Thought Control - Overcoming Pornography

Welcome to another bonus addition of wives Wednesday! I am so excited to be here and talk to guy guys today. Today I wanted to talk about how to create more compassion empathy and love for both you and your spouse. When a love one struggles with pornography it often creates very big emotions for both partners. . IF you follow us on Instagram you might have seen the post I wrote that said The more time we can spend creating compassion, empathy, and love for both ourselves and our partner the further along we get. I wanted to go into a bit more detail here on the podcast. Sometimes I find it hard to write things because it is hard to convey tone and intent through writing. The way to create more compassion for each other is realizing we are all just trying to feel better and that we each have behaviors we use to achieve that goal. What are some of the behaviors you find yourself doing when you are avoiding doing housework, meal planning, being present with your kids, stressed, overwhelmed, frustrated, angry, or defeated? I can tell you some of the things I do in case you need some ideas… Scroll Instagram, check our podcast numbers and reviews, go out for ice cream, over eat or just eat food that doesn’t make me feel good. Sometimes I yell at my kids or try to place blame outside of me why and am not feeling happy. The way we create more empathy is seeking to understand our spouse and trying to imagine what it would be like if we were in their shoes. . The way we create more love is by dropping the judgement we have of our partner and ourself. . When I began to truly empathize with Zach and his struggle with pornography and drop the idea that the way he “sinned” was worse than mine, the easier it was to create a relationship where there was room for us both to grow. . If you are trying to get to this place and feel stuck message me and let’s chat! . I love helping women move forward in their relationship themself and their partner.

11 Aug 202116min

Overcoming pornography takes an understanding of what your brain is doing. The model is a great way to get a handle on it and start making changes.

9 Aug 202114min

- Let’s talk about how we can move from fear, worried about how this is going to destroy marriages, - To love, letting this become a challenge that we face together, growing with, and strengthening each other - We are going to discuss ways to understand and recognize the fear based messages that we offer - As we discuss these we’ll talk about how we might discuss address these when others say them and how we can open conversations differently - And change those conversations to love, hope, and success - Let’s start with somethings that we often hear and see - “This will destroy your life?”/marriage - You can never forget those images You will always be addicted/this will be a problem

2 Aug 202135min

When Marriage is hard. Seasons of marriage Imagine on the day you got married you knew that there would be a trial so difficult that it had the potential to tear apart your entire life. Your every belief structure would be questioned. everything you had worked for would be reduced to the decision of whether to stay or go. all of your hard work, love, and hope would be tested so thoroughly that either this would be the end of your marriage or your marriage will be strengthened immeasurably. Imagine, as you stand there, vowing to make your life and your eternity with the person you now adore, that this will happen not just once, but multiple times during your life together. Would you get married? Would you choose a different partner? how would you approach marriage differently?

26 Juli 202127min

I just listened to your most recent podcast about the vulnerability partner vs the accountability partner and I’m left with one question. When you are the vulnerability partner and the pornography user is expressing feelings of having a bad day or not feeling well about themself, what does the vulnerability partner respond with? Aside from listening what should they do or say to help?

19 Juli 202123min

The three steps that take us down the rabbit hole. As I have worked with hundreds of men and women over the past few years, I have noticed a pattern of behavior emerge that is the critical turning point from being fully the master of your behavior to viewing pornography and following the habitual following of feel good now based rituals. This doesn’t happen with every one every time, but it happens with such frequency that it makes sense to get a feel for it, if you are someone that is working to eliminate a bad habit in your life. It all starts with a near truth. A near truth is something that, on the surface is easily seen as true and something that most people would agree with you on. These kinds of thoughts sound like this: These are all actual beliefs that individual clients have said to me in the scope of our coaching. “I don’t want to be miserable all day” “being in control of myself is so hard” And “When I find something I enjoy, I stick to it” These are the kinds of thoughts that we think should be true. I’ve never met someone who wanted to be miserable at all, much less all day. We have all been in a position to where we think self control is hard. And who doesn’t want to stick with enjoyable things. They are near truths because they are the kinds of phrases that are hard to argue against. They seem right, others are likely to agree with you when you say them, and they are easy to believe because of these things. The problem here is that though they are near truths, they aren’t true in the long term. They are actually lies in the long term. Not because you actually do want to be miserable all day or because being in control of yourself is really easy or because when you find things you enjoy you don’t stick to it. Let’s start with the first one, “I don’t want to be miserable all day” There are at least two untruths in this statement. The first issue is that most of us, when we deal with our feelings directly, are not going to feel miserable “all day”. Modern research shows that most emotions, when felt out to their full extent, last about 90 seconds. That isn’t to say that your feelings might not last longer or shorter. Just that is the average. Usually, the reason our feelings last longer is that we keep retelling stories that refresh and restart the cycle of the feeling. When we fall in love, we tell stories of how our new love loves us. When we are miserable, we tell and retell stories about how someone has wronged us, how we are in the right, and they are not. This particular client was dealing with work struggles. He was telling himself how others around him were talking about him. The only way he was going to be miserable all day was if he kept telling himself repeatedly about what he thought others thought about him. All day is a long time to dwell on anything, especially, when we are aware that our thoughts, beliefs, and stories are the things making us miserable and we get to choose whether they are true or not and how long to dwell on them. The second issue with this statement is that we assume that we don’t want to feel miserable and that the proffered solution is going to make us feel better. Funny thing about emotions is that they exist to be felt and we often do everything in our power to avoid feeling them. In this scenario this client believed that he didn’t want to feel miserable all day, and the solution his brain offered him was 30 minutes of arousal to remove the miserable feeling. a thing that our brains often do is discount future pain based on current desire to feel pleasure, What his brain didn’t take...

12 Juli 202116min

Darcy shares her experiences.

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5 Juli 20216min