Episode 144: Ask a Coach: Shame vs Guilt

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, podcastroadmap. 

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. 

Tina: Hello everyone, this is Tina from Overcome Pornography For Good. Often we get worksheets from the program and members requesting feedback on them sent into the Ask a Coach. And this is a worksheet in the commitment milestone about finding your compelling reason why you want to quit porn. 

It’s an important worksheet because our why will carry us through difficult times and we need to remind ourselves of what that why is when our brain is telling us that right now the pain that we’re experiencing is not worth it. 

So, here’s today’s Ask a Coach question from a worksheet. And the question is, “I’m not convinced my compelling reason is strong enough.” Here’s the worksheet: question, what is your why? Answer, because I don’t want to hide a part of myself and my life from the people I love. Question, why is this so important to you? Answer, because I feel isolated and alone and I fear I’m getting worse in sinful behavior. 

Question, what will happen if you don’t accomplish this goal? Answer, I fear my marriage will end and I’ll make a decision to spend the rest of my life alone stuck in porn cycles. Okay, that’s not the full worksheet but I’m going to stop right there because that alone gives me enough information, and here’s my answer. 

Your compelling reason why looks like it’s based in a lot of fear. When your why is based in fear or shame it will create the opposite of what you want to create. And when you’re using fear as a driving emotion, your actions will not give you the results that you want. But this looks like something that you’ve thought about for a long time and probably an emotion that you’ve been operating from for a long time. 

Not only do our feelings drive our actions, but we act in order to feel a certain way or we act in order to avoid feeling a certain way. How do you think you’ll feel if your marriage ends and you spend the rest of your life alone, stuck in porn cycles? Let’s just get real clear, let’s just imagine. Go to the worst case scenario, what is that emotion? 

Is it an emotion you are already feeling now? It probably is because our brains tell us that the worst case scenario is going to happen and then it causes us to feel that feeling right now. So have you been experiencing a lot of that emotion in your life? 

What if you were not afraid of your marriage ending and spending the rest of your life alone? What would be your reason for wanting to quit? If you were going to pick an emotion to operate from here, one that was not fear or shame, an emotion that was empowering, what would you choose? Let’s start there and then I’ll help you find your compelling reason why. 

Okay, this was my answer, and often in coaching we ask a lot of questions and you heard me ask a lot of questions to this client because we are trying to help our clients identify thoughts and feelings that are keeping them stuck. We know that our clients have a lot of wisdom inside themselves, and these kinds of questions help them begin to find that wisdom. 

Thanks for being here and we’ll see you next 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.