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 63

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Even if you don't want to talk about the sound on the, on the podcast, please just send me an email. Let's chat. All right. Today we're going to talk about how your brain is probably lying to you. Brains are liars. Uh, this is a, this is kind of an interesting topic because I don't think any of us think, Oh, my brain lies to me, but I just want to dig in here and give you something that's going to teach you what your brain is doing when it takes you from where you want to be to a place where you don't want to be, uh, when, when we feel uncomfortable or sad or frustrated or lonely or whatever is happening.

One of the things that happens when we start down the path of buffering is that our brains will tell us things that aren't true.

It'll try to, you know, Give you subtle phrases that it knows that have worked in the past and that have, you know, taken you down the path of your buffer before it does this. Because a little lie is okay most of the time, and especially if it's said to someone to make them feel okay. Right. You know what I mean?

If you've ever told your spouse that you loved. Love her in that dress when you really hated it. Or, you know, the little white lies that we tell that are actually pretty normal. You know, those simple stories that we use to grease the wheels of social interaction. You wouldn't tell your boss that you absolutely can't stand being in meetings with him because he never shuts up.

So when he asks things like, Do you think we got that message across? Rather than saying, yeah, you repeated yourself about eight times, I'm sure we got the message across, you say things like, oh, I'm certain the team knows what we're trying to convey, right? So these are the kinds of things that we, that we bring to the forefront when we're talking to people and we don't want to tell them The absolute crushing truth.

We just want to tell them things that are going to help move things forward. You know, we do this with our kids. We indulge them with stories. While not strictly true, they, they help us and they help them navigate the world around us. You know, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus are examples of this, but also when we are encouraging our children to accomplish something they've never done before, we tell them things like, I know you can do it when we don't really know that they can do it, but you simply think that it will help them try doing it.

What we say to others, while not trying to be deceitful, can often be construed as not quite truthful when put under strict scrutiny. Our brains use this same capacity to keep our external interactions running smoothly on our internal dialogue as well. The phrase my brain used to tell me was, this is the last time.

I remember distinctly being upstairs in our Chugiak, Alaska home as a kid, tucked away in a cubby under my parents waterbed. It was always warm in there, and since we lived in Alaska, it was a great place to hang out and read a book and be alone. But, by that point in my life, I had been taught that masturbation was to be avoided.

So there I was, warm and cozy and wrestling with the hormones of a prepubescent boy. You know, I told myself, this will be the last time and then I'll never do it again. It made my decision to masturbate easier. It was also a final farewell, right? I was like, hey, I'm not going to do this anymore. And it made it so that immediately afterward, I could still feel good about myself.

I felt like I was going to follow through with that promise that I had just made. We do this with food too. You know, I'll start my diet on Monday. You know, you've already not followed your diet today, it's okay if you don't follow it the rest of the day. These are some of the things that, you know, our brain says to us to help us feel better when we are not doing the things that we said we would.

These are the little white lies that grease the wheels of feeling uncomfortable. These simple thoughts, that when you examine them closely, often turn out to be untrue or only partially true. Our brain lies because it wants us to feel good. It wants us to know we're gonna be okay, that we're safe, that we will survive.

When we choose to believe these stories our brains tell us, that's when we get this immediate relief from our discomfort that we, you know, that we're feeling by saying yes to a buffer that we may not really want in our lives. For instance, it's the holidays, right? And right now, downstairs in my, in my kitchen, I have a bag of white chocolate covered mint pret, uh, mint pretzels, right?

Like, they're delicious. I picked them up at Costco. I also have been working on not eating mindlessly and eating healthily. When I see those pretzels, my brain, it will tell me, it tells me right now, it tells me every night, right? Just before I sit down and hang out and watch TV with Darcy, it'll say things like, oh, it's not that bad.

It's not that bad. You know, and then it'll say something like, Oh, you're already here. You might as well keep going, right? It's, it keeps me, it tries to keep me happy. My brain isn't outright trying to lie to me. It's just trying to make me feel better when it knows there is a discomfort on my horizon. So, how do we deal with our brain lying to us when we really want to stick to our goals and become the masters of self?

If you have questions about this topic or anything that we discuss on the podcast, register for our free webinar Sunday night, December 6th at 8 Mountain. Uh, there will be a link in the show notes or you can go to zachspafford. com for it. The first thing that you're going to want to master so that you can work with your brain and not fight against it is going to be recognizing the urge.

I know this sounds a little bit like simple and over simplistic, but urges, these are these thoughts and feelings that intensely drive us to actions that feel better than our current state. To get to a place where you can manage these urges, you have to first stop. Start by recognizing them. You'll have to pay attention to when you are uncomfortable and be willing to question those thoughts and feelings and delay action and delaying action here or withholding action is one of the hardest things we do.

People are set up to act. We have this well known principle called action bias that I've talked about in previous podcasts, where we would rather act than wait. And once you notice these thoughts and urges, the very next thing that you're going to need to do is question them. You need to have a conversation with yourself in your brain, you know, why am I feeling this way?

Can I just feel this instead of doing that? What is bringing this up for me? The process of having a discussion with your brain is key to getting to the root of the issue. For me, when I was eating those delicious chocolate covered pretzels, I was bored. I was totally tired. You know, and it would be more in line with the purposeful and intentional person that I want to be, To put the bag down and go to bed.

Having the conversation without judgment helps us determine what we really want and gives us a better understanding of how this request for action from our brain will play out in our long-term lives. The last thing we need to do with those thoughts and those urges is to feel them to their fullest.

This is a little difficult at times because sometimes we feel like our feelings go on and on. But if we just stick to the one feeling at a time, it only takes about 90 seconds to go from beginning to end. That's because our feelings are chemicals in our bodies that, you know, they basically they run a course.

Just like when you feel happy, it doesn't last forever. When you feel hungry or lonely, it also won't last forever. As long as we don't keep repeating the story in new ways, right? You can't keep talking about this story about how hungry you are and expect that feeling and the urge to dissipate. And then you gotta take some time and you gotta question those thoughts and say, well, what is this thought?

Why is this thought coming up for me? What is bringing this thought up? Why is this feeling and this thought here? And what? Is it providing to me? Why do I feel this way? Right? Spend that time, have that conversation and then finally feel those feelings all the way to their fullest. So if you're hungry or you're lonely, just be like, okay, why am I hungry?

Or why am I lonely? Well, I'm lonely because I don't really have anybody here to hang out with and I'm kind of bored. So do I want to feed my boredom with chocolate covered pretzels or do I want to go and just get in bed and go to sleep and then sit there with boredom and be bored or be lonely or whatever it is that you're feeling.

Don't try to run away from it. Don't try to push it down. Don't try to escape it with, Anything else, because that's big with, you know, with some other distraction, we, a lot of people try to do this where they're like, Oh, I'll just go find something that's quote unquote more healthy. Well, that's just buffering, but in a different way, what you're looking at here is you've got to deal with this head on and then it's going to, it's going to go away eventually.

And you won't have to fight with it anymore. So the next time your brain tries to pull one over on you and talk you into buffering with food or pornography or anything else that you've chosen to quit, but don't quite seem to have kicked, take a moment and ask, is my brain telling me the truth about what it's asking me to do?

All right. I hope that's helpful. I hope that helps you deal with your feelings and deal with those urges as they come along. In the meantime, Hey, it's the week of Thanksgiving. So to that end, I've got an awesome Black Friday opportunity for you. If you would like to be in group coaching, I'm going to, for one day, I'm going to put on the website group coaching at 50 percent off.

com. You can buy a spot in the group coaching for half off, uh, starting for January 6th. Awesome. You guys have a great week. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Self Mastery Podcast. Imagine you sitting next to your loved one and no longer bogged down by the greatest trial of your life.

Each month I offer a free webinar that you can attend where you can get your questions answered about how you can break free from pornography use. Take a moment now and go to the website zachspafford. com slash free call and you can sign up for free. You don't want to miss out on this amazing opportunity to ask questions, learn a new skill.

And even get coached live if you like. We'll see you then.