Hey everyone, Sam Tielemans here and welcome back to another episode of the couples healing podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about the six letter most harmful word that prevents people from permanently healing and finding freedom. And I want to make sure that you know what that is, and know how to approach things in a different way other than using this word. So many couples are looking for a path forward after there has been damage done by 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. Okay, welcome back. So today, I want to start off by saying that there are so many different pieces when it comes to addiction. And a lot of times people get overwhelmed and confused as to where should they start? What should they be focusing on? How do they actually overcome this problem? How do they heal the trauma, the relationship intimacy, there are so many different areas to focus on. So I want to condense this just in this opening thought here to two main pieces, two of the core pieces of addiction. Number one, it boils down to two things. Number one is having broken attachment. And that’s kind of like a fancy psychological way. It’s like, you know, therapist jargon, which is essentially a broken sense of connection or a lack of emotional connection with somebody else that’s important. So broken attachment, or in other words, the missing connection. The second one is negative beliefs about ourself. And so what I want to say to this one is where the whole podcast is centered around helping couples to heal, to be able to rebuild that connection, because connection is one of the strongest buffers against addiction. And we’ve talked about that in previous episodes, we’re not going to go into that right now. But the other one that I want to talk about as these negative beliefs that we have about ourselves or our identity. And this is so critical. And before people think like oh identity, why is that important? or What does that even mean? I want to share with you a crucial piece of research that will help illustrate this point. And this was found in the book, the talent code, which is fascinating books about how talent is developed. And there’s one bit of information that is so relevant to each and every one of you who are listening. There’s a story or the research that they reported was they took a group of kids early early on in elementary school, and they put them into the study. And they gave each of them an instrument of their own choice they wanted to track over the course of time. What was the thing that made the difference? People who are going to be successful long term, how much time Are they practicing? What’s the environment, like they had all sorts of different things that they wanted to monitor and track. And so what they found was that three groups emerged from that one group. The first group was people who played just through the end of that year through elementary school, and that was the end of that. There was another group of people who played up until high school. And after high school, they said, Okay, I’m good, I’m not going to keep playing anymore. There was another group of people who played from that point forward. Until the study was even like, completed the study, they were still playing their instrument. And the people that they found were most successful and people who are the best at their instrument, were those who continued on playing. So they thought, Okay, well, what is it that makes these people so successful? What makes them good? And why did they keep playing this instrument? They hypothesize, maybe it was the amount of time that they practiced. Maybe it was their parent involvement, involvement. How much did the parents follow up? How many lessons did they take? What they found is that it actually didn’t have anything to do with those things. The difference that made somebody successful when it came to their their instrument, versus the ones who stopped or weren’t successful with their instrument didn’t learn to play as much wasn’t the time. Interestingly enough, the people who excelled and those who did okay and ended up quitting, they practiced about the same amount of time each week. So it wasn’t the time the number one distinction that they found between those who were successful and continued to play and those who did not, was simply the way that they saw themselves. So the ones who quit early I thought, this is difficult, like, this doesn’t this isn’t for me. Those who played through high school said yes, I enjoy playing music. But those who are successful long term said that they describe themselves as musicians. Now, this is so critical because their identity became I am a musician, and as such, they didn’t even need to practice as long but they they excelled in their ability to to play their instrument and they were sticking with it for the long term it all came down to the simple identity statement of i am a musician okay so you might be wondering why is that relevant to you guys this is absolutely critical because in terms of addiction going back to what i said it’s broken or missing connection and the negative beliefs or our identity so many people use this the addiction as a label so often for people if they’re confused about what’s going on they find themselves stuck in this pattern they go back to the behavior that they don’t want to be engaging and they don’t understand it then eventually somebody says oh maybe this is addiction it gives them almost like a sandbox to play in or in other words a context or a way to organize and make sense out of why they’re doing what they’re doing but the problem is that people then take this idea of addiction then they make it personal they take on this identity and the six letter word that prevents people from truly gaining freedom is the word of
addict and anytime i hear somebody describe themselves as an addict i always cringe because instead of describing yourself as an as an addict and making that your identity leaning on the study that i just referred to if you make your identity that of an addict how successful can that person be ultimately when you create an identity statement such as addict you’re putting a glass ceiling on your progress you’re essentially anchoring yourself to this thing that you don’t want a part of your life anymore i remember listening to a speaker who once said that the strongest force in the human nature is to act consistently with who we think we are or how we see ourselves and so if you have an identity and we all have them and we want to have ones that are empowering versus the ones that are disempowering so for instance if my identity is somebody who is disciplined or somebody who works hard or who gets the job done or who is healthy or who is angry or who is anxious or depressed or whatever my identity statement is i’m going to act congruently with that identity and when i don’t then i feel this dissonance or this tension and something feels wrong and like i violated a value of mine that i have so if somebody finds somebody just kind of sees themselves as an angry person it doesn’t take much to get them angry if somebody sees them as an optimistic person i think of myself i kind of joke with my friend he says he’s a pessimist and i described to him i’m like i’m an ever optimist like whatever happens i’m always like okay well how do i work with this or how do i approach this how can i use this i just think of things excuse me i just think of things in those terms and so whatever life happens whatever happens in life i always just kind of default with like okay how do i deal with this what do i do to navigate this challenge somebody else who like my friend he says he’s a pessimist a lot of things that happened that was just like oh i can’t believe this is happening again because his identity is such and so it is with regard to healing if you put this cap on yourself some people identify with their addiction and make that the focus of all of their attention and their efforts are geared towards avoiding it and so they need to stay on guard all the time i remember working with somebody not too long ago he was so he’s doing one to one coaching with me and two weeks ago he went out of town for a trip and he had not been out of town in a long long time and that had always been a triggering situation for him so about three days so this is he recounts the story to me while we had our session he says about three days prior to my trip i started feeling anxious and he’s like i had no idea what it was i just started feeling off i knew i had this trips coming up when he got to the hotel room he was just thinking like i do not want to make a mistake i don’t want to make a mistake i don’t want to mess up i’ve been doing so well as a result of him thinking in those terms he felt a sense of dread and anxiety and so he had been focusing on the addiction focusing on not slipping instead of focusing on what he wanted to be doing instead so the whole trip was just riddled with this uncomfortable feeling of i just don’t want to make a mistake so as we had this discussion and i wanted to unpack this with him and i said listen you’ve been doing some excellent work you’ve been able to resolve the core of why you’d been struggling with this so you’re you’re a different person so when you show up as a different person to an old scenario that in the past was triggering there’s a new variable now in other words the new variable is the work that you’ve done so it won’t lead to the same outcome anymore and so he that made sense to him and i said what i want you to do next time you go out of town which was that week i said i want you to focus on what you’d like to do instead instead of what you don’t want to do focus on what you do Want your trip to look like? He said, Well, I want to read, I finally get some time when I go on these trips that I can be alone, the kids aren’t crawling all over me, I can focus on reading and doing something productive. I said, awesome. He said, I’m going to be going to where my parents live. So I want to visit them, there’s some things that I want to accomplish, even want to get back to the hotel room. So when he started thinking about what he wanted to do, instead, he got excited about the idea. No longer was a business trip this anxiety riddled experience, because he had a different focus. And so you don’t need to make the addiction, the focus of your lives in order for it to heal. You want to understand what’s causing it, you want to understand what the triggers are,
it’s crucial that you have that clarity. Because if you don’t know the root of the problem, it’s it’s you’re not going to be able to sustain staying away from it. It’s not sustainable. Sherry, it’s just like, it’s just like holding your breath underwater, eventually, you’re going to have to come back up for air, eventually, there’s going to be a trigger, eventually, you’re going to feel this overwhelm. And I don’t want that for any of you. So of course, it’s important to find the clarity as to why you’re struggling with this in the first place. And so as I did this work with the client that I just furred to that’s our step number one is identify triggers, figure out what’s driving this, let’s resolve that. And then we’re shifting our focus. So it goes from what do you It goes from not needing to make the addiction, the focus of everything to let’s handle that let’s resolve the core and then think about what direction you do want to go into? What do you want to be focusing on? What Who do you want to become? Instead of saying, I’m an addict? No. Who do you want to become? What activities do you want to be engaged in? How do you want to find fulfillment and purpose in your life, the people that I work with find that they they feel like they’re being called, or they have been called to be doing something greater in their lives. Yet, the addiction keeps pulling them back in. And they’re not living up to their full potential, they know that they have a purpose. Some of them might not know what that purpose is, but they know it’s not being stuck in this abyss. And so focusing on where do you want to go, helps you to change the energy or the the emotion that’s there, and it gives you fuel to stay on the path. Right, the path is growth, and empowerment and healing and connection and being a better version of you. And in order to achieve that we can’t focus on the addiction, we focus on what’s driving it and resolve these, these pieces that might be out of place. But then we focus on where do we want to go. So often people get these labels from groups. And for some people, group work is very, very helpful. There are some people who find a lot of comfort in going to meetings, like whether it’s 12 step or something else. Most of the people that I work with don’t like that route, they want to go to a different they want to a different approach. And so we focus on, we focus on doing a different thing where you don’t have to go to group. But I think the culture or the tradition is that these labels come from groups, right? You wait you, you introduce yourself, Hi, my name is Sam. I’m an addict. Hi, my name is Sam, I’m an alcoholic. their identity is wrapped up in this thing that they don’t want. And I remember working with somebody, this was a few years ago, we had this conversation It was not working with it was an interview for this particular person. Me and a buddy who were doing some work together with creating some content, and understanding people’s journeys, what was helpful for them along the way. And this one particular person said, I went to group for 18 months. And after about a couple of months, I thought to myself, why do I Why am I here? Like what am I doing? We’re talking about the same thing. We’re focusing on the same issues we’re talking, we’re recounting the same stories. And it almost just becomes this like, like a there’s like a you know, people can come together and just like support and validate each other. He’s like, I want to do this work. I want to resolve this. I don’t want to just get validated every day. I want to get actionable things to focus on. He said, which stuck with me. That group was such a helpful thing for him for camaraderie. But once he found this network of support of people who do care, then he didn’t need to keep going back to group because of the structure that they had. It didn’t serve him. I think having a network of support is so important. building some support group around something that you’re running from, is not in my opinion that the way that people find success in large in large part again, there’s a small portion of people who find success by going to groups. And there’s a researcher actually by the name of Zachary Dodds, he wrote this book, The Truth About What’s the title? It’s like the truth about our debunking 12 step the truth about recovery groups, something along those lines, but Zachary does his name. He said that people that attend 12 step, it’s a 90 to 95% relapse rate. And so again, this group Structure The most important thing is the network. of support. But again, building a network of support around the thing that you’re running away from and trying to get away from, doesn’t make sense to me. So finding a group of like minded people that can support you, and you build this network around where you are heading makes a lot more sense to me. If you’re going towards becoming a good husband, we want to be around people have that like minded thing, instead of like, I just, I don’t want to be a bad husband, I want to I don’t want to yell at my wife anymore. I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to emotionally abused or hurt or, you know, no, we want to focus on where do you want to go. And it’s not just semantics. Again, it’s not just the new it’s not just,
it’s not just words, but truly the what we focus on flourishes. So if you’re focusing on addiction, and addict, and I’m broken, you’re not going to flourish in the way that you could if you focus on growth, and healing, and moving towards the thing that you want to be focusing on. Now we’ve been we’ve been, we’ve been putting this in the context of addiction, the same thing is true with regard to her. She is not her trauma, you’re not you’re not a trauma, you’re not, you are not trauma, right, that if that label you take on as like, you know, I’ve been affected. I am trauma, like I have trauma now. Right? Somebody says, I have depression, you’re associating yourself with your experience when you’re not. Trauma simply is a way to describe the impact of a situation and the emotions that you’re experiencing, and the thoughts that you’re having. You can have a traumatic response, but it does not define who you are. That’s very, very important. If you’ve experienced trauma, that’s different than then identifying with it, and creating an entire narrative around it. I remember being at a workshop once where this one woman, what she had a phobia of weather. This is very, it sounds very strange. She had a phobia of weather, and specifically thunderstorms and lightning and rain. And my mentor at the time.
He
was doing a demonstration about how quickly people can heal from trauma. And he said, Okay, well help me understand that. Where
did this come from? She says, Well, when I was younger, I was struck by lightning. And he’s like, Well, okay, that makes sense to me.
And what happened though, was she’d found a support group of people who had been struck by lightning, which I didn’t know these exist, but she was explaining how she found this group. And they come together, and every year they kind of like, commemorate or not celebrate, that’s not the right word. But they there’s this remembrance every year of the day that they were struck. So they have this whole support group around being struck by lightning. And as a result, again, she carried this energy with her still. So my mentor helped her untangle herself her identity from this event. And then in a very short amount of time, in this demonstration, he was able able to help her release that fear and shift. And this first step was to be able to disassociate yourself from the identity, our identity is, I cannot underscore how important it is for us to have an empowering identity. So instead of saying that you’re this person who is like you have trauma, you can say, I’m somebody who’s strong. I can, I’m somebody who fights. I’m somebody who grows, I can handle difficult things, right? You’re identifying yourself with something that’s so much more empowering. And the language that we’re using inspires us, instead of reminds us of a painful experience that we’ve gone through that we are trying to heal from. So our identity is crucial. And an identity is simply a choice. So we have to just choose wisely. How do we want to see ourselves and it’s simply a matter of making the decision to see ourselves in that way, and choosing to identify ourselves in that way moving forward, whether again, I’m a good man or a good woman, I’m dedicated, I’m strong, and identity is an I am statement. Or an I have statement, right? determined, I’m focused, I’m a son of God, I’m a daughter of God, I’m a courageous, I’m a fighter. These are all identity statements, and they will empower you much, much more than addict or I have depression, or I have trauma. And that’s not discounting. I want to say this in the same breath. I’m not discounting the experience of those things, because those things are real. But the way in which we see it and say it makes a huge difference. If you say I’m experiencing feelings of depression, I’m experiencing a traumatic response. That’s very different than identifying yourself with it. I hope that makes sense. And I cannot tell you how important this one shift is. Because once you remove this glass ceiling and you don’t anchor yourself to the thing that you want to get away from, you truly can find healing. So I want to encourage you guys this week, as you’re reflecting on this, try to think about some of the identity identities that you’ve developed for yourself. And oftentimes, these unconsciously are adopted or absorbed by how other people treat us, or through our experience in the world, how our parents treat us how they what people say about us. A lot of times we develop these identities when we’re very young, and we just take them on. Because we don’t have a rational part of our mind yet to like, consciously, and intellectually evaluate information as kids, we just take things on. So I would encourage you to reflect on some of the identities that you have for yourself, and how do you want to start identifying yourself instead. And as you do that, you’ll find that it’s much easier to act congruently with that new identity, by simply starting with the decision to see yourself in a new way, then you can build on that and make progress. And then reflect on okay, if I’m a strong person, you can ask yourself the question, okay, what would strong? What would a strong person do in this situation? If I’m a determined person, what would that person do? If they were in my shoes right now, that will reveal the steps that you can take, which then reinforces this new identity to the point where it’s integrated inside of you. And it just, it feels true for you, and it just feels like who you are. So I hope that helps, I would encourage you to test that out this week, and see how that fits for you. And continue to make progress as you step into this new direction, seeing yourself differently. So if this is helpful, I would love to get your feedback, you can put a rating and review on iTunes or wherever you’re listening, it is such a huge help to help other people find this, I want to get this information out to as many people as I can to be able to affect you guys in a positive way. And I hope this is like this content is helping you I legitimately have this desire to serve. So if you can leave me a rating review that would go such a long way. And I’d love to hear your feedback. You can shoot me an email with other topics that you might want covered, and ways that I can support you. I’d love to help you in any way that I can. Can I look forward to having you guys on with me next week. Take care.
Wait before you go, I’m offering free access for my podcast listeners to a course I created. So make sure you go to couples healing.org so you can get some tools to start the healing process individually and in your relationship. Or if you want even more support and you’d like to work with me directly. You can contact me with the info that’s on that website as well. I’m excited for you to make progress on your journey.
