Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Psychology Series 5: Chris Collins / Process Addictions and Pornography

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Psychology Series 5: Chris Collins / Process Addictions and Pornography · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together.
• 0:15
  How old are you? And you moved out to Florida?
• 0:16
  Chris, Welcome. Thank you.
• 0:19
  Easiest way to start. I I was 26 years old, 26 going
• 0:25
  on 18. 26 going on 18. I feel like a lot of people
• 0:28
  today are like that, right? You live in the age of delayed
• 0:31
  adolescence. Yeah, and I tried my best to
• 0:34
  delay it as much as possible, yeah.
• 0:37
  I think that there's like a split between.
• 0:41
  I, I, I tried, I'm always trying to find this line between, I
• 0:44
  call it like straddling the line between responsibility and fun,
• 0:47
  you know, and like, it's such a delicate slope, but like, I feel
• 0:51
  like a life well lived, like is, has that perfect balance of
• 0:55
  like, listen, I know a time and place to be responsible and I
• 0:59
  know a time and place to just like enjoy, by the way, even
• 1:02
  while you're engaging your responsibilities, you could like
• 1:04
  turn that into fun or enjoyable events as long as they're not
• 1:09
  coming at the sacrifice of the other.
• 1:11
  And I think that a lot of times people have the hardest time
• 1:13
  balancing those two. I can never remember this book,
• 1:17
  but I remember this part where he talked about like if the
• 1:20
  United States was really balanced, if you had the Statue
• 1:23
  of Liberty on one side, like somewhere in California, you
• 1:26
  need the the Statue of Responsibility.
• 1:31
  That's such a good line. Right, because liberty without
• 1:34
  responsibility is chaos, and responsibility without some
• 1:39
  liberty is really boring. Yeah.
• 1:41
  So I it's crushing. Crushing.
• 1:44
  Totally, totally. So you moved down to Florida
• 1:46
  26th going on 18. Why'd you move down?
• 1:50
  I I moved down here, it was November of 2014 to get sober.
• 1:59
  To get sober. To get sober I I had been in and
• 2:03
  out of treatment centers through most of my like early 20s and
• 2:07
  teens. Starting teens.
• 2:12
  Yeah, I was 1415 years old when I went to my first treatment
• 2:15
  center and I had been trying to get sober for a really long
• 2:21
  time. And I just being around the same
• 2:25
  people, places and things being around Philadelphia, I would
• 2:29
  get, I had a year once I would get like 30 days or 90 days, but
• 2:34
  something inevitably would happen or I'd run into that
• 2:37
  person at the store and then I was off again.
• 2:42
  Yeah. And it's, it's interesting.
• 2:44
  I actually had this conversation with my my mom and dad when I
• 2:47
  had three years sober. They came and gave me my
• 2:49
  medallion. That's beautiful.
• 2:51
  It was. It was, it was a really
• 2:52
  beautiful night. My mom told me, she said when
• 2:56
  you went down there, we knew that you could die.
• 2:59
  And she's like, that's not what we ever wanted.
• 3:04
  But we we knew it wasn't up to us anymore.
• 3:08
  And I think as, like, I had hit my bottom spiritually,
• 3:12
  emotionally, physically, all the stuff, they had reached their
• 3:16
  bottom as enablers at the same time.
• 3:19
  Yeah. And I think that they finally
• 3:22
  let go. And yeah.
• 3:26
  And then I finally stood up and grew up.
• 3:28
  Yeah. It's really beautiful.
• 3:30
  You think it happened that necessity?
• 3:32
  You think it was just changing of your settings?
• 3:34
  Stuff like that? I think it was both.
• 3:39
  I think, yeah, I well, there was a lot of it was a perfect storm
• 3:44
  of things. It was my parents had stop
• 3:48
  enabling me like, because I remember I called them.
• 3:51
  I had 90 days and I was like, I'm ready to come home.
• 3:54
  And my mom sent me a list of homeless shelters like West Palm
• 3:57
  Beach. And she's like, OK, you're not
• 4:00
  coming back. Like, thank God she did that.
• 4:04
  At the time, I did not feel that way.
• 4:06
  I was really angry, but I'd imagine so.
• 4:08
  I think it was, it was that I had started working with
• 4:12
  therapist who had finally talked about like the big T word, which
• 4:16
  no one had ever really talked to me about that before, which was
• 4:19
  trauma. I think that made all the
• 4:22
  difference. I had also made a group of
• 4:26
  friends who were also sober and became my family and, and just
• 4:33
  that like beautiful connection. And that was a huge part of it.
• 4:40
  And, and honesty, I think for a long time, like I just was
• 4:45
  hiding from everything and everyone.
• 4:49
  So yeah, it was this really beautiful storm of events.
• 4:52
  I finally had like really good treatment coupled with parents
• 4:56
  who were done and a group of friends and a new place where I
• 5:01
  was away from all my triggers and to even to like, I think
• 5:06
  geographical locations to run away from your problems doesn't
• 5:09
  work, but I think geographical relocations for recovery does
• 5:14
  because I even remember going home at six months a year and
• 5:19
  like the dark cloud would come over me.
• 5:20
  Again, I could imagine. And then I would come back to
• 5:23
  South Florida and I was like, I can like breathe.
• 5:26
  So my body would remember, which is really interesting.
• 5:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I've had, I've had very similar
• 5:34
  experiences for sure. And I've also, it's funny that
• 5:36
  you say that you can't run away from like yourself, your state.
• 5:40
  I guess I used to, I used to go before while I was still trying
• 5:46
  to figure out what I was trying to do with myself before I was
• 5:48
  married, before I had any kind of direction in terms of work, a
• 5:51
  creative outlet or anything like that.
• 5:54
  I knew what I, I knew I wanted to find that.
• 5:56
  I just didn't know how to. And a lot of times it manifested
• 5:59
  by me just feel like I had to just break out and go somewhere
• 6:02
  and I would just just and I would just go for cross country
• 6:05
  drives New York to Florida, NY to Washington, excuse me and,
• 6:11
  and sometimes it would be beneficial.
• 6:12
  I remember one time I did it and I was driving down to Florida
• 6:16
  and like I was over the, I was driving to the Carolinas and
• 6:19
  like, I was driving into like a, like a tornado or a tropical
• 6:23
  storm or something like that. And I just felt like the storm
• 6:26
  inside and outside matching up. And I was like, I am not doing
• 6:32
  this out of a healthy place. I'm running away from something
• 6:34
  and I don't even know what. I'm like, I, I remember the,
• 6:37
  the, the, the realization washed over me like so succinctly.
• 6:42
  And I was like, I don't know, I, I'm just trying to run to get
• 6:47
  out of my own skin. And I don't, and that's not,
• 6:50
  this isn't the way to do it. You know, this isn't the way to
• 6:53
  solve my problem. You know, sometimes getting away
• 6:55
  isn't, you know, there's, there's something to accomplish
• 6:57
  by that. But that particular problem I
• 7:00
  was like, this isn't going to solve.
• 7:01
  And I ended up writing about that.
• 7:03
  I'll show you the poem I wrote after.
• 7:05
  Yeah. It's called Driving Into a
• 7:06
  Hurricane. And it's, yeah, I have, I have
• 7:10
  ambitions to turn into a song, but I, I'm not creative enough
• 7:14
  yet with my guitar to, to do that.
• 7:16
  So, so I wanted it. So I want this episode for this
• 7:22
  particular podcast to be something that is informative,
• 7:29
  educational and relevant to anyone that's potentially
• 7:33
  listening to it. Because I think that I the topic
• 7:36
  of porn addiction and sex addiction is taboo, even though
• 7:43
  very taboo for a lot of people, even though it's an issue that
• 7:46
  everyone, everyone struggles with.
• 7:51
  And I want to hear about your experience.
• 7:54
  And I kind of want to, you know, you could you kind of start by
• 7:57
  telling me how you got into this space and you know what you see
• 8:01
  and we can kind of direct the conversation from there.
• 8:02
  That's. Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:06
  So I, I came down here, I got sober and I got my year of
• 8:12
  sobriety, I mean. How hard is that?
• 8:16
  Honestly, like, I mean, it was hard looking back and I can, I
• 8:20
  can say this in retrospect, like, but it just seemed like
• 8:25
  things just aligned perfectly. So at the same time it was kind
• 8:32
  of easy. I mean, I think emotionally it
• 8:35
  was really hard, but I didn't even have the words to like or
• 8:40
  they understanding until years later in like, retrospect.
• 8:43
  Yeah, yeah. That first year was like just
• 8:46
  stay sober and like get a pack of cigarettes and a nice coffee
• 8:50
  like every day did. Your, your, your, your new group
• 8:53
  of friends. Were they instrumental in that?
• 8:55
  Yeah. Like would you you guys would
• 8:57
  call each other and support each other if you felt you were
• 8:58
  having a hard time and? All the time.
• 9:00
  And what would? What were some, what were some,
• 9:04
  I guess, words of condolence or support that worked and what are
• 9:07
  some words, what are the ideas that don't work that for you at
• 9:10
  least? Especially during that first
• 9:12
  year, I think, and I've, I've learned this lesson over the
• 9:21
  last 10 years, is that the people who helped the most are
• 9:25
  the ones who were just willing to sit with you in it.
• 9:30
  And I, I had found people who like didn't try to fix me,
• 9:33
  didn't try to change me how I felt wasn't wrong.
• 9:37
  It was just, it just was what it was and, and really taught me
• 9:41
  how to do that as well, which made all the difference.
• 9:49
  And it's, you know, especially down here in South Florida, it's
• 9:53
  you can't throw a rock without hitting a treatment center.
• 9:56
  Halfway house. Yeah.
• 9:58
  And we just, we're kind of all in the same boat.
• 10:00
  And I, I'd say this all the time.
• 10:04
  Like, I remember the halfway house that I lived in, I found a
• 10:07
  group of men that I didn't know I needed, which made all the
• 10:11
  difference, you know? So yeah, I think people's
• 10:14
  willingness to just sit with you in it and not try to change you
• 10:17
  or what's going on because you can't.
• 10:20
  It's just you have to kind of go through it.
• 10:22
  Yeah. So you have to so you think
• 10:24
  being understood or being, you know, like just someone sharing
• 10:30
  in like being able to express that you're having a hard time
• 10:32
  with someone and someone just being listening, you know, just
• 10:36
  receiving end. Absolutely.
• 10:39
  And I think it's really hard to like develop that as a skill
• 10:43
  because we want to like we want to fix it.
• 10:45
  We want. I remember I heard someone talk
• 10:47
  about fixing bias. Like, you'll listen to someone's
• 10:49
  problem for 40 seconds and you already have the plan how
• 10:53
  they're going to get out of it, not realizing that.
• 10:55
  Like, it's like you needed another 10 minutes to really
• 10:58
  understand what was going on. And then also that they didn't
• 11:01
  really want you to fix it. They just wanted you to know,
• 11:03
  yeah, you know, and that is that's such a powerful tool for
• 11:08
  connection. Yeah, yeah, it's something I
• 11:10
  struggle with, by the way, 'cause I get so excited about
• 11:12
  ideas and conversation that I end up being like, Oh my
• 11:14
  goodness, you know, and I got it's, it's hard for me, but I'm
• 11:18
  working on it. I.
• 11:19
  Like, I have to bite my tongue sometimes.
• 11:20
  And then I'll have like, friends of mine who are just like, hey,
• 11:23
  like, I don't need a therapist right now.
• 11:24
  Yeah, you could talk back to me. But yeah, it's I think that was
• 11:31
  something that really changed everything in the beginning.
• 11:34
  Gotcha. So you're so you're sober?
• 11:36
  You're sober. I started working in treatment.
• 11:39
  I I was a overnight tech at a adolescent male facility.
• 11:47
  I did that for a while. Then I got in.
• 11:49
  Then I went to the treatment center.
• 11:51
  I worked at the treatment center that I went to.
• 11:54
  Was that weird? It was.
• 11:58
  It was like full circle, you know, I'm really grateful that
• 12:03
  I, I got to work there. I, I worked there for five
• 12:05
  years. Wow.
• 12:07
  And I kind of like grew up clinically there.
• 12:11
  There was phenomenal therapist there at the time that just
• 12:15
  really taught me a lot of things.
• 12:17
  I, I know. And what I started to notice was
• 12:23
  that people would come in for substance use and that they
• 12:26
  would put down the bottle and they were picking up the phone
• 12:30
  or they would put down the needle and they were picking up
• 12:34
  massage parlors. And yeah, I started noticing
• 12:39
  that a lot. Or, you know, you would hear
• 12:42
  friends who had, like, five years sober who are suicidal
• 12:47
  and, like, can't stop going to the Hard Rock, you know?
• 12:51
  So yeah, I started becoming aware that, like, process
• 12:54
  addictions existed. Can you?
• 12:56
  Explain what a process addiction is.
• 12:59
  So basically it's, I, I look at them, it's things outside of
• 13:05
  substance use. It's the process of it, you
• 13:08
  know, So I, I look at like gambling, the goal isn't to win
• 13:13
  or lose. The goal is to keep playing.
• 13:15
  And it takes people some time to kind of figure that out.
• 13:18
  In fact, I I was watching this one thing and they were showing
• 13:21
  that it's kind of anti climatic after you pull the lever.
• 13:26
  It's like everything leading up to it.
• 13:28
  It's driving to the Hard Rock, it's fantasizing about buying my
• 13:31
  mom a new house. It's all of those kind of
• 13:34
  things. So then when you actually do it,
• 13:37
  it's the brains. Like I want to go back to the
• 13:40
  fantasy and everything that was leading up to it.
• 13:43
  Sex addiction, compulsive sexual behaviours, pornography
• 13:47
  addiction, food is in there, intulsive eating, things like
• 13:52
  that. There's some people who
• 13:57
  shopping, shopping 100%. I need to get Amazon off my
• 14:02
  phone. It's.
• 14:06
  Slow, I can imagine unlike that with craft beer.
• 14:09
  And there's there's an app that I use called Tavor.
• 14:12
  And this app was so dangerous. And basically the way it works
• 14:15
  is you put in your credit card and and they would make a
• 14:19
  compilation of the top brew like micro breweries from around the
• 14:22
  country that ordinarily you wouldn't be able to access if I
• 14:25
  live here. And there's brewery in Wyoming
• 14:27
  or Seattle or California and you create your own crate and they
• 14:32
  basically have a big warehouse to get all the beer in from
• 14:34
  these places. And you could pick this
• 14:35
  collection and then they, for A1 set price, they send you
• 14:37
  everything, but you pay at the time that you add it to your
• 14:44
  cart, right. So, for example, if there's a
• 14:47
  can of an IPA that is, you know, $6, I pay, I, I, I swipe, I want
• 14:55
  it, I pay that $6 now and then as to my car.
• 14:58
  And I don't think about it later because I've, you know, so it's,
• 15:00
  it's, it's a very interesting, you pay in small increments, but
• 15:05
  then you get one big shipment, you know, and one big kind of
• 15:10
  dopamine release, you know. And also this little dope of.
• 15:13
  Being yeah, all along the way, you know, and then, then there's
• 15:16
  the notification to push notifications.
• 15:18
  New one came out and I'm like, and I looked at my credit card
• 15:20
  bill a month. I was like, this is what I spend
• 15:22
  on beer. This is, this is out of control.
• 15:24
  So I had to delete the app. I never looked back.
• 15:26
  But I I really it's, it's, it's slippery.
• 15:30
  And there's no doubt in my mind that the creators of that app
• 15:33
  knew exactly what they were doing with the reward system of
• 15:36
  their brain. So yeah.
• 15:38
  Yeah, that just like a little pieces along the way and then
• 15:41
  when you get the big one. Definitely, definitely.
• 15:43
  Yeah. So I'm sorry to interrupt you
• 15:44
  though. So, yeah, so continue.
• 15:46
  So anyway, so you were saying so, so process.
• 15:48
  So process addiction is that people are addicted to whatever
• 15:51
  process it is and then getting that result in the subsequent
• 15:56
  hit, dopamine hit, I guess. Yeah, and the, and the ones
• 15:58
  along the way, you know, it's I, I, I think about someone who's
• 16:05
  struggling with sex addiction that it's, it's going to the gas
• 16:10
  station, it's taking money out or going to your bank, taking
• 16:12
  money out. The drive.
• 16:15
  The now I'm on the, the Internet and I'm looking at reviews for
• 16:20
  massage parlors and then I'm pulling up to one.
• 16:23
  It's, it's the whole thing leading up to the very end.
• 16:29
  And or it's the I'm jumping on a dating app and I'm swiping and
• 16:34
  texting for upwards of eight hours and sometimes not even
• 16:39
  meeting a human, like, because their, their brain is more
• 16:44
  interested in that 8 hours. And then when you look at that
• 16:49
  in retrospect, like I've worked with people who are like, I was
• 16:51
  doing that like 8 hours a day at work, like at home, sitting at
• 16:56
  the table with my friends and family.
• 16:59
  I remember I had a professor once who said like the, and he
• 17:02
  was quoting somebody else. The mistress lives in your
• 17:04
  pocket. Yeah, you know.
• 17:08
  Scary. Yeah, it's it is scary, but it's
• 17:12
  in the brain can kind of just disassociate like that and you
• 17:15
  blink and hours have gone by. And the same with pornography,
• 17:18
  you know, it's that looking for the perfect video and you start
• 17:24
  at 9:00 PM and you say, well, I have work at six, so I'm going
• 17:27
  to bed at 11. And then before you know it,
• 17:29
  it's like 4 in the morning and you can hear the birds.
• 17:33
  Out. Do you hear that a lot?
• 17:34
  You hear stories about that a lot.
• 17:35
  All the time. Really.
• 17:36
  All the time that they start going and like can't stop and
• 17:42
  then are sometimes they're like, OK, I'm going to chug a Red
• 17:45
  Bull. No way.
• 17:46
  Take a shower and I'm going to go to work and I haven't slept.
• 17:50
  Oh, man, absolutely. So what is that?
• 17:56
  What? What?
• 17:57
  What? What?
• 17:58
  Because listen, I, I and I, yeah, maybe cannot even pretend
• 18:04
  to videos otherwise. When I was in high school, I was
• 18:05
  definitely addicted to the point, you know, especially
• 18:09
  because the first two years I was in high school, I was in all
• 18:11
  boys school and I just felt. And there was no, and we could
• 18:14
  talk about this too. There was no conversation about
• 18:18
  sexuality or what is going on or what you're feeling.
• 18:21
  You're like, I'm just like this, like incredibly hormonal 131415
• 18:28
  year old that feels a tremendous sense of guilt every time this
• 18:31
  happens and at the same time can't pull myself away and
• 18:35
  actually got to the point I was I was I was mortally
• 18:39
  embarrassed, but I'm so happy I did it.
• 18:40
  When I went to my mom and I told her to put a block on my phone.
• 18:44
  I was, I think I was 14 and I was like, I didn't get I didn't
• 18:47
  go into any more details. I needed to.
• 18:48
  I'm like mom, I'm like mom, I'm looking at things that I don't
• 18:51
  want to be looking at my phone. Can you please just put a block
• 18:53
  on it? And I found ways like 6 months
• 18:57
  or a year later to even get around those blocks.
• 18:59
  But just the fact that it was there for me kind of help keep
• 19:03
  me like anchor me down a little bit to like have that sense of
• 19:06
  like, even if you're going to engage in this, like limited
• 19:11
  guilt wrong, you know, and like, and it was a struggle.
• 19:15
  It struggles for legitimately struggle probably four or five
• 19:21
  years after that, you know, and I don't think it's ever kicked
• 19:25
  100%, but it's kicked 90%, you know, 8090% or whatever it is.
• 19:30
  But what there's so much that goes into it.
• 19:34
  You know, there's so much that goes into it.
• 19:35
  Do you want to you? So what do you notice?
• 19:37
  What do people describe when they say you know when?
• 19:40
  When they're just painting the picture you just painted?
• 19:43
  So it's if I have 12 different clients in a room, like there's
• 19:47
  12 different stories, OK. And I, I really do look at like,
• 19:53
  like whatever the behavior is, whether it's porn, sex, that
• 19:59
  that is the like the end of the story.
• 20:03
  I look at everything from an attachment lens.
• 20:07
  So how we we learn to connect from zero to three, how we
• 20:13
  connect with our caregivers. Sometimes things can happen.
• 20:16
  And I I think especially like in today's day and age when.
• 20:20
  You know, and I see this all the time, like you see a baby, like
• 20:23
  reaching for like mom or dad and mom and dad are like looking at
• 20:26
  a phone, you know? And I, one of my favorite
• 20:32
  writers, therapist Diane Paul Heller, she talks about it and
• 20:37
  how the number of securely attached people has been going
• 20:40
  down over the years. And I think that we're going to
• 20:45
  see that get worse because of the screens and our relationship
• 20:49
  with screens. But it could be like my.
• 20:52
  Attachment have to do with it though, I'm sorry.
• 20:54
  Just with, with. So let's say let's say that I I
• 21:01
  develop an anxious attachment. Which I definitely have, yeah.
• 21:06
  OK. I have my own, yes.
• 21:07
  OK, so let's say I have anxious attachment to my phone, which I
• 21:10
  have, OK. Yeah.
• 21:12
  Well, and it's, there's a fear of abandonment or there's a fear
• 21:17
  of disconnection, right? This, this kind of wounds that
• 21:21
  was created. And then let's say you go to
• 21:24
  school and you've had some events that kind of reinforce
• 21:27
  that, right. Like maybe the kids were mean to
• 21:29
  me, maybe I was bullied, things like that.
• 21:33
  And then one day I turn on the computer at a friend's house and
• 21:38
  I see whatever it is in front of me.
• 21:42
  Yeah, the brain doesn't differentiate between what is
• 21:45
  real and what is imagined. Like the brain thinks that those
• 21:48
  are real people in the room. OK.
• 21:51
  And porn won't reject me. Porn won't leave me, right?
• 21:56
  You're the hero. All the time, yeah.
• 21:59
  And then I think of like, let's say, let's say like you have
• 22:04
  more of an avoidant attachment and you've been really
• 22:06
  struggling to connect with other humans throughout your life.
• 22:11
  And then you find like campsites where you really, you get to
• 22:15
  play a role and you get to be that hero, right.
• 22:20
  With these people. It's.
• 22:23
  Yeah, it's, it makes sense when you kind of line it all up like
• 22:26
  that with each person that I work with.
• 22:30
  So generally filling a void. Filling a void, but also doing
• 22:36
  your best to connect. And especially when I see it
• 22:39
  become really addictive, it's I think it becomes a form of
• 22:43
  connection and intimacy that is a lot easier and safer than
• 22:50
  going on a date with a person possibly getting rejected.
• 22:53
  Sure. And especially like, like how
• 22:57
  you were sharing that growing up and nobody kind of sitting down
• 23:01
  with you and saying like, hey, there's a lot of things going on
• 23:04
  with your body right now, right. And this is what all this stuff
• 23:08
  is. I don't think I, I've said this
• 23:12
  to you last week. I don't think I've ever had a
• 23:13
  client who or somebody explained to them what was happening with
• 23:19
  their body and sex and all these things.
• 23:23
  And we all turn to the Internet. Yeah.
• 23:26
  Which is the least healthy place to learn about what that is?
• 23:29
  Exactly. Right, right, right.
• 23:32
  And I mean, have you ever heard Scott Galloway talk about the
• 23:37
  loneliness epidemic that's been happening with men?
• 23:39
  I mean, you know, I want to actually ask you about your
• 23:42
  experience in terms of men and men versus female, men versus
• 23:46
  women in terms of their addiction and even maybe their
• 23:50
  patterns or like the root causes of like, you know, are there
• 23:54
  certain things that men are more inclined towards as opposed to
• 23:56
  women? Or are men trying to look for a
• 23:59
  different thing than women are? You know, I mean, I think that
• 24:02
  and also by the way, like what you said about the potential,
• 24:04
  not rejection. I feel like porn as a virtual
• 24:09
  space as opposed to an in person sexual addiction is 2 very
• 24:15
  different forms of like, even though they're both sexual,
• 24:19
  they're both very different manifestations of a way to kind
• 24:23
  of get your high, I guess, or get your, you know, yeah.
• 24:27
  I, I, I agree. Like, so connecting with someone
• 24:30
  versus just watching a video. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:32
  Yeah, yeah. Like you're having another human
• 24:34
  being there and like, whether or not like you're, you know,
• 24:37
  whether you have a relationship with them or not, or, you know,
• 24:39
  to what extent you will in the future or not.
• 24:41
  Like there's another person here right now that you're, that
• 24:44
  you're with, you know, in an intimate way as opposed to I'm
• 24:47
  in my bathroom alone with a blue screen, you know, and that's a
• 24:50
  totally different world. And I feel like 1 tends to,
• 24:53
  like, I feel like the sitting alone in the bathroom with the
• 24:56
  blue screen tends to lend itself towards guilt and shame far
• 24:59
  more. I don't know more, but I would
• 25:01
  imagine I'd be more than if I had like an interconnected
• 25:04
  relationship, you know, like something that's physical.
• 25:06
  I don't know. I mean, I, you know, I'm asking.
• 25:07
  I'm just, I'm just spitballing. Yeah.
• 25:10
  Well, and I think of like, how like that becomes part of it.
• 25:16
  Like we can, we can eroticize emotions in the sense that like,
• 25:26
  you know, here I am in the bathroom and I'm feeling guilt
• 25:28
  and shame and I'm having, I'm not having relational sex
• 25:32
  because I'm with like, I'm having some like a relationship
• 25:35
  with a scream. But the emotions of guilt and
• 25:38
  shame that come up can sometimes become part of the process.
• 25:41
  Yeah. And it's because it's happening
• 25:44
  over and over again where like that actually becomes
• 25:48
  eroticized, right. And then when I have relational
• 25:51
  sex with like a partner or something and like those don't
• 25:54
  exist. It's, it's like my, my brain and
• 25:57
  my body kind of want to go back to the thing that we've been.
• 26:00
  Doing Oh interesting. So you're associating some,
• 26:04
  you're associating that particular activity with the
• 26:07
  emotions of guilt or private or shame or, you know, isolation as
• 26:11
  opposed to sharing and loving and, you know, in connection.
• 26:17
  Yeah, it's, I see that all the time where like that becomes
• 26:22
  sexualized and wanted at least, like unconsciously and then
• 26:27
  sometimes consciously. And you kind of get into all
• 26:29
  these other categories of like power exchange and things like
• 26:33
  that where people are just kind of trying to recreate the thing
• 26:38
  that got wired into the nasal template.
• 26:41
  Like I use this example a lot is like, you know, sometimes people
• 26:46
  can get caught masturbating when they're, when they're young or
• 26:51
  their parents explain sex in a really shameful way and then
• 26:56
  they find themselves exploring sex in a really shameful way.
• 27:00
  Right, because that's the ground work that that was the
• 27:03
  foundation that was that was laid.
• 27:04
  Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think of, you know, if
• 27:07
  my first, if my, I, I, I'm going through puberty and my first
• 27:12
  experiences of being sexual are with screens.
• 27:16
  How like, and I think of an arousal template as like a, a
• 27:19
  dark room. All I'm doing is shining the
• 27:22
  light on the corner, which is screens and pornography, not
• 27:26
  realizing there's this whole other part of my sexuality and
• 27:30
  I'm just reinforcing it over and over and over again.
• 27:33
  And it just becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and escalates
• 27:37
  and yeah, not realizing. And I get people who are no
• 27:43
  longer like even attracted to real humans or relational sex
• 27:48
  because it has taken a hold. I hope that I I feel like I went
• 27:52
  a lot of different. Places No, no, that's OK Yeah,
• 27:54
  yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. I, I, I remember actually
• 27:57
  hearing for the first time in high school about something like
• 27:59
  that, where there's a guy that, you know, was that spent so much
• 28:03
  time watching porn that like, and there was a girl in the
• 28:06
  school that was known to be very, very attractive.
• 28:08
  And, you know, they ended up trying, you know, hooking up or
• 28:11
  whatever. And like he just couldn't, he
• 28:13
  couldn't did it, it didn't work, you know, and, and, you know,
• 28:16
  and that's when I was like, and I heard about that.
• 28:18
  And I think I was, I was either junior or senior in high school
• 28:22
  and I was like, This is why I'm scared of that stuff.
• 28:24
  You know, like, and I remember it's striking me like, I don't
• 28:28
  want that to be the case. And also, I've noticed that
• 28:30
  especially in high school, it creates an unhealthy association
• 28:35
  relationship with just women in general.
• 28:37
  You know, that like, you walk around, you walk around school
• 28:39
  and like every girl isn't just a girl.
• 28:41
  They become a potential for some kind of manifestation
• 28:45
  representation of some kind of sick, unhealthy sexual fantasy
• 28:49
  that is drawn up again based on your relationship with the
• 28:54
  screen. That is no correlation to
• 28:56
  reality. Absolutely.
• 28:58
  Yeah, man. And.
• 29:00
  I cannot tell you how many times like in couples work, we're like
• 29:05
  those conversations needed to be had of like, I am a human.
• 29:09
  I am your wife or I am your husband.
• 29:10
  Yeah. And I know that like you had
• 29:13
  this expectation that our sex life would match this thing that
• 29:17
  is curated produce. Seriously, people in it don't
• 29:21
  even look like that in real life.
• 29:24
  And it is marathon Olympic style sex.
• 29:28
  Yeah. And now here we are as like 2
• 29:31
  humans who do not match that and are falling short and that.
• 29:37
  And it's like, you know, it's an intimacy killer.
• 29:41
  Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it dehumanizes the
• 29:44
  partner as because you're not this thing that I've been
• 29:48
  watching all this time. And then I think it it like
• 29:52
  moves people away from intimacy, connection, being seen,
• 29:58
  authenticity, all those things which are vital in in that
• 30:03
  process. Do you want to continue down the
• 30:05
  couple's road or do you want to go back to men versus female in
• 30:08
  terms of their we'll get to both men and female, men and female.
• 30:11
  Cool. Talk to me.
• 30:13
  Yeah, it's, it's interesting because I, I've seen men and
• 30:21
  women experience. Do men have a higher tendency to
• 30:25
  be just to porn as opposed to sexual like physical encounters?
• 30:30
  Do you notice that one is is more likely than the other in
• 30:32
  terms of genders? I I'm speaking mostly just out
• 30:35
  of my practice. That's all you can do.
• 30:39
  Well, and it's, I'm sure there's like tons of research on this
• 30:44
  and I, I, in fact, I know there is, I just, I, I, that's all
• 30:46
  right. I don't have anything to bring
• 30:47
  up for you. I just know in my practice that
• 30:51
  I I tend to see men more in the sex and pornography addiction
• 30:59
  and then I see women more in like the love addiction.
• 31:01
  The categories love addiction is that is the but I also see them
• 31:09
  it's in both genders. A lot of work that like PM
• 31:12
  Melody did, really explores this.
• 31:16
  It is born out of attachment. You will have sometimes like an
• 31:23
  obsession develop around another human.
• 31:29
  I keep going into these relationships with the same type
• 31:33
  of person and it is really toxic and it is harmful to me.
• 31:39
  I'm praying that they're going to change.
• 31:43
  It's it's interesting how it, like it sets up in the brain.
• 31:47
  Do you know how like slot machines work?
• 31:50
  In terms of. What, Winning and losing?
• 31:52
  No. So if you with a slot machine,
• 31:56
  if somebody like wins every five tries, they're going to stop
• 31:59
  playing because it's like no longer exciting.
• 32:02
  The win needs to be random. Got you.
• 32:04
  So you'll win on your 20th time or your fifth time.
• 32:09
  Yeah, it gets boring and people will stop playing.
• 32:12
  I think love addiction works the same way as in like, my partner
• 32:16
  is going to be so kind to me and loving on a Tuesday night and
• 32:20
  then I'm going to have three weeks of like.
• 32:22
  I see what you're saying. And then they get and then and
• 32:24
  then he comes home one night with flowers and you're like,
• 32:26
  this is the best thing ever. Yes.
• 32:28
  And he's like, or she is, yeah, you know, doing the bare
• 32:33
  minimum. And then it's like weeks of like
• 32:37
  awfulness. And so you can see a pattern
• 32:39
  like that develop sometimes. That would be called the love
• 32:42
  addiction. I, I, I would put it in that
• 32:44
  category. I have, I've seen it work in
• 32:50
  where people are, you know, they're interested in, in
• 32:56
  several partners and it's, it's more for the like the emotional
• 33:01
  and the romantic part or they're, they've never actually
• 33:06
  been single. They kind of jump from
• 33:07
  relationship to relationship. Sure.
• 33:11
  I see a lot of like anxious attachment wounds that get
• 33:14
  triggered in that. It seems more emotional based,
• 33:18
  like a more like in search of like an emotional dope mean hit
• 33:22
  as opposed to as opposed to, you know, what porn would provide,
• 33:26
  which would be just more like a physical like getting it out,
• 33:29
  just get it out there kind of thing.
• 33:31
  I also like to give you other examples of it is like there can
• 33:36
  be screens involved because it's the I texted you 50 times today
• 33:41
  and I just want you to text me back.
• 33:42
  And that's the like, please see me, see me, see me, see me, see
• 33:46
  me, see me. Or I'm stalking your social
• 33:48
  media and I'm, I'm downloading these apps where I can look at
• 33:52
  your social media without you knowing I looked at it or people
• 33:56
  who are putting like it, it. There's a whole spectrum of it,
• 34:01
  but it can be really, really just as devastating as sex and
• 34:05
  porn too. I could imagine, right, because
• 34:07
  it just completely unravels you. Absolutely, yeah.
• 34:11
  And you lose yourself and then the the betraying myself over
• 34:14
  and over and over, like for, to get that dopamine hit of like,
• 34:18
  OK, they're coming home with flowers today, you know, or I
• 34:22
  develop a fantasy that isn't really true.
• 34:28
  You know, there's, there's another part of this limerence,
• 34:31
  which is I develop feelings and I I fall in love with a fantasy
• 34:35
  and potential versus who the person really is.
• 34:40
  And that it's like unrequited love.
• 34:41
  It's not being returned. And like I said, the brain
• 34:46
  doesn't know the difference between what's real and
• 34:47
  imagined. And if I spent all day
• 34:49
  daydreaming about all these beautiful magical qualities of a
• 34:52
  partner, that doesn't really exist.
• 34:56
  And I become addicted to that, Right.
• 35:00
  Yeah. It's, it's, I remember someone
• 35:02
  told me this. I loved how they said it.
• 35:03
  They said falling in love with someone's potential is really
• 35:06
  horrible because first of all, it's a future version of them
• 35:10
  that doesn't exist, correct? And it's more about your value
• 35:13
  system that you're placing on them, correct?
• 35:15
  So I see that a lot sometimes in love addiction too, which is
• 35:19
  like I'm assigning all these magical qualities to somebody
• 35:22
  and I'm falling in love with the version in my head versus who
• 35:26
  they actually are. You don't think we all kind of
• 35:28
  do that to different degrees, or you think that there's just
• 35:31
  healthier ways and unhealthier ways to do that.
• 35:33
  I think we do. And I and I don't want to
• 35:36
  pathologize that for everybody. It's, you know, when it becomes
• 35:41
  something else, like when it goes to that next level.
• 35:44
  Yeah. And it's like, OK, I've had five
• 35:47
  of the same relationships and this feels really compulsive at
• 35:51
  this time. And I'm doing the same thing
• 35:53
  over and over again where like I am getting high off of fantasy
• 35:58
  and not who this person actually is, right?
• 36:01
  Or I find myself like dating the same kind of person over and
• 36:04
  over and over again because I'm recreating A traumatic thing
• 36:07
  that happened before and now it's become compulsive and this
• 36:11
  person is not that great. And I'm still I'm going back to
• 36:15
  get that hit. Yeah, if that makes.
• 36:17
  Sense. Yeah.
• 36:17
  So what? So what are some techniques that
• 36:19
  you do to help these people if you can?
• 36:25
  So it's there's a lot, yeah. I know it's a loaded.
• 36:29
  Question yeah, you know, so I'm an EMDR certified therapist.
• 36:35
  I'm working, I'm in training right now for somatic
• 36:38
  experiencing and I love IFS and I.
• 36:41
  What's ifs? Internal Family Systems.
• 36:44
  OK, Schwartz It's parts work. It's one session.
• 36:49
  I might have somebody sitting across from their addiction
• 36:52
  having like a real conversation with it.
• 36:56
  Another session I might be targeting traumatic memories
• 36:59
  that play a role in this as well.
• 37:03
  There's also a really interesting protocol in EMDR
• 37:07
  that I, I've been playing around to with especially porn
• 37:10
  addiction, where you can kind of desensitize the like somebody
• 37:20
  who is experiencing like the good aspects of what they're
• 37:26
  doing. And it's like, so sometimes with
• 37:28
  the MDR, we look at it like, OK, you're, you're desensitizing,
• 37:32
  you know, in the body, all of these things that come up with
• 37:35
  negative memories. But then like I look at my
• 37:37
  addiction and we can kind of, we can go.
• 37:39
  It's pearls her, her she developed a whole procedure for
• 37:50
  doing it where you can go in and and start to desensitize some of
• 37:53
  the stuff around the addiction. Meaning desensitize what is
• 37:57
  attractive about the addiction or gotcha so you can push
• 38:02
  yourself away. Is it?
• 38:03
  Is it so it's kind of getting yourself repulsed to buy or
• 38:06
  desensitize to what it is that you're?
• 38:08
  Not repulsed, but like desensitizing like the reactions
• 38:11
  in the body interesting and like the triggers that come around
• 38:15
  with that. I'm also, I'm somebody who does
• 38:19
  a lot of work with attachment, meaning like I, we have a
• 38:26
  blueprint for what our insecure attachment is and how that plays
• 38:30
  out. And it takes a while, but it's
• 38:32
  developing that blueprint of what more functional attachment
• 38:37
  looks like. You know, an example is like, if
• 38:42
  I'm working with somebody who is kind of more in the love
• 38:44
  addiction area and they come in and they're like, you know, I, I
• 38:50
  don't think they're that interested in me anymore.
• 38:52
  And I want to like, you know, text and call a million times
• 38:55
  and confront them. And I'm like, well, how do you
• 38:57
  know that? And like, let's really sit with
• 39:00
  that. And what you discover is like,
• 39:03
  Hey, maybe this is more of your perception versus like the facts
• 39:06
  that you presented, you know, or if I'm working with someone
• 39:10
  who's like on the avoidance spectrum and they're like, Hey,
• 39:13
  I'm really overwhelmed and I got the ick by this person and I'd
• 39:15
  rather go watch porn because that doesn't give me the ick and
• 39:18
  it's safe. I'm like, well, are they really
• 39:23
  over? Like is what they're doing like
• 39:26
  grounds for that? Or like, are you just having a
• 39:28
  reaction to old ones, Right. So it's kind of doing that work
• 39:32
  too. I also work with a 30 task
• 39:35
  model. 30 you said 3030. Task model which Karns
• 39:39
  developed. He had noticed that when he
• 39:44
  worked with addicts, the ones who had done all these tasks
• 39:47
  stayed sober and had a great life.
• 39:49
  Cool. The ones who didn't?
• 39:51
  Really. What is?
• 39:51
  What are some of them on there? In the beginning it's it's
• 39:55
  breaking through denial. It's one of the reasons why I
• 39:58
  love assessments so much. So I'll sign somebody an
• 40:01
  assessment. And it's, we have a, the SDMI,
• 40:06
  which is the sexual digital media inventory, the SDI which
• 40:10
  is the sexual dependency inventory.
• 40:13
  These paint this really beautiful picture that we can't
• 40:17
  argue anymore. One of the things about
• 40:19
  addiction is compartmentalization, which is I
• 40:22
  can act out on my addiction on a Tuesday and like completely
• 40:26
  disassociate it, like from it on a Thursday.
• 40:31
  It is when people who would sit there and say I never want to do
• 40:35
  this again, I have all the motivation in the world and then
• 40:38
  a week later they cannot recall that.
• 40:40
  They cannot recall that that that regret.
• 40:43
  Yeah, or that like I want this, I can't pull up, you know, it's,
• 40:47
  we call it like a built in forgetter because the brain in
• 40:51
  that reward system is going to make us remember the 12 good
• 40:54
  times and not the 50,000 horrific times.
• 40:58
  So I think it's a really wonderful tool to start breaking
• 41:01
  through that denial. There are aspects of it we're
• 41:05
  like we're working through the trauma, we're looking at the
• 41:10
  arousal template and then the really beautiful parts towards
• 41:13
  the end. We're like, we're working on
• 41:15
  like, what is healthy dating look like?
• 41:17
  What is, What is healthy sex look like?
• 41:22
  What is, you know, what feels healthy, what doesn't feel
• 41:26
  healthy to me? I remember someone said this to
• 41:27
  me a long time ago, Like what is a spiritual orgasm?
• 41:32
  And that is when my my orgasm aligns with my beliefs, my
• 41:36
  values. I'm not using it to
• 41:38
  disassociate. I'm not using it to get away
• 41:41
  from my feelings. It's not nothing.
• 41:43
  It's a, it's a combination of experiences, absolutely.
• 41:47
  And that is my favorite part about this work, is helping
• 41:51
  people get to a place where they then can have a really
• 41:55
  beautiful, healthy sex life. Yeah, whatever that looks like.
• 41:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. How much of it is?
• 42:01
  And I know that this happens by my own, like myself.
• 42:05
  And I think that, you know, this is actually for different vices
• 42:09
  at different points of my life, you know, but sometimes
• 42:12
  something will just happen back. I just need to go, like, smoke a
• 42:14
  cigar. I need to just go have a beer.
• 42:16
  I need to go like, you know, smoke a Jay or, you know, and
• 42:20
  then a lot of times I will re channel I'll I'll, I'll take,
• 42:24
  I'll make the effort to re channel my response to a
• 42:28
  negative event into something a little bit more healthier,
• 42:31
  productive. Right.
• 42:32
  So, for example, I used to, I used to, I started forcing
• 42:36
  myself to wash dishes when I got frustrated, you know, so like,
• 42:39
  if I had like a bad argument with someone instead of going
• 42:42
  out, you know, instead of going and taking two or three shots,
• 42:45
  I, you know, which I didn't do, I got, you know, on a regular
• 42:47
  basis. But like, you know, instead of
• 42:51
  doing that, I go to the guy, you know, like I'm having a
• 42:53
  conversation. I can't believe this guy's such
• 42:55
  a douche. I hate this guy, you know, And I
• 42:57
  hang up the phone and this customer sucks and I'm pissed
• 42:59
  off at my boss or my dad or whatever it is.
• 43:01
  I hang up and I go to the sink. I just watch every edition to
• 43:04
  sink, you know, And I'm like, OK, like, you know, like it
• 43:07
  wasn't that bad. You're fine, you know, but like,
• 43:09
  at least that's a behavior that I feel like I could kind of like
• 43:11
  redirect my frustration towards something that's a little
• 43:14
  healthy. Do you spend a lot of time
• 43:15
  trying to redirect people's associations from, you know,
• 43:19
  like there? I feel like part of what an
• 43:22
  addiction is, is that there's almost like a breakdown in your
• 43:24
  day or in your schedule. That is that's not that you
• 43:28
  don't expect, but not foreseen. And then you have to fall back
• 43:31
  to something familiar or comfortable that to respond to
• 43:34
  that, unless I'm making that up. But that's how I feel like I
• 43:38
  experienced personally. Well, and it's, it's looking at
• 43:45
  that's such a that's I really loved how you framed all that.
• 43:49
  I'm gonna start washing dishes when I get you could vacuum too.
• 43:57
  There's a lot of things to that. So one of the things that I do
• 44:02
  in the sex, love and pornography realm is we come up with this
• 44:07
  thing called a three ring circle.
• 44:09
  And in the middle in this 3 ring circle, it is a live document.
• 44:13
  It changes what is red today might be yellow tomorrow.
• 44:18
  What is green today might be might be yellow tomorrow.
• 44:21
  And it's something that I, I am constantly working with people
• 44:23
  on and revising. But red is essentially like
• 44:26
  these are the behaviours that I need to stay away from, like
• 44:29
  looking at pornography, calling escorts, like whatever the thing
• 44:35
  it's are right, your yellow is proceed with caution.
• 44:40
  Like I have to have a plan right now going to the gym.
• 44:45
  It's it's not a red, but like it could be because there's a lot
• 44:49
  of, there's a lot of attractive people, there's pheromones in
• 44:53
  the air, right? Like I've had people who are
• 44:55
  like, you know what, I can only go to a women's gym or I can
• 44:58
  only go to a men's gym. And right now a Coed gym is red
• 45:01
  for me. Yeah, absolutely.
• 45:04
  Because like I go there and then the process starts and then I'm
• 45:07
  like back at home and I'm very interesting.
• 45:09
  Right, right, right. I can't help myself.
• 45:11
  So it's looking at being very real with yourself.
• 45:15
  In six months you might be like, you know what?
• 45:16
  I've really de sexualized the gym and I feel really safe.
• 45:20
  So gyms would be more into a yellow or Green Zone.
• 45:22
  It can move, right, right. And then it's, you know, you're
• 45:25
  two years in the sobriety and you are going through a lot of
• 45:28
  things. That's a fascinating tactic.
• 45:31
  That's a really, really cool tactic.
• 45:33
  I love the sound of that actually.
• 45:34
  Yeah, well, and let's say cuz. Organized and it let's and, and,
• 45:38
  and there's like different zones where like you can like, at
• 45:41
  least no proceed with caution, you know, or like hey, yeah,
• 45:46
  yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You could really, really you
• 45:49
  could plan around that. Like, it's really, really
• 45:50
  interesting. 100% and, and it moves and I look at the Green
• 45:55
  Zone as like these are things that are really healthy.
• 45:57
  These are things that support my recovery.
• 46:00
  I look at them in different sections.
• 46:01
  Like you think of sex and food, right?
• 46:04
  They are. They're very sensual addictions.
• 46:07
  The way things look, smell here, like all the sizzle, when these
• 46:15
  are very sensual addictions, how am I going to experience my
• 46:18
  senses now in a healthy way? Because I'm not just like, I
• 46:22
  just gave up the thing that hijacks my brain, you know?
• 46:25
  And I've had clients who are like, practicing mindful
• 46:28
  mindfulness at the beach and they're touching the sand and
• 46:31
  like, they're smelling new candles and like just really
• 46:34
  getting into, yeah, I have these God-given senses that like got
• 46:38
  hijacked by this thing. But there's so much in this
• 46:41
  world that I want to experience that's really safe.
• 46:44
  You know, I'm going to go to football games now and use my
• 46:47
  site in a way that is really exciting and fun.
• 46:50
  And I'm with my friends. You know, maybe I'll go to the
• 46:52
  bathroom during the cheerleader part.
• 46:55
  But yeah. Yeah.
• 46:57
  And even, like, I that gym example of it being becoming
• 47:00
  green, you know, let's say you go through a really traumatic
• 47:04
  event, like a parent dies, and all of a sudden you're like, you
• 47:07
  know what? I have to put this back into the
• 47:09
  yellow because right now I have all this stuff going on.
• 47:12
  Interesting. And that's a couple years in the
• 47:14
  sobriety. And I'm, I'm using that as like
• 47:15
  a loose example. Yes, it's it's an honest self
• 47:19
  appraisal of where you're at and knowing yourself that things
• 47:23
  need to move and then having a plan for when they do.
• 47:26
  I think that one of the biggest challenges in this particular
• 47:30
  realm of addiction is honesty. We wanted to talk about not only
• 47:36
  honesty. Can you define or at least tell
• 47:37
  me what you think the difference between shame and guilt?
• 47:41
  And then why we have such a hard, why you think, or why
• 47:45
  based on your, you know, what you've seen, We have, we have
• 47:48
  such a hard time being honest about this as opposed to
• 47:50
  anything else, you know, because like shame and guilt are
• 47:56
  definitely enormous components of it.
• 47:58
  And I just, and I've had so many times in my own life where it's
• 48:02
  felt like it's built up and I felt like I had to say
• 48:04
  something. And when I haven't, it's
• 48:07
  terrible. And when I have, it's like just
• 48:08
  a massive release and just like a break.
• 48:10
  And like I got that off my chest and the world didn't end then.
• 48:15
  Like I could say that I was, I was having a hard time with
• 48:17
  this. And like people understood.
• 48:20
  Like, you know, I, I feel like it's such an isolating.
• 48:22
  And I think just because the action itself is like so private
• 48:25
  and so isolated that you feel like you don't want to ever
• 48:29
  express it. You want to talk a little about
• 48:31
  that? Yeah.
• 48:31
  Absolutely. And I, I think that this is
• 48:33
  something that addiction does across the board.
• 48:36
  It convinces not only the person addicted, but the entire system
• 48:40
  around them that you were the only ones in the world that are
• 48:43
  struggling with this. And nobody can know.
• 48:47
  Because if they do know, what are they going to think of, you
• 48:48
  know, I'm going to get rejected. I'm going to be pushed out of a
• 48:51
  group, right? It's interesting that the same
• 48:55
  part of your brain that lights up if you break your leg is the
• 48:57
  same part of your brain that lights up if you are pushed out
• 49:01
  of a group. If you are really.
• 49:03
  And it's like from an evolutionary standpoint, it's we
• 49:07
  needed to be part of a group in order to survive.
• 49:10
  So I think in some ways it can be pro social, like guilt can be
• 49:13
  very pro social. Shame is not something I shame
• 49:17
  gets people into the room with me sometimes where it like it.
• 49:22
  The guilt and shame from this has built up so much that
• 49:25
  they're like, I have to do something right.
• 49:29
  I also believe that if it's not managed and and shame isn't
• 49:33
  reduced eventually that these things can build up until you
• 49:38
  use again. Because it'll like, if I feel
• 49:41
  crappy enough, long enough, I'm going to give myself permission
• 49:44
  to do what I know is going to provide relief, even
• 49:46
  temporarily, you know? Yeah, succinctly.
• 49:50
  But so and I, I take this from like the work of Brené Brown,
• 49:54
  like Gil is I've done something bad and shame is I am bad.
• 49:59
  And if you knew this thing about me, you would know that I was
• 50:03
  bad too, and you wouldn't want to be around.
• 50:05
  Fascinating. Yeah.
• 50:06
  Fascinating. So guilt is kind of what other
• 50:09
  people think. What would other people think if
• 50:11
  I, if they knew I did this? And shame is like I don't want
• 50:14
  anyone to know this really who I am.
• 50:16
  I would put both of those on shame.
• 50:18
  Oh, really? Yeah.
• 50:18
  And like, guilt too. Of like so.
• 50:20
  What guilt? So like, you know, the, the
• 50:22
  stereotypical example of guilt is Jewish guilt.
• 50:25
  You know, you know, you got Jewish mothers and grandparents
• 50:28
  and guilt and stuff like that. How?
• 50:29
  How do you define guilt like that?
• 50:32
  So I had Catholic guilt. Yeah.
• 50:34
  OK. There you go.
• 50:35
  So I'm sure, I'm sure it is that way.
• 50:40
  So do you still have it, you think?
• 50:42
  Yeah, I will always have that ingrained in me.
• 50:44
  I it's not, it doesn't run my life anymore.
• 50:46
  I'm trying. To fight it, I try to fight it
• 50:48
  so hard. It's so hard to freaking fight.
• 50:50
  And like the times you just when you think you cleared the hump,
• 50:53
  you know, you're like, oh, man, it's still there, you know?
• 50:57
  It's so I think naming things is really important in this work
• 51:04
  because there are so many like you can get the same feeling for
• 51:08
  so many different things like guilt.
• 51:11
  I'll break that down. Like there's maximizing guilt,
• 51:14
  which I think Jewish and Catholic guilt come along in
• 51:17
  that, which is I'm going to, I'm going to beat myself up
• 51:20
  consistently as a way to atone for what I did.
• 51:24
  And if I'm not beating myself up, it's almost like what I did
• 51:26
  was OK. Then there's minimizing guilt,
• 51:29
  which is like, I feel really guilty for what I did and I'm
• 51:32
  going to like, I'm going to go watch 12 hours of Netflix and
• 51:35
  eat a bag of chips, or I'm going to go drink or I'm going to go
• 51:38
  use or I'm going to go look at porn.
• 51:39
  And then I don't have to feel it.
• 51:41
  There's weapon. Yeah, numbing it.
• 51:43
  OK. There's weaponized guilt, which
• 51:46
  is fascinating and exists in a lot of family systems, which is.
• 51:52
  And that's where score keeping comes along.
• 51:54
  Like, hey, I'm going to remind you of all the things I've ever
• 51:56
  done for you. Sometimes moms lovingly.
• 52:00
  Do that. Where it's like you're setting a
• 52:02
  boundary with me, but I gave birth to you.
• 52:04
  Right. So I think we're, we're taught
• 52:08
  that. And it's also it's, it's a
• 52:10
  manipulation tactic where like I'm gonna get you to change your
• 52:12
  mind. So I'll bring up not only all
• 52:14
  the things I've ever done for you, but all the things that you
• 52:16
  messed up on in the last year. That's why I don't take favors
• 52:19
  from anyone unless I trust them. Like if you're not, if you're
• 52:23
  not a very, very close friend, I will never, I'll never ask you
• 52:26
  for anything. You know, I'll never ask you how
• 52:29
  do I look? I'll never ask you what you
• 52:31
  think it is. I'll never ask you to, you know,
• 52:34
  do you mind grab me a bag of ice oil while you're while you're in
• 52:36
  Publix, You know, like I will never ask anythings I don't want
• 52:39
  to hold over my head. You know, I don't want that
• 52:41
  being weaponized, like you said, you know, it's such a yeah.
• 52:45
  OK, so there's weapon. Which shows that like you've had
• 52:47
  that happen. You know what's funny?
• 52:50
  I actually don't know if I did. I actually think so.
• 52:52
  So it's interesting. I spent a lot of time thinking
• 52:53
  about this. I think that the root of my of
• 52:56
  that particular type of guilt is that I not guilt, but I guess
• 53:00
  that particular type of avoidance.
• 53:02
  I don't want to like ask favors and stuff is because I used to
• 53:05
  depend on other people to to tell me to tell me I'm good
• 53:12
  enough to validate me. And at a certain point I was so
• 53:16
  sickened to myself how little self esteem I had in myself and
• 53:19
  how much I depend on other people that I did the full 180
• 53:22
  turn. I'm like, I don't need anyone.
• 53:24
  Like I'm only depending on myself.
• 53:26
  And then I'm trying to get back and talk about like the
• 53:28
  obviously the healthier place is to be in the middle ground, you
• 53:30
  know. But yeah, I don't think I've
• 53:34
  really, my parents both try extremely, extremely hard to let
• 53:39
  us beat us and, you know, do what they do as parents because
• 53:43
  they want to do it as parents and not because it's an
• 53:46
  exchange. So I grew up with a pretty
• 53:49
  healthy perspective attitude in terms of that.
• 53:54
  But I think I just saw it a lot around a lot and I was like,
• 53:56
  this is not something that. I want to be a part of.
• 53:59
  No, very far from me. Very far from me.
• 54:03
  Yeah, absolutely. And I don't want to like put
• 54:06
  that on moms. Like I see dads do it.
• 54:08
  Doesn't. Yeah, but moms are
• 54:10
  stereotypical. Yeah, Example.
• 54:14
  And and then there's survivor skill, which is very simply
• 54:19
  like, I'm OK and you're not. I saw that come up so many times
• 54:24
  when I used to do a lot of work with first responders and
• 54:26
  veterans, just that like I'm OK and they're not in the guilt
• 54:30
  that comes along with that. There's these other things that
• 54:35
  feel like guilt and shame. Humiliation can feel like that,
• 54:40
  and embarrassment can feel like that.
• 54:42
  I've I've seen a lot where a client will be like, yeah, I'm
• 54:45
  feeling really embarrassed. And then when we really dive
• 54:47
  into it, it's like, no, it's actually shame.
• 54:49
  So. What would be the difference?
• 54:50
  What's embarrassed as opposed to shame?
• 54:51
  So embarrassment is like, I've walked in here, I tripped and
• 54:57
  fell. We both laugh.
• 54:58
  I know I'm not the only person that's ever happened to pretty
• 55:02
  quickly, yeah. Shame is I walked in here, I
• 55:06
  tripped, and I'm like, you're an idiot, right?
• 55:09
  And humiliation, as I walk in here, I trip, I fall, you make
• 55:13
  fun of me and there's an audience.
• 55:17
  And all of those can kind of register the same way in the
• 55:19
  body. But all that different forms of
• 55:21
  guilt. And so naming things, I think is
• 55:24
  like one of the most powerful tools we have.
• 55:27
  It's such an important technique because it also creates.
• 55:30
  I think words are so amazing because they contain context to
• 55:33
  them. You know, you can use a word and
• 55:36
  like, you can use one word and everyone imagines a scene that
• 55:41
  goes with it. Like they got like, you could
• 55:43
  say one word captures an entire, you know, it could be minutes or
• 55:47
  months or years of an experience that are, like, boiled down into
• 55:50
  one word. And the more new ones to get
• 55:53
  with them, the more specific we could be.
• 55:56
  It's really, really cool. Absolutely.
• 55:58
  Yeah. I love language because because
• 55:59
  of that, I observe a lot of that like the roots worth like
• 56:03
  impressed. If you're impressed by someone,
• 56:05
  it means they've literally pressed themselves into you and
• 56:08
  you are now and you are now aware of that, you know, or
• 56:10
  delighted is like you are now feeling light and you know the
• 56:14
  emphasis, the emphasis on the on the root word of like light and
• 56:19
  or awesome or awesome. Yes, be in awe of something
• 56:22
  correct Yeah, exactly. There's yeah.
• 56:26
  When I've spoken to people like you're awesome, I'm like, and
• 56:28
  not in like the, not in the lazy way and like I am like in awe
• 56:31
  of, in awe of what you've done. You know, it's such a, it's such
• 56:35
  a more beautiful way of putting it.
• 56:36
  I feel like, you know, even though awesome is fun.
• 56:39
  So I'm sorry to interrupt. Yeah.
• 56:41
  So you have all these different types of of guilt.
• 56:47
  Guilt, right? Yeah.
• 56:48
  Yeah. And then I think like what you
• 56:50
  mentioned, which is, you know, the shame is trying to convince
• 56:55
  me that like I'm the only person in the world who has this and I
• 56:58
  can't talk about it because if I talk about it, then what are
• 57:01
  people going to think? All the stuff, right?
• 57:04
  The the fear of rejection, all those things.
• 57:07
  And then I do talk about it and the relief I feel when I'm met
• 57:11
  with like love and kindness. That's why I love like 12 step
• 57:14
  Fellowship so much, because they, they exist.
• 57:18
  And you can go in thinking that you were the most horrible
• 57:22
  person in the world and then there's a woman or a man sitting
• 57:25
  next to you and they're like, yeah, I did the same thing,
• 57:26
  dude. Like you're fine.
• 57:29
  And the relief that comes with that, you know, I, I, I've had
• 57:33
  so many times in sessions where someone comes in with a very
• 57:36
  specific compulsive behavior, sexual behavior, and they think
• 57:40
  that they're the only person in the world who has done that.
• 57:43
  And I'm like, hey, like, there are a lot of other people who've
• 57:46
  struggled with this very specific thing too.
• 57:49
  And it's such a relief. And then when you're like, we
• 57:53
  jump into Google and you're like, yeah, see, there's like
• 57:55
  this whole world out there. Yeah.
• 57:56
  Yeah. You know, so that starts to, to
• 58:00
  reduce the shame. I also look at like, where's the
• 58:02
  shame coming from? Is it, was it ever really mine
• 58:06
  to begin with? Did I inherit it from society?
• 58:11
  Did I inherit it from my parents?
• 58:14
  You know, I have a lot of shame around sex.
• 58:17
  And then you start diving into sexual history and then like a
• 58:20
  genogram of like the sexual history and family members
• 58:24
  that's like, actually my grandparents, my parents,
• 58:26
  they've all felt a lot of shame around sex because of how, like,
• 58:30
  that's what they taught me. How would you know that though?
• 58:32
  How did someone figure that out? So it's what happened when you
• 58:37
  first talked about sex with a parent, right?
• 58:41
  They yelled at me, Right? And then when I got older and
• 58:48
  these topics were safer because we were adults, they told me
• 58:51
  that their parents yelled at them.
• 58:53
  Right. And how this I see?
• 58:55
  Yeah. It gets passed down.
• 58:56
  Yeah. So it's a form of education and
• 58:58
  it's a bad form of education, absolutely.
• 59:01
  And you, you begin to realize like this shame that I have
• 59:04
  struggled with was never mine. It was just given to each new
• 59:09
  generation. Yeah, because that's what they
• 59:13
  thought was the best thing to do.
• 59:15
  But even that is still a tall hill to get over, you know, like
• 59:21
  you could, you know, there's one thing I it's one thing to
• 59:25
  understand, you know, the root of it.
• 59:27
  And there's another thing to conquer the root of it, you
• 59:29
  know, and I feel like a lot of times we give ourselves a
• 59:31
  license to because we understand the root of something like, oh,
• 59:34
  now I understand myself and you kind of keep on going.
• 59:36
  I've been doing, now that you understand why you're doing what
• 59:39
  you're doing, you know, my dad, you know, my dad didn't have a
• 59:43
  dad. So, you know, he did XY and Z,
• 59:45
  you know, and so, and so now I'm pissed off my I'm not going to
• 59:49
  do anything about it. I just know that that's the root
• 59:50
  of it. And that's why he's and that's
• 59:51
  why he's such a Dick to me, you know, and you're like, well,
• 59:53
  that doesn't really help, you know, get get you from point A
• 59:57
  to point B necessarily. And that's when the work comes
• 1:00:01
  in. And the work does and, and
• 1:00:03
  sometimes it's, you know, building insight into it.
• 1:00:07
  And then also like another part of EMDR, which I really love,
• 1:00:10
  like Part 1 is we're going to desensitize traumatic memories
• 1:00:13
  in the body. And Part 2 is like these
• 1:00:18
  negative beliefs or cognitions, we weren't born with them, that
• 1:00:24
  they're usually attached to memories.
• 1:00:26
  And Part 2 of EMDR is we want to go in and we want to help
• 1:00:29
  adaptive information in the brain kind of sink in.
• 1:00:32
  So like you ever had that experience where like, I know
• 1:00:35
  I'm a good person cognitively, but sometimes my body feels like
• 1:00:37
  I'm not good. Enough all the time.
• 1:00:39
  I have watched EMDR connect the brain and the body in a way
• 1:00:43
  where it's like people will look at me after we're done
• 1:00:46
  reprocessing the memory. Right before they would have
• 1:00:49
  told me that's not true, I am not good enough.
• 1:00:52
  And then after the session, they're looking at me and
• 1:00:53
  they're like, I can bring up that memory now and know that
• 1:00:56
  I'm good enough. Like it, it switches in the
• 1:00:59
  brain and the body. So I think that there's, yes,
• 1:01:02
  there's a lot of work and talking about it and having
• 1:01:05
  insight about it can be great. And it's half the battle.
• 1:01:09
  We can't do anything if we don't know about it.
• 1:01:12
  But there's also a lot of interventions and different
• 1:01:14
  modalities that can kind of go in and and really help that go
• 1:01:18
  along. So it's not just cognitive, it's
• 1:01:20
  like, I feel that too. Yeah, I wonder, I wonder how
• 1:01:24
  breath work would kind of help. And the thing that the breath
• 1:01:27
  work can help open up those neural, those neural connections
• 1:01:31
  that you can kind of help reassociate.
• 1:01:33
  I wonder if breath work, you know, to reassociate memories
• 1:01:38
  and stuff like that to reassociate your experiences
• 1:01:41
  would be something beneficial to implement.
• 1:01:43
  You know, because it's not only because, I mean, what essential
• 1:01:47
  out of this is, is associating with, you know, memory or
• 1:01:50
  activity. You just said, you know, and so
• 1:01:52
  and part of the hardest part with the hardest part of all
• 1:01:55
  this stuff is the rewiring, right?
• 1:01:57
  That's the PTSD, that's the trauma, that's the that's all
• 1:02:00
  this stuff is like you have all these connections that are all
• 1:02:04
  starting from one place and ending in another that are rude
• 1:02:06
  and unhealthiness. But you could just kind of
• 1:02:08
  retrace that road, you know, the road and make it, you know, have
• 1:02:11
  it lead somewhere else. Absolutely.
• 1:02:13
  I'm not as knowledgeable as in breath work as I I wish I was
• 1:02:17
  I'll. Try it out.
• 1:02:18
  Have you ever tried it? I have tried it, I know a couple
• 1:02:21
  really amazing practitioners. It's something that I like.
• 1:02:24
  I I want to do more of in my in my journey but I'm a huge fan
• 1:02:29
  and open to anything that will help people rewire their nervous
• 1:02:32
  system. I love that.
• 1:02:33
  Yeah. And I, whatever that looks like.
• 1:02:36
  And I've had clients who've gone to breath work practitioners and
• 1:02:40
  loved it. Yeah.
• 1:02:41
  Thought it was amazing. Yeah.
• 1:02:43
  So yeah, I I'm a huge fan of anything that can help require
• 1:02:47
  us. Cool.
• 1:02:48
  Yeah. Do you want to take a bathroom
• 1:02:49
  break for two seconds before we continue?
• 1:02:51
  I'm OK. Do you need to?
• 1:02:52
  Yeah, I'm. Going to take a two second
• 1:02:53
  break. Yeah, that the other thing that
• 1:02:55
  you mentioned we're back is the other thing that we were talking
• 1:03:00
  about or that I want to bring up before we talk about couples is
• 1:03:04
  your experience with different age groups.
• 1:03:06
  And like, you know what, you know, you know, what are I guess
• 1:03:10
  common themes, I guess would be between like teenagers or kids
• 1:03:14
  that are just getting, you know, exposed to this as opposed to
• 1:03:19
  young adults, as opposed to like, you know, adults dwell
• 1:03:22
  into their marriages and relationships and stuff like
• 1:03:24
  that. And do you find that that the
• 1:03:29
  motivations, I guess are different as as people go
• 1:03:31
  through different phases in life or the way that it manifests is
• 1:03:34
  different as they go through different phases in life?
• 1:03:36
  Like what have you? What have you noticed from your
• 1:03:38
  practice? SO1II generally like I don't
• 1:03:43
  work with people under 18 is. That for a reason.
• 1:03:49
  Well, especially with like this stuff, one of the things that
• 1:03:52
  they kind of really put into me during when I was training to
• 1:03:57
  become AC stat was like, we don't want to pathologize or
• 1:04:01
  like especially someone who's going through learning about
• 1:04:05
  their sexuality, you know, it's a lot of it is like normal
• 1:04:12
  exploration. So it's a, it's an area of like
• 1:04:16
  we're especially under 18, It's we don't want to over
• 1:04:20
  pathologize things because they're still trying to figure
• 1:04:22
  it out. I know people who do work with
• 1:04:25
  people under 18 and I think that they are the most patient and
• 1:04:29
  amazing people in the world. You have to be because imagine
• 1:04:31
  an 11 year old or a 12 year old getting a hold of a smartphone
• 1:04:34
  for I think the average age that people are starting to be
• 1:04:36
  exposed to porn is like. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:04:40
  And see this, I remember in one of the trainings, I was Patrick
• 1:04:45
  Carnes was was leading it and he was talking about how criteria
• 1:04:49
  for addiction is now being developed for like preview
• 1:04:54
  Vessel, whereas before like we have criteria for addiction for
• 1:04:58
  teenagers, for adults, things like that.
• 1:05:01
  And I, I think I told you this, I remember he said this and it
• 1:05:03
  blew my mind. You know, we've had more mass
• 1:05:07
  shootings in the 21st century than we've had in the entirety
• 1:05:09
  of the 20th century. And they are almost exclusively
• 1:05:12
  done by children. It's the sickest and saddest
• 1:05:16
  statistic I've heard in a very, very, very long time.
• 1:05:19
  And it kind of wakes you up to like never before have we seen
• 1:05:23
  this and it you. Know you think it's the violence
• 1:05:25
  that we're exposed to at an early age.
• 1:05:27
  You think it's the loneliness. You think it's the wait, what do
• 1:05:32
  we like? I know it's a packed question.
• 1:05:37
  I know that you've been trying to answer like in one bit and
• 1:05:40
  not getting the whole picture obviously will get you into
• 1:05:42
  fire. I don't want to get into fire,
• 1:05:43
  you know, but like. Yeah, it well, it's such a good
• 1:05:46
  question. And I the truth is, I don't
• 1:05:48
  know, right? Like, but like what comes up for
• 1:05:51
  me when I sit with it is never before.
• 1:05:55
  Like we now have kids who do not remember what life was like
• 1:05:57
  before screens. Like we have humans on this
• 1:06:01
  planet who do not remember we have secure attachment kind of
• 1:06:05
  steadily going down. I saw this Johann Lahiri, his
• 1:06:12
  Ted talk, he cites a couple things.
• 1:06:16
  He said the amount of floor space.
• 1:06:18
  He was citing a study, the amount of floor space that a
• 1:06:21
  person has in their home has been steadily increasing since
• 1:06:24
  the 1950s. And the amount of face to face
• 1:06:26
  connections that people have has been steadily decreasing.
• 1:06:30
  So I look at it kind of from a macro point of view of like
• 1:06:33
  there's so many different things going on, right?
• 1:06:37
  Like growing up, like people with knock up for you right now,
• 1:06:41
  sometimes someone calls me and I'm like, yeah, why didn't you
• 1:06:43
  text first? You know what I mean?
• 1:06:46
  So I think the way that we and we are a social species that is
• 1:06:51
  neurologically wired for connection.
• 1:06:55
  And I think for a lot of us, like it's really hard nowadays
• 1:06:59
  and these things that were supposed to be agents or
• 1:07:02
  vehicles of connection, I think actually are taking us further
• 1:07:05
  away from each other. I know it kind of scares me that
• 1:07:08
  Mark Zuckerberg is still standing by it so strongly.
• 1:07:11
  Like, I've heard an interview from him recently.
• 1:07:13
  I think he's of Theo Von. And one of the things he just
• 1:07:16
  kept, like he's been saying the same thing for.
• 1:07:18
  Like I've heard him speak about, you know, a bunch of podcasts in
• 1:07:21
  the last 5-10 years and he's been saying the same thing every
• 1:07:24
  time. And he just keeps on demanding
• 1:07:26
  and, and insisting that like his apps and his companies are used
• 1:07:31
  to connect people and that this is like the way the future and
• 1:07:33
  this was healthiest and best for people.
• 1:07:34
  And like, sure, you people used to have a group of five friends
• 1:07:37
  and now they have 250 friends on Facebook.
• 1:07:39
  You're like, that doesn't mean that you have like friends, you
• 1:07:42
  know, doesn't mean that you're getting what you need as a human
• 1:07:44
  being in terms of attachment, in terms of relationships, you
• 1:07:47
  know, and, and it scares me that he's going to he and everyone
• 1:07:53
  else that's developing all these, you know, technologies
• 1:07:56
  are just marching forward on that presumption that this is
• 1:08:00
  all good. And so we're just going to keep
• 1:08:01
  on building on that foundation. When I don't, I, I'm skeptical
• 1:08:06
  as to the initial hypothesis even, you know, like I'm
• 1:08:09
  skeptical as to the fact that that that is that, that that's a
• 1:08:13
  good, that's a valid substitute, you know.
• 1:08:16
  My first thought with that is, you know, Philip Morris told us
• 1:08:18
  along for a long time that cigarettes are healthy for us.
• 1:08:21
  Yeah. You know, and when your product
• 1:08:24
  is the people who are the eyes of the people who are watching
• 1:08:28
  or like the like, you're not using a product, you are the
• 1:08:32
  product, correct. When it comes to Facebook, they
• 1:08:35
  are selling your eyes and your gaze to advertisers.
• 1:08:38
  So of course it's like, yeah, this is let's let's build this
• 1:08:43
  on the whole thing of connection and, and really kind of sell
• 1:08:47
  that lie. Yeah.
• 1:08:48
  You know, and and don't get me wrong, I think that they're
• 1:08:50
  like, I've seen amazing things where like people were reunited
• 1:08:54
  through social media and all those things.
• 1:08:57
  But, you know, that's not why people come to therapy.
• 1:09:00
  You know, people come to therapy because they're like, hey, I'm
• 1:09:05
  comparing myself to all these curated beautiful pictures.
• 1:09:09
  Yeah, of other people's lives that aren't even real.
• 1:09:11
  Yeah. And I feel less than, you know,
• 1:09:15
  and I, yeah, I have all this social media and I have all
• 1:09:17
  these friends and followers, but I'm profoundly lonely in my
• 1:09:22
  life. Or I use social media and I'll
• 1:09:25
  be vulnerable on it. And I'll tell people all of my
• 1:09:28
  like horrific stuff that's going on.
• 1:09:30
  And like to me that looks more like a drive by shooting.
• 1:09:32
  Like that's not vulnerability. That's like, let me dump and get
• 1:09:36
  some likes because like that real vulnerability is like 2
• 1:09:39
  humans sitting together, connecting, responding mirror
• 1:09:45
  neurons going off, like all the things that you know, and that
• 1:09:49
  can happen through screen and zooms as as well.
• 1:09:51
  But yeah, I think it's, it's this weird substitute that
• 1:09:56
  people are using and and I think COVID is like a really good
• 1:10:00
  example of why connection and being around each other is so
• 1:10:04
  important because 2020 like the world got weird.
• 1:10:08
  It got. Really weird.
• 1:10:11
  The world's got, the world's got.
• 1:10:13
  And I'm grateful for these platforms, right?
• 1:10:16
  Because they, I think they did connect us in a way.
• 1:10:19
  But at the same time, it's like it's a perfect case study of
• 1:10:23
  what happens when we're not around each other.
• 1:10:26
  Substance use went through the roof, depression went through
• 1:10:28
  the roof. It was a completed suicide went
• 1:10:30
  through the roof. You know, I, there wasn't a
• 1:10:33
  therapist at that time that I knew who wasn't full, like
• 1:10:38
  completely full their practice. And yeah, it's.
• 1:10:43
  I hope that answers that. It does, it does, it does, it
• 1:10:46
  does. So, so back to the so, so you,
• 1:10:48
  you typically don't treat people young.
• 1:10:50
  So let's say 18 to to adulthood or even later, you know, let's
• 1:10:53
  say more mature adults, you know, older adults.
• 1:10:58
  What do you are, are, are there things in common?
• 1:11:01
  Like are there underlying consistencies in terms of the
• 1:11:03
  addiction? Are they kind of based on like
• 1:11:05
  what phase in life are you in? Like how does that, how does
• 1:11:08
  that work that you've seen? And once again, this is more for
• 1:11:11
  my practice and not like statistics and research.
• 1:11:16
  I find that my men and women who are in their 20s, it is a lot
• 1:11:23
  more of pornography addiction. Although I have people later in
• 1:11:26
  life who have it too that like the way they experience sex is
• 1:11:31
  not relational. It is it is very much through a
• 1:11:33
  screen and then some of the older clients that I have, I see
• 1:11:38
  that more of like the classic sex addiction of like I'm I'm
• 1:11:42
  using escorts or infidelity or do you?
• 1:11:46
  Think it's because of what they grew up with?
• 1:11:47
  Do you think it's just like it's just different?
• 1:11:49
  Like culture. Yeah.
• 1:11:50
  Culture, preference, accessibility, you know, like I,
• 1:11:55
  I'm working with someone who's, you know, later in life and
• 1:11:58
  they're like, yeah, when I looked at porn, it was like the
• 1:12:00
  Playboy that you stole from the store down the street.
• 1:12:03
  Yeah, And it was this, like, physical thing, you know?
• 1:12:06
  And then you talk to someone who's like 22 and they're like,
• 1:12:09
  I have this magical box in my pocket that shows.
• 1:12:13
  Anything. Anything.
• 1:12:14
  Any possible thing that I can think of, What's it's like?
• 1:12:17
  Roll something, if you can think about it, Porn's already made
• 1:12:21
  it. Yeah, it's.
• 1:12:22
  The most creative industry out there, seriously, Hollywood,
• 1:12:26
  There's no there's no big studios that are turning down
• 1:12:28
  any scripts or any projects or anything like that.
• 1:12:30
  They just make everything. Everything.
• 1:12:32
  Anything you can think of? So I, I see that that vast
• 1:12:37
  difference. I will say a lot of my my older,
• 1:12:41
  I don't want to call them older, but people like 30s and above
• 1:12:45
  usually come into treatment because of like infidelity.
• 1:12:51
  And they got caught or because they chose.
• 1:12:53
  There was discoveries sometimes because they chose to, but a lot
• 1:12:56
  of time, like there's like this thing that happened, a discovery
• 1:13:00
  getting caught, which for a lot of people like can sometimes be
• 1:13:04
  a relief. Like I can finally like.
• 1:13:07
  Stop. You want, you almost want to get
• 1:13:08
  caught. Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  Whereas like my younger clients are like, hey, I'm getting older
• 1:13:15
  and it's, I'm really struggling to find a partner.
• 1:13:20
  And, you know, right now my partner is my screen, you know,
• 1:13:23
  so I see like that difference a lot.
• 1:13:28
  And yeah. And then I also work a lot with
• 1:13:31
  like betrayed partners. Those are people that have been
• 1:13:34
  cheated on. And that can look that can
• 1:13:38
  because my my partner never cheated on me with a person but
• 1:13:42
  has spent hours a day looking at pornography.
• 1:13:45
  So I want to, I want to talk about that.
• 1:13:47
  I literally wrote cheating immorality right here.
• 1:13:49
  How is that defined? Let's yeah, let's talk about
• 1:13:52
  that. What do you, what do you think
• 1:13:55
  personally? And then you could tell me, you
• 1:13:57
  know, clinically or personally, personally, what you think.
• 1:13:59
  And then yeah, because I'm curious what you think about
• 1:14:01
  this. Do you think that someone
• 1:14:03
  watching is watching porn is a level of cheating?
• 1:14:09
  Like let's say cheating is you have a scale from one to 10 you
• 1:14:13
  know, and you have like kids would be a 2A4 and you know sex
• 1:14:18
  is A10 and a whole life together is A10 and say maybe you know
• 1:14:22
  sex is A7 or an 8. Would porn be like a 3A4?
• 1:14:26
  Is that considered even cheating?
• 1:14:28
  Like what do you think? It's I love that scale because
• 1:14:31
  it's like like am IA little bit cheating.
• 1:14:34
  Yeah, because it's not a bit cheating.
• 1:14:35
  It's not. It's not.
• 1:14:37
  People don't look at things like they're yes or no.
• 1:14:39
  They're not. What's the word for it, 01?
• 1:14:43
  It's not, it's not one or the other.
• 1:14:46
  I feel like everything, all this stuff is a scale, especially
• 1:14:49
  when it comes to subjective relationships, right?
• 1:14:51
  Like everyone. Everyone's really.
• 1:14:52
  So what do you think? If I it's, it's hard for me to
• 1:14:55
  answer what it is. For me personally, that's a
• 1:14:57
  vulnerable thing to answer. Sure, if I have 10 couples in a
• 1:15:02
  room, I have 10 different definitions of it.
• 1:15:05
  Like one couple might like say, porn's a zero.
• 1:15:07
  Like, that doesn't bother me. But another couple is like, you
• 1:15:10
  know what porn's A10 because they know that when we're
• 1:15:12
  actually making love, you're not thinking of me.
• 1:15:15
  You're disassociated. And in order to reach orgasm,
• 1:15:19
  you have to think about past videos and the disconnect that
• 1:15:23
  that has and the way that that can make a partner feel of like
• 1:15:26
  I'm not good enough. And the way like self blame
• 1:15:30
  comes in of like I'm not good enough to entice you sexually,
• 1:15:33
  not realizing that it has nothing to do with you.
• 1:15:35
  It is the reward center of the brain has been completely
• 1:15:38
  hijacked. You know, so like I I've seen
• 1:15:42
  that and then times, you know, you work with couples who have
• 1:15:47
  open marriages and cheating was really like the dishonesty that
• 1:15:51
  came along with it, right? So.
• 1:15:52
  They'd be OK with being open, but as long as you're not lying
• 1:15:54
  to me about it. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:15:57
  There's so many, so many different things, you know, or
• 1:16:04
  yeah, infidelity. I I don't care that you're with
• 1:16:07
  somebody, but if you cross an emotional line.
• 1:16:09
  Oh. It's so interesting.
• 1:16:11
  You know, or you looking at somebody and objectifying them
• 1:16:16
  is like that to me. Is she?
• 1:16:18
  Sure, right people. My wife makes me look away when
• 1:16:20
  we're watching an HBO show, you know, and, and, you know,
• 1:16:23
  watching The Sopranos and they're in the strip club and
• 1:16:25
  all of a sudden she's like, hey, yeah, what are you doing?
• 1:16:27
  I'm like, and then she looks over and I'm already looking
• 1:16:29
  away because I already know that she's going to be pissed off at
• 1:16:31
  me, you know like I haven't, I didn't tell you I watched the
• 1:16:33
  show 4 times already, you know, but and I noticed I know when to
• 1:16:38
  look away already before it even happens, you know, but.
• 1:16:42
  Well, and that like my desire, my attract, like attraction,
• 1:16:48
  yes, these are really sacred beautiful things.
• 1:16:50
  And like, do I have an agreement with my partner that my desire
• 1:16:53
  and attraction is for them, right?
• 1:16:56
  To think of communication needs to be 100 like so you have to
• 1:16:59
  have a conversation and say this is what's acceptable to me and
• 1:17:02
  this isn't and that could be responded to.
• 1:17:05
  I say, well, you know, I counter this.
• 1:17:08
  I counter that this is, you know, I don't, you know, why did
• 1:17:11
  I think it should just be a conversation as opposed to
• 1:17:13
  naive? Again, no talks about it.
• 1:17:15
  My wife and I did not talk about porn.
• 1:17:17
  No, before we got married. Yeah, we did not talk about it.
• 1:17:19
  We actually, it actually came up because another one of her
• 1:17:22
  friends was dealing with something else with someone else
• 1:17:25
  that they knew. And and then they kind of just
• 1:17:28
  came up and got, oh, oh, is that, you know, is that a thing?
• 1:17:31
  And like, you know, but like we're already married, we
• 1:17:33
  already have a kid, you know, like, you know, like this is not
• 1:17:36
  like, and I blame my, you know, I mean, I, I, I take
• 1:17:40
  responsibility for the fact that it should have been a
• 1:17:42
  conversation that I had earlier that I probably was not man
• 1:17:45
  enough to have. I had a lot of other hard
• 1:17:48
  conversations, but I think it's important.
• 1:17:52
  Yeah. And I, I kind of going back to
• 1:17:56
  like the love addiction stuff we were talking about too.
• 1:17:58
  Like I've had clients like, and you've seen this in the news a
• 1:18:00
  lot where a person will like slowly drain their entire
• 1:18:07
  retirement and gift cards to another person that they met on
• 1:18:11
  the Internet. Like that's how powerful fantasy
• 1:18:14
  is, right? And I've never met up with them.
• 1:18:16
  I've never, yes, I've never seen them.
• 1:18:19
  It's pictures. Sometimes it's phone calls, but
• 1:18:23
  like, is that cheating that I've had this entire emotional affair
• 1:18:27
  with this other human and we've never even met?
• 1:18:29
  I think yes, personally, I would say yes, personally.
• 1:18:32
  There's a show called Traffic. Do you ever hear of it?
• 1:18:34
  I have not. It's on Hulu.
• 1:18:36
  It's it's a woman, she's been a Rogan a couple of times.
• 1:18:40
  Mariana Van Steller, I think is her name.
• 1:18:42
  And she does the show's called trafficked and it's she's an
• 1:18:45
  investigative journalist and she she goes to the underground all
• 1:18:48
  this Four Seasons. Each one is a 45 minutes, an
• 1:18:51
  hour long episode on the underground world.
• 1:18:53
  So, and one of the big things that she did was love scandals
• 1:18:57
  was that people apparently Ghana has a huge culture of they have
• 1:19:03
  scripts and and books and videos and they get in it and they W
• 1:19:08
  pump is a huge location for wealthy, lonely older people
• 1:19:13
  that are on dating sites. You get someone and, and, and a
• 1:19:17
  lot of times, you know, when based on the, you know, the, the
• 1:19:20
  show, they'd say, like we'd even give these people money and buy
• 1:19:25
  them gift cards and give them little things of love and send
• 1:19:28
  them flowers and stuff to develop that kind of sense of
• 1:19:30
  trust, which is actually, I think I remember we were talking
• 1:19:33
  on camera or not about it, but like to lie to tell the little
• 1:19:37
  bit of the truth in order to get away with a bigger lie, you
• 1:19:40
  know, to like give, to throw you a bone so that you could take
• 1:19:43
  something a whole lot bigger than that, you know, while
• 1:19:45
  you're playing with the bone. And I think that that happens a
• 1:19:49
  lot. Yeah, it does.
• 1:19:51
  And that is like, you know, when I bring up like how devastating
• 1:19:56
  like love addiction can be where like here I am, I'm being
• 1:20:01
  scammed. And sometimes I paint green or I
• 1:20:05
  paint red flags green because like, it felt really good when
• 1:20:09
  like, you did show up for me, right?
• 1:20:11
  Like when I got that bone and, and just how that plays out,
• 1:20:16
  right? And it's kind of going back to,
• 1:20:19
  you know, me. I'm married for 50 years and
• 1:20:26
  we're kind of roommates at this point.
• 1:20:28
  We still love each other, but now I've I've met one of these
• 1:20:31
  people online and I'm having this entire thing that's only
• 1:20:35
  exists in my mind. Like did I?
• 1:20:38
  Did I treat them? That's one of the most
• 1:20:39
  complicated. That's one of the most
• 1:20:41
  complicated. Would you do you get cases like
• 1:20:43
  that? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:44
  Where people come in and they say we are just roommates.
• 1:20:48
  It feels like. I really, I feel like I just
• 1:20:51
  like live with this person. Our relationship is not where it
• 1:20:54
  should be. And where do you, what do you
• 1:20:55
  expect me to do? Sometimes, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:20:58
  And and sometimes it can, it can be like a catalyst that propels
• 1:21:03
  this couple into like a completely different
• 1:21:05
  relationship, which I've seen be really beautiful too.
• 1:21:08
  Oh, really? Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:21:10
  I think like I like I have all these like I'm a I'm a seaside,
• 1:21:13
  I'm MDR. I do all these things.
• 1:21:15
  But like at my core, like I am a therapist who specializes in
• 1:21:20
  connection and into the city and whether that's building more
• 1:21:25
  connection with myself, with God, with the world around me,
• 1:21:28
  with my partner, with parts of me, my sexuality, my desire, all
• 1:21:33
  these different things. Like that is I am so excited
• 1:21:36
  that I get to do that with people because I see a lot of
• 1:21:39
  people do the work and it start to experience connection to all
• 1:21:43
  these different things in really new and beautiful ways.
• 1:21:45
  Yeah. So that like, yeah, I, I kind
• 1:21:48
  of, I get all types of stuff. But really at its core, it's
• 1:21:51
  it's all about. So tell me about the couple
• 1:21:53
  dynamics now that we now that now that we're here, I love
• 1:21:57
  this. I'm excited because this is I
• 1:21:58
  feel like this is like it's all I don't want to call it fun, but
• 1:22:05
  there's more, there's more dynamic.
• 1:22:07
  It's when you have two living, breathing, conscious parties
• 1:22:13
  that are involved, the emergent potential of like what could
• 1:22:17
  happen or the potential toolbox that you have to like pull out
• 1:22:20
  has to be so much more complicated, so much more
• 1:22:22
  diverse, right? Because this is an 18 year old
• 1:22:26
  kid that's sitting across from me.
• 1:22:27
  There's a couple that's been married with four kids for 20
• 1:22:29
  years or for 30 years, something like that.
• 1:22:31
  But there's a couple that's been together for five years, you
• 1:22:33
  know, and it's just starting out their lives together, you know,
• 1:22:37
  what do you find? What, what, what?
• 1:22:38
  What do you think? It's funny, like I, I love doing
• 1:22:43
  it, but I also like I get a lot of anxiety about it too.
• 1:22:49
  IA friend of mine used to say this to me all the time back in
• 1:22:52
  the day. He said if you want to know
• 1:22:54
  what's wrong with you getting a relationship And I do believe
• 1:22:57
  that. I think I kind of see it in like
• 1:23:00
  through a spiritual ends. I feel like whoever we're
• 1:23:01
  partnered with, whether that person is there for life or for
• 1:23:06
  a season, I see it in the sense of like we are drawn to the
• 1:23:11
  people who are going to teach us a lot about ourselves.
• 1:23:15
  We are going to trigger each other like talking about
• 1:23:18
  attachment like anxious and avoid and always tend to find
• 1:23:20
  each other. Anxious and avoid and tend to
• 1:23:23
  find each other. Tend to find each other.
• 1:23:25
  That's interesting. Yeah.
• 1:23:27
  What other, what other, what other kind of opposing traits
• 1:23:29
  tend to find each other? Well, I think too, it's like we
• 1:23:34
  can sometimes we can recreate like things from our childhood.
• 1:23:41
  We can like fall in love with the things we swore we'd never
• 1:23:44
  fall in love with that were in our caregivers.
• 1:23:48
  Or we can do like their reaction formation of like, I'm going to
• 1:23:51
  go to the opposite. Yeah.
• 1:23:53
  Which is still being controlled by it.
• 1:23:55
  Sure. Right.
• 1:23:57
  Yeah. Like, and I'm not an imago
• 1:23:59
  therapist, but I think that they do a really good job of
• 1:24:01
  exploring that kind of stuff. I've noticed that especially in
• 1:24:07
  like in the sex addiction world, that like when you start to kind
• 1:24:10
  of peel back the layers, it's like, Oh my gosh, you guys were
• 1:24:14
  like always meant to find each other.
• 1:24:16
  Oh, really? Yeah.
• 1:24:17
  And, and the sense of like, you know, you can have like one of
• 1:24:21
  the, the person who's you find out later in sessions that like,
• 1:24:26
  oh, yeah. Like my, my parent was a sex
• 1:24:28
  addict, you know, and like unconsciously fell in love with
• 1:24:34
  a sex addict, right? There's stuff like that that
• 1:24:38
  really blows my mind. I was in, so I was in high
• 1:24:40
  school. This is my first exposure
• 1:24:42
  something like this. And when I was in middle school,
• 1:24:44
  this is a firt like the world I grew up in was very sheltered,
• 1:24:47
  very wholesome, but and I'm sure an enormous part done by my
• 1:24:51
  parents, right, that they purposely, intentionally kept me
• 1:24:54
  very innocent, which I really like.
• 1:24:56
  I had no idea how much I appreciate it until I lost that
• 1:24:58
  innocence. And I was like, wow, that was
• 1:25:00
  amazing, you know, but my, I remember in 7th or 8th grade,
• 1:25:05
  there was two kids. The class was small, a small
• 1:25:07
  Jewish school. And then maybe there's 10:15
• 1:25:09
  kids in the class, two kids, one kids, mom, something other kids
• 1:25:12
  dad. And they ended up getting
• 1:25:14
  divorced and then the parents end up getting married, right.
• 1:25:16
  And I was good friends with actually both kids.
• 1:25:18
  And it was very, it was incredibly difficult for the,
• 1:25:21
  because they were friends. They were in the basketball team
• 1:25:23
  together. They were buddies there, you
• 1:25:24
  know, they knew each other and this is big.
• 1:25:27
  This is like public news. This was not like just kind of
• 1:25:29
  whispers. This was verified, you know,
• 1:25:33
  divorced and like they're living in a house together.
• 1:25:35
  Remarried, you know, I'm like, and then years late in high
• 1:25:40
  school, you know, I think 12th grade, he was having a hard time
• 1:25:46
  with whatever and he cheated on his girlfriend and, you know,
• 1:25:52
  and a bunch of his friends abandoned him for that.
• 1:25:54
  And I remember this was towards the end of the year and like,
• 1:25:56
  we're like, especially 12th grade and like, you don't know
• 1:25:59
  what life is going to be happening.
• 1:26:00
  You're mature enough to know that.
• 1:26:01
  Like you got to be mature, but you're not mature enough to know
• 1:26:03
  what that means. And so we're sitting around a
• 1:26:06
  bonfire kind of just a contemplating life.
• 1:26:08
  I'm always have my heart broken. I think my heart broken.
• 1:26:10
  My heart was broken at that point.
• 1:26:12
  And I was like, why? Like you saw what your, what
• 1:26:16
  your, what one parent did to the other, Like, how can you, how
• 1:26:19
  can you do that? And he's like, I, he's like,
• 1:26:22
  hey, you look at me, he goes, I've no, I, I've swear to God,
• 1:26:25
  he goes, I've no idea. I just felt like this
• 1:26:28
  incredible, just like pull, just like I just needed to do it.
• 1:26:32
  And like you're just something like, it was like, like I just
• 1:26:34
  had to make it just had to happen.
• 1:26:36
  And he goes and I felt like piece of shit about it, you
• 1:26:38
  know, but I just like I just couldn't pull myself away from
• 1:26:42
  like that's the thing I needed to do.
• 1:26:44
  And I don't know where you know, and and you know, I hope he's
• 1:26:48
  the truth is I haven't kept in touch with him and I hope he's
• 1:26:50
  doing well, but I feel like that's like that's a lot of
• 1:26:53
  people where you end up, you know, but you go through
• 1:26:56
  something that hurts you. It's something that like you
• 1:26:58
  see, has such detrimental effects, Like what pulls us to
• 1:27:01
  like pursue that ourselves? I don't know, you know, and it's
• 1:27:08
  scary because until we figure that out, we're kind of doomed
• 1:27:10
  to keep on repeating the same thing, right?
• 1:27:11
  I. Think Life has this really
• 1:27:13
  amazing way of bringing up the same stuff.
• 1:27:17
  The script's different, the characters are different, but
• 1:27:20
  the themes are the same until we, like, figure it out.
• 1:27:23
  Yeah, you know, And like, I hear that.
• 1:27:26
  And it's. Yeah, I.
• 1:27:28
  Because I see that thing happen all the time, right?
• 1:27:31
  Like I grew up with an alcoholic parent and I swore that I would
• 1:27:34
  never. Drink.
• 1:27:36
  And then I'm in my 20s, and I'm going to rehab because now I'm
• 1:27:38
  an alcoholic. Right?
• 1:27:40
  Like, we become the thing that we resist.
• 1:27:42
  Yeah. And I think part of it, you
• 1:27:45
  know, two things came up for me while you were sharing that.
• 1:27:48
  And 1 was like, sometimes, like, we revisit the scene of the
• 1:27:51
  crime and we, like, play different roles.
• 1:27:56
  And I think the other thing that comes up for me is like the
• 1:27:59
  carbon triangle, which is especially like you see it kind
• 1:28:03
  of, I see it a lot in, in divorce where you have the
• 1:28:07
  perpetrator, the victim and the savior, right?
• 1:28:11
  And one parent cheats, they become the perpetrator, right?
• 1:28:17
  The parent who was not cheating, they're the victim, right?
• 1:28:22
  And then the kid is forced to pick a side.
• 1:28:24
  So they become the savior to the victim, right?
• 1:28:26
  And then it's this dance that people kind of go back and forth
• 1:28:30
  in. And I think a lot of us can get
• 1:28:31
  trained in that relationally as children, as teenagers.
• 1:28:36
  And and then here we are in our relationship in our, you know,
• 1:28:39
  when we're 1920 and we shifted into the 30 or 40 what?
• 1:28:43
  Do you hope, you know hope or not I can grab that you hope
• 1:28:45
  not. And we can find ourselves like
• 1:28:47
  doing the same roles that were taught to us as kids switching
• 1:28:50
  around. And I remember I heard someone
• 1:28:52
  say this like, I can play all three roles in an afternoon.
• 1:28:55
  Like especially with shame, like I can release talk negatively to
• 1:29:01
  myself, which I'm the perpetrator, Then you know, the
• 1:29:05
  beer becomes my savior. Yeah.
• 1:29:08
  And I'm really my own victim. So it's, it's, I know that came
• 1:29:11
  up for me as, as you were saying that as we kind of get trained
• 1:29:14
  in that and then dance around in different roles and bring that
• 1:29:17
  into future relationships until those things are healed, right,
• 1:29:20
  You know, and even after they're healed, it still takes a lot.
• 1:29:23
  Of work, you know, do you hear a couple stories usually end up
• 1:29:25
  well, usually. Yeah, most of the time, yeah.
• 1:29:29
  And that's not to say like, you know, divorce doesn't happen and
• 1:29:32
  and people don't separate it, but for the most part, most
• 1:29:37
  people come in because they want to stay together.
• 1:29:39
  It feels like it feels like cheating is like the ultimate
• 1:29:45
  abandonment of a relationship, right?
• 1:29:47
  Like, I feel like, you know, you could take a bad husband or wife
• 1:29:51
  can get away with a lot of things.
• 1:29:52
  You know, they can get away with not being present, with spending
• 1:29:57
  money recklessly, with not being emotionally active or invested.
• 1:30:00
  They can get away with like bad friends or bad community.
• 1:30:03
  And like, you know, there's like a line with like cheating that
• 1:30:06
  like you can't like it's very, very difficult to get trust
• 1:30:09
  back. What do you, what do people do
• 1:30:10
  to do? How do you frame it in such a
• 1:30:14
  way that people can try and get trust back after, you know,
• 1:30:20
  especially when you're putting in the lens of some kind of
• 1:30:22
  addiction like porn or sex addiction or process addiction
• 1:30:25
  like that? Well, firstly, like I remind
• 1:30:28
  people that like trust is yours to give somebody like it's not
• 1:30:33
  theirs to have like that's yours.
• 1:30:38
  Because I think it's like, that's like one of the first
• 1:30:40
  things is like, oh, this is my thing that I have in a
• 1:30:43
  relationship and I need to protect it.
• 1:30:46
  You know, I at 1st and kind of what you were saying earlier, I
• 1:30:51
  think of like Esther Perrell when she talks about like how
• 1:30:54
  the old shame was divorce and now the new shame is staying in
• 1:31:02
  a marriage when you can leave, right?
• 1:31:04
  And I've, we've seen that kind of shift in culture.
• 1:31:09
  It is. So first to kind of go through
• 1:31:21
  like a bunch of stuff to answer your question.
• 1:31:23
  Yes, trust. Let's do it.
• 1:31:26
  So first thing is, especially with sex addiction, there's a
• 1:31:32
  couple of ways that people find out.
• 1:31:34
  There are discoveries, which is I saw the lipstick on the
• 1:31:40
  collar, I went through my wife's phone and I saw the text
• 1:31:42
  messages. You forgot to delete your
• 1:31:45
  browser history. Like all the things.
• 1:31:48
  And these discoveries can be incredibly painful.
• 1:31:53
  And they're usually followed by like a short disclosure.
• 1:31:59
  That's not a whole disclosure, but it's enough to like let you
• 1:32:02
  know like, hey, this is what happened.
• 1:32:05
  And you see this with a lot of couples that they will go
• 1:32:07
  through so many of those and it becomes like this death by 1000
• 1:32:10
  cuts. We know that it is.
• 1:32:13
  It is a horrific thing to keep experiencing that every couple
• 1:32:16
  of months. Yeah, it's heartbreaking.
• 1:32:19
  To want to believe your spouse and, and on top of that, then
• 1:32:23
  there's like things like the gaslighting, right?
• 1:32:25
  Where like there's the lipstick on the collar and I'm convincing
• 1:32:28
  you that it's yours, you know, or I know you saw the browser
• 1:32:33
  history, but that was from before and where you get
• 1:32:36
  somebody who loves you to question their own reality and
• 1:32:38
  and then start to go crazy from it.
• 1:32:41
  That's the meat. I feel like that's the most
• 1:32:45
  terrible thing that you could do to someone.
• 1:32:47
  Yeah, it's a form of abuse. It's yeah, but it's more than
• 1:32:50
  it's like, because not only are you shouting because I think
• 1:32:53
  there's like any kind of relationship, there's the
• 1:32:55
  individual components and then there's the relationship at
• 1:32:58
  large. And you're shattering the
• 1:32:59
  relationship at large and the other individual at the same
• 1:33:02
  time. And that is like, like, it's one
• 1:33:04
  thing if you're going to break your relationship and that is
• 1:33:07
  sad and, you know, terrible in its own, you know, for its own
• 1:33:10
  reasons in its own way. But like to make someone else
• 1:33:14
  think for years that they're delusional from, you know, just
• 1:33:16
  like just constantly feed them half truths that make them doubt
• 1:33:19
  themselves. Every step along the way is like
• 1:33:21
  such an unnecessary harm. And Neo Mitting.
• 1:33:24
  Yeah. Because I'll let you develop a
• 1:33:25
  story that I know is not true. And and to kind of come over
• 1:33:31
  onto the attic side a little bit.
• 1:33:33
  It's it's survival. It's I am in this constant state
• 1:33:36
  of survival. This thing that I do is the way
• 1:33:40
  that I cope with life. I'm terrified of losing my, my
• 1:33:45
  partner. I'm in this fight or flight all
• 1:33:47
  the time. And so I use gaslighting and I
• 1:33:50
  use lying. And I'm not saying this is OK.
• 1:33:52
  I'm just saying like it's, it becomes a tool and where it
• 1:33:56
  almost it becomes unconscious too, where like I just lie so
• 1:33:59
  much. I don't even know what the truth
• 1:34:00
  is anymore, you know, So it's, I have like compassion for both
• 1:34:05
  sides. Because when the especially when
• 1:34:08
  I'm sitting with the addict and we're doing that work, like the
• 1:34:10
  amount of shame and guilt and self hatred that comes along
• 1:34:14
  with realizing like, I did this thing compulsively and I
• 1:34:18
  couldn't stop. It breaks your heart.
• 1:34:21
  And then you sit with the betrayed partner who's like, I
• 1:34:24
  don't know what's real anymore, you know, and I've lost my mind,
• 1:34:29
  you know, And this isn't just with sex addiction.
• 1:34:31
  This is with substance use. Yeah.
• 1:34:32
  With, you know, a parent loving a child who's addicted to
• 1:34:37
  heroin. Like this is it's these dynamics
• 1:34:39
  kind of they, they play out a lot.
• 1:34:42
  And then how do you build trust when that, when these things are
• 1:34:46
  happening and you've had a death by 1000 cuts.
• 1:34:48
  So usually somebody comes in to treatment and like some sobriety
• 1:34:53
  is, is established. I So what we do next is what you
• 1:34:59
  would call formal disclosure. And usually the partners working
• 1:35:04
  with a CSAT and the, the betrayed partner and the, the
• 1:35:08
  sex sex addict is also working with the CSAT and you roughly
• 1:35:13
  begin to do that work or you roughly have a disclosure around
• 1:35:16
  the three to six month part. Like anymore, it's can be really
• 1:35:19
  cruel to the betrayed partner who's like, I'm just trying to
• 1:35:21
  like get some clarity, you know, And it's, it is a, it is a
• 1:35:28
  really rough process because it's, it's really like the
• 1:35:33
  betrayed partners, like they come up with the questions.
• 1:35:36
  What's the room like? What's it like being in that
• 1:35:37
  room? Is it like, is it like there's a
• 1:35:40
  blanket on the room? Is it, is it crying?
• 1:35:43
  Is it dark? Is it exhausted with, you know,
• 1:35:46
  like, hopefully? Above but like then also at
• 1:35:49
  times where it's like really vulnerable and connecting and
• 1:35:53
  beautiful, you know, it's like. Is that weigh on you at any
• 1:35:58
  point? Yeah, it does.
• 1:36:00
  Yeah. I, I can overempathize.
• 1:36:03
  That's like my sure. And I, I have to like constantly
• 1:36:06
  work on that where I'm like, hey, Chris, this is not yours to
• 1:36:10
  feel. And it's it can be.
• 1:36:13
  What do you, what do you do to to read the channel, I guess to
• 1:36:16
  kind of shift away from that it's.
• 1:36:19
  My own work, you know, I I see a therapist and there.
• 1:36:23
  You go. That's helpful.
• 1:36:24
  I do a lot of. Consultation and I do a lot of
• 1:36:27
  supervision with other therapists.
• 1:36:29
  Right. Do you exercise?
• 1:36:30
  Do you do things like that? Exercise.
• 1:36:32
  I try to eat healthy. I I've been doing this like
• 1:36:38
  where I go to Delray Beach every morning and I watch the sunrise
• 1:36:41
  and I go for a walk there. Nice.
• 1:36:42
  And you could probably do it at a decent time too, right?
• 1:36:44
  It's like 7730. I could go around like 536.
• 1:36:48
  I like it. Like when it's dark.
• 1:36:49
  Nice, you know, I like what am I doing to feed my soul and then
• 1:36:55
  the boundaries that I have like I'm not answering calls or
• 1:36:58
  emails after a certain time. I'm not working on these days,
• 1:37:02
  no matter what. I'm saying yes to things even
• 1:37:07
  when, like, my nervous systems, like I want to lay in bed and
• 1:37:10
  watch TikTok for an hour, like just bedrock, you know?
• 1:37:15
  And instead, I'm like, I'm going to go out with my friends and
• 1:37:17
  I'm going to, like, talk about, you know, things that are not
• 1:37:21
  super traumatic. Yeah, for.
• 1:37:23
  Other people and then oscillating back and forth of
• 1:37:27
  like dealing with the stuff that comes up for me, and then like,
• 1:37:30
  yeah, I'm going to go have the cheesecake.
• 1:37:31
  Nice. You know.
• 1:37:32
  Yeah. And yeah, just like a lot of
• 1:37:35
  regulation, a lot of grounding, a lot of that kind of stuff.
• 1:37:38
  Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Anyway, yeah, so, so we're
• 1:37:45
  talking so relationship trust, that room's heavy a lot of
• 1:37:50
  times. Once that happened once.
• 1:37:53
  So I guess, yeah, I guess when people are going to therapy, it
• 1:37:55
  shows that it shows that they want to try, right?
• 1:37:57
  It shows that they want their relation to work.
• 1:37:59
  Do a lot of people come to you after they're ready, after their
• 1:38:02
  marriage has already fallen apart and they're like, well,
• 1:38:04
  now I need to get this off because I don't want this to be
• 1:38:07
  my life. Yeah, like in all stages, you
• 1:38:12
  know, if people who've already separated but like, want a Full
• 1:38:15
  disclosure. Yeah.
• 1:38:17
  Oh, that's interesting. Like so that they can like, stop
• 1:38:21
  questioning themselves all the time.
• 1:38:22
  I think the partner probably owes it to them, right?
• 1:38:24
  Yeah, absolutely. And like, and then there's these
• 1:38:27
  other parts of it which are like the impact.
• 1:38:30
  Yeah. And we're the betrayed partner.
• 1:38:34
  Like it's to say, like, hey, this discovery impacted me like
• 1:38:39
  this. My relationship with my own
• 1:38:42
  sexuality has changed because of this, like me not feeling good
• 1:38:46
  enough sexually, like I could ever compete with whatever the
• 1:38:48
  thing was and thinking that was mine.
• 1:38:51
  I inherited that from you, right?
• 1:38:54
  The self blame that comes with it.
• 1:38:57
  There's there's all these kind of domains that are really
• 1:38:59
  interesting to explore and the the betrayed partner really gets
• 1:39:04
  to own that. And then there's restitution
• 1:39:07
  where the addict is like, Hey, I'm going to validate you and
• 1:39:10
  I'm going to, you know, you're absolutely right.
• 1:39:12
  This is what I did too. This is what my gaslighting did
• 1:39:15
  too. And I see that that can be such
• 1:39:18
  a powerful process. And the the goal is to make it
• 1:39:23
  as least traumatic as possible. Even though it is it, it can be
• 1:39:26
  a really traumatic process. Totally, totally.
• 1:39:29
  Last question, 222. Last questions, everyone.
• 1:39:33
  We talked about a little bit in passing.
• 1:39:34
  You actually brought it up before I did, but I'm happy you
• 1:39:37
  did when you met kosher phones. Yeah.
• 1:39:41
  And social media. So I want to just talk about
• 1:39:42
  that and then I want to ask you about what's next for you.
• 1:39:45
  But let's, that'll be the last question.
• 1:39:47
  So let's, let's talk about kosher phones and to explain
• 1:39:50
  what a kosher phone is because you brought it up to me.
• 1:39:52
  So you educate me and, and, and then social media and stuff like
• 1:39:58
  that. Because I know for myself again,
• 1:39:59
  that I mentioned to this here when we met last week, that the
• 1:40:03
  sometimes the, the biggest triggers for me, the biggest
• 1:40:05
  challenges that I have will be 1/2 a second social media clip
• 1:40:09
  on. Instagram or Twitter or, you
• 1:40:12
  know, whatever it is where like something just like flashes
• 1:40:15
  across the screen, trigger them, triggers my like, boom, that's,
• 1:40:19
  you know, attractive, that's whatever, blah, blah.
• 1:40:22
  And I just like, I feel the hijack just happened, you know?
• 1:40:27
  And that's when like social media is like, is that in my red
• 1:40:30
  or is that in my yellow? Like it is in a hard red and
• 1:40:33
  unfortunately it's still there. Yeah, or like what?
• 1:40:37
  What do I have in place? Another seaside actually.
• 1:40:41
  And I've been meaning to do this with my phone.
• 1:40:43
  She does it where her iPhone if she's on an app for 15 minutes,
• 1:40:47
  you can set a timer. Yes, it'll kick you off And I
• 1:40:49
  didn't know that existed so I I need to use it.
• 1:40:52
  Yeah, I use that. I, I had that for when I had
• 1:40:55
  Twitter and I had X on my phone, I put 45 minutes a day for X and
• 1:40:59
  Instagram. And but the problem is that you
• 1:41:03
  could still like just go back, you could ignore it if you want,
• 1:41:05
  like you could be like. And that kind of also feeds into
• 1:41:08
  the whole like, shame, you know, process.
• 1:41:11
  You're like, I'm such an idiot. And you just keep on clicking
• 1:41:13
  like, okay, another 15 minutes, another 15 minutes, you know,
• 1:41:16
  and. And what's interesting in that
• 1:41:18
  is like, I know it's 15 minutes of disassociation followed by
• 1:41:21
  like a couple second break. I would invite people to notice
• 1:41:25
  what it's like in their body, in their mind when they're kicked
• 1:41:28
  off, what it's like wanting to get back on, and then what it's
• 1:41:31
  like when they get back on and it's too challenging.
• 1:41:37
  But it's like I felt my cortisol rise.
• 1:41:41
  Yeah, and. I felt it go down.
• 1:41:44
  Yeah, it's that's, that's such an interesting process.
• 1:41:48
  I so I've worked, I've worked at a couple different treatment
• 1:41:53
  centers. I've worked a lot with Jewish
• 1:41:56
  communities, Orthodox communities, acidic communities,
• 1:42:00
  with these issues with mental health, with substance use.
• 1:42:03
  And kosher phones came up like a while ago and I love them.
• 1:42:07
  Yeah, because it's. Explain what they are if you
• 1:42:09
  don't mind. Where I don't have access to the
• 1:42:11
  Internet, it's could be a flip phone.
• 1:42:13
  I know that there's like, I have really smart clients who are
• 1:42:17
  like, I can get pictures still. Yeah, you know when I can like
• 1:42:20
  do things like that, but it is like I look at it as.
• 1:42:25
  Even that at that point, the degree of the damage done is
• 1:42:27
  similar to like having to run down the block to go to Playboy
• 1:42:30
  magazine as opposed to going on your phone and watching a
• 1:42:33
  hardcore a hardcore pornography video.
• 1:42:35
  Yeah, I'm. And I'm a huge fan of, like,
• 1:42:37
  putting as many barriers between me and the thing as possible.
• 1:42:40
  Yeah. Because yeah, like, I can't just
• 1:42:43
  reach for it in my phone anymore.
• 1:42:45
  I have to walk downstairs to the computer.
• 1:42:46
  Correct. Right.
• 1:42:48
  So it's for some of my clients and this is like a really
• 1:42:52
  difficult thing to navigate because these are so addictive
• 1:42:58
  and I'm holding my phone right now.
• 1:43:00
  I've few phones, yeah. Which is, you know.
• 1:43:04
  I've I've contemplated getting a second phone and I can't bring
• 1:43:06
  myself to do it. I mean.
• 1:43:08
  I did it to separate like work and.
• 1:43:11
  Do you find that it works well? Yeah.
• 1:43:13
  You, you, you have a good job. You can do a good job
• 1:43:15
  compartmentalizing it. Because I, I put my work phone
• 1:43:19
  on the charger and then I'm like cut off from it and where it was
• 1:43:22
  when it was on my phone, it was just constantly texts, things
• 1:43:26
  like that. Cool.
• 1:43:27
  And now I can like, really take a break.
• 1:43:30
  But having that conversation with like, hey, you know, is
• 1:43:34
  your smartphone like something that we need to put in the red
• 1:43:36
  circle? No.
• 1:43:38
  It's not, it's such a hard sell, right?
• 1:43:41
  It's such a how do you how do you sell it?
• 1:43:43
  I I let it play out. Everything I do is invitation.
• 1:43:47
  Although I did find out that suggestion when you look it up,
• 1:43:50
  one of the definitions is subtle command.
• 1:43:52
  Oh man, but you're just a propaganda artist.
• 1:43:56
  Everything I do is invitation. And it's really like in a non
• 1:44:00
  judgmental way of like letting people kind of come to the on
• 1:44:03
  their own and like, hey, this isn't forever like right now to
• 1:44:07
  establish like sobriety, like maybe we need to switch phones.
• 1:44:12
  And I've had a lot of people who like where like that will never
• 1:44:15
  happen and then come into my office 3 months later, they're
• 1:44:18
  like, yeah, I had to get rid. Of that I really want to do it
• 1:44:20
  yeah, I really really want to do it and I tell myself I can't
• 1:44:24
  because I work for my phone and emails and blah blah but 95% of
• 1:44:28
  the time whoever my phone is, my laptop is and I don't
• 1:44:31
  necessarily need for that to be the case and and.
• 1:44:34
  When you're not doing it on a smartphone like I've people
• 1:44:37
  become like amazingly, like they can get their emails done and
• 1:44:41
  like they can answer them from this time on my computer and.
• 1:44:45
  But even I'll even enjoy going to the supermarket more.
• 1:44:47
  I'll even enjoy going to the, you know, driving, driving to
• 1:44:50
  the gym in the morning, Like when I'm driving to the gym in
• 1:44:53
  the morning and I'm not scrolling on Twitter.
• 1:44:55
  I'm not, you know, checking to see, you know, the next text or
• 1:44:59
  notification that I'm getting. And I can just enjoy the drive
• 1:45:02
  for the drive and I can just enjoy the activity of being in
• 1:45:04
  the supermarket. I when when you talk to a
• 1:45:07
  cashier, when you say hi to someone that's like get, you're
• 1:45:10
  reaching for the same thing as you.
• 1:45:11
  Like, those are like sparks that make that, that make your day.
• 1:45:15
  You know, that like that make us human and, and it's, and our
• 1:45:18
  phone separates us from those. I, I know for myself, like I got
• 1:45:21
  my headphones and I got my podcast, I'm listening to, I got
• 1:45:23
  the music I'm jamming out to, you know, I'm on the phone
• 1:45:25
  talking to whoever it is and I'm ignoring the entire world's
• 1:45:28
  around me. I don't, I never feel better
• 1:45:30
  about doing that. Like I don't walk out, you know,
• 1:45:33
  I don't walk away and be like, that was a full experience.
• 1:45:35
  I walk away and I'm like, what? What did I just do?
• 1:45:38
  Like where did the time just go? Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:45:41
  And I I think of the study I was reading not that long ago where
• 1:45:44
  they show cortisol raising, rising in people's bodies the
• 1:45:49
  minute they put their phone down.
• 1:45:50
  And then when they pick it up, the cortisol starts to lower.
• 1:45:53
  Yeah. Right.
• 1:45:54
  And to be that physically addicted to something terrifies
• 1:46:00
  me. So yeah, that's the that's the
• 1:46:03
  first thing that comes up. And then I, I think about, I
• 1:46:05
  went to this retreat like six or seven months ago where we were
• 1:46:08
  not allowed to have our phones for six days.
• 1:46:11
  It's a long time. It was a long time.
• 1:46:12
  What was day 2 like? Or three?
• 1:46:14
  Because I feel like after that it gets easier, right?
• 1:46:16
  It did. I like the phantom vibrate.
• 1:46:20
  I could feel my thigh vibrate all the time.
• 1:46:22
  I would reach for it all the time.
• 1:46:24
  Someone would bring up something I didn't understand.
• 1:46:26
  And I'm like, oh, I want to Google that.
• 1:46:27
  Like it's there's just so many things throughout the day.
• 1:46:31
  By the last day, they gave us our phones back that night.
• 1:46:35
  And I had just connected with these complete strangers who,
• 1:46:37
  like, became my family in six days.
• 1:46:39
  There was like this really deep therapy retreat thing.
• 1:46:42
  And we all were like, I don't even want this.
• 1:46:44
  Yeah. And the amount of connection
• 1:46:47
  that came as a result of not having it and all the work that
• 1:46:51
  everybody was doing was absolutely phenomenal.
• 1:46:54
  And I admittedly, I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm in a good place.
• 1:47:02
  You're going to get you keep you keep a smartphone from work and
• 1:47:05
  you get a kosher phone for for your own life.
• 1:47:07
  Yeah, but. No, it's it's.
• 1:47:09
  You do it, I'll do it. OK, We'll hold each other
• 1:47:12
  responsible for that. OK, We'll both, we'll get, we'll
• 1:47:14
  go to AT&T, we'll get one of those phones or Verizon with
• 1:47:16
  Waze on it. So that's because that's all you
• 1:47:18
  really need. And then you then you got your
• 1:47:20
  your work phone for work and you got your kosher phone for
• 1:47:24
  deliver a healthy life. And what's so sick is like.
• 1:47:28
  You're not going to do. It no, no, like I understand
• 1:47:31
  with you. Yeah, 100%.
• 1:47:32
  I know that doing what you just suggested would make my life so
• 1:47:38
  much better. Yeah, right.
• 1:47:39
  Than my relationship with things.
• 1:47:40
  And there's a part of me that's like, don't don't even look at
• 1:47:45
  it. Yeah, don't look at my phone.
• 1:47:49
  It's and there's a part of me that recognizes that like that
• 1:47:52
  is totally valid and I I'm going to sit with it and really think
• 1:47:55
  about it. So take me up on it if you if
• 1:47:57
  you decide I. Will, I will, because that is
• 1:48:00
  that is. Yeah.
• 1:48:01
  It's yeah. I love that I have to really sit
• 1:48:05
  with those two parts of myself and then fight it out.
• 1:48:09
  I'm sure it'll be fun, I'm sure I'm sure it'll be quite do do in
• 1:48:12
  the morning. Do it you know, in your in your
• 1:48:14
  sunset, sunrise, sunrise hangout, you know, just think
• 1:48:17
  about. That I try to that's actually
• 1:48:19
  like one of my best friends. She turned me on to it.
• 1:48:22
  Like slow mornings where I'm not looking at a screen, I'm not
• 1:48:26
  checking emails, The first thing I'm doing is not picking up my
• 1:48:29
  phone. I'm making coffee, I'm going to
• 1:48:32
  the beach to watch the sunrise and talking to God.
• 1:48:35
  Like I'm doing all these things that like really center me for
• 1:48:37
  the day. And then I had the mornings
• 1:48:39
  where I pick this up and I want to look at TikTok and I'm like,
• 1:48:43
  and that wakes me up, you know, and, and the way that it messes
• 1:48:48
  with my cortisol through the day, like it's, that's a
• 1:48:50
  noticeable difference. I kind of feel like I use it.
• 1:48:52
  I, I, if I know I have to get up and like be up and about, I'll
• 1:48:56
  jump on my phone for a thing. And if I know that like I have a
• 1:48:59
  long morning ahead of me or like it's OK, then I'll leave it on
• 1:49:02
  the side. And also that'll take my time.
• 1:49:04
  But like, I try to go to jujitsu two or three times a week and
• 1:49:07
  like, those mornings where the alarm goes off at six and like,
• 1:49:11
  I don't want to get up. And I know that I know that I
• 1:49:13
  really do want to get up. And so like, I'll hop my phone
• 1:49:16
  and check my notifications. It just, it just flips my brain
• 1:49:18
  right on, you know, And I know it's probably not even a healthy
• 1:49:22
  fee. Yeah, it's crazy.
• 1:49:23
  It's crazy. But I don't even know if it's a
• 1:49:24
  healthy acceleration, you know, to go from just waking up,
• 1:49:32
  wanting to go back to sleep, rolling over.
• 1:49:33
  And they'd be like, like, you know, what notifications did I
• 1:49:36
  get? What's happening on what's
• 1:49:37
  happening in the world on Twitter, you know, and like, but
• 1:49:41
  yeah, I think I prefer for it to not be the case.
• 1:49:43
  So what's next for you? What do we hope?
• 1:49:45
  What do we hope? Is it going to be the case in a
• 1:49:47
  year or five or ten? What are we?
• 1:49:49
  What are we generally generally hoping for?
• 1:49:54
  I that's such a good question. I like, I think I, I will always
• 1:50:00
  in some way have like a private practice.
• 1:50:02
  Like I love that I get to do this.
• 1:50:06
  I think I said earlier, I'm training in somatic experiencing
• 1:50:10
  and psychodrama right now. Like there are two modalities
• 1:50:12
  that I find so exciting, especially with doing this work.
• 1:50:18
  So I know that those are my next kind of like credential
• 1:50:22
  accomplishments. I want to go back to school.
• 1:50:26
  Yeah, I want to, I want to go back to school, either APHD or a
• 1:50:31
  DSWI want to do research and practice.
• 1:50:36
  I want to do research around arousal template.
• 1:50:38
  I just this fascinating endlessly fascinates me.
• 1:50:44
  And yeah, and I, I would also one day, like I, I wanna, I
• 1:50:48
  wanna teach. You want to teach.
• 1:50:51
  I do. Teaching is awesome, by the way.
• 1:50:53
  I love it. Yeah, I, I've done it in like
• 1:50:57
  group therapy where I'm like teaching concepts and things
• 1:50:59
  like that. But like to, I had a professor
• 1:51:01
  who said to me, he's like, I knew I wanted to help people and
• 1:51:03
  I wanted to teach people how to help people.
• 1:51:05
  And I was like that you just articulated exactly what I want.
• 1:51:09
  Yeah, so. Beautiful.
• 1:51:10
  Yeah. Well, I think it'd be a great
• 1:51:11
  teacher. I think, I think it'd be, I
• 1:51:12
  think it'd be. I think it'd be wonderful.
• 1:51:15
  Even just based on this conversation.
• 1:51:16
  There's a class, you know, there's a 2 hour, it's 2 hour
• 1:51:19
  master class. So master class, it's a 2 hour
• 1:51:22
  class on, on all this. I think it's really, I think
• 1:51:26
  that these conversations help with the feeling of loneliness
• 1:51:33
  and isolation and that I'm the only person in the world that
• 1:51:36
  has this problem. And I'm the only person in the
• 1:51:38
  world that no one gets what it's like to, you know, to like, have
• 1:51:43
  these urges. And like, you're just a person.
• 1:51:45
  You're just a guy, you're just a girl, you're just a man, you're
• 1:51:48
  just a woman. You're just, you're just an
• 1:51:49
  adult. You're just, you're just a human
• 1:51:51
  being. And like we have that.
• 1:51:53
  And like, you can like, like, I know that, you know, I know that
• 1:51:57
  it's hard, you know that it's hard, you know, and we can work
• 1:52:02
  through it together. And I think that bit of hope is
• 1:52:05
  just so valuable. Absolutely.
• 1:52:08
  And I, yeah, I love that. Thank you.
• 1:52:11
  Chris, thanks so much for coming on now.
• 1:52:12
  I really appreciate it. It's such a pleasure and I hope
• 1:52:15
  we use this again. We will do this again, I'm sure.
• 1:52:16
  And as we're going different points, you know, different
• 1:52:20
  points in life and as you're up to different things and learning
• 1:52:22
  new things and hope you text me and be like, Hey, I just you
• 1:52:25
  know, I got some fun new things that I want to do.
• 1:52:27
  I want to talk about. We can do podcast again.
• 1:52:29
  I would love, but this will be next time, next time I have to
• 1:52:32
  come up to you make that trip up to West Palm.
• 1:52:34
  But thanks so much for doing this.
• 1:52:35
  I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
• 1:52:37
  Bye everyone.