Alright. We're all thinking it. What are we
going to do about this porn problem? It
can be so daunting and heavy as we
watch it, destroy individuals and families. What you
are about to hear is a presentation by
Sarah Brewer. Who is 1 of the top
Saturday Saint coaches when it comes to overcoming
pornography.
I wouldn't be surprised if you've have seen
some of Sarah's content online.
She is becoming more and more popular because
her approach to helping individuals overcome pornography is
just so effective.
Her method is described on her website as
shamed free and sex positive. As I listened
to her presentation, I was so encouraged. As
she describes so many practical approaches of understanding
the issue and then addressing it. Now, this
episode is a presentation rather than an interview
because the video version of this presentation is
now part of our liberating Saints virtual library.
There we have 25 plus
presentations to help leaders who are striving to
help others overcome a struggle with pornography. So
enjoy Sarah's presentation and then head on over
to leading saints dot org slash 14. The
link will be in the show notes. And
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Everyday people who thought they could never overcome
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Here we go.
Welcome
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
Yeah. I'm glad this is working out, and
you know, I've seen... First of, I've got
a marketing background. I must say you have
phenomenal marketing and all things that you do
online with. That's the good things that you
do. So you keep popping up in my
feet. I'm like, use this era.
And Sarah Brewer. And so I was fun
to connect. And you are a life coach.
Mh. But you're a life coach for individuals
struggling with pornography. Is that a a good
way to Yep. To firm it up. Yes.
And how did you... I mean, it's not...
I don't wanna, like, stigma ties this industry
or anything, but usually, I see a lot
of like, men who are, like, in recovery,
and then they're, like, I found some things
that have worked. I can help others. Yeah.
So I'm gonna be the the coach. Right?
So how did you get in this niche
of being a life coach for individuals who
struggle with pornography. Yeah. So
I first started coaching return missionaries and just...
Oh wow. Loved, loved, loved. That... And that's
when, you know, I I... For me found
these tools that I learned through life coaching
was after my mission, it was a difficult
transition and a lot of clients wanted help
with porn. And so it just kept coming
up,
and my
certifications the things that I learned around buffering
some of the things I'll talk about today
and then just education around healthy sexuality, shame
free sexuality. It just it worked really, really
well for people, and
I remember being in my parents basement.
Be like, like, feeling this calling. Okay. Let's,
like, focus on porn, and I was scared
out of my mind, and that was, like,
I am un girl. And I'm kinda young
and, like, people are not gonna wanna hear
this for me, but It just... It really
felt like a calling,
and
know we ran with it, and it's been
really successful To helped a lot people since
then So it's guess cool. Yeah. I'm I'm
glad you jumped in, and you felt that
calling because... Man, we need we need some
help. Right? So it's, like, all hands on
deck. Whoever feels called to jump in and
and make a difference here. Let's do it.
And I wanna maybe smash any stigma, you
know, I'm not only for the stigma of
you being a light... A a female life
coach in this with this focus, but I
would imagine that not all of those that
you help are are men, You know, You
women. Absolutely. So what how would use this
what you've seen with that dynamic of both
men and women struggling with pornography? I mean,
I think the, like, majority of my clients
are men.
But women absolutely do. And it's the same
tools that we can use to quit as
women and there tends to be more shame
there for women.
And so that's something to work through even
more. But, I mean, we're all sexual beings.
And porn, like I'm gonna talk about here.
It's just, you know a way that... We
learn to cope with emotion, and and so
anyone can struggle with it. It doesn't mean
that you're less than if you're a woman
struggling with it. Yeah. Well, I don't wanna
steal any anymore of your talking points here
or too early. So let's jump into your
presentation. I'll be standing by listening, and then
I'll jump on at the animal. We'll talk
about, I'll fire some questions at you. So...
Cool. Sounds great. Okay. Yeah. So
the presentation is called the roots of pornography
use. So and then I title that here
best practices for leaders who minister to those
struggling with porn have leaders in mind as
I made this presentation. And I'm excited because
I do get emails often from ministers from
other
religions, not just L
from many, many different backgrounds were, like, help
me. Help my people. And so I'm excited
to be able to share this with them
as well.
Alright.
There we you go. Okay. So Am Sarah
Brewer,
help people quit pouring, my tagline is shame
free sex positive.
I'm also the hosts of the overcome pornography
for good podcast.
So you can... You see me around there.
Here's what we're gonna cover.
Gonna talk about the 3 big root porn
use, unwanted porn news. And individuals. The first
1 is
escape and buffering. The second 1 is over
desire, which are these automatic, more compulsive urges
and the third route is identity.
And then, Kurt, if you want to ask
questions after each section or at the very
end, whatever you wanna do, just stop me.
Okay. Cool. Okay. So first 1,
gonna talk about this first root of porn
news switches, escape and buffering. So a myth
that
many of us believe about porn is that
porn use is about an overactive sex drive
or rebellion.
And this just isn't true. The truth is
is that porn you, especially, you know, unwanted
porn news is about escaping
emotion, and I call this term buffering. So
might be escaping emotion like loneliness,
anxiety, stress, shame is a big 1 boredom,
discourage, pressure anything really.
Buffering
is just a term use for any action
you might use to avoid negative emotion. So
a buffer can be over eating
can be over drinking. It can be scrolling
social media. It can be Netflix. It can
be over shopping,
and it can be pouring. It can be
a whole number of these things.
And seeing it in this, like, seeing porn
with a list of all these things helps
us get rid of the shame because we
notice oh. Just the same thing. It's the
same thing as if I was using over
eating to escape emotion or overs shopping to
escape emotion, That's all porn use is,
because it's me escaping emotion. So for example,
might be stressed from school from tests and
my clients right, got finals coming up and
just so stressed can't even handle. I need
to escape the dress so I escaped with
sugar or feeling shame and an ina,
and I just can't It's just really painful
and so I escaped that with video games,
or, you know, again, shame and ina, we
escape that with corn use, and it gets
rid of that feeling for a moment, but
the thing about buffers is that it doesn't
really solve the problem.
Makes us feel better for a second, and
then we typically feel worse afterwards, but a
lot of us get stuck in these buffering
patterns.
We feel emotional pain. So a mistake that
many people make is that they use band
aid solutions that don't solve for the buffering.
Can be things like accountability programs,
web filters,
just gotta replace it with exercise. A lot
of people hear that.
Even seeking deeper connections if you see deeper
connections, it'll all be fixed, relying only on
fasting and prayer,
These are good things,
but they are band aid solutions, and they
will not get to the root of the
buffering.
So instead,
we wanna do so we want to learn
emotional management,
different coping skills
learn emotional resiliency,
which is the ability to feel the emotion
without needing to escape it. And I think
I'll talk about this here in a little
bit, but this emotional resiliency, it's not, like,
let's just be strong and not fill the
emotion and just, like, buck up and be
a man.
It's not what I'm talking about. It's really
learning this skill of being able to sit
with a emotion and many of us aren't
taught that. And it's a skill that we
need to learn now in adulthood, then we
can teach you tour kids and just get
better and better. And then lastly, instead, we
need to work on healing from
emotional wounds.
So an application for a leader, and I'll
get here into a more specific example in
a second is that we need to recognize
especially with our members that are coming to
us for help and wanting to change, recognize
that corn use is not about rebellion. And
it's not about having too high a sex
stride. Also need to focus.
The second point here is notice that focusing
only on quitting porn
isn't going to create long term results, So
just don't look. Don't look. Don't look. Don't
look don't look. Don't look don't do. Don't
do it. Don't do it. That's not gonna
create long term results. The focus needs to
be on healing wounds,
learning this emotional management and resiliency skills. That's
the root that's gonna help with the porn
use.
So a very common story that I hear
especially with Rms. Like, I was saying, I
I love the Rms and hear this a
lot.
Come home from their mission,
and maybe they struggled with porn before their
mission, but they quit and didn't struggle and
then they come home
and a whole bunch of stuff comes up
as their Rm. Right? A lot of negative
emotion, no. Fear, worry,
stress,
on top of that, there can be difficult
missionary experiences, that caused some trauma and shame
and
regret and, you know,
kinda tab. We don't talk about the hard
parts of missions or, like, the trauma missions
often. We'd talk about how great there are,
so there can be some shame there and
just a lot of inner turmoil.
And inner turmoil, that negative emotion builds and
builds and built do they need an escape
and what are they used to escaping that
emotion with, especially pre mission is pork.
So you use porn to escape that even
for a moment.
And then this is where we get into
the shame cycle. They receive shameful messages
from themselves,
from others that they're working with. This is,
you,
something's wrong with me because I quit and
now I'm back. I'm never gonna be able
to change.
With these shameful messages, Shane causes us to
hide and avoid. We hide and avoid from
other people. We hide and avoid from ourselves.
And we hide an away from God or
who wants to pray or show up spiritually
wouldn't feel shame. No wanna do that. And
then there's the more porn use because we're
hiding and avoiding, feeling more negative emotion using
that to us using porn to escape the
negative emotion.
And then these arms you know, I worked
with or even heard of, so I didn't
talk about this at the beginning, but before
I even really got into work I've had
you know, experiences with friends and people that
dated that had the same pattern and they're
able to quit after getting emotional health, through
working with her professional, not just trying to
pray it away or trying to shame themselves
out of quitting. K? 1 important thing to
notice here is that shameful tax sticks used
by well intention,
family or
usually only makes it worse.
So that brings me to
shame that I wanna talk about for a
moment, a very common fuel, not just in
rn important use, but in all porn news,
especially
unwanted corn use is shame. So shame
only makes corn use worse. Shame is this
feeling that there is something wrong with me.
Shane comes from thoughts. There's something wrong with
me. And like I mentioned before, Brown teaches
us this is that that actions that come
from shame are hiding and avoiding. And when
we hide and avoid, it creates more porn.
It creates more shame, it creates more buffering
activities.
And so then we get into the shame
cycle, and this is what a lot of
members get into around pornography as they porn.
They think they're... There's something wrong with them.
They feel shame. They hide void and they
buffer with more porn, and it just cycles,
and cycles, and cycles.
And then they think in order for me
to quit more, and I just need to
beat myself up a little bit more I
need to tell myself that this is really,
really, really bad.
But that just keeps them here in this
shame spiral in this shame cycle. K?
Shame, just a few messages here. So shame
is always a message from the adversary and
is never
from
God. Sometimes my clients, they think well,
like, shame is god telling me to be
better. But what we see, you know, god
cares about the fruits, cares about the fruits
of
what we're doing with our life. And the
fruits of shame are never
good fruits, so shame cannot be from god.
I love thinking about
you know, Adam and eve, they take the
fruit and what's the first thing that say
and says to them? Hide
hide yourselves. What have you done?
His first message to them was shame. We
have to be very, very careful
not to
mistake that shame is from God because it's
not. And we see that when we see
the fruits of this shame cycle, we see
that shame cannot be from God because the
fruits are not good. Guilt
is I did something wrong. Guilt is a
great, like,
sign little siren that goes off in our
brain like, hey You did something that didn't
really line up with your values.
Shame is I am wrong. It's really important
here is in order for guilt to stay
helpful. We have to release it and let
it go. If we hold on to guilt,
it becomes shame. I've used an example recently,
you know, guilt might be like someone honking
their horn at you if you start to
sw into their lane, like, like, oh, I'm
like, okay. I'm gonna get back in my
lane. But if that person keeps honking at
you, Like, the rest of the time you're
driving, Hong kong Kong Kong, it gets annoying
and frustrating and then you probably drive more
reckless and you get more upset. And so
guilt,
similarly, it it's gonna give us that sign,
and then we have to release it and
let it go. If we keep holding onto
it, it turns into shame.
Something that,
it's really helpful too is to notice that
it's not either shame
or
justification. Hey, a lot of times, people are
like, well, I don't feel shame,
and I'm just gonna go in view and
justify,
do all the things.
Those are 2 very different sides of this
spectrum, shame and
justification,
very, very
extremes. What we need to notice here is
that there's is middle ground. There's middle emotions
that are gonna be much more helpful than
Shame and much more helpful than justification. Either
of those are not gonna help us quit
part, but staying here in the middle using
emotions like worthiness,
commitment
hope
that's gonna be so much more useful than
these extreme sides. So we need to try
to find this middle ground and stay in
this middle ground as much as we can.
It's also a difference between physiology versus morality,
and I wanna talk about this with shame.
Okay. Physiology versus morality. This is really important
to bring up as we're talking about Shane
too.
Just leave we heard. So physiology, our normal
natural body responses,
hunger,
a sexual urge,
creating for sugar, their normal natural body responses,
morality is what we do with those responses.
So
fill, you know, an urge for sugar and
we have
opportunities with that we can, you know,
eat an apple, We can go and steal
a candy bar. Okay. Morality comes with what
we do with those ph physiological responses. Morality
is not the physiological coal response itself. This
is really important because
so many people
feel shame
around the physiological
response
because they feel and sexual urge because they
want to view pornography.
When the truth is is that that is
not morality. That desire is not sin, sin
comes with whatever your values are about what
you do with those
physiological responses.
And if we're feeling shame about anytime we
feel an urge,
We demon it. We push it down. I'm
gonna talk about this more here in another
section too, but I do wanna introduce it
here, and it just makes it worse. It
just makes it worse. It gets us in
that shame spike shame cycle,
and so it's really important that we start
to differentiate between physiology and morality and physiology,
desire for sex,
hunger cues,
desire for sugar is not morality. What happens
like if we think about this with sugar,
When we demon eyes
desire for sugar,
it leads to binging sugar. It leads to
binging behaviors. When we'd say, oh, I shouldn't
want that. I shouldn't want sugar. I shouldn't
aggression watch sugar, it leads to Binging more
and it's similar with sexual urges.
So we need to neutralize that and recognize
that physiology is just a normal natural body
response in part of being human.
So a little bit of application
here
for leaders is we want to avoid coming
down with the hammer, giving ultimatum,
fear techniques meats,
your family will be ruined forever if you
don't stop now,
and punishments as an attempt to motivate,
just doesn't work. And then lastly, a few
articles that are really helpful with this is
there there's an ensign article called, it is
a sin to be weak, and it talks
about the difference between weakness and sin. This
can really help us with those shame spirals.
And then Brad Wi cox gave a great
conference talk recently called worthiness is not flawless.
I have clients bring that talk up to
me. Often and how helpful it is for
them. Okay. Do you have any questions, Kurt,
that you wanna talk about here? Or should
we keep going?
You know, just some things what I wanna
underscore is this this concept of
escaping the emotion. Like, when we put in
that context, especially as church leaders because it's
so easy to default to this
state of, like, oh it's the behavior, and
we hyper focus on the behavior.
And it drive ourselves crazy because, like, that
will not solve the behavior. It's you,
situated it. And so And then the world
just opens up as of as far as
options with how we can help people when
it's like, oh, this actually an emotional thing
or this is actually something
about just how you... Your skill set of
coping with tough things you've experienced in life,
and let's talk about that. And it's so
liberating as a church leader especially as a
bishop just think, oh, I don't have to
just talk about porn all the time. Like,
I've said everything that that I know to
say, let's move past that and Really talking
about about real healing, You know? Yeah. Such
a good perspective.
It's gonna help the the person so much
more to. Yeah.
And going back to, you know, you talk
about filters and other things we try again.
We're focused on the behavior.
I mean, those can still be good tools
to use here and there or, I mean,
they're... They're still needed along the path some
way, but sometimes we hyper on them as
the maybe a solution. Is that? Yeah. Yeah.
The solution is that I use covenant eyes
and
that it's a software to that helps you
have good material. And that's just not gonna
be a long term solution. Yeah. Be helpful
for sure. And I'm gonna use those with
my kids as they grow up.
But I'm also not going to rely on
that to fix it. Yeah. Yeah. And I...
You heard a lot. You know, it's almost
a a joke with some... Because hear so
much of, you know, those, you know, maybe
the return mission or whatever Like, well, you
just get married so you have an appropriate
outlet. For the sexual urges. But again, that
they find... They hit the same wall again,
like, oh, actually, that didn't help. Like... Oh,
hang gosh. You know, Like, just these little
things we think we just have to address
the behavior given appropriate outlet for it, but
it just perpetuate it. Yes. I can't tell
you how many clients I have that. Or,
like, I thought Marriage was supposed to fix
this.
But guess what, there's a ton of negative
emotion that happens when you get married too.
There's stuff to figure out. There's stuff that
you could buffer from, and it's getting married
is not the solution. Right? Yeah. And I
I just... I appreciate your focus on return
missionaries because And also your focus on shame
is the root cause of why this becomes
such a a difficult
dynamic
But, you know, return missionaries are so vulnerable
to that shape because they've had such an
overs structured life, which, no, that's nothing wrong
with mission life. I think it bless their
lives and in various ways of being over
structured and whatnot. But then you move out
of that over structure, and and you're feeling
like, it's been
2 years. Like, I've got this figured out.
Like, I'm stronger. Like, I feel like I'm
on the search high and then that first
mess up, you fall so far
from where, you know, this pedestal you felt
like you were on that you've conquered you
fall so far that that shame is even
more potent Yeah. For those return missionaries,
because they... They're
transitioning into a not so structured life. Right?
Yeah. And there's so much shame. It's not
even just shame around Porn. It's shame around.
I'm I'm not reading my scripture is like
I was, and
I just don't feel like I'm as good
of a person and I don't have things
figured out, and I'm being idle and all
the things. Right? Yeah. There's there's a lot.
Yeah. And then I I appreciate your your
discussion on Shame and and Guilt. You know,
a lot of times we... You hear that
the separation of what Guilt is what shame
is, but I love your emphasis on, like,
an an over emphasis on guilt
can lead to shame. Right? And not only,
you know, I preach a lot to leaders
like, the best thing you can do is
is remove shame or rather than remove behaviors,
you know, in that interaction as a church
leader,
But part of that is you gotta recognize
yeah. There's guilt and there's a purpose for
guilt, but we have to move past it.
We can't just dwell on the guilt or
constantly come back to
remember how, like, wrong this was like, you
should be filled guilt. Like, and then we
we push them into shame, and then we,
you know, we we lose progress or we
don't see change and it gets so frustrating.
Like, well no. I'm focusing on guilt, but
I love that emphasis the guilt can lead
to shame if you hang with Guilt too
long. Yeah. I think the problem comes when
we use Guilt is like the motivator. Guilt
is more like a sign. It's more just
like a little signal. And then let's use
something else to motivate us. Yeah. And I
guess that's... And, these these are these terms
are all related, but that concept of if
you're in a in a posture, as a
church leader of trying to motivate people or
you're thinking, if I could just motivate him
enough,
then we'll get past this. Like, obviously, he's
not motivated because he had 4 really got
relapse last week and the week before he
he only had 3. So I just need
to motivate him more, like, just gotta get
out of the motivation. Yeah. And just push
them back to grace, and love, and hope,
and you're we're gonna find better results there.
Yeah. And what's really going on? Because the
problem isn't that you slipped up 4 times
last week. The problem is there's something that's
really causing you to go there. And what
is that? Yeah. Really helpful. Alright. Let's move
on to the... That... Your next section here.
Okay. So route 2 over desire,
over desire is like I said, those compulsions
for porn. And so, Myth here is that
desire and comp compulsions for porn means that
your brain is broken and than fixable.
The truth is is that over desire is
learned and can be un.
It is actually a sign that your reward
system in your brain is working correctly.
K?
An example here of over desire is
like, every day after I eat dinner, I
want chocolate. I I have trained my brain
to want chocolate. Every single day. After I
did dinner, and I actually think it started
on my mission because I was blessed enough
to have members who would feed me dessert
after every meal. And so
that's kind of an example of here what
this looks like for members circling with porn.
It can be enriching hours can be, you
know, every time they're at the station. They're
first responder fire, firefighter and every time they're
at the station, they have our just for
porn, every time, you know what. 10PM hits
or first thing in the morning is just
just happens. So the truth is is that
it's actually your brain in your reward system
working correctly.
And we see this through
Pa dogs and and Pa study around his
dogs. It's so basic thing we hear in.
Like,
college psychology courses.
Pa was a scientist, and he had a
bunch of dogs that he kept in cages,
and he would go around and he would
ring a bell, and then he would give
the dog a treat and ring the bell
and give him a treat and ring the
bell and give my tree over and over
and over and over and over again.
Pretty soon, the dog started to associate that
sound of the bell with the tree. And
so these dogs would hear the bell, not
even see the treat and start to saliva
at the sound of the bell. They just
associated that sound of the bell with the
tree. Makes sense. Right? Now the other part
of Pa experiences he was able to train
them to stop saliva at the sound of
the bell. We don't often hear about this
part but this part is just as important
and really really brings a lot of hope
to people
struggling with over desire for porn. So what
he did to train them to not sal
out the on the bell, was he rang
the bell and didn't give him a treat
and rang the bell and didn't give him
a treat, ring the bell and did give
a tree over and over and over and
over again
until they stopped associating that sound of the
bell with the treat. And at first, they
were ticked and they were barking, and they
heard that bell, and they were angry. And
they were saliva. They're, like, what the heck
path off.
Where's my treat, but after
enough time after hearing that bell enough without
getting the reward,
they would hear that bell and not associate
with treat at all. Now if Pa would
have just put his dogs on an island
for a few years where they didn't hear
any bells,
and then bring them back a few years
later, they would still saliva at that sound
of the bell even if
it had been 2 years since they heard
it because what's going to create bringing down
that over desire,
getting rid of that association isn't gonna be
just time away from it. It's going to
be actually hearing it and not receiving the
reward. So this makes sense with missionaries. Right?
They're out,
doing something else. They don't have the same
stuff that was available to them before, but
then they come back and they still have
these
urges
because they didn't go through the process of
hearing it and not giving themselves the reward.
And so a few key takeaways here,
Well, and and let me say here too
and make sure I'm being clear, you know,
what this looks like is,
it's 10:00. You give yourself porn. You watch
porn at 10:00. And then your brain remembers
that, and 10:00 comes around again, and you
watch porn and you train your brain to
start wanting porn at this certain time because
you've done it before,
or
with certain emotions. So whenever you feel stress.
You train your brain to associate stress with
porn. You train your brain to associate waking
up with porn. You train your brain to
associate going to the station with porn.
Being in a certain environment with Porn. So
that's what's happening here, and we can train
ourselves out of that, like Pa,
train these dogs out of it. So a
few key takeaways from this example is that
it's a mistake to focus
on avoiding urges. Like, it would be a
mistake for Pa to
focus on just avoiding the bell.
Instead, what we wanna do is focus on
training our brains out of desire which is
hearing that bell,
and not receiving the reward. K, triggers for
porn are never gonna go away,
especially today when we have smartphones and we
have
computers and we have... You know, we live
in a very hyper culture, and we have,
like, stress is never gonna go away Negative
emotion is never gonna go away. So true
self control comes from learning to hear that
bell
without giving yourself the reward. And I'm gonna
talk about how to do that,
this is
mindfulness, and all the studies are showing that
mindfulness techniques are the most effective in helping
people
quit horn
because it teaches them how to do this.
So what mindfulness looks like is there's imagine
a pendulum
swings back and forth between willpower and giving.
And anyone who struggles with porn knows this
pendulum very well. They're like, no No No.
I'm not gonna do it. Willpower grit. Not
gonna view not gonna view and then if
this... Okay. I'm exhausted so we're gonna view.
And then willpower willpower willpower and then give
in. So what we need to do is
we need to learn to stay here in
the middle again. Will power doesn't work
because power is, like, holding a beach all
under underwater. When you have an urge to
view porn. You're like, no No No. Go
away. Go away. Go away. Go away. Hold
it down, hold it down, hold it. What
happens when you hold the beach ball underwater.
It just wants to pop up, the further
down you hold it, the more strength that
has to pop up. That's what happens with
willpower.
And that's why we get stuck in this
pendulum.
So instead of holding that down,
wanna learn to just
sit with it,
sit with the emotions, and sit with the
urges, not push them away, not try to
make them go away, not try to run
away from them,
but allow them to be there, sit with
them.
Without giving ourselves the reward, and they have...
I'll talk about how to do this specifically
in just a moment. But what this does
is this teaches
true self control
and allows these urges and these emotions to
pass through sometimes. And and this isn't just
with urges. Right this can be with any
emotion with anger. Right? When I hold anger
down I have 2 toddlers,
and they're the best, but they're really busy.
So when I hold my... Like, if I
get angry, I'm just like no I'm no
be angry. I'm not gonna be wrong. I'm
not gonna think about it go away angry,
anger go away. What happens.
It explodes, and I explode and it's the
worst. And so This is not just with
urges with any emotions. We need to learn
how to sit with them instead of trying
to make them go away. Sometimes when we
think about sitting with the motion or sitting
with urges.
I can't do that because I don't want
it there, and it's gonna be there forever
if I just let it sit there The
truth is is when we allow
emotions when we allow urges to be there,
it allows them to, like, make their way
through our body and go away.
So it's not gonna be there forever.
I've heard before. Emotions only last 90 seconds
until you have a thought that brings that
emotion again.
But the natural flow of emotion and urges
is to come and go unless we're holding
them and trying to push them away, and
then they come back even more. K?
So again, here, I wanna bring this this
idea of physiology versus morality again because if
we are thinking, oh, this urge is bad.
It's bad for me to feel this. That's
when we're gonna be pushing it down, pushing
it down, pushing it down. When we can
have this mindset of, oh, I'm a human,
grew up in a super hyper sexual culture.
My brain's trained to want the dopamine in
a pornography. It makes sense that I'm having
this bird right now. There's nothing wrong with
me for wanting this. That's when we can
just allow it to sit there
without falling into that willpower resist react cycle
allow it to sit there and learn how
to not give ourselves the reward to train
ourselves out of that over desire. So here
is 1 of the most simple ways that
I teach people how to start doing this
is stop, drop. And breathe. So you stop
and you point out to yourself, Oh, I'm
feeling and urge.
Sounds simple, but this can be really difficult
for people, especially if they feel a lot
of shame about their urges to actually say
to themselves and feeling an urge to have
the awareness
that they're feeling stress or whatever and they're
having urges.
So stop and notice that you're feeling an
urge. Number 2, drop, drop into your body,
so where do you feel this in your
body? We're thinking of sensations in our body,
we have different sensations in our body with
different. So when we are happy, like,
For me, happiness in my body feels light,
and it feels airy when I feel sad,
it feels heavy and tight? Just a really
simple example. So our body has different
feelings, tight, hard, soft,
light,
maybe like, shaky,
we wanna drop into our body point out
the sensations. We're filling in into our body.
Focus on those sensations and breathe into them.
It's okay that I'm feeling this. I'm having
an urge. I feel tightness in my chest
focusing on it. It's okay. That tightness is
okay to be there. I feel antsy. I
feel really antsy and shaky. Okay. That's okay.
I can feel antsy I'm gonna focus on
it. I'm gonna breathe into it. When we
do this, it allows those urges to make
their way through our body
and go away. K? This is what it
means to listen to that bell to feel
the trigger to feel the urge and not
respond to them. It's practice and mindfulness. I
have some podcast episodes that explain this in
depth that I wanna make sure I share
because these are totally free and you can
listen to me
explain this in much more depth. Episode 66,
episode 47 and episode 21. I think in
66, I actually take you through a practice,
like, a a more mindful practice
there in your mind. So use those and
and share those you'd like to.
1 thing that's important to recognize about this
is that it's a skill that needs to
be learned,
and it requires growth mindset. A lot of
us when it comes to quitting porn, we
have these all or nothing mindset. Right? We're
in a quick cold turkey, this is it
we're done. What this actually requires is more
of a growth mindset, which is this belief
that you can change and that it's step
by step. It's not all or nothing. It's
not culture turkey. You slipping up does not
mean that you're back to square 1 This
is something... Well, I think I'll talk about
it in a moment, but we don't... It's
damaging to, and say if you slip up,
you have to start it all over, not
how growth works. Looks more like a graph
like this.
It's going up, even though there's, like, ups
and downs as we're going up. K?
So a few applications here for leaders is
that we want to wanna avoid telling people
that they're gonna have to struggle with this
forever. And I know a lot of us
maybe say that because we don't know any
better. And we we think that that's true
and and we feel a little bit hopeless
around this. But what I wanna offer to
you today is that it's not true. And
instead,
recognize that our brains are very malleable, and
there is so much hope and so so
so much hope that you can quit. So
you wanna instill that confidence and hope instead.
We wanna avoid encouraging the all or nothing
thinking, so we start over when we slip
up. And instead use slip ups as learning
opportunities
learning and growing instead of immediate perfection. Want
to avoid demon
sexuality. Right? That physiology versus morality principle.
And instead teach our members that sexuality is
a beautiful part of our existence.
And then it makes sense that they're struggling
for urges and that it's not problem. It's
not a problem to want things that are
sexual. It just isn't morality comes from what
we do with those desires.
Those desires are normal, natural and okay. And
you can learn to be in more control
when you stop demon that part of yourself.
We want to avoid saying that more prayer,
fasting and righteousness will fix this and instead
encourage healing pain. Right? Like we talked about
from buffering and learning mindfulness skills. I tell
people. You know, it's the same thing as
if you went to your bishop and you're
like, I'm over eating. Can you help me
over eat... Like, they're not gonna tell you
that praying more and fasting more and being
more righteous is gonna fix an over reading
habit. It's the same thing. So... Okay. There
we go there. Do you have any questions
on this section, Kurt?
Yeah.
Man, this is really good stuff. I just...
I love this concept of learning to sit
with it. Because I think for whatever reason,
our natural
response
is...
Don't sit with it, go to distraction. Right?
Like, maybe
if you're having struggles, you know, after 7PM,
maybe that's when you should go to the
gym, you know? And yeah sure I guess
that's fine. But if we're doing it in
a state of to distraction or the old,
you know, sing a him or Yeah.
Or even do, like,
instead of doing something that's sinful, a behavior,
like, maybe do something that's not sinful. So,
yeah, maybe over eating isn't so bad. Yeah.
It doesn't great But your temporary recommended at
risk, you know, obviously that's maybe a a
strange example. But the point being is that
oftentimes we want to default to or encourage
people to go to distraction rather than just
sitting with it. Mh. Yeah. And it's because
we haven't been taught that Yeah. We can
do that. And it feels scary. It feels
more scary and mold vulnerable.
Mh. Oh. Yeah. And I I too enjoy
ridiculous amounts of chocolate after dinner. And so
like, that's a good practice. And and even,
like, leaders. Like, that's the thing is... Sometimes
it's hard
for church leaders
understand where they're coming from if they've never
really struggled with pornography, you know? And so
but there are ways that all of us
buffer, Yeah. There are ways that we do
behaviors that maybe they don't... Aren't sinful, but
they're not necessarily healthy.
Yeah.
I mean, we can point to the smartphone
maybe is a good place to start. Right?
Like, just that the overuse of a smartphone
is maybe not overly healthy and could be,
you know, could be an addressed. So... But
finding even as a church leader, like, finding
places where you can sit with, like, Oh,
wow. You know, I do like to just
have a huge lunch after... During a stressful
day, or I'm just gonna sit with that
instead, or man, I just even as a
father. I feel those emotions come up, like,
I'm about turn into Monster dad. So I'm
gonna go to the other room and sit
with these feelings. Right? And so I think
all of us can practice and get a
better sense of how this feels when we
just get curious about what we're feeling
and sit with it. Yeah. And it's it's
so helpful to recognize that... Because I have
people say me, like, why porn,
why can't be anything else? Why does have
to be porn? Why couldn't... Like, even drugs?
Why? I mean, I know that's it's just
from such a place of shame and like
sadness. Right. Like, why couldn't it be anything
else? And then the truth is is because
that's what you unintentionally train your brain to
want. And so it's the same thing
as those over desires to eat, those over
desires for sugar. It's the same thing. And
so many were especially, like, turn missionaries, people
who grew up with the Internet, like, we
had access to things
that people didn't have access to you before.
We had so much access to pornography.
And so it makes sense that maybe you
you used that as your buffer, and there's
nothing wrong with you,
and you're part of the generation that just
got thrown into this, and we're learning and
we're doing better, but there's nothing wrong with
you. Nothing. Yeah. So helpful.
And I love the your emphasis on really
inserting hope of making sure it's okay to
communicate. This isn't gonna be a forever thing.
Like, there are skill sets. There are things
help resources that
individuals... You know, they move on with life.
This isn't like this white knuckle struggle their
rest their life makes me think of my
friend,
Steve Shields, who, he was entering a recovery
from a sexual addiction, and he was introduced
to my other friend, Chris Bennett, who had,
like, 10 years of sobriety. And
Steve was just amazed. It, like, that Chris
could just, like, function real life and he
wasn't like, holding on where Steve was sort
of still in that moment of, like, I
don't know how I'm gonna get through today,
and Christ just got through 10 years. Like,
how was that even impossible, but he talks
about how instilled in him such hope of,
like, oh, like, this isn't a white knuckle
thing until the end of the eternity, I
it will get easier as I build these
skills and and reach out to these resources.
Yes. Yeah.
We don't go up to the pulpit and
say.
I quit porn and you can too. Right?
But it might be a little helpful if
we heard that. Yeah. And then the... Your
emphasis on all or nothing
1 thing I still hear here is more
common than I wish it was in the
church context is when you're telling the and
youth is a whole another dynamic. Like, in
my opinion, like, if you're working with you,
there's really never an appropriate time to restrict
the Sac. And that's for various reasons and
I get that's up to each bishop. But
I think that dynamic of restricting the Sac
or even visiting with the bishop on a
weekly basis that brings such shame to that
dynamic that we're actually making it more difficult
for success than not. But No. Putting that
aside, but I often hear, like, this concept
that feeds into this all or nothing of...
Alright. Well, if you can go 7 days
or 14 days, then you can take the
sac. That's a very all or nothing thing
where,
it's just gonna, again, drum up more shame
and make it more difficult to... For progress.
Yeah. And what I teach my clients too
is that progress isn't measured by how many
days you've gone without port. Yeah. We take
back to Pa dogs. Progress is measured by
how many urges your your processing the determine.
So how many urges you're sitting with and
aligned to pass through and how you're building
that skill. That's progress. Not big. Let know
so many people, you know, can go 30
days and then binge. You know, it's not
about days. Yeah. Really helpful.
Alright. Park 3. Is that where we're at?
Part 3, this one's the shortest 1. So
just a few notes here on identity,
Like we've talked about this Myth you have
to struggle with this forever.
When the truth is is that many people
quit porn and it's not a life sentence.
I love using the story of Quinn,
who is awesome. He 1 of my clients
and he quit porn after 50 years of
struggling at age 63.
And now he's a life coach. And he
works in my programming and he's you know,
retired, but he loves it so much that
he he does support groups in my my
program is just such a powerhouse.
Says after I learn these tools switch flipped
and it was easy transformation for me. It
worked and completely changed my life. And so
what we learned from his is that it
doesn't matter,
how old you are, How long you've struggled.
There is hope and healing available for you
And hello. That is the message of Christ.
And of the atonement, but sometimes we like
don't apply it to porn. And so let's
make sure that we're also applying it to
porn because it is so true here too.
How we think about ourselves really
matters.
I like to think, you know, how we
think about ourselves it gives us energy for
our actions,
So how we think about ourselves gives us
energy for our actions. So for example, right
to become a run you have to start
seeing yourself as a runner to become successful
in your company,
you have to start seeing yourself as someone
who is competent and able to thrive at
the job at hand. This identity piece is
extremely important if you're thinking. I'm not someone
who can quit porn. It's really hard to
quit porn. I hope I can quit porn,
but I don't really think I can. It's
gonna be really difficult
to do it. You have to start taking
on that identity as someone who quits porn
before you even do it. That feels a
little backwards for people,
but it's it's really important. Identity here is
a very key step.
Says something that I just wanna
mention for a second because it's a big
enough thing that I see in my clients
that I think it's worth mentioning.
Is that all porn news does not equal
addiction. Elder Oaks gave a great is in
an enzyme, a great talk about this.
Ray says we recognize that not everyone who
uses pornography will fully is addicted to it.
In fact, most young men and women who
struggle with pornography are not addicted.
If the behavior is incorrectly classified as an
addiction, the user may think he or she
has lost
agency in the capacity to overcome the problem.
This kinda comes back to that identity. Right?
This can weaken their resolve to recover and
repent and problem He says lastly, it's important
not to label even intensive or habit use
of pornography as an addiction because that does
not accurately describe the circumstances
or the full nature of the required repentance
and
recovery. And so this isn't like a never
say addicted stance, but it's just something to
be aware of.
I think this is really interesting just to
kinda sit on for a moment is that
this year in June, the Ic icd 11,
which is the international cost... Of diseases by
the world Health organization. They started classifying corn
use as an impulse control disorder,
not an addictive disorder, and that doesn't mean
that there aren't
compulsions and, you know,
I'm not gonna go into all the nuances
here. I've done that another podcast episodes, but
it's just something to pay attention to. And
here's really the key point I wanna get
at. Is that we wanna let individuals decide
whether or not to use the addiction label
and we don't wanna just give it to
them. Okay? So if it's helpful for them,
use it. If it's not helpful for them,
all this stuff that I've talked about like,
just shows us you can drop it. You
do not have to
identify as addicted if it doesn't feel helpful,
and if it doesn't feel true,
not all important use as addiction. And this
is why this isn't so important because here's
what we wanna avoid We wanna avoid fostering
this addiction mindset.
Which is an I can't change mindset. I'm
stuck.
Mindset.
Once an addict always an addict,
I'm powerless to this. Those are really harmful
things that we get in our brain that
keep us from quitting porn. We wanna avoid
creating addiction identities,
like, which is what I just talked about.
We wanna avoid
young teenagers thinking that they're addicted because they're
interested in porn. And unfortunately, this happens
because of things said about if he's is,
you know, a teenager going through the hormones
and the natural things and is interested important
has access to the Internet starts to think
that they're addicted when maybe they're not.
And lastly, we wanna avoid members feeling hopeless
and stuck. Okay. 1 thing... I asked this
often in like my life classes that I
do a few times a year. So I
ask them how do you feel when you
think I'm addicted. And these are common responses
that I get. I feel out of control.
I feel hopeless. I feel fearful. I feel
like I'm never gonna be able to change.
And I feel like I've gone too far,
and this is so important to think back
to that identity piece. When our identity
and we're feeling this out of control hopeless
fearful. Like we'll never be able to change
like I've gone too far. That's going to
play out directly in whether or not we're
able to quit porn. It's gonna play out
directly how we act. If you feel out
of control,
you are going to act out of control.
And so it's worth it to maybe question
this
any of these
beliefs that might be coming up for you
around pornography, like, a out of control and
hopeless. I'm addicted and I can't change, because
that's just not true.
So little application here for leaders is we
wanna just avoid assuming addiction.
We wanna avoid just using addiction as a
label and let let our members and let
individuals decide how they want to label it.
We wanna avoid any comments that might make
giving young man or women in the congregation
think that they're addicted because they viewed or
have urges to new pornography and wanna help
members foster an identity
of someone who quits.
Porn. And so
what that might look like is
instead of always always always focusing on
Don't look. Don't look. Don't look. Let's also
focus on, like, what identity?
Do you want to have? How can you
live into that identity now?
What does someone who doesn't struggle with porn
do? Okay. Go and do that. What does
someone who doesn't struggle with porn, feel and
think about themselves?
Let's start feeling that, and let's start thinking
about that ourselves that way right now.
I had someone a client recently in my
program who said all I've done is the
identity work this last month. And I haven't
struggled at all. I feel like, so good.
I I haven't had any or just report.
I'm I'm doing so much better than I've
ever done. All I've done is changed the
way that I'm thinking about myself. So we
cannot underestimate how powerful
identity work is.
Hey. There is hope, healing and a life
without porn available to
anyone. To
anyone. And I think this my last slide
here Is just, yeah. I just have a
vision of a group of really powerful and
informed leaders that use research based techniques instead
of creating
unintentional harm from fear and shame. There is
so much
good that you can do as a leader
here in these positions, and I hope that
this hope that these principles will help you
do that when it comes to
pornography.
Awesome,
Sarah, that was that was so good. And
I so much appreciate your approach to the
concept of addiction. In this work I do
with leading saints and especially through creating this
liberty saints
this resource
you quickly realize there's, like, these 2 camps
of, like, you never say addict and you
do say addict, and I get caught in
the middle of it then sort of fresh
because sometimes I hear people talk about, Yet,
pornography is not an addiction. Don't even use
the term as if just by not you
saying it attic is somehow going to help.
Like You said in some instances. Yeah. It
can help. Right? And so I love your
slide where if it helps, use it if
it doesn't help, don't use it, because the
dynamic, I think people miss that especially those
in the camp where they're like, never use
addiction.
Is that in this process with
immortality where we're struggling with things, especially with
sin, there has to be a step of
surrender where we give it all to God
and say, I am broken. I don't know
what to do. You're gonna have to help
me. And for a lot of people using
that term addiction is another way for to
say, I'm broken and I surrender this that
without Christ, I'm addicted. And so I need
Christ to move through that, And so as
long as everybody has a component of that
step of
surrender, whether that through the word addiction or
not. So, anyways, I really believe that you're
your approach to that term and and how
we use it when not really helpful. Yeah.
Thank you. Yeah. I I can see it
being helpful for people and then I also
see the other side a lot where. It
becomes a little bit of a trap. Right?
Yeah.
I've wanna maybe emphasize just... Obviously, you're life
coach
And man I kinda... When I hear people
sort of downplay life coaches like, oh, you
know, they don't have real schooling or training
or whatnot, And a lot of leaders they
feel like, oh, well, I gotta get this
person out. They're really struggling with these urges
and addiction or whatever it is. I gotta
get them into some good therapy
Mh. And there's some good great therapists out
there. There's some mediocre therapists out there. There's
some great life coaches out there. There's some
mediocre life coaches out there
And what... The reason I always try to
emphasize this is that it doesn't take long
for a leader to realize how daunting this
issue is, how per it is,
And if we say only this
group of people with
specific
educational
traits, you know, it can help us, we're
just not gonna win this war. And so
I just always
encourage leaders
consider the great life coaches out there like
Sarah, who have have seen success and who
are really helping people, you know? And, anyway,
so I just wanna
make sure that's clear with leaders like, don't
don't dismiss the life coaches and what the
the power they they can have and
Sometimes
it can be a lot even, you know,
as the leader
is analyzing the sacred funds they use for
therapy and fast start funds are whatnot. Sometimes
a life coach can be a whole lot
cheaper, and they get the same results and
anyway, so I just wanna make sure we're
we're really looking at
resource of life coaches. Anything you'd add to
that? Yeah. Thank you. I... I mean, I
work with therapists
too, and we we will work side by
side clients depending on what they need. I
typically will recommend therapy.
If there's some trauma that hasn't been addressed
before, that's a little bit out of my
wheelhouse, if they need more, like, intensive support,
that's gonna be a better fit for them.
But, yeah. It's it's more about if Like,
I've worked with therapist that have helped me
more than a life coach. I've worked with
gl coaches that have helped me more than
a therapist as. It just depends on the
person. Mh. Your level of trust.
How you feel connecting with them. So I
I graduated from By and therapeutic recreation, and
I was going to get my license, and
that's when I found life coaching, and I
just love business. I just love the business
side. And I love the, like, counseling side
too, and so life coaching are really fun
mix of that for me.
Yeah. But,
yeah. It just depends how I typically work
around that too is my podcast
is just
awesome. And so people listen to it and
they get results, and they feel amazing. And
then if they want some extra help, they
trust me because they listen to the podcast.
So So that's a great place to send
people for more free help too is my
podcast let them start making changes learning more
there too. Yeah. That's really helpful. And anything
you'd add as far as like how
a leader could leverage
someone like you and your life coach because,
you know, with therapy, it's like, okay, we
gotta get them an appointment. And then we
get them an appointment, They go to this
office, they sit on a couch and they
talk. And I don't know what exactly happens
there, but maybe they get better. So I
mean... But life coaching isn't always like that.
I mean, I you do wanna on 1
coaching, but I'm imagining you have other research
as well. Right? So how how could a
leader use those resources? So I've had bishop
subsidized for my program for for their members.
I do a lifetime access program. So it's,
like 6 payments or if you want lower
payments, it's 12 payments and you get lifetime
access to, like, the program and then lifetime
access to weekly group coaching calls. Mh. Which
are, like, group therapy calls and all the
other stuff in between so. That's an option
that I've had members do in the past.
And then we also have 1 on 1
coaching opportunities that we can look into. Does
that help? Yeah. I I haven't ever been
in the position of being bishop to help
someone find something. So I'm not totally sure
what they might be yeah. Questioning Or... Yeah.
And I I guess it's just such a
traditional model. You know, we just sort of
do ask Guy I did and and, you
know, therapies
very traditional model as well. So it's like,
you know, someone has a problem I send
them to a therapist, and they sent me
the bill. I pay it. And so But,
man, this issue, specifically,
we just need to look at all resources
and try, you know, whatever works and whatever
is a good fit for the individual. And
so you know, in my opinion, again, or
read the hamburg, you do you or whatever
you feels best, but if I was in
that position again, you know, I wanna have
a problem paying for a monthly program for
somebody. If it's helping. Right? And, again, not
that you pay for it forever, but Yeah.
Try it for a while. And and again,
if it's helping just as much as a
as the therapist would help and great, you
know? Go. Yeah. I've had many clients who
who
You know, it's... It... My program is just
really specific on that. You go to a
therapist, and there's probably so many things that
are working out with so many people that
it's not as specialized, you know? Right. Yeah.
Yeah. So definitely consider it. Sarah, this has
been great. I guess the final question I
have for you is if you're in a
room full of
bishop and relief Study president, steak presence, whatever
it is, what final encouragement would you give
to them as far as, as they struggle
with helping other people who struggle with predominantly.
I think I would just reiterate the message
that, we can't change from shame.
And we can't change from
from hating ourselves, for being disappointed in ourselves.
And so that's the most powerful thing you
can do for people is it and take
their results off of your shoulders too. What
they decide to do is not like a
reflection of you. So what we get to
do is we get to try to help
in healing and we heal through love, not
from shame and fear.
That concludes this episode of the leading Saints
podcast, Hey listen, would you do me a
favor? You know, everybody's got that friend who
listens to a ton of podcasts, and maybe
they aren't aware of leading saints, so would
you mind taking the link of this episode
or another episode of leading saints and just
texting it to that friend, you know who
I'm talking about. The friend who always listens
to pod cast and is always telling you
about different podcast podcasts it's your turn to
tell that friend about leading saints. So Share
it, We'd also love to hear from you
if you have any perspective or thought on
this episode, You can go to leading saints
dot org and actually leave a comment on
the episode page or reach out to us
at leading saints dot org slash contact.
Remember, to see the slides from Sarah's
presentation and to watch the other 25
presentations, go to leading saints dot org slash
14.
It came as a result of the position
of leadership, which was imposed upon us
by the God of heaven who brought fourth
a
restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And when the declaration was made
concerning the own and only true and living
church upon the face of the earth.
We were immediately put in a position of
loneliness. The loneliness of leadership from which we
cannot shrink nor run away
and to which we must face up with
bold and courage
and ability.