5: Interview with Sexual Addiction Therapist, Dan Ellenberg (MA, NCC, LPCA)

In this episode, Mandj interviews Sexual Addiction Therapist, Dan Ellenberg MA, NCC, LPCA. Some highlights of the show include:

- Dan discovering porn at 9 years old which led to an addiction 
- Why men don't often speak up about their porn struggles and hide it in relationships 
- Why the porn or sex addiction started years before the relationship even started and isn't because of the woman/partner
-  Why a sex or porn addiction isn't actually about the sex/porn or "attractiveness" of other women 
- How a porn habit can escalate into an addiction
- The chemicals being released in your brain while watching porn 
- Why porn users continue going back to porn even when it makes them feel bad
- Why the problem of pornography is underplayed
- Intimacy disorder resulting from an insecure attachment style 
- How EMDR can help people overcome addictions and trauma
- Why surveillance tools like CovenentEyes don't solve the issue of relapsing

You can follow along for more resources on Instagram and TikTok @WTFDoIDoNowPodcast https://www.instagram.com/wtfdoidonowpodcast/

If you'd like to contact Dan, you can reach him at https://www.dynamiscounseling.com/

Transcript

 All right. So welcome back to another episode. I am so excited today to welcome Dan to the podcast. I Dan, as I wanted to bring you on this podcast because I think both your personal experience with porn and your professional experience with porn and sex addiction is such a powerful story and it will really help so many betrayed partners or women who have found porn in their relationship or people who are dealing with a porn or sex addiction or just anyone who is curious on the topic because it really has become such a taboo topic by society where a lot of people are affected by it, but not many people are actually speaking up to talk about it.

So  I'm so excited to have you on here. Thank you so much for joining and thank you for being open to share your story and yeah, this is going to be fun.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm super pumped to be here. Very excited to get into it with you. 

Awesome. So first of all,  I think it'd be great if you could just set the stage a little bit by walking through and giving more context about what you do for work, how your past relationship or experience with porn has led you here, and how now you're really using your pain to become your life's mission.

Yeah.  So I, I'm a professional counselor in Kentucky. Mental health therapist. And I got into the field for this purpose. Really? That's what led me to be passionate about mental health and psychology is The topic of addiction and more specifically porn addiction, because that is something that I struggled with.

It's been an interesting road to get to the point that I'm at now. And I don't want to bore you with too many of those details. But but, my, my journey started when I was 9 years old. And that's when I first discovered porn. I was just a nine year old kid. And and this was way back before, there was internet on every device.

It was just like my brother knew about it and my mom's computer was unlocked. And so we went in the room and we looked at it  and it was honestly like, Instantly hooked, like it instantly hooked me and  I struggled with it for a very long time. And about the time I was 14, I made a conscious effort to stop.

I really made the decision for myself that I didn't want this in my life anymore. I had always struggled with the guilt of it because it wasn't, it was taboo in my house. It wasn't allowed. And And then at 14, it was like, I definitely want to stop this. And then I realized I really couldn't. And that's when I knew that I had a problem because I was making sincere pointed efforts to get it out of my life. And I had no success,  constantly failing, constantly falling back into it. And so then that produced a lot of guilt and shame. Around that. And I struggled by myself for a couple of years and then finally reached out to somebody and the support I got from this guy who's probably in his twenties just in an older male role model in my life.

And it was life changing and it was so helpful, but  he also, he didn't really know like how to help me. He didn't know how to help me stop. Like I, I needed that support and the empathy that he provided and the encouragement. But he didn't have the tools to give me to get free of it. And so I ended up telling many other people for years after that would reach out to leaders at my church.

I'd reach out to even mental health professionals and nobody really had a good answer. So  even anything I found across the internet, it was not really effective for me personally. That's what set me on this trajectory of I want to find something, an approach, a treatment that is more effective, that is the secret sauce the thing that,  that we haven't discovered yet, because this is a relatively new issue, sex addiction's kind of always been a problem for human beings, but we've never had pornography like we have it today. It's 30 years old basically. So to figure out how on earth do we help guys get free of this thing that is so prominent everywhere on your smartphone, it's on the TV constantly. There's triggers everywhere. It's turned into my life calling to go on that path of discovery and continue to find What ways I can help other guys achieve the same freedom that I've  been on a long road to, to discover, 

Wow, that is so powerful. And thank you so much for sharing your story and something that I find so, I don't know if interesting is the right word, but of all the people where I hear them talking about their  personal experience with porn it's a lot of men who find it at young ages, say it's nine years old, 10 years old, whatever it may be. And there's no one there to really educate them on what it was. And we didn't really have the research that we now have that show. It's can be addicting. And I think something that I would love for you to shed more light on is a bit on how this porn habit how it can start as a habit, but then eventually escalate or progress into an addiction and how some people may think they have it under control, but then when they go to stop, similar to what you said, you're like, wait, I can't stop. And then that's where the struggle really comes into play.

right? Yeah it is very much so a topic of escalation, right? Which is one of the key components of any addiction. And I think what tends to happen is you first discover it and it's just this hit of dopamine and other endorphins that you get. There's a lot of different chemicals that are released in the brain when viewing pornography.

It's really interesting because you have mirror neurons in your brain and your brain literally thinks you're having sex. when you're watching porn. So all of the chemicals you would release  with having sex with a real person get released, except you're not bonding to anybody, right? You're just bonding with the screen.  And then you also get the dopamine and endorphins and things like that. You would get with any pleasurable, activity. So like at first, you can discover it and it can just be this exciting thing. You get epinephrine and norepinephrine, which is what makes it feel exciting and energetic. And then you get the dopamine and it's reinforcing.

It's, I want to do that again. But what tends to happen, especially what I've seen with porn addiction specifically is it stops becoming so much about The positive reinforcement or the reward of it, and it becomes something that we use to cope with life because All of those chemicals that you're getting released when you look at it, they don't just give you something positive, they also take away a lot of negatives. So if you're feeling stressed, lonely, bored, tired, if you're feeling bad about yourself like, when you are in that moment and you're indulging in that, all of a sudden, all of that negativity goes out the window and you feel good. So that's what we call negative reinforcement. That term is misused a lot to think of like punishment, but negative reinforcement is actually like it takes something bad away.

So it makes you want to do it again.  What we tend to see is guys get started on it as just a curiosity thing, right? It's I just discovered this new thing. A brother or a friend or somebody showed me this thing that I had no idea existed, and man, it feels amazing to look at. But it can turn into something more serious whenever you begin to rely on it to have an artificial version of something that's real so instead of Me actually connecting with other human beings and me seeking out, love and esteem and a sense of connection with other people.  I'm just going to run and hide in my room alone with the screen and get this kind of fabricated artificial version of that  almost like a drug.  And then what happens is because of the way the brain is programmed, you get numb to it pretty quick. So the brain always wants homeostasis.  So if, you're living your life right here and all of a sudden you, you find this stimulating thing that's way up here your brain wants to bring you back down to what's normal.

So this becomes your new normal.  And then you have to find either more intense versions of it to feel that same kick out of it, or do it more often. And that's where it can escalate to  more intense versions. A lot of guys I work with, they look at types of porn that they personally find disturbing.  But it's that's the only thing that, Excites me anymore. Like I can't just look at a picture of a naked woman and feel any excitement, right? It's I have to go find some really weird out of the ordinary, strange crap to get excited because the brain just gets bored of what it's used to. And it's always looking for something new and something more.  And so that's where you find, guys going way further and way deeper than they ever expected to. And that's where it can cross the line and to even, Other disturbing behaviors, such as like hookups and prostitutions and voyeurism and all kinds of, things that some guys would never have expected to find themselves in, they've gotten stuck into this  cycle of this is what my brain expects and. So now it almost becomes like I feel like I can't live without it. Even though they might not say that to themselves in their head,  their brain is craving it so badly that they feel really uncomfortable if they don't have it.

Wow, that, my, the wheels are spinning in my head, that was so insightful, I've never had someone be able to fully just explain it as well as you just did, so thank you for that. Something that came to mind that I was writing down when you were writing was how The fact of escalation and how someone may watch something and then they need more disturbing material in order to feel aroused, and they're not necessarily getting turned on by just seeing a naked woman, and something I struggled with a lot after discovering the porn addiction in my relationship was what's wrong with my body?

Like, why is my body not enough? And  I know that's not true. I know it doesn't have to do with like me not being enough now, but I've heard a lot of partners be like why wasn't sex with me just enough? Why do they need this porn? And so could you just highlight there how maybe watching porn more frequently actually makes it's more difficult to get aroused during just one on one sex with the same long term partner.

Yeah, so I'd have two, things to point out there. For one it's an impossible comparison, right? Like you could be the most beautiful, most sexy woman in the world, but the way the brain works is it's not just concerned about what's most beautiful. It's also concerned with variety,  right? So you are competing with  everything that's out there and there are thousands. And thousands of different partners out there for the brain to get attached to. And so then that's what it expects. And then devalues true love and true intimacy and real sex, right? So it's literally, if you think about it inflation. What is inflation? You print a bunch of money, you put it out there in the world and that devalues the dollar, right? That's exactly what porn is. When you have all of these different partners out there that you're imagining in your mind, you're literally devaluing sex in your mind so that it's not  as exciting. It's not as meaningful. It's not as intimate because it's just inflated, right? The other thing that I would say is that really for most Sex addicts.

I would say probably every sex addict. It's not actually about the sex. So  in a real intimate relationship, sex is in a physical expression  of intimacy. It's more than just this act that gives me pleasure, right? That's what hookup culture is about and stuff. But that's not what you do in a loving relationship. But for the porn addict or the sex addict.  They have lost their ability to have any kind of real intimacy and what they are actually seeking  is not intimacy or expressing that intimacy through sex.  They are just seeking that high.  And it wouldn't matter if it was, sex or something else.

It's just that feeling that they're seeking out. It's what the sex or the porn is doing for them that they're really seeking. It's not that they want to betray you. and go look at someone else or go have sex with someone else.  It's really more so about chemical kick that they get or, how they feel about themselves that they're trying to cope with by using sex, something of that nature, right?

In almost every case, I don't see men really concerned with sex itself. So it's not really an issue of the majority of the work I do with men. We don't really talk about sex that much. We don't talk about the porn that much. It's deeper stuff that they're just using this chemical high that they get from acting out with sex. So that's why it doesn't have a whole lot to do with the partner. And it's impossible  to hear that and understand that when you that's hard to know and believe  because it's a direct violation against you, right? If your partner struggled with alcoholism, or they had a drug addiction,  it might be easier for you to find empathy in understanding in that. But because this particular addiction is a direct violation against you,  it's hard not to read into that and see things in there that you fear yourself, right? Like I'm not good enough. 

Yeah. That is so powerful. And when you were making the reference to alcoholism, it just reminded me of, talking to my therapist after I discovered about the betrayal. And I was like, I honestly wish he was like addicted to meth or heroin. And he was just blowing through  money and we were homeless rather than having this be some type of addiction where it feels like he's addicted to other women's bodies because mine isn't enough.

And I've heard that from other betrayed partners too, where we're like, why can't it just be like a drug addiction instead,  obviously, no addiction is good or like better than the other, but just going back to the violation, it feels when it's to your body. Something else that I thought was so powerful.

I remember reading that  the majority, I think 100 percent of the cases you worked with, the porn or sex addiction was already in the relationship and, obviously correct me if I'm wrong.  So could you just shed more light onto that? 

Yeah. I've yet to work with, and I have a hard time believing that such a thing  would exist that, a guy didn't already struggle to some degree before. The relationship began. It's not you got into a relationship and all of a sudden you became dissatisfied. So you started looking other places for satisfaction. 

And I understand why your brain might think that way if you're the betrayed partner, right? But in every case that I have seen  and read about.  It has been, like you said, an early exposure to sexual experiences, and in some cases that's finding porn at an early age, in some cases that's actually being the victim of sexual abuse. 

So there's actually an interesting correlation between, abuse and sexual addiction. So it's very tied to trauma but Yeah,  usually it's before the age of 14 that guys begin using sex as a coping mechanism, right? Like they're hooked on it and they don't see it as a problem all the time when they're 14 or 15, right?

They were doing it constantly and they were using it as a means to cope with negative emotion. Stress in life, feelings of insignificance, anytime, the trauma response would come up with them, they would use that to numb themselves out. I just don't want to feel, so I just want to escape  using sex. Alright it's really never In my experience, it so far has never been about  anything to do  with the partner. There's no even iota of man feeling I'm just not happy with my wife. And so I feel like I deserve to look at other women, right? That's never been the case for me so far. It's been like I recognize that this was wrong. I don't want to look at other women or even in some relationships, it's interesting that they watch porn together. They're open to pornography, right? And then it comes out that there was some maybe infidelity or something that kind of sparked more conversations, right?  And then they find out that, it was a bigger problem than they realized. They were watching porn by themselves a lot. And then it became a huge issue, right? So like the wife was just okay with the idea of pornography.  But then when it became about Oh, you're doing this behind my back in secret. So what does that say about it? It's this fear of Oh, you don't think I'm good enough. And  you feel the need to go get sexual satisfaction somewhere else.

But in, in all of those cases too, it's the same thing. It's like that guy has been doing that for years before they even knew each other.  And that's just not a conversation many couples have. And if they do, then there's not a lot of honesty in there. A lot of the time

Yeah, I don't think  I've ever, Then getting into a relationship and I immediately go so like how often do you watch porn? Like what's your relationship? But it's just something you just don't have as a couple and maybe you talk about oh, yeah they watch it every now and then but you don't know to the extent they do it Like for example, I knew my ex was watching porn, but I didn't know I would have never known he had an addiction I just thought it was  in my mind.

It was like, oh, that's just what guys do But now I have a pretty different stance on it now knowing the research

I think the problem of pornography is way underplayed because I think that most guys struggle with it. And I think there's a lot more guys that struggle with it too.  a serious degree, it's so easy to hide  and it's Not something that you're very willing to ask for help or share that with someone else, right? Like it's pretty easy to tell when somebody is on drugs, right? There's some to hide the fact that you're drunk, but it's really easy to hide a porn addiction. So like you have all of these guys that they might admit they watch porn sometimes  if it comes up, but they're really going to minimize it.  And they're not going to admit it's a problem, even though they themselves know in the back of their mind yeah, I've tried to stop this several times, but I can't write. So they're almost in denial until crap hits the fan and they get caught and  their relationship is in trouble.  And then they realize how much of a problem it is.

Yeah And I thank you for highlighting just how easy it is to hide because now that i'm in these support groups I just keep coming across all these women who have been in relationships for 5 like even 40 years Married with kids and they find out like 30 years into the marriage that their partner has had a Porn addiction and it's escalated and now that's how they found out which that's a big reason why I want society to talk about this more is because like you said, it's not like when someone's drunk or on drugs  you can't tell right away, but it has damaging effects to relationships and brains. And yes, of course you can heal. But something else I would love to talk about is  a big question I get from betrayed partners and something I struggled with a lot was.  Why do men get into these relationships?

Why do they let it go on for so long? Like why before committing to spend a life with someone or dating, like, why didn't they tell them about this issue that they were facing?

 A complex question. I don't know if there's one specific answer, but I think there's a couple common answers to that. I think that guys still want to be in a relationship, even, when they're watching porn. They still have that desire for a serious, committed relationship.

They would prefer to just not Put porn away. The majority of guys like just put porn away and actually just be in a  healthy relationship, right? I think a lot of the times it's an issue of they're not capable of doing that and then when they get into those Relationships, it's  the same fear. We all have right? It's  I fear that if somebody truly sees me and truly knows me, they're going to run away. 

They're going to reject me. So how can I tell them this secret that is my deepest, darkest secret and the thing that I hate most about myself when I like this person, I want them to stay around, telling them might mean that they leave, they reject me, they  walk away.

And so it's  caught between  two different types of pain. So this is a talk I give a lot of my guys, right? It's, there's two types of pain. There's the pain of telling the truth and being authentic  and showing people who you really are and then being rejected. And that's painful. That is. And that's what we fear. We all fear that.  But there's another type of pain, the other option, which is just as or maybe more painful, which is  the pain of living a lie, living inauthentically, living in a shell or putting on a mask and pretending to be someone else,  just so that you continue to be accepted.

And that's maybe more painful because  in that scenario you're not actually loved and accepted. A version of you that you've shown the world is loved and accepted. And so that's a prison you build for yourself and it drives you mad after a while.

That is powerful. Thank you. That,  Oh something else you highlighted that just came to mind. Sorry. I'm not trying to change topics so quickly, but intimacy disorder. Can you explain  why men who watch a lot of porn may fear intimacy and more so what intimacy disorder is? 

Yeah. So, it's obviously it's not like an officially diagnosable term or anything, but it is a term that's grown up in this field and what it means is  the inability to have genuine, authentic relationships.  And  to be intimate, right? So to be intimate is to know and be fully known and what I see in a hundred percent of guys is an insecure attachment style. So there's three different types of insecure attachments. So you have avoidant and then you have anxious,  and then you have a mix of the two, which is disorganized where you're just a blend of both of those back and forth all over the place.  The majority of guys are avoidant. So what happens is it happens early in life and you realize that it's not safe to be your authentic self.  It's not safe to be in a relationship with other people. It's not safe to trust other people. So there's different responses to that. The avoidance says.  I realize it's not safe, so I would rather just keep myself blocked off from the world and put a wall around myself,  so that I can't ever feel pain.  Because if I don't let you in, then you can't hurt me. So they're the ones that tend to numb out more. They're the ones that tend to dissociate, distance themselves from others. They'll get into relationships, but there'll be really emotionally distant. It'll be a really shallow relationship.  And then you have the anxious style, which is the opposite. It's I'm so afraid of you leaving me  that I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that you don't. It's like this super dependence on other people to be around and it's a constant fear of being abandoned. And so I've seen both  have porn addiction, but definitely more people have the avoidant attachment style. And so what we find is that a lot of times these guys, they  You know it's an ongoing question in all fields of science, which comes first, right?

The chicken or the egg. So does pornography cause people to have an intimacy disorder or does the lack of ability to be intimate cause you to be more susceptible to pornography addiction? I don't think that  it's helpful to put things in such black and white, right? I think it can be both.  At the same time or in different cases, but  either way, almost everybody who has a sex addiction or a porn addiction has an intimacy disorder.

So they have an inability  to form real relationships that are deep, meaningful, built on trust. And involve you having the ability to be vulnerable to another human being, so then they use pornography as a means of escape. Instead of feeling real feelings, I'm going to go and numb myself out  instead of  trusting another human being or getting my sense of connection with a real human being.

I'm going to go and get this artificial version of that over here from a screen,  and so you find a lot of these guys they're not  able to identify their own emotions.  They're not able to identify the emotions of other people. So we'd call that like low emotional intelligence, right? Like just not really aware of  emotions  coming or going. And they're actually really afraid of intimacy. It's like a fear of intimacy.  I'm scared to let you see inside of me at all. And it's that same thing I talked about earlier, right? It's that thing of, I'm afraid that if you see me, you're going to see what I fear that I am. And you're going to hate me. You're not going to like me.  going to walk away. You're going to reject me.  And so instead of letting anybody in there where they can hurt you,  you keep a wall around yourself. Or, in some cases with the anxious, you become so anxious you get to the point of being controlling. And you try to control it.  every aspect of the relationship so that you can prevent  somebody else from ever rejecting you or leaving you. And in some cases that involves using pornography because when you can't control your partner, what is the thing you can rely on to always have control of  pornography, right? Like it never says no to you and never rejects you. You get to choose. The person place, activity, like all of it, you feel in control. It gives you a false sense of control. So in every case, we just see people who  have the secure attachment style that is most ideal for healthy relationships.  And they fear real intimacy in relationships. And that's romantic and friendships too.

You'll find even their friendships are really shallow. They're scared to let their friends in and see them and get deep with their friends for the same reasons.

Wow.  That was so helpful. Thank you. It was interesting when you were giving those examples of the different attachment styles and immediately things were just coming to mind of my ex and other people's partners who were addicted and  how it was either  a sense of controlling the relationship or a sense of  the low emotional intelligence and not being aware of the emotions coming in and going out.

But then also the sense of controlling in a sense where a lot of. Partners, when they like look back at their relationship, they notice that when their partner was acting out with different sex partners, it was actually like, Oh,  that was a day or two after we just got in this  fight. So it seemed like the immediate response was, so now I'm going to go act out. Cause that's how I'm going to numb myself away from these emotions, which, yeah, I feel like while you're talking, I'm just connecting all the dots now as well.

Yeah. Yeah. So you, you see all that stuff when you start working through, and that's why I say a lot of the work I do with these guys has nothing to do with the porn or the sex, because it's really about what's underneath  What's going on there? It's like, why is it that you feel the need to use sex, right? Like it's like a there's two aspects to it.  There's like the mental aspect of you know At some point you're buying into some faulty thinking that says this is a solution to my problem, and then there's also the what I call the roots of the problem deep in me  What has led me to be susceptible to  to the addiction,  which for a lot of people is this lack of healthy attachment or it's lack of self esteem, right? Like I run to porn because  it at least makes me feel like I'm the man, like I'm loved and  nobody's ever going to reject me. And I can be with the most beautiful woman in the world. You know what I mean? So what is that root in me that makes pornography is so appealing to me that I feel I need to keep running back to it.

That's fascinating. And then something that came to mind when you're talking about that. So obviously there's the cycle of shame with addiction. And I'm curious if you could describe how,  Oh my gosh, what was I just about to ask?  I'm completely blanking. Oh yeah. Running, so running back to the porn,  how come  the people keep going back to the porn knowing that it makes them feel worse? Is it just that like initial chemical reaction you were talking about earlier and like just chasing that high and then,  but then obviously it crashes

Yes, that's the conundrum of all addictions, right? It's why go back to it when  you realize that it makes you more miserable than it is providing you any benefit, right? So when I first talk with guys, it's always the question of, What's the pros of using it, and a lot of times  they're honest and they'll give some, but sometimes there'll be like nothing, it provides nothing good for my life, but that's not true.

There's a reason why your brain  wants to motivate you  to pursue that thing. So the short answer to The complex question you just asked is that our brains are complicated and there's really  constant dialogue between different parts of our brain. The way that we're conversating now, having a rational conversation, is all happening in the frontal cortex, right?  But, where the addiction actually lives is back in the limbic system, in the midbrain. And, It's stupid. Honestly, it really just knows like it knows emotion and it knows pleasure and pain and that's all it knows.  So with our frontal cortex, we're able to look at that and say, okay, yeah, that feels great in the moment, but it ultimately leads to more consequences  than what I want and I would rather not have it, right?

Like I can think that in my head right now, but then you get into a moment where you're triggered.  And then all of a sudden that part of the brain that remembers the addiction,  it starts flooding your brain with chemicals saying, Hey, we remember this. It feels really good. We want to pursue that.  And the unfortunate thing about addiction  is that part of the brain actually has the ability to cloud the frontal cortex. So that you're not actually making sound rational decisions anymore. So that ability that you normally had To say okay, yes, it would feel good for a moment, but I know that in the long run, I'll be happier if I don't do it. All of that goes out the window and you might still be able to have those thoughts in your head.

You'll be saying to yourself in the moment I don't want to do this. I know I don't want to do this, but it loses its power. It's almost like you've got the controller, but it's been disconnected from the device, right? So the limbic system is now in control and it's only pursuing you  to pursue that pleasure, and it just forgets.  It's like childbirth, too, right? Like, why do women want to go have more babies after the pain of childbirth? It's because of the way our brains are designed that women actually have a type of memory loss associated with childbirth to where they don't remember the pain.  It's designed into us and that makes us want to go have more babies, right?

Because if you remembered every detail of that excruciating experience, you might not be so motivated to go have another child.  But the brain only remembers the rewarding part of it, instead of the painful part. The same thing happens, in addiction. So your brain just discounts  those after effects of remembering the shame you felt afterwards, remembering the fights you got into and the way you made your partner feel when she discovered it, right?

It just minimizes that or completely throws it out the window and doesn't care in the moment. And it only really thinks about, and this is important, it's not even thinking about The last time you watched it or the potential of this time watching it, what it's really remembering and motivating you towards is the very first time you watched it.

Wow.

Addicts always talk about chasing that first high because the first time is always the best time. You'll never have a high like the first time. The same is with porn addiction. Like, when you are a kid and you first stumble upon that and it's just something completely new and exciting, and, you're young, so it's just like this flood of endorphins and that is overload for your brain and your brain remembers that. Very vividly.  And so it's convincing you in that moment that it's going to feel that good  if we pursue this thing, even though, in your frontal cortex Hey, it hasn't felt that good in a long time. It doesn't satisfy me anymore. It doesn't even feel that good anymore. But that limbic systems like, Hey, we remember how rewarding that was.  We need to go find that again.

Wow. Our brains are so tricky.  That's okay. Interesting. That's really helpful.  On a similar note, when it comes to EMDR, I know that's a technique that you use. Is that something that is able to be used for addiction or in the case that someone became addicted from sexual assault or whatever trauma it may be?

Could you just explain a bit more like what EMDR  is and how that works with your brain because I know that's something that a lot of Betrayed partners have been  interested in as well as people who are dealing with the addiction.

Yeah, so I love EMDR. I'm a big fan of it. It stands for Eye Movement Desensitization  and Reprocessing Therapy. It's a different type of therapy, very, Different from just standard talk therapy and the focus of it is  really on targeting deeper parts of the brain and helping you process memories. 

So it was originally developed for trauma specifically, but it's also been found to be useful for other things. And I've found it to be extremely useful for this issue. So I do it with all of my guys  trying to overcome pornography addiction. Sometimes. the source of what we're targeting. Those roots is trauma.  Sometimes it's just trying to figure out what is the root of my addiction. And we focus on that, but it uses eye movements. So that's the eye movement part.  Some people get weirded out by that because it seems like hypnosis, but it's nothing like hypnosis. Like you're conscious the whole time you're there. The eye movements really just allow you to bypass Your frontal cortex where you're thinking too much and get to that deeper state and deeper part of the brain where the processing needs to happen, right? So it's a very  somatic therapy where you're feeling things not just thinking things and you're allowing the brain to do the healing that's necessary. So our brains want to move towards healing just the same as our body naturally heals itself. But we often put our deepest darkest pains and memories. In the basement of our mind where it's wet and damp and nasty and it's not an ideal place to heal.  So what EMDR does is it asks us to bring that back into a place in our mind. where our mind can process that and move it towards a place of healing and store that in a healthy place. So it's now just a memory, not a disturbing memory. So I've altered it slightly to be, more applicable to this issue specifically, but I found it to be extremely successful. It was a big part of me figuring out what I needed in order to get over the hump, so to speak, in my recovery. And I found it to be very helpful for guys because it does help us to identify that route, right? It's moving past like the level one.  What I call it, just the behaviors, we're not just focused on helping you avoid triggers and change your behavior and stay away from pornography, right?

We're getting to the level two. We're getting to once  underneath the addiction that's causing the addiction.  I tell guys all the time, if all we do is take care of the behaviors  and we get you to stop looking at it for a while, but we don't take care of what led you to it in the first place. Won't you be just as susceptible to becoming addicted all over again?  So we have to make sure we take care of what's underneath. And that's what EMDR allows us to do. It allows us to create permanent lasting change where you actually heal from the inside out, instead of just trying to modify your behavior.

Wow, that is really I was gonna say eye opening, but I was like, EMDR eye opening, okay, anyways that was really helpful. Something you mentioned is talking about triggers and wanting to get to the root cause of it. I've heard a lot of betrayed partners when they initially find out about the addiction, their mindset may be like, oh, I can just use like surveillance tools like Covenant Eyes or something to monitor what they're doing and then we're fine. Could you talk about how that's not necessarily the case and like what the triggers? Yeah. You get what I'm, you're nodding your head. You get it.

I'm really happy you asked this question because it is an issue that I run into every time and it's difficult, right? Cause I understand the position that betrayed partners in, and I understand the perspective and why that feels that's the right move. And I do agree with, for a season  after that betrayal hits and it's just, it feels like chaos and confusion, that might be necessary. So a couple things on this. One, that's not gonna be a solution because it's so prevalent. I tried for years to just lock down  My life and not give myself any access to it.  It's not possible I promise like it is Everywhere and at the very least like you could just drive to Walmart and buy a 40 smartphone and there you go so  it's so accessible and it's so prevalent and there are triggers in our environment Everywhere unless you're gonna go live with the Amish It is not a solution, so the solution cannot be outside of you and depending on surveillance and hiding yourself from porn, like that's not the solution to it. What I often see from the portrayed partner, what they're really looking for, and it goes beyond just the desire for filters. they're really looking for is a sense of safety,

I want to feel safe. And so the thinking is, if I constantly know what is going on,  I'm going to feel in control, which is going to make me feel safe. And that has some surface validity to it, but it's highly flawed once you get it into practice. Because you can't build a healthy relationship that way. Healthy relationships are built on trust.  And so it has to get to a place where  you are able to trust again. And that person has to become worthy of trust, right?

It's not just we're not just going to ask you to trust again, like that person has to do the work, right? But it's not a solution for you to just need constant control because that's just really  playing into your own anxieties,  like I'm anxious that He's going to be doing something, and I'm not going to be aware of it, and then I'm going to get hurt again because I'm going to discover it.
 
That's really the fear that's going on there.  And so the problem is  when we have a goal of  recovery and freedom from porn addiction, that's very counter to that goal. Because That tends to  just drag the addicted partner  down, and anytime that there is an issue that arises, if you're the accountability partner, and you're the one that's being in charge of surveilling them, now every time something comes up, It really becomes more of an issue about you, how that made you feel, how that makes you feel insecure, right?  It's not about the addicted partner, right? So I really strongly encourage my guys to not have their partners or spouses be addicted. Their accountability partners. I don't think that you should be keeping big secrets, right? Like we need to have an open line of communication and constantly be honest, but  I don't think it's a healthy dynamic for your partner to be your accountability partner because that produces more anxiety. More stress, not less.

Yeah even the thought of being someone's accountability partner, like as the partner,  I would feel like I would just be so insecure all the time  oh, I already know I would be insecure in the relationship. I was, but adding the level of the accountability partner onto that so this has been so helpful.

If someone was listening to this and they want to reach out  to get help or whatever it may be, how could people best reach you?

Probably just my website,  dynamiscounseling. com It's the easiest way to find me. 

Perfect. I'll include a link in that in the show notes and then Before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to say to anyone listening or any last bits we didn't cover that you'd like to get to? Anything that comes to mind?

Yeah, just, if there is anyone listening that is struggling with this I think the one of the most important things is changing your mindset about what recovery even is.  learning to have some grace for yourself in that, because it's not really so much about having a perfect streak  or, going on this 90 days or six months of being perfect.

It's really more about a process that you go through. And so I have this conversation with all of my guys is our goal of recovery is not X amount of days without. A setback. Our goal in recovery is a changed relationship with porn and sex. And that's ultimately what you have to do. And you can do that even with some setbacks along the way.

So setbacks are not starting over. Those are learning opportunities that you grow and get better and keep moving forward.  And so the only thing that really could ever keep you from getting to a place of freedom would be to give up on yourself instead of adopting this mindset of, I'm still in process. And I'm still  getting towards that end goal of a place where I am no longer a slave to this thing. I'm no longer in a bad relationship with it. I'm no longer using it in an unhealthy way, but I'm free of it and I'm whole  as a person in myself.

That was so beautiful.  Thank you so much. I know I just want to thank you so much for the work you're doing. I know you're already working with people, helping them. And I know you're going to continue helping so many people just by how honest and vulnerable you are about your experience with porn and how knowledgeable you are on this topic.

It's amazing. So yeah, just thank you so much. It's, we need more Dan's in the world.

Hopefully there will be. I plan to train some up, 

 yes, go for it.  Thank you again, Dan. So much. If you're listening to this and you were struggling with porn or sex addiction. And you are looking for help. I'll include Dan's website in the show notes

And always one mentioned, if you're looking for support group, if you're experiencing partner betrayal, trauma, and you found out your partner had a secret porn or sex addiction,, I want you to know there's an amazing support group. 

You can join. I didn't start it. I don't own it. This isn't like a weird marketing scheme or anything. And it has been so helpful. There's professional resources, there's community. There's so many women and it has just been so incremental in my healing journey. And I actually met  one of the founders of it during my meditation teacher training and she is a amazing woman. So if you want to get connected with that, you can reach out to me on Instagram and you don't need to share any restore. You can literally just message me saying support group, and I'll send you the link to join. I'll include the handle in the show notes, but it is WTF Do I Do Now Podcast

And we also have some really exciting interviews coming up. In a few weeks, I'll be interviewing a girl who was working out only fans recruiting agency to come on and talk about her story and why she left and peel back the curtains on what's really going on behind the scenes that only fans and also having another author come up who wrote a book about partner betrayal, trauma, and porn. And we also have another interview coming on, about  a woman who is a breakup coach and helping people who are navigating partner betrayal, trauma. So super exciting stuff there. 

And then we'll also be releasing some episodes focusing on how to love yourself after betrayal and infidelity and just how to love yourself after a breakup and another episode, focus on how do you work with anger? I know I had and still have so much anger after discovering what was going on and. How do you work with this? It's I fully believe it's something that needs to be expressed. 

And if you are still listening to the very end, please go do yourself a big favor and go do something nice for yourself today. Whether that be treating yourself to a massage, buy yourself a coffee, reading, writing, journaling poetry. Uh, nature calling a friend, whatever it is, taking a bath. Just go, go to something country yourself. 

Take, give yourself some self-love. I love you. Bye. I don't know why I just said, I love you.   Okay, bye.