Episode 146: Ask a Coach: Thinking New Thoughts You Don’t Believe Yet

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: Hey everyone, this is Tina from Overcome Pornography For Good. Today’s Ask a Coach question is actually request for feedback on a model. And here’s the model. The circumstance: I’m sometimes drawn to look at the sexual parts of female bodies in real life with actual people I know or see walking around. It feels quite powerful and instinctual. My thought: I’m powerful and loving and I have nothing to fear. Feeling: confidence. Action: live according to my values of loving God and loving people. Result: free from lust. 

Now, this was an intentional model. And the person said, “As I put this model together, I’m experiencing myself questioning it, not believing it will work. I’m not sure if this is a result of negative thinking and feeling defeated or just knowing how many times I’ve failed in the past. I know a life without porn is possible because I used to live it and other people do now, even after watching it. 

I wanted a silver bullet that will make my struggle with porn go away. The reality seems to be though, it’s going to take a lot of work on my part. And the reality is, or at least seems to be, it’s going to be a battle and one I do not feel like I’m winning. I feel trapped in the cycle more than I feel free. Maybe I need to stop thinking all this and try thinking things I don’t believe are true until they come true.

I’ve heard it said many years ago if we act as if something is true, even if we don’t believe it at first, eventually it will become true. I think it just feels like I’m lying to myself or deceiving myself, staying trapped in porn by saying to my myself, or thinking to myself, that I’m getting better. But I keep slipping up and going back to porn. 

I wish the path of freedom was quick. I feel my struggle with porn has the potential to ruin my marriage and my job. I do feel scared and I do wish I could just stop. All of that said, I want to believe I’ve made progress. It’s just taking me a long time to progress. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me in this way.” 

Here’s my answer. You are a powerful creator in your own life. You can see that by all the models that you’ve created. If you’ve created the unintentional ones, you can create the intentional ones. Where you put your focus matters. What thoughts you allow to stay in your brain matters because whatever you focus on, you will see more of if you are focusing on how difficult this is, how many times you failed, your brain will continue to show you more of that. 

Your brain wants you to be right and it wants to show you evidence that what you’re thinking is the correct view of the world. It will filter out things that it doesn’t think are relevant for your current view of yourself and the world. Your brain also has a bias towards the negative, especially when it comes to the way that you view yourself. 

This is because anything that could make you not be acceptable with others threatens your survival. So it wants to make sure that you’re aware of those things. It’s what your brain is programmed to do. Your model reflects you speaking to yourself and directing your thoughts in an intentional way. And it is the way that you want to go and this is important. 

You have an inner narrator that is constantly talking to you. And sometimes he’s pretty mean. You don’t have to listen to him, you can also talk to him. And you should talk to him more than you listen to him. Tell him what you want to think and believe. Direct your thoughts on purpose. 

Often when we tell our brain what we want to believe, and it’s so far away from where we are now, our brains will reject our new thoughts and tell us that there’s no way that that’s true. And then it proceeds to show us a slideshow in our head of all the reasons that the new thought is not true. It’s racked up a lot of evidence to show us, then we end up feeling worse than we did before. 

When this happens, bridge thoughts are a great tool to use. Sara has a video of bridge thoughts in the beliefs and identity milestone. Go back and watch that one again, and create some bridge thoughts that will help you to work towards your new belief. Here are a few bridge thoughts that you can use if you want some help getting started. 

Number one, I’m learning how powerful I am in my own life. Number two, I want to believe that I don’t have anything to fear and I’ll overcome this. Number three, it’s possible that someday I won’t struggle with porn anymore. You want your bridge thoughts to be open statements so that your brain won’t outright reject them and so you can begin to wiggle the painful cemented thoughts that seem so true. 

Okay, that was the answer. 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.