This is a transcript of a Pure Desire Ministries discussion about resisting secrecy and dishonesty during recovery. Speakers (including Brent and others) describe recovery as an ongoing process that reduces reward-driven secrecy (they reference neurochemical reinforcement), outline practical steps (guardrails, boundaries, origin-tracing of lies), and suggest exercises (playing out likely responses to a confession) to surface shame and fear. The conversation ties psychological insights to spiritual identity (scriptural grounding) and references the Seven Pillars of Freedom curriculum (a 10-month program) as an intended pathway toward greater openness and honesty.
Questions this video answers
10 months.
It is, it is a process. It's something that we keep working on, we keep doing. I think we've mentioned a lot in this series that this is an ongoing process of change and transformation. And so, Brent, just because we've, you know, started to get honest, maybe we're making progress in our journey. We've even perhaps done a full disclosure. But what is it, what does it look like to continually fight against that desire to go back to wearing a mask, to enter into half truths, to make ourselves look good? How, how, how do we fight against some of those desires?
Like I said, this is self correcting to a degree as we're going through the recovery process and becoming healthier versions of self. I mentioned the tolerance, window shifting and narrowing of where what was just overlooked before now is like, you start becoming convicted. And a lot of this goes into, you know, what Dr. Tim Jennings says in the Conqueror series about the delta phosph in the brain of how our consciousness becomes seared, that delta phosp B is a neurochemical that reinforces the reward circuitry and desensitizes the aversion to the behavior. So as the guys start going through the groups and start establishing guardrails and boundaries, they start, you determine is, why do I do this? Why did I lie about that cheeseburger? Or why did I lie to my boss when it was no big deal, but I lied anyway, and what am I trying to protect and when did that start in my life? If we get to that point of origin of when it started, then we can often deal with the trauma, the woundedness around that that has caused this protective mass to form. And so like you said, this is a process. It's not an overnight thing or just a will to stop. But you know, that that commitment to change and commitment to the process, believing that it's going to lead me to a place where I want to be at the end is key. And that's, you know, every single part of that Seven Pillars of Freedom curriculum is meant to build on that process and take you through these steps so that by the end of that 10 months, then we're in a new place of openness and honesty. We may not be perfect, but we're not worry we started.
Yeah. One of the things that I've noticed because, you know, I'm in year, I'm soon to be into, maybe I already am. I don't know. It's hard to keep track. I wish I had Brent's brain. He, like, knows 12 groups, 84 guys. This many lives Saved, right?
This many.
This many. You probably know how many times you've been in the air, in an airplane and all. It's amazing. I don't have that kind of brain, but in the way that I've thought through it, I've gotten to the point in a year nine of recovery where I still absolutely feel those polls for half truths to come out. And one of the things that just came to mind as we've been talking has been what if we, like, played the whole situation out? Okay, so I got a cheeseburger, and I told someone that I got a salad instead. Like, why? What are we trying to protect? Had a cheeseburger instead of a salad. Play that conversation out. How do you think that would go? And two things kind of come to mind there. One is you catastrophize it in your head that she's like, you big fatty, I can't believe you're sleeping on the couch tonight. Get out of here. Go. I know I can do that. Tend to catastrophize this thing. So you may end up with a reality that's actually much less than that. But at the same time, this is what I'm realizing that myself and carry shame with. And so if I get a cheeseburger, which I know I shouldn't, my fear is tied to the shame I actually feel. And I don't want someone else to call me out on that or to reinforce that reality. And so I think in some ways, if you play that out, that situation, you may end up getting to a point of like, oh, here's what's underneath that desire to be. To lie, to be dishonest, to keep something that seems so simple a secret. And so I think that that would just be a suggestion, maybe try that out if you feel that pull to do a white lie, play it out and see what you can figure out.
Yeah, well. And even when we expose that kind of thinking, it's revealing that I'm really finding my identity, value and worth in the opinions of others, that it is what people think of me that matters most. And. And we know from scripture, we know that how God made us. That's not where our value, worth, or identity comes from. But if we're being driven by a fear of what others think of me, it shows the ways that we've still put the opinion and value of others above maybe God's opinion in our life. And I would want to be careful to say we're not trying to make any promise or guarantee that, hey, just tell the truth and it's not going to go as bad as you thought, because I'm sure there's many people listening that are like, yeah, I was afraid of how it was going to go and I told the truth and I did. And it went even as bad and maybe worse than I thought. Sure that sometimes facing the reality, taking responsibility is incredibly painful to be half true about it or deceptive. And so the more you can stay connected to just the conditions.
