Thrive Beyond Pornography

Create realistic expectations -  Not expecting my husband to commit to things I know he doesn’t have skills for. 

Looking honestly at yourself

• Could you honestly commit to eliminating your coping mechanism immediately 
• Instead of looking to give you a right answer, because that answer looks like it will give you peace of mind, it is about being able to 
• Instead of expecting your partner to give you the right answer because it might make you feel better in the moment
• Become willing to hear the honest answer without losing yourself and becoming disregulated. 

Creating realistic expectations reduces the possibilities that you are setting your partner up to make lying to you his safest move

Don’t make their behavior about you - 

• This is difficult and they do impact you
• It may hurt when your partner doesn’t live up to your values and your shared values
• 
  

Be willing to be wrong

• Reevaluating your understanding of pornography 
• Being willing to address where you are not being or have not been kind in the relationship
• Become willing to see how you’ve been untrustworthy in the relationship.  
• It might be good sense for your partner to not share what is going on for them around pornography 
• What you do when you learn the truths and realities of your spouses struggle impacts their decisions, sense of self, and their sense of the relationship
• This is not an excuse for their choices, it is an awareness of your impact on them as you are becoming aware of their impact on you. 

Become willing to hear the truth of where your spouse is in their journey

• Not internalize it to mean anything about you
• Be capable of choosing to be near your partner even when that truth is not what you want to hear

You become more trustworthy, which sets up a framework where openness and honesty are not simply expected but more likely.  Because your partner becomes more aware of your capacity to hear their open, honest reality.  And you become more capable of confronting their reality without needing to cater to their struggles or enfold into their anxiety.  

Three secrets to creating trust after pornography 

Here is the truth of it. You can not make your wife trust you again. You do not have control over if your wife trusts you. All you can do is be someone who she can trust. Don't commit to things you can for sure follow through on. Be honest. Each of these revolves around an honest presentation of yourself, but probably not in ways that you have ever thought of before.  

1. Let go of the outcomes
2. A lot of us have been working to manage our partner’s feelings 
3. This is something that is trackable and leads to a fundamentally dishonest way of interacting
4. Client - when I speak with my wife, I’m often looking to figure out a way to present my side in a way that is least likely to have her blow up or get upset
5. 
   
6. Say “no” to your spouse when it is your true position
7. Be willing to tell your partner “no” rather than trying to find the answer that will keep the peace, make her happy, or keep you from getting in trouble.
8. example
9. Darcy: Your partner knows when you’re telling them what they want to hear. 
10. They may like it in the moment, but it’s a hollow victory
11. Our kids do this as well, they tell us the answer they think we want to hear. 
12. Clean rooms
13. Be more circumspect about what you tell your partner. 
14. Don’t just say yes, because you think it’s what your partner wants
15.  Be careful in agreeing to a plan of action because you feel like you are in a one-down position of having messed up. 
16. Becoming willing to disappoint your partner if it is the more honest position
17. If your partner asks you to never look at porn again saying “yes” even if that’s what you want to say, might undermine the trust in the relationship. example
18. 
    
19. When we say “no” from an honest position or disagree we are letting go of the outcome and offering our partner an opportunity to hear us being real with them.  
20. They are also going to be presented with an opportunity to grow through the process
21. 
    
22. 
    
23. Integrate your private self with your presented self
24. Say what you are doing and do what you say. 
25. For instance, if you say you’re leaving work at 5 o’clock then you do so.  
26. This is like doing what you say, but I want to emphasize the cost 
27. Often we can rationalize not doing it. 
28. But, can you do it regardless of the ratio nalization.
29. Become committed and take action in the direction of your values.

1. be willing to reevaluate, renavigate, and restate your position
2. 
   
3. Example
4. 
   
5. Hear what your partner is saying and make the argument for them about your behavior
6. This is a process of self-confrontation and winning strategies in your arguments
7. Self-confrontation - episode 127 
8. Hearing what they have to say and understanding their perspective on how you are showing up
9. Being willing to see your behavior objectively and without the need to defend it. 
10. I feel valued
11. We can work together

One of the books that I have often recommended to my clients is a work by Dr. Robert Glover.  

His book, No More Mr. Nice Guy is a guide to men who have struggled to get what they want in “love, sex, and life”. 

I’d like to share one of the key concepts from this book and a caution as you begin to integrate the ideas the book offers you. 

First, what is a “Nice Guy” or as Dr. Glover nice guy syndrome?  It is essentially this.  Nice guys are men who, at the expense of their own happiness and from a position of hiding real and important parts about themselves seek the approval of others. 

They do this at work, they do this in their church callings, and they do this in their personal lives, particularly as part of their marriages.  

What this looks like is often saying, “yes” to things that they are not fully on board for, in an effort to gain the approval of those around them.  Their boss, those they attend church with, and especially their spouses.  

This may not sound problematic, as being a person who serves in their community is often a well-regarded thing.  But this overwhelming need to seek the approval of others at the expense of one’s own honestly held position can create a problem called covert contracts.  

Covert contracts are actions that we take in order to obligate others to take actions that validate us without their consent.  An example of this might look like a spouse doing all the right things around the house, doing the dishes, cleaning up the house, getting the kids to bed and so on, in order to get their partner to have no possible excuse to not have sex with them.  

At it’s core, a covert contract is a manipulation of those around you, in particular our spouses, into giving you validation through things like sex in a quid pro quo that the other party is not fully agreed to.  

For some of you listening to this, you might be saying, “Well, how else am I supposed to get my partner to have sex with me, she always has some reason why not to, unless I maneuver her into feeling like she has to.”

When we create these covert obligations, in the long run, we end up alienating our partners, and get less of the things we want, including intimacy and sex.  We are essentially manipulating our partners for coerced validation at the expense of self-validation and their desire for us. 

What I find here is that many men feel like getting some sex, even bad, servicing-based sex, is better than no sex.  

What we fail to see, from that perspective is, that the servicing sex that we end up getting isn’t fulfilling, but we can control, to some degree, when we get it.  

That control is the thing that you and your partner will eventually push back against and may create damage to your relationship that is difficult to reconcile in the long run.  

By the way, both men and women do this.  My mom once told me that if she wanted something from my dad, she would have sex with him and then ask him about whatever she wanted.  He was much more likely to give in to her position if she did that.  

So, how do we stop creating covert contracts?  

I’m going to give you two things that you can do.  Part of the process of leaving behind covert contracts is letting go of the outcome. The other part is becoming more desirable.  

Let’s start with being more desirable.   

Most of us, if we take a few moments to examine our lives, can see a number of things that we would like to change or improve about ourselves.   Those of us who engage or have engaged in covert contracts are often, fundamentally dishonest about what is real and truly going on for us internally.  Meaning, we don’t really tell our partner what is true, we often tell them what we think we want them to hear.  

This is a difficult issue for many of us. Because we can get things from others if we tell them what they want to hear.  We can get a lot of validation and gratification at very little immediate cost if we withhold our true position on issues that are big and small.  The problem with this is that for your partner to desire you, to really want to create intimacy and have the kind of desire for you that we all really want, we have to be willing to disappoint them and suffer rejection from them.  

What do I mean?  If we just go along with our partner on everything they ever want and we never disagree with them and we never tell them what we really want, especially if the thing we want is directly contrary to the thing they want, they will not trust us and they will likely get sick of us.  Have you ever had a friend who was so hard up for friendship that they never had an idea of their own, they just wanted to follow you around and do whatever you wanted to do?  Are you that friend?  It’s fun for a while because that person is easy to get along with, but eventually, you get tired of them and they become a bother because they don’t bring anything to the relationship.  They are like water in a cup, they just take whatever shape you are and that doesn’t push you or contribute.  It’s boring.  

I’m sure you’ve also had friends who push you and make you think and help you grow. But sometimes they believe differently than you do, and you tolerate that because they contribute to your life in meaningful ways.  

It’s easier to do that with your friends than it is to do it with your spouse.  

But being able to disappoint your spouse, in meaningful ways and for well-considered beliefs is more important than you might think.  

You have heard me talk about this before on the podcast, but I don’t like having pets very much.  I tolerate it, but if it were up to me we wouldn’t have pets.  Darcy likes them and she got them.  She was willing to disappoint me because she has a sincerely held desire to have cats.  

Now there are limits and you have to feel these out and work through them.  It isn’t one of those things where you go and create disappointments because you stop being overly nice and you decide to become mean or intransigent and unwilling to compromise.  It is a process of feeling your way through it.  Being solid in the person you are, while being willing to choose closeness with your partner. 

One thing that I did that changed the dynamic of our sexual relationship was I stopped saying yes to duty sex or servicing sex.  That was something that was really difficult and disappointing for both Darcy and me.  

You might think that it wouldn’t be difficult for Darcy but it really was.  One reason that it was difficult was that she could no longer utilize sex as a way to control me.  That’s right, I said, Darcy would sometimes use sex to get me to do things that she wanted done.  So, when I would say no to sex meant to service or manage me, even when it was sincerely offered, it was disappointing for Darcy because it took a tool out of her toolbox.  It also required her to reflect more earnestly on how and why she wanted to engage intimately and sexually.  

For my part, it was disappointing because I realized that she didn’t really want me, she only wanted to control me and help me control myself.  But, if you have a pornography struggle, you know that your partner can’t control you.  And, significantly, she can’t help you control yourself.  

Being willing to disappoint your partner by being open about what you really want is a muscle that, if exercised regularly, will become one of your most powerful allies in creating real intimacy and desire in your partner.  

When I stopped saying yes to sex from a servicing frame, which always felt wrong, I started to show and say what I really wanted.  I started to become willing to wait for Darcy’s desire to come up and for her to choose me, not just service me.  

There were disappointed moments for both of us on that journey.  In the beginning, Darcy didn't believe me when I would say, “If you're not into it, I’d rather do it another time.”

In the years since I started doing that, Darcy’s desire for me has become a driver of our intimacy in ways that make me so happy.   

To be clear, this is different than the immature position that we often see in pop culture and movies where playing hard to get will eventually reel your partner in until they are doing everything you want.  That is just the Mean Guy version of the same manipulative tactics.   Getting your partner to do what you want by ignoring them, pushing them away, and making them work for your attention is just as manipulative as covert contracts.  In both cases, your partner will tire of the games and want to distance themselves from you eventually. 

The second way that we can begin eliminating covert contracts also has to do with making yourself more desirable, but by letting go of the outcomes. 

Letting go of the outcomes means choosing closeness with your spouse and not needing them to respond in a certain or specific way.  

The interesting thing about this is that you might end up doing the same things, like washing the dishes, cleaning the house, and putting the kids to bed.  All things that might have been done previously to lift burdens from our partner’s life in an effort to obligate a specific response in the bedroom.  Now, however, you do them without seeking that specific response or expecting to be rewarded for your efforts.  You do them because you are a partner with your spouse, you want them done, or you have committed to doing them.  

Being able to let go of the outcomes is about changing the meaning behind your actions, possibly more than it may be about changing your specific actions.  

What you do is important.  Why you do it is key.  

Back and foot rubs are a good example of this in my life.  If I wanted sex, I would make sure that I gave Darcy foot rubs in the morning and back rubs in the evening.  It was essential to our sex life and it was kind of a currency. It meant that if I did enough foot or back rubs that I would get sex. So, I would, resentfully many times, massage her working up enough credit to get what I wanted.  

While I still rub Darcy’s feet and back, I do it less often and only when I want to because I want to. The why of my actions has stopped being about getting rewarded and is now, in this area at least, only about my desire to give to her. 

In coming at it from a place where I’m not working toward a specific outcome, I place myself in a position to be desired for who I am, not what I do for others.  My actions come from a place of self-validated choice to choose my partner rather than seeking for her to validate me and service my wants. 

It’s subtle and, just like in working through covert contracts from a position of being more desirable, we’ll need to work through it and feel our way.  

A good question to ask yourself is, “What am I trying to get out of doing this?” If the answer is anything other than the satisfaction of doing it because I want to or I choose to, then you might want to take a step back, reevaluate, and maybe choose not to do it, or choose to do it but know that you’ll need to work through the emotions and difficulty of eliminating any expectation from your spouse to validate you for doing it.  

I had a conversation with a friend of mine who while we are about the same age, he started his family well after I did.  His two kids are the same age as our youngest two kids.  We worked together in Wisconsin and each week when we returned to work on Monday he would ask me, “what did you do this weekend?”  My answer varied, but once I said, “I pulled weeds.”  I don’t remember anything about that particular weekend’s worth of activities, but my friend recalls the story and brings it up occasionally when we chat.  

It made me realize that one weekend's worth of work is often what we think lasting change looks like.  But in truth it is more like this: 

Last year we bought a house that we love, right next to the house that we used to own here in St George. 

When we bought it, we had some pretty big ideas about what we wanted to do.  We had a vision of what this property would look like when we had finished.  

We got to work, I cut down 20 or so cedar trees that were shedding harsh, thorny bits all over the yard.  We took out about 10 evergreen bushes that were both ugly and prickly.  We built a wall so our yard would extend 5 to 10 more feet in the back. I started to lay a stone path in the backyard so we could have a nice comfortable place for the kids to play.  

Then a back injury I received while playing football on Thanksgiving 2019 flared up and everything stopped. 

During that period, the yard didn’t change much, but my concept of what the yard needed to look like and how I wanted it to change did.  As I waited for my back to strengthen and heal, I kept thinking about how I wanted things to look in the yard.  

Things that I thought were certain changed and morphed and became something completely different.  As that evolution happened, I found that there were some new and awesome things that I loved about the way I wanted to do the yard.  These were things I didn’t even have any idea about when I started the process of updating the yard.  

While the new yard is far from complete, It is well on it’s way.  

For many of you, the process of overcoming pornography will be the same.  

As you listen to these podcasts and work on the things that you learn, you’ll have an idea of what it means to execute that skill.  Some of you will ask questions about it during open coaching in the Self Mastery Membership, others of you will discuss it with your partner, and some of you will think it through and just do it.  

As you go through episodes, ideas that you have will fade and you’ll move on to new concepts, adding them to your mind and letting them become a dominant force as you work to eliminate this unwanted habit.  

You may even stop listening for a while, stop doing the work, and stop trying the skills because a particularly difficult setback has made it tough to continue.   

All of that is ok.  What I hope you will remember is that, if you will come back to it when you’re ready, you will keep growing, keep succeeding, and eventually overcome pornography forever. 

That may sound simple or even naive, but it is the way I’ve seen things work for so many men and women.  They learn, they grow, they stop, they restart, and they do it again.  

Overcoming pornography is doable.  I hope you see it.  

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

This week in the membership one of my members was talking about the question that another member had asked during our previous session.  

The man I was coaching said, “when That guy asked that question, it was as if he had been reading my mind.”

This is the amazingness that comes from being part of the membership. You get to hear the questions you didn’t even know how to ask, asked for you!

This moment was when I decided that I needed to answer that question for you all, here on the podcast.

As part of the coaching I do, often we talk about shame and how to manage and deal with it.  

The question we’re talking about was part of this discussion about minimizing shame in our lives. 

The question was, “what is a good way to not let myself feel so much shame when I act on my urges?”

First off, let’s talk about why we feel shame. 

Knowing what shame is gives us the ammunition we need to actually end it.  

Shame is often contrasted with guilt.  

The thing about guilt is that it can be a powerful catalyst for change.  

Guilt is about learning that what you have done is not what you would like to have done, had you been able to.  

I’ve heard it said this way and this definition works for me.  

Guilt comes when I understand that what I’ve done is not right for me. 

Guilt comes when I’ve acted incorrectly, based on my own sense of right and wrong and according to my agency within the framework of truths I hold. 

As brene brown put it, guilt is I did something bad. 

Shame on the other hand, is not about a behavior, but about our sense of who we are.  

Shame comes when when I believe that what I’ve done makes me bad, irredeemable and unacceptable. 

Shame comes when I’ve acted contrary to my framework of truth knowing that I’m discarding my own sense of what is right and wrong and feel incapable of exercising my own agency. 

Again, going back to brene brown, Shame is, I am bad. 

So “What is a good way to not let myself feel so much shame when I act on my urges?” 

Here are 3 things that you need to do to eliminate shame when you have acted on urges that don’t fit your idea of who you want to be. 

First, you need to decide that this is an opportunity to learn

Learn something move forward.

Second thing you’ll need to eliminate shame when you’ve acted on your urges is talk to someone you trust.  

-       Create intimacy

-       Practice openness.  

-       

Third thing, understand that you are enough.

-       Atonement

-       

Each of these things will help you eliminate shame and understand that you are not bad. 

Hopefully they will serve to strengthen your capacity to exercise your agency, accept responsibility for your actions and shape the person you want to be. 

Happy Fathers’ Day yesterday! I hope it was a pleasant day with ample food and kind words. 

Before I forget, this week I have a free masterclass set up for you on Wednesday at 7:30 PM MT.  We are going to be learning how to drop the porn struggle.  Be sure to register at zachspafford.com/freecall

How to become an expert on yourself and why it matters if you want to leave pornography behind 

When I am talking with clients and reflecting back on my own experiences there are a few common themes I see.

How much time do you spend focusing on things outside of you trying to control your results?

How might things change if you stopped focusing on things outside of yourself and instead turn your focus inward on what you do have control over?

Part of the reason that we all struggle with anxiety, whether it is pornography related or not, is that there is a near-universal sense among us that something outside of us is causing our pain.  

When we struggle, especially when that struggle involves other people, we tend to label them as the problem.  While it is true that, by virtue of being a human, others, especially our spouses, can be part of the problem, it is much more important to recognize our own role in our anxieties and why they exist.  

We say things like, “if only my wife would have sex with me more.”  Or, “I wish Sharon in accounting would dress more modestly.”

What is happening is that our anxiety around being a good person, finds a place outside of us to focus and makes that the problem.  Once that occurs, we no longer own our agency, we’ve given it away, often to someone who has no idea they have it.  

While this isn’t the only reason people choose pornography or struggle when their spouse does, it is one that I want to talk about today.

I also want to give you one simple exercise that you can use to begin leaving behind your external focus and refocus on yourself as the owner and agent of your own happiness. 

When we are anxious, there are basically four responses that are available to us.  You’re probably familiar with fight and flight, but there is also freeze and worry.  

Worry is probably the one that comes up most often when we are talking about anxiety around pornography.  For men and women who choose pornography, we are worrying about how we are going to keep from viewing or choosing pornography.  For women and men who are supporting someone who chooses pornography, they are worrying about how they can keep their partner from choosing pornography in the future.  

This endless cycle of worry and imagining new worries is keeping us from engaging directly with actual, reality based struggles that we are facing.  

I think, this worry cycle also puts us in a place of victimhood.  When we label the source of our struggle as some external individual or force that we don’t have any power to control, we become victims in a perpetual downward spiral of victimhood, trying to control, and failure that leads to repeating the process. 

This is us, investing a lot of time and energy and not getting what we want out of it. 

For pornogrpahy users, we invest in programs, plans, and giving power to others, only to find that when the urge comes and we are on the path of finding porn, we find it.  

For spouses, we invest in thinking up ways to manage our partner’s internet, working to distract their eyeballs, and worrying excessively about the next time they might fail us, because we can’t control them. 

For pornography users, we also spend a lot of time working to manage our spouse’s perceptions of us.  

All of us understand that the behaviors of our spouse are part of the problem because they are really important to us and their behavior impacts us.  

What we forget is that their behaviors are not the cause of our problems.  The cause of our problems is that we aren’t very good at dealing with our own anxiety.  

In other words, acting like our spouse is the cause of our problems is like acting like the policeman who pulled us over is the cause of our problems.  While he may be creating a painful moment, he didn’t create the problem. Be clear, that isn’t to say that we deserve how our partner is behaving, it is just a metaphor about where our focus needs to be. 

So, instead of giving away our agency to others, here’s what you can do to refocus your efforts on yourself.  

Instead of asking yourself, Why am I so anxious?, instead ask, “How do I manage my anxiety, and how effective is it?

Or, rather than, “Why doesn’t my wife/husband understand me?” try, “What part am I playing in the way my relationship is functioning?”

Questions that focus on what I’m doing, thinking, or feeling are going to help you focus in on yourself.  

This isn’t going to solve the problem right away.  It isn’t going to fix everything overnight. 

What it is going to do is to reframe the conversation for your mind and begin to place it’s amazing problem solving focus on the right thing. You.  Things you can do and things you can change. 

This week we are going to discuss your cycle of avoidance and how to recognize what is going on for you around this cycle and a few things you can do to help remove yourself from the cycle. 

We’ve talked about experiential avoidance or buffering in episodes 5, 6, and 135.  I’ll link to those episodes in the show notes. 

Humans have a unique ability to problem-solve. From the very beginning of human existence, we have learned how to survive in the world. 

ONE OF THE 3 THINGS our brains are designed to do is avoid pain. If you have listened to this podcast from the beginning, this is not a new concept for you. If you think back thousands of years ago when we had to hunt and grow our own food, and physically provide safety and shelter from the elements of this world avoiding pain was a very essential part of everyday life. Over the years we have learned that avoiding pain helps keep us alive! In the physical world, this is VERY important. Imagine if your house was on fire. What would you do? 

I imagine I would make sure my loved ones were safe and run out as fast as I could. I would do everything in my power to avoid the hot flames and in doing so it would keep me safe. By avoiding the fire it makes it possible to continue living!

We tend to react to our psychological pain the same way we react to our pain in the physical world.  

For instance, You might have a stressful workday, and instead of dealing with the stress in a productive way, you might avoid your feelings by engaging with pornography.

Another example may be that you approached your spouse for physical intimacy and felt and received a no answer which made you feel rejected. Instead of feeling rejected, you might seek out pornography.

You might have a stressful day with the kids and turn to chocolate to relieve some of that stress.

Our brains think that avoiding pain inside of our head is the same as avoiding pain on the outside. When we try to problem solve psychological pain in the same manner it often leads us further down the path of discomfort in the long run. 

Every one of us has a cycle of avoidance.

For some of us, it is a cycle that circles around avoiding parts of our lives through eating.  For others, it is a cycle that revolves around pornography, and others still avoid their lives through shopping or other behaviors that run contrary to our values.

Here’s what that looks like in real-time: instead of working on your project’s upcoming due dates, you scroll social media avoiding getting started on your work and putting yourself further behind. 

Or: rather than get studying for your upcoming exams like you planned on, you open a browser on your phone and start looking for sexually explicit material.

Or, finally, instead of getting your house ready for the week by doing a load of laundry, you hide in the pantry and eat a sweet snack so your kids don’t catch you.

Darcy and I use a system called acceptance and commitment coaching, a key component of which is the word acceptance.  

Often, the main reason we suffer is that we are not accepting our lives and our unpleasant or unwanted feelings. 

This desire to avoid discomfort leads to experiential avoidance or the avoidance of the experience of being uncomfortable. 

If we really want to avoid pornography or any other unwanted habit that we have, we must accept these uncomfortable feelings and learn how to deal with them directly. 

These kinds of avoidance behaviors are like getting stuck in a roundabout where each exit point that is available to us means that we will have to be uncomfortable while moving toward our ultimate goal, so instead of getting out of the cycle, we stay put, circling around the same unwanted behaviors over and over. 

Experiential avoidance is an unsustainable attempt to avoid the experience of discomfort in our lives and, often, creates long-term negative effects. 

So, how do we resolve this issue? We start by accepting these feelings as valid and deal with them up front.  

When we talk about our purpose in life, I often think back to the scripture in 2 Nephi 2:25 “... Men are that they might have joy.”

But if we are to get the whole picture, we have to go to verse 11 where we learn that there must be “ an opposition in all things”.  Which I read to mean that there cannot be joy without the opposite, and if we are to fully experience joy, we must be willing and capable of dealing with the opposite of joy. 

In other words, we must learn to accept our discomfort and face it willingly and adeptly.  

Let me give you 3 of the ways that I teach people to accept and deal with their discomfort.

1. Get familiar with your inner experience. 
2. Become Willing
3. Define your values

Get Familiar with your inner experience

One of the simplest ways that you can get familiar with what is happening in your mind is to take 5 minutes each day and just experience your own thoughts.  I know that might sound a little weird but I mean is to take just five minutes, alone and without distractions, sit and just be present with the things your mind offers you. 

You can even use a tool called teams (developed by Robinson, Gould and Strosahl) that helps you identify what your brain is offering you. 

TEAMS stands for 

T: Thoughts - This is the judgments , rules, plans, and worries that our mind offers us on a regular basis

E: Emotions - This can sometimes be a difficult process because, as I’ve said before on the podcast, many of us feel like we are only allowed to have 3 emotions, angry, hungry, and horny.  This process is just about identifying which emotions you have and creating a vocabulary around them.  Being clear that you are experiencing these as a matter of daily life.  Once you know what these are and how to identify them, you will be much more capable of dealing with them. 

A: Actions - What do you tend to do in given situations, what urges, longings or cravings do you experience and how do you follow through with those promptings. 

M: Memories - This is where we pay attention to past memories of interactions or events and how they are affecting us. 

S: Sensations - What are the physical sensations that you have?  How do you usually deal with them?

TEAMS is a process of introspection that gives you a clearer picture of why you are choosing pornography or any other experiential avoidance or buffer that keeps you from being the person you want to be.  

Become Willing

Now that we know what is going on internally, becoming willing to deal with those feelings, sensations, urges, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors is key to letting go of pornography in your life.  

Willingness is simple but not always easy.  It is the act of putting yourself in a position to try something.  I like to call it an experiment.  

I have always loved experimenting because I like finding better ways of doing things.  I never realized that this same desire to make life better in the outside world would work on the inside world as well. 

Fortunately, I started experimenting with different ways of overcoming pornography and it began to yield tremendous results. Being willing means that you engage the courage to experience the unpleasant parts of the TEAMS experiment that you just learned about. 

This willingness is an experiment in going through the discomfort we all feel.  It requires only one thing, to act in ways that take you outside your comfort zone. 

Define your values 

Lastly, as you think about who you want to be and what experiments you want to run to step outside your comfort zone, you will want to be clear about your values.  

The values that you have are the guiding principles of your life.  

Most of the people who buffer have a value of being comfortable.  

That may be a value that you can do without at this point because you’ve been comfortable for long enough. 

Now it’s time to get out of your comfort zone and grow, so one of your new values might be “Growth” or “Self-development”. 

Within the membership, we have a great module on how to create and begin following your values. It is a great deep dive into the concepts we talk about here on the podcast. 

As you work to identify your values, your actions will begin to come into focus in terms of whether they fit into your values system or not. 

As that becomes more clear, your choices become more clear, and acting in the direction of your values becomes more likely. 

These three skills, getting familiar with your inner experience, becoming willing, and defining your values are essential to help you overcome pornography in your life.  They will help you get out of the roundabout and onto the path of avoiding pornography rather than avoiding your life. 

This week is a really busy week.  YM camp up in Enterprise and speaking at a Youth Conference here in town.  

The more angst that we have toward pornography, we think is going to create the motivation to stay away. 

But what that is more likely doing is giving it power over you.  

I think we think that if we create a harsh relationship with something, it will banish that thing from our lives. 

Often, the more we hate something, the more power it seems to have over us.  It, somehow gets to live in our heads rent-free.  

When we are angry and bitter toward someone or something, that anger won’t let us move past that issue.  

How has hating porn helped you in this struggle?  

When we acknowledge it from a place of gratitude, we can acknowledge the role that it played in our life, learn from it more fully, and move beyond it when we’ve grown past it. 

Acknowledging the role that pornography played in your life.

Acknowledging ways that porn helped you to survive when other coping methods didn’t work.

This thank you, has allowed me to claim back my choice, claim back my ownership of my life and create closure from it.

Gratitude for what it has done for us while also moving toward and choosing something that we do want, helps us move forward with power. 

It’s time to break up with porn.  

Dear porn, 

Thank you for being the trial that made me into a better person.  I know that seems strange to say, but it’s the truth.

 Because of our relationship, I was driven to be an amazing provider and hard worker.  

I’m not proud of all the things I did with you and all the ways that I used you to mitigate my short-term discomfort.  But I realize now, that’s not your fault.  That was my choice and not something you made me do. 

Because I chose porn, I had a ready system to fall back on when my ability and skill at dealing with my life wasn’t enough.  But I also used you as a crutch when I could have stood on my own.  And that’s not your fault either.  I chose that.  So, thank you for being there and helping me when I really needed to do it myself.  

Thank you for helping me learn empathy.  I’m grateful for my capacity to be kinder to those who struggle and less judgemental of their flaws.  

When I see someone who struggles with life, I used to wonder why they couldn’t get it together.  Now I realize that they are just learning, growing, and trying their best.  If I really want to help them, I can be there for them without judgment and with empathy for what they are going through. 

I also want to thank you for helping me find my purpose in life.  Without porn I would probably never have become a coach helping people solve their own pornography problems.

Here’s something that I never thought pornography would help me with, ever! Thank you, for helping me build the relationship, love, and intimacy that I had always wanted with my wife. 

Without this struggle, without pornography being the focal point of our marriage for so many years, I would not have learned to be honest and open with Darcy.  I would not have learned to trust her, listen to her, and value that I can tell her anything, knowing that she can handle it and that we can resolve it, together. 

Thank you, for catalyzing this growth and helping me learn that I would be able to trust Darcy. 

I realize that most people who don’t want you in their lives see you as the reason for their misery.  But because of you, I was able to learn how to become happy.  Not because you make me happy, but because I had to learn the skills to leave you behind, and those skills I get to use in so many parts of my life to grow and learn, which makes me happy. 

Thank you 

Darcy thought it might be cool for her to also write a thank you letter to porn.

Dear Porn,

I use to hate you! I used to believe you were going to ruin my life. I viewed you as a threat to my safety. I was angry towards you and full of resentment. I was bitter and at times jealous of you and the control and power you seemed to have over my husband. If I am being 100% honest the power you had over me too. 

Those days are OVER!!! 

Never in a million years did I think I would be writing you a thank you note or that I could even see that beauty that came out of our relationship. Thank you for helping me grow in ways I never knew were possible. Because of you, I have been able to share my story and be vulnerable in big ways. Thank you for helping me learn that Zach and I could work through hard things. Because of you, I  realize how strong I really am and how capable I am of facing the truth even if it’s not what I want to hear. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to help others who are struggling. If it wasn’t for you, I would have never been able to learn and grow in ways that were hard but also rewarding. You helped me learn that all people are struggling with something in their lives. You helped me realize that I am stronger and more capable than I thought I was. Because of you, I was able to learn to take back my power. I have learned that my power is mine and I don’t have to give it away to anyone or anything. I have learned to love myself and my imperfect body because I am REAL!! I don’t have to be like you to be enough because you are not real, you are pretending to be real. I am enough because I am me! I am a real human who can love and receive love. 

I realize our relationship hasn’t always been easy but, because of you, I am the person I am today. I have learned to love others who are struggling with hard things. I have learned to see people as real people, not just the things they struggle with. 

Thank you for the time and role you played in my growth. I will forever be grateful for the challenge you brought into my life because without you my life would look very different. You forced me to snap out of my fairytale and learn to truly love someone for who they are flaws and all. I love the person I have become and the person I am growing into and I am willing to thank you for the part you played!