance
- mental health
- vulnerability
- forgiveness
More episodes of The Life Shift | Conversations About Life Before and After
- Start Here: What Is The Life Shift? · June 12, 2026 · 1 min
- Resilience After Amputation: Rebuilding Life From the Ground Up · June 10, 2026 · 1h 1m
- Lemon-Sized Brain Tumor: The Life That Grew After Surgery · June 7, 2026 · 1h 2m
- How Misha Brown Got Sober and Learned to Be His Own Best Friend · June 3, 2026 · 1h 6m
- Under the Surface: The Shark Attack That Taught Tim Thomas to Trust · May 31, 2026 · 1h 6m
- What Happened to You: Breaking the Cycle Sixty Years in the Making · May 27, 2026 · 56 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Life Shift | Conversations About Life Before and After podcast page.