Episode 149: Ask a Coach: 5 Areas of Self-Care to Focus On

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer. 

Hi everyone, welcome to Overcome Pornography For Good. We are currently on a season break, and regular podcasting will resume January 1st. But we are still bringing you brand-new content every single week by sharing an Ask a Coach question and answer from me or from one of the other coaches in Overcome Pornography For Good. 

Ask a Coach is a feature in the program, in our program Overcome Pornography For Good, where you can come and you can submit questions or coaching and get a personalized response from a coach on our team. This is something that when you join you get lifetime access to and you can submit as many questions as you would like. 

You can submit 10 a day, 20 a day, you could come back down the road in three years and submit a question. You’ll always get answers, you’ll always get help and support via our portal through the Ask a Coach function in the program. So you can submit questions. If you’re struggling you can ask for help. You can submit your learn and move-ons or other worksheets. 

And so what we’re doing right now is we are picking and choosing a few of these to answer anonymously, of course, here on the podcast until we pick back up with regular programming on January 1st. And I think you’re going to love it, it’s going to be so helpful and so good. And you get to hear from all the other coaches. 

So before we hop in I do want to talk about a brand-new free resource that I have for you all that’s perfect to announce during this podcast break. It is called the podcast roadmap. What this is, is it’s a roadmap of all of the key podcast episodes. With around 150 episodes, that can feel really overwhelming if you’re new to the podcast. So what we did is we created a roadmap. 

Here’s 12 of the most important episodes to listen to. You can listen to them in order or not, but we have those listed out for you and linked for you and you can sign up for that and get that in your inbox for free at sarabrewer.com/podcastroadmap. No spaces, no dashes, podcast roadmap. 

I really hope that you guys will go and take advantage of this. Even if you’ve been a longtime listener and you’re using this podcast break to maybe catch up on episodes, go and download the podcast roadmap to re-listen to those most important episodes. 

We also have our free masterclass that’s always available if you want just the quick and easy version of how do I quit porn, that’s sarabrewer.com/masterclass. It’s just an hour long, it’ll walk you through the process. It keeps it short and simple. 

And then, of course, we always have our program open. So you can come and join and work with us. You can start getting answers to your Ask a Coach questions, you can come and get coaching. Remember, it’s a lifetime access, so we’ve got the modules and all of the work for you to do in the program, the milestones to complete. 

And then you have lifetime access to coaching calls. We have multiple coaching calls every single week. We have specialized marriage calls, relationship calls, support calls. We have regular coaching calls, which are the ones that I do. We have calls on each individual milestone. Anyways, there’s so much in there. I won’t go into all of those details here, but you can see all the details of the program, sarabrewer.com/workwithme. 

All right, you guys, enjoy these Ask a Coach Q&As. 

Jessica: Hi, everyone, I am Jessica Farmer. I am a coach with Overcome Pornography For Good and I am here this week with our Ask a Coach question. So this one is a great one that we see a lot in the program, so I’m bringing it here. 

He says, “Do you have any tips on not getting fed up or burnt out from all the urge processing? This morning I woke up and I have them, but I feel so tired it’s like I know I should process them, but because it’s a process, in air quotes, meaning work involved, it just seems like I’m too tired to try. And so I’m automatically falling into resistance instead of trying to allow the urge.” 

First of all, thank you to the person who wrote this in because so many of us have dealt with this before. So there are a couple of different sides of this, and if I was coaching him on one of our coaching calls we would kind of explore a couple of different ways. 

One of the things is first of all we want to ask, okay, why is this making me feel tired? Why is processing the urge resulting in me feeling tired? And so I would probably ask them questions like are there other areas where you’re feeling a little bit too tired or overwhelmed to address? 

This is where we get into kind of some self-care talks because a lot of times, this feeling of overwhelm or feeling like we’re too tired to process the urges, it’s our body trying to tell us that it’s not being taken care of in the way that it needs to. So we want to look at all the different areas of self-care, and there’s really – 

Well, there’s lots of areas of self-care, but for our purposes today we’re going to talk about five areas of self-care that we want to make sure that we’re hitting each of these areas on a regular basis. We don’t have to hit every one every day, but you want to be hitting all of them at least once a week. 

So here’s the five areas of self-care that we like to focus on. First of all is physical. And this can be, you know, this is pretty self-explanatory. It can be exercise, it can be eating healthy foods, getting enough sleep. It can also be taking care of our physical environment. This could be like making sure that you’re paying your bills on time. Making sure that you’re doing the dishes or living in a clean environment. So that’s number one, physical. 

Second is emotional. And in the program we do a lot of emotional work. So for this emotional self-care this is taking some time to check in with what emotions you’re having. Like being aware of what’s going on for yourself emotionally and taking care. 

So that can be like journaling. That could be meditating on a regular basis. That could be doing something that just feels good, that feels just nurturing to your soul, right, that just feels good. That’s emotional work. It could be talking to somebody that is meaningful in your life. Somebody that you love, engaging in conversation with them, that’s emotional work. 

So we’ve got physical, emotional, and the third is social. And this can be – Sometimes there’s a little bit of overlap, right? Like this can be talking with somebody that you love. This can be spending time with friends, going to a movie and experiencing something with other people. Interacting in meaningful ways with people around you. 

So we’ve got physical, emotional, social, next is intellectual. Our brains are designed to have regular intellectual stimulation. And I also like to include in this category play because we’re playful beings. Just because as we grow up we tend to kind of neglect or feel like we don’t need this playful part anymore because when we’re children, we use play to learn, right? 

It comes naturally to children, but as we grow we tend to kind of let go of this. But our need for play and fun and adventure, it doesn’t go away. It just kind of changes, right? The things that we find fun and playful are different than they were when we were kids, of course. So find those areas where you’re being intellectually stimulated. Areas that just feel playful to you. 

That might be being creative. That might be painting or pottery work, or helping to fix up your house, if that’s something you enjoy. Wood work, it can be anything. It can be playing with your kids on the trampoline, whatever feels playful to you. 

And I want to encourage that none of these areas are meant to be something that we think we should be doing, right? It’s all very internal and it’s different for everybody. It needs to be something that feels nurturing to you. Not something that like, oh, I feel like I’m supposed to go play with my kids, so that’s going to be my play for the day. We want something that actually feels playful and fun for you. 

So, okay, recap. We’ve got physical, emotional, social, intellectual and play and the last is spiritual. And this is going to be different for everybody. This doesn’t necessarily mean a religious practice, although that definitely can be a spiritual practice, for sure. But it might be spending time with nature. It might be connecting with God through prayer. It might be going to church and serving people. 

However it feels for you to connect with a higher power, to connect with something bigger than yourself. Even if you don’t believe in God or religion, it can be like connecting with the greater community of humanity. So just connecting with something bigger than yourself and really searching inward into your spiritual nature. 

So when all of those areas are being covered, your nervous system tends to be in a more equalized state, right? It’s going to be calm and feel rested and feel taken care of so that when it comes to processing urges, you’re not going to feel tired, right? It’s not going to feel overwhelming, it’s not going to feel like it’s too much. So taking that time to really sharpen the saw, so to speak, that’s going to help make processing urges so much easier. 

And like I was saying, this isn’t meant to add to the overwhelm, it’s meant to help the overwhelm feel better. So you don’t need to be hitting all of those areas every day. I usually recommend trying to hit at least three of them a day, and that can change around. Like it might be, okay, today I went for a walk and I talked to my sister and I went and played with my kids, these are my three things. 

So don’t overthink it, you want to just make sure whatever you do, you’re doing it with the intent of nurturing. And when you can do that, it’s going to help make processing the urges easier because you’re already going into it feeling taken care of and rested. 

All right, thank you for being here and have a great week. 

I want to invite you to come and listen to my free class, How To Overcome Pornography For Good Without Using Willpower. We talk about how to stop giving in to urges without pure willpower or relying on phone filters so that you can actually stop wanting pornography. 

We talk about how to stop giving up after a few weeks or months. And spoiler alert, the answer isn’t have more willpower. And then lastly, we talk about how to make a life without porn easily sustainable and permanent. 

If you’re trying to quit porn, this class is a game changer. So you can go and sign up at Sarabrewer.com/masterclass, and it is totally free.