Learning to Thrive Beyond Pornography use was the greatest challenge of our life and marriage. It had rocked my self confidence, tainted all of the most important experiences of my life and become the most impossible challenge I had.

With this podcast or at https://www.GetToThrive.com you'll learn about the struggle, how to overcome pornography use, and where to find additional resources to begin to thrive beyond pornography with your spouse.

At some point I took a step away from all the 12 step meetings and councilors and started to figure out my own brain, to look at my issue as something that I had the answer to and I was going to figure it out. Here I share those lessons and give you the power to start your own journey free. Whether you struggle with unwanted pornography use or are the spouse or partner, whether you feel stuck or just don't know where to start, here I will teach you principles, tools and skills that you can use today to change how you think and, in the end, what you do.

You'll hear interviews with my spouse, with experts on human sexuality and with former and current pornography users on how you can overcome your own struggle with addictive behavior.

The Thrive Beyond Pornography podcast will bring new perspective to your struggle and keep you coming back to improve all aspects of your life. (formerly, The Self Mastery Podcast: Overcome Pornography Forever)

Episode 280

===

Guys, I was in a car accident yesterday. It was pretty brutal. I'll tell you what, man. Uh, yeah, don't, don't slow down. And, uh, you know, while you're driving, people just hit you from behind.

And about two years ago, I took, they took a picture of my bulging disc and it was no longer bulging. And now it's bulging again. So it's a, it's a little bit of a frustration. I'll be honest with you. Anybody that's dealt with that knows how rough it can be when you can't walk or sit or lay down or do anything.

So, Hopefully this doesn't take as long to heal as the last one did.

As I was doing the open coaching call this week, one of my clients asked, you know, as he's going through this divorce and he's dealing with a lot of emotions, he wanted to understand how do I actually feel my feelings?

And this is a pretty Difficult question that a lot of us men don't know how to deal with because the truth is, as men in the United States and really in Western culture in general, we're only allowed to have three feelings. Hungry, angry, and horny. Those are the only three feelings that I think men are allowed to have.

And, um, As a result, we are not very good at dealing with the emotions of our lives in a meaningful and effective way. So today I want to tackle that question and talk about what cuts to the heart of emotional resilience and the personal growth that many of you are looking for in order to thrive beyond pornography and put pornography behind you for good.

And that question is, how do I actually feel my feelings?

This question Might seem a little bit dumb. It might seem just like one of those things that's like, "well, of course I can feel my feelings. I'm okay." I don't think that's as true as most of us tend to believe it is. And as a, as a man myself, one of the things that I struggled with was understanding and navigating emotions that I didn't know or understand.

Because in a lot of ways, what I did is I just like. said "okay well i've got this to deal with and i've got to you know i gotta move on to the next thing i've gotta do whatever needs to be done so i can be successful so i'm gonna push these feelings down until my brain is like "hey let's just let's just suppress these feelings through porn or through arousal and not actually deal with them" and so I want to give you three practical steps that you can use to get good at feeling your feelings so that you don't have to run from them.

You don't have to suppress them. You don't have to fight with them, but that you can get really good at dealing with emotions.

So the first thing I want you to do is get more conversant in your feelings. If we talk about our emotional vocabulary, if you're talking about your emotional vocabulary and you don't have one, it's time to start creating one.

And a lot of us never have been taught emotional words, we don't have a lot of emotional words in the way that we speak. Most of us, me included, if somebody says, how are things? Good, bad, okay, fine. That's pretty much it. But there's actually quite a depth and breadth to emotional ideas and emotional understanding.

And why this matters is, Naming the feeling brings clarity, and it helps you understand what's happening internally, and it shifts the focus from avoiding the discomfort that, that that feeling is bringing, and helps you move toward identifying and working with that feeling directly.

So how do you build an emotional vocabulary?

Tools like an emotions wheel can be incredibly helpful. The more you understand the vocabulary of feelings, the more likely it is that you're going to be able to pinpoint the actual issue that you're dealing with. So rather than saying." I feel bad. You could say, I feel bored, or busy, or stressed, or tired." Or you could take that to another level. You could say, "I feel indifferent. If you're bored, or apathetic." If you're busy, you could say, I feel pressured, or rushed. If you're stressed, you might say, I feel overwhelmed, or out of control. If you're tired, you might say, I feel sleepy, or unfocused.

For instance, if I feel bad, and that means I feel tired, and that means I feel unfocused, well, that's I might not need caffeine to get more focused, or I might need caffeine to get more focused.

I might need a nap to get more focused or not, but whatever it is that I can find as a solution, unfocused is actually the problem, not bad feeling. And the more we can do this, the more effectively we can actually start to resolve the struggles that we're dealing with in an effective and direct way.

This gives us more power and more capacity to step through the feelings and that's another step we're going to talk about here. But when you're feeling overwhelmed, pause and ask, what am I feeling right now? Push past the surface, is this anger or frustration, is it sadness or grief, is it tiredness or is it unfocusedness?

Whatever it is, is it a combination of things? Whatever it is, get more effective and conversant in your feelings so that you can be more empowered by accurately naming your, by accurately naming your emotions and then your capacity to address them increases.

The next thing I want you to do is I want you to learn how to sit with your feelings in a deliberate way. Most of us, we, I mean, people are action oriented. We're like, let's get out of here. Most of us instinctively, we avoid unpleasant emotions. But this particular kind of avoidance, but this avoidance that we engage in often creates more problems because instead of taking time to deliberately sit with our feelings, we run from them until they catch up with us and they kind of take us and beat us down. Unfortunately.

So what does it look like to sit with your emotions? In a deliberate way. One of the things you'll want to do is choose a quiet place free of distractions and close your eyes and focus inward. Get comfortable in that space. Get comfortable being, we call it mindful in the business, but get comfortable being alone with yourself without needing anything to distract or entertain you.

And ask yourself, what am I feeling? Where is it in my body? Do I notice tension? Is there heaviness? Is there unease? What's going on internally, and where is that coming from?

And I want you to do this in very simple ways. You know, if you're going to be successful at this, start small. You know, it might be one minute that you start with.

You might do it for two minutes. But the more you can do it, the more you'll become practiced at it, and the more practiced at it that you are, the more automatic it will be. If you can commit to sitting with your feelings. In small ways, you're going to start becoming more cognizant of them and you're going to start to be more capable of dealing with them.

Another thing that you can use to create success here is to breathe and use breath as an anchor. Breathing in slowly, focusing on the feeling as it resides in your body, not needing to do anything about it, but just being there present with it as you breathe.

Another thing that you want to do is don't judge the emotion.

There's no right or wrong way to feel. It's not like I'm not supposed to feel this way or I am supposed to feel that way. Just remind yourself that emotions are temporary and they come and they go just like waves. And the more you practice this process, the more tolerance you are going to have for the discomfort that you feel when you have emotions that you either don't understand or you don't identify quickly and easily.

And this is going to help you process those emotions instead of suppressing them. It's important to understand this is a lot like lifting weights. Like if you go to the gym and you pick up 50 pounds, that 50 pounds doesn't get heavier or lighter depending on how much you engage with it. The only thing that changes is your capacity to pick up that 50 pounds.

So if you only go once a year and you pick up 50 pounds, well, you know, it might be harder. If you go once a day and you pick up 50 pounds, maybe you're doing bicep curls. Well, 50 pounds is a lot of weight for a bicep curl. If you do that every single day, your capacity to lift that 50 pounds increases, but the 50 pounds doesn't become any lighter.

So all we're doing here is engaging our capacity to be with and engage with our discomfort and our unwanted feelings.

Last thing, use diffusion techniques to move through those feelings. One of the most powerful tools for handling difficult emotions is learning how to separate yourself from them.

This is where diffusion techniques come in. So what is diffusion? It's a way of recognizing that your feelings are not you, and that they are experiences that you're having.

So let me give you three examples of diffusion techniques that you can use when you're coexisting with these feelings that previously you might have run from or tried to suppress.

Label your thoughts and feelings. Instead of saying, I am sad. Say, I notice that I'm feeling sadness. This is a simple shift, but it also creates distance between you and the actual feeling.

You're externalizing it as a matter of, this isn't me, this is part of my experience, and allowing those feelings to move on without needing to do anything about it. Another way that I like to do this, and a lot of people like it, is when your feelings feel overwhelming, try to use a little bit of humor.

Try saying them in a funny voice, or imagine them as characters in a cartoon. This often can take the intensity out of that experience. If you're feeling overwhelmed by the, the sheer volume of temptations that you're feeling to view pornography, you can start saying stuff like, I'm gonna look at porn in a Daffy Duck voice, right? And just use that humor to, if you're any good at Daffy Duck voice. If you're not, you know, I wouldn't recommend it. But, Use that humor, use that distancing and capacity to humorize the content of the conversation in a way that allows you to decrease the intensity of that engagement.

Really, the goal here is that diffusion helps you avoid becoming stuck in your feelings while still honoring them, allowing them to exist, and not needing them. To go away any quicker. This allows you to experience those emotions fully without being consumed by them. Learning to feel your feelings is a skill that takes time and practice, especially in the face of life altering events like divorce, like my client from the open coaching call is going through. By expanding your emotional vocabulary, sitting with your feelings deliberately and using diffusion techniques, you can begin to process emotions in a healthy, constructive way.

Remember, emotions are data. They're not directives. They're simply the check engine light of your body and your life. They can guide you toward understanding what's important and how to fix it without dictating your actions. If you're going through a tough time, I want you to know that I'm here for you.

You don't have to do this alone. Reach out, seek support, give yourself A little bit of grace for the things that, you know, are a pretty big struggle in your life.

you as an individual are always learning and growing and becoming stronger every step of the way. Don't let this hold you back. Let yourself move forward.

Give yourself the grace to grow. Don't let it become something that keeps you from being the person that you expect yourself to be.

All right, my friends. I really appreciate you guys. I love doing these episodes. If this episode resonated with you, share it with somebody who's gonna benefit.

And if you want more help and more tools to help you thrive beyond pornography, go to gettothrive.com/workwithzach and set up a free consult. I'd love to chat with you and your spouse. Until next time,

keep moving forward and have a great week. I'll talk to you next week.