Overcoming Pornography: A Missionary's Journey to Break Free

Episode 257

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Zach Spafford: [: 00:00:00

He sent me a text, he said, you taught a lesson at my ward a little while ago and you told us to contact you if we needed something. I need help.

So in the conversation with this young man who's preparing to be a missionary, he said he's struggling with pornography and he wants to know what he needs to do to put it behind him so that he can actually go out and serve this mission.

And today I'm going to discuss exactly what I shared with him in hopes that it might help you or someone you know who's in a similar situation. I'm going to use the detour cycle framework that I shared with you in episode 238. And you can go, so go back and listen to that framework if you haven't heard that. But also if you want to get that mini course, you could go to gettothrive.com/succeed. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

So here are the three things that anybody who is trying to deal with their pornography struggle, especially this young man, needs to focus on so that they can succeed at putting porn in the past.

The first step is to start to become aware of what is leading you towards pornography.

Zach Spafford: So this involves identifying any triggers identifying the situations identifying anything that is likely to push your mind towards engaging in this behavior.

So what does that mean? What that means is reflect on the patterns that your brain is offering you. So if you're keeping track or you're journaling on this, you want to start to see where your brain is offering you pornography.

I call that the escape offer in the detour cycle. That is the place where your brain starts you down this path towards pornography. It's not the moment at which you start viewing pornography. It's the point at which your brain says, Hey, let's take a break, or I deserve to relax or something like that, that your brain is saying, "Hey, let's just move away from what we don't want to deal with right now."

So note down what happened just before that came up. I call that the emotional catalyst. And if there are specific times of day, specific emotions, specific ideas that are triggering this escape offer, you want to become aware of those and start to recognize the pattern that is creating this option to choose porn, especially when it's outside your values.

So when I'm saying recognize patterns and recognize triggers, what I'm talking about is in the detour cycle, the first three steps. What is the narrative onset, what's the story that your brain's telling you? What's the emotion that that creates and what is the escape offer? Those are the three things that you're looking for.

Understanding these three components is going to give you the awareness that you need to start addressing each of these ideas directly and with confidence. You can call them triggers. These ideas, or these opportunities that your brain is using to move you away from your from your values and towards porn.

These could be things like being alone, or being bored, being stressed. So this particular person who sent me this text message, he said, "I have two things that I'm dealing with, boredom and stress. And so we talked a little bit about what does it look like when he's bored?

It could be loneliness, it could be inadequacy, it doesn't really matter what it is. What you're doing Is you're getting more aware of what's happening for you. That's really what you want to be doing. So that's step number one. Create that awareness, reflect on the pattern, recognize the triggers, just start creating awareness.

The next thing you want to do is stay centered through unwanted emotions. So when I teach the detour cycle in the clean break system, the thing that is going to help you become most effective and most empowered at dealing with your emotions is being able to go through them without needing to avoid them, without needing to suppress them, without needing to give into them.

Emotions are like the check engine light in your car. What they do is they say, "Hey, there's something we need to address here." That's it. That's all they're doing. So getting centered and being able to deal with your emotions directly and not have to freak out or get hooked by them.

That is an essential step to leaving porn behind. And just remember your check engine lights, not the problem. It's an indicator that there might be a problem. Same thing with your emotions. And What you need to recognize and understand about your emotions is they only last about 90 seconds.

Any basic given emotion is going to last about 90 seconds. That's not true for things like grief, but. In general, your day to day emotions like boredom, loneliness, stress, inadequacy, any of those ideas, any of those emotions that you're dealing with, they're going to last about 90 seconds. So you want to get good at just being able to sit with that emotion for 90 seconds without needing to do anything about it and without needing to circumvent it or do anything that might exact, that might make that emotion last longer.

his young man is what I will [: 00:05:00

Zach Spafford: One way you could do that is deep breathing, there's meditation, there's leaves on a stream. There are hundreds of mindfulness practices that you can dig into and say, Hey, you know, which one works for me?

I offered this young man box breathing. I think box breathing is a really simple way to stay centered. It's four beats of in breath. It's hold for four beats followed by exhale. Four beats of out breath and then hold that for four beats. And you just repeat that. That's called box breathing. You repeat that a few times until you know, the 90 seconds is up.

And what you're doing here is you're learning techniques to regulate your emotions, meaning you're not eliminating them. You're not trying to run from them. you're not trying to not have them. What you're doing is you're saying, I can be with this emotion. For the timeline that it requires to exist.

And then I don't have to freak out about it. And then I can go to figuring out what is actually wrong, like, what is my brain doing? Why is it offering me this emotion? Like, why is this emotion coming up? And what is my brain offering me to create that emotion?

And in empowering yourself to emotionally regulate without needing to escape or run away or circumvent or suppress any of your emotions, you are going to be able to then more clearly and more even handedly address the underlying issue.

So the third thing , that I offer to everyone, and in particular this young man, address the underlying reasons.

This third step is really about figuring out what's the story so that you can deal with that story directly. Even if it's difficult, because it sometimes will be difficult, and not need to escape from that issue.

That's really what pornography is doing for most people, it's offering them an opportunity to escape, and I want you to take the time in this component to address that narrative onset. What is the narrative? What's the story my brain is offering? Take time to explore that deeper issue that might be contributing to your use of pornography. Meaning the thing that you don't want to think about and that you are trying to escape.

Start asking questions, get curious. Is there an unresolved issue here that I need to address? Am I experiencing stress or pressure that I'm not Facing in a meaningful or empowered way. So for this young man, he'd gotten a speeding ticket recently. He just felt like he was done.

So the story his brain was offering him is I'm done. And you could also think of that as an escape offer as well. But there's this story of, " I have all this pressure, I'm done, and I don't know what to do, so I'm just going to escape." That's the basic narrative that was going on there.

He's feeling stressed about this speeding ticket, and so his brain said, hey, let's just go check out some. Pictures, right? So there he has a whole, in a nutshell, you have the first three steps of the detour cycle. And the problem is I'm done or I'm under all this stress and I can't deal with it. So start by asking yourself, "well, what can I deal with? What can I handle? Can I address this speeding ticket? Is there anything to actually address? Do I need to escape from it? Or can I just face the consequences of my actions meaningfully and directly?"

This is a really important component because what I teach my clients and what I want everybody to remember is we cannot really get rid of all of the things that drive us towards pornography.

A lot of systems, They focus on trying to eliminate all of your triggers. They focus on trying to eliminate any danger zones. Well, the reality is that when our brain is offering us an escape from our troubles and from our difficulties, that's not something that we can eliminate because our brain, is there, it's designed to help us solve our problems.

So we can't get away from our brain, so what we have to do instead is we have to work with our brain to solve those problems in a much more meaningful and empowered way. That's the difference and if you can address that story and you can say "yeah, this really stinks. I do have a speeding ticket I don't want to have a speeding ticket."

Is escaping towards pornography going to help me solve for this speeding ticket? Probably not. Is it gonna help me live up to my values? Probably not. How can I? How can I deal with this speeding ticket in a way that doesn't have me escaping from how I feel right now, which is stressed and frustrated. So then I can start to ask, well, where would I go?

If I, you know, what would I do? Maybe I can have a conversation with my parents and say, "Hey, can you help me pay for the speeding ticket? I realized that's my fault, but I'm trying to get on a mission and, you know, X, Y, Z, right?" It doesn't It doesn't really matter what the issue is, as long as you're willing to address it directly, and allow for your uncomfortable, unpleasant, unwanted feelings to exist without needing to circumvent them.

ucture is because they don't [: 00:10:00

So, again, there's no way to get rid of the problematic stories that our brain offers us, but we can address them more meaningfully, more effectively, without needing to escape, if we're willing to look them in the face and exercise that muscle of resolving these problems directly.

Really what you're doing is you're creating awareness, you're staying centered through those unwanted emotions, and you're addressing the underlying reasons that your brain is offering you porn.

So that is really the whole system in a nutshell. There are, you know, there are nuances. Sometimes you're going to need a little bit of help.

Might, you might need a little bit of coaching on how to make that happen, but I want you to understand this is a hundred percent doable. And it's doable. If you're willing to practice both. In the moment and in non game time situations. So when your brain is actually offering you porn and in situations where it's not offering you porn and you pull out and you try and practice these same skills outside of those game time situations.

Thank you so much for listening today. If you have questions or you need Any support, just reach out to me, zach@zachspafford.Com, or you can follow us on Instagram at ThriveBeyondPornography, where the N in pornography is an X. I'm here to help you guys on your journey to self empowerment and to put porn in the past.

Keep moving forward and continue your journey to Thriving Beyond Pornography.

You guys so much for listening. I will talk to you next week.