Thrive Beyond Pornography

The cue, response, reward system of habit creation can also be used to intervene when our habits don't align with who we want to be.

Here is a simple process that you can use every time to intervene when your brain offers you the chance to view pornography.

If you are looking to eliminate an unwanted porn habit, this is the podcast for you.

Learn more at zachspafford.com

In this interview, Andrea (Andi) talks about being a single woman who, for the last three years, has struggled with and begun to eliminate pornography.

If you are someone who needs help with pornography, please set up a free consultation at zachspafford.com/workwithme.

Here are six essential, simple steps that you can use every time to eliminate unwanted urges to view pornography.

If you are looking to eliminate an unwanted porn habit, this is the podcast for you.

Learn more at zachspafford.com

This podcast is for Latter-day Saints (LDS) who want to overcome pornography and create the life they want. It's hosts teach you how to retrain your brain to completely quit pornography. If you are excited to move past your unwanted porn habit, this is the show for you.

For more information on how to overcome porn please visit, zachspafford.com.

To schedule a consult, go to zachspaffor.com/workwithme

How do I keep the urges to view pornography from coming back. 

• Don’t judge who you are in that conversation - allow for neutrality in thoughts
• Someone can be beautiful or sexy without making it mean anything about you. 
• 
  
• Focus on what actions you want to take next
• Allowing the thought to be there
• Drop the judgment of what your brain offers you.  
• Stop believing a thought is morally corrupt if you aren’t choosing it.

My wife used sex as a way to try and control me and I wanted her to

My wife is a wonderful woman, whom I love and adore. 

She also used to try and control me with sex. 

It wasn’t always overt, and it wasn’t usually something that was designed to make me do something that I didn’t want to do. 

In fact, it was the opposite. 

She was trying to get me to not do something. 

She was trying to keep me from looking at porn and I didn’t really want to look at porn. I wanted to stop.

It was always, in her mind, something she would do to “meet my needs”.

And I thought she was, by her actions, “meeting my needs.” 

In her mind, my pornography problem was about controlling how often I needed to give in to my urges. If she could interrupt my urge by engaging with me sexually, then she was helping me. She thought she was helping control my choice to use pornography. 

She would ask questions like, “How are you doing today?” in an effort to gauge where I was and if she “needed” to intervene by providing me with an outlet for the day. 

What she was doing, in reality, was frustrating herself and rewarding my pleasure center for disconnected, isolating behavior. 

Two main things were frustrating her. 

First, was the fact that she could not, despite her best efforts, control my urges or when or how I acted on them.

Whenever we try to control others, we will always find ourselves frustrated. They will rebel, they will deceive, they will find a way around you. People are like water; they will go wherever their personal gravity takes them. 

It is inevitable. 

Second, and I think more importantly, when what each of us really wanted was intimacy in the deepest and most connected sense of the word she was creating resentment and I was creating disappointment.

Control is antithetical to intimacy because inherent in intimacy is trust and control requires none. 

She resented needing to look over my shoulder to make sure I was making good decisions. 

I was disappointed that the intimacy that I wanted wasn’t available in a resentful spouse 

Don’t get me wrong, when you and your spouse decide that pornography use is not ok in your household then both of you should take steps to create an environment where viewing pornography is difficult. I am also not condoning pornography use. 

I am also saying, whether you are a man or a woman, making a decision to intercede in the urges of your spouse in an effort to control their actions is not going to work out in the long run. 

Let’s flip this on its head for a moment. 

Imagine a wife who is struggling with eating sugary treats. Each morning her husband asks her how she is feeling about that cheesecake with fresh strawberries in the fridge. 

During that discussion the husband hears the wife is having a hard time not sneaking a piece. She knows that it is for dessert after dinner this evening, but that she really wants to have just a little. 

So, he says, I know what, I’ll help you out. I’ll meet your needs. I have a carrot for you. It should tide you over because carrots have a lot of sugar. 

His attempt to “help her out” places him in a position that makes no sense to anyone. 

He’s giving her a “sweet treat”, but it isn’t what she wants. Not really. 

She may even take and eat it. But she may feel resentful that he is trying to control what she eats. 

Do you see the parallels?

What we all have to understand is that controlling others behavior isn’t really going to bring us or them to the place we want to be. 

It may only to create a short-term fix and will probably create a long-term negative effect. 

How do you avoid this?

1. Ask yourself, is it working? Is trying to control his behavior or her behavior working?

2. Make your decision about you being your best you. 

a. If you need time before reengaging with your spouse sexually, let them know and wait until you are ready to begin trusting again.

b. If your spouse is offering you carrots when you really want cake, discuss it and be prepared to wait until you can come to a mutually agreed on timeline. 

For a long time, I wanted my wife to control internet access on my phone, my computer, anything that I could get into trouble with. 

I found out that doesn’t work because in the end I needed to make good decisions based on my long-term desires, not my short-term urges. 

Being the person taking the carrots then being mad that I wasn’t happy with them and mad that my partner was putting “health food” in my face when what I really wanted was dessert that evening with my spouse. 

Here is what I know:

- proactively confronting yourself and why you are choosing pornography over intimacy is essential to chang 

- Being held accountable doesn’t mean someone is constantly checking your phone. We all know that things can be hidden and that is not your spouse’s job. 

- User’s must be solely responsible for their actions, no one else. There is never a reality where, “she didn’t meet my needs” or “you didn’t make the internet safe” or anything like that. The “devil made me do it” isn’t true. You chose to look or not look. Feel free to curiously explore why. 

- You are going to have negative feelings like loneliness, disappointment, anger. Don’t let them compound by making decisions that temporarily block the emotion. Seek instead to feel it, understand it and honestly and lovingly express it. 

- Intimacy comes through honesty and trust, not sex, not control, not buffering. Seek to find ways to experience intimacy.

- creating the life you want involve  

I love my wife and she loves me. 

I can’t control her and she can’t control me. 

I want you to know that it is possible to figure this out. I coach men and women who can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel who finally reach the sunshine and see how much better it is on the other side. 

If you are a pornography user or the spouse of a user, sign up for a 

free mini session and let me help you begin the process of letting go of control so you can have greater intimacy in your life, home and marriage. 

Last week we discussed how goals can be problematic when we are working to achieve lifelong behaviors rather than short term events. 

As promised, this week we will be talking about how to decide what your values are. In addition to that we’ll talk about how to more fully live them. 

When you think of your values, this is often where your deepest emotions lie. And as a result this may be an emotional process for you to go through.  

As you think about what your values might be, I find it helpful to use I statements that convey a sense of who you are.  For example, from the last podcast, “I choose sexual experiences that create intimacy.”

Here we have a current position on who we are, who we want to be and how we want to act in the moment. 

When you think about your pornography struggle or any struggle you have.  If your goal is to eliminate a pornography habit, ask yourself, what would achieving this goal show that you stand for or support ( or stand against or oppose)?

As you look at the core values that emerge from that question, you can form them into I statements that can fully express and inhabit your core value.  

So, for instance, if I were answering the question, what would eliminating pornography from my life achieve and show that I stand for or support?  I might say, I stand for living chastely, being open and creating intimacy in my life. 

My I statements would then look something like, “ I live chastely”, “I am open with my spouse about my sexuality, including when or if I view pornography” and our phrase from earlier, “I choose sexual experiences that create intimacy”. 

As you go through the process of doing this you may want to come up with two or three core values statements that are easy to remember and that help you convey to yourself a new sense of who ¥ou are.  

Then, in the process of living those values, it is important to keep in mind what we learned about values last week.  If you havent’ listened to that, go back and get familiar with what values are. 

You;ll want to hold these new values loosely. Meaning, rather than holding so tightly to them that when you fail to live up to them, you beat yourself up and feel like these values are impossible to live by, you hold them like you would a handful of sand. 

If you’ve ever grabbed a handful of sand and squeezed it tightly you’d have noted that most of the sand escapes your grip and you are left with very little of it when you open your hand . 

Rather, when it comes to values, using the sand as an analogy, if we pile the sand on an open palm, we end up being able to hold more than we ever could by squeezing it.  

This analogy also allows us to prioritize which sand, and how much of each type of sand we will hold at given times in our lives. 

When we prioritize our values properly, we find that we are no longer trying to hold on to ever decreasing amounts of capacity in our hands, but allowing, at times, some values to take a back seat to our current needs while still maintaining a small focus on values that are still important but not urgent.  

So as you hold your values lightly, prioritizing them as you do, you’ll find that you’ll need to practice your values for yourself and in your interactions with others.  

You’ll also recognize that as you focus in on a priority value, that your other values are still relevant to your life and who you want to be. 

One key to living your values more fully is being aware of what they actually are, which is what we’ve just done. 

The next key to living your values more fully is practicing them whenever you can. 

Think of scenarios where you have not lived up to your values in the past and role play what you would do if you had lived up to your values.  

You could even go into safe situations where you previously had not practiced your values and practice them.  For instance, if you have not been truthful with your spouse and one of your values is that “I am open and honest” then you might take a few minutes each day and openly convey to your spouse what your real feelings are.  You can do this is in a non-threatening and simple way.  for instance, you can come to them and ask them to just listen to you for one minute.  Ask them to not try to fix or even respond to what you say, but that you are going to open up and tell them what is going on for you.  

Do this regularly for a month and it will become second nature to speak about your life in real terms, rather than hiding from them what you are feeling and struggling with. 

Shifting goals to values:

As a person who struggled with pornography I had one goal.  Stop looking at pornography. 

There is a problem with this.  It isn’t that this isn’t a worthy goal.  It is. 

The problem with this goal is that goals are about finite moments in time.  

Goals are about achieving a target at a point, usually, in the future that once passed, will no longer be as relevant to your daily life as it was before you achieved it. 

That means, that once this goal is achieved, it stops being relevant, and then becomes something that you are no longer shooting for. 

Let me give you an example. 

Some of you may have done iron man competitions.  WE JUST had the world championship Iron man, here in st g over the weekend. 

If you have a goal of racing in the iron man, you’ll do certain things on a set schedule to achieve that goal. 

The day of the race comes and goes and the next day you are back to your routine you had before you were training to become an iron man or iron woman. That is what a goals based result looks like.  

But what about those people, who for years, keep doing it.  They seem to love it.  They seem to be doing it as part of who they are, not to simply say they’ve done it.  

Often, when I see men or women who come to me after a year or more of not looking at pornography, they have been training hard and achieving a goal. 

They have turned things off on their phones. They’ve been careful to not be left alone.  They’ve changed certain aspects of their lives as a process of exercising the willpower to achieve a goal. 

But the moment it is achieved, it is no longer a goal. And all that work that we’ve done to get to a certain point, may stop happening.  

This is what a diet looks like as well. 

You stop eating certain foods.  Foods that you will go back to once you’ve gotten to x weight. 

Then when you achieve x weight, the goal is no longer a goal and you go back to the way you ate before and maybe even worse than before.  That is why most people who go on a diet, end up gaining it all back and then some.  

The problem is, this goal based system of seeking achievement is not attuned to the long term results you are looking to create. 

What you need, what we all need values . 

Learning to create a values based decision making process will clean up all the struggle that we have with ourselves and what we aren’t achieving. 

First, this week we’re going to teach you about how values work.

Next week we are going to teach you about how to decide what your values are and how to live them more fully. 

1.     values are here and now. Goals are in the future.

a.     So, just like in the case of losing a certain number of pounds or running the iron man, once you’ve achieved your goal to stop looking at pornography, it is no longer a goal. 

b.     Some of you might be clever and thinking, well, then what if I say, My goal is to never look at pornography ever again. 

c.     Well, ask yourself, have you ever set a goal that you’ve failed to progress at to the point where you’ve convinced yourself it’s unachievable?

d.     So, how do we do this different?  

e.     we create a value around this

f.      I like to use “I” statements for this because they easily capture who we are

g.     And by virtue of the nature of “I” statements, they are in the now. 

h.     “I live chastely” “I keep my commitments to myself sexually” “I choose sexual experiences that create intimacy”

i.      These kinds of values are about me, they are about now, and they are not the values of someone who views pornography

j.      We can still have goals of eliminating pornography or losing a certain amount of weight, or competing in an Iron man

k.     Those goals serve as markers of how we live our values, rather than the substance of our purpose. 

l.      

2.     Values never need to be justified

a.     Are a lot like our favorite drink.  

b.     It’s not really possible to justify why you like a certain type of drink.

c.     Mine is root beer.  

d.     Which I know lots of people disagree with.

e.      You’ll rarely have to answer for why you have a value. 

f.      You’re more likely to need to answer for the actions you take trying to live up to that value. 

g.     One of our values is that we educate our children

h.     Because of this value we’ve chosen to homeschool

i.      For which darcy and sometimes I have had some explaining to do.  

j.      

3.     Values often need to be prioritized

a.     Living our values sometimes means that we let one value or another take a back seat to values that need to be front and center

b.     As a missionary I set aside my values of earning a living and pursuing secular learning 

c.     When I came home, my values of sharing the gospel and sharing my testimony come up occasionally, 

d.     But they were no longer my total focus. 

4.     Values are best held lightly

a.     Some values will take priority in our lives at various times, 

b.     But we also need to be aware that values can change and morph

c.     This means that the process of growth in our lives allows us to realize that values are not absolute rules. 

d.     We also don’t want to focus to closely in on one.  But be able to bring values up as needed to keep us moving in the right direction. 

e.     Much like getting fixated on the speedometer or gas gauge would make it difficult to drive 

f.      Getting fixated on being too strict with any given value may make it difficult to progress in that value or in others 

5.     Values are freely chosen

a.     This is very much a component of agency, 

b.     If we want to own our values we must choose them, 

c.     They must be ours because we want to not because we must 

d.     Any sense of compulsion is likely to eventually create rebellion.  

e.     

6.     Values include self and others

a.     When we live the value of Choosing sexual experiences that create intimacy, that value needs to reflect in our actions for our selves and others. 

b.     That means that when we think about how our values function and guide our actions, there needs to be consistency 

c.     

In this episode I interview my client Jonathan Layton.

Most of us, when we find ourselves in a position that we might find impossible, like winning a race that is seemingly unwinnable we beat ourselves up. 

That is how many men and women act when confronted with their pornography viewing habit. 

We see ourselves in last place and never able to get to that top ten so we can finally win at something.