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us. Before we jump into the content of
this episode, I kinda feel it's important that
I introduce myself. Now many of you have
been around a long time. You're well familiar
with my voice and the the with Leading
Saints as an organization.
But if you're not, well, my name is
Kurt Frankem, and I am the executive director
of Leading Saints and the podcast host. Now
Leading Saints is a nonprofit
organization
dedicated helping Latter day Saints be better prepared
to lead. And we do that through, well,
content creation like this podcast and many other
resources at leadingsaints.org.
And, we don't act like we have all
the answers or know exactly what a leader
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to explore
the concepts of leadership, the science of leadership,
what people are researching about leadership, and see
how we can apply them to a Latter
day Saint world. So here we go.
Hey. In this episode, we talk with Curtis
Morley. This is part of a discussion that
we had over at the leading saints community.
You guys listen, all the cool kids are
hanging out at the leading saints community. If
you go to leadingsaints.org/design,
be able to experience it. There's so many
free resources on there, vast libraries
to really dig in, and we're having ongoing
discussions. Like, Leading Saints is no longer just
a once a week time type of a
podcast that you just wait around for the
next week's episode. We are having the conversation
over at the community and never seems to
end, and I love it. Just so many
interesting questions and perspectives are shared there. And
so we we invite you to be a
part of that. And one of the things
we do there is have a lot of
live streams with a live studio audience tuning
in. That's what we did with Curtis. Curtis
is a phenomenal author, coach,
has some really dynamic programs that have helping
a lot of people even in the arena
of overcoming pornography. And so Curtis wanted to
come on here on the podcast and share
or on the Leading Saints community and share
the eight myths about, pornography addiction.
And, man, they are there are some good
ones. So he goes over the eight myths
of those who struggle with pornography and just
really practical advice here, a good starting point
for leaders. And when somebody walks in your
office or reaches out to you and opens
up and says, hey. This is part of,
something I'm struggling with. I don't know what
to do about it. It's been a while.
What's the real problem going on, and what
are some things as far as the some
myths about sobriety
versus,
recovery?
And, you know, is it just this white
knuckle
type of process for a while? Or should
we tell missionaries, I just gotta be sober
for six months in order to go on
a mission? And, I mean, there's so much
of this in our culture that we could
benefit from by stepping back and really assessing
the the real story, the reality of what's
going on. So you're gonna appreciate this. This
is one to share with bishops or youth
leaders that you have in your life, or,
I mean, everybody seems to be connected to
this issue in some way. So please drop
this in a text message and, and share
it with somebody and,
bless their lives. So here's my interview with
Curtis Morley.
So Curtis, maybe just give this a thirty
second. What's your background? I know you're an
author, you're a speaker, you you're on TV
here and there. And how do you explain
yourself?
Yeah.
So most of my life I've been an
entrepreneur, but the last,
last several years, last seven, eight years have
been really around
the idea of counterfeit emotions
and what people now are referring me to
me as, as a, an emotionologist,
different than a psychologist that deals with the
psyche. This is an emotionologist,
which deals with the heart or the motions.
That's awesome. And you've let's see. You've written
a couple of books or you're working on
one and you have one out or,
I wrote right here. Yeah. I wrote a
book called the entrepreneur's paradox,
Very different topic. It's about business and how
to go from basement to buyout.
Hit Wall Street Journal bestseller list and fun
things like that. But, yeah, currently writing the
book called Counterfeit Emotions. We submit it to
the publishers this week. Oh, cool. That's awesome.
So where's a good you know, I guess
the the general theme is we're talking about
recovery, addiction,
and, obviously, that that works in things like
pornography use and but where's a good jumping
off point? One of the best jumping off
points, I think,
is to dive into
the idea that
there's myths around
pornography recovery.
There's a lot of myths, and they've perpetuated
for years, probably decades,
that they would be great just
to dive in and say, okay, let's figure
out what these myths are and what they're
doing to our members, what they're doing to
society in whole, and why these myths actually
keep us trapped in the problem versus
freeing freeing us. Yeah. And that's the tricky
thing with these topics is that we do
things that feel like,
we're helping. Right? When in reality, you're maybe
further ingraining the the issue or or for
perpetuating
it. Yeah. And maybe actually, maybe if we
step back, the idea with counterfeit emotions is
that every authentic emotion or every emotion that
serves us and takes us where we wanna
go has a counterfeit.
And
so some examples are like guilt and shame.
Guilt is a beautiful
It talks about in the scriptures over and
over again. It's an important emotion.
Shame is the lowest frequency emotion we can
fill. And there's several different dyads or pairs
of emotions in the counterfeit emotions framework.
And one of those is that sobriety
is the counterfeit of recovery.
So break that down. How would you define
sobriety and how would you define recovery?
There's a really simple visual.
Sobriety
says how long.
Recovery
says how deep.
Mhmm. That
sobriety
is
sobriety is the stopwatch.
It's very simply saying, okay,
You're not gonna look at pornography. Ready? Go.
And it's almost like holding your breath. It's
almost like, okay. Ready? Everybody hold your breath.
Let's see how long you can go. You
know what? Let's just do it. Alright. Everybody
listening. Everybody that's listening, hold your breath on
your marks. Get set. Go.
And I'm not, I'm not gonna hold my
breath. You guys do. Let's see who turns
blue first.
Yeah.
But the severity is saying, okay, hold your
breath, hold your breath, hold your breath. Don't
try and breathe. We're gonna keep this timer
going. And as long as the timer's going,
you're okay.
But as soon as you take that breath,
then guess what happens?
The clock
resets.
And
sobriety
uses I call it the worth clock. This
is the worth clock that your worth goes
back to zero
every time there's a relapse.
And
and sobriety is strictly focused on how long
can we go without looking at pornography.
Whereas recovery,
recovery doesn't measure how long,
recovery measures how deep. And there's this general
concept
that, okay, we're gonna use willpower.
We're gonna tough this out. We're gonna make
this happen. And it's basically
pushing all these emotions down in our soul.
So I grabbed my little demon here. This
is this is my emotional trigger. Right?
And
sobriety says, okay. Push these emotions down. Push
them down. Push them down. And some of
us get really good at suppressing the emotions,
but it's like holding a beach ball underwater.
The farther down you push the beach ball,
the more force is exerted when it pops
back up. And that's the difference between sobriety
and recovery. Sobriety says, okay. We're gonna teach
you all the ways to push this down.
Recovery says,
we're gonna pull this little guy out. We're
gonna take our demons to lunch,
and we're gonna start to understand what they're
doing in our soul. Mhmm. Yeah. And this
digging into, like, a leadership context or even
a a parent child relationship is, you know,
we often we don't know how to measure
the progress that's being made. And that's the
tricky thing is the measuring stick for sobriety
is easier to read than than a recovery.
And so we maybe default to time limits
or a Bishop may say, all right, let's
go. You can go two weeks without looking
at pornography, then you can take the sacrament.
Right? Or a parent may use the same
thing and, you know, you'll get your phone
back if you can such and such. Right?
And it becomes very transactional,
and it feels like we're making progress. So
we're addressing
the concern because we're addressing the activity when
in reality, it's, not that simple. Yeah. I
love how you put that. It is the
counterfeit because it feels like we're making progress.
Okay. Great job. You made it two weeks.
Way to go. And that feels like progress.
And here's the crazy thing. There is zero
correlation.
Zero
correlation
with how long someone is sober
and how much recovery they've experienced. Yeah. You
can white knuckle for a long time. I
have a guy in my program
that's coming up here in September 3. He
was able to white knuckle for twelve years.
He was able to be sober for twelve
years. And I think this really illustrates the
concept. I have a good friend. He's a
bishop.
And he said that growing up, his dad
was a raging alcoholic. He was the angry
drunk. You know?
And when his brother turned 18,
his brother followed in his dad's footsteps. So
now there's two drunks in the family. And
together, they went to a recovery program. And
they had a family dinner. And my friend,
he asked his dad, he goes, so dad,
when was the last time you wanted to
have a drink? And he goes, oh,
I I don't even remember.
And he was like, oh, that's so awesome.
And then he asked his brother, he said,
hey, how about you? When was the last
time you wanted to have a drink? And
he goes, oh, about fifteen minutes ago.
Yeah. And
And that illustrates
the difference. And he's like, fifteen minutes ago,
you've been sober for five years. You still
have these cravings, these compulsions. He's like, oh,
every morning, every morning I wake up with
a pit in my stomach thinking is today
my last day. And I have to battle
this over and over again. I have to
fight it every day. Whereas his dad
was in a state of recovery
where he didn't have the daily compulsions. He
didn't have all of the things that said,
go get that
drink. Instead, it was, I don't even remember
when I had that last drink or when
I wanted that last drink. Yeah. Takes my
mind to, is it I wanna say Mosiah
four where, you know, the people had didn't
even have a desire to sin or disposition
to to sin. Like, there's a something changes
in you. There's a transformation that happens. And
not to say that it's an event or
it's this magical moment that happens. You know,
some individuals are bringing out routines or
figuring out that, you know, how do I
take that demon to lunch or, you know,
process this or what about that past trauma?
And, you know, it doesn't just go away
in instant, but the point is is that's
what needs to be addressed rather than just
the behavior.
Yeah. That's it. That's exactly it. These little
guys that are buried in the graveyard of
our soul, that's what needs to be addressed.
You said, what is the metric for recovery?
Like, for sobriety, the metric is super easy.
It's the stopwatch.
For recovery,
the metric is how many of these guys
have we been able to process?
How many triggers?
How many hard emotions or demons? We'll call
them demons. How many of those have we
dug out of the graveyard of our soul?
That's the metric.
Because if we can pull this guy out,
let's say we have we have a trigger
like
a fight with a spouse or something like
that. And, you know, this little guy's screaming
at our skull, hey. There's this out over
here because
that fight with your wife said you're not
of worth, that you are actually pretty jerk
husband.
And so this little guy is screaming at
us. Well, if we can pull this guy
out, the very next time we have that
fight, we don't have to go here. We
don't have to go to that place anymore
because we've already processed. We've already figured that
part of our soul out.
Yeah. Anything else, Curtis, about this concept of
sobriety versus recovery? I'm sure we'll come back
to it as we go, but any any
other groundwork we need to lay? Yeah. There's
one really, really important thing with the sobriety
and recovery
is that and, actually, that takes us to
the second myth,
is that sobriety is miserable.
If you're a bishop, if you're working with
anybody that is in this problem, sobriety is
miserable. Recovery is peaceful.
And if you look if you actually take
the etymology of the word sober,
the word sober means not drunk dot dot
dot
at the moment.
The concept of sobriety
is by definition
sobriety comes from sobrias, a Latin word that
says it's the time between relapses.
Yeah.
Bookended
by relapse.
Whereas recovery, if you look at the word
recovery,
it actually has the word over
inside it. Yeah. And just like holding your
breath where the first two, three seconds, even
ten seconds, I'm I'm feeling okay. You know?
It's when I'm pushing forty five seconds where
I'm like, oh my goodness. I I'm gonna,
I, I feel like I'm gonna die. Right.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I didn't tell everybody you can
breathe. So whoever's still in your breath, you
can breathe now. People are passed out of
their computers all around the world. So this
is great.
But that's exactly it. It's that holding your
breath. It's like pretending you don't have to
feel. Every one of these demons,
Rachel, in the q and a, she says
talk more about the demons, taking the demons
lunch. Every one of these demons is a
feeling.
And what I mean by taking our demons
to lunch
is that instead of pushing these down in
our soul and pretending like we don't have
to address these feelings,
we pull them out and we start to
process them. When I say taking our demons
to lunch, it says sit across the table
and say say, what are you doing to
try and help me in my life? And
that may sound backwards. Like, wait. These are
the demons in our soul. Why would I
ask it and what it's doing to help
me? Mhmm. And the truth is when we
pull these guys out, what we find is
that they're not demons after all. They're a
part an important part of our soul
that we've exiled, that we fractured, that we
don't know how to deal with.
And once we do that work, I call
doing the work or digging.
Once we dig and find these guys and
say, I wanna understand you. And what it
turns out is this was a 12 year
old Curtis
that had a traumatic experience
that through that traumatic experience
said, Curtis,
you're actually not worth it. And when that
type of experience rolls back around, guess who's
popping up their head? It's this little guy.
And being able to process through that, being
able to process to say, okay. You know
what? I can understand this. My favorite definition
of trauma is
is experience
that our mind couldn't comprehend
at the time. Mhmm. That's it. And I
love that definition of trauma because
it removes the fear of trauma. Like, people
say trauma, and it's like, dun, dun, dun,
you know, trauma.
And it's simply
an experience that our mind couldn't comprehend at
the time. But now that we've grown, now
that we've experienced life more, we can go
back to those experiences.
We can go back to those experiences and
say, you know what? I can process this
now, and I'm going to process this
so that it's no longer screaming, hey. Go
over to this other destructive behavior.
It's
now something that I can pull back into
my soul in a peaceful,
restful state and say,
hey. We're okay. We've made peace. This little
guy and me, who we're friends now and
don't have to have that same trigger again.
Yeah. I love the framing of taking, you
know, take your demons to lunch where you're
actually
focused on what the problem actually is rather
than the behavior.
And, again, taking them to lunch, you know,
that's, seems like a very benign
way to phrase it, but it can be
maybe more complex for some than others depending
on the trauma or the situation where maybe
professional help is needed or intensive coaching
or could just be, you know, I'm I'm
gonna process this or take it to prayer
and try and, you know, surrender this demon,
the shame to the savior.
Yeah. And that's one of the keys is
it's crazy because
clinically,
you can see addiction in the brain. There's
tests you can do, clinical tests that you
can do to say, is someone clinically addicted
to pornography?
And most men are not. They're not addicted
to pornography. What they're addicted to is shame.
And I think this is a really key
piece of the puzzle.
There's there's four elements
to the issue of pornography.
The first is sexual.
The second is physical,
which is different.
The third is habitual,
and the fourth is emotional.
And I'm actually doing this research right now,
right at the moment, is to figure out
what percentages
of these are
contributing to the problem.
And believe it or not, sexual is actually
the smallest.
Sexual is the smallest component of the the
issue. Then comes physical, third is habitual,
but all three of those
don't even come close
to the emotional.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying.
Cause we want to, we want to default
to it because on the surface that looks
completely sexual, you know, like, oh yeah, what's
the problem here? Like, don't you have appropriate
ways to address this, the sexuality urges or
whatever? Or maybe you should do more of
that or less or whatever.
But there's so much more going on under
the surface.
Yeah. In our program, in the eight week
pornography recovery program, we talk very little about
pornography.
Like, very little. It's all about the triggers.
And that's one of the differences is sobriety
says, let's focus on the pornography.
Recovery says, let's focus on the need for
the pornography.
Once that need disappears,
the behavior, it just dissolves.
It just goes away on its own. When
the need isn't there anymore,
then the behavior, it's gone too. Love it.
So I wanna ask about this addiction to
shame. This is really interesting because it's almost
like this
like, it's, this, like, false loop. Right? Because
the shame
feels terrible, but it also
helps you feel. Because when, you know, when
you're so, you know, stuck in that addiction
thing, the problem is is you're having a
real hard time regulating your your natural emotions.
Right? You're maybe having a hard time connecting
with people. And so
going to something like pornography that is so
intense and so, like, in your face,
you feel something dramatic, and then that perpetuate
shame. You feel that shame, and then it's
like, oh, no. Like,
you feel terrible, but then later, you can't
help but go back to it. Right? It's
this is terrible loop. It is. That that's
a great way to put it is it's
a loop.
And
one of the best things that we can
do to help our members, help our kids,
help anyone with this problem
is to address the shame. Mhmm. Like, it's
so easy to say, okay, you had a
relapse.
Alright.
Where were you? What time was it? All
of these things. And completely ignore
what came before
the relapse.
Mhmm.
That's where it's solved.
It's not solved in how many filters do
you have and how many hymns can you
sing and how many scriptures do you have
memorized. That's not where it's solved. Where it's
solved is what came before.
And that's where it's really important. That's where
we get into this idea of guilt and
shame is
guilt says, I did something wrong, and I
wanna repair. If you look at the etymology
of the word guilt, it actually comes from
Gildan, which is an old English word that
means to make whole, to repay or make
whole. That's what guilt is. Guilt is beautiful,
healthy emotion.
Shame
is the lowest frequency emotion we can feel.
And the reason this is important is because
guilt says I did something wrong. Shame says
I am wrong.
Guilt says I made a mistake.
Shame says my existence on earth is a
mistake.
And
understanding the two is really critical
because every
counterfeit emotion actually points
to the authentic.
Is shame says I need to get into
guilt.
And Breton a Brown as well as the
University of Oslo,
they did similar studies,
and they found
if you want to get into bullying,
criminal behaviors,
pornography, or any addiction,
suicidal ideation,
get into shame. Shame is the direct path
into those things.
But then they flipped the study, and they
said, well, what about guilt?
And they found this was fascinating.
First time that I've seen a study like
this, they found that guilt was the way
out. You wanna get out of
suicidal ideation, get into guilt. You wanna get
out of pornography addiction, get into guilt.
Yeah. It was a recent guess, and I'm
only got a thousand episodes of my brain
that I have to parse through. But I
forget who it was exactly, but I really
appreciated
how they framed
this dichotomy of guilt and and shame where
when someone's feeling guilt, they're typically motivated.
Yes. They feel a sense of motivated to
change for the better. When they're feeling shame,
they feel like, almost like depression. Like, what's
the use? You know, I keep messing up.
You know, this is just who I am
type of thing. And so I I really
appreciated that where it's like, if you're feeling
it some people think, okay. Am I feeling
guilt or shame right now? Well, are you
motivated
to do better and keep trying? Then that's
typically guilt. Yeah. If guilt is driving you
is connecting you
to your true self,
to
God, to Christ. If it's connecting you, you
know that's guilt. If it's saying disconnect,
stop going to church, don't talk to the
bishop, don't talk to mom and dad, that's
shame. Shame is saying you're pretty worthless.
Whereas guilt is,
hey, there's an issue that I can repair,
and I'm going to. That word motivated, that's
one of the cores of guilt. Yeah.
Any thoughts on this question here? How do
you work with someone to help them identify
and surface their demons without counseling? Is it
possible?
What tools are available? How would you respond
to that? Yeah.
Whoever said this question, thank you.
Thank you for this question because it's so
important.
As a parent
or as a leader, as a bishop,
one of the things that I would suggest
if anyone ever says,
hey. I've been looking at pornography. I've come
to, you know, I've come to confess anything
like that. The very first thing I would
say to them is thank you.
Thank you
for sharing with this with me. I know
that this is hard, and I'm so grateful
for that. And
the question isn't about the pornography.
The question is what came before
pornography?
What were you feeling?
What were the important emotions inside of you
that were screaming? You know? What was the
little demon that was screaming in your skull
that was
saying, hey. This pain is too much. And
I can go over here to this numbing,
distracting behavior so I don't have to look
at the pain.
Instead, say,
let's identify that.
Let's do it. In my program, we call
it the whole method, w h o l
e. And we go through these five steps
to be able to identify,
okay, what is the emotion?
Now let's go through and process this and
figure out how do we get whole again.
And one of the most misunderstood
scriptures
in all of scripture, I believe, is Matthew
five forty eight that says,
be therefore perfect
even as your father, which in heaven is
perfect.
And the reason I believe this is one
of the most misunderstood scriptures
is because you have to pair it with
third Nephi twelve forty eight. In third Nephi,
Christ says something very different,
but so close.
In third Nephi, Christ says, be therefore perfect
even as
I or your father which aren't in heaven
is perfect.
In Matthew, he doesn't use the word I.
It's not in there.
He doesn't say I. He just says the
father. It's not until after
his resurrection,
after
his atonement, after his ascension to the father
that then he includes himself.
And if you look at the Greek translation,
it's not perfect. It's not infallible.
Christ doesn't say be infallible.
He says be whole.
Be ye therefore whole.
And if you think about how many pieces
of our soul that we fracture or exile
or say, you don't get to be a
part of me, We can't be whole if
we're exiling pieces of us.
We can't be whole if we're saying, nope.
I don't like you. You go over there.
These little guys are part of our life,
part of our lived experience,
part of our soul.
And it's not until we bring them back
in in a place of peace and rest
that we can truly become whole. Yeah. And
I wanna highlight here, like, we often talk
about addiction or demons in the context of
addiction
or other, you know, stigmatized
negative,
behaviors.
However, we all have demons. You know, we
may say, well, I don't struggle with, you
know, alcoholism, pornography struggles. You know? I'm generally
pretty good person. I guess I'm just don't
have demons. In reality,
we all have demons, but some people go
to more stigmatized
behaviors than others where there's very positive things
that you can almost get addicted to
that because of the demons you have in
your life, but they're not stigmatized in society.
Right? It could be overworking and people think,
wow. You're just, like, such a hard worker
or, like, super religious where you think, I
mean, it'd be super religious and then nobody
has to know the pain I'm dealing with
inside. Right? And so I always invite people
as we talk about these things. Let's just
not say, man, this group over here that
looks at pornography, and we kinda they just
figure out their demons. It's like, no. This
is mortality.
Like, we're all broken. We're all wounded. We
all need a redemptive savior.
Yeah. And destigmatizing
it is so important. Yeah. Getting rid of
the shame. They actually did a survey and
asked people
which is better, someone that looks at pornography
or someone that's on the streets addicted to
meth and cocaine,
you know, and robbing and stealing and committing
crimes?
And they said that person, not the person
looking at pornography.
Like, it's so stigmatized.
And the truth is we all have triggers.
We all have triggers. And just like you
said, it could be overworking. It could be
shopping. It could be
excessive exercise. It could be things that we're
like, oh, yeah. Every single one of those
are just another way to distract
from
what's inside.
Yeah.
The other part of this question I wanted
to highlight is,
you know, can you basically reconcile these demons
without counseling?
And this is sort of the the tricky
thing about mortality is is I've heard and
seen stories of deeply addicted individuals
who just for whatever reason without a bit
of professional help, they just change and they're
able to reconcile them or they have experience
helping that. And others have maybe more minor,
you know, quote, unquote, minor trauma or whatever
that that, yeah, they need some professional help.
So it's I would say and Curtis, maybe
I'm open to to push back on this,
but there's not everybody needs this one program
or this one therapist or this one type
of therapy. But to me, that's where it's
like, well, lean in. If if it's helping,
it sounds like a path you should continue
down. But if you may be recommended the
best therapist and you go there and you're
just sort of hitting a wall or the
loved ones hitting a wall, it's like, this
is not working for me, then great. Try
something else. Yeah. Yeah. And I had Todd
Sylvester on my podcast today on the Counterfeit
Motions podcast.
Yeah. He said, still Kurt. Hi. So Now
we've had him on. It's in the library,
so definitely check it out. Yeah. He's such
an amazing man. And he shared his story.
There was a you know, it took him
years, but then one day, he said, I'm
done. And that was today, thirty six years
ago. Oh, wow. He stopped. Yeah. He's got
an inspiring story.
So inspiring. Oh, love that man so much.
And it was just like you said,
you know, it's when the person
is ready,
that's when their their heart will open.
But can we do it without therapy? Yeah.
Can we do it faster with a program
or with therapy?
Absolutely.
And one thing so that is
kind of the the secret sauce of what
we do with the counterfeit emotions recovery program
is that we actually have men
call each other every single day. So they
we call it peer calls.
And every day, there's at least two peer
calls that each man will make to process
their emotions.
And you think, okay. That's a thing to
help them process, but it actually serves a
second purpose. The second purpose is connection.
Connection is so important.
If you look at, you know, going back
into the research,
the you know, you have these studies that
say cocaine is so addictive that rats
will, you know, they'll give up food and
water just for cocaine, and they'll kill themselves
because cocaine is so addictive.
That's accurate
if there's only one rat in one cage.
But what they found is when they put
families
of rats together,
the rats left the behavior
of cocaine.
They stopped entirely
because they had connection.
And addiction often is the replacement
for connection.
And that's why we have these men
every single day making these calls so that
they can connect with others on a vulnerable
level, on a way that they can say,
yeah. I see you. I understand you. I
can validate what you're going through. Yeah. And
that's the thing with, you know, even, you
know, the even the relationship with maybe a
a bishop. Right? Like, sometimes people just having
somebody that they trust, they can go and
talk to about this. Even that amount of
community and connection sometimes
really, you know, helps that individual dramatically.
Or there it's the question of because I
think as a church leader, as a parent,
we wanna go to this place of, like,
let's dial in the behavior. Like, let's get
the Internet filter dialed in. Let's, you know,
be accountable to me or someone every night
or wherever it is. But it's to me,
it's more asking the question. So what do
you like to do for fun and who
do you do it with? And you'll often
hear, like, well, I'm busy or I don't
really have hobbies anymore. I don't have friends
or now you have something to work with
and be like, how can we develop relationship,
a connection, community for you, and that'll be
dramatic
progress.
Yeah. That's it. It's the community. It's getting
them connected again
because the shame the shame says disconnect.
Mhmm. And when we can destigmatize
that shame, that's one of the main
main things that start to heal.
And on the note of shame, like, it's
crazy to me because
with all of the not all the programs.
With so many programs out there,
every single meeting starts with shame.
It starts the meeting with shame.
Stand up and say, hi.
I'm Curtis.
I'm a pornography
addict.
And
it paints this
title that is nailed to their chest of
addict.
Right? And that's a shame statement saying, you
are an addict if you think about, like,
I'm an athlete. Well, what do athletes do?
They wake up early. They eat healthy. They
exercise every day. They hang out with other
athletes. You know, they look at YouTube
for their event. That's what athletes do. What
does an addict do? An addict does the
things an addict does. An athlete does the
things that athletes do. And removing that title
of I'm an addict and removing the stigma
that once an addict, always an addict, that
is not true. Oh, Kurt. This is one
that that gets me because
this idea, once an addict, always an addict.
You're gonna deal with this the rest of
your life. That denies the atonement of Jesus
Christ.
That says, I can fall farther than Christ
can reach.
It is absolutely
not true
that you do not have to carry this
with you your whole life. You don't.
And I've seen it. I've seen it personally
with all these men that have gone through
this where they can be done, and there's
so much hope in that. There's so much
hope in the idea that I don't have
to live with this the rest of my
life. I don't
have to wake up every morning with a
pit in my stomach thinking is today my
last day.
Yeah. I'm curious of this question,
if you have any deeper
perspective on this. Can you please talk about
resources for women who struggle with pornography or
other unwanted sexual
behaviors? Is there I mean, when we talk
about demons and addressing trauma and things, is
there anything we should consider with the the
male female dynamic?
Yeah. The National Institute
or excuse me, the National Library of Medicine,
they did a study a couple years back,
and they said within the last month, have
you looked at pornography?
And
they separated male and female.
The men
were at ninety one point five percent,
almost 100%.
But even more startling than that, the women
were at sixty point five.
This is not a
problem that happens every once in a while.
This is over half of the women and
almost 100%
of the men. And those are probably just
the ones that were honest.
Those are probably the ones that were honest.
And yet
we don't even think of this as an
issue that would affect females.
And yet, with the advent of the Internet
with instant accessibility,
instant gratification,
it's becoming that. It's becoming
something.
And it's crazy. I know we don't have
time to go into the neuroscience on this,
but the, female brain
is very different in the way it processes.
Even the bilateral stimulation between the two hemispheres
of the brain is completely different.
And
and yet it's becoming an issue.
And so
I actually have a friend. She's a therapist,
and she's thinking of completely focusing her practice
on women's pornography
recovery. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody's safe
from this, from this plague for sure.
So then someone else asking, is there a
is hole in let's see. The hole, is
that an acronym?
Yeah. What does hole stand for? Yeah. What
does hole stand for? Yeah. So
whole, the process
of digging up these demons,
the
w in whole is witness.
So witness the emotion.
Instead of judging the emotion, just witness. If
that emotion is pain, if that emotion is
anxiety, if that whatever that emotion is, just
witness.
Kinda like sitting on a grassy hill on
a summer day looking up at the clouds.
Just let those clouds float through. Mhmm.
The truth
is we are not our emotions.
We are not our thoughts.
And even a transcendent level higher than that
is we don't have to believe
our emotions.
We don't have to believe our thoughts. And
so many of us think we do. And
so that first step is just witness.
Don't put any judgment on the emotion. Don't
let that emotion drive the bus.
Just watch it. Just witness that emotion as
it comes in and it flows out.
And they did a study of, I believe
it was Harvard,
where they looked at how long does an
emotion last. Most emotions last on average ninety
seconds.
So if you can just watch that emotion
for ninety seconds, that cloud will come into
view, and that cloud will float right on
by.
The second step is harmonize,
is get harmonized. And what I mean by
that is
doctor Daniel Amen, He's one of he may
be the leading neuroscientist
in in the world. He when I worked
at Franklin Covey, he came on our tour
with us, and he said, I can get
anyone out of an a complete panic attack
in three minutes or less. And I'm like,
what?
You can you can pull somebody out of
a panic attack?
Like, they're full on on the floor hyperventilating.
And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, how
do you do that? And he said, I
just have them breathe.
I just have them breathe
deep breaths. Most of us don't breathe.
Most of us our our breath is that
shallow all day long.
And so he does this deep breathing that's
in for five seconds, out for eight seconds.
And he does that for ninety seconds, and
the panic attack is completely gone. Wow. So
that's one of the pieces of the h
in whole is harmony.
Harmony. So
witness and then harmony and then o. The
o is open your mind.
Get curious.
Get curious to say why was I triggered
by this?
Our emotions, our triggers are 100%
ours.
They are ours to own. They are our
responsibility.
So ask yourself, why did I get triggered?
Not why did anyone else get triggered. Why
did I get triggered? And open your mind
and start exploring,
hey. I got triggered by that. I wonder
why. And start backtracking
in your life
because
every emotion
well, let me start at the end. Every
habit comes from an action.
Every action
comes from an emotion.
Every emotion
comes from a thought or a belief,
and every thought or belief
is formed in an experience.
If you can open your mind and say,
okay. Why do I wanna go to this
action or this habit? Well, it's because of
this emotion.
Okay. Well, that came from this belief. Where
did that belief come from? That came from
this event.
So that's the o is open your mind.
Cool. And the l? L is lead, leading
the saints. Of course. That's why we're here
today. Mhmm.
That's the whole reason.
Is
lead your life is say,
what am I trying to distract from?
What in me is saying distract? What am
I trying to hide from, distract from, numb
from?
Lead your life and say,
okay. Am I going to be a victim?
Am I gonna go into victim mode with
this emotion? Or am I gonna be a
victor? And one of the great tools there
is a victim will ask the question, why
is this happening to me?
They'll say this bad event happened. Why is
this happening to me?
A victor will change the question
and will ask, why is this happening
for me? And that question is so important.
So asking that question in the l so
that you can lead your life and you
can say, it's like one doctrine comments one
twenty one.
All of these things
shall be for your good. Not just the
ones you like, not the pleasant happy ones.
All of these things
will be for your good. So the l
is lead your life,
and the e
the e, this is where the real work
happens,
is edit the meaning.
Is as you go back in that
process
and you find that event
that created that belief that created the action
that or the emotion that created the action
and the habit. As you find that,
that's where the real digging happens.
That's where the digging happens that says,
okay, I found the event.
Now it's time to rewrite the meaning. We
don't rewrite the story. What happened happened. That
was real. That was authentic. That happened.
What we do is we rewrite the meaning
of that story,
and we edit
the e. We edit
that portion of our story to say,
hey. When this happened, I put this meaning
to it. Is that true? Is that real?
Do I have to put that meaning to
it? Or because I've grown, I've learned, I've
evolved,
can I put a different meaning to that
story? Can I do put a different meaning
that
will allow
this guy to rest?
Yeah. That's powerful.
Alright. Russell's getting us back on track. As
far as we we've teased him with the
eight myths, and I think we've gone over
a couple of them, two or three. What
are what are the ones we've gone over?
And then where should we go next with
through these myths?
Alright. Myth number one, sobriety is not the
same
as recovery.
There is a myth that sobriety is recovery.
It's not true. There's zero correlation.
Myth number
two is I will have to fight this
every day for the rest of my life.
Again, that's not true. Through the power of
Christ, through his atonement
through his atonement, we don't have to struggle
with this every day. And that plays into
myth number three. We talked about that one.
Hi. I'm Curtis and I'm an addict.
No. Remove the labels. Remove that. There's only
one title.
There's only one title
that cannot be destructive
and that's I am a child of God.
I'm not an addict. I'm a child of
God. It's just not true.
Myth number four
is I just need to be sober longer
and go away.
This is such a pervasive myth. Just hold
on. Just hold on longer, and you're gonna
be okay.
You know, that
18 year old boy who wants to go
on a mission is like, okay. We'll make
it two months or three months or and
then you it'll go away. Or I'm gonna
get married. And then once I'm married, then
it'll go away. You know?
These little guys have nothing to do with
that. And this idea of longevity,
it just doesn't work. There's one purpose for
sobriety.
And you can find this in Anna Lemke's
book, Dopamine Nation,
is that
the dopamine dependent cycle
takes anywhere from two to four weeks
to get out of that constant
compulsion.
That's it. There's this myth that we've you
know, if I've done this behavior for ten
years, it's gonna take me ten years of
therapy to get out of this.
It's not true. You can break the dopamine
independent cycle in as quick as two weeks.
So that two weeks, it's important to be
sober. Really important to be sober.
You know? And like I said, two to
four weeks is about average.
But
that's the purpose of sobriety. Once you get
past that, then you've got to do the
digging. You've got to get into that part
of it. Yeah. I think that's I I
wanna highlight that is because that's prevalent as
we wanna go to these time frames, you
know, as church leaders or as parents. Right?
And, thinking that, man, if we can just
get this young man to six months sobriety,
then maybe he can do two years of
sobriety. Right? Then what happens is you just
pass it on to the mission president. Now
now they're they're the ones struggling with it.
Right? And so, yeah, just recognizing that we're
not, it's not about the behavior.
Yeah. And a common friend of ours,
he returned from a mission in Peru,
and he was so open and so amazing
with his missionaries.
He just said, hey. If you've got a
problem with pornography or masturbation, come talk to
me. Come talk to me.
And he created a safe space for them
to do that. And here's the thing. He
found that about seventy eight percent
of his missionaries, his current active missionaries
were either involved with pornography or masturbation.
Seventy eight percent. And so, yeah, that six
month mark, okay, be be good for six
months, and then we'll kick it down the
road to the mission president.
That's not solving the problem.
Yeah. It's just not. Yeah. Alright. Where were
we on the list of eight? K. We're
on number five. Five. Okay. Number five. Number
five is that viewing pornography is just a
lack of willpower.
That's great. And that's not true.
The idea that it's all about willpower and
just push this guy down and push this
guy down, think about that beach ball. Think
about holding your breath. You wouldn't say, oh,
you can't hold your breath for ten minutes?
Oh, that's such a lack of willpower.
It's not about the willpower.
It's that you've got to pull out the
things that are constantly screaming in your skull.
That's what it's about. It's not about the
willpower. Yeah.
Another caveat there I'll insert is that it's
easy for a parent or a church leader
kinda get in this place. Well, like, well,
I mean, I don't look at it, so
I must have the willpower.
So just do what I do and don't
look at it. Right? When in reality,
we have different demons. We have different
numbing mechanisms that we handle life and the
struggles that our own demons create. And it
may not be as stigmatized as pornography. And
so we kind of lie to ourselves thinking,
oh, I figured it out. I did it.
When in reality,
we were all struggling with demons. But just
because you don't act out a certain way
doesn't mean that someone else didn't just do
what you do. Yeah.
Kurt, you nailed that. That was so well
said. And it's,
like, going through the eight weeks of our
program,
we start with recovery versus sobriety.
The second week, we talk about guilt versus
shame. The third week, we talk about pain
versus misery.
How misery is the counterfeit of pain, and
pain is actually a gift from God
and understanding the true nature of pain. And
we go through all these different dyads.
The following one is love versus lust and
how that plays. And the reason we go
through these each week is because
we want
to give people the tools they need.
It's so funny because if you ask people,
everyone wants to be good. Everyone.
Like but okay. How? How do I be
good? Right? How do I make that happen?
I want to get pornography out of my
life, and it and maybe if it's even
possible, but how?
And so we go through these different diets
to help them understand,
okay. What is the true nature of pain?
How does love differ from lust?
You know, one of them is that nice
is the counterfeit of kind.
And this idea that
there's a correlation between the nice guy syndrome
and pornography usage. Because the nice guy,
he's the banner waiver of the victim
movement.
He's the one out in front saying, I'm
a victim.
And when we can break him out of
nice and get him into kind, that changes.
Then we talk about joy versus pleasure and
excellence versus perfectionism
and being able to give them those skill
sets
that changes the entire game. And this what
I'm gonna say next is probably
goes contrary to everything you've ever heard.
And
that is that
sobriety, by definition,
is the time between relapses.
Sobriety
cannot include a relapse.
In our program, we don't even call them
relapses. We call them lapses
because rather than spinning up all the shame
from the past
and putting it on our shoulders and then
all the shame of the future expectation
of a relapse, we just say, let's take
a look at this one moment in time.
This one moment
because that serves us. If we can look
at this moment in time, that will serve
us. And so we say, okay. What happened
with this moment?
And recovery,
this is where it's gonna contradict everything you've
ever heard from every program, is that recovery
can include
lapses.
And the difference is, like, I know when
someone is in recovery,
when they get on their knees and they
thank God for their laps.
And you think, wait. You're gonna thank God
that you looked at pornography? No. That's not
what we're talking about. We're not talking about
that. We're saying
that god just gave me one of the
most important messages he could ever give me.
It's it's that idea of I wanna be
good, well, where, how,
and
what a lapse does is it puts a
pin
in the map of my soul,
an exact location like the
dead on GPS coordinates. This right here
is where God needs me to dig.
I need to go to this location in
my soul to dig this up. And for
that, we can always be grateful.
And when people do that work and when
they actually get on their knees and say
thank you for the message
of showing me
showing me where I need to dig, and
that humility and that gratitude and leaving the
stigma off of you're this horrible, shameful person.
But just looking at the message,
that's when I know people are in true
recovery
is when they they're actually grateful for their
lapses.
That's awesome. And we we will mention, you've
mentioned your program a few times. We'll make
sure Curtis plugs it at the end here,
but I wanna get through the eight the
eight miss. How far did we get? We're
on six. Here we go. Let's hear it.
Here we go. Number six, recovery is about
removing all triggers.
Right? Like, this is,
if you're triggered, just stop pulling the trigger.
Yeah. If you're trigger, then, well, get rid
of your cell phone. And if you're drunk,
don't go to bars anymore. And David Hawkins
in the book Letting Go does an amazing
analogy. He said, okay. If you get a
a sliver in your arm,
then,
you're like, oh, well, it doesn't hurt as
long as nothing touches it. So let's put
a barrier over that. And then, well, I
might wanna still play sports, so I'm gonna
put a bigger barrier and bigger barrier. I'm
just gonna make sure that this splinter
never gets touched.
Mhmm. And
instead of just pulling the sliver out. Right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Just pull the sliver out. Pull the demon
out. Instead of trying to put all these
barriers
to touching that, just pull it right out.
Yeah. And that is the core of the
gospel. I mean, that's redemption. We're not saying,
you know, Jesus will help you just feel
good and get through the day. Like, no.
He will heal you. He will transform you.
He will redeem you. That is the gospel.
Yes.
That's exactly it. So number seven Number seven.
You have to hit rock bottom before you
can recover.
Yeah. That's a big one. And that's not
true.
Christ is there no matter where you are.
No matter where you are, Christ is there.
Or it is unkind to just watch them
spiral until they find some level of rock
bottom and then think, okay, now we can
help them. Right. It's there's no reason why
we need to wait for this obscure rock
bottom when we can offer resources to help
right away because at their core, everybody wants
to be better, like you said. Yeah.
Number eight. Eight. We're there. Here we go.
We made it number eight. Number eight is
I will overcome this for my,
like, for my wife,
for my girl Yeah. For my kids, for
my parents, for my bishop. I will overcome
this for,
like Not a good plan.
It doesn't work. It will never work if
the motivation
is to do it for someone else.
It will only work
when that person
loves themself enough
to say, I'm gonna do this for Curtis.
That's who I'm gonna do this for. And
once they can get to that place,
once they can say,
I care enough about me to do this
work, that's when it'll work. And I've had
people that are like, hey. I'm doing this
for my wife. And I'm like, k. Then
this program is not for you. It's just
not
because
you cannot heal for your wife.
It doesn't work that way. You can only
heal for you. Yeah. My mind goes to,
you know, if if the savior came to
us and said, come follow me. Like, well,
I don't know. And then you turn to
your wife. You're like, yes, you will follow
him. Okay. I'll follow him like that. Kind
of seems like disconnected. Right?
Like we should follow Christ because we, we
want to be
in relationship with him. Right. Not because somebody
else does. Yeah. That's really helpful. Yeah. That's
good. Exactly.
Awesome. Well, this has been really helpful and
fantastic.
Where can people find out more about, what
you offer or your resources or and what
does that look like? Is it it's a
weekly type of online thing or coaching or
therapy or what is it? Yeah. So we
do an eight week program, and you can
go to you can go to counterfeitemotions.com/recovery,
or you can go to we actually just
got this up. We're we've it's been such
an important
part of our business that we've created a
whole new website. We just got it up
this last week. It's called recoverynotsobriety.com.
And it's like I said, it's an eight
week program, and each week we go through
one of the dyads of counterfeit emotions to
be able to get out of the shame
cycle,
to be able to honor pain, to be
able to understand what love is instead of
lust,
to get rid of the perfectionism
mindset and get into an excellence or striving
mindset. And so, yeah, we do that program
multiple times throughout the year, and our next
one is September 3.
And,
yeah, please, please, please, please,
if there's someone in your life or if
it's even you that is struggling with this,
know that there's hope.
Know that there is
true recovery,
that it doesn't have to be a daily
battle full of misery,
that you can find peace in Christ.
That it's
that Christ is there. He is
absolutely
there, and there is peace to be found
once we can dig out those demons out
of our soul. And,
maybe follow-up question. Is this program for youth?
We don't do anybody under 18, at least
not yet.
So
as of right now, we just do 18
and over. We have had some
potential or future missionaries
join, but they were they were over that
18
age group. Yeah. But, fear not. There's other
great resources out there for youth if you
need any. You know, we we recommend all
sorts of of therapists or things, but usually
in your local area, you can find you
know, if you need direct individual therapy, there's
definitely
some options there. And just being a youth
is sometimes the answer is just hang tight.
They'll grow up and, and,
we can, sometimes those demons are tricky to
deal with, but I know it's heartbreaking in
the moment, for sure. So, all right. I'm
going to, just wrap this up mainly for
the listening audience, maybe through the, the podcast,
but there's some other questions here. We're going
to, if you want to hang around Curtis,
if you have a few more minutes to,
maybe entertain some of these questions and then,
so those of you listening on the podcast,
come join us over at the leading saints,
community, and you can watch the full recording
as we explore some more of this.
That concludes this episode of the Leading Saints
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It came as a result of the position
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When the declaration
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the loneliness
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from which we cannot shrink nor run away,
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