Episode 10: Am I Addicted?

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 10, Am I Addicted?

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer.

Hey you guys, welcome to the podcast this week. I'm so excited to be here. I just got back. Well I guess about four or five days ago, I got back from my YWE trip to Mexico. And, you guys, it was so epic. It was so epic.

We went to Chiapas, Mexico. So that's kind of central, I think a little bit south. And it is so beautiful there. Wow, it is so beautiful there. I'd never been to Chiapas before. When I've been to Mexico before it's been by Cancun. And that place is really beautiful too. But, man, Chiapas is like a whole new story.

It is so beautiful there. We went to waterfalls, and repelled down waterfalls, and explored caves through waterfalls. And we went to San Cristobal, which is this beautiful city. We went rafting and swimming and saw some really beautiful lakes. I mean it was just a blast, and I'm totally worn out still. I am so worn out, we just went hard.

We went hard for eight days and it was awesome. I loved it. Again, it was with YWE, Y-W-E. If you’re a youth or young adult and you want to do some really cool adventures you've got to check them out. They're so fun.

One of my favorite parts of the trip, I was just thinking about this, and I wanted to share it with you guys, was the last couple days we were camping by Las Tres Tzimoleras. Obviously, I do not speak Spanish. But it's the three waterfalls, these three big waterfalls and that's the name of them.

And we stayed with guides. So we'd camp, we'd sleep there, and then during the day we would go up and we would explore all these areas and the waterfalls. And the guides would take us and they would take us to do these crazy things.

So when we first got there, they had us get in wet suits and life vests and helmets. And I was kind of thinking like, “It seems like they're going a little bit over the top. I don't think I need a life vest or a helmet. Maybe a wet suit because I get cold.” But I was like, “This is maybe a little over the top.” But it wasn't, because the stuff we were doing was just stuff I would never have done on my own.

First off, because I wouldn't have known. All right, so like, for example, just swimming under the caves. Or they have these special little spots that they would take us with gorgeous views and have us do these little things that I wouldn't have known if I wouldn't have been there. And if I wouldn't have had this guide showing me all these things. This guide who has done it before and this guide who that's just what he does all the time.

And I kept thinking about how lucky we were to have these guides with us and how they are giving us such a better experience than if we were just by ourselves. If we were just by ourselves it would still be beautiful and gorgeous. And we'd be swimming in the water and looking at the waterfalls. But without the guides we wouldn't be able to find all these caves and we wouldn't have been able to repel down the waterfall.

That's one thing that we did, it was crazy. They had us swim upstream to get to like really neat little places. And we wouldn't have been able to do that without them. And I kept thinking too, like this is a pattern for me in my life is that when I have guides and people helping me, I always do more than I could do on my own.

So I'm also thinking of running with my mom. My mom is a runner and anytime I go work out with her I always work out harder than I would if I was working out by myself. If I go hiking with her, I always go further and I see better things and I do cooler things than when I'm just by myself.

I don't know about you guys, but for me it's hard to go as far when it's just me because I listen to my brain when it says to stop. But when I'm with other people that are pushing me, and telling me what to do, and encouraging me, and showing me the way, I just do so much more.

I keep thinking about you guys, my podcast listeners, who are learning all of these great tools and these great resources. And if you're struggling to apply them, and I get on calls with you guys occasionally and I hear this. Like I've heard you talk about these concepts and I understand but I'm struggling to apply them. The reason that you're struggling to apply them is because you're trying to do it by yourself.

It's the same with me, right? I have a business coach who's helping me reach more people than I could reach and do more good in the world than I would be able to do by myself. And before I had a business coach, I knew all the business things, and I read all the business books, and I knew all the concepts. But having the coach helped me actually apply them and do them.

And there's so much information out there to really pick and choose what specific little information I needed to work on right then. And it's made all the difference for me. All the difference for me and my business. And that's exactly what my coaching program will do for you too if you're trying to quit pornography. Especially if you're hearing these concepts and you're kind of understanding them, to really apply them and take them further. That's exactly what I'm here for.

I have a client right now who is a coach with the same tools that I have and understands some of this stuff that I've talked about and has understood it for a little while. But I was talking to him this last week and he said, “I just cannot believe how my urges have decreased since working with you and being in your program. And how my desire for pornography has gone so, so, so down. Even just in the last couple of weeks being in your program.”

I thought that was so interesting. And it just made total sense to me too, though. Even though he is a coach and he's understood some of these concepts, it's different having someone take you through it.

Just like even if the guides for this waterfall trip would have told me exactly where stuff was and, how to repel, and explained it to me, I still probably wouldn't have done most of that. And I wouldn't have been able to go and find all the places without them right by me. And I wouldn't have been able to repel, even though they were teaching me how to because I might have messed up and fallen off the cliff and died, right?

Thank goodness, when you're trying these tools out by yourself it's not that dangerous. And the worst that happens is you just mess up and then you try again. You're not going to fall off a cliff and die. But there's something really important to be said with having someone take you through and do the work and guide you through it.

So, my programs open right now if you are interested. If this is speaking to you, if it's kind of tugging at you, you're like, “I think I want to do that.” Go check it out on my website, just under the work with me tab. I would love to have you there.

And today what I want to talk about in our podcast is addiction and labeling ourselves as addicted. And what my opinions are on that, and what I see in my clients, and how they label themselves and how that affects them. So let's kind of get into that.

First, what I want to do is I just want to mention and share with you that you get to define what addiction means to you. There isn't one universal definition. Addiction means something different to a lot of people.

And what I find, this is what I'll talk about, what I find is that in our LDS culture especially, I think we use the term addiction way too liberally. And I think it's really harmful to a lot of us, especially when it comes to pornography. That's what I mean specifically, pornography addiction.

So is there still chemical stuff going on with you and your porn habit? Yes, absolutely. There's chemical stuff going on. I talk about this a lot in my program. I talk about it occasionally in some of my classes, my free classes that are on my page. So you'll hear me talk about the chemical stuff.

But just because there's chemical stuff going on your brain, that doesn't mean, right, that doesn't need to mean that you're addicted. Because I was studying this last year, I was really diving into like, what does addicted mean. And I saw so many different definitions and then I saw this scholarly article that was actually studying all the different definitions.

That was the purpose of the scholarly article was to study all the different definitions of addiction. And I thought that was so fascinating. We get to decide how we define addiction. And so here's what I want to share with you, I want to share with you how I define addiction. And then we can talk about how you want to define addiction for yourself.

So my definition of addiction that you'll hear me say is, addiction is when you are unable to live a normal functioning life. What that means is that pornography is keeping you from living a mostly normal life. So you can't hold a job because of pornography. And you can't go to school because of pornography. And you can't have mostly normal functioning relationships because of pornography. And the pornography is keeping you from living a mostly normal functioning life.

When I worked in recovery centers, in addiction recovery centers, I did a little bit of work there. This is how most of the people were. They were there because they could not live normal functioning lives. And so when we hear over the pulpit, you know, a 14 year old who started looking at pornography and now he's addicted, that's usually just not true with this definition. And it's not very helpful either.

So here's what I want you to ask yourself when you're thinking about whether or not you want to use this label of addiction for yourself. First, I would ask yourself that. Am I able to live a normal functioning life? And some people can't because of pornography and sex addictions. And that's an area where you'll really want to go and see a therapist and someone who can help you there.

And then the next question I would ask yourself is, when I think I'm addicted, what do I feel? When you think, “I have pornography addiction” what do you feel? Do you feel hopeless? Do you feel stressed? Do you feel out of control? This is really important. That's really the most important thing with this concept of trying to figure out if you're addicted or not. Or how you want to label it, is how do you feel when you think that you're addicted?

Because how you feel, if you are feeling hopeless, and stressed, and out of control, that will create results for you that are hopeless, stressed, and out of control. This label, addiction, especially when it's used too liberally can create more problems, more hopelessness, and actually create the result of you having a deeper and deeper porn habit because you're feeling helpless, stressed, out of control.

I'm thinking of a specific client who I've worked with who had a lot of years of the ARP, of the addiction recovery program. Which is great, I think there are so many great things about it and it's important for a lot of different reasons. But that's one thing that was put into his head over and over again, is that I am powerless to this. I am powerless to this.

And for him, he had a very normal life, he held a great job, he had great relationship with his family and his spouse. And he just had this pornography habit that kept coming up and he wanted to get rid of it. But he would tell himself, “I am powerless to this, I am powerless to this.” And this was such a problem for him because it became his reality.

So we did all the work, we did all the processing urges. He got really good at processing urges, and all that work of bringing down the over-desire, and understood all the tools. But what would happen is he would self-sabotage in these moments where he was feeling weak and would tell himself, “You know what? I'm just powerless to this anyways.” And every time he thought, “I'm powerless to this” and this was a strong belief that was there, he would always look at pornography.

And that was a belief that we really have had to work on and really have had to overwrite. And that's been so life changing for him is that “Hey, I am powerless to this, maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe that's not true. Maybe I can recognize that porn is a problem. Maybe I can recognize it's not something I want my life. But that doesn't mean I'm powerless to it. Maybe I can recognize it's a habit, maybe I can recognize it feels automatic. And I'm not powerless to it.”

So remember, you get to define what addiction means. You get to decide what that means. So if you're going to use it to define you, and your porn habit, make sure that it's serving you.

And this is too why you'll hear me say in my podcast, on my content, you'll always hear me say porn habit. You'll never hear me say porn addiction because I don't work with people who are addicted to pornography in this way that I've talked about where they're unable to live functioning lives. That's just out of my scope, that's for more therapy.

Coaching is for people who are living mostly functioning lives and want to quit a habit. And so if you have any questions of whether or not that's you, feel free to reach out to me. I'll have people ask me a lot, and I'm happy to kind of talk you through that and help you decide. Help you get the best help possible for you.

But I just want to say again, too, so you get to define what addiction means. And so if you're going to use it to define you, make sure that it's helping you and that it's serving you.

I just recently did an Instagram post that said, “You get to decide how to interpret everything in your life, including how you interpret yourself.” Isn't that awesome? You get to decide how to interpret everything in your life, including how you interpret yourself.

So in that post I shared an example of there is a fact in my life. The fact was that I wasn't reading my scriptures, period. And what I was making that mean about myself is that I wasn't spiritual, and I wasn't doing good enough spiritually, and I was really falling off the horse. And really just this main belief that I wasn't as spiritual as I should be.

And once I recognized this and I started to get into these coaching tools and understand that I get to decide how I want to interpret everything in my life, I decided, you know what? I don't want to interpret me not reading my scriptures as I'm not spiritual. And so I stopped. I just stopped. And it was kind of like, “Whoa, I can do that?”

And I can, and I could, and it was amazing. And what happened instead is I decided, you know what? Reading my scriptures doesn't mean I'm not spiritual. And I started looking for all the ways that I was spiritual instead.

And I started noticing like, “Oh, I thought about God multiple times during the day. And I said, a little prayer there. And I felt drawn towards this picture of Christ. And hey, look, my spirit is really loving this hymn or loving this music, this Christian music that I'm listening to.” And I would just find all these little things.

And what happened, this is amazing. What happened is that from this place of believing I am a spiritual being I started to read my scriptures, and I started to study more because I wanted to and because I felt good. And because I had seen myself, right, when I see myself as someone who is spiritual, then I'm going to do things that help me be more spiritual, like studying God's word.

If I'm interpreting my actions as, “Oh, I'm not spiritual.” Then that's going to continue in my actions and behaviors. I'm going to keep being that person that I'm thinking I'm being. So this is so important because who you think you are is who you become, period. Who you think you are is who you become.

So if you think that you are powerless to pornography, that is going to be your reality. It doesn't matter how often you view pornography. You get to decide how to interpret that in your life. You can interpret it as an addiction, you can interpret it as a habit, or you can interpret it as neither. You get to decide whatever feels best to you and whatever helps you the best.

And there are definitely cases where defining it as an addiction is helpful. But I think more often it's unhelpful, especially to those of us who are living functioning normal lives.

And I want to share this example too. I had a client who we were calling it a pornography habit. And then I stopped and we were talking and just kind of seeing where he was at and how he was doing. And he told me, “I'm viewing about once a month or so. It's just been about once every month or so.”

And I stopped and I looked at him and I said, “Well, why are we calling this a habit? Why are we calling this a porn habit?” Think about it, if you worked out once a month would you say, “Yeah, I have a habit of working out?” Probably not, probably not.

Or even once every other week, if you're viewing it once every other week. If you work out once every other week, would you say, “I have a habit of working out?” Maybe, maybe not. You get to decide how you want to interpret that too. You can choose just to interpret it as sometimes I look at porn and I want to stop looking at porn. Sometimes I do it and I'm trying to stop. Instead of as a habit or as an addiction.

Okay, so if it feels important, if it feels freeing to call it an addiction, by all means, do it. But if it feels like a trap, if saying that you're addicted makes you feel stuck, stop calling yourself addicted. Recognize there are so many people who are struggling with a porn habit and are not addicted to it. Maybe that's you too. All right you guys. Have a great week. We'll talk to you next week

If you’re ready to apply what you’re hearing in this podcast and finally overcome pornography for good, I’d love to be your coach. I’ve created a virtual program with the intent to give you everything that you need to quit. Once you join, you have lifetime access to the content and lifetime access to individual support through coaching calls and coaching boards. For more information check out sarabrewer.com/workwithme.