In this conversational episode, host Nick Stumbo interviews Bob and Rich about recognizing early warning signs of relapse and using guardrails to intervene before temptation escalates. Bob outlines concrete red‑flags such as isolation, minimising language, hidden “loopholes” in technology, unstructured downtime, failure to make group check‑ins, and an increased focus on noticing women in public – all of which signal a drift toward self‑sufficiency and away from community. Rich adds a personal anecdote about a church mentor who demanded honest check‑ins, illustrating how minimising responses can mask deeper distress. Nick expands on the cultural pressure on men to appear “fine,” explains the FASTER relapse‑prevention scale (with “forgetting priorities” as the first warning light), and stresses the importance of proactive habits, prayer, family time, and inviting God or trusted others when early signs appear. The discussion weaves together practical guardrails (accountability partners, shared technology boundaries, regular phone‑check‑ins) with spiritual and community‑based interventions, offering listeners a roadmap to spot and halt relapse pathways before they solidify.
Chapters
Well, Bob, for you, what are the early warning signs on your personal relapse scale or those of clients you've worked with? And how can guardrails help you intervene before temptation turns into action? So in other words, how do you self-identify or help others self-identify that that old pattern is kicking into gear?
Yeah, I think— I know we're gonna talk a lot about this in some of the other questions. But I think isolation is, is one of the, the key identifiers for us. That if we are starting to isolate, which means we are not having vulnerable, honest conversations with people, right? We are, we are doing behaviors that are disconnecting. Like, I do not know, 5 hours of video games on a Saturday where you are not interacting with anybody else. Where you are just working, working, working. You come home and you are too tired to do anything. So, you sit on the couch and pull out your phone. Right? These kind of isolating behaviors are, are definitely some early warning signs. Another one is just the minimization to say that, well, it's not that bad. We start using minimizing language or even just thoughts. It's not that bad. Or I don't need to do that. Like, I'm— I shouldn't need to do that, right? Normal people can. watch whatever they want and not be a problem. Start to use that kind of minimizing language is definitely a warning sign because that just means that you are not really looking at the scenario and giving it the proper attention and consideration really that it, that it needs. There is something I talk a lot about with clients. And if at any time the feeling or thought comes in that I am a grown man, right? Like that, that sort of, I don't know, entitlement.
Yeah.
Is, well, I'm a grown man. Of course I can watch TV alone by myself at home. Okay, well, sure, you are a grown man, but if you're also a grown man, then, then ideally you would be taking responsibility for the healthy behaviors. So I think any of that minimizing talk, isolation, those are definitely like blowing through boundaries, you know, having a loophole in your back pocket, right? Maybe you're starting to set up some structure with your technology, but you know, that there is a loophole there, and you are not telling anybody about that loophole. You know that, okay, all these other apps are locked down, but you know that you can actually access some stuff through this other app that you have not talked about with your spouse, or you have not talked about with other people. Just keeping those loopholes in your back pocket, not sharing them, definitely puts you into a vulnerable spot. And And then I think lastly that what you are doing with your time is not proactive, that, that you have got downtime where you are not thinking through what am I doing right now for health, but you are just leaving a lot of really open space that, oh, I am tired and I deserve to be able to relax, right? It is more of that kind of entitlement sort of, sort of thinking. Those are just some of the things that often come up.
Yeah. Yeah, Bob. I one thing you said I thought was really great. I think sometimes it's often unlooked as the minimizing responses or the conversation. I remember early on one of the gals at our church. Her name is Sugar, older gal and part of my recovery since the very beginning. And I remember when my story broke, she basically grabbed me. She's this little tiny thing, and and she said, Rich, when I ask you a question. Don't ever tell me you're fine. She goes, "I want to know how you're doing." So, Bob, you even said, Bob, just in some of your your answers there is like we minimize the response when somebody asks us because there's a fear there. Well, if I go deep, then they're really going to find out what how I'm really doing. So, just in my marriage, I I do catch myself telling my wife, "I'm fine. I'm okay." And she goes. Well, that's not good enough. She wants to— let's have a conversation. It's like you just don't want to go there because it could be painful. It could not even be a recovery issue. It could just be whatever. So minimizing our responses, for me, has been a telltale sign that there's something deeper.
And I think it's something men can struggle with more. And not to say that women can't as well, but some of our societal norms and pressures, I think, have created an ideal for men that says you're supposed to be fine. Be strong, be tough, you know, rub some dirt on it. We talked about that, like get through it. And so to reveal like, boy, I'm really anxious or I'm really angry or I'm really exhausted, it feels like almost an admission of failure when those are just human experiences that all of us have. But we've been taught like, no, don't show that. And then that becomes the very thing that enables us to keep going down our old pathway. You know, at Pure Desire, we use a tool called the FASTER scale. And FASTER is an acronym where the R of FASTER is relapse. But the first step in the FASTER scale, and we will put this in the show notes, is forgetting priorities. It is moving away from trusting God and others into a place where I am becoming self-sufficient, self-reliant. And I learned in my pathway, and still to this day, like, for me, that needs to be the warning lights, that if I am procrastinating, if I am being overconfident, like what you said, Bob, I can handle it, it is no big deal. If I am avoiding quality time with God, family, and others, Those are, in a moment, might seem like really small habits, but for me, they're part of the pattern. They're the pattern of moving away from community and trust and moving into myself and into self-sufficiency, shutting others out. And that moves me down the scale quickly. So I think for me, that is such a change of an early warning sign of seeing like, boy, if I'm getting stuck in some procrastination, I need to take a few deep breaths and say, what's really going on here? What's the fear that I'm avoiding? What's the unpleasant situation that I don't know how to address? And where do I need to invite God or others in to deal with this and not stay stuck in it? Because for me, procrastination leads to avoiding relationships and wasting time online, which would lead to triggering content, and then I'm back into that old pattern. So I can wait until I'm looking at, you know, tempted to look at triggering content online to ask for help, or I can go all the way back to the beginning and say, as soon as I'm starting to procrastinate, A little warning light's going off going, this is your pattern, this is— you're avoiding something. And if I pay attention to what it is and invite God and others in, I'm incredibly successful, versus when I ignore that light, it starts to become a snowball that can get away from me.
Yeah, yeah. 2 other things came to mind. One of them is if you're in a group and you are not making your check-in phone calls to other people in the group, that immediately, uh, should be a warning sign to you. That I— if you're not— and that goes with isolation. But if you're not making phone calls, like, that is danger zone. Like, there's other things going on. And then another thing, and I want to kind of be a little cautious about how I phrase this, but if you notice that you are noticing— so let's just say you're a male and you notice that you're noticing more women, like, in public. Doesn't mean sexualizing, doesn't mean lusting after, right? We're not talking about things that we would consider to be relapse, but just noticing their existence.
Mm-hmm.
A lot of times with clients, that is also a good, a good sign that, that you are not dealing with some stress in your life and that hardwired part of your brain that returns to this behavior to anesthetize, that you are moving down that, down that path. I remember sitting at Starbucks one time 20 years ago, and it was a full Starbucks. And this woman walked in and almost every guy in the Starbucks, you know, their head went up, like they turned and looked. And I'm just kind of observing everybody. And there was one old guy sitting in the corner reading his newspaper. And like, he didn't even budge, right? He just kept reading the newspaper. And I remember looking at that guy thinking, oh my gosh, I want to be like that guy. Like, not even notice that there's a human, another human in the room, much less a beautiful woman that walked in. So I think just that noticing that you're noticing more is a good sign that maybe there's some underlying stress that you're not dealing with, some procrastinating. Uh, and that's gonna lead down that path.
