196 - Porn As A Pacifier w/ Drew Boa

You're listening to the Pure Desire Podcast, your safe place to find hope, healing, and freedom from sexual addiction, betrayal, and relationship issues. Hey, hey, hey. I'm your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 196 of the Pure Desire podcast. You're joining me as always, my co host, Nick Stumbo.

I am not going to make a skeptical of my career.

Okay. I don't know if I've even seen it. I'm gonna guess Legally Blonde.

If you had pulled this reference, I would like, I would high five you or something because it would be impressive. It's not from a movie. This is actually a quote from Tanya Harding when she was interviewed by local Portland news. She's from the Portland area, by the way, in the whole turmoil that came out of the issue where Nancy Kerrigan got hit in the knee by what turned out to be someone from Tonya Harding's camp. And just the irony of her both saying skeptical instead of spectacle and the fact that she had done exactly that with her career. It's one of my favorite all time sport quotes.

Oh, man. Okay. Well, I learned something today. I learned that and then I learned actually quite a bit too from our conversation. We had Drew Boa on today and we were talking about viewing porn as a pacifier.

Yeah. Such a good conversation. Just to look at how pornography isn't really the problem. Pornography is the symptom of the problem, of how we try to cope with pain, to soothe ourselves when we're agitated or angry. The way that really pornography is an emotional response to much deeper things. And I feel like when we unmask that system, as Drew helps us do so well today and some of the tools that he uses in his work, it really gives us some handholds to grow and to change maybe in ways that we haven't been able to see before.

Yeah, yeah. And it really is a good episode for sure. A few things before we get into it. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't. We're on all the major platforms, including Audible now, and you can follow us on social media. Earedesirepdmi, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And then remember, these full episodes are now up on YouTube. All right, here is our conversation with the creator of Husband Material Academy, Drew Boa. Drew Boa, welcome back. It's been a while since we've had you, but welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you. It's been a year.

Has it been a year? Is that where we're at?

It's been a year?

I mean, that's Just. That's the understatement of the decade.

How many ways we could go with that one? It has been a year.

Yeah. Yeah. Into 2021. So it's been. Yeah. I mean, unless everyone gets, you know, non Covid, by what, March, then it'll be more than a year, which we don't need to get into that. Okay, Drew, so we were thinking about having you back on and a couple things that you talk about, because we're going to do a couple episodes here. One of the things you do is you teach about pornography being a pacifier, and I think that that's just a great analogy. And so we wanted to dive into that a little bit more, flesh out what that looks like, and hopefully help people see how they're using pornography in their life, both the benefits and obviously the negative side to it as well.

Yeah.

This is such a great topic, because I think for most people, when they get into recovery because of pornography or sexual brokenness, they're focused on the behavior. They're focused on, you know, why I'm drawn to it, you know, admitting that tension, that there's a part of me that likes it, that derives pleasure from it. And so we can focus on stopping the behavior. But what we're talking about today is really recognizing how we're using pornography really to meet other needs. And I think that helps take our journey a lot deeper. So, Drew, help us launch into it. How does porn soothe us? What does that mean when we say we use porn for soothing?

Well, Dr. Ted Roberts said it best in that book Pure Desire. He said sexual addiction and sexual bondage are not ultimately about sexual. They're about coping with pain. And specifically, when it comes to porn, we're talking about coping with childhood pain. Because adults do not get hooked on porn. Boys and girls do, mostly between the ages of 10 and 13, and often younger. So that's why I believe porn is a pacifier. It promises to make that inner child within me feel better, but in reality, it's a predator exploiting me because that pacifier is laced with poison.

So what? You know, to follow up to that, you know, you just made a statement that I'm guessing some listeners are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Adults don't get hooked on porn because I, like, here's the guy I'm thinking of, who's listening? Or gal who's saying, well, yeah, I was maybe exposed to some stuff as a kid, but for many years, and I've heard this story in a group recently, you know, for 20 years, I did great. Wasn't in my life. And then they got, you know, an iPhone or an iPad or whatever, and the accessibility in their 40s and 50s. Now they're hooked. And they'd say, I don't ever think I was addicted, but in my 50s, I was. So. And I think I know where you're coming from, but qualify that statement for the person who says that, like, well, I didn't even look at porn much as a kid, but now in my 50s, I'm hooked.

I would get curious about why. Yeah, probably there's more of a story behind that than just getting more access to an iPhone.

Totally. Yeah. And I'll be honest. Like, in my story, this was the thing that helped me. I remember the two things that were most influential when finally understanding or addressing my brokenness was that what happens in the brain is very similar with pornography, very similar to cocaine. I was like, oh, okay, that's not a good thing. But then also understanding that it wasn't this. You're so perverted. You're just a disgusting person. It's. You're using this to medicate pain in your life. It doesn't just mean you're this dirty, dirty person. And so I think, for me, I resonate with this. And I think understanding the soothing power or the pacifying power of porn and understanding how I used it that way, that was really helpful in unlocking the freedom for me.

Yeah, totally. We're using it to medicate pain. And at the same time, there's often a part of us that wants to reinforce that pain because it's familiar, because it's what we know, and because we feel like we deserve it.

Yeah, that sounds familiar. I mean, we have a mutual friend, Jay Stringer, who I know, says some things about that as well. Okay, so we've talked about it being something where we're medicating our pain. So how do we identify what pain we're pacifying with porn? There's a lot of P's in that question.

It's great alliteration, man. You'd make a good pastor.

Wow, that's so good.

How do we identify what we're pacifying, what that pain is? Some people will say, let's start asking questions about your childhood. I have found the easiest way to discover the pain beneath your preferred type of porn is to look at your triggers, both your pain triggers and your pleasure triggers. So a pain trigger would be something that comes up and your body reacts, saying, I never want to feel that way again. Get me out of this I. A pleasure trigger, would feel like a magnet. Like, I am so drawn to that thing, and I don't understand why, but it's really compelling. It's stirring up a response in me. A trigger is an automatic response that's disproportionate. So if a car is coming and it's about to hit me, I'm going to get triggered to get out of the way. And that's very natural. But sometimes, let's say there's like a tricycle coming at me, but I feel like it's a Mack truck. You know, somebody makes a little comment like, please don't touch me, or would you please be quiet? And it feels devastating. That's an example of a trigger. And every trigger tells a story. And when you begin to look at your triggers, it will reveal your trauma.

And I think it'd be helpful to qualify or quantify a little bit what we mean when we say pain. Because I think when some people hear I'm using pornography to pacify pain, they think of really overt kinds of pain, like abuse, anger. I got fired, like, really intense kind of pain. And there may be saying, well, I've. I've never used pornography, and I don't really have that much pain in my life. But we're also talking about very covert kinds of pain. Things like, in my story, I could identify with loneliness or boredom or feeling like no one really was paying attention to me, or I didn't matter. And I wouldn't. I'm sure in my 20s and early 30s wouldn't have even thought of that as pain. They're just things I didn't really like, but there was pain in it because of how it connected to my sense of value, worth, and identity. And so in that sense, I was running from that pain. But if you said I was using porn to cope with pain, I'd been like, what pain? So I think it's good for us to see pain can come in some very subtle ways that we're using pornography then to avoid or run away from.

Yeah, and it's the thing where you usually think that pain or trauma is this big T thing, these big things that happened. But over time. Like, I mean, I've told this story before where I make this catch at a baseball game when I'm. I think I was 12 or 13, and I walked into the dugout and I heard parents overheard them talking about me being a ball hog. And that's not a big traumatic event. Like, I still made the play. Like, I still, you know, it was great. But what I realized was that I learned something in that moment, that it doesn't matter how well you perform, it's never going to be enough. And so for me, if you take that and add all the other times in life that I have felt that way, that then becomes this big. Like, you know, obviously, if you have the number one and you add it to one over and over and over and over and over again, you're gonna eventually have a huge number. And so I think that in some ways, it's not this big, huge, mountaintop, traumatic event. It can be. And we talk about this a lot, these small t. These little T traumas over time. And I think that that's what we don't see. We don't see the thread of pain throughout all of those things. And I think that that's why we minimize that. We're pacifying our pain.

Yeah, absolutely. And the most common childhood wound, similar to what Nick talked about, is neglect. And neglect is doubly destructive because not only is it affecting you, but it's covert, it's hidden, it's invisible. We don't even know that we've experienced neglect because it's all we know. So abandonment and feeling. Let me. Let me say it this way. So trauma can come in many ways. There are the big T traumas and the little T traumas. There are the things that shouldn't have been done to us, that were done to us, and there's the things that should have happened that didn't happen. And that's where the void of neglect and abandonment is the most common kind of pain that we're talking about.

Yeah. And I think about a quote we've used on this podcast of the idea that everyone is born looking for someone, looking for them, and in neglect, it's that feeling of no one's looking for us. And so it can lead us into unhealthy patterns and behaviors. And, you know, Drew, one of the metaphors that we use a lot in this arena is how we need to find fight pornography. And it is a battle. There's a spiritual battle. There's, I think, a physical, mental battle. I mean, obviously, Pure Desire is deeply involved with the Conquer Series and Dr. Ted Roberts presenting that. That is very much that war motif. But when we think specifically about fighting pornography in our lives, it actually can be kind of an unhelpful way of thinking about it. Why is that? Why is it maybe not helpful to try to think of fighting against pornography?

Nick, you said it really well in your book setting us free. Specifically when you quoted Anthony DeMello. So I guess it was his quote, but I found it in your book.

You facilitated his quote. Excellently. Yes.

Yeah. He says, as long as you are fighting something, you are giving it power. You give it as much power as you're using to fight it. So, so many of us for years, have been fighting porn so hard. Hard. And it's frustrating and it's exhausting because in the end, we're giving it power. Yeah. And as long as we are fighting that battle, we can always lose. It doesn't matter how far you get if you're constantly fighting, constantly trying to resist these urges. In the end, even after a year of fighting that battle and winning, I relapsed. And that's when I found out that my healing needs to go a lot deeper if it's gonna get me to the point where I can be husband material and marry my wife one day with complete confidence that she won't have to worry about my sexual behavior.

Right. One of the illustrations I heard a pastor friend of mine use recently was the idea of, like, if this apple tree is dying and fruit is falling from it in so many ways, our actions to try to help solve that problem often are like just taping other apples to the tree. And it's like, that actually doesn't help anything. Like, they're not going to stay up for very long either. But that's not addressing the real issue. And I think that that's the problem with fighting is we're putting a lot of energy into something that's not creating any result. Just fighting pornography or just saying, I won't do it again, or even those moments of, you know, I'm finally going to be honest. Being honest isn't enough. You have to figure out why you're doing what you're doing. You have to go down to the root of the tree if you want it to produce right fruit. And so I think that comes from gospel fluency, the fruit to root principle that he talks about in that book. But I just think that that imagery is so powerful that I'm. I'm. I. Look, if you think about it, it looks foolish to try to tape apples to an apple tree to make it look healthy. We got to go to the root if we want it to actually produce the right fruit.

I think of it kind of like that middle school scenario of the bully who's, like, taunting and like, oh, you're. You know, you're stupid or dumb and you've got a group of friends who Are like, just ignore him, he's an idiot. Like, just walk away. And the truth of that, if you just walk away and ignore him, most bullies just, they're looking for a fight. They're looking for someone to challenge them. They're driven by kind of that rush of let's do this. And if you're just like, whatever and ignore them, it kind of becomes this non issue because they go on to somebody else versus that pornography idea. If we're sitting there like, okay, I'm not going to go to that website. And I'm not going to go to that. In saying I'm not going to go to that website, I'm thinking about that website and my brain is releasing these chemicals and there's this whole process that now I'm actually engaging with the very beast that really I just, I need to avoid, I need to withdraw, I need to go to other things and not engage the bully. That's they're looking for that fight.

That is such a scientifically accurate statement because research has shown that resisting an urge intensifies it. Allowing an urge to pass with mindfulness and gentle observation usually takes less than half an hour. But if you are actively resisting an urge, trying not to think about it, trying to make that erection go away, you can stay aroused for hours. And that's why it can feel so hopeless.

Yeah. I also think in scripture that the law came to increase sin. Like that idea of like when you tell someone to do, to not do something. I mean, I've got a per. I have a case study at home. He's four years old. I just say, hey, don't do this. What's the first thing he wants to do? He wants to go do it and piss his dad off. And it works. But it's just human nature. I mean, even if you were just to think about it, it is human nature. Even that, like, don't think about the peak elephant. It's like, well, crap. Okay, well, that didn't work. Like, it's just. It is human nature from the beginning. I think that that's, that's how we've been since sin entered.

So let's make a shift. Instead of fighting our sexuality, let's fight for our sexuality.

Go. Keep going. Please expand.

My sexual desires are not bad. They're not the problem. They're from God. What I need to learn how to do is manage them and express them in a healthy way. And that is what lasting freedom looks like.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so another approach is fleeing or running away. Um, and that I mean that is such, I think that that is a default for so many people or the fighting. We know that takes a lot of energy. Fleeing just seems like the easy way out, but that's also super detrimental. So talk about that.

If porn is a bully, and I like the way that we are talking about porn as a bully because it does target young kids. It targets young kids and it violates us from a young age and has power over us. Even if for the rest of our lives we're trying to fight it or trying to run away from it. Fleeing is still a fear based response. It's still fight, flight or freeze. And God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and self control. And if you're constantly avoiding porn, even if it's through accountability software and Internet filters and getting a flip phone, is that coming from a spirit of power, love and self control? I think sometimes it can, can be a temporary solution, but eventually there will come a time when you can't run away and you'll be in a situation Even if it's 20 years down the road, when you're 50 years old and all of a sudden porn comes back up into your life, there will be a time when you're going to need those muscles, when you're going to be able to look at porn in the face. And if you can get to a point where you're so healed and free that it does nothing for you, that it doesn't even appeal to you anymore, then you will finally have the power and porn will have no control over you anymore.

I love how you link that drew to our limbic responses of fight, flight or freeze. And just seeing how if that's our go to and it's a limbic response of just survival, that's not us staying in health, that's us going to an unhealthy place. But the pastoral side of me would like to interject here for a minute just to say that I do think we have to take seriously that the number one response Scripture gives us anytime it lists sexual immorality, particularly in the New Testament, is flee, run away, have nothing to do with, keep far away from, not even a hint of.

Yeah.

So I think the issue is not necessarily with the concept of fleeing. It's if that's the only method we know how to use and it's how effective can it be? Because maybe we're feeling tempted by our computer and so we quote unquote fleet, but our smartphone's still in our pocket. And so then we Throw that away. And then it's like, well, now we're by someone else's. Like, the temptation in our world and culture in some sense is unfleeeable, and particularly the temptations we carry in our own brain. And so, yes, like in an escape plan, we have an escape plan as a free tool at pure desire. That is saying if you're in the midst of realizing you've made some bad choices and you're getting triggered and you don't know what to do. Like, a response of flee in some method needs to be part of your plan. Get out of the room, leave the environment, get out of the restaurant, shut down your browser. Like, that part is healthy. But like you say, if it's just about fear, and then that's our only strategy is just to try to avoid. You can't avoid your own past and your own emotions. So you've got to have some other structures in place that can help us move towards health.

And that's the key. Avoid porn. Befriend my emotions. Befriend my desires. Move closer to them, move towards them. Because at the core, they are good.

Yeah, I just. The visual that came to mind was like, whack a mole. Like, us running away and fleeing all the time is like whack a mole, but I don't know if you've ever played it, but they keep coming. They don't go away. So unless you go over to the wall and unplug the unit, it's going to keep happening. And so I think that the. The fleeing allows us. Because we talk about. About this a lot too. The fleeing allows us to step back and gain clarity again. And we're not in this super triggered, super tempted mindset. And then we can make healthier decisions to then, what am I going to do if I find myself in that situation again? And so the fleeing is, I think, initially a huge part of it with. Coupled with making sure that we're putting practices, people, principles, resources, all that into place to help us when we re enter that situation.

Yes, there is a place for fighting. There is a place for fleeing. Ultimately, though, God gives us something way better, which is love. Cast out fear.

Write that one down.

Yeah, it's good.

Super good. So, Drew, we're talking about just the ways that we use pornography, lust, fantasy, all sorts of sexual issues as a way to deal with pain, wounds, struggles in life. So in order to find freedom, we really have to be able to identify what are the wounds, pains, and struggles that we're running from that we're avoiding that. We're using maybe pornography in the past to numb out from. So how do we figure out in your mind and as you work with guys and husband material, how do you help them recognize the pain and struggles that are most specific for them really driving this behavior?

Great question. I've taken everything I've learned about neuroscience and psychology and spiritual formation and put it into a tool. It's called the floss method. This is the greatest tool I've ever used to help find.

You've talked about it on the podcast before.

Oh, really? Do I need to?

It's Benny here.

Yeah, it's Benny.

No, I would. It's the context. We totally need to hear it.

Totally. Yeah, please.

All right. I hate flossing. Don't mind brushing my teeth, but I don't like flossing because it's kind of gross. If you brush, you're just on the surface level. But when you floss, you have to get down into those hidden places and you don't know what you're going to find. It could be gnarly. And in the same way, the floss method is designed to get you into those hidden parts of your brain, into those memories that you may not be aware of and find what's there.

So talk us through the floss. Give us the.

All right. Yeah, floss. F stands for fear. What we've been talking about fight, flight or freeze. I've recently become aware that there are other fear based responses that we also need to talk about, particularly flop, which is shut down. I think actually flop is the most important one because it's that E exhausted on the faster scale. It's when I give up, it's when I numb out. I check out, I zone out. We always go through some kind of fight, flight, freeze, flop. The other one is fawn. Fawning over, pleasing, appeasing. Maybe this person triggers me and instead of running away from them or trying to overpower them, I'm just trying to win their approval. Like. Like me, love me, accept me. So all of those are triggering responses and the first step is just to name what is going on. What is my body doing? Am I powering up? Am I getting agitated into an aggressive form of fight? Or am I becoming anxious and feeling like I need to avoid, I need to fly away? Or. Or am I just shutting down? Am I going to a little safe place in my head, which is what I did so much when I was a kid? What's that F fear response going on? And then together with that, is there A lie associated with it. That's the L. Yep. The L is a lie because with those childhood wounds, there is almost always a message of toxic shame attached to it. So for me, for example, let's say I am. Let me see if I can get one of my triggers. You know, we're going to be. We're going to be talking in a future episode about a time when I was a kid that has given me a trigger of bright pink lipstick. When I see bright pink lipstick, it activates a fight response in me. I get fired up. I get kind of angry. Doesn't make sense. But on its own, Right, but once we floss it out, it begins to make sense. What is the lie with that? The lie is I'm not safe. The lie is this can hurt me. Someone's gonna hurt me. Okay, the next step of floss, if you can name the fear response. And the lie is O. O stands for origin story. This is the million dollar question. If you take nothing else away from this episode, please remember this. When you get triggered and you can name that response in your body and you can name that lie, ask yourself the question, when have I felt this way before?

Yep.

When have I felt this way before? When have I felt that anger in relation to bright pink lipstick with the lie that I'm going to get hurt? Well, guess what? That lie actually was true at one time. And even if it wasn't true for you, with the specific lie you're dealing with, it felt true. And when I asked that question, when have I felt that way before? It takes me back to a time when I was 5 years old and my grandmother, who used to tell me how handsome I was, which made me feel uncomfortable. And then she would force her way to my face with bright pink lipstick and a big one on my cheek in front of all the family to see. And I hated it. My parents saw it. They were aware of it, and they did nothing. And I remember running to the bathroom, washing my face, scrubbing that lipstick off as hard as I could. No one was there to protect me. I was harmed. I was humiliated. I never would have called it sexual abuse, but that's what it was. And so when I can get into that origin story, all of a sudden the trigger makes sense. Now you can understand why that would set me off. We all have triggers. You may not think I carry a lot of trauma, but I'm sure that you have triggers, and those triggers are telling a story. In fact, a trigger is a time machine. It's taking me back. I Feel like I'm that little boy again. That 12 year old boy. So that origin story will reveal the story behind the trigger. And then the next step of loss is sadness. To grieve for that boy or for that little girl.

We are not good at that, I think in the church grieving. Yeah.

To grieve both what happened, what should have happened and what it taught me. It gave me a fear of women. It taught me the lie that women are allowed to dominate and humiliate me. And that has shown up in my life in many ways. Even though she was not the only woman to treat me this way, I. I learned this is normal.

Yeah.

And that needs to be grieved, that needs to be lamented. And little Drew needs me to be angry on his behalf. And we'll talk about that more on healing the inner child. But that's the S. And then the last one is the final S. A floss. Surrender. Surrender to the truth. How does God feel about what happened? What does God say about what happened? What is the truth? And let me center myself on that. Let me hold on to that. Because the lie that I'm not safe is now over. Well, the truth is that I wasn't safe back then, but now I'm 28 years old and now if my wife happens to wear chapstick, I might get triggered. But I'm safe.

Right.

I can rest in that.

Because there's no pink lipstick in your house. There's not so much safety. Right.

Well, that's part of what we talked about before is there is a healthy aspect of fleeing, of staying away from those triggers.

Yeah.

And also of flexing my muscle, of being able to be present in the middle of them when they do show up.

Today's episode is actually sponsored by Drew Boa and Husband Material Academy. Through Husband Material, Drew helps Christian Meng outgrow porn. He does this by coaching men, helping them change their brains, heal their hearts, and save their relationships and really achieve freedom from porn.

Yeah, he's a sharp guy. He's a guy we trust. He's a guy that we refer people to. And I think he. He's really made some great inroads in kind of that niche market of guys who are newly married, newly engaged, about to be engaged. Like really identifying that season of life as crucial to really win in this area of our sexuality. And so we send people to him a lot because he's someone we know and trust and really think that his work is great. And he's such a young guy that we know for Many, many years that this is an area that we think God will use him to help shape our culture in this area.

Absolutely. So what we want you to do is go to husbandmaterialmen.com and join Drew's group. Lots of great stuff there. Videos, podcasts, resources. And obviously, you can sign up for the stuff that Drew offers as well. So, again, that's husbandmaterialmen.com as you're sharing that, I was thinking one of the things that. That I've been chewing on recently is that sin impacts our response to negative things in life. Sin. There's overreaction and under reaction. And I think that I'm really good at figuring out where I've overreacted. It's where I'm underreacting that's hard for me to see. But I think that if we can start to view it that way, where if someone looks at me and said, because I've seen it, I've even seen it recently in some friends, where there's an under reaction to some crazy things that are going on. And that, to me, is an indicator that there's wounds, there's trauma, there's a lot going on. And so I think if we can start to search our life and figure out where we're overreacting and underreacting, that can then really tie into the floss method, because then at that point, I can find the fear that's attached to it and then go all the way through that process. Yeah.

Yeah. Super simple. You can practice this on your own or work with somebody to help you through it. And I'm curious, Nick and Trevor, what is one of your triggers?

I got a fresh one.

I don't have any triggers.

Okay, well, I got a fresh one. It's funny, it came up as you were sharing. I can think of a time where. So yesterday walked into work and felt that no one cares about what I'm working on or what I'm doing. They only care about their things and. Or their perspective. For me, I've been able to tie that through most of my life, going all the way back to my childhood, where you could have. And, you know, if you grew up in a Christian home, you might have experienced this, too, or you just had parents, I guess. But I remember I would always hear. I would ask, why do I need to do something? And my parents would say, because I told you to. Because I said so. And what's funny is I say, I totally say that now to my kids. Right.

So I'm just recreating this trauma. Train. But I think reenacting.

Right. And I think that that, though, is tied to a couple other things that happened in life where my perspective wasn't valued or I was like, another one is being blamed for something I didn't do. And those two are actually merged together over time. And so like yesterday when I walked into work, that's what I felt. I felt people don't actually value my perspective or what I think about this, and I'm just being told what to do and. Because it's the thing to do. And I. So that's. Yeah, that's a fresh one. I'm actually. It's still today too, so very, very fresh.

Maybe we could help you work through that. Trevor, how could you floss this one out?

Well, it started with an email from my boss and. Just kidding.

Said we weren't going to talk about that. Yeah, it's interesting we're doing this podcast today because at the time of recording, I just had a group of pastors that I'm going through the seven pillars of freedom with, and we walk through our ten most painful moments, you know, and that's of those tools that we use in our groups to help people get at. And that's not to say that every single painful memory has a trigger, but many of them do. And for me, one of mine is false accusations where I. And it can even be triggered when I feel like I'm being misunderstood and someone's maybe angry about, like that's not even what I meant and you're upset about. So I can feel falsely accused of by their emotion or their anger. For me, a lot of that I think stems from a, you know, unique story. Fourth grade year, there was a class spitwad fight in which I was not involved. And I will say truthfully on the podcast, I attempted to be. I tried to get, you know, figure out how to get the paper through the straw and I never could figure it out. So I felt like a failure. But then when the kids all got caught, they implicated me as being equally involved. And so I. I can own that. Well, maybe I did attempt to. So maybe I should have paid the same punishment. But what really hurt wasn't the detention time. It was that I felt like my friends had turned against me and that where they could have stood up and said, no, Nick never was, they said, yeah, Nick was. And what's, you know, even ironic looking back. You know, you talk about identifying the lie. Looking back, I can assume they were friends after that. And we had made many good memories. I don't think they were trying to cause me pain. I think they were just. Nick's one of our friends. He's a part of the group. Like, yeah, we were all in on it. And so it actually could be a story if I would rewrite it. That was about inclusion and about belonging to a group that, hey, I was a part of that group of friends, so just own it. But instead, it felt like I'd been turned against. And that was the lie of really, you know, when. When push comes to shove, friends will do whatever they need to and they'll turn against you. And so I have to be aware of that. Like, when I feel falsely accused now, I create that they're the enemy because they're no longer my friend. And it is interesting when you can kind of take that deep breath and see the connection points. It's like, oh, okay, I'm recreating a scenario that even in its original case, wasn't exactly what I took out of it.

Yeah.

I love what you said about taking a deep breath because that sadness step of floss softens the body totally.

Yeah.

And it's. It de. Escalates the fight, flight, freeze. And it allows us to give and receive love. It allows us to open up to God, to other people.

Yeah. I think another thing I'll just mention in that is that our emotions are not us. They're a part of who we are. But we so often think, if I allow myself to feel sad, I'm just a sad person or that's just who I am. And it's not true. Like, I get angry, but that doesn't make me an angry person. And so you need to be able to identify, like, yeah, name it, but then also just give yourself. The terminology that keeps circling back in my life is self compassion, self compassion, self compassion. So I think we need to, like, pump the brakes a little bit, don't judge ourselves as much, and understand that we all have this complex array of emotions that we all experience.

Yes. And our emotions are evidence of love. This is something I've been learning and teaching a lot lately. Anger is love in the face of opposition. Anxiety is love in the face of a threat. Sadness is love in the face of loss. So these deep emotions show us how much we care.

Yes. Not always in a healthy way. So, okay, so let's say we. I just think of the visual, just the clothesline. Like, all these little moments in life that are tied to this clothesline or this lie. But once we've identified those wounds and been able to tie those Maybe to our sexual struggles. What do we actually do with that? What does it look like moving forward from there?

This is the question that purity culture never answered. What should I actually do with my sexual urges and attractions and desires? Whether it's an urge, let me say it this way. Whether it's an urge to use porn or same sex attraction or a desire to do something that I don't understand, that I don't even want, but I feel it so strongly. What should we do with those desires? Well, first of all, we need to identify what they really are. At the surface level, there are urges and attractions. Something as simple as I want this, I want that. For example, one of my sexual urges and attractions has been to porn featuring oral sex and humiliation. Well, guess where that comes from. It's a reversal of what happened to me. So the surface level urge is something that I hated about myself for so long. Like I was so aroused by violating other people, by invading their mouths and faces. Now that I've understood the origin story behind it, it makes more sense. But it's still not healed yet. First I have to understand the deeper desire. What is the ache and the yearning and the longing below that surface level urge? And in my case, it was to be safe. Because if I'm the person doing that.

Yep.

Then the other one can't hurt. Then the woman can't hurt me.

Right.

And if I'm in that position where a woman's mouth is receiving me like that, that's connected to a deeper desire to be connected, to be accepted, to be validated by women. And that is good, that is from God. So can we move from the urge to the deeper desire? And once I can identify that, okay, to be accepted, to be safe, then we can gain a lot more momentum towards freedom. Before I talk about what we should do with those desires, I would be interested to hear Trevor and Nick. What is one of your deeper desires underneath the urge or the attraction?

I mean, if you were to look at, because I know our friend Jay Stringer talks about it, that, that our. I mean, you just look at what you search and pour and what you view. And that so often is the key to finding freedom for me. I just, I want to be desired. I want to be desired, I want to be pursued, which I think I struggled with some shame growing up too, hearing that, like, men are the ones who pursue and women are the ones who respond. And so I was just like, what? Like, I don't really want that. Like, I want the opposite of that. So I dealt with Some identity stuff there. But I know for me, that's why any porn or any situation that's appealing or attractive in a sexual nature is the pursuit of me, someone pursuing me. And so I think that that plays a lot into what I've already mentioned. The idea that my perspective doesn't matter, which means my value is lesser than other people. But what I saw is that if I love you or if I respect you, or if I admire you, I will pursue you. And so it's that feeling of. Of being wanted. Yeah, Is what it is for me.

Yeah. That's interesting, because I was thinking of similar things of that. That need to feel desired, wanted for who I am, not for my performance. And having so much connection in my story of how that goes into my childhood with. I had great parents. Dad's a pastor. Wonderful people, godly examples. I mean, we had a lot of great things growing up, but they would acknowledge it was really busy. Dad didn't make much money pastoring a small church. He had tons of hobbies, some of which were to make more money for the family. Others were to connect with men in the church. Others were things he just liked. My mom had to work at the hospital to make ends meet. We had four of us kids that were all in five years. It was just busy. And so the feeling of being cherished for just who I was, apart from my performance, because that's another part of my story. I felt like the times I would get my dad's attention were only when I either acted up by doing something really good and perform. You know, he'd come to my baseball games, or he was my baseball coach, or when I acted out and I'd get in trouble. It both got me attention. But to just be cherished and wanted for who I was, I think that was a missing back to our word for neglect. That just wasn't there. That through pornography, you know, in my teenage years, I felt in a way, at a deep level that I never maybe felt in my human relationships. And so it became this hook of, like, in the fantasies, in what I was viewing, I would translate it into this person wants me so badly. And that became the lure of fantasy and pornography. So, yeah, I just think what you're saying about connecting those dots is actually what creates healing. Because we see not only maybe the lies that we've taken out of the story, but we see what we really need to take to God. We see what we really need to pray about in our faith and in coming to Christ. Because too many of us just Go to Jesus to say, help me to stop this. Forgive me. I don't want to do it again. Give me strength to say no. But it's much more powerful if I can go to Jesus and say, lord, help me to remember that you cherish me, that in all of the universe, you know my name, you know every hair on my head like you cherish me. And it's in a way that's far deeper than anything I could ever experience from a human being. And then that healing is connected to my faith in a way that I think most of us maybe haven't understood.

Yeah, yeah.

When that happens, you don't need a pacifier anymore.

Well, hopefully.

Yeah. Right.

You know, I think that's the other thing we feel like, okay, I did that once 10 years ago. So now that urge to be desired should be gone. It's like in some ways that's. It's going to be an ongoing process. Right.

Yeah. Right. My point is that when the deeper desire is being met, then the urges and attractions dissolve. They fall away. Now they might still be there, but they've lost their power.

Yeah.

So I want to make a bit of a challenge here because I know that you guys believe that simply having a stronger relationship with God, where I feel accepted by him, I feel pursued by him. Feeling safe with God in my case is a part of the picture. And then there are some other parts of the picture too. We also need to learn how to find that thing with others to.

Yep.

So let me, let me go back a little bit. There are four directions for every desire. In all of my reading, I never heard anybody put it this clearly. For every desire, we have four God given directions. Number one, get it from God. Number two, find it with others. Number three, give it to myself in a healthy way. And number four, overflow to others. So let's take that desire to be pursued, that desire to be pursued by God. What would it look like for me to experience that with the Father, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, then also finding that with other people, maybe expressing that desire to be pursued and opening yourself to the risk of receiving it, and then also giving that to myself? How can I offer that same pursuit and love and desire to myself? We're going to talk about that more with healing the inner child and then finally overflowing, how can I pursue others? How can I bless others? How can I show others that I really do genuinely enjoy them and want to be with them? Now that is a fuller picture of healing and maturity.

That's good.

Yeah.

So Drew, we've talked about how pornography attacks us as children, how a lot of this brokenness comes into our lives as kids. And it's a realization I had in my journey of how much my recovery was really about learning to mature in an area of my life where I was stuck in tons of immaturity. I was really a sexual child. And I want what I want, and I want it now. And I want to feel good and just exposing that. You see why I need to grow up in a healthy way. Not like someone saying, you know, shame on you, grow up, but like in a. I need to grow and mature. So give us some. Some definition or some parameters to understand. What does it look like for us to be sexual adults, to think maturely about our sexuality?

Man, I'm so passionate about this. And being a sexual, emotional, spiritual adult is really what we're all shooting for here. I mean, that is my definition of what it means to become more like Jesus Christ. And a sexual adult is able to not just release these desires and do whatever I want or repress them and shut them down and keep them trapped until feel the need to release them again. That's the binge purge cycle. Repress, release, repress, release. Having the ability to manage my desires, to pursue those desires in a healthy way with God, other people, myself, and overflowing into a God given purpose. Yeah, I was talking to Rodney Wright about this from pure Desire and trying to ask him, okay, what does it mean to be a sexual adult? Like, are there stages of sexual development? We know that there are stages of development in many other areas. And to be an adult means you've reached the final stage of development. So what are those stages? And he pointed me to Clifford and Joyce Penner. And I watched a really outdated, kind of cheesy video that they put together, but it was really good. And they said that when you're growing up, there are stages of sexual development that everyone has to go through. Just like psychologically, physically. I think there are even stages of spiritual development. But it starts as an infant with the stage of attachment. Just simply being able to connect with a caregiver. Having that attunement that's foundational. Being able to connect with another person is the foundation of all sexuality. If we can't do that, we're going to be sexual infants. Then touch, safe touch. Being able to give and receive touch in a safe way. Talking about it, learning the words, learning what is my body and blessing it. Hey, this part of my body is good. This desire is fundamentally good. These Urges, these attractions, they're natural, they're okay. Being able to get that from a young age. I mean, most people think sexual development starts at puberty. No, it starts from birth. And after those few stages, then there's a stage of curiosity. And this is important because a lot of us were shamed for our curiosity and we were yelled at and we were verbally, emotionally abused for being curious with a friend or a neighbor or a cousin. Curiosity is important. It's just that desire to learn. And if no one's talking to us about sexuality, of course we're going to be curious. And in some ways, porn became our sexual educator. And then beyond curiosity, it goes into having boundaries, healthy boundaries with other people. You know, not treating someone else's body in a dishonoring way. Beyond that, accepting my feelings and emotions as a preteen, as a teenager, there's a healthy kind of experimentation of beginning to encounter each other and figuring out what works. And the final stage is mature management. That's what it means to be a sexual adult.

Yeah, I think that you can make that principle across the board in anything, like emotions, finances, relationships, sexuality, spiritual. Like it's a matter of managing. That's good. Yeah, I like that word. I'm going to sit on that word for a bit.

So.

Oh, go ahead.

I should say one of the things that I think has been helpful for me to think about a primary indicator between what we might call juvenile or childish and immature and being mature adults is really just in how we treat pleasure. That in an immature or juvenile mindset, we will always choose immediate pleasure, regardless of future consequences. Or not always, more often than not. That's an immature mindset. A mature mindset is I will always choose the greater, longer lasting pleasure, even if it means denying myself things in the short run. And so, you know, I pay my kids $5 for a chore and within a day they've spent it on candy at the corner store. And it's like, I thought you wanted, you know, to save up for this. Like, yeah, but I needed candy today.

I couldn't help it.

And so there are ways I can still be impulsive with my spending. But I see, like, boy, I'd rather be paying off our mortgage. I'd rather be saving up for retirement. So I'm seeing the long term pleasure and good that comes from those choices. And if we can take some of that mindset into our sexuality, it's kind of the same idea. Like, oh, okay, I can choose the candy pornography or I can invest in the long Term joy of real relationships with a spouse or if I'm single, just understanding my sexuality in the context of friends and relationships prior to marriage. So it's seeing those choices as okay, that, that for me has just been a helpful kind of question. Ask okay, am I choosing the short term good at the consequence of long term or vice versa?

Yep.

Yeah. Delayed gratification is a pretty good summary of what it means to be an adult.

Yeah.

And for me, even though I feel like I'm at a place of maturely managing my sexuality, I still go back to those earlier stages. I'm still learning how to talk about it, how to bless my body, how to accept these feelings. And so we don't really graduate from them. Just like we don't really graduate from the floss method. It's not like you floss it out one time and then you never have to floss again. We're practicing, we're growing, we're improving over time.

My four year old, recently in our nightly routine, takes all of his clothes off and is now started to like, put his naked body on me. And it's like, funny, but also like, there is shame in there with me. Like, don't. No, stop. No. You know, and so I'm like, I'm. As you're saying that that's the stage I'm in is learning how to communicate. Because I think there's. And I think that you could probably have a toe or a finger in all of those stages at one time. Because I think in managing my sexuality is one thing, managing my kid and understanding his body in the conversation is a whole nother thing. So if you think about me, pray for those moments because they're funny and difficult and challenging. But yeah, Drew, let's keep going, man. I think we talked about porn, the being a pacifier. And really we're looking for that soothing. And so we talk about it a lot. We've also learned, I mean, you look at scripture, it's there that it's not a matter of just avoiding behavior, it's replacing it. And so those things that we. The thing we've been using to soothe pornography, what are healthy avenues for getting that soothing?

Ultimately, I believe it looks like those four directions. How can I pursue the deeper desires of my heart in a healthy way? By getting it from God. And that's going to be unique for each of us based on the shape of our story. For me, feeling safe with God and finding that safety with others with my unique story about my grandmother has sometimes looked like spending in Time with my mother in law, who is a very safe spiritual director. She's really wonderful and I feel like she's the grandmother I never had. So that's kind of a corrective experience. It's a healthy way for me to find that feeling of validation from a woman in, in a way that I didn't get. Also just being able to give that to myself, being able to set boundaries or not allow my 3 year old daughter to dominate or humiliate me, those are some of the ways that I feel like I'm continuing to grow and also overflowing to others. How can I create a safe place for another person? I mean, so that's with my desire for safety. I wonder what it is for you. And ultimately what we're talking about is self care and healthy ways of soothing. I find the most helpful way for me to reframe self care is not like doing something for myself because that just feels selfish. Rather, how can I care for, for little Drew? How can I spend some quality time with little Drew? What are some words of affirmation that he might need to hear right now? And then when I go do my self care, it's not about me, it's about him. And it becomes such a special, meaningful time. And that's why we're talking about healing the inner child on a future episode.

Yeah, plug, plug, plug.

So stay tuned for that. Yeah, I think Drew, something you said earlier in the episode about our triggers is just noticing them, observing what we're feeling, questioning, okay, where is this coming from? And then being able to respond in a healthier way. Because I really think there's not necessarily one way or one thing we can go to soothing, because it really can depend on what we're feeling. And so for me, in my trigger of maybe boredom, which boredom being linked to I don't matter, no one's paying attention to me. If in that boredom I'm feeling the desire for lust or fantasy, I can soothe that way. And historically my brain has found that works, at least for the short term. It's an immediate gratification. But if I'm noticing that like, boy, I'm feeling bored, I'm feeling drawn to this, okay, what's going on? What am I hearing? And then I can respond to that by maybe going to a trusted person, to my spouse, to a group member to say, boy, for some reason I'm just really struggling, feeling like no one cares about me, like I'm alone and I don't necessarily need you to fix me. I just, I Know that for me to process that helps me see the lies behind it. And so to kind of make some healthy choices. Here's something I'm going to choose to go do today, and maybe it's to go hang out with a friend. Maybe it's to call up a family member that I haven't talked to in a while. It's to engage in a relationship that I remember, like, oh, it's not about me. I've got tons of people that love me, and life is good. So entering back into a place of gratitude versus loss is a method for.

Me and Nick that feels like it aligns so perfectly with that story you told where you thought everyone was against you, but in fact, you had friends who loved you and who were wanting to include you with them, even though it felt like the opposite.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yesterday, when I was having this stressful day, it's. I've. It's funny, it's connected to something someone told me a long time ago. But I went and I talked to a couple other people on staff, some friends, my wife, and they just shared how overwhelmed they were as well. And it was like, oh, okay, I'm not alone. I'm not the only person. And it made me kind of come above the tree line of my emotions. And where I was in that narrative, I was telling myself, I'm not the only one who's got stuff they gotta do and people telling them or asking them to do things that they don't feel like they have time for. I reached out to our producer, Justin, one of my best friends. He was just like, I'm not solving your problem. I'm just gonna tell you how you feel is valid. I was like, yeah, thank you.

You know, I deserve.

Right? Like, I deserve. Thank you. You know, but it was a mixture of all of that where I was able to. At one point, I was sitting at my desk, and I'm a pretty happy, joyful person. So when I feel sad, it's hard for me to separate that emotion from my identity. But I sat there for a minute. I'm just like, let's just do the next thing. What's the next task? What's the next thing I can do on my list just to keep moving forward? Because I could have totally wallowed. But again, that's what a kid does. A kid wallows and doesn't take that step. And so that helped. That was, you know, what you're talking about too, Nick. That idea of community being around you helped just add perspective for me.

That was a Healthy thing for the child within me who feels neglected and isolated and alone, to have a redemptive experience of being surrounded by friends, being with somebody, saying, hey, what you feel is totally valid, man. That renders the pacifier irrelevant.

Yeah, totally. Drew, this is good, man. I love how passionate you are. I love the way that you think, the way that you frame things, you know, fellow seven on the Enneagram. So I know that's just what you do in your sleep, but I just appreciate the thought you've put into it, and it's just evident how meaningful this stuff is. And so I think that if you're listening, understanding that porn is so much more than just an action that you do or a thing that you watch. It's something that you're using to soothe the pain and the difficulty and the stress and frustration and trauma in your life. But we don't have to use a pacifier because I don't know any functioning adults that use pacifiers anymore. And that's what we want for ourselves to manage, as. That's a great word. To manage all areas. Andrew's holding up a pacifier.

Okay. This is an adult pacifier. It's. It's kind of huge. I found this on Amazon. It's like. It's real.

People use these if you're not watching. It's.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

I don't even know if I should tell people to go on YouTube and watch this. But, Drew, thank you, dude, just for all the time and for being here with us. Appreciate it, man. You're welcome.

Thanks for having me.

And wherever you're at on your journey, pure desire is here to help create a roadmap for your healing. If you or someone. Someone you know is impacted by sexual brokenness, go to PureDesire.org and let's start the healing journey today. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Each week, we put out new content to help you on the road to freedom from the effects of sexual brokenness. And lastly, never stop being healthy.