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Rewiring The Habit Loop · Moral Injury Support Network Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody, welcome to the Moral Injury Support Network podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Danny Roberts, president and CEO of Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women Incorporated, a 501c3 based in North Carolina that exists to help women veterans uh recover from moral injury and other traumas while serving in the military.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: We have a great guest with us today, Nelson Whiting.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: He is an um expert on helping people who are porn addicts quit compulsive viewing.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he uses clinical hypno hypnotherapy and experience uh specializes in behavior modification.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm looking forward to this conversation with Nelson, and uh I think he has a lot to offer about helping uh gain control of your thoughts and your behaviors.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Nelson, welcome to the show.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks, Daniel.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us a little bit about your background, uh, your knowledge and experience, and how you got into this um work that you're doing.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's kind of an interesting story.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I grew up here in Utah, just like uh just kind of the your average Mormon kid out here in Utah, uh, growing up, you know, very religious and just going to high school, enjoying my life.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I I tried to be a good student in high school, you know, A's and B's and and all that, but I got into my senior year and I started doing some classes that were pushing me a little bit more.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I tended to be maybe lazy in the sense that I didn't want to push myself too hard, but I didn't want to cheat either.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was trying to find out how I can cheat without cheating and uh spend less time having to study and still get good grades.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I came across a book called Double Your Brain Power.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think her name was Julie Marie Stein, was the author.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And my cousin had recommended this to me.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, hey, if I can double my brain power, then I can get this done twice as fast or twice as easy with half the effort.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I read through this and I learned a little technique that was that she called the optimum learning state, the alpha learning state.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my first exposure to the idea of, hey, we can change something in our brain, we can do it through our own deliberate, focused attention.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: We can change something in our brain so that we can increase its abilities or increase communication in the brain and absorb information better, retain information better, regurgitate it better.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I learned this little technique.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was basically box breathing, five or six, seven sets of box breathing, and then saying affirmations to yourself.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I really love learning, I have perfect memory recall.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I learned very well and quickly.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then you do that three times.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: It took basically five minutes.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so in my anatomy class where we were learning all this medical terminology, I thought, I'm gonna apply this because I have all these 4-0 students, you know, 4-0 GPA students in my class that they're all the geniuses.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I know they study really hard and they take a long time to study, but I don't want to do that.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd take this five-minute exercise and put myself in that optimum learning state into an alpha learning state in my brain, slowing down the brainwave state.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And next thing you know, all I had to do was put myself in that state, read through all the terminology, and I just retained it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd maybe read through it one more time, but I didn't have to try and memorize it.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'd go back and I'd put myself back into that state when I took go take the test, and I'd get 100% on all my tests, started blowing me away.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, holy cow, I remember this information.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've never done this kind of thing before.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And all the other 4-0 students in the class were wondering, how in the heck is Nelson getting these 100%?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's the only one in the class that's getting 100% on all the tests.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I didn't tell any of them what I was doing, but that was my first kind of exposure at 17, 18 years old to the idea that we can we can train change what's going on in the brain.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: What I what I didn't know was that I was utilizing what we call now self-hypnosis, self-inducing a state of increased focus, right?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Which is all hypnosis is, and all hypnosis really is self-hypnosis.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that was kind of an interesting idea.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then in my scene at my senior all-nighter party at Springville High School, we were the Red Devils at our senior nighter, our senior all nighter party.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: We had a hypnotist come for entertainment purposes, and I was really intrigued.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I knew nothing about hypnosis.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: He came in and started telling us the mind is extremely powerful.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, this is really cool.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I volunteered and I got up on stage.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: There were about 40 of us sitting in chairs on the stage.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was on the very, very end, and he starts inducing us into this trance by just getting us to relax, and he's putting us on this cloud.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, I'm gone.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gone mentally, listening to him.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he's got me so relaxed.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I started super relaxed in the chair.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just melting in the chair.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden he he says, relax, just one level further.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I fell out of my chair and I smashed my head so hard on that stage floor that was a wood floor, and it just reverberated through the whole auditorium.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I just heard everyone gasp.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I was fine.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't, I didn't even feel a thing.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wow, this is crazy.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm laying there, this little pile on the floor with 300 people watching me and all these other people sitting in their chairs.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm wondering, what's going on?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's happened to me.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's happening to everyone else, but I'm laying here having this almost orgasmic type experience that was really strange, very uh ecstatic.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm laying there, I was wondering why I didn't have any pain when I was hitting my head on the floor.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, looking back, I know what it is because when you hit a certain state in hypnosis, there's a certain brainwave state that you can hit where you have full-body analgesia and even deeper full body anesthesia, which is what we teach women who are trying to get painless childbirth, right?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're they we teach them a self-hypnosis protocol to get them into that state so they can have a very smooth pregnancy and delivery.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but unbeknownst to me, that's the state that I fell into.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was the same state that uh in the hypnosis realm, we we named it after James Esdill, who uh he'd been doing a whole bunch of surgeries, putting people into this state without chemical anesthesia.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually how the Mao brothers, the male clinic in the early 1900s, how they got famous because they weren't uh using ether to anesthetize people anymore, and which was blowing them up on the tables.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so they'd do this hypnosis protocol, and then they could use less chemical anesthesia.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's the state I was in.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very interesting state.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my first exposure to hypnosis, and I was in a super daze the whole rest of that night, had no idea what was going on.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh I went off and served two years in Brazil for my church, uh for the LDS church, and then I came back and got into tennis, and that was a good opportunity for me to again see how I could get myself into a state of high performance and uh learn some sports psychology.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of got into that side of it as well.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I didn't do much with it after that for many years.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was in and out of all these other jobs, kind of dabbling with the idea of hypnosis for a long time until I was just unfulfilled in in those other jobs.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I went back to school uh to learn the clinical hypnotherapy side.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that was that was life-changing.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've been doing that for seven years now, and we've been able to build an amazingly effective results-based clinic that applies to a lot of different areas, not just the pornography.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so that yeah, that's how I got to where I'm at.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: I I talk to clients all the time about self-talk and self-image and that kind of stuff.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, so and the amazing power of the brain.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um and people sort of get stuck in in thinking patterns, behaviors, they think um it's just the way they are, or because you know, trauma changed their personality, and they they they get stuck in the guilt and the shame and the and the recurring memories and all that, and they feel like um there's almost nothing they can do about it, and often they're taking some pretty strong medication and stuff, and and I'm not against medication, but it it what needs a change is the way they think, what's in their brain, what they're thinking about, and that sort of stuff.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: And this is a great modality to be able to do it for people.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: There are all kinds of different ways to do this with different clinical techniques, but I love this because and I love what you said of all hypnosis is self-hypnosis, and in a sense, I was just talking to a client this morning, and I said, All talk is self-talk, right?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: What you believe about yourself is is a result of what you think about yourself.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's it may it it was built from what other people said, right?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Growing up and over time, and and many women in the military experience a lot of harassment, so that gets in there, but because you accepted it on some level, that's why it feels true for you, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: So you can you can begin to change that narrative by choosing something else, you know.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's a ton of work, it's not easy, it's a thing you have to begin to do every day because your current self-image was built from daily habits of thinking and hearing and stuff.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a way, in my mind, as I'm listening to this, I go, this is a way to sort of short short circuit that process in a sense, right?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, you're right on track.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitely a shortcut in terms of uh compared to all the other modalities, traditional talk therapy, medication, you know, retreats and the like.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I know that you work with different things, but I am curious about the porn piece and why that's such a strong uh frame of reference for you or such a strong like passion for you to really zero in on that uh that problem for people.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for three my first three years in my clinic, I was doing a whole bunch of things.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: We were mainly seeing women for anxiety and depression, you know, they're overwhelmed, they think they're bad moms, all that kind of stuff.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um occasionally we'd get people coming in with bad habits, smoking, chewing, uh, you know, maybe it's a shopaholic, a workaholic, uh, somebody who's vaping or they're stuck on smoking pot or something like that.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of people were coming in also for pornography.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And here in Utah, there's a very high sensitivity to like chastity.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a moral obligation, religious obligation.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can't you can't get married, you can't go to the temple, you can't go on a mission, you can't have certain church callings if you have a porn problem.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a high level of uh not just sensitivity, but accountability here.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's too bad that that high sense of accountability has not been concomitant with a high uh solution ability because there is a 12-step program, there's a there's a LDS family services program that are not super effective.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: The recovery rates are very low.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even with 12-step programs, it's like 200 sessions, you'll get a 70% recovery rate, but you got to have a super high attendance rate, and then you have a 30-day relapse rate.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really not that effective in terms of what works.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of have a high BS detector on what is effective and what isn't.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just like to be results-based, right?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so here, when we were looking at uh all these people who are going through tons of programs for pornography and literally making like barely a dent in the problem.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: One of the, I'll just give you an example.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of the talk therapist companies that was the top company in Utah for 10 years for helping guys overcome pornography addiction, uh, called Fight the New Drug.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, you may have heard of them.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: They have a lot of good research on it now.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they have like 5,000 articles on the negative effects of pornography in case anyone's wondering, like, should I quit this?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, go do some research.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: But um they their former CEO recently told one of my clients who was sending his nephew there for uh help with pornography.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then that former CEO, who was their top therapist, said, you know, we can take him, but it'll take us probably about a year to take to make a dent in that problem.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we're actually referring all of these pornography clients out to hypnotherapists now.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, sweet, it's a win for us in the hypnotherapy industry, but it's too bad that even the uh, you know, the the gold standard first line of defense talk therapies of the CBT and DBT, at least the way that they were using it was not making the progress that they wanted with this particular form of addiction.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right, which is which is interesting because generally with other addictions, uh, smoking, alcoholism, drugs of other kinds, they're they're not so secretive.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can't hide them so much.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in that sense, you can talk to them a lot uh you know a lot more with other people.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this was kind of one of those things that was very secretive, very embarrassing, very shameful and and guilt-ridding people here in Utah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I'm just surrounded by by this Mormon community that kind of was really dealing with this.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: But then as I was looking closer into the statistics, I was seeing that it depending on what statistics you look at, and you can you gotta kind of sift through them and find the reality, but um not that statistics are reality, but what what I was finding was that about two-thirds of marriages in the United States are failing, they're ending in divorce.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the number one reason was was not finances, it was infidelity.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And half of those people that reported that it was due to infidelity, 50% of them were saying that one of the spouses in their relationship was struggling with pornography.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: They had an obsessive interest in pornography.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of one of those gateway drugs to just more problems, right?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right, so to speak.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that was kind of the impetus for diving into it.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided to take a faith-based approach to it with my Christian background and say, hey, you know, I I wrote this book, your problem isn't pornography.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it became a bestseller on Amazon in five different categories, Christian self-help and addiction and recovery and all that, which was really cool, but it's all faith-based.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we're teaching people how the adversary is getting in too, not just how the mind is getting stuck in it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you know, we can talk about biologically how somebody wants to go and look at pornography.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: We can talk about the dopamine hits that they get from that.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what was fascinating to me was some of the the the Christian scriptural understanding of the fact that, for example, Christ, when he was in the flesh on the earth doing his his ministry, about 75% of the miracles that he performed were healings for what seemed to be mental issues.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: They were casting out devils, is what they were.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Which, you know, those could have been mental health issues.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that that's a that's a major part.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and a lot of people who don't have a Christian background might think that that's super weird.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so we say, well, we won't call it a false spirit then.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just call it a a negative emotion if that's what you want to call it.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: But what's important is that they recognize that those are lies and that they're not them and that they can separate from them and that kind of thing.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, uh, that's really fascinating.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I porn addiction is actually a pretty big problem within the military community.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, probably more so with men than women.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I wonder is there a component of like um porn in response to like feelings of maybe boredom or stress or whatever?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Is there like is the reason people get into porn more than just um you know, personal entertainment?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: Is there more to it than that?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it really is it escapism?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what are what are the kind of reasons I know when I was a young guy in the barracks in the army, uh, there was tons of porn, and partly it's like 18, 19 year olds hyped up on infant we were infantry guys, paratroopers.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're adrenaline dudes, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Adrenaline junk dude.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: That probably and so and so, like one person said recently, once you once you get somebody in a mode of where it they're capable of killing, jumping out of an airplane, like they're doing all this high-risk behavior as part of their job, then things like pornography, alcohol, other other behaviors, uh it especially that age, you feel like you could do anything, you're bulletproof, you don't really think about long-term effects of things.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but beyond like just the 18, 19-year-old stuff, I know plenty, I know of plenty of senior level officers and NCOs who are porn addicted and their spouses are are and they're having real marital problems because of it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm wondering about the source or what causes people to get into that addiction.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you nailed it.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Escapism is a is a good one, an interesting one.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and most this is kind of interesting because a lot of people will say, oh, it's a guilt problem, oh, it's a shame problem.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, when I when I say that, I mean like quick pornography programs, quick pornography coaches that are like life coaches.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times they'll say, Oh, your problem is that you feel guilty about this, or there's shame attached to it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if you would remove that, then you wouldn't have the problem anymore.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually not seen that that's the case.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I've done almost 4,000 sessions, over 4,000 sessions now with people over the last seven years.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen a pretty consistent pattern.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh the number one negative self-thought is I'm not good enough.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems like all of our problems can come back to this idea.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't feel like I'm good enough.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And because I don't feel good enough, now now it leads to this avoidance of taking responsibility and it leads to escapism instead, right?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like you just mentioned.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so in that sense, the reason I wrote this book, your problem isn't pornography, is because a lot of people think that pornography is, like you said, maybe it's just them seeking to uh get their entertainment kicks out with uh and and get their lust kicks out at the same time, right?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And lust and entertainment and uh exposure to pornography are not the problem.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because the question really is why are you going to that in the first place?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you going to that?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because some people don't go to pornography.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not a lot of people do.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like 85% of singles that were surveyed between 18 and 35 years old uh struggle with pornography.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I talked to four bishops, church leaders here in the congregations here in Utah, four bishops who were over singles wards, these 18 to 35-year-old age groups.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: They said 100% of their uh congregation uh made up about 500 people struggled with pornography or coming to them struggling.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, on a smartphone, access to the internet, you get that pretty pretty easy.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the question is, why are people doing that?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, I'll I'll give you uh I'll give you some case studies.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you three case studies and and you tell me what what you think the commonality is with these three, okay?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say um one was a bishop that came to me, he had a porn problem, a porn masturbation problem, and he wanted to fix it.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, people are coming to him confessing this problem, trying to help, right?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's in a position of authority there.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he came to me and we we induced him down into trance and we do some age aggression work sometimes, sometimes we do, sometimes we don't.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: But in his case, we found out that 20 years earlier, when he had gotten into college, he was all alone and he felt very sad and felt very disconnected from the rest of his family.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this sadness just seemed to overwhelm him.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so he started looking at pornography to feel better.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's case study number one.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another kid had been going to there's a program here in Utah.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't want to make him feel bad, so I won't say which one it is if they hear this, but uh, they're like a number one touted kind of program here in Utah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this kid had gone to it for 10 years consistently, to where he had risen up the ranks till he was he was a leader, a facilitator, or a coach helping these other kids, 30-year-old guy, and he still had his problem.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he didn't know why.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: He came in, we did one session with him and knocked it out.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: But what we found was that when he was 10 years old, his dog died, and he was just crushed.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he was more crushed because his dad didn't sympathize with him at all.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then his dad died the next year and he had massive grief over his dad dying and some unresolved bad relationship there.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's all we resolved, and his porn problem went completely away.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: 10 years of like all the introspection that this amazing program was having to go through, all the journaling, and you know, okay.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that's case study number two.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh number three, very simple.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Kid comes in with pornography and he's had it for about 15 years.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: It all went back to when he was in junior high and in eighth grade, he wanted to ask this girl out, and she totally rejected him.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then he came, he was exposed to pornography.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the same feelings that he had that were stressful feelings of rejection, he felt like he could numb out and feel better about by looking at pornography.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: So in those three case studies, what might you find as like a commonality or what stands out to you as relationships here?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's what's the real problem?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's there's a major emotional need.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's either some sense of loss or some uh you know, in the case of of the the the second person who was who had that sense of loss, um the first person this loneliness, this need for emotional connection, right?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: And and then the third one, um the same thing, like there's an emotional need there.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: She he was rejected, which said, I'm you know, and try probably translated that into I'm not worthy, I'm not any good, I'm not valuable.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And and that may be a commonality among all three of them, but it's really could it it could be alcohol or drugs or any other addictive kind of thing that's meeting the emotional need.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: I there's uh guy, I don't remember his name, but a friend of mine turned him on to me, does these podcasts um about about alcoholism, and he just it's just him talking through things very active in Alcoholics Anonymous and all that.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: But he always said, like, it's not it's not about alcohol, it's about some emotional need, and so what you've got to do is figure out what is missing there emotionally, what is it, what is or or or lack of confidence or self-image or whatever.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's this internal need that you're using alcohol or in this case porn to numb yourself from to avoid rather than like in fully engaging.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I sort of see those things.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and we could get into some of the theory of how we approach fix fixing people's problems at the speed of thought using hypnotherapy, because it's based on understanding definitionally the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, what an addiction, a so-called addiction, actually is, and um how to reverse it out.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because if somebody has a belief that they're not good enough, and that belief is something that you have, and it's something that I have, but you tend to go to alcohol and I tend to go to pornography, then is the symptom the problem?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, the symptom is not the problem.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: That behavior is not the problem, the action is not the problem, the alcohol is not the problem, the pornography is not the problem.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Those are not the problem, they're just symptoms.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we we don't want to address symptoms.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's like going to the doctor and you have a tummy ache and they give you thumbs, right?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's not gonna fix the problem.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to get into what is really causing it.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in this sense, you can kind of think of uh the hierarchy of things that you might address.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're ever looking at a program, you want to see what exactly are they addressing to get to the root cause.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: But you'd you'd say that those symptoms, the the actions and behaviors that are popping out the other end of this relay in your mind, that actions are kind of sitting at the most superficial level.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then you look a little bit deeper and say, what's the emotion behind that?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the emotion is what's driving that action because we know that the emotion in the limb in the limbic system is what's pushing the cerebellum to create the physical activity for the movement in the body in that direction, right?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this is this is a a neuroscientifically proven process, but you've got you've got the actions, and underneath that you have the emotions, and underneath that you have uh a combination of imagination and and memory.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then again, these are limbic system, what we call subconscious functions, because they're not part of that neocortex, that outer cortex of the brain that's doing more of the executive decision-making functions.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: That outer cortex, most people think is what's driving their behavior.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's that inner brain.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: That limbic system of the brain is driving the uh the emotional output, that electrochemical output in the brain, because that's where these neurons are are deciding to fire together in the network that says we're gonna create emotions out of this.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the emotions are driving that the actions, right?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what's underneath the imagination, the memories, or in other words, what's what is informing the imagination to know what memories to pull up, to justify the emotions and the actions in this sequence.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Underneath that, we have belief systems.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this is our moral systems, our creeds that we live by.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And those belief systems in hypnotherapy, we're always saying, we're always saying, well, let's rewire the subconscious, let's change the belief system.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it's actually not the belief system that we're targeting, it's what's underneath the belief system, and that is also a belief system, but it more at its core, it's an identity.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and you've you uh you mentioned this already in some of your other things that I was looking at, is that identity is really so when when you get to the identity and you get to that core universal negative self-thought that I'm not good enough, well, that's gonna inform everything now.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm too weak, I can't fix this.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: What's the point?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh like I'm screwed, and if I'm screwed, like why would I give any more towards life?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: I might as well just check out, and then that's that's bad news.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, this this is fascinating, and and I I do want to get into the how a little bit of the how-to process so people can understand how it works, but just what you hit on is so so freaking powerful.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh, I was just talking about today with a client very similar things, and she said it's so hard to re-identify yourself to to establish a new identity for yourself.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, It's like a it's like you've already built this monumental building made of marble, right?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so now you have to like re-chisel it, and that's not gonna be easy.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: The I even though identity in some ways is a little fluid at its core level, it's been established after years and years and years of self-talk and other people's evaluations and your own failures that you've taken personally and made it a valuation on yourself and all that stuff, and so so um I'll give you an example for myself.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: I recently learned about, and I'll try to make this short.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but you know, maybe someone else can benefit from it too.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I really I religion, uh, some religious beliefs and religious approaches can exacerbate the problem, right?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: If it if it's a non-personal identity agency approach, right?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I grew up with a very much like a very restrictive view of God, a very uh legalistic, um, you know, and so even though and so I'm 54 years old, right?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: And and I've changed a lot religiously over the years, but because that that upbringing was so young at an early age, it's still some of it's running in the background, especially when you run into like I run into some really challenging things that I'm not very equipped to handle.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the problem, the reason I'm not very equipped to handle is because I just don't know enough, like I don't have enough skills, I haven't learned enough about that particular area.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's business finance, maybe it's whatever, but it it's an incredibly emotionally difficult thing for me, right?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because somewhere along the line, there's a sense of lack of personal agency.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm not smart enough to do this, figure this out, whatever.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: Even though I'm I I know I'm a very smart person, right?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, so what happened to me is that the more I struggled, the harder I prayed, the more I studied my Bible, the more I tried to be a person of faith, right?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I was really avoiding the real problem, it was just lack of business knowledge, right?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: What I needed to do is read more business books, not read the Bible more.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's nothing wrong with praying, reading the Bible, and whatever, but I was pushing off my problem onto God rather than taking charge of it and finding out how to fix it, right?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it came from a background of you got to wait on God.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: It what what happened?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: What my dad did is a terrible business person as a result, we were often poor, right?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: But instead of learning how to be a better business person, he said, God is against me, and he would say that openly and verbally all the time, right?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: And we always rejected as kids, right?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like rash rationally, we rejected it.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because he said, No, you just suck at business, right?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: And you probably shouldn't be doing this business because you're no good at it, or you should learn.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: But subconsciously, that sort of belief that God arbitrarily chooses who to bless and who to curse was running in the background.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: So when I when I ran against some real problems that I was not trained to deal with because I wasn't trained as a business person, I was trained as a military person.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: My instinct and response was to go to God is punishing me for some reason for some unknown sin, right?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right, and it was this total lack of personal agency.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that was really, I never thought about that when I was military.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: When I ran into military problems, I never thought, well, God is against me.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: I just thought I used my training and solved it.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, so I think in a similar way, like people are encountering similar things, you know.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: This uh, I heard let go and let God and all this stuff.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing wrong with that when there are things that you can't control, but when there are things that are you can do something about, you need to do something about it, and yeah, what what happens is our our those under that really deep layer of what we see who we see ourselves as being often prevents us from taking reasonable good action to solve our problems, and that's where addiction comes in.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: For me, it wasn't addiction, it was more religious, it was sort of more religiosity, which wasn't solving my problem because my problem wasn't religion, it was lack of business knowledge, you know what I'm saying?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I can see how by getting to that deepest core level of those uh programs, those like programs that are running in the background, those personal commandments that you that were given or you give yourself, I'm not this, I can't do this, whatever.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: They're running deep, they're hiding.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, when you encounter like this major emotional trauma, they take charge instead of your rational brain that goes, just because a woman rejected me doesn't mean I'm no good.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: It just means she doesn't, she doesn't, she it's her loss, her loss, right?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, so so that's a little bit of confession from me, but it's just really powerful what you're saying.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: And um in my talk therapy, I'm trying to get at that for people, but I but I want to know how you're like a little bit of how to, a little bit of the mechanics of how and why your program works to be able to get like right to those deep things.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh here's here's one key principle that I keep in mind that I learned from a neuroscientist who had done a whole bunch of his own studies, fMRIs and whatnot, on people who are in stress states.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: This was a very interesting finding, and they repeated it and repeated it and repeated it.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that was that if you are trying to solve a problem in your life from survival mode, from a stressed-out state, from inside a disturbing emotional state, you will make it worse 100% of the time.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: There was no exception to this finding.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: We did not find one single person over study after study after study after study.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is so fascinating to me.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I heard that, I thought, nah, that can't be accurate.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I heard it again, then I heard it again, then I heard I thought, no way, no way.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And yet that is what it what the science shows.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: That one piece of information alone should tell you that if you're trying to force a change on somebody who's in a disturbed emotional state, they're acting from survival, you will make it worse.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you have to do?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: The answer would be that you would have to, because because neuroscientifically, what they mean by this is that the amygdala keeps wanting to process the information.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: The amygdala is that survival center, but and we we say that's where the ego is, and and it just won, it only cares about your survival.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that's not actually true.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: That it's not like there's some universal survival mechanism.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: It only wants to keep intact the belief systems that you've you've told it are important, right?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you might fear something that is not fearful to me, like it's totally neutral threat, right?
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in that sense, the survival mechanism mechanism is only uh referring back to your belief systems and saying, are we okay?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we believe about this situation, right?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when the amygdala is firing, if if you continue to make it fire like that, you're gonna make it worse 100% of the time, no matter how good a critical analyst you are on the conscious side of your brain, that frontal lobe is trying to figure this out and set goals and new ways of thinking about the problem.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot do it from that state.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're gonna make it worse by doing that, and if we know that you have to uh think new things, you have to think new thoughts, otherwise, you won't solve your problem.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: The reason you add it is because you're thinking the same thoughts.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what a belief is.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's you're just thinking the same thoughts over and over and over again.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in that sense, that's what an addiction is.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: That these are beliefs that you can't stop having.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an action.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: That symptom is not what the problem is.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that you keep looking at pornography, it's that you keep having the same belief system and you can't stop thinking that belief system, or at least you think that you can't stop thinking the same belief system over and over and over again.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so in hypnotherapy, it would be similar to saying uh if you were praying properly or breath work or meditation, if you could do it properly, then you would quiet down that amygdala so that it's not firing, so that communication between the limbic system and the conscious brain, the frontal lobe, opens up.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this information that is coming in says, oh, we can think new thoughts about this.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then the whole brain kind of becomes uh synchronic, synchronistic in its hemispheres.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, what's happening, you have about 19 different compartments of the brain that that all fire on different frequencies when they're not synced up.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: But we find in in meditative states and in hypnotherapy states that all of those different normally separate, almost like community communities and neighborhoods that are all just kind of doing their own thing.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: They all start communicating with each other.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the synergy of that communication makes it feel effortless to f to fix the problem.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what people call flow state.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: In flow, it's automatic, it's effortless.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a big marble castle of belief system identity statements that you've been given yourself that you you're talking about.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: To the subconscious, it's not a big castle, it's just a curtain to be put and brushed aside with your hand because the subconscious doesn't care how big the problem is, it doesn't deal in time or magnitude.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't care how big the problem is or how long you've had it.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a computer program.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's just been created by you.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's been created by you, if you were a developer and you were smart enough, you'd know how to get in there and just fix the glitch, take it out, and tell it what you want to do instead.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Give it the right command.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it changely.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Instantaneously.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or as the quantum physicists say, faster than instantaneously.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a crazy phenomenon.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we say we can fix people at the speed of thought.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in one session, 50% of the people that come in are done.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: 90 uh done in that one session, 95% of them are done in one to three sessions.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's that's wild when you're considering somebody who's been on this medication for 20, 30 years or stuck in this belief system or this addiction for that long, and they're changing that fast, and they can go back and be exposed to all of the same old triggers, all the same old threats, and none of them feel threatening anymore.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: They just find new ways to think.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's fascinating.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to talk about this more.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: We're we're sort of running out of time.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I but I want to make sure uh people know how to get in touch with you.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: What it, if they want to learn, well, first put up, put up, tell us about the book again.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm assuming you can get it on Amazon and then your website, other ways that people can can reach out to you.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the book itself, your problem isn't pornography.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: How to uh the truth that will save your you from yourself at the speed of thought, guaranteed.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: It goes through the first section, is all about how the adversary is sneaking in and messing with us.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: The second part is all about how to properly pray and repent, different than maybe we learned in Sunday school growing up in Christian denominations.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um the third portion is explaining how all this hypnotherapy works, and then starting to give people practical skills and tools to know how to fix their problem.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there are three bonuses that are links in here to trainings that people can go engage in if they want to start uh collapsing negative emotional states, cravings, temptations, old ways of thinking, very, very powerful subconscious reprogramming or redirecting uh skills and tools that are free, freely accessible in here.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it if you buy this on Amazon, it's about 25 bucks.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you go on my website uh at www.nolimitshypnotherapy.com, you can get it for seven bucks.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's where that's where people can find me, no limitshypnotherapy.com.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: If they, you know, if they want to uh you know, we we give free consultations for people if they want help with whatever, but you know, whether they we see people remotely all over the world, but whether they come to us or they go somewhere else, um I think it's just important that they understand that they're entirely capable of fixing this, they've just forgotten that.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that the pro the solution to their problem is not external to them, it's internal.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as they say, that the deeper you go the inside yourself, the closer you get to God.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where that infinite glory and that kingdom of God inside you has all the information that you need to fix the problem.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and however you can do that, hypnotherapy, meditation, uh, breath work retreats, these are all very good at getting the conscious mind out of the way so that it can slow down and say, Hey, let's let's find the new ways of thinking, right?
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I appreciate that.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Maimon Deeds, who's probably the most prolific Jewish writer, rabbi, physician, philosopher of the 12th century, he says the way you access God is through your intellect, he gave it to you to use, and the way you access God is through your intellect and study of science and creation and all this stuff.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm a big follower of his philosophy.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a Christian, but I love his philosophy because it really gets at God is something you can access right now because you see it in all the world he created, he created this world, natural processes, the way your brain works, all that for you to use, not to wait for him to do things for you, not to just you know leave it to him, but to use what he gave you to to be this amazing person created in the image of God and explore that and be that, live that fully.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, that's in line with what you're saying.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's all there, it's all in here, and this is a great technique.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very excited uh to talk to you.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad we could expose this to our listeners to really because I know many people can really, really benefit from this.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate it, Nelson.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's great spending some time with us today.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I hope like you get so flooded with clients you have to you know get 30 other people to do the stuff.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, I think you're doing a great work in the world, and I really appreciate it.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thank you.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you letting me come on and take some time to be with you, Daniel.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.