Thrive Beyond Pornography

Hey, everybody welcome to our podcast I think you guys probably noticed something that there was no intro music. did you did you guys notice that did you notice that Darcy I don't know because I can't hear it. So. If you notice that there was no welcome to episode number 163 this is the one hundred and sixty third episode of our podcast the podcast that I've been producing since October of 2019 so that's kind of cool and you probably notice that there's no intro music or intro. Whatever. That we usually hear every time you turn on the podcast. We're changing. We're growing and we're looking to become hopefully more valuable to you as we do that. So the very first thing that I want you to know from us is that there's a name change. You might have noticed that. Maybe when you open up your app this morning for the first time in a week that that the name of the podcast has changed to thrive beyond pornography or it might not be updated yet depend. Yeah on you might know same device to use. It can sometimes take a week for that to like process through. Apple Podcasts or Amazon or Spotify wherever you're listening from that said, the reason we changed. The name is a really important one and d'arcy and I have we've kind of worked a lot on thriving. Becoming a thriving couple becoming individuals who are thriving on our own and hopefully you guys have been doing the same for yourselves. So we want to focus on. And and this is the second thing that you'll probably notice as we go forward. Is you know we're going to continue to focus on individuals who have struggled to overcome pornography. We are also going to integrate what was once separate coaching for individuals to couples and those in relationships. Who want to not just eliminate a pornography struggle from their lives. But really begin to move past that and begin to thrive and begin to create growth and intimacy in their most valuable relationships. Darcy and I have worked on that a lot ourselves we we found that. And and I've said this to so many people as they've come through and done a consult with me or just talked to us in random places at random times because people stop us and they're like hey you talk about porn all the time. Yeah, absolutely. Um and I've said this so many times it's when the couple. Really does the work together is when the relationship moves forward the most effectively and it's also when the person who struggles with pornography is able to move forward most effectively. It's when the person who doesn't struggle with pornography who may feel wounded and. Oftentimes the word betrayed comes out and they are trying to find a new reality that they're proud of we we want to help both those people we want to help spouses. We want to help the person who struggles. So that's why we're changing. From from the self-mastery podcast to thrive beyond pornography. Additionally, we are going to change some of the things that we do in our coaching our coaching will now offer more to both spouses as they work together to move forward. Through and then beyond the struggles that have been keeping them from thriving. So if you've been listening to our podcast long enough. You've probably noticed that we don't just say hey remove pornography and everything's going to be amazing. And one of the things that we realized in our own journey was that just stopping the behavior of Zach turning to pornography did not necessarily create the thriving marriage that we wanted the intimacy and the connection. And the sexual relationship that we wanted. It was a great thing and it was exciting when he did stop turning for pornography but it it wasn't the answer to creating the thriving marriage that we wanted to yeah it didn't help heal. Everything that needed to be healed and it didn't give us necessarily the tools to actually enjoy each other to not make it problematic when something went wrong and to you know, keep from creating long-term rifts in our in our relationship. So...

One of my clients sent me a message a couple of weeks ago that I thought was common but interesting.   He was talking about how he had become bored while he was studying and the thought crossed his mind to google something that he could tell at the time was a distraction from what he would ideally choose.  He just wanted a little high, just wanted to kill time with something interesting, as he described it. I wanted something more subtle.  Then he moved from there, out of curiosity googled, “do people walk around naked at home?” So, he asked me, “Is there anything that I can do, even when my brain is being subtle, is there any tool that I can catch myself?” Knowing as he mentioned in his voice memo, I would suggest that he listen to my course video “the truth, the justification, and the lie” Then he said, “Is there anything that I can do to get rid of this right away?” One of the things I do in my individual coaching is deep dive into what is going on in the 30 or so minutes before we choose pornography.  For this client, his brain is being very subtle as it offers him something that will be highly appealing at the moment.   What is happening for him in that moment is that the habit running part of the brain has received a cue, that subtly begins the response process, in order to create a highly appealing reward.  In episode 69 I dive into how our brain can create new habits.  One of the keys that this client and everyone who is working to eliminate a pornography habit from their life must do is create and practice new ways to respond to cues.   I know that sounds overly simplistic, even if it is true.   Those who join my membership and those who get individual coaching with me work on some very specific techniques to retrain their brains to respond to the cues we receive in order to avoid the rabbit hole altogether in the long run.  Before we change our habits, we have to be able to recognize when our brain is being subtle and start identifying where we are playing into its desire to feel good now rather than deal with what’s uncomfortable.  I think there are a few questions I might to ask that might help decipher between the wholesome passing of time and the start of the rabbit hole. It’s also really important to ask these questions with the same curiosity that you are bringing to the questions that are working to pull you away from your values.   Is what I am currently doing on the internet something that I would be comfortable and confident doing when I am at my best and living my values? If I were to ask myself on my best day, considering my current relationship with pornography would I encourage myself to search away on the current topic or would I be able to see that I might be approaching a line of what I would feel was contrary to my values? If I look into my past have there been similar instances like this that have lead me down a path that I am wanting to stay off? If I were on the outside looking in would I be comfortable with the person I am currently being?

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Set up a free consult at zachspafford.com/workwithzach Thrive Beyond Pornography

Why do I view porn before bed?If you are listening to this podcast, you are probably like everyone else on the planet and have chosen to do something that feels good right now at the expense of sleep.  I know I’ve done it.  Whether it is watching one more episode of that binge-able new tv show until you look over and its 4 am or knowing you are so tired but you just keep scrolling social or crawling into bed, feeling ready to sleep then, your mind offers you that “you’re alone” and “you might as well get away for a bit.” These are all real-life examples from my life, Darcy’s life, and the lives of my clients.   And if you are human, as imagine there is an example like this in your life that makes you wonder, “Why did I choose that instead of sleep?” For many of my clients, the hour before bed is a regular time when they choose pornography.  Today we’re going to look at why that may be and give you some really clear, actionable tools to put you in a position to make the decisions that meet your values when confronted with the urge to view porn before bed.  It can feel easier short termIt’s easier to do than quieting our mind It’s easier than laying there restless It’s easier than tossing and turning It’s easier than transitioning to the next thing It can be engagingCuriosity is probably one of the key reasons our brain engages us in pornography viewing.  What does this person look like nude?  Who is this person?  How can I see more of this person?   Problem-solving is one of the most powerful things our brain does.  When it comes to viewing porn or binging screens late at night, the problem solving feedback here is twofold.  First, it is solving for anxiety by avoiding it.  Second, it is solving for our desire to know as much as we can. Learning is an outgrowth of curiosity and problem solving and our brain feels justified in learning everything it can about the world around it.      It can feel greatDopamine,  Arousal Escape from responsibility It has been shown to help sleep quality A study reported that 65% of participants who had an orgasm before going to bed reported better sleep quality.  in order to attain high-quality sleep, our bodies should be able to enter a state of relaxation and calmness. Cortisol is a stress hormone that prevents that. It’s often associated with our body’s fight or flight response, making our bodies feel more alert and restless. Fortunately, research shows that masturbation and sexual intercourse inhibit this stress-inducing hormone's production. Cortisol is also often associated with a slew of health problems, from high blood pressure and fatigue to decreased bone density, so it’s always ideal to have a low count of cortisol in your body. (https://primemensmedical.com/blog/does-masturbating-make-you-tired/#:~:text=But%20here%20comes%20the%20kicker,bed%20reported%20better%20sleep%20quality (https://primemensmedical.com/blog/does-masturbating-make-you-tired/#:~:text=But%20here%20comes%20the%20kicker,bed%20reported%20better%20sleep%20quality)) I’ll link to that information in the notes.  I want to be clear, I’m not advocating viewing pornography and masturbation in order to improve your sleep.  What I’m offering is an understanding of why this habit may have formed and why you may be engaging in it as you do fall asleep.  This is about realizing that you might be using orgasms to manage stress and cortisol levels. Fortunately, these are not the only ways to manage your stress, cortisol, or sleep patterns.  And just knowing what you are facing gives you a lot of power to make changes and change patterns. That’s why we have the membership, so you can figure out what is happening and resolve it, even if you can’t see it yourself at first. I know that for me, there were many times that I lay awake at night, and...

One of the biggest issues that every person who works to overcome pornography has is that they often feel like they are failing if they have any sort of setback or make any sort of mistake in the way that they are handling themselves.  So today we are going to talk about two ways to ensure that you never fail again when it comes to overcoming pornography.  A guy that I was working with told me the story of when he was doing a physical challenge of some sort, I think it was a multi-day race, and he stopped at a home that was part of the race support.  I heard this story a long time ago, so the details are a little fuzzy for me, but the message is clear.   He goes into the house, they point him to a bedroom and since it’s the end of the day and he’s been racing all day, he goes in, faceplants into the bed and goes to sleep.  Fast forward to the next morning and his wife, who, for some reason didn’t sleep in the room with him, comes in to wake him up.  As she does this, she notices that the wall above my friend’s head is a mural of a naked woman.  I imagine some of you are right now thinking of your partner or yourself and wondering how much trouble that guy was in.   Turns out he was in quite a bit of trouble.  His wife was quite furious with him that he had slept in that room and let him have it.  So my friend defends himself by saying that he had no idea, he had just come into the room, it was dark, he hadn’t even gotten undressed, that he had just slept in the room without even looking around because he was so tired from the race he had been running.  This is key number one making your journey to overcoming pornography forever fail-proof: Learn to recognize what is problematic and what is incidental.  Too often, we become hyper-sensitive and hyper-focused on the ways in which pornography intersects our life and this intense management of the thing we want so badly to avoid creates a reality where we are more likely to notice it, and often, we beat ourselves up over it reinforcing a negative reality.  Just the same way you notice every car on the road that looks like the one you just bought, your brain is constantly looking for ways to reinforce itself.  This happens in ways that are positive and valuable and it also happens in ways that reinforce negativity in our lives.   In the case of my friend, the fact that there was a mural of a naked woman on the wall above his head was a non-issue until his wife made it into a big deal, reinforcing a number of negativities that seem inescapable.   I don’t know what her thoughts were, but I imagine she felt like we can never get away from this, that no matter what, we always have to be diligent, and maybe any trauma that she experienced was being dredged up and relived in that moment.   For him, it might have been that he will never be able to do enough to stay away from this, that even when he isn’t doing anything, he still gets in trouble because of his past behavior, and maybe even that his wife will never get over this and that it is a hopeless issue.  Think about what you’ve felt over the time you’ve struggled, what would you have thought or felt.  I know that I would certainly have felt attacked for something I didn’t do and that I had no control over.   If you want to overcome pornography forever, you need to be able to triage what has happened in order to understand if there is something more to do.  In this case, there really wasn’t anything to be done.  My friend had no idea the mural existed, and as such, nothing happened and there was nothing to learn from the experience.   This, in a lot of ways, could be summed up as stuff happens, and making it into a bigger deal than it needs to be won’t make it better.  The second thing...

Join the membership for 50% off using promo code LABORDAY50 Click here to join https://www.zachspafford.com/jointhemembership Here is a story that we are all familiar with, that we all believe is true, and that we inflict on ourselves when we think about our pornography struggle.   The story begins with us seeing the hero of the story at their lowest point.  They are being crushed by the world and see no light, no end to their suffering, and no way to rise above the challenges that are before them.   In this struggle, they come across a single truth, weapon, or skill that opens possibilities to them, creates a path forward, and allows them to triumph.  While I struggled with pornography, I found that this is how I thought of what I needed to overcome pornography forever.  I thought, if Heavenly Father can just give me that one tool, that one skill, or just take this one thing away from me, then I would be immediately successful and clearly win this fight.  I don’t know if you have thought of your porn struggle in this same way, but this was my mindset for a very long time when it came to pornography.  I’m sure, that like Saul who saw Jesus on his travels and was renamed Paul, there are people for whom extraordinary shifts occur in moments and then, forevermore, that newly minted being of awesomeness is plagued no more by their trials.  I know, for me, that this wasn’t the case.   I found that really overcoming pornography forever was about three things.  Regularly refocusing, habits around my urges, and experimenting with totally new ways of thinking.  In the process of overcoming pornography, I found myself regularly discouraged when a setback occurred or a process that I had put in place seemed to fail. For a long time, this lead to an out-of-control spiral and frustrating despair.  Each time made mistakes, I had to dig out of that hole and refocus and redouble my efforts.   The clear lesson for me around this is, that you don’t have to wait until you make a mistake to refocus.   If you are working to overcome pornography, setting regular checkpoints, working with a coach, or regularly evaluating your progress, process, and potential is something you can set up before you make mistakes. Adding key touchpoints to help you evaluate and adjust will yield high levels of self-awareness and pivot points that allow you to move toward your values.    These regular refocus sessions, whether you are doing them on your own or with a coach can help you clarify where you stand, what you are doing well, and if there is an area that you might want to improve.   If you are thinking about overcoming pornography forever from a strategic perspective, checking in with what’s working and setting time to evaluate it is a perfect start to getting you where you want to go.  You might have a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly refocus session set on your calendar where you celebrate your wins and see how you want to focus your energy for the next period.  Speaking of how to focus your energy, one of the key components that you’ll need to focus on is how you are habitually dealing with urges.   Willpower is a regular go-to when we engage with our brain around urges.   But if you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know that willpower fades and is never enough to totally eliminate pornography from your life.  Creating and practicing new ways to deal with urges seems really simple, I know.  When it comes to the things you are most effective at in your life, you have created habitual ways to engage with them.  I’m reminded of Phil Mickelson and Michael Jordan and Tom Brady.   Each of them has risen to the height of their sport.  But how? By doing the same things, over and over and over and over until it was habitual, not reactionary.  My...

As I was discussing pornography with one of my clients, an odd phrase occurred to me.  Pornography is a participation trophy.  On the podcast we don’t do a lot of porn bashing, mostly because when people come to listen I feel like they already have a really keen sense of shame and know full well that watching porn is not their ideal way of engaging in life.  And a concept that has been bubbling around in my head for a while is how effective pornography is at engaging people.   Let me tell you what I mean.   First off, I think its really important to recognize that validation is one of the most highly sought after interactions a lot of us chase.  We look to others to validate our views, this is why we see the ever narrowing of our social media spheres of influence.  We want the news programs that we watch to validate our sense of the world.  We want our politicians to validate our sense of fairness or that the other side is doing us wrong.   Closer to home, we want our partner to validate the view we have of ourselves as a good spouse, a good parent, and a good lover.  Why else would you ask, “How was it?” after dinner or dessert?   We want validation for a number of reasons, most important among them, it feels good.   This is part of the reason why, when we ask our spouse if they want to make love and they say no, it can be some of the most disorganizing, frustrating, and invalidating words our spouse can say.  When they say no, however they say no, it can feel personal, causing us to worry and feel like we aren’t enough, even that our spouse has rejected us.   So many of us feel even worse because we might have put in all kinds of effort to make the rejection less likely by cleaning the house, putting the kids to bed, or whatever we think might keep our spouse from being able to say, “Yes.” This desire for validation, especially the validation that I’m ok or I’m enough then shows up sometimes as neediness.  I have a client who would view pornography and then after he viewed pornography and told his wife, he would mope and pout until she would have sex with him.  He connected her having sex with him as a re-validation of himself into a person that was worthy of participating in their life.   As I’ve thought about pornography and it’s capacity to draw people in, although this is not the only reason people view porn, it seems to me that one really clear reason why people choose pornography is that it always validates them.  Think about it.  No one ever goes to google and types in a search only to have the system say, “Oh, not tonight, I’m just not in the mood”. Pornography is, especially in today’s day and age, always on.  It always says, “Yes”. It is willing to try out anything you might want to try.  It like the things you like.  It believes in what you believe.  It wants to please you.  The face it makes is always one of desire for you.   You see, porn is like the participation trophy of emotional and sexual interaction.   You didn’t really earn it, but you got it anyway.   The difficult reality is, when we are willing to face up to who we want to really be, most of us don’t want participation trophies.   Most of us want our lives to be a mix of real desire and honest growth.   Neither of which come at a command, but are earned with effort, over time. 

I used to think that once my wife and I could have sex because we were married that my pornography problem would go away.  Then when we got married and my pornography problem kept going, I used to think that if we had sex that day, I wouldn’t turn to pornography.   Then if we had sex that day and I chose pornography, I used to think that our sex life needed to be more interesting before my porn struggle would end.  There are a lot of reasons why people choose pornography when they are morally opposed to it.  Many of those reasons stem from trying to resolve an issue that is difficult or painful.  Often they either do not have the tools to resolve these issues or that they are unskilled or unpracticed at using the tools they do have.  WIthin the Self Mastery Membership we dive deep into the tools you need as well as help you hone those tools to make them effective in your day to day life.  When I believed that sex would solve my pornography problem, I failed myself by believing that the answer to my struggle was outside me.  I believed that Darcy would solve my problems.  I believed that God would make me stop somehow. (Agency tells us He won’t) I believed that if I had my needs met often enough and well enough that I simply wouldn’t have more desire than to be with my wife.   The idea that external forces will help us resolve our pornography problems is the same idea that keeps us from solving our pornography problems.   The more we believe that someone or something outside of us has power to solve for how we feel or what we need, the more we will believe that pornography can help us solve for how we feel or what we need.   The idea that Darcy could make it so I wouldn’t want porn is the same concept as porn could make it so I wouldn’t struggle with my difficult or painful issues.   When Darcy can make the bad of porn go away, porn can make the bad of loneliness go away.  Placing our ownership of what is going on for us outside of us, in the hands of a person, a substance, an electronic dopamine machine like video games, or in pornography only aleviates the struggle for a short time.  Then, we have to face up to both our choices and our previously unaddressed difficulties.  So, if sex won’t solve your porn problem, what will? I’ll give you a one word answer that you may not want to hear: YOU You are the only person who can solve for how you feel, why you choose porn, and learn the skills you need to practice in order to leave it behind.  I can teach you those skills, you can learn them through individual coaching or in the membership, but you have to be the one who takes the steps to make it happen.  Heavenly Father could create the perfect conditions that would make your life perfectly simple and easy to live, but you have to be the one who exercises your agency around pornography.  Your wife can have sex with you every day, three times a day, she can be understanding of your issue and not make you feel shame or guilt when you choose porn, she can be emotionally available and alway meet your “needs”, but you have to be the one who owns your emotions, experiences your frustrations, and resolves them internally before they become so overwhelming that you feel like you have to escape them.    This is why more sex won’t solve your porn problem.   You have to hold on to yourself and create the sense within yourself that you are capable of solving the problem, learn the skills and utilize them, and stop relying on externals to manage you.   This is why I don’t encourage accountability partners, too often we think of them as external checks on internal choices.  (they can be effective if used as a way to become known more fully)  This is why I don’t recommend internet or device filters

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Create realistic expectations -  Not expecting my husband to commit to things I know he doesn’t have skills for.  Looking honestly at yourself Could you honestly commit to eliminating your coping mechanism immediately  Instead of looking to give you a right answer, because that answer looks like it will give you peace of mind, it is about being able to  Instead of expecting your partner to give you the right answer because it might make you feel better in the moment Become willing to hear the honest answer without losing yourself and becoming disregulated.  Creating realistic expectations reduces the possibilities that you are setting your partner up to make lying to you his safest move Don’t make their behavior about you -  This is difficult and they do impact you It may hurt when your partner doesn’t live up to your values and your shared values Be willing to be wrong Reevaluating your understanding of pornography  Being willing to address where you are not being or have not been kind in the relationship Become willing to see how you’ve been untrustworthy in the relationship.   It might be good sense for your partner to not share what is going on for them around pornography  What you do when you learn the truths and realities of your spouses struggle impacts their decisions, sense of self, and their sense of the relationship This is not an excuse for their choices, it is an awareness of your impact on them as you are becoming aware of their impact on you.  Become willing to hear the truth of where your spouse is in their journey Not internalize it to mean anything about you Be capable of choosing to be near your partner even when that truth is not what you want to hear You become more trustworthy, which sets up a framework where openness and honesty are not simply expected but more likely.  Because your partner becomes more aware of your capacity to hear their open, honest reality.  And you become more capable of confronting their reality without needing to cater to their struggles or enfold into their anxiety.  

Three secrets to creating trust after pornography  Here is the truth of it. You can not make your wife trust you again. You do not have control over if your wife trusts you. All you can do is be someone who she can trust. Don't commit to things you can for sure follow through on. Be honest. Each of these revolves around an honest presentation of yourself, but probably not in ways that you have ever thought of before.   Let go of the outcomes A lot of us have been working to manage our partner’s feelings  This is something that is trackable and leads to a fundamentally dishonest way of interacting Client - when I speak with my wife, I’m often looking to figure out a way to present my side in a way that is least likely to have her blow up or get upset Say “no” to your spouse when it is your true position Be willing to tell your partner “no” rather than trying to find the answer that will keep the peace, make her happy, or keep you from getting in trouble. example Darcy: Your partner knows when you’re telling them what they want to hear.  They may like it in the moment, but it’s a hollow victory Our kids do this as well, they tell us the answer they think we want to hear.  Clean rooms Be more circumspect about what you tell your partner.  Don’t just say yes, because you think it’s what your partner wants  Be careful in agreeing to a plan of action because you feel like you are in a one-down position of having messed up.  Becoming willing to disappoint your partner if it is the more honest position If your partner asks you to never look at porn again saying “yes” even if that’s what you want to say, might undermine the trust in the relationship. example When we say “no” from an honest position or disagree we are letting go of the outcome and offering our partner an opportunity to hear us being real with them.   They are also going to be presented with an opportunity to grow through the process Integrate your private self with your presented self Say what you are doing and do what you say.  For instance, if you say you’re leaving work at 5 o’clock then you do so.   This is like doing what you say, but I want to emphasize the cost  Often we can rationalize not doing it.  But, can you do it regardless of the ratio nalization. Become committed and take action in the direction of your values. be willing to reevaluate, renavigate, and restate your position Example Hear what your partner is saying and make the argument for them about your behavior This is a process of self-confrontation and winning strategies in your arguments Self-confrontation - episode https://www.zachspafford.com/blog/episode-127-overcome-pornography-through-self-confrontation-the-secret-to-intimacy-series-chapter-2-of-5 (127)  Hearing what they have to say and understanding their perspective on how you are showing up Being willing to see your behavior objectively and without the need to defend it.  I feel valued We can work together

One of the books that I have often recommended to my clients is a work by Dr. Robert Glover.   His book, No More Mr. Nice Guy is a guide to men who have struggled to get what they want in “love, sex, and life”.  I’d like to share one of the key concepts from this book and a caution as you begin to integrate the ideas the book offers you.  First, what is a “Nice Guy” or as Dr. Glover nice guy syndrome?  It is essentially this.  Nice guys are men who, at the expense of their own happiness and from a position of hiding real and important parts about themselves seek the approval of others.  They do this at work, they do this in their church callings, and they do this in their personal lives, particularly as part of their marriages.   What this looks like is often saying, “yes” to things that they are not fully on board for, in an effort to gain the approval of those around them.  Their boss, those they attend church with, and especially their spouses.   This may not sound problematic, as being a person who serves in their community is often a well-regarded thing.  But this overwhelming need to seek the approval of others at the expense of one’s own honestly held position can create a problem called covert contracts.   Covert contracts are actions that we take in order to obligate others to take actions that validate us without their consent.  An example of this might look like a spouse doing all the right things around the house, doing the dishes, cleaning up the house, getting the kids to bed and so on, in order to get their partner to have no possible excuse to not have sex with them.   At it’s core, a covert contract is a manipulation of those around you, in particular our spouses, into giving you validation through things like sex in a quid pro quo that the other party is not fully agreed to.   For some of you listening to this, you might be saying, “Well, how else am I supposed to get my partner to have sex with me, she always has some reason why not to, unless I maneuver her into feeling like she has to.” When we create these covert obligations, in the long run, we end up alienating our partners, and get less of the things we want, including intimacy and sex.  We are essentially manipulating our partners for coerced validation at the expense of self-validation and their desire for us.  What I find here is that many men feel like getting some sex, even bad, servicing-based sex, is better than no sex.   What we fail to see, from that perspective is, that the servicing sex that we end up getting isn’t fulfilling, but we can control, to some degree, when we get it.   That control is the thing that you and your partner will eventually push back against and may create damage to your relationship that is difficult to reconcile in the long run.   By the way, both men and women do this.  My mom once told me that if she wanted something from my dad, she would have sex with him and then ask him about whatever she wanted.  He was much more likely to give in to her position if she did that.   So, how do we stop creating covert contracts?   I’m going to give you two things that you can do.  Part of the process of leaving behind covert contracts is letting go of the outcome. The other part is becoming more desirable.   Let’s start with being more desirable.    Most of us, if we take a few moments to examine our lives, can see a number of things that we would like to change or improve about ourselves.   Those of us who engage or have engaged in covert contracts are often, fundamentally dishonest about what is real and truly going on for us internally.  Meaning, we don’t really tell our partner what is true, we often tell them what we think we want

I had a conversation with a friend of mine who while we are about the same age, he started his family well after I did.  His two kids are the same age as our youngest two kids.  We worked together in Wisconsin and each week when we returned to work on Monday he would ask me, “what did you do this weekend?”  My answer varied, but once I said, “I pulled weeds.”  I don’t remember anything about that particular weekend’s worth of activities, but my friend recalls the story and brings it up occasionally when we chat.   It made me realize that one weekend's worth of work is often what we think lasting change looks like.  But in truth it is more like this:  Last year we bought a house that we love, right next to the house that we used to own here in St George.  When we bought it, we had some pretty big ideas about what we wanted to do.  We had a vision of what this property would look like when we had finished.   We got to work, I cut down 20 or so cedar trees that were shedding harsh, thorny bits all over the yard.  We took out about 10 evergreen bushes that were both ugly and prickly.  We built a wall so our yard would extend 5 to 10 more feet in the back. I started to lay a stone path in the backyard so we could have a nice comfortable place for the kids to play.   Then a back injury I received while playing football on Thanksgiving 2019 flared up and everything stopped.  During that period, the yard didn’t change much, but my concept of what the yard needed to look like and how I wanted it to change did.  As I waited for my back to strengthen and heal, I kept thinking about how I wanted things to look in the yard.   Things that I thought were certain changed and morphed and became something completely different.  As that evolution happened, I found that there were some new and awesome things that I loved about the way I wanted to do the yard.  These were things I didn’t even have any idea about when I started the process of updating the yard.   While the new yard is far from complete, It is well on it’s way.   For many of you, the process of overcoming pornography will be the same.   As you listen to these podcasts and work on the things that you learn, you’ll have an idea of what it means to execute that skill.  Some of you will ask questions about it during open coaching in the Self Mastery Membership, others of you will discuss it with your partner, and some of you will think it through and just do it.   As you go through episodes, ideas that you have will fade and you’ll move on to new concepts, adding them to your mind and letting them become a dominant force as you work to eliminate this unwanted habit.   You may even stop listening for a while, stop doing the work, and stop trying the skills because a particularly difficult setback has made it tough to continue.    All of that is ok.  What I hope you will remember is that, if you will come back to it when you’re ready, you will keep growing, keep succeeding, and eventually overcome pornography forever.  That may sound simple or even naive, but it is the way I’ve seen things work for so many men and women.  They learn, they grow, they stop, they restart, and they do it again.   Overcoming pornography is doable.  I hope you see it.    

In this interview with Josh and Amber, we discuss their success and how overcoming pornography has made their lives better.

This week in the membership one of my members was talking about the question that another member had asked during our previous session.   The man I was coaching said, “when That guy asked that question, it was as if he had been reading my mind.” This is the amazingness that comes from being part of the membership. You get to hear the questions you didn’t even know how to ask, asked for you! This moment was when I decided that I needed to answer that question for you all, here on the podcast. As part of the coaching I do, often we talk about shame and how to manage and deal with it.   The question we’re talking about was part of this discussion about minimizing shame in our lives.  The question was, “what is a good way to not let myself feel so much shame when I act on my urges?” First off, let’s talk about why we feel shame.  Knowing what shame is gives us the ammunition we need to actually end it.   Shame is often contrasted with guilt.   The thing about guilt is that it can be a powerful catalyst for change.   Guilt is about learning that what you have done is not what you would like to have done, had you been able to.   I’ve heard it said this way and this definition works for me.   Guilt comes when I understand that what I’ve done is not right for me.  Guilt comes when I’ve acted incorrectly, based on my own sense of right and wrong and according to my agency within the framework of truths I hold.  As brene brown put it, guilt is I did something bad.  Shame on the other hand, is not about a behavior, but about our sense of who we are.   Shame comes when when I believe that what I’ve done makes me bad, irredeemable and unacceptable.  Shame comes when I’ve acted contrary to my framework of truth knowing that I’m discarding my own sense of what is right and wrong and feel incapable of exercising my own agency.  Again, going back to brene brown, Shame is, I am bad.  So “What is a good way to not let myself feel so much shame when I act on my urges?”  Here are 3 things that you need to do to eliminate shame when you have acted on urges that don’t fit your idea of who you want to be.  First, you need to decide that this is an opportunity to learn Learn something move forward. Second thing you’ll need to eliminate shame when you’ve acted on your urges is talk to someone you trust.   -       Create intimacy -       Practice openness.   -        Third thing, understand that you are enough. -       Atonement -        Each of these things will help you eliminate shame and understand that you are not bad.  Hopefully they will serve to strengthen your capacity to exercise your agency, accept responsibility for your actions and shape the person you want to be.   

Hear the true and amazing story of Jon, a client who's work with Zach gave him the freedom from pornography that he's been trying for years.

Happy Fathers’ Day yesterday! I hope it was a pleasant day with ample food and kind words.  Before I forget, this week I have a free masterclass set up for you on Wednesday at 7:30 PM MT.  We are going to be learning how to drop the porn struggle.  Be sure to register at zachspafford.com/freecall How to become an expert on yourself and why it matters if you want to leave pornography behind  When I am talking with clients and reflecting back on my own experiences there are a few common themes I see. How much time do you spend focusing on things outside of you trying to control your results? How might things change if you stopped focusing on things outside of yourself and instead turn your focus inward on what you do have control over? Part of the reason that we all struggle with anxiety, whether it is pornography related or not, is that there is a near-universal sense among us that something outside of us is causing our pain.   When we struggle, especially when that struggle involves other people, we tend to label them as the problem.  While it is true that, by virtue of being a human, others, especially our spouses, can be part of the problem, it is much more important to recognize our own role in our anxieties and why they exist.   We say things like, “if only my wife would have sex with me more.”  Or, “I wish Sharon in accounting would dress more modestly.” What is happening is that our anxiety around being a good person, finds a place outside of us to focus and makes that the problem.  Once that occurs, we no longer own our agency, we’ve given it away, often to someone who has no idea they have it.   While this isn’t the only reason people choose pornography or struggle when their spouse does, it is one that I want to talk about today. I also want to give you one simple exercise that you can use to begin leaving behind your external focus and refocus on yourself as the owner and agent of your own happiness.  When we are anxious, there are basically four responses that are available to us.  You’re probably familiar with fight and flight, but there is also freeze and worry.   Worry is probably the one that comes up most often when we are talking about anxiety around pornography.  For men and women who choose pornography, we are worrying about how we are going to keep from viewing or choosing pornography.  For women and men who are supporting someone who chooses pornography, they are worrying about how they can keep their partner from choosing pornography in the future.   This endless cycle of worry and imagining new worries is keeping us from engaging directly with actual, reality based struggles that we are facing.   I think, this worry cycle also puts us in a place of victimhood.  When we label the source of our struggle as some external individual or force that we don’t have any power to control, we become victims in a perpetual downward spiral of victimhood, trying to control, and failure that leads to repeating the process.  This is us, investing a lot of time and energy and not getting what we want out of it.  For pornogrpahy users, we invest in programs, plans, and giving power to others, only to find that when the urge comes and we are on the path of finding porn, we find it.   For spouses, we invest in thinking up ways to manage our partner’s internet, working to distract their eyeballs, and worrying excessively about the next time they might fail us, because we can’t control them.  For pornography users, we also spend a lot of time working to manage our spouse’s perceptions of us.   All of us understand that the behaviors of our spouse are part of the problem because they are really important to us and their behavior impacts us.   What we forget is that...

This week we are going to discuss your cycle of avoidance and how to recognize what is going on for you around this cycle and a few things you can do to help remove yourself from the cycle.  We’ve talked about experiential avoidance or buffering in episodes https://www.zachspafford.com/blog/episode-5 (5), https://www.zachspafford.com/blog/episode-6 (6), and https://www.zachspafford.com/blog/what-is-pornography-addiction (135).  I’ll link to those episodes in the show notes.  Humans have a unique ability to problem-solve. From the very beginning of human existence, we have learned how to survive in the world.  ONE OF THE 3 THINGS our brains are designed to do is avoid pain. If you have listened to this podcast from the beginning, this is not a new concept for you. If you think back thousands of years ago when we had to hunt and grow our own food, and physically provide safety and shelter from the elements of this world avoiding pain was a very essential part of everyday life. Over the years we have learned that avoiding pain helps keep us alive! In the physical world, this is VERY important. Imagine if your house was on fire. What would you do?  I imagine I would make sure my loved ones were safe and run out as fast as I could. I would do everything in my power to avoid the hot flames and in doing so it would keep me safe. By avoiding the fire it makes it possible to continue living! We tend to react to our psychological pain the same way we react to our pain in the physical world.   For instance, You might have a stressful workday, and instead of dealing with the stress in a productive way, you might avoid your feelings by engaging with pornography. Another example may be that you approached your spouse for physical intimacy and felt and received a no answer which made you feel rejected. Instead of feeling rejected, you might seek out pornography. You might have a stressful day with the kids and turn to chocolate to relieve some of that stress. Our brains think that avoiding pain inside of our head is the same as avoiding pain on the outside. When we try to problem solve psychological pain in the same manner it often leads us further down the path of discomfort in the long run.  Every one of us has a cycle of avoidance. For some of us, it is a cycle that circles around avoiding parts of our lives through eating.  For others, it is a cycle that revolves around pornography, and others still avoid their lives through shopping or other behaviors that run contrary to our values. Here’s what that looks like in real-time: instead of working on your project’s upcoming due dates, you scroll social media avoiding getting started on your work and putting yourself further behind.  Or: rather than get studying for your upcoming exams like you planned on, you open a browser on your phone and start looking for sexually explicit material. Or, finally, instead of getting your house ready for the week by doing a load of laundry, you hide in the pantry and eat a sweet snack so your kids don’t catch you. Darcy and I use a system called acceptance and commitment coaching, a key component of which is the word acceptance.   Often, the main reason we suffer is that we are not accepting our lives and our unpleasant or unwanted feelings.  This desire to avoid discomfort leads to experiential avoidance or the avoidance of the experience of being uncomfortable.  If we really want to avoid pornography or any other unwanted habit that we have, we must accept these uncomfortable feelings and learn how to deal with them directly.  These kinds of avoidance behaviors are like getting stuck in a roundabout where each exit point that is available to us means that we will have to be uncomfortable while moving toward our ultimate goal, so instead of getting out of the cycle, we stay put, circling around...

This week is a really busy week.  YM camp up in Enterprise and speaking at a Youth Conference here in town.   The more angst that we have toward pornography, we think is going to create the motivation to stay away.  But what that is more likely doing is giving it power over you.   I think we think that if we create a harsh relationship with something, it will banish that thing from our lives.  Often, the more we hate something, the more power it seems to have over us.  It, somehow gets to live in our heads rent-free.   When we are angry and bitter toward someone or something, that anger won’t let us move past that issue.   How has hating porn helped you in this struggle?   When we acknowledge it from a place of gratitude, we can acknowledge the role that it played in our life, learn from it more fully, and move beyond it when we’ve grown past it.  Acknowledging the role that pornography played in your life. Acknowledging ways that porn helped you to survive when other coping methods didn’t work. This thank you, has allowed me to claim back my choice, claim back my ownership of my life and create closure from it. Gratitude for what it has done for us while also moving toward and choosing something that we do want, helps us move forward with power.  It’s time to break up with porn.   Dear porn,  Thank you for being the trial that made me into a better person.  I know that seems strange to say, but it’s the truth.  Because of our relationship, I was driven to be an amazing provider and hard worker.   I’m not proud of all the things I did with you and all the ways that I used you to mitigate my short-term discomfort.  But I realize now, that’s not your fault.  That was my choice and not something you made me do.  Because I chose porn, I had a ready system to fall back on when my ability and skill at dealing with my life wasn’t enough.  But I also used you as a crutch when I could have stood on my own.  And that’s not your fault either.  I chose that.  So, thank you for being there and helping me when I really needed to do it myself.   Thank you for helping me learn empathy.  I’m grateful for my capacity to be kinder to those who struggle and less judgemental of their flaws.   When I see someone who struggles with life, I used to wonder why they couldn’t get it together.  Now I realize that they are just learning, growing, and trying their best.  If I really want to help them, I can be there for them without judgment and with empathy for what they are going through.  I also want to thank you for helping me find my purpose in life.  Without porn I would probably never have become a coach helping people solve their own pornography problems. Here’s something that I never thought pornography would help me with, ever! Thank you, for helping me build the relationship, love, and intimacy that I had always wanted with my wife.  Without this struggle, without pornography being the focal point of our marriage for so many years, I would not have learned to be honest and open with Darcy.  I would not have learned to trust her, listen to her, and value that I can tell her anything, knowing that she can handle it and that we can resolve it, together.  Thank you, for catalyzing this growth and helping me learn that I would be able to trust Darcy.  I realize that most people who don’t want you in their lives see you as the reason for their misery.  But because of you, I was able to learn how to become happy.  Not because you make me happy, but because I had to learn the skills to leave you behind, and those skills I get to use in so many parts of my life to grow and learn, which makes me happy.  Thank you  Darcy thought it might be cool for her to also write a thank you letter to porn....