008 - 3 Circles (Relapse Prevention Tool)

Before we start the podcast today, we.

Wanted to let you know about an.

Upcoming event, Pure Desire's Redeemed Men's Conference, September 15th through 17th at Cascades Camp in Yelm, Washington. This will be a time to gather together as men where we will worship together, hear world class teachings, learn from experienced workshop speakers, and learn more about how to battle for purity in Christ. Come escape the noise and distraction of everyday life. Join us 9-15-17 and rest in what Christ calls you. Redeemed. To register, visit PureDesire.org redeemed We hope to see you there.

Hey there. I'm your host, Trevor Windsor, and we're so thankful you're taking time out of your day to hang out with us. I'm here as always with my co host, Nick Stumbo.

Check, check. Is this thing on, Nick?

It is on.

Oh, good.

And we are sitting here with one of the coolest people here at Pure Desire, Mr. Harry Flanagan. Harry's a pastor and is also one of the pastoral sex addiction professionals here on staff. Harry, welcome to the PD podcast.

It's exciting to be here.

We're very excited to have you. So today Harry is going to talk with us about another one of our tools, the three Circles tool. And as a counselor and veteran here at Pure Desire, Harry's going to give us some good insight on this tool. So Harry, with your permission, let's just jump in. You ready?

I'm ready.

All right, let's start, Harry, with a little bit of your background. Can you tell us a little bit of your story and how long you've been with Pure Desire?

I've been with pure desire since 1993, when it was actually founded. But I came into this program not as a counselor, but as someone who was battling with addictions. I was a pastor who fell in sexual sin. And in 1993, July of 93, Ted started Pure Desire. I joined in November. So I've been here since the early days of Pure Desire and watched all the transformation and changes over the years as God was using this ministry to transform and change me.

Very cool.

And how long have you been counseling with the ministry?

I was the first paid full time staff member of Pure Desire.

Pure Desire.

OG Yep, yep. The very beginning. So Ted came into my office. I was on staff at East Hill Church here in Gresham and he came to my office for the first time after all my time on staff. This is his one and only visit to me and it was 10 minutes long because I was busy counseling with someone from Pure Desire on the phone. And I wasn't going to cut him off because Ted walked in. So in the two minutes that he and I actually talked, he said, hey, I'm taking this ministry out of East Hill Church, and I want you to come with me and do it. So it took me 24 hours to pray it through, talk, have a conversation with my wife. And I was on board because I feel like a kid in a candy shop in this ministry. I love watching God change lives.

That was in 2007, 2008.

2007.

Were you already doing some counseling at Sound?

I was already running Pure Desire at eastill Church for the previous four years. I was actually running the entire ministry within east hill. We had 28 groups at that time.

Wow, that's awesome. Well, that should give our listeners a lot of confidence that you have used these tools a few times. And in a Pure Desire group, there's a number of tools that we use that help people start to get some traction to see life differently. And I think this might be my favorite and perhaps one of the most important tools we used to. It's called in the workbooks the relapse prevention tool, but also is referred to informally as just the three circles. So, Harry, help us understand this tool and what it's used for. Give us kind of the overview of the three circles tool.

The three circles tool, which was originally created by Patrick Carnes, a great researcher out of the. In the field of sexual addiction. Matter of fact, he's pretty much on the cutting edge of sexual addiction patients. Patrick created this tool as he began to start working and recognizing the nature of sexual addiction and how it worked. And when Ted and the other counselors, including me, went through our preparations and certification, this is one of the first tools that we were introduced to. This tool is going to be powerful for anyone who really wants to change, because it's going to make you more self aware of what. What's happening inside you. The transformation we're looking for at Pure Desire is transformation from the inside out instead of the outside in. This tool helps you become aware of what you want to avoid and what triggers you. And eventually what are the behaviors you're going to turn to to replace the destructive behaviors that you've been living out in your addiction.

Yeah. So walk us through those three circles. Like what, what is each circle? And can you give us examples of what would go in each one?

So we're gonna make this really simple. The middle circle, the inner circle. I tell people to make a red list. What are all the behaviors you want to stop in your life in the beginning, because this can feel overwhelming at times. You want to begin with just the sexual issues, but eventually you can include any issue in your life that you struggle with. But in the beginning, the red list, the center that bullseye is these are the behaviors that have to be eradicated from our life.

And we often refer to that as relapse.

Right. What's your relapse? And relapse is there's four levels to relapse. The first level of relapse is what the 12 step community calls recovery, what we call restoration. Restoration is where you are accepting life on God's terms. The second stage down is what we call lapse. Someone is triggered, they act out, they say, what the heck am I doing here? And they go back towards the restoration type behaviors. The third level is called episodal relapse, where you relapse and you stay there for a season, periodically acting out. That's where most of our addicts come into our program, where they've been battling. And the fourth is kind of humorous. They call it a collapse because now you're living to fulfill the addiction. So sexual addiction is a compulsive, destructive, self coping behavior. And in that self coping behavior, we have to discover the obvious question is, what's driving this? What are you coping with? What are you struggling with? And that in the second circle, what we call the middle circle, I call it the yellow circle, the yellow list you're writing down, what are all the things that trigger you to act out the behaviors that are on your red list. So it might be having a confrontation with a parent or a spouse. It might be having to work overtime at work, although the three of us have never had that experience.

Right? 100% true.

But there's a trigger. Maybe it's shame, maybe it's guilt, but there is something going on inside you that's triggering your desire to go to these old behaviors that you promised yourself you would never go to. Living out. Romans, chapter 7, verse 15, that says, I find members of my body doing the very thing I don't want to do. Paul clearly understands what we people who battle with addictions go through. So the yellow circle is the circle that you discover your triggers, but it also becomes can be positioned to help you say, oh, I'm feeling this, and so now I'm feeling anxiety. I have a client that I'm working with and he gets flashes of memories from his addictive past. And now he knows, oh, that tells me I'm feeling anxious. So now he Knows he needs to be looking to the third list, the green list. What are the healthy self coping behaviors? That third list needs to include emotional self care, spiritual self care, physical self care. Like for example, how much rest are you getting, what kind of foods are you eating, what are you doing for exercise, those kind of activities. But there also needs to be intellectual self care. What are you doing to continue to grow in your understanding of you and the world around you. For us, we'd be encouraging people to learn more and understand more about their addiction or the addiction of their spouse that they're struggling with. But there's also relational self care. Are you taking care of the importance important relationships in your life? And then there's recreational self care, being able to do some things that reinvigorate you with life, give you energy and power. But they're also like a really good.

Golf round for me is revitalizing foods.

Those are rare though.

Yeah, they are. Thanks, Nick. Yes, they are very rare.

Actually. I think that's another addiction you should have on the red circle.

Trevor, a couple episodes ago, we actually asked Heather, and Heather Kolb actually told me it's not an addiction. So I'm just gonna. I'm gonna sit in that truth.

Harry, if we could go back to the middle circle just for a minute. When you talked about triggers, it might surprise some of our listeners that you didn't list sexual triggers. You talked about things like work or rejection. Why would you describe those as triggers? And would you include also a sexual trigger like seeing a provocative commercial of some kind?

You certainly, certainly seeing something provocative for you and for every individual. What's provocative can. So you have to be able to be ruthlessly honest with yourself to say, yeah, that triggers me, even if it's just a billboard when you're driving down the road. So it can be anything. But remember, sexual addiction is a coping pattern. It's a way of coping with life. And so you have to be looking and understanding that what drives you to act out is your life experiences. Where are you struggling? Where are you finding yourself, not measuring up? And one of the big ones, for example, is shame. And shame is that incredibly painful emotion and experience of being so flawed that you feel unworthy of love and belonging. And that isolation is deadly. Remember, the number one sign of an addictive personality is isolation. So, Nick, you're absolutely right. This is about your life impacting you to turn out these behaviors. Stopping these behaviors by themselves is going to be what we call white knuckling. And ultimately it will fail you. You have to get down to the root issue and find healthier ways of coping and learning how to deal with the anxieties, the fears, the. The judgments that you have against yourself or the judgments others you think may have against you.

That's where true renewal happened for me, was when I realized that one of the biggest triggers for me is when I disappoint people. Growing up as an athlete, I was only loved to the extent of how I performed. And so in relationship, again, that was one of those things where if I didn't perform in a relationship, it brought me to a place where that felt painful, that brought me back to being younger, and that was trauma for me and needed to cope some way. And so healing really started. And the renewing of my mind actually started when I realized, wow, like, that's the biggest trigger right there. When I feel like I've disappointed somebody, even if I haven't. Just that feeling of me disappointing somebody. I was set off and wanted to go act out.

I think I just wanted to make sure that was really clear that our triggers are far more than just something sexually triggering. Because when guys and gals start to make that connection and see how shame and rejection and disappointment are part of their pattern, that's I find, really eye opening in groups.

And this is what I'm about to say is universal. Every culture battles with value by performance. And that's not a biblical concept, but we brought it into the church. It's there, and it's a strong influence as to why sexual addiction is so difficult to give up. That's why this tool, all of the tools that pure desire are going to provide for you can be merely academic. It's your task this week to fill this form out because we've asked you to do it. But this is about you taking actual ownership and saying, I need to change. If I don't change, everything that's important to me is going to end up being lost or tainted. And so you're learning to be willing to embrace these tools and use them is incredibly significant for your healing to take place.

That's good. So, Harry, you kind of talked about relapse a little bit. Can you again, just define relapse for somebody who may be listening, has never heard that language before. And then does relapse. Does it just relate to sexuality and sexual addiction?

No. Relapse is when you find yourself compulsively doing any behavior. And unlike Heather, golf can fit into this category. Anything that is personal, Anything that. I'll let Heather have the last word, but Anything that you use compulsively. And so it's called a process addiction. Sexual addiction falls into the category of being a process addiction. A relapse is where you have made a commitment to stop doing a certain behavior. And whether you committed it to your spouse or you committed it to your pastor or to your parents or just to yourself, the fact is you find yourself again doing the very behavior you promised yourself you weren't going to do. That's what a relapse is. I'm now back doing this. And the key here is everybody on the planet has unhealthy coping behaviors. Addictions are compulsive. And even though I know I shouldn't be doing this, I feel driven to do it. That's what an addiction is. So a relapse is. Is where the addiction takes over and literally biologically hijacks our conscious brain. It's being bypassed, and the limbic system is now redirecting what we do because the limbic system wants us to cope. And that's a whole other lesson for another time. But, boy, it's one that we need to examine closely on these podcasts.

Yeah, I really like the way the three Circles tool invites you to see your life holistically. Yes, that we're far more than just someone with a sexual addiction, but that it's connected to all of our emotions and interests. And so the tool really has to kind of COVID the spectrum. As you were saying, it has to be relational, emotional, physical, spiritual. And that's a real key for success.

Well, and a part of what we're facing is that our culture has not taught us how to handle the difficulties we faced in adulthood. When we were kids, we didn't have someone telling us, this is how you handle when you and your wife are struggling sexually. Here's how you handle that. Most people don't. In fact, I was speaking to a church of around 2 or 3,000 in upstate New York, and I asked this congregation, how many of you had a real quality birds and bees conversation with your parents? And I had three people raise their parents.

Wow.

Three people. So, you know, of course, that's better than my story, because I came back from my honeymoon and my dad met me at the door when we stopped to visit them. And he pulled me aside to start that conversation. Thirty seconds in, I knew where he was going after the honeymoon.

Little late, Pops.

When I told him, dad, I think I've got this, he was so relieved that he walked away. So we have a whole bunch of we have done our culture has done a poor job of preparing us for adults, for adulthood, and for family, marriage, and intimacy. So we're flying by the seat of our pants. And unfortunately, Hugh Hefner has had more influence on our sexuality than the Bible has.

Yeah, because he talked about it.

Yeah.

The church doesn't.

Exactly.

That's great, Harry. So let's go back again to the middle circle where you were talking about triggers. And for many men and women, as they identify triggers, that's what leads them into creating a guardrail or a boundary around that trigger. So, for example, if you find that provocative commercials are a real trigger, you might set a boundary of not watching television alone or getting rid of cable TV as a way to maintain your sobriety. So for the listeners, talk through. Why is having some healthy guardrails or boundaries, which many of us, we kind of rebel against the idea of having a boundary in our life. But why is having guardrails or boundaries so important for us?

And I want to go a step earlier than that when we come into this. Our culture has taught us that we're on our own journey of healing. And in reality, the Bible is really clear that this healing process we're going through is in community. So any rules that you have for yourself, Nick, is it going to be just like when you tell yourself, I'm never going to do this behavior again? Well, you just set a boundary and you're going to cross over it again. If you are trying to do this solo, you're going to fail if you do it solo.

That's good.

So this is about building a relapse prevention plan and then including the significant people in your life, your pure desire, groove your spouse, some good friends, or even siblings that will help you to hold onto accountability as you go through this process. So, for example, I have a fellow, I just literally finished a counseling appointment with his wife, is on a business trip, going to China for 10 days. So here he is, 10 days with no accountability at home whatsoever, except for self accountability. So what he's done is he's built connections about how he's going to occupy himself when he's not at work so that he's going to end up being in a place of purity when his wife gets home to reconnect. And he's not dependent on. He has to carry the load himself. He's got men in place because every one of us who have battled with sexual addiction knows that we within ourselves don't have the ability to do this. That's why in Romans 12:15, Paul tells us that when one of us weep, we all weep. When one of us rejoices, we all rejoice. We can only weep and rejoice with each other when we're willing to tell each other our stories, where we're at today, what we're struggling with today. And so the guardrails is not just what I'm thinking in my head, but building the team in place to be a band of brothers to support each other through the healing process. That when I know I'm in a dangerous scenario, I'm going to be bringing in my friends and saying, hey, listen, here's what I'm going through and here's what I'm asking of you to support me as I go through this so that I want to. Here's what the other side looks like when we're going to be out of this. So they know what to expect. I know what to expect of them.

It's interesting because the guardrails. I remember growing up, we had a family friend who. One of his things he did is he never went into a Blockbuster Video. Every time he went in there, he felt like he was triggered by the covers of movies that he saw. And I remember as a teenager thinking, that is so ridiculous, dude. Just. Just go in there. You're fine. Like, it's going to be okay. But then learning through the pure desire content and through this ministry that not every guardrail for every person is going to be the same, and learning to understand who I am. You know, for me, you know, one of the biggest social media apps in the world right now is Twitter. And for me, I've had to take it off my phone because every time it's on there, somehow I end up being in trouble and either relapsing or getting to that point and feeling like, you know, shame and sin. And so I've learned that humility is where it really, like, you have to be real with yourself about what triggers you, and you have to be humble enough to say, you know what? I can't do this. Even though I know there are millions of people who can have Twitter and not act out and not relapse, it's going to be okay. If I'm the only one in the world that can't use that app, if I'm going to maintain purity, it's okay for me not to have that.

And, Trevor, that took courage for you, because again, in our culture, one of the things you're going to recognize that a very common trait among people who battle with sexual addiction is they're Codependent, they want to be accepted. In fact, the reason they isolate is because they believe if people really knew what they thought, if people really knew what they had done, that they would be rejected. So for them to admit, this is not a good place for me, when their friends are all saying it's a great place to be, it takes a lot of courage. That's why building a community of people who really have your back important and that you can't afford to have relationships with people who are going to pull you away from your own values.

Yeah.

And I think it's through others, whether it's a spouse, people in our group, a close friend, they can see us sometimes much better than we see ourselves. And so if we do, like you said, Harry, if we develop this in isolation, we're going to miss half of the boundaries or guardrails we need because we're blind. And that's exactly why we're struggling, because we're blind to it. And so, you know, I've had a number of times where, as I was developing this and communicating with my wife, she'd say, what about this? And at first my reaction is like, what? That's no big deal. But when she would explain things, then it was so painfully obvious, I was like, oh, yep, that needs to go on there, and we all need that. And that can be a little humbling at first, but then you start to realize, wow, without their input, without their eyes, I would continue to make the same mistakes. And so it's inviting community for our health.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, you can't be in that kind of community without humility. You can't take on what people are saying without it. So good. Okay, so, Harry, we've been talking about guardrails, right? They're really, really important. Can you give us some examples of some effective guardrails and then some that are ineffective?

Well, the first guardrail is no secrets. So when you recognize that you're being tempted, you need to be able to not only get it into the air, but you need to get it into the airwaves. You need to contact your accountability people. And if you're married and you and your spouse, you have to give the dignity of choice. They may want to be involved with your healing process, and they may not. If they want to be involved with it, you let them know, hey, this is. I'm really struggling right now. So it begins with saying, okay, I recognize this is going on. I can't let this just fester in my head by myself. That's where the problems lie, but when you finally recognize it, you've got to. This is really simple. You, your head can't relax until your body relaxes. So your brain literally has never encountered the world that we all live in. It's encased in one of the hardest objects on the planet, the skull. My wife tells me it's thick all the time.

Thicker for some than others.

Absolutely. So the brain doesn't know what's going on out here. And so when the five senses are feeding raw data to the brain, and then it's interpreted by the limbic system, and the limbic system turns it into a narrative that we're telling ourselves. And the narrative, the limbic system is taking the facts, but it's not telling you necessarily the truth truth, because its job is that you survive. So it's going to create the narrative. It's going to make you alert to this. So we have all of this taking place, and in our brain, we have to be able to get. We have to create a scenario where we're now taking to our community and saying, here is where my struggle is. And understanding that the limbic system can only be retrained experientially. We can't feed it information and have it change. We have to behaviorally change for this to take place. And so when I find that I am anxious, then I have to think on my outside circle, what are the behaviors that are going to help my body to relax? So for some people, it's going to be deep breathing exercises that we have talked about for years at Pure Desire. For some people, especially the wives, they lock the bathroom door and they take a soaking bath where the kids are on one side of the door there on the other. And they're able to relax their bodies. So the whole purpose of the addiction is to relax the body and then their brain can calm down and relax. So your coping behaviors needs to be things not that are a good list of things to do, but they're valuable to you, whether because they're pleasurable, like your golf game, sometimes Trevor, or it is something that you recognize is valuable, like, say, Nick's jogging, his running that Nick does. So you do the behaviors that you value that are going to relax your body. When your body relaxes, your brain can begin to relax, and now you regain control of your brain and the cravings go away. The cravings will go away when you can relax your body.

So it sounds like you might say an ineffective guardrail or boundary is one that I'm setting just because everyone else is setting it, but it's not necessarily connecting with my personal emotions or struggle.

Exactly.

Or.

How many of our listeners hate going to the gym. So if we list going to the gym and it's not something they value. Yeah, exactly. And so if your list is a list of supposed to's, it's going to be really ineffective. It's not going to work. It has to be things that you really recognize for you as an individual. These are valuable to me.

Yeah, well, I know for many people, going to the gym can be a triggering place. So we have to make sure that in trying to do that, the quote unquote healthy behaviors that we think go in that list, we don't inadvertently add more triggers to our list.

Exactly, exactly. And the key, Nick, is we need to be grace filled towards everybody else. We need to be self kind. We need self kindness. Jesus was clear in Matthew 22. Love your neighbor as yourself, but we need to be ruthlessly honest with ourselves. Love rejoices in the truth. 1st Corinthians 13:6. Love rejoices in the truth. We need to be able to be honest with ourselves about what we're capable of handling and what we aren't.

Well, Nick, you were, you were saying that, you know, sometimes we got to understand that what may be effective for someone else can be ineffective for us. It's like Netflix is a huge thing now where you can sit down and just calm down and watch something with your family or watch something by yourself. But I've learned that it's one of the things I use to numb out when I go home. And I don't want to go, you know, take care of what's going on at the house. And I need to just, you know, numb out in some way from the stress of the world. I've learned that that's something that I can escape to too. Where a lot of people would say that seems kind of ridiculous, but it's just learning that it can be ineffective for yourself.

Yeah, it is. Knowing yourself. All things in moderation. If we set limits in our accountability. We don't want to go from 83% of men who battle with sexual addiction have what the clinicians call comorbidity. That is, there's other addictions. Well, we don't want to. Bill W. Who helped co author the big book for Alcoholics Anonymous when he died. He hadn't touched alcohol for decades, but that was only because he'd switch addictions to sex. So what we don't want to do is go from one addiction to Another, we want to learn how to live a life that is always going to be honoring to the values that we believe our Creator has placed within us.

Yeah, that leads right into the next question. I think it's one that we get in the groups. I've been in a lot because the third circle in our workbook is labeled as sexual health. And I think when most people hear that, they think, well, if I'm married, that means having good sex with my spouse, and if I'm not married, it means not having sex because God said not to. And that that's how we define sexual health. But I have a feeling the third circle, that definition is intended to be much broader than that. So for our listeners, could you define. When you see sexual health or healthy sexuality as the third circle, what does that mean?

Well, I think that. That we have to define. It's not about the intimate relationship between a husband and wife. It's more important about your identity as a male or female. It's about what God intended for you to be as an individual, how you carry yourself, how you manifest, what it means to be male or female. This is not about cultural norms, whether you are far left, far right, politically, this is irrelevant to that. This is about saying, how do I honor the nature that God has given me? How do you honor that and live it out in a way. Way. You know my favorite verse in the Bible on worship? I call it my Halloween verse because it's First Corinthians, 1031. So 1031.

I see what you did there.

Yeah. Thank you, Trevor. It says, whatever you eat, whatever you drink, whatever you do, you do to the glory of God. Well, I dare you to take a milkshake and make it into a religious experience. Hallelujah. When you drink it. No, it's your learning how to take the life that God has given you and give glory to God as you carry out this life. How you treat yourself, you have to learn how to love yourself if you're going to treat other people right, if you're going to walk in health in this life, it begins with you being able to enjoy this gift that God has given you. Not just your body, but life on this planet that he's given you.

That's good. So, Harry, if someone has the three circles outlined and is following it daily in their life, does that ensure that temptation will just disappear in their life?

I wish. The reality, Trevor, is that in this life there's never going to be a season where we are beyond temporary temptation. We still all fall short of the glory of God. We're still all being changed from glory to glory into his image. And we're not going to see, we're not going to be perfect till we're seeing him eye to eye. So we're all going to be tempted. Remember, Jesus being fully God and fully man, was tempted in every way like you and I. So if Jesus could be tempted, you and I are going to be tempted. And this three circle thing should probably be a piece of paper that you have folded up and have it in your back pocket that you carry with you to remind you to pay attention. I think it's a living document. So when I find something that I didn't have on my list that has triggered me, I now add it to my list. So these lists actually, the healthier you get, get, the longer these lists get.

So don't be afraid of a long list.

That's right. Absolutely. Absolutely. The shortness of list says you're in denial. The longer the list, the more aware you are. One of my devotional things I do is I like to go onto the Internet and go to Hubble and just look at the pictures that that Hubble is creating about what God's doing with the universe, or even looking to see what people are discovering with a microscope. This life that God has given us is remarkable. But in the midst of all of that, in the midst of our experiences, we miss the point when we think that our value is based on performance. And if our value is based on performance, it's not okay for us to have things listed on our three circle exercise. The reality is we all fall way short. Nobody needs just a little fine tuning. We all have areas that we struggle.

That's good. So, Harry, if someone is sitting listening to this podcast and maybe the three Circles tool is pretty new to them, or maybe they've been through it in a group and it just hasn't clicked and now they're thinking, okay, I'm going to give this a shot. What tips would you have for someone who, who's working through their three Circles tool?

I would ask them, who are the people that know you best? Because they'll have insights, whether it's your spouse or your family, your siblings, the guys in your group. But also Paul said to us to imitate me as I imitate Christ. So who has been doing three Circles well for you? If you have someone in your group who is really thriving with this tool, I would talk to them. If your group is all struggling, then I would tell them to call Rich more at Pure Desire and Rich will help.

He'll talk you through it.

He'll talk your leader through how to improve what you're doing with that tool. So again, it goes back to, this is a community experience. It's not me sitting somewhere in a corner by myself trying to solve all of this, because it can be overwhelming, especially if I spend my whole life running from this inner stuff. Because, remember, when we isolate, according to scripture, we isolate from God. He said that as you've done to the least of my brothers, so you do to me. We isolate from other people, but we also isolate from those parts of ourselves we don't want to look at. So you're not going to be good at looking at the inner stuff by yourself. That's why it's really helpful to have someone. And for a few people out there listening to this podcast, you may need counseling. And so whether you use the staff here at Pure Desire or you have some local counselors who are going to honor your faith, there are great resources to help you to begin to explore your inner world.

Yeah, yeah. That's why I say all the time in my groups, I'll say it's okay to cheat off your neighbor if their answer reminds you of something. Or you say, that's totally true about me. That's why we have the group. And I say, you better have your pen or pencil out while we're sharing our answers, because someone else is going to say something about their tool. You're like, wow, I need that.

Absolutely.

That sounds familiar.

Yes, it sure does.

Because we do learn. And I just find it remarkable how many groups I go to. And I start out with a short list, and then as we go around and guys are sharing, it's like, oh, add that one.

Yep, add that one.

So cheat off your neighbor, and you'll find that it really helps enhance your three Circles tool.

And there's one more thing. It's really important for me. When I was young, in my healing, we had a group leader who was honest to the core about his growth. And when he struggled, it gave me permission. He struggled, and he would talk about it. It gave me the concept that it was safe for me to talk about my issues. So if you have a leader in your group, again, this is a Coleridge bore issue. But if you have a leader in your group that's not being open and transparent, then that may be a hindrance to the safety of your group. And don't beat them up. They just need some help, and that would be a good time for them to give Rich a call, and Rich is a really gracious big guy who will walk you through that.

That's great, Harry. This has been great. Thanks for helping us with the three circles. We really appreciate your insight and your expertise in this area. Thanks for thanks for being here.

Thanks for inviting me right on.

And thank you for listening to the Pure Desire Podcast. If you like what you're hearing and want to keep up with the podcast, please subscribe and check out our website, PureDesire.org also, you can follow us on social media. EaredesirePDMI. Once again, that's EaredesirePDMI. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the PureDesire podcast. For more information, check out our website, www.puredesire.org. check in each week for new content on the podcast and we pray that it will help you find hope and freedom on your journey to purity.