Alright so I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Another episode about
pornography?" Yes. All the episodes we had before we're really good and this one's
gonna be really good too and I think you're gonna benefit from it so sit back,
relax and watch the rest of this episode.
So Daniel, where are you from? I'm from San Francisco area. Alright, okay. And
Daniel, you specialize in sexual behaviors in the field of marriage and
family therapy. First, thank you for being here, thanks for talking about something
kind of uncomfortable cuz you know in the latter-day Saint culture, we
we don't like to talk about things that make us uncomfortable, we're just like "uuuh
sex uhhh" like we just...
It's a normal conversation in my house. Oh is it? Me and the five kids. And the wife.
It's free reign in our home. We're very open. I think it's an important topic to discuss. Well,
on that subject, when you started helping families, you realized that there was an
issue. An issue. A big issue. It's interesting because I actually had no
desire to address any types of addiction and we studied it as a coursework in
college and it just seemed like a very intense and overwhelming and a lot of
what we were studying and working with was substance abuse and I had one of one
of the actual experts in California was one of my professors and so she would
give me these just brutal stories and I was like, oh man you really have to be
someone special to work with the needs of an addict so I went and I was
hoping to go more towards marriage and family relationships in just
strengthening the family and what we can do there and so as I started doing that,
I started going into practice, I started getting calls from LDS members. One
particular member had called me up and she had asked if she could come in and
see me about her porn addiction and I said, I was thinking to myself I says, "Boy, this
isn't something I really want to do." So I pushed back, I said, "I got some references to
some other people I think you might want to see" and she's like, "They're not LDS
and I really want somebody who understands my faith. I understand that
you're not--" I explained to her, I says, "I'm not very,
that's not my specialty, it wasn't at that time and she says, "That's okay I just
need a place to-- this is kind of my last resort."
And that was a big confession of hers and I was like, "Okay let's respect that,
let's see what we can do." So I started to meet up with her and it was it was
pretty impressive she had spent 15 years in combatting her pornography
addiction and it was interesting because I went in there with the hopes, "Okay,
let's get you into ARP 12-step program or some other type of program to start
helping address this," thinking she hasn't tried any of this, this is just like her
in the closet experience. But she says, "I've done all that. I'm grounded the
temple, I'm actually a worker at the temple with, you know, with permission of
my my bishop and my leaders but this continues to resurface. I've been in ARP,
I've done 12-step, nothing's working, nothing works for a long period of time."
And as I was hearing her, I was at a loss, I was like, "These things I
thought were supposed to work. What's happening here?" And so I made a
commitment to her, I says, "I'm gonna figure this out with you." And so we
started to talk about it understanding exactly what's going on so as I started talking
to her, she was, first of all she was starting to tell me about-- what I found
was interesting, first of all, she came in with a story that was overwhelming and
at first impression was she was engaging in pornography, you would have
thought maybe four hours a day and every day with the weight and the burden that
she was coming in with and I started to do an assessment on her and I came to
find out it was much, much less, a couple times a month maybe at the most
for small periods of time and so that was the first thing that was surprising
because when I go back to my addiction classes and what I knew at that time,
whenever somebody comes in says they have an alcohol addiction, we do an
assessment, "Where are they at? How bad is it?" But here she was coming in with
self-diagnosis she believed that she was an addict and there was no indicator
within any form of substance abuse, you know, under that model that she was
actually an addict. She had an occasional use. This was still
concerning and she still wanted to figure out how to overcome it. So you
said that your client, when she came in, she said she had a pornography addiction
so what do you think is the problem with generalizing all pornography use with
addiction? Well addiction is a very serious term. It's lifelong, right? You
talk to any substance abuse addict and they will tell you even
when you've been sober, you're still an addict. This is a very scary, very big
term and it weighs on people so when you have clients, when you
have individuals who identify as an addict and they experience, they come
across pornography at anytime and they have any duration with that
experience, they see themselves as a lifelong addict. That is a huge, huge
burden for them and it makes it very difficult for them to address
and seeing themselves as an addict is often more of the problem than the
actual problem that makes them scared to go ask for help. I'm thinking of all
these teenagers who are dealing with this right now and just knowing that
they're probably thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm an addict, I'm going to deal with this
forever." It would just make it that much harder to go talk to someone about it.
Yeah, you can imagine a 13-year old, the year previous, this innocent child who's
excited going to church, bearing their testimony, all the sudden starts to have
these hormonal rushes, comes across pornography and has all these
curiosities and all these feelings. This is scary. Yeah, now I have to confess this
very evil thing, this very overwhelming thing to my bishop. Now I'm being labeled
as an addict I need to get the help that an addict would as opposed to
somebody who just came across pornography.
Children will do one of two things, in fact, often kids will come-- parents
will bring their children in to my office and you know, usually when they're
about 13, 14, 15-years old and the parents will report to me their behavior's
completely changed. They're very anxious, they're depressed, they're not
socializing as much. Usually that's an indicator to me that there's a potential
that they've been viewing pornography and that they're not actually sharing it
with their parents and so when we explore that usually is the case. They're
afraid to say it. They see themselves as this addict or that they have committed
this atrocity that they can't get away from and that they're becoming something
that they're so scared of. Well and I think there's wisdom in that if they
had this idea that they're an addict, and then if they do end up going to some
counseling or something and the counselor finds, I mean, yeah your kid's
not an addict. He's not addicted. And the parents are like, "Well the problem
isn't solved." Well the reality is your child is not addicted to porn, he's
almost, I don't wanna use it for normal but, how do we say that? And I don't, I think
it's important for this discussion to start right there with the parents is
I think it's important as a clinician never to come in and destroy a concept,
right? You know, parents will come in and they hear that their child is seeing
pornography and they may go to the idea they're addicted or we got to prevent
the addiction and it's important as leaders or as clinicians
to not necessarily rip that idea from them but say, how do we make this as an
opportunity to learn and grow? For example, one kid came in one time and I
was working with him and his mother in some family dynamics and very positive
situation but they're working through some teenage growing years and he came
in one day and sometimes we met separately and just to talk things
through before I bought his mom in and kind of met up with her and talked about
goals and outcomes and one day he came and he was just staring at me, just blank
face, like a deer in the headlights and he wasn't interacting with me like
he usually had in the past and so I kind of pushed back on him exploring what's
going on, what was in his mind and he let me know he was watching pornography the
day before and he'd come across something that really just kind of
shattered and really put an impact on him and it was overwhelming and I
think this is really an opportunity for parents and especially clinicians to be
able to engage the topic, not to create more fear around it. He's already scared.
He's a good kid, serving in the church, and he came across
something that was scary to him and he didn't know how to process it.
Instead of reinforcing that it was bad, I took the opportunity and used it as an
educational opportunity and so we discussed what was overwhelming about
that, is there questions you have about that behavior, and as soon as he was
comfortable with talking about it, I engage with him again and said, "Would you
be willing to have the same kind of conversation with with your mom?" And he
kind of had that look on his face like, I'm allowed to have that conversation
with my mom? And that was both representative of what we generally see
what they usually-- I can't talk about this with even my parents but a desire
to, that was there also, I want to. So with his permission, I brought his mom in and
and I shared with her, I says, your son has come across some pornography but I
think this is a wonderful opportunity to learn how to actually engage him in the
conversation and so we were actually having a conversation there in the
meeting where he got to learn from his mom what he had saw and have a
discussion with her and it had changed the dynamic of their relationship. I
think we miss those opportunities. So it's not so much going in and saying, "You're
not addicted." But taking the focus off it and seeing this as an opportunity to
actually have a productive conversation and to build a healthy relationship. Now
he's learning how to have a conversation with his mom, he will hopefully be able
to have the same type of conversations with his future spouse.
In a general sense, is it fair to say that the way our culture works and in
Orthodox religious culture, the approach to pornography is not always the best
because, you know, if I want to say look, you take a teenage boy, right? And he's
has hormones, you know, that's just the way it is and you say, okay there's
no sex, no masturbation, no pornography at all, you don't even talk about it, we
don't think about it, there's nothing. That's not realistic for a human being
especially not in 2018, right? So then they do those things anyway and they're
just quiet about it and that's how you develop
these bad habits and the doing things in secret and you create a really unhealthy
sexuality and then, you know, you come to BYU, you go to St. Mary's, you go
wherever you go and then you get engaged, you get married and then you bring that
to a marriage, that's not good. I think not talking about it and just
putting it away and pretending it isn't there just because it makes us
uncomfortable has really long-term negative effects and ends up hurting
multiple people. I'm really glad you brought that up, going back to the
first case I was talking about with that female client, that was probably the
biggest issue with her and I think I see that with just about every client I work
with on this topic is this all-or-nothing mentality. It's either no
pornography or I'm viewing pornography, as opposed to-- so what happens is this
dynamic of, gosh it's been reinforced with this idea of section 82 verse 7,
"When you repeat your sins, it's as though you've never repented before" and so it
eliminates any type of progress and so it's often, I'll speak with this
first client that is mentioning and other clients where they've been
resisting, resisting, resisting pornography and then they view it and
it's as though they have never repented before. And guess what their mentality is?
I'm already here, I might as well engage in it.
Use this as an opportunity, right? Interesting. Probably not that blunt all
the time but if I have to go confess anyway... Is there self-mastery in that? No.
There's no way to recover from that. This is what this one individual was
having experience with and why she saw herself as an addict is she was actually
never progressing. So we changed the way that we measured her progress, we
introduced it to her bishop, we introduced it to her, and that was
actually track frequency and duration. That is key, that is absolutely key.
Let me give me an example. She wanted to eliminate pornography out of her life so
in the old way, it was let's see how long I could go. In fact, some bishops will say,
go to weeks. Do you know what that means? On day 15, you get to enjoy as much
pornography as you want, right? So some leaders will do that, right? They'll say,
let's see if you can go two weeks without pornography and then what? Well
somebody hears that and says, "Great, I'm gonna embrace that idea I'm going to go
ahead and try that." Three days into it, guess what?
They're probably repeating the behavior because they're looking at the two weeks
as eternity because the bishop's really not giving the permission to engage on
day 15 so this is kind of the reoccurring program-- I'm going to stay away from it as long as I
possibly can. So it's sheer willpower, right? It's, "But I failed, I'm not gonna
tell my bishop about this. I'm just gonna try to secretly do it again and again
and again." So what I introduced was this idea of, let's track your progress, let's
create true self mastery, you know, I think the gospel teaches us that anytime
we're pursuing Christ, that we're drawing to Christ, the Spirit will be with us, it
will encourage us and strengthen us. So as she was laying out her plan, she says,
"This is my baseline. This is the frequency in which I usually engage in
pornography and the duration." So now if she finds herself engaging in
pornography, she can say, "Oh my goodness, I'm here. It's been a minute,
it's been two minutes, I could be successful by ending it now. I created
progress because in the past I would have been here for 30 minutes, 40 minutes,
today I'm successful. Does that make sense? Small wins. That totally makes sense. If you feel like you
keep trying and trying and trying and it just never works, you have to try
something else. Yeah, absolutely. I think the point here is taking this
as an opportunity to learn that you can develop self mastery as opposed to
seeing yourself as an addict. Very, very few people are actually an addict who
come into my office who claimed to be an addict. I'm experiencing pornography. I
think there's a couple things that we can do. I think it's important to
actually see where you're at, track where you're at and measure your progress in
a long term period of time. How much, for how long and start to measure
yourself downward so that you don't see yourself as failing every time. You know,
a lot of my clients will come in and they say, you know, I text my friend
every time I looked at pornography. Well why don't we use that as an opportunity
to text your friend and say, "I was only there for five minutes this time, this is
a huge success. I chose to leave it in the heat at the moment."
As opposed to-- and then it gives something for the friend to be positive about too. Because if the friend
keeps getting texts like, "Oh, again and again," it's like, sorry. I would
imagine they don't know what to say. Yeah, it's, if I may say
this, it's not viewing yourself as a victim or a prisoner of that episode but
rather how you won that battle, you know? You were still in the
battle but it ended before you won that battle and then you can
view yourself in a way that's making progress and not just as an addict and
then that's how you're on the road to kicking it. I think that's important for
church leaders to understand too. What I do with when bishops reach out-- and
I want to draw a very clear line, I'm obviously not their spiritual leader but
when they reach out and they ask what can I do to help out
the youth or spouse who's engaging in pornography? Encourage spiritual
awareness. Usually the child or the individual who's engaging in that
pornography already knows it's wrong, it does very little good to have somebody
else tell them that what they're doing is wrong. I have seen success come with
every bishop who encourages sacrament passing and temple attendance while
battling their pornography and encourages them to take this to the Lord
in those moments. I've seen less success when bishops usually engage in by saying
we've got to remove this now. Again, I want to be clear I'm not telling how
Bishop should do things but I think there's a measurement or an
opportunity here for us to engage as leaders by encouraging them to take it
to the Lord as opposed to removing it when they're trying, when they're coming
to you to discuss this and in relationships also it's critical
that, you know, in marriages we should be open about everything and I'm not asking
that spouses necessarily show the-- yeah-- I'm not asking for them to show the porn
but if a spouse of somebody who's struggling with pornography, the
individual already knows that they're struggling. I've had good men come in who
are just great fathers, successful employees, doing well in life who are
priesthood holders but can't understand why they keep repeating this behavior. If
the spouses can embrace them where they're at. I asked one husband, I said,
"What is it that you experience when you see pornography?" And what was a pretty
routine question that I asked, he teared up immediately.
Here is a stoic individual, this just good man breaking down into tears and,
"What's going on?" He says, no one has ever asked me that.
I've been even too scared to consider it myself. I've been just trying to pray it
away."
And so I helped the wife understand how to engage him in that where he's at,
not necessarily explore the porn but what his desires are, what his passions
are, his interests, he just wanted to be able to connect with his wife and that
provided an opportunity for her to connect with him. "Tell me more
what's going on, what draws you to it" and being able to create that safe space
creates healing in connection like you guys have talked about before. If we
can do that, I think we can make our youth more successful. We find
opportunities to teach about healthy sexuality in the gospel and we could
connect with our spouses. Every individual is different but I've noticed
a common factor when when leadership can use these opportunities like sacrament
and temple attendance. The success of the individual skyrockets. We don't want you
to be defined by this sin. When you're a disciple of Christ,
you've been atoned for, you're not defined by that sin but you can be yourself as a
work in progress and that is the mindset that will bring you
closer to Heavenly Father and understanding his character and his
personality more and even with the subjects that are uncomfortable like
this, he knows about it and you can overcome them eventually.
Also, thank you so much. For more information on this, go find and join the
Facebook group, "Improving intimacy in Mormon marriages"
and you can... *whispers* that's the part where you're supposed to say,
"Subscribe to 3 Mormons!" We also have other social media, Facebook Instagram and Twitter.
So comment below, tell us what you think.
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