Latest / Sex & Porn Addiction Recovery with Russell Beebe / Addicted to Porn? My Process For Getting Sober in 12 Weeks [Proven by 500+ Men]
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: Most men are told that recovery from porn addiction takes three to five years.
- 0:04SPEAKER_00: But when your marriage is falling apart right now, that's an incredibly expensive timeline.
- 0:09SPEAKER_00: I'm Russell Beebe, I'm a licensed mental health counselor, certified sex addiction therapist, and a recovery coach.
- 0:15SPEAKER_00: I'm also in recovery myself.
- 0:17SPEAKER_00: Over the years, I've developed a much more concentrated approach that can help a man establish real sobriety, get relief from the obsession to act out, and begin repairing his marriage in as little as 12 weeks, and all without going away to rehab.
- 0:31SPEAKER_00: Let me show you how.
- 0:32SPEAKER_00: When I trained as a certified sex addiction therapist, I was taught that recovery commonly takes three to five years.
- 0:38SPEAKER_00: And I do think that some parts of recovery can take years, and it's a lifelong journey.
- 0:44SPEAKER_00: Trust takes time to rebuild.
- 0:46SPEAKER_00: There may be trauma, shame, childhood experiences, relationship problems, and other underlying issues that need attention.
- 0:52SPEAKER_00: A man may continue growing and working on those things for a very long time, but he can recover from the initial effects of addiction much more quickly than three to five years.
- 1:03SPEAKER_00: What I started noticing was that a lot of men were not steadily progressing for five years.
- 1:08SPEAKER_00: They were spending those years going through the same cycle over and over again.
- 1:12SPEAKER_00: They would stop for a few weeks, maybe even a few months, and then relapse.
- 1:16SPEAKER_00: They would feel terrible about it, make another promise to themselves or to their wives, and then start all over again.
- 1:22SPEAKER_00: Then they might try a different therapist, another book, a new podcast, a 12-step program, accountability software, or something else that gave them hope for a while.
- 1:31SPEAKER_00: Some of those things can be very helpful.
- 1:33SPEAKER_00: The problem was that men were often trying them one at a time without a clear process of trying everything together and putting everything together.
- 1:42SPEAKER_00: They were learning a lot about recovery, but the recovery was not building upon itself.
- 1:47SPEAKER_00: And when a man keeps returning to the beginning, he starts to wonder if he can actually make it out of this addiction.
- 1:53SPEAKER_00: What I started to realize was that a lot of these men did not have enough recovery happening in their actual lives to create real stability.
- 2:01SPEAKER_00: And that brought me back to the way most men are trying to recover in the first place.
- 2:05SPEAKER_00: So why does therapy alone take so long?
- 2:07SPEAKER_00: I've noticed that therapy in and of itself has been very ineffective.
- 2:12SPEAKER_00: So I want to be clear that I'm not against therapy.
- 2:14SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm a therapist myself.
- 2:16SPEAKER_00: Many of the men we work with are also seeing therapists, and I think it can be an important part of recovery.
- 2:21SPEAKER_00: Therapy can help you understand trauma, attachment, shame, anxiety, childhood experiences, and why pornography or sexual behavior became so important to you.
- 2:31SPEAKER_00: The problem is when one hour of therapy each week is expected to carry the entire process, it doesn't usually work very quickly or very effectively.
- 2:40SPEAKER_00: So here's how it would work a man would come into my office and we talk about what happened that week.
- 2:44SPEAKER_00: Maybe he relapsed, maybe he had a fight with his wife, maybe he started to understand what he uses porn for and feels rejected, lonely, and stressed or ashamed.
- 2:52SPEAKER_00: And those are all reasons why people use form.
- 2:54SPEAKER_00: So he gets a real understanding of himself.
- 2:56SPEAKER_00: Then he leaves and goes back into his normal life.
- 2:59SPEAKER_00: He goes back to the same job, the same house, the same phone, and the same situations where the behavior has been happening for years.
- 3:06SPEAKER_00: The next urge may show up all at night, it may show up three days later, it may show up in a hotel room after an argument with his wife.
- 3:13SPEAKER_00: And even when he understands more about why it's happening, he may still have no idea what to do with it in that moment.
- 3:19SPEAKER_00: This is what I see a lot of men.
- 3:20SPEAKER_00: When they gain insight and the insight is real, they don't have enough support or structure to turn that insight into a different response.
- 3:27SPEAKER_00: So they come back the following week and talk about what happened again and again and again.
- 3:32SPEAKER_00: That process may eventually help, but it can take a very long time.
- 3:35SPEAKER_00: And when a marriage isn't in crisis, the man usually needs a much faster progress and much faster process.
- 3:42SPEAKER_00: And progress depends on knowing what to do before the urge is already taken over.
- 3:47SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing once you recognize where the relapse actually begins, the entire process starts to make a lot more sense.
- 3:54SPEAKER_00: Most relapses begin earlier than men realize.
- 3:57SPEAKER_00: A lot of men think the relapse begins when they open the porn site.
- 4:00SPEAKER_00: Usually it starts well before that.
- 4:02SPEAKER_00: Maybe you woke up feeling irritable, something happened at work, and you felt embarrassed or angry.
- 4:07SPEAKER_00: You came home, your wife was upset, and instead of talking about what's going on, you pulled away.
- 4:12SPEAKER_00: You may have started scrolling through social media.
- 4:15SPEAKER_00: At first it was nothing explicit, so you told yourself it wasn't a big deal.
- 4:18SPEAKER_00: Then you kept looking a little bit longer and started moving towards the kinds of things you know you usually lead you somewhere else, right?
- 4:25SPEAKER_00: By the time you open up the pornography, you may have been moving towards it for hours and didn't even know it.
- 4:29SPEAKER_00: That's why trying to stop at the last second is so difficult.
- 4:32SPEAKER_00: At that point, you're already in the ritual.
- 4:35SPEAKER_00: Your thinking has changed and you're starting to negotiate with yourself.
- 4:38SPEAKER_00: You tell yourself you only look for a minute, you tell yourself this is not really porn, you tell yourself you've been doing well and deserve some relief, and then afterwards you wonder how the hell did you end up there again.
- 4:49SPEAKER_00: A good recovery process helps a man recognize what's happening much earlier than that.
- 4:53SPEAKER_00: He starts noticing when he is isolating, becoming secretive, getting resentful, or feeling what I call rid, restless, irritable, and discontent.
- 5:02SPEAKER_00: Those are often the first signs that he's moving towards the behavior.
- 5:05SPEAKER_00: Once a man can see that a relapse starts much earlier, the next question becomes pretty obvious.
- 5:09SPEAKER_00: What's he supposed to do when those first signs show up?
- 5:12SPEAKER_00: Because if the whole plan is to wait until the urge is strong and then try harder, he's probably going to keep ending up in the same place, relapsing over and over again.
- 5:20SPEAKER_00: So how do we build a recovery process that really works in real life?
- 5:24SPEAKER_00: At the beginning, we get very clear about sexual sobriety and what that actually means.
- 5:29SPEAKER_00: A lot of men say they're going to stop watching porn, but the boundaries stay vague.
- 5:33SPEAKER_00: They may still be scrolling through sexual content on social media, messaging people, looking at suggestive images, or doing other things that keep them right next to the behavior.
- 5:41SPEAKER_00: Then they tell themselves that that's not technically a relapse, right?
- 5:44SPEAKER_00: That kind of gray area gives the addiction a lot of room to negotiate.
- 5:48SPEAKER_00: So we help a man define the behaviors he's stopping, the situations that make him vulnerable, and the early signs that tell him he is beginning to move in the wrong direction.
- 5:57SPEAKER_00: Then we help him build a daily and weekly recovery routine.
- 6:00SPEAKER_00: That includes things like group meetings, check-ins, accountability, recovery work, and having people he can connect to when he notices himself struggling.
- 6:08SPEAKER_00: The main thing is that he is no longer trying to make all his decisions alone, especially when he is already under pressure.
- 6:14SPEAKER_00: If he has an argument with his wife, he knows what to do.
- 6:17SPEAKER_00: If he's traveling, he has a plan.
- 6:18SPEAKER_00: If he's home alone and notices the urge beginning, he has somewhere to go and somebody to connect with.
- 6:24SPEAKER_00: If he starts becoming isolated or dishonest, other people in his recovery know about it before it turns into another relapse.
- 6:30SPEAKER_00: That kind of structure can help a man stabilize much faster.
- 6:32SPEAKER_00: He's no longer making every decision alone, and he's not waiting until things are already out of control to ask for help.
- 6:38SPEAKER_00: But then another issue usually starts to show itself.
- 6:41SPEAKER_00: Even with all that structure in place, some men are still thinking about acting out all the time.
- 6:45SPEAKER_00: What do we do about that?
- 6:47SPEAKER_00: So the problem is really underneath the porn.
- 6:49SPEAKER_00: In my own recovery, I eventually realized I did not have a problem with sexual behavior.
- 6:53SPEAKER_00: I had a problem with how I felt when I was sober or not acting out.
- 6:57SPEAKER_00: I was restless, irritable, and discontent.
- 6:59SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to deal well with stress, loneliness, resentment, shame, rejection, or just feeling uncomfortable in my own skin.
- 7:06SPEAKER_00: Acting out gave me temporary relief from all of that.
- 7:09SPEAKER_00: That is the truth for me and a lot of men that I work with.
- 7:12SPEAKER_00: Pornography may be causing terrible problems in your life, but it also may be the fastest way you've learned to change the way that you feel.
- 7:18SPEAKER_00: For a little while, you're not stressed, you're not lonely, you're not thinking about the argument in your life, you're not thinking about what happened at work.
- 7:24SPEAKER_00: Then you come back and now you have the original problem plus the shame, the secrecy, and the damage created by the behavior.
- 7:31SPEAKER_00: That creates even more discomfort, which makes you want more relief again, and the cycle goes on and on and on.
- 7:38SPEAKER_00: If all we do is take away the porn but never help the man deal with his life underneath it, he may stay sober for a while, but the obsession is probably going to keep coming back.
- 7:46SPEAKER_00: So during the 12 weeks, we also begin looking at what's underneath, what's been driving the addiction, the internal reaction to life, what he's escaping from, what feelings does he have that he can't tolerate, what happens inside him before he begins to move towards the behavior.
- 8:01SPEAKER_00: Then he starts learning other ways to respond.
- 8:04SPEAKER_00: And the amazing thing that happens here where the obsession to act out go away is the mental part of this that precedes the acting out behavior goes away and becomes much more easy to manage.
- 8:14SPEAKER_00: He learns how to tell somebody he's struggling before he disappears into isolation, he learns how to deal with stress and resentment earlier, he learns how to stay present even when he feels rejected instead of immediately looking for a way out.
- 8:25SPEAKER_00: That deeper work takes time, but you do not need to finish all of it before you begin experiencing real freedom.
- 8:31SPEAKER_00: And that is where the 12-week timeline starts to make a whole lot more sense.
- 8:35SPEAKER_00: So what can change in 12 weeks?
- 8:37SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying every issue is healed in 12 weeks, and I'm certainly not saying that your relationship is going to be healed in 12 weeks.
- 8:43SPEAKER_00: A man may continue therapy, he may continue working in his marriage, his past, looking at the deeper issues connected to the addiction for a very long time.
- 8:50SPEAKER_00: But what can happen in 12 weeks is that he can finally get out of the cycle constantly starting over, relapsing over and over again.
- 8:57SPEAKER_00: He can establish clear sobriety and an understanding of the gray areas that have been pulling him back over and over again.
- 9:04SPEAKER_00: He can learn how his relapse process begins and recognize it much earlier.
- 9:09SPEAKER_00: He can build a routine that does not depend on motivation.
- 9:12SPEAKER_00: He can have accountability and support from other men who understand exactly what he's dealing with.
- 9:16SPEAKER_00: He can learn what to do when an urge shows up instead of trying to figure it out on his own while it's happening.
- 9:22SPEAKER_00: He can begin to address the stress, shame, loneliness, resentment, and other issues that have been driving the behavior.
- 9:27SPEAKER_00: When all those pieces begin coming together, a man can be in a completely different place at the end of the 12 weeks than he was when he started.
- 9:35SPEAKER_00: By the way, I see this all the time in my program.
- 9:38SPEAKER_00: But sobriety is only one part of what is changing because while he's working through all of this, his wife is watching to see whether this is just another promise or whether something is actually different this time.
- 9:49SPEAKER_00: That matters because his wife has probably heard promises before.
- 9:52SPEAKER_00: She's watched him apologize, delete apps, install blockers, and say he's done.
- 9:57SPEAKER_00: So another promise is not going to mean very much to a wife who's been hurt so much over many, many years.
- 10:03SPEAKER_00: What she may notice is that he's now part of a real process.
- 10:06SPEAKER_00: The other people know what's going on.
- 10:07SPEAKER_00: He's getting support without her forcing him.
- 10:10SPEAKER_00: He's telling the truth sooner.
- 10:11SPEAKER_00: He's not making her responsible for monitoring everything he does.
- 10:15SPEAKER_00: She may see him become less defensive and more willing to understand what this has done to her.
- 10:19SPEAKER_00: That does not mean trust is completely restored in 12 weeks, and nobody should really expect that.
- 10:24SPEAKER_00: But she can begin to see evidence that his recovery is real, that something is actually different this time, and that she's no longer the only person trying to hold everything together.
- 10:32SPEAKER_00: And that gets us back to the original question, how can this much change happen in 12 weeks since so many men have been told it takes five years?
- 10:41SPEAKER_00: The answer is that we're putting pieces together and increasing the intensity at the beginning.
- 10:45SPEAKER_00: The man is not only talking about the problem once a week, he has groups, coaching, accountability, a recovery curriculum, peer support, and access to help when he is actually struggling.
- 10:56SPEAKER_00: He is learning about underlying issues, but he is also practicing what to do in normal life.
- 11:00SPEAKER_00: He is catching the relapse process much earlier.
- 11:03SPEAKER_00: He is building sobriety and working on the marriage at the same time.
- 11:07SPEAKER_00: When all that's happening together, men can make a great deal of progress in a relatively short period of time.
- 11:12SPEAKER_00: They've not finished recovery, but they are no longer stuck at the beginning.
- 11:16SPEAKER_00: They have some stability, they understand what they're doing, they have support around them, and they have a plan that they can continue to follow, and that's really the point.
- 11:24SPEAKER_00: Twelve weeks does not mean the work is over, but it can mean you're sober, the obsession is losing its grip, your wife is finally seeing something different, and you're moving forward instead of starting over again.
- 11:34SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you've already spent months or years trying to solve this problem and you're ready for a more concentrated approach, there's a link below where you can schedule a confidential call with our team.
- 11:43SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about what you've tried, what may be missing, and what a 12 week recovery process would look like specifically for you.
- 11:48SPEAKER_00: You don't have to spend the next five years continuing to start over.
- 11:51SPEAKER_00: And if you're a high achiever and want to see the biggest mistake ambitious men make trying to recover from porn addiction, that video is up on your screen now.
- 11:59SPEAKER_00: Check it out.