Boundaries - how to set them

Why Would my Husband Lie to me? And other questions Wives ask when their spouse uses pornography. Over the last couple of weeks my wife and I have had a number of conversations with a new client and his wife. They had enrolled in my 13 week course and after one session she hadn’t felt like she had seen any changes. This was hard for her because she was dealing with so much pain, so much frustration and so much heartache that his recovery from pornography use was eating away at her. She described him as unemotional, uncaring and disconnected. Their story is so similar to so many stories that I decided to share with you some of what each of them are asking for themselves and for each other. Let me just give you some background. I have known this couple for almost 20 years. About 2 weeks ago she reached out to me on Facebook and asked me to call her about her husband and my business. They decided to enroll in my course because they felt it would give him the best chance to change and become pornography free. As we spoke on the phone she told me of the difficulties that he was having. He had been laid off due to Covid-19, he was using pornography and he was hiding extra cell phones around the house. To her the biggest issue had been that he lied. He had lied to her and he had lied to their children. She loves him and wants him to get better. For his part, he is an amazing man who has done so many amazing things in his life. He has always been there for his kids and his wife. He works hard. He doesn’t want pornography to be what he does to feel better but he also doesn’t want to feel so bad all the time. And right now he feels like he has a lot to feel bad about. Their story is not unlike my story or the story of so many people who struggle with addictive behaviors. So, let me share with you some of the questions that she was asking, some of the questions he was asking and some of the essential information I shared with them and would recommend for anyone dealing with something like this. “Why would he lie to me?” Darcy - In the thick of it the lying hurt more than the pornography use. - I also didn’t understand why zach would lie to me. - When truthful I would react poorly - Angry, cry, call names - Throw things, threaten to leave. - His brain wants to do tree things - Pleasure - Pain - Conserve energy. - Honesty causes pain - For me - And for him - His lying is him trying to protect his feelings and mine. - Lying from kids perspective. - Not get in trouble - He’s lying to avoid pain - It conserves energy because avoiding external consequences - Lie because we don’t want to hurt others feelings - Hey guess what so and so said about you. - What would you tell a wife who is being lied to on how to handle this situation? - Remove the emotions - Look at the facts - When your child is doing this it isn’t to hurt you - Same true with your spouse - They are just trying to deal with their own emotions - Don’t accept/believe that you

26 Apr 202029min

- The sun is setting and the kids are out making the gleeful noises that signal an amazing day is ending. - It’s about bed time and I am sitting down to record - Thinking, what is the skill the thing that my audience needs help mastering this week? - What can I bring to them. - That they might have joy – 2 ne 25 - Opposition in all things 2 ne 11 - Taking new meaning - Ask clients, what percentage of life should you feel good? - 90%, 75% 60/40 - Major reason we fall into buffering or addictive behaviors – avoiding negative feelings - Avoiding feelings leads to doubling down on negativity. - Lonely leads to drinking, pornography whatever, - The lonely doesn’t really get addressed and in the end it doesn’t go away - Then after the temporary pleasure fades, the loneliness comes back and - On top of that we add guilt - So now we’ve doubled the pain - Problem is we can make it even worse. - We can double again and choose to think, not, “ive done something I don’t want to do again and I will take responsibility for it and stop” - We some times choose to think, “I’m bad, broken or irredeemable” which is shame, - So now we’ve tripled our pain. - - On the flip side, when we have great things in our lives happen, we look for problems. - Or we diminish the value of our accomplishments or our contributions in the world - - - 4 ways to create joy in your life. - 1. Seek the good in your life a. Consciously observe the wins in your day i. Dinner table question b. avoid seeing problems where there aren’t any c. Believe what you want to believe about yourself d. 2. Become willing to feel your feelings all the way a. Practice b. Self confidence i. Feel any feeling 3. Remember you are learning a. Ability to trust self 4. The atonement has bridged the gap, you just need to get on the bridge 5. - Guess you could say that in a way man’s purpose is to feel the depths of sorrow and the loftiness of joy, each to their fullest - As I

19 Apr 202017min

- The more accountability we take for our experience here – what happens to us, what we create, what we see as external or internal struggles – the more choices we have o This is about ownership o Ownership creates power and choice - This isn’t about what you’re not o Come from negative place o Not strong enough o Not smart enough o Not disciplined enough o That is all blame and fault finding o Blame and fault finding are shame based o - Here’s the real difficulty, sometimes we judge ourselves for the things that we are taking accountability for o Then we look to see how we can deflect that judgement o When we beat our self up that often leads to deflecting which doesn’t feel good o This goes wrong in the way that people/humans don’t like to be blamed or at fault so then we look to explain away the results in our life o She didn’t meet my needs o This just showed up on my screen o There was a link in my feed o That food wasn’t supposed to be in the pantry - You try to deflect judgment - In the process of deflecting judgement, you relinquish accountability. - Here is one of the secrets that I want you to take away from this, You can be accountable without judging. - There are two words that you can eliminate from your vocabulary to help you do this. - Should and Shouldn’t. - You’re a human, you’re going to make mistakes - Saying I should have done this or I shouldn’t have done that - I should be more - I shouldn’t be so bad - I shouldn’t have slipped up - Taking should and shouldn’t out of your vocabulary all together will help in this process of taking accountability without judgement. - You aren’t perfect, I’m not perfect, no one is. - Take accountability without taking blame. - Let’s talk about areas where we can take accountability - There are three areas - Some call it the cognitive triangle – - Brooke Castillo calls it the Model - – most of us just know it as the things we have control over in our lives - - Thoughts, feelings and actions - Elder Uchtdorf had a great Instagram post where he was writing on a sheet of paper just a quick reminder, it seems - I have control over my: Thoughts, Feelings, Actions. - So, 3 questions: Why not always take accountability for these three things? - How do I take back accountability for these three things? - And why will that help me have greater self mastery? - Let’s quick define Actions: o Every one of my clients comes to me with one of two problems o I’m doing but I can’t stop o I want to start doing but I can’t § I’m using pornography and I can’t stop § I want to stop overeating § I want to get more things done § I want to stop sleeping in so I can get my exercise in - This is all stuff we do or don’t...

13 Apr 202020min

Does it matter whether you are an addict? Does it abdicate your agency? Does that thought serve you? - Does thinking it make you more likely to stop using pornography?

6 Apr 202020min

The urges are taking over my life – or that is kind of what a lot of us are feeling right now. For a lot of us this last 2 weeks have been really challenging. A lot of us are feeling trapped, stuck, and cooped up This is driving a lot of behavior that we have not used to buffer in a long time. For some of us it is eating – A lot of people are going to pornography – the data indicating that people are visiting illicit sites indicates a huge spike since the beginning of the covid outbreak. A lot of that is driving overwhelm, frustration and shame Our brains are really interesting machines. They do a couple of things really well and then they miss a couple of other really important things if we don’t manage them. So, the first thing our brains do really well, is they see danger in bad feelings. But something that is not a strength of our brain is distinguishing between bad feelings. Being chased by a bear feels bad. Being bored also feels bad. Which one is going to kill you? Your brain doesn’t know. So it throws something out there to keep you from feeling bad. In the case of being chased by a bear, people have been known to lay down and play dead as well as run screaming or even to stand up and face the bear, dealing with it head on. In the case of being bored, you have essentially the same three options, you can lay down and play dead, for me this looks a lot like depression. You can take off running, which is looking for adrenalin. So, food, pornography, social media Or you can stand up and face the boredom, feel it and deal with it head on. The big difference here is, when you face boredom, you know that eventually it will go away. That is not always the case with a bear. Now, if you were faced with a bear and you did any of those three things no one would judge you So, don’t pile shame on to your choice of how you choose to behave. Figure out how you want to behave ahead of time. Build in time for boredom Create. You have projects that you have been putting off. Engage your family

29 Mars 202022min

Is the corona virus lockdown getting you down, here is something to help you be your most productive self. There's even a free download https://www.zachspafford.com/getitdone (https://www.zachspafford.com/getitdone)

25 Mars 20208min

Love – As papi to 8 children I have been regularly faced with a significant load in trying to connect with my kids. There is a lot that happens in life, there is a lot of living that 10 people do in one house, so there is constantly something to wash, clean, pick up, put back, get out, fix, make, build, take apart, and leave alone. The other day my oldest was really upset that he was having to participate in the chores around the house because he felt that it was unfair, he hadn’t created any of the mess and now he was being asked to clean up. This is the part where I probably would have gotten mad at him, escalated the… we’ll call it a discussion, and told him off for how ungrateful he was being, how he was acting entitled and life just isn’t fair so stop whining about it and get it done. For me, my children’s behavior has often been a point of both pride and a source of deep frustration. It has meant that I was either a good parent or a bad one. It has meant that I was doing it right or that I was failing miserably. We used to go out with our 4 or six kids ( we don’t go out with all 8 at the same time these days partly because they are all at such different stages of life and the older ones often have activities). People would stop us so often and tell us what well behaved children we had. Sitting at dinner in a restaurant or grocery shopping was usually a high point because, in public our kids were kids, but the best behaved kind. They did what we asked, they sat nicely and had conversations with us and we all enjoyed being out together. These days we are all getting a lot more time with our children because of school closures and work from home or work shutdowns. For us, even though I work from home and we homeschool our kids, our lives have shifted dramatically from one of going to sports activities, church youth activities, seminary at 5:40 AM, our oldest going to work, our littles playing with the neighborhood kids and all the normal stuff that you do when you are a large family of highly social people. We now stay home more, our kids interact with outside people a lot less, practically not at all, in fact and we see a lot more of the inside of our home and each other. All of this leads up to the moment two nights ago when my oldest was what I would call excessively upset over being asked to clean up a mess that he didn’t make. As I stood there, tired from a day of work, with a tube of caulk in my hands because I was putting it on the baseboards that I had just replaced on the entire main floor, I looked at my son with anger and frustration welling up in me. I wanted him to just help, to just get it done, to just stop complaining about the work that was obviously going to need to be done by someone. I didn’t understand why he was acting like this and why did I have to deal with his bad attitude. I could feel myself getting warm and I was seeing red. At that moment I realized something that I had been trying to do for a few months now. I was trying to see my children and everyone around me the way I wanted to be seen. And trying to eliminate what felt like near constant bickering among my kids when they are home. I realized that this was that moment where I could change the whole situation. I realized that love was the one thing that I needed to bring to the equation. So, I just stopped running around applying caulk, even though it felt like there was a time crunch because that stuff dries, and I looked at my baby boy who is now the size of a grown man and I said, “It’s ok, I’ll do it when I finish this. You don’t have to.” Then I put my hand on his shoulder with love in my eyes and went back to what I was doing. I had peace, in that moment. I knew that I might have to go back and clean up, but it was ok. I realized that no...

23 Mars 202012min

Victim-hood and the blame game. - Not too many people think or express that they are the victim. - Not weakness, just our brain justifying our behavior - Indicators of victim mentality. - Blame o If my spouse would just meet my needs better o If I just hadn’t looked at porn that first time o If my church leaders would just help me more o The house clean on ramsey – o If only the circumstance was different o Ask yourself, do I blame anyone else for things that I don’t like about myself or my behavior? - Defensiveness o Byron Katie talks about defensiveness as the first act of war o That person doesn’t know my situation o My life is different. o No one else can understand what I’m going through o No matter what I do it’s never good enough o Zach driving o This is a place of defending your actions even though you might want to change but think you don’t know how o Ask yourself, is there someone in my life that is causing my pain? o - Complaining o I just can’t catch a break o Also, just plain negativity, o this is never going to work, nothing I do works o You feel sorry for yourself and feel trapped. o You know this person in your life, they are constantly looking to engage in a conversation that is negative.. o Building a business has really challenged me in this area o I just have to ignore those thoughts and move forward with my best plans. o Ask yourself, do I complain , do I excuse my behavior, are my thoughts and words negative? o - Key indication is that the stories that you tell involve “someone did something to me” “it happened to me” - “I was reading the news and the site showed an article that made me want to click further and that took me down the rabbit hole” – it just happened to me - Be careful about your words – look for a victim and villain

16 Mars 202019min