083 - Genesis Process

Welcome to the Pure Desire podcast where we partner with you to bring hope and freedom on your journey to purity. Before we jump into today's episode, we wanted to let you know about a brand new resource, Mended. One couple's journey from betrayal to imperfect beauty. Mended is the story of Rick and Tiffany Bowman. This story is how God healed a marriage that was destroyed by betrayal and turned it into a powerful picture of his grace and healing. This testimony of relationship that went from broken beyond repair to rebuilt by God's mighty hand will give you practical tools on how to strengthen your marriage and find true intimacy. There is hope. When God works a miracle. Anything can be mended. To pick up your copy of mended, visit PureDesire.org mended. Enjoy the podcast. 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 with my co host, as always, Nick Stumbo.

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So simple. So simple.

Yeah.

Do you know where that's from?

I don't know where that's from.

It's the. It's the farmer's insurance jingle. And I thought it would be appropriate for today because their tagline right now is we've seen it, we've covered it. And I think that's like this podcast. We've seen it and we've covered it.

Okay.

Okay, good to know. Today we're really excited to have a special guest with us, Mr. Michael Dye. Michael is a national level two and international certified addictions counselor. If you don't know what that means, you can Google it. You'll find it. The author, he's the author of the Genesis process, the creator of the faster scale, which, thank you, by the way, Michael. We very much appreciate that and we're excited to hear more about Michael and dive into his background and the resources he's created. So welcome to the PD Podcast, Michael.

Okay, thank you. Thanks for inviting me. I really have appreciated Pure Desire over the years and what you're doing to try to stem the tide with the epidemic of sexual addiction and how it's affecting us as a society. So I really appreciate what you're doing. Everywhere I go, you know, the main thing that people are struggling with is whether it's teenagers or adults, is their confusion about their sexual identity. So, yeah, anyway, thank you for Pure Desire.

Yeah, thank you. Appreciate that. So today we're going to get to know Michael better. We're going to Talk about his resource, the genesis process. And so Michael, let's just jump in right away. Why don't we start with some of your background and history. Can you just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Sure. Actually I'm 73, so I've been at this for over 50 years. 38. As a Christian, I've always been just fascinated and, and struggled with the whole dilemma and mystery of human self destructive behavior. In other words, as human beings, when we want to change, you know, why aren't we able to change? And you know, I did before I became a Christian, I was about 13 years in the whole 60, 70, you know, hippie movement. And I was very involved with the occult and metaphysics, Eastern religions and did everybody, every kind of mind expanding lsd, POD kind of drug and traveled around the world with some of the biggest gurus. But no matter how much I did and no matter how many, you know, cosmic experiences I had, there was this emptiness in me. And it was an emptiness, it was like an itch I couldn't scratch or you know, like a thirst I couldn't quench. And even after these experiences, they would come back to this emptiness. And so that's basically what happened. I was just laying in my bed one night and I'd never read the Bible, never been in a church, and I said, you know, this emptiness was real, aware and the painfulness of it. And I just said, you know, the only thing I haven't tried is Jesus. I said, you know, if you can, you know, make me into the kind of person I've been trying to do all these years on my own self effort that I'll dump all this other stuff and follow you. And next day I got up, I was a different person.

Wow.

And my whole life changed and went in a different direction. And I think the main thing that happens in us, especially with those of us who struggle with self destructive behavior, is when the Holy Spirit enters us, we begin to become other centered versus self centered. And you know, and I think that's the evidence of Christ in us. So anyway, you know, it's a long story short. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, but so, you know, that's why new books are about too is, is understanding this, this pain that God gives us, this emptiness in us that he has designed us for relationships with him and other people. And when that gets damaged or either willingness or ability to, you know, to trust God and people, then you know, we have this emptiness. And I really believe that almost all self destructive addictive behavior is a way of Temporarily anesthetizing the awareness of this empty place in us. That's good.

Yeah, yeah. Well, Michael, your workbook, the Genesis Process, has touched so many of our listeners, and I know many people tuning in or just thinking about having walked through that process. And I think it would be really interesting for all of us to just hear some of the backstory as you shared your conversion and coming to faith in Christ. How does all of that come together into this workbook? Just tell us some of the backstory, if you would.

Well, say after, you know, years of trying to work and help, you know, addictive people, you know, be able to change, I just really became enamored with trying to figure out this mystery of relapse. And of course, you know, we all know about Roman 7, you know. Yeah, and that's where it started with me, is I read Romans 7, and here's a guy, Paul, you know, had the strongest attributes that humans can have. He had, you know, discipline and self sacrifice. And he was, you know, really intelligent and he had tremendous faith. But in Romans 7, he tells us, you know, in my mind, I want to serve the law of God, but in my behavior, I keep doing the very thing I don't want to do. So his conclusion was, well, if I'm doing the very thing I'm not, I don't want to do, it. Must be, you know, not me doing it. It's sin in me. Of course, we would tell Paul, he's in denial, come back. To be serious, it is you doing it. See, but what he's saying is, is that there's something in me that's a mystery that is stronger than the me I'm aware of that causes me to do the very thing I don't want to do. And of course, you know, Freud and the psychologist and Skinner and Jung and all these guys, you know, realized this also, and they began to say, you know, there's something in us that's causing us to do things that are self destructive. And they called it the subconscious. So that's what psychology has been doing for the last 150 years, is trying to figure out how to reprogram the subconscious to keep us from being self destructive. And. And not only that, but I think, you know, where Genesis really started was God spoke to me once and we had all these relapses and I was the director of Santa Barbara Rescue Mission. So I had 85 clients and 25 staff and a couple million dollar budget, and all these people kept relapsing. And then, you know, it's Christian. Well, they weren't serious, or they just didn't. It's not their time right now. But, you know, I believe God spoke to me and he said, michael, there's a partnership that works with helping these people. And he says, michael, it's my job to make people willing to change. But they come to you, and it's your job to make them able to change. And I realized that the clients would come because of the pain in their life, and it's pain that motivates us to change. And God had done his job by motivating them and making them willing to change. But when they relapsed, how come I wasn't able. Able to make them change? Okay. And so I began to take their relapses personally in saying, you know, what did we miss with this person? And so that's where we began to really, you know, learn a lot from these relapses and try to come up with ways to prevent it, which is, of course, you know, what the Genesis books are all about. And especially the faster scale is.

You.

Know, and it's really true. You know, I mean, that's. And that's what we're finding is so effective in Christian counseling is when we understand, you know, the part that God does and then the part that he expects us to do and why I was unsuccessful all these years. I was expecting God to do my part, and I was trying to do his part, and it didn't work. Yeah. Yeah. So once. Once again, it's God's job to make people willing to change, and they come to us to make them able to change. So that's why we can learn so much from, you know, their attempts, you know, their attempt to success and how they fail. And. And. And that's how Genesis got written, by learning this mystery of these unconscious patterns of that people get themselves into relapsing. And the other thing about relapses that we didn't understand, and it took me from a lot of clients, is people don't plan on relapsing. Most clients I work with only aware of relapsing 10 or 15 minutes or half an hour maximum before they relapse. And so we said there must be this. Some kind of an unconscious pattern that may last for weeks or months that causes them to get to this place where they become powerless.

So for some of our listeners, and I'm included in this, I have yet to go through the Genesis process. So this question is, what exactly is the Genesis process? And how does it Help men and women break free from addiction. Just talk about the resource itself.

Well, I think the lights went on when I was trying to understand this mystery of why we do the very things we don't want to do. And it dawned on me from what the Bible says. It says basically, if you want to change who you are and what you do, you have to change your heart. So I'm going, okay, but what is the heart? Where is the heart? And how does it get damaged? And what's. And what's its role in relapsing? And then I got in Romans 10, in Roman 10, it says with the heart. For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. So what Paul is telling us, the insight that he has, is that our belief systems are in our heart, and those belief systems result in the way we act. That's what Jesus does. When we invite Jesus into our life, we invite him into our heart. Well, that was a mystery. Why do we do that? I think we should invite him into our head or our soul or someplace. But what I began to realize is Jesus says, if you become my disciples, that you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free. And what does this truth set us free from? It sets us free from lies. And these lies that we believe are just distortions that come out of usually early childhood trauma in our life. So the way it works is I began to understand through studying all the brain imaging that most of what we attribute to the heart is called the limbic system in the brain, and it's our survival brain. So what happens with addiction is when our survival brain or limbic system associates an emotion like anger or a behavior like perfectionism or workaholism or a substance like alcohol and drugs, when it begins to associate those things with survival, okay, it says, you know, we need these to cope and we need these things to survive. Then it creates a unique emotion. And that unique emotion is only created where real or imagined survival of the stake. And it's called a craving. So, and the craving is produced by the limbic system believing that I need this behavior or substance to survive. So the challenge was, if we can change the limbic system belief so that it no longer creates a craving, then you can prevent relapse, because relapse is all about craving. So it's pretty simple, but not easy, that if you can eliminate craving, you can eliminate relapse. Does that make sense?

Yes. Yeah, it does, Absolutely.

So that was a challenge. Is the limbic System is subconscious. It doesn't respond to words. Okay. It only responds and is programmed through experiences. So the challenge was, how do we use words to make them experiential that can reprogram the distortions of our value, self worth and identity that has been programmed into our limbic system. And so that's why Jesus says, you know, if you come, my disciple, you're in the truth and invite me into your heart. So Jesus comes into our heart rather than trying to help us change our behaviors before we can become to him. And he says, if I come into your heart, which is your Olympic system, then I'm going to begin to change your belief systems. And, and your belief systems, as I change them, are going to begin to set you free from the painful behaviors or sin that caused you to come to me in the first place.

Yeah, yeah.

Kind of the neurobiology of being born again. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's amazing that what Jesus says in scripture has a very real world impact on our bodies and brains, that we tend to think of it in simply the spiritual sense. But as we all know, we're not just spirit, we're soul and body, and we're one connected unit. And so to have that faith in Christ that transforms us to know that there is something actually happening in our body and our brains, it's just awesome to see the way God has designed us to work like that.

Yeah. And that's where we found that freedom really works. Is this partnership that I've been learning and still learning about, you know, the partnership with God and what his area is and what my area is, and how when those things work together properly, that people begin to get some healing. So as far as changing these belief systems is it, it's my job, you know, through the Genesis process and things, tools we use to identify the belief system that. That's driving the behavior. And we look at how it affects them, which makes them. How to make them act and feel, and then also how it affects the relationships. And then the simplicity of it, which seemed too simple for me in the beginning, was we take these belief systems and we take them to the Lord. And when the Lord speaks truth into these lies and distortions, it, it changes the limbic systems, you know, belief system. It's called the healing of memories or, you know, our, you know, healing of body wounds, you know, because our body feels things even when our mind doesn't know why. And so because I could tell them the truth, and I'm just a truth, I can say, well, don't believe that you're really a good person or whatever. Right? And they go, yeah, I understand that. But when. But Jesus is not a truth. He is the truth. And when he speaks truth into the lies in our lives, it sets us free.

That's so good.

That's, you know, how we teach and train counselors to take people through the one on one process to, to not work on controlling behaviors, you know, self destructive behavior, but to look at, at addictive and destructive behaviors as symptoms and work on the causes. So for example, in Genesis, if somebody has a, you know, an eating disorder, you know, overeating or something, rather than try and get them to diet and, you know, and discipline and all that, we just simply ask the right question. And really change begins from asking the right questions. So the right question in that area would be, why do you eat when you're not hungry? When you answer that question, real recovery begins. Yeah, yeah.

So, Michael, for a lot of people in the Genesis process, the tool that really is transformational for them is the faster scale. In fact, I've had men that go through groups and say just learning the faster scale and applying that to my life was worth the whole group just to have that tool. It's been that important to them. So talk us through that scale a little bit. I mean, I know it relates to everything you've been sharing with us so far, but how did you come up with the faster scale? You know, we know it's the acronym for forgetting priorities, anxiety, speeding up, ticked off, exhaustion, and then into relapse. But we'd love to hear a little bit just about how did you identify those categories? You know, early on, how did you realize that you'd really stumbled across a real thing that was repeatable from person to person?

Okay, well, it's kind of funny. We were running our first rehab, you know, back in the late 80s, and it was a, it was a reentry program. And most of our clients, this in Santa Barbara, we had a YWAM building there we were using, we were YWAM missionaries at the time. And it was a six month reentry program. And most of our clients were court ordered on three strikes. And what we're learning is that in spite of the consequences of all the pressure that society can put on somebody not to go back into an addictive behavior, in this case, mostly heroin addicts, you know, relapsing is, is that, you know, these clients had the most probably pressure that the society could put on them. You know, one more relapse and they were going back to jail for a long period of time. Many of the women had their kids in, in child protective services, so they were going to, you know, lose their kids. But we still had this problem of chronic relapse in spite of these, these severe consequences. So anyway, we had had a client named Maria and the clients had to work. And, and, and so I got Maria a job and her boss calls me one day and tells me that she's, he's gonna have to fire her because she's 10 minutes late to work every day. So I go, well, it's unto rocket science, figure this out. I'll just get her up 10 minutes early. And I get up 10 minutes early and she's still 10 minutes late. I get her up 20 minutes later early and she's still 10 minutes Late. So I figured, well, maybe this is going to take a rocket science figure this out. So I don't know, maybe on the way to work she's getting loaded or something. So anyway, one day I follow her to work and she has to be at work at 8:30 and it's 8:30, so she's 10 minutes late. So I'm following her down the street and she's, you know, walking real fast and she's stressed out and she's know she's late and she got all this pressure on her that she didn't lose her job and, and she's running all this anxiety and I'm, and I'm following her and you know, doing her body language and I go, I'm all amped up and anxious. And then I just said, you know, what would happen if I was 20 minutes early going to, going to work, then what would I experience? And I slowed down and all of a sudden this whole different world came into my awareness. I mean, I was aware of these kids playing, there's puppies next door. It was Santa Barbara. It was a beautiful day. The wind going through the trees, there were some birds playing, kids at the bus stop. See. So what I was seeing was being anxious caused both her and I, you know, to block out any kind of background information. And that's what this partnership between dopamine and serotonin. Almost all our addictive behaviors are to raise dopamine in our system, which helps us focus. It's like cocaine does and anxiety does it and it makes us have more energy. So what I began to see was, was that if I was Maria and I slowed down, what kind of background information would be coming into my awareness? You know, all the guilt from her kids, all the Fear of going back to prison, all her, you know, cravings for drugs and alcohol and her shame and her guilt and her childhood stuff, all that became. Came into focus. So what I began to see was especially her being a cocaine addict and meth addict, was that as she, you know, raised this dopamine or this anxiety, it kept her from feeling unwanted thoughts, feelings and memories, and it pushed it back out of her awareness and because to slow down, you know, created a lot of painful, like, say, thoughts, feelings and memories that she didn't want to deal with. And so. And then, of course, you know, realizing, like we said before, that this could be the reason why relapses are not only so unconscious, but they're. But people aren't aware of relapsing, usually just till a few minutes before they relapse. So what I was seeing and beginning to see with the clients, that as we look down the faster scale, that they were creating the same neurochemicals that they used in their. In their drug addiction, especially on cocaine and meth, by manipulating their own emotions. So if you look at the faster scale, of course, you know, the first section is for getting priorities. Okay, and what is that? It's a change in what's important, and it's unconscious. And, you know, we have videos on this, and in the change book, we have chapter on secrets. Okay, so secrets is a good example because relapses almost always start with the secrets. In other words, something has become more important than our recovery plan. And a secret is a secret because we know we're doing something that we shouldn't be doing. But it also creates what? A little bit of anxiety, a little bit of, well, adrenaline and dopamine. And then we don't go to the whole faster scale. But if you look at the next step, see, is anxiety. And what does it say? It says getting energy from emotions. So, you know, we worry using profanity, being fearful, resentments, playing old negative thoughts, you know, judging perfectionism, all these things. And as you go down the faster scale, you. You get a little bit more and more energy out of each. Each section. And so what happens is, is we have a limited amount of coping neurochemicals, and as we burn them out, we have to do more extreme behaviors and emotions to create them until you get to the place where you're. You're angry, you know, and anger is incredibly powerful anesthetic. And so what the kind of the bottom line of the faster scale is, is that anything that you do to speed up your body dulls the awareness of physical and emotional pain. So when we get to the anxiety section, I'm doing a seminar, and I'll say, how many of you have a problem with worrying? Okay? And they'll say, you know, most people raise their hand, and I go, well, why do you worry? Because, you know, that's dumb. It just makes you upset and sick and your tears down, you know, your immune system and everything else. See, and, you know, we use. We use, you know, worry and resentments and all these things because we get a. We get energy from it. So anything that you use to speed up your body goes. The awareness of physical and emotional pain. So that's. That's kind of the way the faster scale works. And it takes usually about two weeks minimum to go down the faster scale, and which is totally unconscious for most clients, okay, Till you've burned up all your coping chemicals, and then you get to a place of exhaustion. And when you get to a place of exhaustion, the limbic system begins to take over, and it says, if I'm exhausted, then I can't cope anymore. If I can't cope, I can't survive. And then its job is to go into your memory, the hippocampus in the brain, and look for what you did in the past to be able to cope and get through this. And then it creates that unique emotion called a craving. And when you get to the place of craving, a craving will wear you down. And it's almost impossible to say no to for any length of time. So what we do with a faster scale is if people go down and identify their. Their unconscious pre relapse, you know, emotions and behaviors and. And even food as a chemical for coping, that it takes two weeks to get down the faster scale till you get to the place where you're powerless and you relapse. Then if we can have a meeting every week where the clients come in and say, where are you on the faster scale? And what do you need to do to get back up in the recovery section? Then we can prevent relapse, really prevent relapse before it happens.

Okay? So, Michael, the faster scale is a great tool. It's something that a lot of people use. And especially if you go through pure desire, you use this tool every week. And so, again, it's been something that's super helpful in my life. And so coming from you, the creator of this tool, what would be a couple tips that you'd give someone on how to best use the faster scale?

Well, the problem with the faster scale is that all these Behaviors are unconscious. And once people start to go down it, they can't see it anymore. So that's why we create these accountability cards. So the short version of it is the client will go down the faster scale and identify everything they have done now or in the past that, you know, that has been a problem for them or especially, you know, which is what's so cool about it is we use it for when people relapse. We use it as an opportunity to learn and create a new treatment plan rather than for, you know, for punishment and shame. And that's really what works. So if a client relapses, then when they go down and circle all the things that they did with the help of a counselor on the faster scale, okay? And so those are their unconscious dry relapse patterns. And so what they do, we have these accountability cards. They transfer those, those behaviors or emotions to these accountability cards. And they have four people in their life that they basically say, when you see me, you know, not going to church, when you, you know, see me, you know, you know, with a new girlfriend, when you see me, you know, working, you know, two jobs, these are my pre relapse behaviors in the past. And I need to make, I need you to make me aware that I'm doing it. And so that's, that's what's really hard, especially for, you know, some Christians, a lot is they think that, you know, that this relapse thing is just because people aren't serious or they weren't trying hard enough, but it really is unconscious. And it's this limbic brain that when we get into a place where it believes that we aren't coping and can't survive, and it begins to use all these behaviors, you know, like secrets and workaholism and anger, you know, to help us be able to cope and push back these unwanted thoughts, feelings and memories. So that's the way it works. It, it doesn't work as a self help tool, okay? And I've had people that have memorized the whole faster scale and they went down it and they go, it's weird, you know, when I was in it, I can't see it. And that's the way this survival brain works. It hides the awareness of these behaviors from it because it believes we need it to survive. So that's where things like denial and confusion and justification, you know, come into helping us not see the pattern that we're in. And all of us have, you know, confronted addicts, you know, and they just get defensive and they can't see it and, you know, there's nothing we can do because they're in this, you know, angry denial, you know, survival state. So that's what we do is if people can make us aware when we're way up into anxiety or forgetting priorities and make us aware that, oh, you know, I'm in my pattern. And we have another process in Genesis, it's called process seven, where when somebody relapses, we want to work on both sides of their brain so they do a cognitive behavior of what you did, you know, the day you relapsed, the day before, your patterns and all that. And then they also make what we call a deja vu movie script where they write a movie about their, their dry relapse pattern. Say, well, I was doing okay, and then I met Susie and, and when I met Susie, then I stopped going to my meetings. I started spending too much money, you see. So that's pictorial. So we have both sides of the brain. One is a deja vu experience where, oh, I'm in my movie. And the other one is a cognitive experience where other people can see the patterns that we've done before that led to relapse.

Yeah, Michael, that deja vu movie script is something that I know in my group as I first went through the Genesis process, just how obvious it became that my pattern was being repeated just over and over. And I wonder. One of the great gifts that the Genesis process gives and the faster scale is self awareness and self awareness like I'd never experienced before. But kind of a follow up question to that. What do you say to someone, and this is going off script a little bit here, what do you say to someone that maybe is kind of caught in beating themselves up over their self awareness? Because as they become self aware, maybe they realize that I'm very deceitful, I'm very selfish, I'm very arrogant. I'm, you know, that self awareness can illuminate our old self and almost become a negative thing. So how do you help someone that their self awareness is causing them to beat themselves up?

Well, that's where grace comes into it, you know, Nick, it's just, it's the more you reduce shame, the more you increase recovery, the more you increase shame. It's like putting, you know, gas ain't on a fire. As far as recovery is concerned, in a lot of Christianity is, recovery programs are shame based. You know, it's punishment. Whereas in Genesis we use every behavior, especially relapses, as an opportunity to change and heal. So when people do the very thing they don't want to do. If they know somebody that is not going to judge them or condemn them or criticize them, but has the tools to help them understand how they got to a place where they did what they said they would never do again and can take that relapse and turn it into a new treatment plan to plug up these holes. Then you reduce shame. And I say shame is one of our most avoided emotions. It's one of our most painful emotions. And both psychology and in my experience, you know, the root of almost all our destructive behaviors and isolating behaviors is to avoid the emotion shame. Yeah, so, yeah. And so it's, it's, it's basically, you know, grace. And it's funny because, you know, Christians are the only ones that I know. Christian rehabs who punish people for relapsing. Huh. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, but secular programs, you know, Betty Ford or 12 step AA, you know, you can relapse a hundred times, you know, and you're welcome with open arms without judgment as long as you have a desire to get sober and clean. But Christians, especially in the church, you know, they're really afraid to ask for help because they're afraid they're going to get pharasiticalized like that word.

So how do we change that, Michael? Because I know that's a big passion of yours to help the church be a safe and a healing place, to be a grace place. So what can we do for churches to move towards being that healing, grace filled place and not be stuck in a pattern of shame or beating ourselves up?

Well, my last two books I wrote, you know, for the churches, the one is called the Church Helping or Hurting. And my new one, which isn't out yet, it's called Filling the Empty Place. But they're basically helping church people and agencies to understand what's broken in people, how it got broken and what it takes to heal it. And so it's pretty really simple. If I'm a sex addict and I want to reveal my patterns and my secrets, okay. Has to be safe for me to do so. So the two, the two elements that an agency, a person or a church, you know, needs for someone to be safe, to come in, reveal their secrets is versus grace, which we talked about, which, you know, which is, you know, Jesus tells us not to judge because the judgments are a log in our eye and you know, we can't see other person because of this, of this log in our eye, you know, which is a screen of looking at through Judgments and judgment is one of our most fearful experiences that will avoid at all, all costs. You know, we're. Judgments create heart wounds, okay? Because judgments, you know, don't judge what you did. They're. They judge the kind of person you were that did it. You see? Well, you're a weak, crummy person, you know, you're just not serious. You don't have enough faith. See, those are all judgments. Even. Even going down. Down the freeway and somebody cut you off, right? You don't say, oh, that person cut me off. You say, you blankety blank. You know, you call them some kind of name, See, and you're not looking at what they did. You're looking at the kind of person.

Michael's been following me on the freeway.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'm sure Christians don't use those kind of words. Of course not. Yeah. And. And the other problem is competency. So even if you have grace, I also have to. If I'm going to come and take the risk of sharing my shame and my sin with you, I have to believe that you're competent, that you have the knowledge, education, understanding, and experience to help me with my problem. So. So this is what it takes, you know, for churches to do that. I learned this. I was doing a luncheon, you know, a speaker at a luncheon for about 40, 50 pastors, their monthly city luncheon, right? And so they're eating their lunch, and then I'm getting up to talk, and I'm going on and on about my speech about how to make churches safe for wounded people. And this Baptist guy raised his hand and he said, his pastor, he said, michael, you don't understand. And I said, yeah, probably a lot of things, but what.

What are you talking about?

You know, and kind of they're all shaking their heads like they do something I didn't know, okay? And he said, well, we all went to seminary here. And I go, yeah, I still don't. And they all, you know, nodding, shaking their heads. They understand. I didn't get it. I go, I don't understand. He goes, in seminary, they only taught us how to administrate, not how to minister. And. And the light just went on for me, okay, that. Trying to get Genesis in through the pastors, you know. And so. And so what he said is, we don't want to attract these kind of people into our church because we don't have the education, experience, or knowledge or programs on how to help them. And so, you know, that was really insightful to me, and of Course, in both my books, the last one, especially the one that's out now, it's a church. Helping or hurting. There's dozens of stories in there, you know, real stories from real people that people went to church, you know, asking for help and how so many of them just got nailed so they never would go to church again, you know, and shamed, and everybody knew about it. There's no confidentiality. Okay. And then there's a lot of stories, you know, about the same people or others going to a church, it was a good church, and, and how they got help and got freedom from it. And so, you know, helping understand, you know, the difference, you know, in a grace competency church rather than a, you know, judgment punishment church.

Yeah, yeah, I really like that.

And the reason they use judgment and punishment is because they just don't have the tools. If you don't have the tools to help people with these kind of sinful behaviors, then all you have left is judgments and punishment.

So, Michael, off of that, I mean, I think that when you get into stuff, and we get this a lot at pure desire, I mean, we use the faster skill and we use a clinical foundation for a lot of what we talk about. And that's always partnered with the biblical truth. But very quickly, it's easy to react. For someone as a believer to think that, like, well, isn't all that I need Jesus. This just seems a little self help to me. So how do you help people connect the dots in that sense that you're connecting not only, you know, what, what's going on in your, in your soul, as far as a spiritual perspective and having those pieces of Jesus and scripture and prayer and biblical community, but also connecting that with the truth about your brain and how trauma and how difficulty in your life function and how those play out in addictions. How do you connect those two for people?

Well, it's difficult because there's, you know, there's so many denominations and there's so many diverse theologies about, you know, how God's supposed to, you know, work and heal people. But it's the bottom line. If we could change on our own, we would have. And, you know, basically we all want to get delivered, right?

Yes, please.

We want to go up the altar, call and, you know, I'm an angry or addict or sex addict or whatever, and I just get delivered and I don't have a problem anymore. Well, occasionally that happens, but Genesis is for people who don't get delivered. And in my experience over the years, the people who don't who just get delivered aren't really able to help anybody else because they don't have the grace and the mercy, you know, to have having relapsed and had to humble themselves and ask for help and try and find tools and, you know, life skills, you know, to overcome their problems. And so I think God, you know, allows a lot of us to go through the ups and downs of the pains of relapse because it gives us empathy and understanding and real tools, you know, to help other people. And so how it really works, you know, to make it really kind of a short. Okay. Is that we are made for relationships with God and people. And when we lose our ability, which usually happens in the first couple years of life, when we lose our ability to bond, trust and attach to other people, usually because of abuse or neglect, then if we can't get our needs met the way God designed us from relationships with people because those relationships have been painful, then we have to learn to self gratify, okay? But we're designed to get gratification for relationships, okay? So one of my two bottomless bottom lines is. This is the second bottomless bottom line. I have a lot of bottom lines. They're all fighting to be number one.

There you go.

You know, but this is number two. And there's a lot in it. You can think about this and kind of meditate on it, that all addiction is self gratification. Okay. And you know, I've tried to find a flaw in that because I'm like a lawyer and I haven't been able to find a flaw in it. All addiction, especially of course, sex addiction, is self gratification. And so the insight into this, you know, this key thought is that if all addiction self gratification, then all recovery and recovery means it's not sobriety. Recovery means to return to a former healthy state.

Yeah.

And a lot of people say they're in recovery, but they're really not. They're in sobriety. And so it's it. And so if all addiction self gratification. So to recover from self gratification is to learn to get in touch with those needs and get them met from relationships.

That's so good.

So it was trusting and being betrayed that caused us to gravitate towards not trusting other people in self gratification. And so the bottomless bottom line of what recovery really is is the process of all recovery for all of us as human beings is a process of learning to trust again. It's by not trusting that causes to isolation in the most Dynamic feature of self destructive behavior is isolation. If you can break the power of isolation, which you look at down the faster scale, each section creates more and more isolation from God and people. If you can prevent isolation, you can prevent relapse. And that's why we can't do recovery alone.

That's such a good statement, Michael, because.

We just can't see it ourselves.

Exactly. You're exactly right.

Yeah, well, sometime.

And also the limbic system, its job is to keep us from taking risk because risk has to do with fear. And it says, you know, fear is a survival emotion. So we want, you know, to avoid, you know, you know, fear. Okay. And it's not safe to take risk alone. So the Olympic system actually won't let us take the risk of giving up a coping behavior, which is scary. Right. You know, how am I going to cope? It won't actually let us do it when we're alone. So it takes a safe group, our counselor, but usually a group. Okay. That allows us to be able to make changes even if we're willing. Yeah.

Well, sometime, Michael, we're going to have to have you share your whole list of bottom lines. We'll bring you back for a podcast on that.

So good.

We have appreciated your work so much. If those who are listening want to check out the Genesis Process, you can find it on our website at Pure Desire or go to Michael Dye's website at the Genesis Process and find his other books as well. I know you'd really benefit from checking those out, Michael. We like to end all of our podcasts the same way, just to ask our guests to give a final word of encouragement or maybe just that one last thing that you would like to leave listeners with as we wrap up today. So Michael, what would that final word or that final encouragement be from you today?

Well, I think the final word for me is what I'm doing with my books and when I speak is to try and give people hope. Hope is a very, very powerful emotion. Okay. You're a different person when you have it than when you don't have it. And hope comes from being able to change. So encouragement, I would say to people, you know, it's the first time in history that we actually know what's broken and why we do the very things we don't want to do. Okay. And, and because we understand not only what got broken, how it affect affected us and both the relational and the spiritual, you know, path of getting well, that there is hope because, you know, we, if we partner with the Lord and change this heart and limbic system, you're going to, you know, be free. And that's what I say with the change. The first time in history that if you do this process, I can guarantee you will change. And that sounds kind of grandiose, but it simply is this. If you identify a fear which is a self sabotaging, you know, distorted belief system, okay, and you move towards that fear with support and accountability, I guarantee you will change. But it's not easy. It sounds simple, but it takes tremendous courage to override the limbic system that believes. Basically, if I trust people, I'm going to be betrayed and hurt. And that's why the grace and competency thing is so important.

Gosh, there's just like so many good nuggets in here. I'm so thankful, Michael, for you just hanging out with us. Look, learning how to break free and stay free from addictions. And I love Michael. You're talking about the difference between recovery and sobriety. When we can actually dive in and figure out what's going on, that's not going to be a fun process. It's not going to be a short process. But, Michael, you are on the front lines of helping people break free and finding what's at the root of their addiction, addressing those cravings, those fears. And so if listener, if you want more information on the genesis process or you want to pick up a copy, go to PureDesire.org GenesisProcess and for more information on Michael and all he's doing and his resources, it's genesisprocess.org Michael, we very much appreciate your time with us today. Thank you so much for hanging out with us.

Yeah, thank you, Nick. I really appreciate what you guys are doing and how we're working together. And I think we're going to, you know, be more successful together than we were separately.

That's right.

And especially I admire you guys because the overwhelming epidemic of sex addiction is like an undercurrent, like an undertone our society that people don't, don't, don't see it. But it's destroying so many lives. I mean, I read it that 60% of all divorces in the United States now have, you know, pornography and chat room as a major issue in the divorce. So you guys, you know, but we'll keep doing job security.

We'll keep doing what we do, and you stay around and keep doing what you do. All right, Michael.

All right. Well, thank you guys.

Thank you. 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. You can also rate and review our podcast and let us know how we're doing. For more information, check out our website, PureDesire.org and 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.