Hey everyone.
Welcome back to the podcast today is the first episode, the first full length episode of the couples healing podcast. And I’m so happy you’re here, because I have something very important that I want to talk to all of you about. And if you haven’t yet, I would encourage you to go back and listen to the launch episodes previous to this one, because I had some amazing guests on that are going to be able to give you some direction, and a point of focus for different aspects of the healing process. And so it was a pleasure to be able to have them on and hear from them and learn from their expertise. And now for today’s episode, I think so often people think that addiction is something that they’re going to have to battle for the rest of their lives. And their reality is that people can 100% heal from the addiction, the trauma that it causes, the spouse can 100% heal. And this can be a thing of the past that doesn’t have to continue to interrupt their lives forever. If they focus on the key things that will get them that outcome. And this In this episode, I want to make sure that you guys are clear about what those things are. So you can focus your time and attention on that, to finally get freedom from the pain that this has caused. So you can move forward and leave this behind you. So I’m very excited to jump in with you today. So many couples are looking for a path forward after there has been damage done by a pornography addiction. After working with hundreds of couples, as a therapist, I want you to know that there is hope for you hope for your relationship to become stronger, to rebuild the trust and the connection and to rid the addiction from your lives permanently. And in this podcast, I’ll be sharing with you the tools and the strategies that you need to heal both individually and in your relationship. My name is Sam Tielemans, and welcome to the couples healing podcast. I’m so happy that you guys are joining me today because again, I want to have a discussion about something that I feel like is so important when it comes to healing and giving people hope. One of the most common questions that I get asked by women in particular is can my husband’s addiction actually heal? Or is this something he’s going to have to deal with for the rest of his life. So I remember working with a client a few months ago, we finished up working together I work one on one with couples and individuals in my coaching program. And he reached out to me because he was at his wit’s end. He literally had tried everything else that he could possibly think of to try to overcome the addiction. But he did not have any success. He had been struggling with his addiction for over 20 years. And I think this is a common theme among the people that I work with is that they’ve been struggling for a long, long time. They’ve tried what they could they tried the things that they could think of or the things that they had been told to do. But they’re still struggling with the addiction. And he was in the same place. And so he reached out to me because he wanted to become free. And he said to me after we had finished the process together that he was going to work with me. And if it didn’t work, that he was going to consign himself and abandon himself to the idea that this was going to be his problem his lot in life, that he struggled us forever, and he was just gonna have to deal with it. And unfortunately, I feel like so many men have the same kind of
idea or belief that this is a problem that they’re going to have to be dealing with for the rest of their life, because they’ve failed so many times in the past. They think that if it was possible for them to overcome the problem, they would have been able to do it by now. And I think another reason why people sometimes maybe wonder if this is a problem that’s going to happen for the rest of their lives is because there’s an old school way of looking at addiction that says once an addict, always an addict, that you have a character defect or a disease if you have addiction, and you’re powerless to overcome this. This is based on an old school way of looking at things. But now we have so much more technology and understanding about the brain and the fact that we can absolutely heal and new neural pathways can be formed, new habits can be created, we can become different people. And it just takes solving the problem at the core, which is a part of what we’re going to talk about today in this episode. And so the client that I was working with, he had been struggling for so long, and he tried everything he could think of he tried the 12 step route. And it didn’t work for him. He didn’t like that approach. He didn’t want to believe that he was powerless. But he started to maybe think that that that was the case because he wasn’t able to overcome it. He tried to get accountability partners, he tried to put filtering software on his phone. He tried willpower and trying to distract himself when temptations arose. None of those things were sustainable. Sometimes he’d have some success for a week, two weeks, three weeks, then eventually he’d fall right back into the same old patterns. He would beat himself up. And then he’d recommit to himself and to his wife that he would do better. But then the same process would happen he tried to resist temptation he tried to use as well power. He knew that he could call a friend but in the moment he was getting tempted. That’s the last thing that he ever ended up doing was it was just it was so difficult for him in those moments. So he knew the right things mentally to do but the process of actually doing them He’s struggled with it. And so as we work together, one of the most important things that I think people need to understand is what we’ve been talking about that addictions absolutely can heal. Because once you resolve it at the core, the problem goes away. And so often, many times people wonder, well, what’s at the core of the addiction? Why do I keep turning to this? Or the spouse might wonder? Is it just because he’s not happy with me? Is he seeking somebody else? Why would he be looking at other women, if I was enough for him, and that’s such a painful thing to consider for so many spouses, where they think if my husband is going elsewhere, it must be me. There’s nothing further from the truth
than that. And I want to explain this to you. It’s so important that everybody understands that addiction is not, because they’re not happy with what’s happening at home, I’ll work with so many men where they say, my wife is amazing, this person that was just referencing who said that he had tried everything that was Those were his exact words. He’s like, my wife is amazing. I don’t know why I’m doing this. If I ever did want to be intimate, she’s open to that. But I cannot seem to stop turning to pictures and images on on my computer. I don’t know what’s wrong. And so it’s important that both the men and the women that all of you who are listening, it’s so key to understand that addiction is all about coping. It’s a negative coping strategy for internal struggles that we’re having. So this is what I want to explain to the client that I was working with. As we did the process together of understanding what was underneath the addiction, because addiction is just a symptom of the problem. It’s a problem in and of itself, and it causes problems. But it’s not the core of the issue. So for the man that I was working with the core of why he was turning to his addiction was because he was grappling with feelings of worthlessness. He constantly felt like he was a failure, and he wasn’t doing a good enough job, whether that’s at work. anytime he got into a fight with his wife, he would tell himself that he was bad. And he was not good enough that he couldn’t get it right. He couldn’t please his wife, she’d never be happy with him. He’d have such negative self talk, which then set him up to want to get away from that pain. And so his story was when he was young, and the average age of exposure to pornography is between ages nine and 11, which is so young, and a kid that age has no idea has no capacity, no ability to process, what he’s seeing on the screen. And so it was for him when he was 910 or 11 years old, he was introduced to pornography. And what he discovered at a very young age is that he could cope with the difficulty of his life. Because his dad was very hard on him borderline abusive. He grew up in a home that he always had to be perfect. And if he wasn’t his dad would punish him. So he grew up with this idea that I had to be perfect. And every time he made mistake, he realized, or rather, it was reinforced to him that he wasn’t, which made him feel less than and unworthy and inadequate. And his dad just reinforced those messages by the way that he interacted with him. And so this client of mine was young, exposed to pornography and quickly realized that looking at those images, helped him to feel better, because it of course, it releases chemicals in the brain like oxytocin and dopamine, these other feel good endorphins, so that when he looked at something on the screen, he then was able to forget about the pain that he was carrying about his him feeling worthless and inadequate. And like he was constantly failing is that this is more of an extreme case, what I’m about to tell you is more of an extreme case, but this does happen for a lot of people. He said that as he grew up, addiction was the way it was a tool by which he was able to personally survive, because he had suicidal thoughts. Because of the pain that he was carrying around this worthlessness. It’s such a heavy, overwhelming thing for somebody to carry, which is being inadequate, not being enough being hard on themselves. It was so overwhelming for him that he wanted to commit suicide, but he didn’t want to want it went against his his beliefs. He was a Christian man. He knew that that’s not something that God wanted. He knew that that’s something not something that he wanted. And it was so painful for him to carry around these feelings of guilt because again, he would look at pornography knowing I shouldn’t be doing this. This isn’t something that goes along with my values. And so his escape to pornography was something that helped him stay alive, because it was the way that he was able to manage and deal with his pain. Now, like I said, That’s more of more of an extreme case and not everybody’s in that place. But most People, they use addictions as a way to cope. And it just looks differently for different people, some people turn to it. Some people turn to alcohol, some people turn to drugs, some people turn to food, other people turn to Facebook, or there’s limit, there’s unlimited numbers of ways that we can just numb out our pain. And for people who struggle with a pornography addiction is usually because that’s one of the earliest things that they were introduced to, that helps them get out of how they feel.
So the work that we did, was helping them understand what is at the core of it for him. And like I mentioned earlier, it was his feelings of worthlessness. And so he didn’t have a safe place where he could process how he felt, he couldn’t turn to his parents and say, Hey, I’m having a hard day today, I need some support, I need some comfort, I need reassurance, I just need to know that you’re proud of me, he didn’t have the ability to do that, because his household was such that he couldn’t, his parents didn’t respond to him on that level. They didn’t talk about emotion, emotion was made fun of. And not only wasn’t made fun of it wasn’t talked about, which just sent him this message. It’s not safe to do that here. So of course, going throughout the day, day to day experiences at school, feeling like he’s letting his dad down, acting out with pornography all left him with just this overwhelming sense of pain that he had to figure out how to cope with somehow. So again, his behavior of choice back then was pornography, which then over time, over many, many months and years, it became an addiction that he was not able to get away from. So it’s important that everybody understands that addiction is a way to cope. It’s not an indication that somebody is that the man isn’t happy. And men and women both struggle with this, just for simplicity sake, I’ll say, Man, so it’s not an indication that the man is unhappy with his wife, it’s not an indication that his sex drive is out of control. A sexual addiction actually has nothing to do with sex. It’s simply a way to cope. And sex is the means by which he’s choosing to cope. I hope that’s very clear. I hope that makes sense. And so what we need to do, then in order to heal from addiction is understand what’s at the core. And then helping him resolve things on that level, and help him develop new ways of coping with his pain. The core of it is pain, helping him have new ways of coping with the pain. And then the brain is able to develop new neural pathways. And you can create new habits, new ways of interacting with other people, new ways of interacting with yourself, instead of being hard on yourself. And instead of feeling guilty all the time, you can change those habits and patterns, by resolving things at the core and getting new things in place. And that’s exactly what we did. And over the course of two months, he transitioned from a place of feeling like I have no hope. I’m going to be struggling with this forever. And he moved into this place of I’m actually free, internally from this problem. I don’t feel the same degree of temptations anymore. I don’t feel this poll anymore. I don’t constantly feel like the addiction is in the back of my mind, just waiting for an opportunity to show up. It doesn’t have to take you 10 years of struggling, it can take very focused energy towards resolving the problem at the core. And you can see a huge change in just a matter of a month, two months, three months, in a very short amount of time, he was able to go from that place of hopelessness, to having a dress the problem at the core, new new coping skills in place. And once you resolve things that the core, the coolest thing happens just as it did for him, the internal struggle that you have goes away, because the mind is used to coping in a certain way. So for him, his the mind the brain has led him to turn to pornography. But after resolving the core of the problem, his pain, building up his self esteem, helping him realize that he doesn’t have to be perfect. And of course, he knew that logically but sinking that in on a deep level. Once he was able to do that the pain that he was carrying, wasn’t there anymore. He didn’t feel like he was inadequate. He didn’t feel like he was worthless. Therefore, there was no need, there was nothing for him to cope from.
He didn’t have to turn to pornography because he wasn’t suffering anymore. So the goal isn’t to just put filters on your phone and to tell you to call a friend when you’re being tempted and to simply distract yourself or use willpower to push through temptations. That’s not the goal. The goal is true healing, which is resolving things on a deeper emotional level. that once you create those changes on that level, you absolutely find freedom and this problem becomes a thing of the past. It’s important for both the men and the women to understand this because I know that many wives are are afraid that is something that they’re always going to be thinking about that it’s difficult to maybe go out in public or go to the beach or go to a place or watch a show or watch a movie because they’re always wondering what’s my husband thinking as we’re at the beach how does my husband feel about the person that’s on the movie screen right now the good news is that not only can he heal but the relationship can rebuild the trust that needs to be in place and he can learn the skills necessary to help create safety for her so that she doesn’t keep wondering those things anymore and when she feels trust and when she feels safe her triggers her fears her and her own personal inadequacies those things can heal as well because they’re not constantly being fueled by his addictive behavior because he’s been able to resolve that problem at the core so the thing that i want to reinforce to you right now is that in order for somebody to heal we need to work from the inside out we need to resolve things from the inside and one of the things that prevents people from doing this is this belief of i don’t believe in myself so often people feel like there’s something wrong with them that they don’t have the ability to do this or they often tell themselves i’m too weak i’m just too lazy i’m not strong enough i don’t have the commitment
i’m not able to do this because i’m just a weak person this is a very deceptive belief and it’s important that the men and the women both know the wives and the husbands
is so important that you understand and know that it is not you the husband is not the one who is broken it’s not you it’s simply your strategy and sometimes when i say this to people it’s it’s sometimes there’s resistance around this idea it’s like well no it is me because i’m the lazy one i’m the one that’s not able to do it i’m the weak one i want to help you understand that it’s not you that’s lazy and weak it’s the fact that you’re trying to use willpower because when i hear people tell me i’m just too weak and lazy to do it i hear them saying i’m using they’re saying it without saying it i’m using the tool of willpower and i’m not able to sustain it that’s essentially what that means when they say i’m weak and i’m lazy so this is me it’s not my strategy it’s me the reality is that if you use willpower you’ll never be able to sustain your progress willpower is an expendable resource there’s a study in the book it’s a fascinating book it’s called switch and i’ll give you the brief version of the study they took two groups of people they took one group of people and they put them in a room with cookies and radishes they took another group of people and put them in a separate room at the same thing cookies and radishes radishes they told group number one guys you can have whatever you want that’s on the plate if you want to have cookies have as many as you want if you want to add it radishes have as many as you want so they went ahead and most people of course had the cookies and the second group was told here are the cookies for this experiment you’re not allowed to eat any of them we want you to eat two radishes each and then we’re going to walk you through a test and so they thought like ah like i don’t want to have to eat radishes who wants to use radishes and so they went along with the experiment they had their radishes and then they brought both groups of people together for a test a mental exercise where they had to solve some problems and these problems were such that they were unsolvable they wanted to just gauge they didn’t want them to actually solve it they just wanted them to gauge the researchers were gauging how long were these people going to stay working on the exercise before they give up and what they found was the people who had been given the radishes gave up far sooner than the people who were not given the prompt to eat the radishes that they could eat the cookies and i thought this was fascinating and what they said the research that they the the explanation behind this was the people who were eating radishes had to use their willpower to not eat the cookies because of course they wanted them the people who did not get the prompt to eat radishes they didn’t have to exercise any willpower so that then when they were presented with a difficult test that was impossible to solve they didn’t experience decision making fatigue they didn’t experience any willpower fatigue so they were able to work on the puzzle longer so the results of the study show that willpower is a muscle and when you try to use willpower to solve a very difficult problem or overcome an addiction you will never be able to sustain it it’s the wrong tool we’re working on the wrong level if you’re simply using willpower this is one of the things that i believe so there’s a there’s a An older way of looking at healing addiction. And there’s a different new way of looking at it. And this is more of the way that I look at things, which is, willpower is not the way to go. We want to resolve things at the core, it’s a fundamental difference in how you look at addiction. For some people, they see it as this is a problem that you have to deal with forever, this is just inside of you, therefore, you have to manage it forever. I again, I couldn’t disagree with that more, that’s not the case, I see it as No, it’s it’s a symptom of deeper problem. It’s a simply, it’s a sense. It’s simply a way to cope with pain. Therefore, let’s resolve the pain, get new healthy things in place for that person, and stop relying on willpower or filters or all of these external things to help you solve an internal problem. And let’s actually solve it from the inside out. And once you do that, you don’t have to rely on willpower anymore. So you don’t have to think of yourself as weak and lazy. Because again, those are just different ways of saying, I’m just trying to grit myself through
it.
And so I want to re emphasize to you now as you’re listening, that you, for the men listening who are struggling with this, you are not your addiction, there is nothing wrong with you. It’s simply the strategy that needs to be adjusted. And the tools that you’ve been trying, if you’ve been trying to overcome your addiction for a long, long time, they just haven’t been working. It’s the tools that don’t work. It’s the strategy. So if you’ve been using this strategy of willpower or trying to show up to groups, and there’s this belief of being powerless, or you’re putting filters on your phone, those strategies just don’t work, and they’re not sustainable. So as we go throughout this journey on the podcast, I’m going to be sharing with you lots of tools, and ways to deal with the deeper underlying issues that are much healthier. So that you actually can sustain progress. Because, again, I’ll get on phone calls with people who reach out to me because they want to work together because they want to resolve this problem. And they’ll say, you know, I’ve been struggling with this for many, many years. And sometimes I’ll go months without falling. And then I’ll follow again. And I think I thought I was doing so good. I had three months without falling. And now I’m back in this problem. And then I go to three days. And I’m just like bingeing. And then I say, Okay, I got to recommit. And then they get back on the path that they want to be on. They go three, four or five months sometimes. And then they fall again, they say I just don’t want to have to deal with this anymore. I want to resolve it, I don’t want to manage it. And so I’m very, very happy to have you guys joining me on this podcast, because I want to give you the tools and the support that you need to truly be able to resolve the problem instead of having to manage it for the rest of your lives. And I hope that this idea gives hope to the wives who are listening to this as well, the wives, the partners or wives married or not, it’s the same process. Again, for simplicity sake, I’ll just usually say husbands and wives, I hope that this gives hope. For the wives who are struggling with this idea of my husband’s been doing this for a long, long time, he has not been able to overcome this, maybe this is something we’ll have to deal with forever. But I can’t deal with this forever, it’s too painful. I want you to know that he truly can heal and you can heal from the damage that this has caused you. And when you get the tools that you need to resolve the pain, and the inadequacies and the insecurities This is created or made worse in you. After you get those tools, those can be healed, those wounds can be healed, you can have a new way of looking at yourself, you can get back the sense of confidence, you can get back a sense of peace, instead of having to be anxious all the time wondering when the next shoe is going to drop, wondering where your husband is or what he’s been looking at, or can you trust what he’s saying, you’re going to be able to start to trust him when you see these changes. When you’re when when he’s able to implement new tools into the relationship to create that safety for you. And you’re going to be able to have a brand new life emotionally and mentally just like he is as you walk down this path. I very much look forward to having you guys with me. And I look forward to sharing with you the next episode. And we’re going to be going deeper into some of these topics as well to help not only give you hope, but actionable things that you can do and implement, to finally start to see growth and progress individually and in your relationships. I look forward to seeing you then. Wait before you go. I want to tell you about the free course that I’m offering my podcast listeners. So make sure you go to couples healing.org to get access to it for free and start the process of healing on a deep level for him and the addiction for her with the trauma it’s created and for the relationship so you can know how to become stronger as you move forward on your journey. Help you see you in there.
