Episode 15: For When it's Really Difficult

Uncategorized Apr 25, 2021

There is no doubt about it; quitting pornography is an incredibly difficult thing to do. We know that nothing worth having comes easily, and because you’ve used porn to buffer against negative emotions for so long, there is so much discomfort to deal with when deciding to break the habit. But don’t despair because, in this episode, I’m showing you what to do when things get really hard.

Deciding you don’t want to look at porn is the easy part. It’s what comes after that makes it feel like hard work. However, the difficulty that will inevitably come up for you is what makes this process so amazing, and if you implement what I’m giving you in this episode, you’ll never see your urge to view porn the same way again.

Join me on the podcast this week to discover how to embrace the discomfort of quitting pornography. I’m showing you the stories we tell ourselves that stop us from even really trying to do something we know is going to be difficult, and how to apply what you already know from other areas of your life to break your porn habit for good.

I have amazing news. If you want to take the work I’m sharing on the podcast deeper, I’m running a masterclass on April 29th. It’s called The Top 3 Mistakes That Keep You Stuck in Pornography and it’s 100% free! All you have to do is sign up here and I will see you there. 

What You'll Learn from this Episode:

  • The emotions that are inevitably going to come to the surface when you stop looking at pornography.
  • How the discomfort of resisting the urge to view porn is made so much worse by our stories about why it shouldn’t be so difficult.
  • Why porn being so difficult to overcome is actually a good thing.
  • Where other areas of your life will be improved when you master the discomfort of quitting pornography.
  • How to embrace the difficulty of breaking your porn habit instead of fighting against it.
  • 2 tips for becoming an expert at feeling discomfort.

 

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Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 15, For When it’s Really Difficult.

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.

Hey, you guys. Welcome to the podcast episode this week. Thanks for being here. I’m glad that you’re here. Today, I’m going to give you a little pump-up talk. We’re going to talk about what to do when it’s really difficult. Because quitting pornography is a process and it’s hard and it’s difficult and it takes effort. And so, I want to give you some tools for you to use when this happens when it’s really difficult.

First, before we get started, I want to make sure that you are aware of my free masterclass that is at the end of this month. It’s titled The Top Three Mistakes that Keep You Stuck in Pornography. There’s actually two titles. One is, How to Quit Viewing Porn, Even if You’ve Tried in the Past, and along with that we’re talking about The Top Three Mistakes that Keep You Stuck in Pornography. It’s a brand-new webinar, so I’ve never done this masterclass/webinar before. You’re going to really love it. Make sure you sign up, sarabrewer.com/masterclass.

I just got a message from a client this week I want to share with you too, share some of his wins that he’s having going through this process of quitting porn.

He said, “I’m closing in on three months without looking at porn. I’m getting married in a few weeks and I couldn’t be happier with the progress that I have made. I am so amazed at how my porn habit truly was a buffering activity that I used to cope with negative emotion. My life is so much better now.”

That’s amazing. He’s done such amazing work. And if you want to be in the same place that this client of mine is in now, and if you want to make this massive progress towards your porn habit, in this masterclass that I’m giving at the end of the month, I’m going to offer you a special invitation to come and join my program.

This program is really that next step for you to dive in and apply all the things that we learn on the podcast, right? Podcast, we’re hearing, we’re listening, we’re learning. The program is dive in, apply, and let me guide you and be your guide throughout this process.

Now, if you don’t want to join the program, that’s fine. You will still get a lot of goodness out of this masterclass. It will still be very, very valuable to you. I have my clients show me their notebooks with all the notes that they’ve taken from my masterclass that they still refer to, even though they’re in the program.

So, make sure you come to this if you’re interested in learning how to quit porn for good. Again, that’s at the end of the month. You can sign up, sarabrewer.com/masterclass. The link will also be here in the show notes.

So, let’s dive into this. For when it’s really difficult, because quitting porn can be very difficult. First, let’s talk a little bit about what is difficult when it comes to quitting porn. I talked about this in depth a few episodes ago. What was the title? It was something about what happens when you stop viewing porn, or what to look out for when you stop viewing porn.

And what happens is all of those emotions that you’ve been avoiding, just like my client said in this message that I read to you, he said, “I can’t believe it has really just been a way for me to cope with all these negative emotions.” When you quit viewing porn, you have all those negative emotions boil up to the top.

So, what’s so difficult about quitting porn is the discomfort from feeling your emotions and the discomfort from learning how to process those urges, that desire for porn. Desire is just another emotion. There’s a lot of emotions we have to feel when we’re quitting porn. You have to feel the loneliness, the stress, the whatever it is that you’re running away from.

And you have to feel the discomfort of the desire for porn that you’re not answering anymore. That desire, that urge to go look at porn is uncomfortable. That’s why you go and look at it, to get rid of that discomfort.

So, this isn’t this discomfort of will-powering and shaming yourself, but the discomfort of feeling your emotions instead of turning to porn to get rid of those emotions. So, what it looks like is you stop porn and then you feel antsy. You feel super-antsy, or you feel bored. You stop porn, and then you feel all these urges and this desire that’s unanswered.

You stop porn, you feel lonely. You stop porn, you feel stressed. And a common response when this starts to happen is, “Oh my gosh, this is so hard. This is so difficult. I hate this. This is too hard. I can’t do this.”

And then, instead of just the discomfort of those emotions that you’re feeling, the stress, the loneliness, the urges, whatever, we add all of this suffering onto that discomfort. So, there’s the discomfort of feeling the emotions. And then, there’s the suffering that comes from that narrative, “This shouldn’t be so hard. This shouldn’t be so difficult. Why is this so difficult?”

The discomfort from all the emotions coming up when you quit porn, that is necessary. We need that. We don’t need all of the suffering that comes from, “Oh, this shouldn’t be so hard.”

Here’s the thing about quitting porn. It’s going to be difficult, and that’s a good thing. It’s going to be hard. And halleluiah, it’s difficult. It’s supposed to be that way. It’s good. This is a good thing. And that’s what I want to convince you of in this podcast episode. That it’s difficult, and yes, it’s difficult and great. It’s difficult, and we’re going to embrace that instead of fighting it.

Here’s why it’s such a great thing that it’s difficult. Because the better we are at discomfort, the more amazing our lives will be. Really think about this for a minute. The more difficult your life is, the better you are at handling discomfort and dealing with discomfort, the more amazing your life will be, the more amazing things you will accomplish, the more inspiring you will be.

Think about this. In order to become really smart, maybe get into med school or law school or be the top in your class, you have to be very good at the discomfort of boredom so that you can study. You have to be really good at feeling bored instead of trying to get rid of boredom.

When you try to get rid of boredom, that’s when you stop studying and you go scroll Instagram. So, in order to become very smart and to study and to put in the time studying that you need to, you need to be really good at feeling bored, just letting yourself be bored and study anyways.

In order to become influential, you need to get really good at the discomfort of being embarrassed. In order to become influential, you have to put yourself out there. You have to share your ideas. You have to share what you know. You have to risk being embarrassed.

The better you are at being embarrassed, the more influential you will become because you won’t be trying to escape the embarrassment. When you’re trying to run away from embarrassment, you’re not good at feeling embarrassed, you’re not going to put yourself out there for fear that you’re going to feel that feeling.

If you want to make a ton of money through a business, you have to be really good at the discomfort of failure. I love Brooke Castillo. She’s awesome. If you like what I talk about, you’d really love her podcast. But she always talks about how, jeez, the way we’ve been taught to succeed is so wrong, especially in our school system where it’s like, “Get good grades, get good grades, get As, get As.”

In the real world, the way that you succeed is you get a ton of failures. Because the only way to really learn is to fail. So, if you want to make a ton of money, especially through a business, you have to get really good at the discomfort of failure.

So, that failure is not something you’re avoiding anymore. It’s just something that happens and it’s not a big deal. If you want to get a really good raise and make your way up in a company, you have to be willing to feel the discomfort of rejection. You have to be good at feeling that discomfort of rejection.

We’re not running away from that anymore. In order for you to get that raise, you’re going to have to go ask for it. In order to find an amazing partner – I know a lot of you want to get married – you have to get really good at feeling the discomfort, again, of that fear of rejection.

To be with someone you really want to be with, you have to be good at feeling rejection and you have to be willing to feel that rejection. And of course, in order to quit pornography, you have to be very good at feeling that discomfort of the urges and feeling the discomfort of the desires. And you have to get really good at feeling all the discomfort from those emotions that you keep wanting to run away from.

Do you see? Do you see that everything that you want is on the other side of an uncomfortable emotion? Everything. And so, quitting porn is this amazing opportunity to practice this skill so that you can create an amazing life.

I know a lot of you still see this porn habit as like this terrible thing and there’s something wrong with me for having this and I just wish this wasn’t in my life anymore. I want to invite you to switch that narrative in your head and instead see this as an amazing opportunity that will put you far ahead in life.

Because through this and learning how to quit this, you are going to learn how to feel discomfort on a level that not a lot of people know how to feel it. And with that skill of feeling discomfort and being okay with it, you will create so much goodness in your life.

Instead of this porn habit being something that’s holding you back, not anymore. We’re not thinking of it like that anymore. This porn habit is something that’s propelling you; propelling you into who you want to be and propelling you into this amazing life because of the skills it’s teaching you. Mainly the skill of feeling really uncomfortable, feeling a lot of discomfort.

I want you to think about all the successful people that you know. What makes people successful and great is that they are all really great at feeling discomfort. So, I’ll give you a few examples. Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins, if you don’t know who he is, he’s a motivational speaker, he’s very, very successful, makes billions of dollars, has helped so many people. He’s a really inspiring guy. His whole thing is being uncomfortable and being uncomfortable on purpose and using that as a way to continue to do amazing things in his life.

So, for example, I heard him say recently that every single morning, he gets into an ice bath. So, he wakes up, and the first thing he does is he gets into an ice bath. And the purpose of this is to train his mind, like when I say go, we go. And to train his mind to be less concerned about discomfort and more concerned on following through with himself.

It’s just a mind exercise. And the more he does this, the more able he is to feel uncomfortable and to take action anyway, the more amazing things he does in his life. He sees how important this is and he, you know, doesn’t have any habits he’s trying to quit. And so, what he’s done is he’s continued to take this practice and instead jump into an ice bath every morning. Isn’t that amazing, slash kind of crazy? I love it.

Sara Blakely, she is also very, very successful. She is the founder of Spanx and has made a lot of money and helped a lot of people and done a lot of good in the world and is very influential. And her thing is getting really good at feeling embarrassed.

So, she knew that the only thing that would keep her from success would be her unwillingness to feel embarrassed. And so what she did is she practiced feeling embarrassed. She knew that the better she was at feeling embarrassed, the more success she would have because she would put herself out there more and she wouldn’t be afraid.

Honestly, the only thing that is bad about feeling embarrassed is just how it feels in your body. So, she just practiced feeling embarrassed, got really good at feeling it in her body. And her Instagram account is really fun to follow. Because she posts embarrassing funny things on it all the time. And it doesn’t affect her like it affects a lot of us because she’s practiced it. That’s what has made her so successful, is her ability to feel the discomfort of embarrassment.

This is the same with David Goggins. I just learned about him. I don’t know a ton about him but I watched this amazing YouTube video on him. He’s an ultra-marathon runner. He talked in this video about sitting on the couch one day, eating a bunch of donuts and watching the Marine/ SEALs on TV and he kept thinking and visualizing, “Man, what would it be like to be one of them? What if I could do that with my life?”

And then, he decided one day, he just decided, “Okay, I am done seeking purpose in comfort.” Hear that? “I am done seeking purpose and joy and fulfilment in comfort.” What he discovered is that everything meaningful, everything meaningful comes from discomfort.

Once he had that mindset shift, where he wasn’t just trying to feel comfortable, that’s not what he was seeking for throughout his day, he was seeking for comfort, but instead he was seeking, “How can I get really good at being uncomfortable?” That’s when he did amazing things. He lost 150 pounds or something and became this crazy ultra-marathon runner who inspires a lot of people and does amazing things with his body.

But you see the similarities between all of these successful people is their willingness to feel discomfort and their practice of feeling discomfort, getting really good at that. And that is the opportunity that you have here.

So, when you’re like, “Hey, this is really difficult, quitting porn is really uncomfortable and really difficult,” good. Good, Halleluiah it is. What an amazing opportunity for you.

So, new goal. I want you to have a new goal. Instead of the goal to quit porn, I want you to completely get rid of that goal. The goal, the main focus here isn’t going to be to quit porn. The main focus is to become a master and feeling uncomfortable. A master at feeling uncomfortable.

And I promise, quitting porn will be a byproduct of that. So, I want to give you two tips for becoming very good at feeling discomfort. Number one, let’s adopt a nothing has gone wrong mindset. This isn’t, “Oh, life is so hard. I just hate this. This is difficult. This is so difficult. I hate it.” This is joyful hard and joyful difficult and joyful growth.

For example, think about going to the gym and think about pumping weights at the gym. If you’re pumping weights, you’re not like, “This is the worst. I hate my life so much. This is so hard.” No, you’re pumping weights and you’re, like, “Feel the burn. This hurts so good. This is uncomfortable and it’s good. Look at how strong this is making me.” Not pumping weights and, “Oh, I hate this so much.” You will pump so much more from a place of, “Yes this burns and this hurts and this is so good.”

This David Goggins character, he talked about in this YouTube video I watched of him, he said, “I didn’t feel victory when I did this amazing thing. I didn’t feel victory with the result. I felt victory every single time I made it to the gym or I made it on my run.”

You see the difference here. It’s not like we’re waiting to feel good until we have the result. It’s like we’re feeling good and we’re feeling victory and we’re feeling this sense of pride and accomplishment every single time we show up and we feel that discomfort.

It can look like for you, when you quit porn and it’s really difficult and you’re feeling all of the emotions come up, “Look at me, I’m feeling so lonely. This is so good. This is hard. There’s a lot of stuff coming up. I didn’t know all of this was there. But I’m going to feel this. Nothing’s gone wrong.” Same mindset you would have if you were pumping weights at the gym, “This hurts, but this is so good.” That’s tip number one, this nothing has gone wrong mindset.

Tip number two is to get really good at processing your emotions. You guys, this is a game-changer. This is a new way of handling discomfort so it’s not just, you know, resist, resist, resist, resist, “I’m feeling all this discomfort and I don’t know what to do with it.”

This is a new way of handling discomfort that makes it very doable and very practical. This is something that we practice in my program all the time. I have a client who messaged me and he said, “This is all changing my life, but especially this skill of learning how to process my emotions. Especially this skill of learning how to process my emotions has been life-changing.”

So, what this means and what this looks like, this is similar to how I’ve talked about processing your urges. We’re not pushing our urges away. We’re not will-powering through them. We’re not trying to make them go away.

Instead, we’re allowing them into our body. We’re noticing them and we’re feeling them and we’re letting them be there. And when we do that, we realize that they’re really not that big of a deal.

So, what this looks like, four-ish years ago, I was really trying to follow through with my calendar and I had all these things I wanted to do. Maybe you can relate with this. You have all of these dreams and ideals of what you want to do with your life and who you want to become. The problem isn’t that you’re not thinking big enough. The problem is that you don’t know how to follow through with all of those dreams and all of those goals.

That was me. I wanted to do all of these things but it’s just like every time I looked at my schedule, I just wouldn’t follow through with it. I couldn’t get myself to actually do the things I wanted to be doing. And then, I realized, and I had this big lightbulb moment where it was like, “Oh my gosh, the only thing that’s keeping me from living my dream life and doing all these things that I want to do is that I’m not willing to feel this emotion, this emotion of resistance.”

So, on my calendar I would have, workout. As soon as that came, this resistance would bubble up and I would feel, you know, that tightness. You know, it just feels like kind of tight and you’re like, “No, not going to. Don’t want to.” That was what was preventing me from following through with my calendar. And instead of trying to make that go away, I just learned how to feel it.

So, I would notice that resistance bubble up. I don’t want to work out. Okay, breathe into this. Stop, breathe into this, where is it? It feels tight. We’re just going to let it be there. That’s fine, I can feel this resistance. Instead of just like, “Oh, there’s that resistance. I don’t know what to do. Let’s go scroll Instagram and turn on Netflix.”

So, what it looks like, it looks like dropping it into your body, finding it, noticing it, and breathing into it. Just feeling it and letting it be there. Then you notice, this resistance isn’t that big of a deal. I can feel this and I can go workout anyways. I can work out with this feeling that’s like, “I don’t want to.” That feeling isn’t a big deal.

I can’t tell you how life-changing this was, that epiphany of, “Okay, instead of getting rid of all the negative emotion, I’m just going to feel this emotion and do it anyways.” And it’s a lot easier – listen, you guys, it’s a lot easier to feel that emotion, to let it be there, to process it, than it is to resist it and push it away and then have the consequences of not following through with yourself.

Alright, you guys, remember discomfort is good. If it’s difficult, this is a good thing. The goal here is not to quit porn, but the goal is to get really good at feeling discomfort. If you can feel discomfort, you can sit with that discomfort for as long as you need to and not look at the pornography.

The better we are at discomfort, the more amazing our lives will be. The easiest way to practice discomfort is to change our mindset so we think that nothing has gone wrong when we accept this discomfort. And number two, to learn to process and sit with your emotions.

Alright, you guys, don’t forget to come sign up for this free masterclass that I have at the end of the month. You’re going to love it. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

If you’re ready to apply what you’re hearing in this podcast and finally overcome pornography for good, I’d love to be your coach. I’ve created a virtual program with the intent to give you everything that you need to quit. Once you join, you have lifetime access to the content and lifetime access to individual support through coaching calls and coaching boards. For more information check out sarabrewer.com/workwithme.

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