281 - The Impact Of Sexual Addiction (w/ Dr. Adrian Hickmon)

Welcome to the Pure Desire Podcast, helping you take back your life from unwanted sexual behavior and betrayal trauma.

Hello.

Hello. I am your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 281 of the Pure Desire podcast. Here joining me, as always, is my co host, Nick Stumbo.

Here's looking at you, kid.

Oh, yeah. So good. Jimmy Stewart.

Yeah, could be.

Okay.

Sounds like Jimmy Stewart, doesn't it?

It does.

It's from Casablanca, right?

Oh, Casablanca. Okay, so here's the thing.

Is that Jimmy Stewart?

No, it's not. That's not you. The voice is Jimmy Stewart.

That. That's probably my voice for any, like, 1950s, 1960s movie. It's pretty universal. I've never actually seen the movie.

You've never seen the clip?

And more so the way the clip gets quoted in the more recent movie, the Holiday is where I'm more familiar.

With it from Humphrey Bogart. So, like, classic.

Yeah, classic.

Classic. Okay. So interested to see how you tie that in, because today we had. And I mean, I don't want to speak for you, but he might be one of our favorite people in general. Just what he teaches, his content, all of that. But we had Dr. Adrian Hickman on, who is on the teaching faculty for ITAP, and he taught us in our PSAP certification. He was in Module 1, the Pastoral Sex addiction professional certification. And he also runs a really cool organization called Capstone, and we had him on really, just to talk about the impact of sexual addiction.

Yeah, Dr. Hickman is an amazing guy. And I think when you hear him, that's the feeling I get is like, this is just classic material. It's what Pure Desire kind of is rooted in, is the work that he's been doing for a long time. And he also attributes a lot of what he's learned to Dr. Patrick Carnes. And then the way he's taken it and applied it to, you know, his work with young men and with couples. But whenever I listen to him, it's like, man, this is just so good. This is, like, foundational. It's. It's the stuff everyone really needs to know and understand. And today we went into a lot of those kind of big topics on trauma and addiction and relationships and. And I hope everyone gets that feel of, like, this is the kind of material you could just come back to again and again. Because it's classic, it's timeless, and it really, I think, paints a picture of why recovery, the Pure Desire way, or the Dr. Adrian Hickman way, is unique and different from what a lot of people have done for many decades. So he's a great Christian thinker too. Very biblical. And so I just really appreciate his perspective.

And though it may be to your point, the content, it might be familiar to a lot of us. The Adrian flavor is awesome. You are going to love him.

If you don't have a pen and paper out or your smartphone to take a couple of notes, get ready, because he's just like, he's quotable, he's memorable. It's like, oh, I agree. As we did the interview, I kept writing down notes like, oh, that is such a great way to say it. And especially if you're like a group leader, I think you're going to take some of these thoughts back to your group. Say, hey, listen to this. This applies to what we're going through right now. So get ready to jot a few things down.

Yeah. So good. Before we get to it, a few things. The first thing, Nick, that we want to touch is we have an opportunity this year on Giving Tuesday to really help people access healing that they may not be able to.

Yeah. This year, as we look at Giving Tuesday, we're choosing a focus of the counseling scholarship because we recognize that many people need help, but not everyone who needs that level of help can afford it, quite frankly. Sometimes our addiction and our struggles have put us in precarious spots financially with jobs, careers, and the help we need when we most need it is maybe at a time when just financially, because of the crisis we're in, it's out of our reach. And the counseling scholarship really makes it a possibility for couples or individuals to go through this one year process that really we have seen over and over is life changing. But in order to go through that process, you've got to be able to commit to it. And a big part of that is the finances. So with Giving Tuesday, we're just looking to say, you know, in connection to our gratitude and what God's done in our lives, could we be a part of paying that forward into someone else's healing? And if you're feeling that, if God has used the counseling program at Pure Desire or the group ministry to change your marriage, could you turn and say, man, I'd like to help the next marriage get footing? And that's what this Giving Tuesday is all about.

Yeah.

So if you want to pay your healing forward, go to PureDesire.org give and give toward the Counseling Scholarship for Giving Tuesday. All right, normal stuff. Before we get into it, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. If you're not, we're on all the major platforms. That way you get each new episode in. You're a podcast player. Also, follow us on social media. Earedesirepdmi. And then we have this full episode up on YouTube. And I'll just say, you're gonna want to watch this. You can listen to it. That's great. But also watch it. Sit down and watch because Adrian is very engaging. And with that, let's get into our time with Adrian Hickman on the impact of sexual addiction. Dr. Adrian Hickman, thank you so much for being with us on the Pure Desire podcast. Thanks for being here.

Well, I'm so happy to be here. I mean, you guys are like my favorite group in the whole world. You stand up for what's right, and you make a difference all over world. And to be connected to you is just an honor for me.

And that's our episode.

We'll see you next week.

Just kidding. No, Adrian, with your experience, and Nick and I both got to spend time with you in the pastoral sex addiction professional certification with itap. And I would just say, personally, you are just one of the greatest. I just love listening to you, listening to your heart, how you help people, what you do. And with that experience and expertise, both as an educator, as a therapist, we're just really excited to really dive in and talk to you specifically about the impact of sexual addiction. And I think looking over even some of the notes that were in the ITAP training, you have a definition of sexual addiction. And so how would you define sexual addiction and what fits that criteria of making it an addiction?

Well, that's a really good question that we could probably spend the whole time on. You know, there are definitions of that that come out of national organizations that would just say it's a genetically based brain disease of, you know, whatever. There's so much research that goes against that I don't know how it still stands. You know, if you go back 10 years, and especially 20 years, and you go to a conference in the country, there's not anybody talking about trauma. It's all the biomedical model. And then 10 years ago, you started seeing a few people come in, Judy Crane being one of them. Now, you don't go to any conferences without tons of presentations on trauma. So there's a paradigm shift that's happening with it. And I think the way I'd answer that, just to kind of go around my ADHD brain, is that at its core, any addiction is a coping mechanism from some kind of chronic stress, some heavy weight that you carry. And it could Be unhealed, big T, little T, chronic T, trauma, unhealed, adverse childhood experiences, or a disconnection from intimate relationships. So an isolation and an emptiness from purpose. And when you first look at it, addiction begins, as Gabor Mate says, as a solution to a problem and. And then turns into its own problem itself. But I think it's a situation where somebody finds something that they do and it almost works to take away the pain or the numbness from that unhealed stuff, if that makes sense to you. And if it was a behavior that by itself wasn't wrong, like if it was sex between spouses, if it was exercise or food or a glass of wine at night, and the purpose of it was to deal with the high anxiety of facing the underlying issues and healing that, then those behaviors would have never been called an addiction. But it's like. And of course, some behaviors are wrong from the get go when you go to porn and adultery and blah, blah, blah. But it's like once they become an avoidance pattern, to me, that's when they enter what I would call the addiction continuum, is that I'm doing this not to cope so I can work on it, but to avoid it. That's when they enter that continuum, and that's when it becomes something on a. Like an unstoppable train toward tragedy. And so when you look at it in that point, from that point of view, a lot of people are like, well, we gave this assessment and he was one point shy of being an addict. And I'm like, give me a break. Get your head out of the sand. You know, I want to find them when they're way many points below that, but they're in that direction because then it's going to be easier to intervene with. So I would say coping mechanism for chronic stress. You know, when I don't know if you guys have read the book and if you hadn't, I wish you would. The Urge by Carl Eric Fisher. It's a history of our addiction. 500 year history.

Oh, wow.

And it kind of shows what addiction does and also parallels what the biomedical model has done with mental illness. And in it, he wrote an article in the New York Times that said it's misleading to call addiction a disease because then you're making it a medical issue. And when you make it a medical issue, you're oversimplifying a very complex problem into something that's just biological. Not only does that invisibilize a person's story and suffering, it it's disrespectful to it. And so one of the things that he says in that is that addiction actually is very ordinary and connects all humanity and how we deal with self control and our pain. And so you just think about it. Something that frustrated you or hurt you in the last two or three days, what'd you do with it? It's like, you know, get a box of Crunch and Munch, you know, go jog, go shoot basketball, you know, go make love to your wife or. Or something else. And it's like those are things that you're doing to cope. And with you two guys, you're doing it to cope while you work on the problem. But it's like we all suffer, and we all see coping mechanisms when we suffer. But the difference in groups, who uses them to avoid and who uses them to engage, does that make sense?

Yeah, that's great.

That's such a great way of putting it. And I mean, I think why we listeners are already understanding why we love the PSAP training because you just sit and, like, want to take all these notes. And I remember, for me, Adrian, it was with Ted Roberts telling me in one of my first counseling sessions, he said, we were all born to be addicted to Jesus, but we've learned to be addicted to something else. And in that, he was sharing the same heart of what you're saying. It's like our brain needs to cope with heavy things, stressful things, you know, things we don't know what to deal with. But in an ideal, unbroken world, we would just always run to the Father, our heavenly Father, who would comfort us, soothe us, assure us, you know, whatever we need. But in a fallen world, we've learned to run to other things. And when those become a pattern of avoidance, and as you say, then it's addiction. I think if our world could grasp that definition of addiction, we'd have a lot better response when we realized that someone has become stuck in something. Because we wouldn't kind of paint it as this extreme category of, oh, what's wrong with you? We would just realize, oh, you're somewhere on the same spectrum that I'm probably somewhere on. We maybe just have different issues.

We're using, well, yeah, we're just using something else for the same purpose, like use alcohol, porn, whatever it may be. Absolutely. And I feel like, to me, that has helped me my own journey, understand and experience empathy for other people, that someone may go to narcotics and use that. And I'm like thinking, what are you doing yet? I'll go to Netflix or a book or Alcohol or food to do the exact same thing. And so it. It has helped me to stop or at least limit, I would say, casting any judgment that I might.

Yeah, right. Yeah. In other words, there's a fine line between the best and worst of us, you know, and when you say, hey, look at that guy over there doing that stuff, man, I would never do that.

Right.

You know, my college football coach sat me down one day and said, boy, sit your butt in the chair. He said, I hear you saying stuff about you do this and you do that if you were in a situation you had never been in before. And then he told me a story about him in Korea, in the. In the war, where he had practiced hitting the ground when. When he hit a booby trap and a grenade flew up in the air. And if you could be on your way down on number two out of one, two, and three, you could survive it. And three came and he had moved. He just stood there. And he was pretty tough guy, but he froze in it. And he said, that's when I stopped saying what I would do.

Yeah.

In a certain situation, because we don't know if you hurt bad enough. Would you eat garbage if you were starving that bad? And the answer is, yeah, we would. So it's. There's not a very far place between the best of us and the worst of us.

Yeah. So if we think of addiction as an avoidance pattern and we all have tendencies of things we want to avoid, how would you help someone maybe understand more on the front end if they're moving towards sexual addiction? How might they see that this is a pattern that's developing and. And maybe deal with it sooner?

Well, I mean, one. With any time a person would get into a conversation like that with. With you guys, with me, with a friend. I mean, you know, didn't have to be professional stuff, and the conversation is on the table about you're doing some of this stuff as a coping mechanism or as a. An avoidance pattern, then there's already been enough happened for that person to realize they've already got repetitions. Is what I'm trying to say of it not working.

Yeah.

So when you've gone to this before and you've got this low and. And then the pain that comes with it and you go seek this high. What happens next? I mean, before. This isn't your first rodeo. And what happens next is, you know, they get shame. I mean, it's. It's a legitimate. In that kind of situation, healthy shame. And there's even something bigger than that. Called toxic shame, which both you guys know about that. And so then the pain or the low gets lower, the pain gets more intense, so they have to seek a more intense high. And that's how the spiral starts. So first I would use what's already happened in their story, but then I think there's always an ace up my sleeve. And for your sleeves as well, because of being Christians, is that we know that person sitting in front of us is made in God's image. So when we get a young man here at Capstone and you know, some of them come in going, thank you, Jesus, for getting me to Capstone. Mom and Dad, I think I got it. Would you take me home on Friday? You know, and then others come in saying F you to everybody. And we got one that's just fu. And everybody, you know about it. It's like sometimes people look at that and say, well, he's so resistance, he needs to get out of here. But I know underneath that there's a little boy who's really scared and hurt, and he wants the same things I want, even though he may not know it. And so I think knowing that person that is headed in that direction, Nick, like you're talking about, I know that that's what's on their inside. And they want something to be deep and good and fulfilling. And when you look at the way God made our brains, this is just a little sideshow here, but I think it will contribute to the conversation. John 10:10 says that the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. But I have come that they may live life and live it to the full. And so when you think about our experiences of life to the full, how could you break that down? From a neurobiology point of view, there are three neural pathways in the brain for pleasure. One is arousal neural pathway, one is satiation neural pathway, and one is fantasy. So taking a drug will activate only one of those pathways. Masturbating to porn will activate all three. You know, sexual addiction will activate all three. So here we have three pathways created by God. And so arousal neuropathway is dopamine and excitement and motivation and intensity. Can you use that in a godly way? Yeah. Or you can use it with some kind of dopamine releasing drug like cocaine or crystal meth. Satiation neural pathway is I've got pain from a broken leg and I get some medicine. But also, have you seen the color change in the trees around Arkansas lately? It makes me feel that endorphin feeling inside. And then when you look at fantasy Pathway. That's where imagination and hope comes from. That I can imagine something that's not yet and give me hope of getting from where I am point A to point B. So it's really the same thing that's happened since the garden. You know, Satan never created anything. You know, he's a creation. So it's like God created everything and everything was good. It's Satan taking the good things and using them for bad. And so to me, the same neural pathways that are used in addiction are the ones used in living life to the good and full. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and I think this question really speaks to where we're at today in our culture, you know, and I can, I can tell you right now, like I, in a couple of days I'm going to be speaking to some high schoolers. And I know that even inside the church there's a perspective with people in high school and that young age group that porn doesn't really hurt anybody. This doesn't really damage me. This doesn't impact other people. It's just something that I do. There are no consequences. How would you respond to that? Like, what does sexual addiction damage? How does it damage us? What does that look like?

You know, I'm gonna, I'm working on some material on this right here because it's such a thing to me. You know, I taught in high school and junior high for 14 years and, and it's so poorly done with our churches and stuff. But it's like what I would do first. And you may laugh at this and fire me from this, this program. But first I would go in and say, hey guys. And I'm talking to boys and girls and I'd probably do this one separately. You know, I did this for my church on pornography. And I did seventh through 12th, girls separate from boys. But it's like everybody in this room, and I'm not even going to ask it because I know it's true, would love to have the greatest sex in the world someday. That's, that's how we're made. We're made as sexual creatures and, and we'd love to have it. So I would like to work with you on how to have the greatest sex in the world. And I actually did this with a seminar that I did that had about 450 people in it. And most of them had gray hair or no hair like me. And, and I kind of role played this group. And so you look at it and I'm really talking about how do you have the most fulfilling, intense orgasms possible? Well, there's three possibilities. One is pornography and at the end of that, you know, you get erectile dysfunction. Dysfunction. And, and you shut down as far as sexual drive as far as a woman's concern, you know, the next one is just picking up good looking people at bars and ball games or whatever and having sex. And sooner or later you get to where you can't just go pick up anybody because you lose your young stroke. And then third is long term marriage and research, not Christian spin and opinion pieces. Research shows that people that are long term marriages have twice the number of sexual encounters with a double sexual satisfaction from each encounter. And so I'd first go in to say this is what's possible for you, this is what is what's going to end up if you go these other two paths. But this is how you can really have it. Typically all the way back to when I was in junior high, everything was while we don't.

Yeah.

You know, while we don't do this and instead we flip it and go here now to talk specifically about pornography with them. It's this when fantasy is going on, you know, somebody's watching porn or they have watched it before and they're fantasizing in their shower and masturbate. It's like a fantasy in which there is an orgasm. And sexual arousal is so powerful because the sexual arousal, and especially at orgasm, concretizes that fantasy into a memory that is equal to a real memory that you actually did that. That's why you read everywhere pornography lowers your inhibition from doing that act because it's like you've already done it. And so what's at the end of that, at the end of that is loneliness and emptiness and isolation because nothing can ever keep up with your fantasy. And so you're actually killing the thing that you may be looking for in, in that kind of a pursuit. And it's a fact of that. That's not a try to be holier, try to be more like Jesus. It's like cold hard fact. If you're an atheist, this is how it's going to work.

Yeah.

Does that make sense to you?

Yeah. Yeah.

Gosh, that's good. The thing that I'm actually pursuing if I bypass it with pornography makes me not want that thing that I wanted in the first place. It's so trippy. To me it makes so much sense, but it's just not something that, I mean, I didn't hear that in church growing up. I didn't hear that in my household growing up. So. Such good information to have.

Yeah, well, it's really good to call out the contradictions in what we believe or think, because I think that's a really common one where people say, oh, it's. It's not really hurting anyone. And you say, oh, well, then you should tell your wife or girlfriend or fiance about everything you're watching. Like, oh, no, I wouldn't do that. Well, why not? Well, they'd probably be hurt by it. Yeah, well, I thought you just said it's not hurting anyone because if you told someone, it clearly hurt them. And I think a turning point for me, too, was even realizing kind of what you're saying here, Adrian, is that I. I'm being hurt by it. It's hurting my ability to be authentic. It's hurting my ability to feel like I'm real when I'm around friends. It's hurting my ability to see my wife for the beautiful person God made her to be. Because now there's all these other images. It's like, if I can even start there. And I think in our world, we have to sometimes acknowledge people are pretty selfishly driven. But if you can start there with them saying, you're hurting yourself, just like you're saying you could be causing erectile dysfunction. You could be causing this deep sense of loneliness. Like, if you say, no one's being hurt, just start there and say, I'm being hurt. And as an image bearer of God, I should at least be willing to say, say I shouldn't do something that's hurting me and my future.

Yeah. And, you know, when you think about it, it's like, I've worked with many couples that, you know, the husband would bring pornography into the marriage to say, this will enhance our relationship. It's kind of like taking ecstasy and then having sex like rabbits all weekend, thinking that this is helping our marriage. And, you know, when they used to do that back in the 70s, and now they're trying to bring it back. But in the 70s, marriage and family therapists could give ecstasy out because it wasn't regulated. And they would do the wild thing all weekend. And they got to where the next Tuesday, they started calling them Suicide Tuesdays because they would go through this high and then drop back down. And it wasn't just a chemical thing. It was relational thing as well. And so when you bring porn in, I think the stats are. And you guys probably gave me these stats that they're training, but it's 25% of married women Watch porn. And the reason that's happening is their husbands, for most of them, are bringing porn in. And it doesn't take someone very long to realize that if I'm having sex with my wife while we are watching pornography, that she will eventually figure out that I'm masturbating in her vagina and using the porn scene or the porn girls or whatever as. As my fantasy. That's. That's what it's about. So it's so degrading and disrespectful. But what's happening, and this is a little bit of poetic justice, is that now 40% of the people that access online porn every day, Dr. Patrick Horn says, are women. And so what's happening is now women are starting to look at some of that porn stuff, and then guys are looking at that and comparing themselves to it, and they come out, you know, short, no pun intended, just like the women do. You know, I can't compare to that centerfold.

Yeah.

So it looks like it's going to be a possessing really good thing. And what it does is it kills the intimacy. Just kills it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Comparison just destroys on. On both sides, male and female. So we do think a lot about, you know, the dangers of erectile dysfunct and the things that, boy, you keep feeding yourself. Those fantasies are that high and it can't last. But you've mentioned this a little bit. Let's talk about the other side of it, that there is withdrawal. There's the other, the downside. So what does withdrawal look like in sexual addiction?

Well, it's basically the same thing. It's like if you had 10 people and you had, let's say, 10 ways of getting high. So here's five prostitutes in one night, and here's pornography, and here's cocaine, and here's heroin, and here's alcohol, and here's a bunch of high sugar food and blah, blah, blah. And you let each one of those people try each one of those approaches to getting high for a month. So 10 months later, you're going to pull the brain out of their skull and interview the brain, not the person. And you're going to ask, which one of those ways of getting high did you like the best? It's going to be a laughter fest by the brains, because they're going to go, you guys don't understand neurobiology, do you? Because by the time that affects us, it's only about neurotransmitter flooding. And so whether it was an actual chemical that went in and was a surrogate for a neurotransmitter or a chemical that went in and caused more neurotransmitters to go out there or a behavior that did the same thing. It's like Dr. Patrick Carnes says that moving porn for a male is 1100% dopamine potentiation, which is equal to crystal meth and crack cocaine. It doesn't matter to the brain. So if you stop any of those when the physiological system is used to being able to get that high, then it has to reset itself. It's like resetting a thermostat. So while you'll have physical things from that physiological reset, when it's alcohol and heroin, those are going to be your worst withdrawals as far as the physical part. You will still have those emotional down withdrawals that'll make your body really fatigued and you'll get discouraged and depressed from pornography just like you would a drug, if that makes sense to you. So it's really the same. The thing that I would say that makes it more difficult is that you can stop drinking and stay away from a bar and a liquor store. You can stop snorting cocaine and don't use Johnson baby powder and get triggered by it. I mean, you can do lots of those things. But if you're sitting there watching pornography, it's very difficult, unless you go inside of a monastery to not see the, the object of your fantasy by just seeing women. So that makes it more difficult, you know, in the withdrawal. Well, that makes sense.

Yeah, we talked about it, you know, a number of times on the show that I'm not, you know, and I know epigenetics can play into this a little bit, but like, I'm not born an alcoholic, but I am born sexual. And so, you know, in that capacity, then like, it's not something that I can rid myself of. And I don't know, maybe there are people out there who could argue me now with the chemical stuff and things that are going on today. But like, I am born sexual. Therefore if I'm using my body and you know, that idea of like your, the dopamine is the drug that your brain is producing, the drug that it's getting high on because of this, like the impact is, it's just, it's far reaching to alcohol, I could stop drinking alcohol, I could stop going to bars, but I can never stop being a sexual being because that's how God has made me.

Yeah, you know, there's an adjective or term, I guess you could say that. Dr. Patrick Carnes used called high risk sex. He would say high risk. And when he first said it, I was like, you know, what is, what does that mean? And this is what he means. And it made so many marital therapy sessions that I've done make sense. Is that you're born sexual, like you're saying. And so that's different than being born an alcoholic. But it's like sex as God intended. In other words, the greatest sex in the world. Sex between those two married people. That's not what we're talking about when we talk about sex addiction. What we're talking about, he says high risk sex. We're talking about sex that has a component that causes an increase in, in the dopamine release. And so they did a study once and I don't remember who did it, I just remember watching the video. But there was a decently attractive woman in a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, very modestly dressed. And she walked down the sidewalk and they had men sitting on park benches that didn't stand out, but you know, looked at her and they were measuring arousal. Zero. So they took the same woman in the same outfit and I guess they went in some alley somewhere where it was like a two or three story building and they this. This little walkway across it, you know, because it was like 18 inches and, and kind of like a ladder with, with a solid piece on it and had handrails. And she walked across that and they measured the same end and all their arousal went up and it was the cause of the perception of danger. So when you think about affairs, and this is something that I guess I could do, True confessions of a Marital Therapist. But it's like I've worked over 600 couples that one or both were having affairs. Mostly one. And I guess most of them have been men that had the affair. And hundreds of them, I knew the person they were having the affair with because I grew up in this town and we're a town of 22, 000 and I don't have one yet that I went inside my head. I would never say this to a client, obviously, but I never had one that I said, oh yeah, dude, I understand that because she's so good looking, it's killing me, you know, it's like every single time I'm looking at him and saying, what?

What are you thinking?

Yeah, and here's what. What's going on with it. They talk about how intense the sex is and boy, it's just so awesome. And she's the most wonderful whatever. And I'm sitting here going, what is wrong with me? You know, I must be the one that needs therapy. But what it was is the. The thrill of the taboo of getting caught.

Yeah.

So you learn real quick in your career to start asking crazy questions like, what's the most out of normal place that you've ever had sex? Parking lot at church, the church bathroom in your bed when your wife has gone to the grocery store and you only had an hour before she was going to get back. And there's hundreds of stories like that. So why, why do they do that? Because it's really not about sex that we're born with that sex drive. It's about the added benefit, if you want to say benefit of it, of the adrenaline and the dopamine from the fear of getting caught, if that makes sense to you. So high risk sex is a pretty good way to say it, if you can define what that means. High risk.

Yeah. So on all these stories that you're talking about, we're trying to escalate the peer pleasure experience, but losing out on the overall satiation or satisfaction, which is then what leads to withdrawal. And I think that's just. Again, a lot of people are not used to thinking about addiction this way. But when we start having these conversations, which we've had so many with you in our PSAP training, it's like it just makes sense. It starts to click. It's like, man, I understand when I see it from this perspective, why the human brain and then the human person gets stuck in these patterns. And so another part of that, I think for so many of us in the training and that you spend probably the bulk of your time on when you do the trainings is really talking about that role of trauma when it comes to sexual addiction. And so we've talked quite a bit about the brain. But let's go back to the trauma piece of how does you know? Simply put, how does past trauma become a driver for current sexual addiction or acting out?

Well, one, I would say this, you, when, when research looks at it, someone that is an adult with an addiction, it's like 90% of them have childhood trauma. And I would probably say that's wrong. It's a hundred percent. Because a lot of times people only define trauma as the big T's, right? And to me, most of the trauma that I work with and we work with here at Capstone are little T's with big messages of toxic shame. You know, not getting picked for kickball is a little T. But, you know, if you Were planning on being a pro football player and you're not good enough to get picked. And kickball, that's a pretty good message of you're not good enough. So there's always going to be trauma, you know, underneath it. And so, you know, when you, when you look at that, I would, I would frame it just to kind of make it concrete that two people, two different guys, let's say they unilaterally get on the Internet, go to the same porn site, see the same image and masturbate to it. I mean, hypothetically. And one of them is like, man, I feel bad about doing that. I don't want to do that again. And he stays away from it maybe for life or for months, maybe by the time he's married, he's seen it five times. But the other one, same, same exact thing that he's seen. And for him it's so powerful, he goes back to it the next day and then he starts going to it twice a day, and then he goes to it until his penis bleeds. And that's one of the questions you always ask people when it comes down to tell me about your porn stuff. Why is that? You take trauma and if there was a, like a scale of the total weight of trauma, add all the big T, little T, chronic T's in there of 0 to 100, think of that as a power factor scale. So if this guy here's got a power factor of one because he doesn't have any of that stuff earlier, but this one has a power factor of 10 because of that trauma, then that one experience in masturbatory fantasy with that porn is going to be 10 times more powerful for this guy.

Yeah.

And so let's say somebody's got a 90 on that scale, which we work with many guys that do. You know, you talk about divorce of parents, even if it's a merited divorce, that's one of the top two things of our top two big T traumas. With, with children, you talk about a death of a parent. It's like, so you get those things and add sexual abuse and add a teacher saying, why can't you be as smart as your brother? Whatever. Then they look at that same thing and they've got something that is 90 times more powerful than this guy over here with one. So to me, that's how trauma affects it. And I would say this, people may try alcohol, they might try cocaine, they might smoke a joint, might try high risk sex, picking up a girl at a party, or pornography. They won't get stuck in it if they don't have something underneath that is a power factor that makes it more important than it would be for someone without that.

Yeah.

So that's how important it is.

So you're saying for the person with significant levels of past trauma, the impact of pornography will actually be much, much greater on them because of the trauma itself.

No doubt. No doubt. And let's say it was a chronic T like a dad that's a super high achiever, which is probably because he's trying to counterbalance the scale of his toxic shame messages as a child and a mom who's driven. And maybe they're not as connectable by touch and maybe they don't spend a lot of quantity time together and etc. And you've got this message inside this kid that, you know he's not capable of being an achiever like his parents.

Yeah.

And so you ask, did you ever get chewed out by a teacher? Did you ever get sexually abused? You ever get bullied, beat up, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. And you're going, well, why are you stuck in pornography? Yeah. Well, oftentimes it's that section of his own comparison and his parents may not even feel that way at all.

Yeah.

But he's trying to say, this is what they expect of me, even if they've never said it, and I can't do it. I fall short of it. So that's the ones that I think get hidden and most therapists don't know to go look in at it that deep. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I.

One of the things I remember from, and correct me if I'm wrong, if it wasn't in your session, but there was a video gabor Mate was talking about. Trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside you as that thing's happening, how you're processing that information. Am I quoting that correctly?

Yeah, exactly right.

Yeah, exactly right. Just that idea of it's not, you know, because for me, I don't have divorced parents and I don't have, you know, all these major traumas that a lot of people do. But, like, I do remember peeing my pants in the middle of a Math test in fourth grade, and that's still on my top 10 list of the most traumatizing things. And the messages I learned and, you know, a lot of that had to do, like, do fueling my addiction. So another thing that you said that I thought was just so, so great was you asked the question what makes this make sense? And that's what I feel like trauma when we're informed on what has happened in someone's life. You know, you told so many stories and I wish we had time for all of them because they were so great. But that idea of trauma is what helps us make sense of a person's behavior. Why they're pursuing these high risk things, why they're pursuing pornography, why they're numbing out and avoiding is because of all the pain and trauma they've experienced. And I, I just, to me that continues to stick out from your session.

Yeah. And what you asked earlier about, you know, how do you help somebody that's on that path? I think you have to go in and this is just like a pair of, of glasses that the lens we look through every single day at every single session. Is that what makes it make sense? And so here's a kid or an adult or 75 year old or whatever that's doing something in sexual addiction, porn or anything else. And it's a behavior that's self destructive. You know, it is an avoidance pattern. It's, it's in the progression, spiral, all those kind of things. And seriously, to say that that's because they have a genetic disease and, and discount that there's any of these things we're talking about and simplify it to that. You know, it's like honestly, if it was a genetic disease and with all the things that we have done with the genetic disease model over the last several decades, would we not be going down in the number of people that are addicted?

For sure.

Just like depression, with all the SSRIs and, and, and the billion hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent on them, would depression percentage wise in our population not be going down? And it's, it's skyrocketing.

Yeah.

You know, and so I think it comes down to you're looking at that, what makes it make sense and knowing there's always an answer to that question. And when I say answer, I mean there's always a jigsaw puzzle picture with many pieces that answer that question. Because like what you just said about the math test, it's like take me to song. Leading class in the sixth grade, My first panic attack and being laughed at by all those guys. Yep. It's like, that's not being raped, that's not anything else. But boy, the message of it and the toxic shame I felt about being not good enough and not belonging. I still deal with that, you know, today. Not that the trauma of that, but I still deal with fighting that message inside of myself sometimes.

Yep. Yeah.

And this next question, I feel like there's a lot of, especially people listen to our podcast. They know. And, you know, people who listen have been through this journey of addiction and betrayal, you know, trauma healing. But maybe from your perspective and your experience, Adrian, what are some of the bigger ways and maybe even some of the surprising ways that you see sexual addiction impacting marriage and relationships just in your work, what have you seen?

Well, I mean, the betrayal of it. And betrayal is the hardest trauma that any human can go through. And I think that that's pretty biblical. Jesus was betrayed and crucified, and I think somewhere in there, that's, that's why betrayal is so hurtful and damaging to us. But there's a breaking of the faithfulness, there's a breaking of the trust in doing that. And, you know, we have a lot of Christian people, bless their hearts, that look at it. I just had one last week that I was working in, and it was like, you need to forgive the. That husband and pray for him and the other one and the woman he had the affair with. Forgive him and forget and come home and let's leave everything alone. And it's like, that's not how it works. You know, you have to do, you know, the trauma work in, in doing that. And, and the reason it damages marriages so badly is, I mean, I've had non offending spouses that want to say, hey, let's just do this one session. And, and you know, I've given this to God and Jesus and I'm ready to go home and let everything go on the way it needs to be. And I said, okay, let me ask you this question. When you're laying in bed at night and you close your eyes and everything's kind of stopped, you're waiting on going to sleep. You ever think about her taking her hand and unbuttoning that first button and he gets the second one. And I kind of took her through a real slow deal and she fell apart, bawling. And it's like that's what's really going on inside of her. And then on the outside, you've got this. So don't ever underestimate how hurtful and traumatic it is to the non offending spouse. And what I tell my clients is it is at the level of being raped, because it is a rape of the soul that you did this with someone else. But can you work through it? Of course, we do. Most of those 600 couples did not get a divorce. We worked through it and they found more magic in their marriage afterwards than they had before. Not that you would prescribe that.

Yeah.

But it's super damaging to that when it comes to children. Even more so. And, and I'll. I'll give you a couple things if you want me to, unless you wanted to stay on that a little bit. But we, we had a boy here once. This is how I learned this, usually from messing things up, but it's like he was doing some acting out sexually that we're going, oh, he's got terrible sexual abuse. He's been into porn and blah, blah, blah. We couldn't find anything. He had parents that were in love, Christian people. We, I mean, we dug hard and could not find one thing from it. But dad traveled all over the world and we were like, that's the only secret place that we can see, so we need to figure this out. And I think we kind of arranged to have a conversation about a polygraph. And then he came forward that he frequents prostitutes every trip he takes and has been doing so for 20 years. So this boy grew up in an over sexualized environment without anybody in the home knowing it was going on. Accept the debt.

Yeah.

So Patrick Horn's book, Don't Call It Love. They studied a thousand families in which one or both of the parents were addicted sexually. And usually just one. And so they go to therapy and then they get to the point of disclosure to the spouse, if the spouse is willing. And they disclose to the spouse and they work together while the addict continues to do their own work. And they come to a place of disclosure to the children. So if you had a secret that you wanted to keep from everybody, there is nothing more powerful than the secret of sexual addiction. You would have done anything to keep it from people. 64% of the children already knew it.

Wow.

Wow. The secret that you do anything. And another 20 some percent knew something was going on. They just didn't know what it was. And I would venture to say the 20 some percent fared worse because of the egocentrism of a child's brain. When they're young, they. And the younger, the worser. As Coach Moat would say on this. They're egocentric and they think things happen, good and bad, because of them. So this bad thing's happening. We don't know what it is.

Yeah.

It's got to be about me.

Yeah.

You know, since I don't know what it is. So that's how it kind of permeates an atmosphere in, in a family even without people knowing, you know what it is.

Just that's so good. I mean it's, you know, and to your point there, like that's why a divorce though it is so common is so damaging to children. That whole point that egocentric like. And it's, it's funny to me because we've had some conversations and I can't remember who said it but the idea that like my 34 year old brain is thinking about maybe if I was 6 or 7 and my parents were to get a divorce and you would assume that a six or seven year old, it's like buddy, it's not your fault. But I didn't have a 34 year old brain when I was 6 or 7. I had a 6 and 7 year old brain and that's the only way that it processes which then they walk through the rest of their life with that filter. It just makes so much sense.

Yeah. I had a little girl in my office one time, she was 10 years old, cute as a button. Parents were getting a divorce, parents wanted to send her to me to fix her and they'd coached her. So I asked the question knowing what she was going to say pretty much. I said so you think there's anything you could have done to, to prevent your parents marriage? She goes oh no, I know it's not about me, it's about them. And so I, I don't feel like it's, I've got any responsibility in that. Almost like she memorized. Yeah. So back. This is your coffin. Yeah. And I started talking about other things and about 20 minutes later when we were very intense on another subject, I just blurted this out. I said hey, don't you think there's something you could have done different to stop this thing? And she went oh yes, if I just wasn't so fat. So that's what she felt all along she was coached by that good intentioned person saying it's not you. But when I caught her off guard, she was able to say it and, and then we got to do some work to try to minimize the damage. But it's. You're exactly right. It's that egocentrism.

Yeah.

That as cute as she could be, she thought she needed to have lost weight and that might have saved the marriage.

Yeah.

Therapists are so tricky. Look at catching that girl off guard.

Well to me it's just amazing how intuitive our brains are and in relationships and you know, trauma having so much to do with am I safe or Not. And the brain's quest to just define, am I safe? And when it somehow intuitively knows it's not safe. The way that damages relationships. And I think for people listening, this is probably a huge motivator of like, wow, this, this does hurt people. This is why I need to change. And that can be kind of scary and weighty and shame filled and like, look what I'm doing. But I would also want to bring up the flip side that Adrian started to mention there of like, how many of those couples that he's worked with, and we've talked about the same thing at Pure Desire that go through this process of facing their pain and dealing with the betrayal and walking through the trauma and doing that really hard, deep work and then get to the other side and we'll say that really bizarre thing of if we could change anything, we wouldn't. And you're like, what? Like, you're crazy. Like, you wouldn't change the affairs or the hurt or the pain. Like, if we could do it different, we wouldn't, because we don't know any other way we could have gotten to where we are today in terms of their marriage, their parenting, their kids. And so if you're listening to some of this about the impact of marriage and kids and you're like, wow, I've screwed it all up and what a failure I am and what a horrible person, like, you need to hear the other side that if you will face it and do the work. There are countless couples that are also saying, but if we could change it, we wouldn't. Because look what God has done. Look at the life and the growth. And I think that's where, again, the brain is intuitive, that when we do that work to deal with our stuff, to become safe people, to walk in grace and forgiveness, like, that also impacts people around us. And so it really can be a very healthy motivator in our recovery process.

Well, I hope I can respond to that well, because I got so much running through my mind. That's the best point of the whole night, what you just said. If you can imagine this, and this is a little bit of the evolution of the work that you guys have heard me present before, and I've got it in the book and we got an editor going on it right now. But it's like, imagine being born and being called the original self. Okay? Your original self. And I, I asked people first, do you remember when your child, one of your children, your grandchildren would do something and whatever they were doing, you could look at them and Say they are nothing but sheer delight. They are so delighted in themselves and what they're doing. And they have made everyone in their presence full of that delight and they know it. And I tell about my granddaughter and I dancing to Woolly Bully. And she calls it woody Booty because she can say her L's. And I'm holding her hand and she's spinning and it's over the vent in the floor of the air conditioner and it kind of blows her dress out and she just gets that sense of wonder look on their face and it's just sheer delight. Everybody can say, yes, I remember my child. I remember my grandchild, you know, doing that that's original self. Then I asked, can you remember when you brought that kind of delight to the room? I've asked hundreds. Never had one say they could remember it. So what happens in that? Well, I believe this is where the heart of spiritual warfare is. It's when the toxic shame deception, or the toxic shame messages come in from not being invited to the party or parents saying you're not as smart as your brother or sister or a sexual abuse or a divorce or whatever. And now it is this deception to. To create something called the toxic shame crucible and redefine who you are into something called learned instinct. And so most people get to that and guys like us, we're kind of, you know, hustlers, you know, we're kind of, we're going to fight, we're going to achieve something. And so we try to do something so special that we kind of invalidate those messages, which never works. Now, we can achieve a lot and we can do some good with it, but there's going to be a lot of collateral damage to our children, and we're not going to ever solve that. So when you go to battle with the toxic shame messages and come out of it, and I did that in my 50s, then you become what I call the divine instinct. In other words, this is who God meant you to be. And so original is pure and innocent and perfect and vulnerable and fragile and ignorant to many things. Going through this battle could destroy you. And you stay in your learned instinct. I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable. I'm bad, dirty, evil, stupid or whatever. But if you can fight through it, you become something that is more magical than what you were in the original. So with marriages, it's the same kind of pattern.

Yeah.

Now, what if I could magically do this as some kind of mad scientist God? Two couples, and they go through life and one gets on what they're supposed to do and grows in their marriage. And the other one, one gets into a sexual addiction that works through it and finds its magic. Will this one be as good as the one that didn't have it? No, that wouldn't, because that's fallen God's.

Plan, you know, from day one.

However, will they be better than they were before it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, they would. They may not be as far as this other one, but, you know, comparing yourself to someone else, like Jordan Peterson says, is not the question. You compare yourself to who you were yesterday. Yeah. So for them, they're better than they were. And if people could see trauma like that, they could see getting knocked out of the saddle, getting. Getting, you know, failure. If you want to look at that as a real term, as being something that you can learn and grow from.

Yeah.

Then you could completely cause transparency to happen in churches.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, I'm working with one right now that, you know, she's spiritual bypass and everything. And he's not sure he wants to get back into it. And I'm like, you know, that's where I'm going after we finish this deal. And if you could just say, you know, this could be better than you ever dreamed it out before, if you would work through the battle against evil.

Yeah. It's like you don't know what you don't know until you get there and you look back and you go, man, if I'd have only known. So take it from some guys that are walking that journey and walking with a lot of people to say there's. There is a way of relating to your spouse, of your kids, that if you're stuck in any level of addiction, you don't realize how good it could be. But it takes hard work to get there.

Well, and I would just say, you know, my wife and I are in a season of some challenge with her physical health. And, like, we can look back on moments in our journey, in our marriage, in our parenting, where we've developed resiliency and have been able to make it through difficult times. And I'll tell you, the confidence that we have right now has a whole lot to do with those times where we look back and be like, yeah, we went through hard times, but look, we processed through it. We were surrounded by a trusted community. We pursued each other. We were open and vulnerable, and look at where we're at now. And I think that, like, I think I've almost come to this. This place, and I wouldn't say I'm addicted to it, but I like, I strive after those resiliency type of moments or experiences where I have more confidence in my ability to manage the storms that happen in life. And to me, it's not lost that. It's showing my kids that mom and dad can do hard things and you could do hard things, too. And I think to the question about kids and that topic, I think that that's something that our kids should see. And I think that there's a beauty in there somewhere that God designed it, that our kids are going to be aware of our mistakes whether we share it with them or not, and that we can show and model what it looks like to make it through those difficult times and to trust the Lord and still pursue community and be open.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I would probably say that of the 1800 plus guys we've worked with at Capstone and their families, I had this growing up, you know, I used to sweep the hair out of my daddy's barbershop all the way back to when I was six years old, you know, and he'd give me a nickel for the Coke machine or something. And it's like. And all these men in the barbershop, you know, would meet me, shake my hand, look me in the eye. A lot of them would try to squeeze my hand until they broke and see if I would squeeze back. But it's like they'd say, hey, Adrian, what you want to be when you grow up? You know, and they start asking that kind of question that would make me start thinking about things, you know, as you go, you know, to the future. And so it's like when I asked these boys here about their parents, childhoods and stories. I've got a hundred stories or more from my dad. I've got 30 or so for my mom. And she had a very traumatic childhood. So I didn't get as many of those because most of hers were trauma stories. But it's like, I know those things. These boys here will say, I don't know, you know, and so when the parents get here for Family Week, you know, one of the things we've had them do is a life story. So they tell the story that I was born in this town and I grew up and went to the first grade at this school and all that. Well, that's kind of the logistical story. So when they get here, we now we're looking for the real story, what was going on with you underneath all that, and they share it with their Sons. And for most of them, it's the first time.

Yeah.

You know, and so that thing you're talking about, about knowing the battles and knowing the failures and how you came back from it and being open with it at a developmentally appropriate, you know, level of communication, that's. That's legacy inherited. That's how you raise people to be good men and good women. And we have gotten to the point that I think there's a misnomer about. If I tell them I smoke pot at Woodstock, that'll make them want to go out and do it. And it's actually the opposite. You tell them you're open with them, it lowers the odds that they'll do that. But I'm trying not to go to where the truth probably is on this. So here's me avoiding. Because I think, honestly, the real reason is we're so busy, we don't have the time to do it. And that's a shame.

There's some truth to that, you know, that's a shame. When for sure.

And maybe, Adrian, some of this is parenting and the legacy we want to build with our children, with our family. But when it comes to healing from sexual addiction, what do you see tends to motivate people the most towards sexual recovery?

Well, I mean, there's one. There would be idiosyncrasity with the individual. It could be individual, but from a global standpoint, I think the thing that motivates any of us to do anything hard is when someone else sees us and sees us that believes in us. And so loving somebody's great. And everybody can love somebody and say, I love you, and put a heart on their text and all that kind of stuff. But it's like seeing someone may be more important than loving them in that you believe in them. You know, that there's something better in there, that this is not who you are. And so it first comes down to relationship. Yeah. You know, that somebody with relationship has got to offer an honest assessment of what's going on, because the truth will always set you free. In the absence of it will always imprison you and then show you a better way. And if you've got a story yourself, which most people do, they just don't want to tell it of when you were at that point in some form or fashion, maybe not with that specific thing, but that you. You hit the bottom in some sense, you know, you got knocked down to the bottom, that this is what you did to come out of it, and you can see God's hand. In all of it. And there's so many different things that can be in that story. So it's like power of the success story, identifying that I'm looking at you and tell me how I'm looking at you different now that I know this bad thing about you. Do you see my eyes looking at you differently? I've said that to hundreds of boys because I know my eyes never look at them differently. And you take what you've got in front of you and you try to make it make sense and then if you can, and you can say, you know, I know this other guy and I know this story and I know that kind of deal and inspire them. Because inspiration gets people further than requirement. You know, when you start requiring and all that, it doesn't really go very far. So I think it's, you know, if you give me a scenario, I'd tell you how I'd go after it. But in general, yeah, that's what's going to probably be happening with everything. And so one of the things that we do, and I've seen it in my own private practice, is that this whole idea of getting somebody that loves you unconditionally, especially those with four legs and hair all over their body, called a Labrador retriever or a German shepherd or whatever. Yeah, it's like you'd be surprised how many people that are alone that have a dog. And I'm, I'm talking about boys here because of what we do, but also people outside of it. You know, I've worked with kids that I don't even do therapy with and I got them to get a dog go with, went through their parents and it changed their life. Why? Why would that work? Because it sounds weird, but I'll tell you why it works. We had a 12 step meeting one night here in which a little 16 year old boy, late bloomer, didn't have a hair on his face and he was the one that could pick the topic that night and the night staff are with him and he said, hey guys, when you're at puppy time with your dog and we do that separated, where they're all separated from each other at a specific spot, what things do you talk to your dog about? Well, at first the night staff was like, oh my, that's terrible. They said it was the deepest group they'd ever heard in their lives because they're going there and having the total attention, unrestrained conversation about what's going on with them with these dogs. And what do those dogs do is they look them in the eye, and they give them sugar and they lay on them and all this other. And so when the boy is saying this, he's petting the dog, and the dog's getting an endorphin release. The boy's getting more endorphins because the giver of touch has more endorphin release than the receiver. So it's like, that's what all of us need. We need somebody that can see us and love us and connect to us like that. Sometimes a human is too untrustworthy because of what kids have been through.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But what a powerful statement, just of the power of connection and of being seen. And, you know, it makes me think of Dr. Kurt Thompson, who says that we're all. We're all born looking for someone, looking for us. It never stops that feeling of like, am I seen? Am I known? Am I valued? Even. Even if you know the worst of me, will I still be seen? Will I still be known? And when some of those deeper questions get answered, like, we find, oh, that. That's really what I've been looking for. That's what's under all this other stuff that I've maybe been running to. So such a cool way that you guys illustrate that or help young men learn that through the connection with a dog. That's. That's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

You know, and he also says this. And this is in the Anatomy of the Soul book. I don't know which one that you're talking about, but he says the idea of intimacy is about to know someone fully and. And to kind of like. And always do this. Pull the armor off and let someone know you fully.

Yeah.

So it's that, you know, I love you, dear. I love you, too. But if you knew I were sexually abused, if, you know, I used pornography last week, you know, if you knew this, you wouldn't love me. And so that transparency, part of the things you guys know as the 12 trust bridges, that's what allows us to know and be known by.

Yeah.

And when someone still looks at you and loves you, when they know your story and know what's going on inside, that's where the magic really happens, you know, That's. That's exactly where it happens.

Yeah. Well, you mentioned in another question, we could spend a whole night on just one question. But, you know, one more here. As you've worked with, you know, so many couples, so many young men, and working through these challenges, if you were to give someone some encouragement in terms of describing, like, the essential components of recovery from Sexual addiction. Where do you go with someone to say, here, here's kind of a snapshot of the essentials you need if you're going to recover from sexual addiction. What. What comes to mind for you?

Well, first I would say you got to deconstruct the biomedical model. You got to deconstruct the genetic thing, and here's why. Research shows that if someone buys into I've got this gene and this disease, that their hope for being able to change goes down, and their sense of responsibility to make changes go down, it also is just. It's disgracing their past of suffering. And so if they're just a defect, you know, like, I've got fair complexion. Complexion and freckles. So if I'm, you know, wanting to go out there and get a tan, that's not going to work out too well. And so if getting a tan was the ultimate thing in life, I'd be pretty discouraged because there's no chance in the world that I could get it. So if they've got this thing genetically and there's no chance they don't have a choice, then that's pretty discouraging. So first I think you have to say you did this to survive. This was survival stuff. This was overcoming stuff here. Now, was it smart? No. Was it something that was a sin? Probably so with different, you know, behaviors, especially to this degree, it's like. But the reason you did it is that it was the solution that you found in the middle of that dark cave, and you started doing it to survive. So that's called resiliency. But it's not what you wanted because you know that the more you did it, the more shame you felt and the bigger the hole in your heart was. And so it's like, this is repairable. Matter of fact, I could sit here and tell you 100 stories of people that were in your situation or worse, that are now living life to the full. So what does it take? First, I think it is to know that you can change. And that's why I say deconstruct biomedical model. And two, that the reason you got here had some nobility in it. I know that sounds like I'm trying to. Yeah, make a donkey into a thoroughbred, but I'm not. It's like, I had a kid here once that I said, hey, you know, I want to ask you, have you ever gone whitewater rafting and been thrown out in class? Four or five rapids. And he had. And I said, well, you did drown, because you're standing there Talking to me. What saved you? Are you that good a swimmer? And he goes, no, I had this giant life jacket on. I said, oh, so your life jacket saved you? So what would happen if when you got down to the takeout point on that raft where the water's always smooth, you decided that, boy, this was just a glorious day. I'm going to get out here in this smooth water and just kind of frolic before we go home. And suddenly your life jacket turned to concrete and started to sink you and it's going to drown you. What would you do? He was 17. They said he was a borderline dissociative personality disorder, bipolar and conduct disorder, and one other one. Well, it's crystal meth addict, they said. And he said, well, if that was happening, I'd take my life jacket off. He didn't say stupid, but I heard it in between the lines. And I said, oh, you would? Well, then you got all this drug stuff figured out already, right? He goes, what are you talking about? I said, well, I think you'd be dead if you hadn't used all this drugs, because with all the trauma you've got and the hurt, I think you would have just died of a broken heart or you would have killed yourself because the pain would have been so bad. So you did a great job of surviving that. But now your life jackets turn into stone and it's going to kill you. So you honor the journey and the effort.

That's so cool.

And instead of taking a. A horse that's bucking everybody off and breaking its spirit, you want to harness that energy in a different direction. And you can do that honorably without. What's the word I'm looking for, minimizing the impact of their bad behavior. They need to know, yeah, that was really bad. And yeah, you hurt a lot of people, and this was wrong in the sight of God. But the reason you did it was this. That's the what makes it make sense question you mentioned a while ago. That's, to me, the first thing that, that you want to do with them. And then what's happening is that's happening. Well, if you get in a group and yalls groups have got to be the best in the world on this. You get around other people and they tell their story, and most of them tell it really well. Some of them will, you know, glory day it and some of that stuff. But there's going to be some people in every one of yalls groups, and I'm willing to bet money on this, that will see that person and do that. Really seeing them and believing in them and honoring their struggle and resilience. And when that one person does that changes something in that kid. And so then you. You build off of that, is what I'm trying to say. If you can show them something and you know that I use the hole in the heart and the arrows in the heart of how this was their attempt to survive, then they come out of it with, I had agency in this. I had agency in this. I was captaining my own ship and did something that had some really bad parts that could have cost me my life, may have cost somebody else their life. You know, we've had that several times, but this is why I was doing it. And now I have the agency to turn this ship's direction. And that, to me, is how you. Not in a conversation, but over a period of weeks that you get that done.

Yeah, even that makes sense. Yeah, even that is powerful, though, to make that. That comment. This is not something that happens in one conversation or in 10 conversations. This is something that happens over months and months and years potentially. So to give it that. Yeah. Give it that time and space. And even. Even in that. Adrian, to what you were saying, giving it that time and space is a way of honoring that person's story, is a way of honoring the process of them coming out of it.

I gotta add one more thing. If you guys have one minute to that. When you talk about trauma. So you went into fight or flight and. And did not lead to safety. So you went into freeze, spawn, or flop, depending on the situation. Then what happens in that? Is that the thalamus of your ligament. What word am I looking for here? Of your limbic system gets overwhelmed. And it doesn't do this, but it's like it fragments out and it sends fragments of the. The Of. Of the experience. And that's why you remember it in. In little snapshots, like little pictures going across your mind. It messes up your alarm system. And polyvagal theory, Stephen Porges, you. You remain in a threat state.

Yeah.

So some people being in danger or a threat state is this. And other people, it's this. And others, it's. And trying to please everybody in the room.

Yeah.

And so if I get that person in my office, which is always the person we get at first, and I try to talk about some of these things we've talked about because you said it takes months and months, and you're right. But it's not months and months of that talk.

Yeah.

They first have to get their body, their physiological systems to not be in threat state just so they can hear you. And so things that you do physically, you know, it's like sleep, eat, and exercise are going to be really important in lowering that. But then there's EMDR and brain spotting and neurofeedback. And we're being trained this week in a thing called sound and safety protocol with the Stephen Porges polyvagal theory, people and all that. None of it is saying, tell me about your abuse, your parents divorce, your toxic shame messages. None of it's any of that. It is about getting the body to calm. And so when you think about mindfulness, breathing and yoga and some of those kind of things, we do a lot of this on the ropes course.

Yeah.

You know, where we put them in situations where they get very emotionally activated and we try to kind of get them to be in a similar state to when some of the trauma happened and then have a different outcome.

Yeah.

That's not therapy as far as talking to the brain. That is physiologically calming down their system so they can talk about it. And so that's where I think a lot of therapists don't understand that it's not just your words and your questions. And when I teach, like teaching you guys in those trainings, I'm not doing that work with you. I'm giving you academic information. But I think I screw it up sometimes by implying that these words will change something.

Yeah.

And the only thing that changes anything, one in that situation is your relationship. And the words don't work until their body comes, if that makes sense to you.

Totally. Well, and I think we know that because of the experience in our groups that it's not just information. We have a lot of people coming into our groups that were just bread information, and that didn't work. So it is absolutely pairing it with that experience. Adrian, just because we want to respect your time, we'll just end with this. You've talked a lot about Capstone, and we are big fans of what you do. But just for our listeners, could you. Could you educate them a little bit on what Capstone is and the approach you guys take to helping these kids?

Yeah. And then. Sorry, I didn't mean to go. No, but that's where my experience is for 21 years.

Yeah. No, please.

You know, Capstone, 21 years. We're in our 22nd year. We're a 90 to 96 day program for young men 14 to 26. And we use what I call the core systems model. That's what the book is on where we look at, like I've stated, the coping mechanisms and by the way, there's never just one, you know, there's always at least two or more. And so someone's an alcoholic, they're probably also using porn or sex or something else. And so we look at whatever they're doing as coping mechanisms, just like I stated at the beginning of defining addiction. But then we look at what's going on inside in the core being system and that's where you find attachment, incapacity, trauma, unhealed aces. And then we look at the third context, which is called the, the, the context system of the family and could be local, church, local, you know, town, depending on the kind of community it is. You have to work on all three of those at the same time because if you just work on one, they go back into the same system. It's not going to change. And we do that in a very intense way. I, I only let therapists see two boys at one time because if I wanted to become very rich, I would let him see 8, 10, 12. And we do group almost every day. That way you could, you know, you could get it done, but we wouldn't do the work that we do, wouldn't have the success. If you're going to go deep like we go and we sequence every week to go a little bit deeper. We don't start off with trauma work on week one or two. We start off with connecting and kind of move our way down to sexuality week and then trauma week and then family week and we go deeper every week. With only two clients, our therapists can have a full emotional muscle to be able to connect with those boys and work with their parents. I think the, those things and looking at it in a bigger picture, working with families and doing trauma work with mom and dad, you know, is, is the thing that kind of separates us out with it and it's become so successful. I mean, we're a little bitty.in a, in a little bitty town outside of a little bitty town. And we've had kids from 49 states and nine countries outside the US and it's like we just bought a 360 acre cattle ranch that we're going to build a young women's program. And we're in the process right now of raising the money to do that. And it will use a lot of equine therapy and the same kind of things here, but it'll be more trauma focused because you're going to have a Lot more trauma with girls where we've got about 50% of our boys that have been sexually abused. That'll be 95 to 100 for any given group out there. And then with that there is a two week residential intensive program for women, 12, I'm sorry, 18 and up. The long term 90 day program is 18 to 30. And then we just bought the 32, 000 square foot building down here on our main dragon Searcy that we're starting an outpatient clinic in January. All of it is because this model of those three core systems is what needs to be happening with people. You know, and I beg people that even are the die hard medical model people, biomedical model people that if you would just take these like the old overhead projector transparencies and lay it over what you do, but address them, you know, not that I agree with medicating to the level that a lot of people do it and all that, but it will, it will change your practice. You will help a lot more people. So we're been blessed by God in this thing and we've been very successful with it. Not, not as good as we're going to be because we're going to get better every day.

Yeah.

And now God's opened it up for us to expand like that where we give puppies now to boys when they get here and they take them home, which honestly is one of the best things that we've done. Yeah, we had puppies that die at age 13 and 14 and a boy calls us back that we hadn't talked to in a decade and he wants another puppy out of the same bloodline. And I'm like, well, if your puppy's dead of old age, the parents probably have already gone too. We're not giving horses away at the women's center. We're going to use them for the equine therapy stuff. And so that's, that's kind of what we do. And we're just out for the kingdom of God to make a difference. Because honestly, this has always been about my ministry. It is spiritual warfare at the tip of the spear, in my opinion.

Yeah.

And that's what we're going to continue to do at every level God opens the door for us to do. We believe mountains get moved. Even if it's one teaspoon at a at a time. We're going to get them moved into that ocean.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's amazing. And if, you know, listener, if you don't know much about capstone, you can find a lot of these things on their website. Learn more about the. The Puppy program and how that helps boys. And it's. It's really amazing to, I think, just glean from what they're doing. And you know, Adrian, you've been talking about the book since I did psap, like, three years ago. So I'm so glad it's being edited and, like, get that done because we're ready for it.

We need our copies, man. Like, let's make it happen. Yeah.

Yeah. If you think you're ready for it, ask my wife.

She's really ready. I bet.

I bet.

Yeah.

Thanks for persevering, Adrian. We, and truly, man, like, we have treasured this time. We loved getting to learn from you in the PSAP certification program. And, man, we're just big fans of the work that you're doing currently right now, the work you have done. And honestly, truly, thank you so much for just spending time with us today on the show.

Hi. I love you, you guys personally, and. And tell Ted and Diane I love them too. And to keep up the good work, making a difference.

Absolutely. And wherever you're at on your journey, Pure Desire is here to help create a road map for your healing. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual brokenness or betrayal trauma, go to PureDesire.org and begin the healing journey today. If this podcast is helpful on your journey, please share it with others. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast, drop us a review. It help helps others find the show. And each week we're putting out new content to help you on the road road to healing and freedom. And lastly, never stop being healthy.