Act, Don't React: Transforming Your Approach to Urges

Episode 251.1

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Zach Spafford: [: 00:00:00

Today, we're going to talk about the two most common ways people try to handle urges and why they don't work.

And at the end, I'm going to share with you the one way that actually works to handle any urge.

First, let's start by clarifying what I mean by an urge. When your brain offers you an escape towards porn that you know, especially when you're in your best mindset, is likely to lead you toward behavior that's outside your values. That's an urge.

So sometimes people refer to these ideas as triggers. I like to call it an escape offer. Whatever it is that you've experienced as a path away from your values and towards engaging pornography viewing, that's what we're talking about. So sometimes you can identify this by the way you feel. Sometimes your brain offers you, hey, let's go watch YouTube shorts, and it's not an urge.

And sometimes your brain offers you, hey, let's go watch YouTube shorts. And for some reason, you feel this sense of elevated emotion. Maybe your heart rate is up during that process. And you have that rush where you might feel like you're getting away with something, or you're going towards something that's really exciting. That's what I'm talking about.

So this state where you are at the crossroad of battling to move toward your values or away from them.. That's what we're talking about.

So what are the two most common ways that people try to handle that particular situation, they either resist or they react.

We're going to talk about what it looks like to resist and react and why those two tactics don't work. And like I said, at the end, I'm going to talk you through what actually does work.

Let's start with resisting. Resisting is using willpower to push away an urge. This approach is really temporary. Even though I know some of you have been there. And I've maybe used it for a year or more and it's limited in its capacity to really get you where you want to be.

What does this look like? It feels like holding on tight. It's, it's a place of constant vigilance. Lots of programs out there, they have this daily set of values, you know, certain things you have to do that are about distracting you from everything else in your life. They're about trying to fill your time with so much good stuff that you won't have time for anything bad.

this is reams of daily tasks to complete so that you can blame yourself when you look at porn if one of those particular items isn't complete.

You'll look at all the tasks in a way that deflects from the choice and you'll point to that task and you'll say, Oh, well that was the problem. That's where I went wrong because I didn't read the full 15 minutes. in my scriptures that day, or I didn't pray three times, I only prayed twice, or my prayers weren't sincere enough.

That's really what resisting is looking like. When we're resisting urges, we're creating and trying to maintain a heightened awareness that often leads to heightened anxiety. And this is why this doesn't work. This is why resisting does not work. Resisting is about willpower to do everything right. So you can't make a mistake and fall back into those old habits.

And this creates, to me, it creates a sense of powerless. Most of the people I talk to, it is this sense of powerlessness. Now, a lot of times people are like, well, I gotta, I just gotta keep doing it. I'm clearly not doing it right. And so I've got to just double down or triple down or quadruple down. To me, that's powerlessness because if you aren't able to succeed in a meaningful way, because you're, you know, you missed one time, you didn't cross a T here or dot an I there, that's, that's problematic because if you're like most people, you aren't highly regimented enough to keep constantly vigilant and that places the blame on you for not being able to do something that's actually pretty much impossible.

Willpower does have a place in life. It's an important component of life. And what willpower is used for is short term immediate threats. The problem is number one, your brain is not a threat. It's an idea machine. So being constantly vigilant in order to keep your brain from offering you ideas.

Is impossible. In fact, it's not even desirable. That's how bad it is. Number two, we aren't even close to addressing the issue that underlies the escape offer your brain has come up with. There's, there's some reason why your brain is trying to escape. And if we're just constantly vigilant going from task to task to task, we aren't addressing why our brain is offering us porn in the first place.

We're just trying to avoid it. We're running as fast as we can. Try not to get caught. Number three, it's demoralizing. It's demoralizing to be told to do something that's not possible, so you end up wanting to give up and stop even thinking about the problem. But that's exactly the opposite of what you've been told you have to do in order to solve the problem.

ain keeps offering you porn. [: 00:05:00

I mean, how horrible is that? It's like, here, hold this beach ball underwater forever. Never let it up. Never stop pushing it down. And if you fail, you have to start all over from scratch and it's your fault because you didn't do it. You, you weren't constantly vigilant. I mean, that's, that's impossible.

I don't know if that's been your experience. That has been my experience and the experience of so many of the men and women I work with in terms of resisting their brain and resisting what it is that, and resisting pornography. The other option is to react, which I, I think of that as immediately giving into an urge without any resistance.

And I find most people who struggle with porn viewing, the thing that they do after they have gone through this demoralizing process of resisting as much as they can for as long as they can, And failing over and over and over again is they just give up. I mean, this, this just makes their lives easier.

For me, this was true at various points of my journey. And for so many of my clients, this is absolutely true at various points in their journey. Everybody feels like they've spent an enormous amount of energy fighting a losing battle and it just keeps coming up. There's nothing they can do about it. And you know, if you're sitting here, you're listening to this, you're probably like, yeah, I've made little to no progress and any progress that I did make, it was never enough because I feel like I have to be perfect at it or I'm utterly failing. So even a minor, Hey, I saw this and I looked twice. That is an utter failure in this in, in the, in the resistance area. So they just go to the reactionary and they're like, "well, forget it. I'm just going to, I'm going to look as much as I want and I'm not even going to bother figuring out." So what do we do? We just go, "well, if I just give in now, I won't have to fight with this and I can get back to what I need to do."

And I can understand why that's an attractive option. It's very low cost emotionally.

It's lower cost emotionally than. Then resisting, and we just have to feel bad later. Or we just tell ourselves I'm done feeling bad. I just, I'm going to go live with the reality that I can't live up to this particular value in my life. I'm going to just try not to feel bad about doing this thing.

And reacting just helps us to avoid any immediate discomfort that we're dealing with as well. So it's like, well, it's fine. It's easier. The reason that doesn't end up working for most people. And by the way, there are those who decide, Hey, this is no longer part of my values. I don't need to live up to that anymore.

I'm not going to be made to feel bad about it. There are those people and that works for them.

But the reason that doesn't work for everyone is that they don't actually, they don't want to give up on that value. Their relationship partner doesn't want them to give up on that value. Most people who, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have a genuine desire, whether it's for a moral reason, like, you know, you feel like it's, it's not okay morally, or that just isn't who you want to be you have a genuine desire to put this habit behind you. And just like when we resist, when we aren't succeeding at putting it behind us, that leads to a level of demoralization as well. Imagine having a dream to climb a mountain that you can see from your house.

And each time you set out to get there, you find your path blocked, or you get as close as you can, and you just can't find the path to get onto the mountain. And no matter how much time you spend trying to figure it out you're missing one crucial turn to get on that mountain and, you know, you know, it's a worthy goal, you keep trying, but you just can't find the path and anyone you ask, they say, "well. I've never been up there, but try this road or try that road. Maybe that'll work."

Right. And you, you do whatever it is that they say only to find out. That that leads you in the opposite direction from where you want to be. Most people go back and forth between this resisting and reacting process. It's the resist react cycle.

This cycle leads to a frustration and a sense, I think for most people of being out of control.

So before you go today, I want to give you. A map to the top of the mountain. I'm not going to promise you that you're going to be able to follow it completely. Sometimes we need a guide, someone who has been to the top of the mountain to get us past a particularly tricky part. And that's why I offer lifetime access to my coaching membership for anybody who wants a cost effective way to get help on their path.

And to get on the path.

We need to act. Rather than resist or react. And if you've listened to my podcast for a long time, you know that I use acceptance and commitment training or act because it's the only proven method to quit porn. So this is a bit of a double meaning.

Using act in a meaningful and effective way to address the underlying issue your brain is offering you an escape from is the only way to get up the mountain without willpower and without just throwing in the towel.

So what is acting versus reacting? What does that look like?

Zach Spafford: Acting involves higher brain decision making until we turn it into a habit. And then it becomes habitual.

ssociated with impulse, with [: 00:10:00

And this is the same process that you would use rather than resisting. So how do we do that? We start by letting the urge be, again, without resisting it, without giving into it. And without feeling judgment about it. So this takes a little bit of practice and it takes time and it's best done at first anyway, in purposeful practice sessions where you're not feeling the immediate need to deal with the urge.

So what does, what does that mean? Set up a time, maybe like when you're brushing your teeth to relive a particular scenario where your brain is giving you an escape offer and just practice sitting with that urge without having to do anything about it.

And speaking of practice, you're going to need to build your discomfort tolerance.

Allowing an urge involves acknowledging it without trying to force it away or giving into it. The more often you do that in a deliberate way, outside of what I like to call game time situations where the urge is real and present and then not at a practice scenario.

Right? So that moment where you're like, oh crap, this is it. The more, you know, outside of those times, if you will do that practice, you'll create more tolerance to discomfort. And the more likely you'll be able to do it automatically in the moment when it is game time. So this is like shooting free throws when you're not at the line in the middle of a high stakes game.

The practice of allowing urges is like learning to ride a bike. It requires regularly returning to the process, and that may involve some initial discomfort. That leads to greater self control in the long run.

And this will help you with the mindset shift that you're going to need to succeed in the long run. The goal of allowing an urge should be to get comfortable with discomfort. I know nobody, I always say, I say this a lot in my consults.

I don't think I, I don't know if I ever say it on, on the podcast, but I'm like, yeah, nobody ever wakes up in the morning. He's like, "you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to learn how to feel bad. I'm going to learn how to be uncomfortable."

But. If you know anything about success, you know that discomfort is the currency of success and approaching this problem with the attitude that I'm going to build strength, that is going to help you succeed.

It's a lot like weightlifting. It's not comfortable to me. It's not even interesting. I mean, sitting there, like picking things up, putting them down. I think it's kind of a silly exercise.

But. The more reps you get, the more you'll be able to lift and the more you'll have the strength you need when you need it, regardless of how uncomfortable you are in that moment.

And that's the work that you need to be doing.

I hope this has been helpful. I hope you can see the difference between reacting and resisting versus acting and practicing and purposefully creating times to spend doing the work so you can build that discomfort tolerance so you can actually assess what the underlying issues are that your brain is trying to help you escape from.

And if you need some help with this, please set up a free console. Go to gettothrive.com/workwithZach. I would love to meet with you. Start doing this work, you're going to start succeeding in a way that allows you to build on that success and put yourself , in the position of thriving beyond pornography.

. Alright my friends, I'll talk to you next week.