Break Free from Porn Addiction with This Spiritual Recovery Secret

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on the spiritual aspects of recovery from pornography addiction. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Now, this video can be used to talk about the spiritual aspects of just about any addiction. But we're really going to focus a little bit more on porn addiction specifically today. So we'll redefine spirituality and explore how to use good, orderly direction in your recovery process. Loosely defined spirituality is your sense of connection to others supported by acting in accordance with your values. In this process, you started defining your rich and meaningful life. That was several videos ago. Now you're going to explore how good, orderly direction can help you embrace your values and create that Life. And in 12 step communities, we talk about a higher power. Some people talk about God, other people talk about good, orderly direction. It's all kind of the same thing. And whatever you call it by good, orderly direction is your road map to your rich and meaningful life. It helps you avoid unnecessary detours, prevent getting lost and going in circles, and use it and helps you use your energy purposefully when you encounter roadblocks. So good, orderly direction, it's project management, if you want to think about it that way. Good, orderly direction perfects. And these are all values that are very common among most cultures and virtually every religion out there. I don't know every religion out there, so I can't say it's common to everyone. But these are not weird, off the wall things. And when you start looking at them, you can understand how each one of them can help you live a healthier, happier, more content life and follow good, orderly direction. So the first one is prudence. And prudence means wisdom and patience. In order for us to act prudently, we need to have the knowledge to make effective decisions. And we need to apply that knowledge wisely and patiently. Sometimes it's not time to be impulsive. Sometimes the knowledge you have worked in one situation, but when you're being prudent, you recognize that's not going to work so much here. My kids, I'll give you that example, my son and daughter were very, very different. And I knew what I needed them to do, I knew what I wanted them to do. Did a lot of training in psychology somewhere along the way. But I also recognized that disciplining them and encouraging them had to be very different. Each child had their own unique ways of receiving, interpreting information. So it wasn't prudent to treat my daughter the the exact same way I treated my son. It wasn't going to be effective. Earnestness means keeping Your word and doing your best. Pretty straightforward. Respect for self and other. And too often we just focus on other. Respect other people do unto others. Well, yeah, that's true, but it's also important that we respect ourselves. We respect our boundaries, our needs, and we recognize that we are people who are worthy of respect and love. We deserve to feel safe. We deserve to feel accepted. Forgiveness again of self and other. In addiction, a lot of times people have a lot of guilt that they hold. And as long as you're holding that guilt, that energy is going to stay locked up in the past about all those things you feel guilty for. Does it mean that you can just say, oh, it's okay, and wipe the slate clean? No, no. Forgiveness means letting things go and say, you know what? It's not worth my energy to continue to beat myself up over that. I am going to learn from it so I don't do it again and move forward. And forgiveness of others is kind of the same thing. You're not going to allow them to continue to do something that's hurtful to you. However you're going, you're going to choose not to hold on to resentment and tie a bunch of energy up being upset over something that happened that can't be changed. Endurance of challenges with courage. Oh, in recovery, especially early recovery, there's a lot of freaking challenges. And enduring them with courage, recognizing that it's uncomfortable, it may be downright painful at times, and you can get through it. You demonstrate that you have the courage to get through it, like climbing Mount Everest or running a marathon. There are times it's going to be really unpleasant, but you're courageous enough to get through it. Compassion for self and other. And we've talked about this before, you can dislike your behaviors, you can dislike somebody else's behaviors, no problem. I mean, we all make mistakes. We're all going to have times where we dislike our behaviors. But having compassion for ourselves, that means recognizing that we're just worthy of love and also trying to understand, trying to empathize and understand your sufferings or what motivated that behavior and in the case of others, understand their sufferings. Truthfulness with guess what? Self and other. That means being honest, overtly honest with other people as well as well, not lying by omission or commission. That means not telling an outright lie, but also telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Truthfulness with self also means recognizing our thoughts, wants and needs and being honest with ourself, living authentically to the best of our ability, and selflessness means recognizing that sometimes you know what? It ain't all about you. And somebody may be having a bad day, they may bite your head off and you have compassion for them instead of going, well, I didn't deserve that, you need to apologize. Blah blah blah. Selflessness might say to have compassion and ask them if there's something you can do to help. Or empathize and say, wow, that must be. You must be having a really bad day today. Selflessness also means recognizing the contributions of other people to your successes and sometimes to your problems. Recognizing again, it's not all about you. Other people contributed along the way. So let's start with prudence. Acting impulsively or without all the information to make an informed decision is often a waste of energy. Identify times you went off, as they say, half cocked. How did that impact you? Did it help you move toward your rich and meaningful life? Or did it just drain your energy? Kind of like sitting in the mud and spinning your tires just drained your gas. It doesn't help you move forward. Prudence means tolerating distress until you can get the information and or skills you need to make the best decision. Decision Tolerating distress We've already talked about ad or ads. Acknowledge and accept how you feel. Downregulate. Get into your wise mind. Distract and decide on the next best course of action and seek safety. Get to a place where you can get support. Get to a place where you don't feel drawn or compelled to make a poor decision. Be curious. This is part of prudence. Getting curious about the issue in general, whether it's addiction or your mood issues or challenges in relationships. Think about it and go, okay, clearly this isn't going well. Why not? Let's take a more scientific explanation of it and try to understand what might be contributing to it and and what some possible solutions are. Think about let's stay with porn addiction. How this specific instance of the problem is an issue for you. So how is porn addiction an issue for you? What is causing porn addiction for you? Or what is causing your urges right now? What is causing your cravings right now? What has worked for me in similar situations in the past and what has not worked? Don't keep doing things that don't work. It doesn't make any sense. So acknowledge if journaling doesn't work for you, then don't journal. Find something else to do instead. Be curious about what knowledge you still need. Maybe you don't understand all of the neurochemical aspects of addiction and why nutrition is important. Maybe you don't understand or have the knowledge and skills you need to toler distress, whatever it is, identify what you still need, where you can get it, and what the best course of action is. Examples Is it prudent to have 24. 7 access to unsecured Internet when you're recovering from porn addiction? I would say no, but you have to make your decision. If you are recovering from alcohol addiction, is it prudent to have 24. 7 access to whiskey? Is it prudent to address social anxiety by doing something that guarantees rejection? Well, no. Is it prudent to assume you know how your partner feels or what they want? When you've done that in the past, how'd that work for you? What would be a good, better strategy? So that's where prudence comes in is getting the knowledge of better strategies and figuring out how to apply it. Is it prudent to go on to Reddit at all when you're in early recovery from porn addiction? But is it prudent to go onto Reddit and go on a negativity diet tribe where you're just this sucks, that sucks, nothing works, blah blah blah. What are you hoping to accomplish by that? My husband gets frustrated with me sometimes because he'll say something but he won't ask a question so I won't respond and he's like, well, what do you think about that? Why aren't you saying anything? I'm like, well, you didn't ask a question. If you are going to go into forums or support group meetings or whatever, yes, identifying challenges you're facing, that's reasonable. But it's also important to follow it up to ask for help, not just be in there to spread misery. Where could you develop new skills, get more information on recovery, or get helpful suggestions? What would be more prudent in all of those above situations that we talked about? And how does being prudent impact all pieces of your life? If you are making the best decision in a situation based on your knowledge of the situation, how does that affect you physically? Does it help save your energy? Does it make things go easier? I'm thinking yes. How does prudence impact you in your relationships? If you prudently choose how you act or react towards somebody, how does prudence impact your emotions? Well, guess what? If you're acting prudently, remember I said earlier, it's kind of like project management, then you're going to have more successes, you're going to feel more confident, more competent. How does prudence impact your environment? Well, there's probably going to be a lot less stress or negative energy in the environment. If you are choosing your words and choosing your actions instead of acting impulsively, earnestness means keeping your word and doing your best. How has it impacted your self esteem, relationships and recovery processes? When you failed to keep your word, you said you were going to go to your kids soccer game and you chose to stay home and watch porn. How'd that work for you? Or when you half asked what you were supposed to do, you wanted to get to the bar or you wanted to get home so you could watch porn so you did the very minimum of what you needed to do and you did it sloppy but it was done. How did that impact things. Applying it A lack of earnest Earnestness at work. How does this impact all pieces of your life? How does this impact you when you're not doing a very good job? You're there, you got a pulse but you're not doing giving it your best. How does it affect all pieces of your life when you fail to keep promises? How does it affect all pieces of your life when you are not earnest in your pursuit of recovery? When you're not earnest in application of recovery principles Questions before you do something or say something, ask yourself is this prudent to do right now? How can I best stay focused to do my best in in this situation? How can I stop making promises that I won't keep? How can I take more responsibility for my behaviors? And again, how does lack of earnestness impact all pieces of my life? Or if I'm not earnest in this situation, how will it impact all pieces of my life? The next part is respect. Remember we talked about that a little earlier? Respect of self and other why is respect for self important in all pieces of your life? Well, guess what? If you're not respecting yourself, then you are your own enemy, which means you're not going to feel safe in your own skin, which is going to cause you stress, which is going to which is going to potentially negatively impact your health. If you are not being respectful of your body, then you may be more tempted to engage in addictive behaviors or crappy nutrition or whatever. Interpersonally, if you don't respect yourself, how does that impact your relationships emotionally? If you don't respect yourself, how's that going to impact whether you feel happy, whether you feel fulfilled, whether you feel accepted or content? Cognitively, if you don't respect yourself, then what kinds of things are you telling yourself and what do you think about your own competence and acceptance? Acceptability? Why is respect for Others in important in relationships. And I kind of hinted at it just a minute ago. When we demonstrate respect, it helps the other person feel safe. When we demonstrate self respect, we help ourselves feel safe. We recognize that we're going to be our own champion and we're going to be safe. How does prudence show respect for self and other? Well, you know what, a lot of times if you prudently choose your actions, then you are tailoring your response to that person to that situation in a respectful way. How does earnestness show respect for self and other? That was kind of a no brainer. If you keep your promises, do what you say, and do your very best, that's demonstrating respect. But it's important to demonstrate respect to yourself as well as other people. How do disrespectful thoughts and behaviors negatively impact your recovery? How do they negatively impact your self esteem? How do disrespectful thoughts and behaviors negatively impact your relationships? And those can be disrespectful thoughts about yourself or disrespectful thoughts about the other person. How do disrespectful thoughts and behaviors negatively impact your ability to move toward the things that are important in your rich and meaningful life? What thoughts and behaviors do you have that show a lack of respect for yourself? For example, excessive criticism, lack of self care or boundaries. A lack of prudence or a lack of earnestness. And for prudence and earnestness, it's important to identify examples. Well, actually for all of these, it's important to identify examples of how you lack prudence. What did you do that showed a lack of prudence towards self? What did you do that showed a lack of earnestness and a lack of respect for self? What thoughts and behaviors do you have that show a lack of respect for other people? That can include violating their boundaries? Physical boundaries, emotional boundaries, cognitive boundaries. Any of their boundaries can demonstrate a lack of respect, even environmental. For people who are in relationships, if one partner puts a tracking app on the other partner's phone, that demonstrates a lack of respect. If one partner goes snooping through the other partner's text messages, that's a violation of environmental boundaries and a lack of respect. Assuming and mind reading is also a demonstration of a lack of respect. You're not acting prudently. You are assuming you know the information you need instead of gathering it. How does conditional love show a lack of respect for other people? That means saying I love you, but only if you do these things or you do it my way. And how does lying show a lack of Respect for other people. Forgiveness means accepting what happened, learning from it, and choosing not to let it steal your energy. Think about it. Is holding on to anger and resentment a good use of energy to help you move toward your rich and meaningful life? Or does it drain your energy and keep you from moving toward your rich and meaningful life? How is forgiveness related to prudence, earnestness, and respect? Why is forgiveness a prudent thing to do? How is prudence I'm sorry. How is forgiveness also earnest when you are trying to recover? When you are trying to be prudent, earnestly be prudent and respectful. Then it's going to be important to forgive self and other. And how does forgiveness demonstrate respect? And that again goes back to the difference between having compassion for and loving a person versus their behaviors. You are not your behaviors. What guilt or anger are you currently holding against yourself? How could you use prudence to recognize the impact of holding on to these feelings of on all pieces of your life? Learn more about the situation or explore it with fresh eyes? How can prudence help you do that? How can prudence help you recognize the losses as a result of some of your actions? How can you earnestly tolerate distress even when you're forgiving self and other? How can you earnestly learn from your mistakes? How can you earnestly grieve the losses that may have occurred as a result of whatever the behavior was that you feel guilty or resentful about? How can you earnestly try to make amends and prevent it in the future? What resentment or anger are you currently holding onto against others? How can you use prudence to recognize the impact of holding on to these feelings on all pieces of your life? Are those people really worth holding on to anger and resentment and spending that much of your energy on, whether it's for their own good? What resentment or anger are you currently holding against other people? And how can you use prudence to recognize the impact of holding on to these feelings on all pieces of your life? And it's going to be pretty similar to how holding on to anger and guilt at yourself impacts all pieces of your life. I'll just give you a hint. How can you use prudence to learn more about the situation or explore it with fresh eyes? Sometimes we don't see the whole situation for for how it is. So prudence would say get all the facts first. How can you use prudence to recognize losses that occurred as a result of the behaviors? Then how can you earnestly take all that information and tolerate the distress? Forgiveness is not easy. Forgiveness Is definitely a challenge. How can you learn from whatever happened so you can stay safe in the future? And how can you prevent it in the future with that person and with other people? If you're at the point where you dysregulate in response to stress, have experienced distress in multiple areas of your life because of your issues, and are in constant state of fight or flee, then it's going to be a huge challenge to act with prudence and purpose and earnestly respect and forgive yourself and others. So you're going to have to have compassion for yourself. How can you use prudence to endure the distress and earnestly work to overcome the challenges you experience in recovery? Forgiveness, respecting yourself and others, and just generally the challenges in life? How does a lack of courage or frustration tolerance impact all pieces of your life? How does courageous endurance demonstrate prudence, earnest earnestness and respect for self and other? And why do you need courage and endurance to forgive self and other? If you've done something that you feel guilty about, it takes a lot of courage to admit when you're wrong and make amends if someone else has done you wrong. It takes a lot of courage to forgive that, to set boundaries and to potentially trust them in the future, or at least have compassion for them. What skills and tools can you courageously endure? Used to courageously endure challenges, what challenges have you overcome and what skills and resources helped you? What things often contribute to you giving up, and what are three ways to address each of those? Now, this may require developing some new skills. If you have a very low frustration tolerance, there are a lot of tools that can help you overcome that. How can you support yourself emotionally, not just financially in your recovery process? Who else can support you and how can you get support from them? I mean, it's great to say, I've got Bob over here who can support me. I have no idea how I'm going to broach this and get support from him. And it's also important to tell Bob what you need from him. When I need support, this is what I need from you. Are you able and willing to do that? Compassion is a feeling of caring for the well being of self and other. Many people are taught that self compassion is bad and they should push through or do better. Well, is that really prudent? Pushing through until you're completely burned out? How is compassion prudent? How is earnestly practicing compassion respectful? And how does forgiveness show compassion? Get the idea? These things are building on themselves what compassion is not. And a lot of people mistake compassion for being Doormats. And I want to dispel that myth now. Compassion is not excessive caregiving. Let people do for themselves what they're capable of doing for themselves. Don't enable them and don't do for them what they can do. Don't make excuses for other people's behaviors and don't prevent them from experiencing natural consequences. We only learn from when there are consequences. How do each of the above examples of over compassion or unhealthy compassion show a lack of prudence, earnestness, respect, forgiveness of self, and compassion for self? So what is compassion? Compassion is caring while maintaining healthy boundaries. Empathy, accepting responsibility for your behaviors and forgiving self and other for mistakes. Recognizing that we're lovable for who we are, knowing that we all make mistakes. So how do each of the above traits of healthy compassion show prudence, earnestness, respect, forgiveness of self and other, and compassion for self and other? We're almost through Truthfulness with self and other. Truthfulness means being mindful of your thoughts, wants and needs, respectfully communicating those, and acting in an authentic manner. Not doing things that go against your very grain or or that are going to put you in harm's way just to appease somebody else. Think about how you have not been truthful with yourself by lying to yourself about what's going on. And this may include lies of omission. You just you. You chose to ignore it because you didn't want to even address it. Lying to others or operating on autopilot? Operating mind mindlessly. When you're operating mindlessly, you're not being truthful with yourself because you don't even know what the truth is. You haven't figured out what it is. How does a lack of truthfulness impact all pieces of your life? Remember physical, interpersonal, emotional, cognitive, environmental, and spiritual. How is truthfulness prudent? How does it make sense to be truthful now? Not hatefully mean truthful, but compassionately truthful? How does truthfulness with self and other show an earnest effort to heal and change? How does truthfulness show respect for self and other? How does truthfulness help you forgive yourself and others as well as stay safe? Recognize what you need to do to prevent it in the future, and sometimes recognize who's not safe to be around. You can love them, you can have compassion for them, but you can also say you need to stay at arm's length. How does courageous endurance help you be truthful with self and other? Truth is hard. It's a lot easier to tell people what they want to hear. And how does truthfulness show compassion for self and other in order to enhance truthfulness. Be respectful and do not use this as an excuse for that brutal honesty. We've talked about Think in multiple other videos. Think before you speak. Make sure it's truthful, helpful. You say it in a way that's inspirational. You only say it if it's necessary and you're as kind as possible about it. Practice morning and evening mindfulness, at least ideally lunchtime too. Compassionately and earnestly respect your boundaries and the needs of self and other. So when you check in with yourself in your mind mindfulness minutes, you're going to acknowledge. You're going to figure out what are my thoughts, wants and needs right now and how can I compassionately and earnestly respect them and respect myself right now? Embrace the and I can feel angry and still be nice to others. I can feel afraid to tell somebody something and still be truthful and be willing to accept and grieve losses with prudence, respect, forgiveness, compassion and truthfulness. When we have losses, they hurt and they may hurt different people for different reasons. But it's important to be truthful with yourself and sometimes with others about how that loss impacted you and selflessness. Selflessness means recognizing everybody's contribution to the situation, good or bad. Marshall Linehan says that many times we did not create our problems, however, it's our job to fix them. If you grew up in a chaotic environment or if you were in a chaotic abusive relationship and you're not there now, well that's great. However, you're the one that has to put the pieces back together even though they had at least a certain degree of contribution to your to your hurt, to your problems. Selflessness means respecting others boundaries and agreeing to disagree. It means giving credit where credit is due and being willing to ask for help because guess what? Nobody does it alone. How has self centeredness increased your feelings of guilt and shame? Thinking it's all about me, it's all my fault, I'm weak, I'm bad, I'm this, I'm that. How has it kept you from asking for help and developing developing support? Sometimes we can be self centered or self conscious and that keeps us from being selfless because we don't want to show weakness to others or we don't want to bother anybody else. Selflessness means getting out of our own ego and asking for what we need. How is selflessness prudent? How does it make good sense? How does earnestly practicing selflessness show respect for self and other? How does selflessness make it easier to forgive self and other. When you start recognizing all the contributions that went into it and start recognizing the impact that holding on to that anger, resentment, or guilt is having on you and those around you. How does selflessness help you have the courage to develop support that can help you endure challenges? How does it help you have compassion for self and other? And why is truthfulness essential to selflessness? Why is being honest about who contributed and what your part was? How is that essential to selflessness? When something happens, ask yourself, what was my part and who or what else contributed? If whatever it is is good, great, how can I encourage that? If whatever it is you're thinking about is unpleasant or bad, how can I learn from it? When you help someone else, how can you do it selflessly? That means do it for the right reasons to help build them up. And how can you do it in a way that respects their boundaries and it's not about what you want or having to do it the way you think it should be done. It is respecting their boundaries and earnestly trying to help them in the best way possible for them. When you need help, how can you keep pride and ego from getting in the way? For example, recognize what other people have done in similar situations and identify the impact of asking or not asking for help on all parts of your rich and meaningful life. Perfects represents a nearly universal set of values that can provide good, orderly direction to help you move toward your rich and meaningful life. If you find yourself bristling at one or more qualities like forgiveness, compassion, or respect, you may believe that that shows weakness or makes you vulnerable. Prudently explore what is causing you to still feel unsafe when you engage those values and behaviors and process it with a therapist, sponsor, or spiritual leader. Remember, practice Perfects.