This is part II of a 4-episode comprehensive series on understanding and overcoming porn and sex addictions. In this episode, we discuss many practical techniques to help us demystify sexual triggers and overcome the urges of sexual "acting out".
How can I communicate with my "inner addict" and deconstruct my urges? How do mindfulness and conscious awareness exercises help me overcome my sexual triggers? What are some practical tools that can be used when I experience intense urges to watch porn or act out sexually? How can all of this be transformed into acts of worship? These and other questions are explored in this episode.
References used and resources mentioned in this episode:
- Breaking the Cycle: Free Yourself from Sex Addiction, Porn Obsession, and Shame by George Collins
- The Porn Pandemic: A Simple Guide To Understanding And Ending Pornography Addiction For Men by Andrew Ferebee
- The Easy Peasy Way to Quit Porn
- "Taking Your History" Questionnaire
- TED talk “A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit” by Judson Brewer
- Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam by A. Helwa
This is part II of a 4-episode comprehensive series on understanding and overcoming porn and sex addictions. In this episode, we discuss many practical techniques to help us demystify sexual triggers and overcome the urges of sexual "acting out".
How can I communicate with my "inner addict" and deconstruct my urges? How do mindfulness and conscious awareness exercises help me overcome my sexual triggers? What are some practical tools that can be used when I experience intense urges to watch porn or act out sexually? How can all of this be transformed into acts of worship? These and other questions are explored in this episode.
References used and resources mentioned in this episode:
- Breaking the Cycle: Free Yourself from Sex Addiction, Porn Obsession, and Shame by George Collins
- The Porn Pandemic: A Simple Guide To Understanding And Ending Pornography Addiction For Men by Andrew Ferebee
- The Easy Peasy Way to Quit Porn
- "Taking Your History" Questionnaire
- TED talk “A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit” by Judson Brewer
- Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam by A. Helwa
Waheed 00:39
Assalamu alaikom wa rahmatullahi ta’ala wa barakatuh, and welcome back to “A Way Beyond the Rainbow”, this podcast series dedicated to Muslims experiencing same-sex attractions who want to live a life true to Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and Islam. I'm your host Waheed Jensen, thank you so much for joining me in today's episode, which is part II of our series on porn and sex addictions. In the last episode, we talked about what addiction is, from physiological, emotional and personal perspectives, and we took a look at the paradigm that says that “the opposite of addiction is not sobriety but rather connection”. We also talked about some of the horrifying realities associated with the porn industry.
Today’s episode builds on so many previous episodes discussed this season. If you’ve come this far, you probably understand how unhealed complex trauma and emotional wounding have contributed to us seeking unhelpful coping strategies, including numbing behaviors that we seek in order to silence the pain and literally numb it, but we have realized that that never works on the long run, and such numbing behaviors become addictions in and of themselves and fuel a vicious cycle that keeps us trapped. You also realize by now a common theme that we’ve been discussing a lot throughout the podcast, which is the concept of shame, “I am not good enough, I am unworthy, no matter how hard I try, I keep on failing”, with all that negative self-talk. These and other themes are important to understand so we can really get a realistic picture of how addictive behaviors reveal themselves in our lives, when they show up, and the real reason we seek them.
When we’re disconnected (emotionally, spiritually, mentally), feeling hurt or shamed, or when an old wound comes up, our survival brain gets activated (the fight-flight-freeze response we’ve spoken about), and in those moments, our old habits come to the surface. We seek to numb the pain or wound by resorting to our addictive behaviors, but after the deed is done, we realize that we soothed ourselves only momentarily, and the pain, shame and aftermath of this addictive behavior becomes a vicious cycle that keeps on repeating itself endlessly. When we numb “the bad”, we also end up numbing “the good”. We’ve spoken a lot about this and other relevant themes earlier this season when we talked about complex trauma, as you guys remember.
Today’s episode is dedicated to healing a lot of our addictive behaviors using mindfulness and the process of demystifying our triggers through many helpful techniques. See what resonates with you and which techniques may be helpful to you in your personal journey. Some techniques might click, others might not, and that’s OK. I encourage you to keep an open mind and try new techniques, you never know what might be helpful for you on your healing and recovery journey, inshaAllah. Once again, the contents presented in these episodes are a synthesis of several sources including books and TED talks that I will add to the episode description so you can check them out.
I would like to start this episode with a quote by Rachel Greenwell who wrote, “I had to find something, ANYTHING to distract myself from myself. But you can’t run from yourself forever. No matter where you go, you are always there. No matter what you do to avoid being with yourself, you’ll always come back around to having to face you again.”
04:12
Imagine yourself in an indoor, circular amphitheater. Imagine it’s dark, really dark, and that you’re in the center of the floor of the amphitheater. There are bright spotlights on you, and they follow you wherever you walk. You can tell there are a lot of people up in the stands, and they are all observing you. You hear their voices, but the spotlights blind you when you try to look up into the crowd. Then you hear a voice that yells out, “Let’s open that porn website and look at those videos! Or better yet, open up that app and see who’s available, let’s have a good time!” You don’t know who’s saying that. You can’t see anything. You feel like doing what the voice says. You feel compelled, and the compulsion is very strong.
The people sitting in the audience are the different voices in your mind that you hear all day long: “I think I’ll have pizza for lunch” or “I need to use the bathroom” or “I need to get to work now”, or “I’ve got to make time to check out that new porn site.” It’s as if they’re voices coming from the dark. The one that’s telling you to look at porn, masturbate or hook up is the one we’re addressing here. Let’s call that voice a subpersonality, which, in psychology, refers to a personality mode that kicks in (on a temporary basis) to allow a person to cope with certain types of situations.
Psychologist Ken Wilber identifies subpersonalities as “functional self-presentations that navigate particular psychosocial situations”. In different situations in our lives, we have different subpersonalities that get activated. What this means is that if you’re lonely, afraid of being rejected, isolated, or whatever the issue is in your case, you may have a subpersonality, or a part of your personality, that tells you that the easiest solution to feeling lonely is to engage in a particular soothing behavior to take away the pain - e.g. look at porn and masturbate, go to a club, or have a random hook-up with someone. This subpersonality is an aspect of your inner addict. Many people experience masturbation and other sexual activities in ways that promote fear, shame, and pain. Their sexual subpersonalities keep them stuck in a negative loop of sexually compulsive behavior, for instance. It’s important to note that subpersonalities can also, of course, be positive and do not have to be associated with your addiction.
One way to address this is to turn on the lights in your amphitheater and hear your subpersonalities saying things such as, “You’re not good enough,” “Your older brother is smarter than you,” “Your younger brother is better looking,” “The best you can do is this, meanwhile look at what other people are doing,” “You’re stressed, go check out that site and masturbate,” and so on. There are lots of these voices or subpersonalities, and they are usually created as a result of difficult experiences and events that happened in the past, often in childhood. Furthermore, these voices or subpersonalities won’t shut up. They go on and on. You can notice that some operate on the basis of shame, others on the basis of lust, others from a place of fear, and so on. The negative voices are part of the shame narrative that we have discussed in detail throughout the podcast, and, again, if you’ve been following the topics of this season, you can see how complex trauma and shame are at the origin of this, in many cases.
These stories and your resultant coping strategies are kept in your own amphitheater. They emerge and clamor for your attention when they think it’s important. These voices or subpersonalities typically are based on old stories—aspects of your painful history—that are no longer even true. But they still have a great deal of power and they keep you living in reaction to them. They keep you a prisoner of your past. They cause you to feel awkward, sad, angry, afraid, ashamed, judgmental, critical, and so on. Your sexually compulsive behavior isn’t just about sex. It’s about your self-esteem. It’s about everything that ever happened to you, especially the negative experiences that sparked you to seek a coping strategy, such as visiting particular websites or even real places for sex. We need to realize that these voices emerged as coping mechanisms, and the behaviors that result are numbing behaviors used to soothe the shame, pain and hurt that lie beneath. We need to learn how to convert the energy from our negative experiences into positive adult behavior, thought, and action.
How can we get free of these voices? The first step, which might be clear by now, is to realize that you have your own amphitheater and you can turn on the lights. Illuminating the amphitheater will allow you to see what part of you is talking and demanding that you take an action that could have negative consequences. Listen to the voices and realize they exist, but they’re NOT you. Observe your mental chatter. You can identify your stories and coping strategies from the past that are stored there in the darkness, the voices that prompt you to act out sexually. You can do this by using a simple technique of listening to yourself and creating a dialogue. If you keep the lights on in your amphitheater and a situation arises in which you hear a voice encouraging you to act out sexually, telling you that you’ll feel better, making excuses, or even calling you a wuss if you don’t, you can talk back to it.
We talked about inner child work earlier this season and how you can actually communicate with your inner child. Sometimes the inner child is what’s driving you to act out sexually, because he/she is lonely, abandoned, frustrated, shamed, etc. Bottom line is, he/she is hurt. The inner addict could come from a hurt inner child, or it could come from the inner critic, the hurtful inner parent, for example. We talked about this before, as you may recall, back in episode 47, with lots of helpful techniques that you may wish to revisit when you have the chance. Whoever the inner addict may be, the bottom line is the same: there’s pain, there’s shame, and there’s a desire for numbing behavior.
By dialoguing with your inner addict in your amphitheater, you can change the dynamic so that the inner addict is no longer in control. In fact, the whole idea of imagining the amphitheater allows you to eventually run the show, instead of the stories you tell yourself being in charge. In his book, Breaking the Cycle: Free Yourself from Sex Addiction, Porn Obsession, and Shame, George Collins tells us that our life may be wonderful in many areas, but it’s only as strong as our weakest subpersonality. We’re only as healthy as this subpersonality. We have to isolate a subpersonality, isolate the worst thing that’s happening to us, and talk to it. If you isolate the worst thing that’s happening to you, that will lead you to your negative subpersonality. If you actually do something about it, then you can change your mind—and this is the whole idea. Confronting your subpersonalities is a way to reduce the pain and suffering in your life. If you’re suffering, then it’s very likely that you have one or more negative subpersonalities that cause you to do, think, and feel negative things. When that happens, it’s logical that our minds would try to soothe the pain by looking at activities that numb it out, right?
So let’s do this as a practical exercise. Imagine yourself in your personal amphitheater with the lights on. You’re looking at an offending negative subpersonality. What would you say to it? What questions would you ask? Talk to this addict subpersonality as if it were a real person. For example, ask, “Who are you? Why do you want me to act this particular way?” By doing this, you’re tricking your mind so that you are in charge, rather than the story your mind tells you is running the show. You begin to separate your thinking and your story from who you really are. Try to spend at least ten minutes a day on this exercise.
As you go through the next day, go to your amphitheater whenever your addict shows up, even if you spend only a few moments there. Talk to him/her. Try to write down your dialogue while you’re imagining it, or do that later if you have to. Writing down the dialogue will give the experience a stronger impact. If you just think about it, it won’t work as well, because it won’t seem as important to your mind. Remember, the mind doesn’t like to change, the subconscious always prefers the comfort zone, and you need to use whatever leverage you can. If you keep going to the amphitheater and conducting dialogues with your addict, your thoughts will have less power over you, and you will begin to feel more in charge. And, as you feel more empowered, you’ll be able to act in ways that are contrary to what your inner addict wants. Again, that inner addict might be the wounded inner child, or the inner parent who’s very critical, or maybe some other voice that’s sending you harsh messages.
You may have a deep and, harsh sensation that says you can’t stop. Your addict subpersonality might say: “You must do this. You must go to Internet porn sites. You have to masturbate. You have to do so and so. You can’t change.” If a subpersonality tells you that you will be a better person if you hook up and have random sex, that is not true. If a subpersonality says that you have to have an orgasm in the next ten minutes or you will spiral down into depression, that is not true. If a subpersonality tells you that the person on the other side of the camera looking at you naked really likes you as a person, that is not true. But that part of you that is the essence of you (i.e. your authentic self, your fitrah) is always true, and you can count on that.
If you’ve been practicing the amphitheater dialogue technique, you may have begun to shift away from the power of your compulsion. You may have begun to demystify that voice and see what it stands for: a part of me that’s hurt and longing for connection, the desire to be loved, the need to fix the pain that’s gnawing on the inside. That’s what it’s about. I hope you begin to realize that instead of hating that part of you, you see it for what it is: a part of you that’s hurting and in need of connection and love. Don’t run away from it, don’t hate it or fight it. Be with it, give it the love and attention it deserves, the right kind of attention, the healthy one, embrace its pain away. And that’s how we heal, inshaAllah.
As you recall, in episode 42, we embarked on a process of uncovering our own stories, which is the first step to understanding that we are not our stories. This comprehension is vital, because stories created in and by our childhoods are no longer relevant. Operating according to these stories is like running on software that was installed when you were a child. It’s obsolete. Reviewing your history will give you the information you need to find the old software and update it. If you remember, in episode 42, I added links to a few questionnaires, one of which was developed by Dr. Gerard J. M. van den Aardweg and helps us gain self-insight into our psychohistory and the present self, our habits, emotions and motives.
In the episode description of today’s episode, I have added a link to a questionnaire developed by George Collins in his book, Breaking the Cycle: Free Yourself from Sex Addiction, Porn Obsession, and Shame, and it particularly addresses our history and patterns with sexual compulsions. I encourage you to check it out and take some time to work on it. Try and reflect on the questions and notice your thoughts as you reflect on the questions and over time as you go on. Remember, you’re looking for information, not ammunition. When we dive into our stories, a lot of pain and hurt comes up from the past. This self-inquiry is meant to help you help yourself, not to criticize yourself or others. This is also not a blame game, this is meant to help you heal, grow and recover, inshaAllah. Keep that in mind as you go through these exercises.
Also, keep in mind that your inner addict is not your enemy, but a worthy adversary. Your addict personality actually believes it’s helping you, that’s how it operates. This is a trick of the mind—a false story. Remember the survival brain and the discussion we had on complex trauma and coping strategies. It all makes sense, doesn’t it? Uncovering your history uncovers the truth. Step back and look, as if you are seeing someone else— be a witness to your own life, your unique addict. That way you can become an understanding, empathetic advocate for yourself and your inner addict.
17:51
Author and psychotherapist Alexandra Katehakis wrote that “addicts may engage in the euphoria that comes with recalling past sexual experiences, labeled ‘euphoric recall.’ They may also fantasize about some future sexual exploit. What’s the outcome of these activities? The sexual experience becomes an avoidance of connection with their partner and their own feelings in the present.” She elaborates that euphoric recall is the act of “remembering only the pleasures of an experience and not the adverse consequences.” For many people in sexual recovery, remembering particular events associated with their past behaviors and sexual addictions may bring about pleasure or longing, again this “euphoric recall”, and the same feelings may be triggered when they think about something similar happening in the future. And that’s normal, given the dopamine pathways and brain circuitry that’s been entrenched for a long time to operate on this basis. That’s why, for people in sexual recovery, it’s important to experience what’s happening now versus what’s in one’s euphoric memory, which may be distorted experiences.
Euphoric recall is a function of our minds and memories. It’s important to remember that we are not our minds. We are not our memories. We can live a more fulfilling life in the moment. As spiritual teacher and best-selling author Eckhart Tolle wrote, “Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true.” Identification with one’s minds and internal chatter “causes thought to become compulsive. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal.” Remember, in episode 42, we talked about how we spend most of our time and energy in autopilot mode, in that subconscious world, and only 5-10% of our time is actually spent in the moment, being conscious of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
Once you realize that you are not your mind, you are not your story, you can begin to break free from your story. Recall back in episode 41 when we talked about the layers that separate us from the essential self, or the fitrah. Your essential nature or essence is what you were born with. It’s who you were before you began accumulating thousands of experiences, memories, and sensations. Before any betrayal, abandonment, abuse or hurt you may have experienced. As we grew up and began to be shaped by our home environment, family, school, culture, and society, many of us depended on whatever we could see, taste, touch, and hear to help us cope and feel better when we didn’t have our needs met.
In episode 42, we touched upon how mindfulness and conscious awareness put us in touch with our essential or authentic self. The knowledge, awareness and skills associated with this are phenomenal on our journey of healing, growth and recovery. Being in the moment is key. Again, we’ve touched upon this in detail in episode 42; I encourage you to give it another listen when you have the chance. Experiencing stillness has led so many people to discover how to live their lives in new and more satisfying ways. The brief satisfaction we’ve received from our addictive behavior just doesn’t hold a candle to the quiet sweetness and true satisfaction of experiencing our authentic self. We truly experience who we are beneath all the mind chatter and addictive impulses. As we stop living in reaction to our story and stop being on auto-pilot mode, our lives begin to change, most likely for the better, inshaAllah.
Your mind is constantly spinning stories, and these stories stop you from being in the present—because they’re not actually true. What is always true is your conscious awareness. Your connection with the Divine, subhanahu wa ta’ala. Your fitrah, or authentic self, is in harmony with the world. What is true is being aware that you’re conscious and present, without being stimulated by a thought or impulse. Yes, thoughts and impulses are there, you acknowledge they exist, but you don’t entertain them. What’s always true is pure conscious awareness —just being. We’ve been trained to do multitasking, to do as many things as we can do. We’re often more of a “human doing” rather than a “human being.” But constantly doing removes us from ourselves, because we’re not being. The question that arises is: Can we just be for a second? For ten seconds? Just ask yourself that question, without worrying about what the answer is. And then ask yourself the question, “What’s always true?” What’s always true about you no matter what? What is always stable amidst the chaos? What’s always true is your existence. Your fitrah. Your connection with Him. That your life is worth it, that there is a reason why you’ve been created, and that your time on this Earth is precious. That you are worthy and that Allah loves you. That you have potential. You are alive. You are breathing. You are much more than your stories or what you are experiencing right now.
If you ask yourself what’s always true when you’re standing in line in a supermarket, or you’re feeling impatient at a stoplight, you can feel the answer internally. If you feel a pull toward sexually compulsive behavior, ask yourself what’s always true. Then remember that you are not your mind or your compulsions, but you’re something much more. Remembering what’s always true will help you stay in the moment so that you won’t act in negative ways.
Remember, when you want to access your conscious awareness, take a few moments to allow your mind to rest. Take a deep breath, let it out, relax, and notice your surroundings. Use your five senses - what do you see around you right now? What do you hear? What do you feel? What can you taste or smell? If you can do this even for a few seconds before your thoughts start up, you have begun to experience your essence and you are living and being in the present moment. We talked about grounding and mindfulness exercises earlier on in the season; utilizing these techniques is helpful in demystifying triggers and bringing back our attention to the present moment, as opposed to something in the past or the future.
When you start asking yourself “what is always true?” and being in the present moment through mindfulness and grounding exercises, and when you practice this regularly, you will notice that you become more resistant to getting lost in your sexual compulsions, by bringing yourself back to you, to your essence. It becomes easier to interact with others without confusing that person with our own fear, pain, shame, self-doubt, judgment, criticism, or anger. Getting in touch with what’s always true and the present moment can enable us to stop the pull of compulsive behavior and to be who we really are rather than who we think ourselves to be. Afterall, when we’re triggered, whether emotionally or sexually, we’re really not in the present moment. We’re pulled into the past or into some place of fear, pain, shame, anger or what have you. Being in the present moment and achieving that conscious awareness helps alleviate that triggered state. The two can’t exist simultaneously for so long.
If you get in touch with your conscious self, as opposed to the subconscious auto-pilot, and the more you’re in the moment, you’ll be able to let the addicted voices of your past slide right on by. As you become proficient with being silent and experiencing that conscious awareness, even for a few moments, you can then use your authentic self in your own amphitheater to filter out different subpersonalities, such as your inner addict. After you become proficient at dialoguing and writing down your inner conversations, you can do it in your mind as situations arise and subpersonalities speak up. Later, when your mind has changed, this process becomes automatic. What happens is that you begin to reform your thinking patterns so that you filter negative impulses through what’s always true—your conscious awareness and essence. If you practice asking what’s always true, you begin to behave in ways more congruent with your true self. And remember, our brains can rewire their circuitry with patience and daily work - what we have learned in the past can be unlearned, and healthier new habits can emerge when we stick to doing the work, slowly and consistently.
As you’re going through life, you never know when you might be triggered. It might be a whiff of perfume. It might be a flash of a limb or body part. An image online that pops up out of nowhere. You may never know when your inner addict will be aroused. But you can be prepared by being in the moment and getting in touch with your conscious state, not your subconscious programming. The authentic you is in the amphitheater with the lights on. Then, when the impulse arises to act out sexually, your authentic self can respond, “No. No thanks. I don’t want to do porn. I don’t want to masturbate. I’m not going on that app or hooking up. I’m stronger and better than this, inshaAllah.”
Something else worth mentioning here: Just because we’re awake or consciously aware does not mean we’ll have a blissful life. It just means that we’ll be able to handle turbulence more effectively. All of us struggling with porn or sex addictions are human beings blessed with unique and wonderful abilities, but those positive attributes are often kept hidden by the intense drive to satiate what cannot be satiated. There aren’t enough porn sites, hook-ups, massage parlors (or whatever your addiction is) to make it so that you will have enough. You can never have enough of what won’t satisfy you. You cannot be satiated. The people who sell porn know this and are skillful in their presentation. Once you stop listening to your mind’s false tricks, you’ll be able to find what truly satisfies you. You can begin to move beyond your mind and experience your essence.
Exercise time: to get in touch with what’s always true—your authentic self, the essential nature of you. Find a quiet place with as few distractions as possible. You can be outside, walking in a park or looking at the mountains or the ocean. Whatever makes you comfortable. Take some deep breaths and really feel your breath. Most of the time our breathing is automatic. This time, consciously realize that you are breathing. The first time you do this, do it for two to three minutes. Then, as you become used to paying attention to your breath, do it for longer periods. Feel the air as it moves through your lungs. Feel the blood flowing in your arms. Feel the breath going in and out of your lungs. Then take a few deeper breaths and just be quiet for a second to see what happens. Now try it again.
Your mind will come in and say all sorts of things: “What’s this nonsense?” “This breathing stuff is for New Agers or meditators. I’m not a monk,” “Let’s forget this and go do X, Y or Z.” That’s your subconscious pull which resists change. You know that now. You can stop it. You can sink down below your mind into your breath, your essence. This moment is for you. You don’t need anything or anyone else. You don’t need porn at this moment, you don’t need a release or hook-up. You’re having a few seconds of relief from the constant chatter of your mind. Being still and paying attention to your breath is a way to refresh and recharge yourself.
Your mind will bring up excuses: “I’m too busy for this,” or “I’ve got more important things to do.” If you find your thoughts wandering, don’t judge or criticize. Just realize that this is a process. Acknowledge this is happening, but don’t entertain it. It’s like a fly making noise; it’ll go away on its own. The mind is a worthy adversary. It will constantly want you to pay attention to your old script, going from one story to the next and to the next, all day and all night. Your true addiction is to your mind. But you are not your mind. Continue to ask yourself, “What’s always true?” and trust the process. Breathe, practice mindfulness and be in the present moment.
These techniques help you become more relaxed and can make it easier for you to always know who you are, to always know that you are more than your constant thoughts about sex, and that you are the one in charge. If you do this, the positive results may spill over into your work, your relationships, and your life in general, inshaAllah. You will be calmer and more self-assured, because you’ll really be in touch with yourself and what’s always true. Your entire experience of being alive can change. If challenging things happen and you feel a pull toward acting out in a sexually compulsive way, you won’t have to do it. All you’ll need to do is to ask yourself, “What’s always true?”, breathe deeply and be in the present moment.
One thing you need to be aware of is that the more you move in this sexual recovery journey, you will no longer get the same high or spiky rush that you might get now from your acting out behavior. But you also won’t have the shame and misery that often follows the high. What you can get after breaking free of sexually compulsive behavior is a nice, steady buzz of intimacy and connection with the person you want to connect with. When you go home to the same loving spouse every night, you get to experience a real sense of connection with him/her. And when you’re alone, your connection with yourself isn’t swamped by the guilt and shame of your acting out behavior, and you can actually focus your energy on the things you’ve always wanted to achieve, inshaAllah.
33:27
Keeping all of this in mind, let’s talk about managing our triggers in meaningful ways. Any combination of events can cause us to sexualize, and these key combinations stem from memory. Triggers can be sounds, sights, smells, tastes, or other sensations. You could be walking down the street in the midst of a cell phone conversation, barely paying attention to the area, and suddenly you hear music and catch the distinct smell of something that had triggered you. Or maybe you’re taking the bus or train and someone good-looking sits near you and you’re triggered. Maybe you’re watching a movie or reading a book and some scene or event takes place that turns you on. You feel that you need to act out sexually. It can happen any time, and you can be prepared by becoming aware of your triggers so that you’re no longer reacting automatically.
What will you do the next time you get an “uncontrollable” impulse? What if you could practice what to do when you’re triggered sexually, but with a trigger that has less power over you? For example, you can notice which foods trigger positive or negative feelings, what triggers you to get ticked off at someone you work with, or which drivers trigger you when you’re in heavy traffic. You can notice the events that get to you, especially situations that lead you to excessive behaviors or things that trigger you to react aggressively. You can hunt down these situations and, rather than reacting automatically, you can become aware of your patterns and maybe even smile to yourself when you see the triggers. You can reach a turning point where you no longer react negatively to triggering situations.
You can begin by noticing a few innocent triggers, such as seeing a fast food ad on TV and feeling the urge to jump in your car and get a big, greasy burger. This is a way to begin to notice the cues in your mind and your body that alert you to an impulse. In this example, you might say to yourself, “No. I don’t need to go anywhere right now. I just want to finish watching the game. Instead, I’ll grab a snack at home.” If you can do this with food impulses, for example, you can begin to become aware of the process by which you note and counteract the urge to act in a negative way. Then you can learn to apply this process to your sexually compulsive behavior patterns. Another example would be, for example, when you’re driving and someone cuts you off, or the one driving in front of you is really slow. Your first urge might be to honk your car loudly and get angry. Notice your emotional trigger, breathe and choose to be calm and present instead of giving in.
Whatever the situation or example is, the first step is to notice the situations that tend to trigger you. The second step is to demystify the sensations of inappropriate desire so that, rather than giving in to the urges, you stay in touch with yourself and your essence, practice mindfulness and conscious awareness. Say no, and feel what happens inside you then. Usually there will be some push-back, some resistance to your refusal to give in. Yet you can weather this resistance. You can challenge your automatic responses, the programming generated by your internal story. After you’ve noticed your trigger, stayed in the present moment and observed what’s happening, the third step is to demonstrate to yourself that you can, indeed, resist what has been triggering you to act out in sexually compulsive ways. You can very consciously show yourself that you no longer need to be a slave to your impulses. You are more powerful than the whisperings, temptations or voices inside you. You are better than to surf porn, masturbate or act out sexually in response to a trigger that you can otherwise handle in healthy ways.
By knowing ahead of time that a situation can prompt your trigger moment, you can be prepared. Notice when your attention locks in on sexualizing or objectifying. You may be triggered. Watch for the sexual charge. Be fascinated by it. You don’t have to act on it. Being sexually charged doesn’t mean you have to have an orgasm. Many people feel like they have to have an orgasm within an hour of having a trigger experience. It doesn’t have to be that way. Getting triggered and feeling that you need to have an orgasm is a pattern that is going to screw up your day, your relationships, and your mind. The difficult part is that this is so automatic and subtle that you might not even notice when you’re triggered. So work on noticing when you get that charge. When you can get between the impulse and the action, you can change the outcome.
There’s a brilliant TED talk I’d like to reference here called “A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit” by Judson Brewer. Brewer talks about how, in his lab, they studied whether mindfulness training could help people quit smoking. The majority of them had tried to force themselves to quit smoking before and failed -- on average, six times. Now, with mindfulness training, “We dropped the bit about forcing and instead focused on being curious. In fact, we even told them to smoke. What? Yeah, we said, ‘Go ahead and smoke, just be really curious about what it's like when you do.’ And what did they notice? Well, here's an example from one of our smokers. She said, "Mindful smoking: smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals, YUCK!" Now, she knew, cognitively, that smoking was bad for her, that's why she joined our program. What she discovered just by being curiously aware when she smoked was that smoking tastes like shit. Now, she moved from knowledge to wisdom. She moved from knowing in her head that smoking was bad for her to knowing it in her bones, and the spell of smoking was broken. She started to become disenchanted with her behavior.”
From a neurobiological perspective, the prefrontal cortex at the front of our brains, the area responsible for rational and executive decision making, understands on an intellectual level that we shouldn't do something that is harmful for us (like smoking, viewing porn, acting out, etc.). And it tries hard to help us change our behavior. We call this cognitive control. We're using cognition to control our behavior. Unfortunately, this is also the first part of our brain that goes offline when we get stressed out, which isn't that helpful. And we spoke about this in detail earlier in the episodes on complex trauma, when we talked about the survival brain -- how in moments of stress, our fight-flight-freeze responses are activated, and our old habits emerge. This is why this disenchantment is so important. Seeing what we get from our habits helps us understand them at a deeper level -- to know it in our bones so we don't have to force ourselves to hold back or restrain ourselves from behavior. We're just less interested in doing it in the first place.
And this is what mindfulness is all about: Seeing really clearly what we get when we get caught up in our behaviors, becoming disenchanted on a visceral level, and from this disenchanted stance, naturally letting go. The paradox here is that mindfulness is just about being really interested in getting close and personal with what's actually happening in our bodies and minds from moment to moment -- this willingness to turn toward our experience rather than trying to make unpleasant cravings go away as quickly as possible. And this willingness to turn toward our experience is supported by curiosity, which is naturally rewarding.
What does curiosity feel like? It feels good. And what happens when we get curious? We start to notice that cravings are simply made up of bodily sensations -- oh, there's tightness, there's tension, there's restlessness -- and that these bodily sensations come and go. These are bite-size pieces of experiences that we can manage from moment to moment rather than getting clobbered by this huge, scary craving that we choke on. In other words, when we get curious, we step out of our old, fear-based, reactive habit patterns and we step into being. Just be curiously aware of what's happening in your body and mind at that moment. Notice the urge, get curious, and let go.
Another technique you can use is to create a cue for yourself. A cue is a word or action you can use to signal or alert yourself to wake up to what’s happening in the moment. George Collins in his book, Breaking the Cycle: Free Yourself from Sex Addiction, Porn Obsession, and Shame, describes what he calls a “beard test.” His cue would be to run his fingers through his beard for a moment, reminding himself that he’s a man, that he’s mature and strong, not a child or a teenager anymore, i.e., not a weakling at the mercy of his inner addict. Another example is an “energy wave”: visualize a flow of energy strumming on your chest. The energy runs through your solar plexus, and you can start to feel it moving towards your genitals in a moment of sexual tension or trigger. If you have a word for the energy you feel when you first begin to get sexually aroused or triggered in a situation that is not appropriate, you can practice saying those words to yourself: “energy wave.”
You will first need to notice the feeling in your chest or your genitals. If you can notice that, you can ask yourself, “Is this appropriate?” You may not catch the sensations the first time. Instead, you’ll act out. The third time maybe you’ll wait to act out. By the fourth time, you might find yourself saying, “This is crazy. I’ve got work to do.” Your mind will start to change. The point is to distract yourself from the chemical release, or your addictive thinking, and convert that energy into something positive.
The “energy wave” response is actually your mind working on you to create a chemical release. This energy runs through your body and to your genitals, gearing you up for sexual release. When you sense this energy surge, you have an opportunity to be your own hero. You can say to yourself, “This is not the right time. This is not the right place. This is not the right person. I’ve got work to do. I’ve got a relationship to be in. I’m not going to objectify or sexualize that person.”
Another effective technique for breaking the stranglehold of sexually addictive triggers, particularly if it’s with a real-life person, is to imagine the other person as a real person—which, of course, he/she is. What I personally do is try as much as I can to humanize the other person -- he had a tough childhood growing up, he’s going through God-knows-what right now, he probably had a difficult morning and he’s been struggling with work and finances. He’s in charge of others and he’s barely making ends meet. He has his insecurities and pains, he might be in dire need of help. This really helps demystify things for me.
Another example is, when you’re really turned on by someone, visualize him/her sitting on the toilet and having a bowel movement or passing gas. Really. Or maybe he/she has some physical feature or personality feature that you find unattractive. Maybe he/she has body odor, burps loudly, or whatever. Now, I understand that this isn’t very pretty. But when you visualize that the other person has bodily functions, it is more difficult to objectify or sexualize them. What you’re doing is interfering with the inner addict’s fantasy to loosen the hold that the fantasy has over you. You are making a choice.
This is what I want you to remember: No matter how strong the pull toward sexually compulsive behavior, you always have a choice. Even though your mind tells you to look at porn, have sex, masturbate, go to a massage parlor, or just walk around the mall and check out other people, you always have a choice. It’s your birthright to have a choice. You don’t have to give in to the addict within. You can choose something else to do. Whether you give in to your addict or not, this is your real life and there are real consequences. It’s your health. Your peace of mind. Your career. Finances. It’s your marriage. Your kids. And most importantly, your relationship with Allah SWT, with prospects of success and failure on the Day of Judgement. Consider how all of these thoughts and behaviors are doing to our God-given spirit when we besmirch it through sins and constant acting out.
Bottom line is, we have a choice. Try and notice the exact point where you can make a choice. This point may be when your inner addict is pulling you towards the Internet to look at porn and you give in, “just this one last time.” Or it could be when you notice another person on the street and don’t look away and start to spin a sexual fantasy about him/her. When you give in to your inner addict, you’re making a choice. The moment you make that choice is what is known as the choice point. That moment is also when you can make a different choice. It’s important though to note that the time to make a choice to stop acting out sexually is not when you’re in the grips of it. At that moment, it’s nearly impossible to change anything. The chemicals have already been released and your body is starting to react. The time to make a choice is when you feel the shift toward sexually compulsive behavior starting.
One way to work on changing your mind is to think of what else you’d like to do, and maybe even come up with a list of things you’ve always wanted to do. Maybe you wanted to change your life in some dynamic way. “What else can I do besides acting out?” This is one thing you can ask yourself when you’re not triggered, and write up a list of things that you can read out when you’re actually triggered. So let’s do this exercise together, which is designed to bring your choice point into focus. When you know what is useful and what is not useful, you can more easily make a clear choice and ask yourself: What else can I do?
Bring a pen and paper, or use your daily journal for this purpose. Whatever is comfortable for you. Think about the ways in which you act out sexually when you give in to impulses, and write them down. Next, write down ten things that do damage to you when you act out sexually, such as depleted energy, feeling guilt or shame, disconnection from God, problems with sleep or productivity, family problems, etc. After that, write down ten things that would be useful for you to do instead of acting out. Knowing that you have a choice, what are alternative activities that are healthy for you that would be worth pursuing? Start thinking about what you really like, what you’ve always liked. Maybe it’s sports. Maybe it’s learning a new craft. Whatever it is. Ask yourself how you could be involved with it. Look for options and google what interests you. Start looking at what you love to do. There is a definite, tangible reward in doing what provides you with joy rather than the fear, shame, and pain that result from addiction. And then, with time, if you feel that first impulse to act out, ask yourself: What else can I do? Keep your list at a safe place so you can open it up when you’re triggered and think of all these things you’ve written.
According to Taoist philosophy, sexual energy and sexual fluids are our life force. It takes a tremendous amount of energy, vitality and vigor to create this life force inside you. Aimless and wasted ejaculation actually depletes and weakens you of the life force you need to move forward in life. It’s instant gratification. It feels good in the moment, but you ultimately pay the price in the long run. So many people have reported that quitting porn and masturbation has given them more energy, motivation, increased confidence, mental alertness, less brain fog, higher sex drive, less fatigue, more assertiveness, less anxiety and depression, more sociability, better memory, better athletic performance, higher self-esteem, and even less acne and a clearer complexion.
Stop wasting this power by watching porn and masturbating. Keep it inside of you to drive yourself and go out into the world and do amazing things. Use it to go after what you want in life instead of letting it out and it going nowhere. Accomplish goals, meet people, and change the world around you. Notice how you feel hours and days after you ejaculate. If you’re really stressed out from work and life, then it’s easy to succumb to watching porn and masturbating to release and relax for a bit. But as you live your life with more purpose and meaning, you won’t accumulate so much tension from the day. Instead of being addicted to ejaculation, become addicted to becoming the best version of yourself.
When you go to bed at night, the long-term fulfillment and satisfaction you’ll get from knowing each day that you put all of your best work, talents, and gifts out into the world will be well worth it and much better than some meaningless orgasm. How amazing would it be to spend everyday in the best possible way to please Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, having best fulfilled one's status as a 'abd (servant) of Allah and khalifa (vicegerent) on earth, having taken one more step, through the pure fadl and rahma of Allah, towards realizing the verse: إلا من أتى الله بقلب سليم, “But only one who comes to Allah with a sound heart” [Ash-Shu’ara, 26:89]. Nothing tops that honestly. Napoleon Hill said it best in his book, Think and Grow Rich, when he said:“The desire for sexual expression is by far the strongest and most impelling of all human emotions. For this very reason, this desire, when harnessed and transmitted into action other than that of physical expression, may raise one to the status of genius.” In other words, since sexual energy is the most powerful of energies, channeling that energy into your purpose in this life, pleasing Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and doing productive things are much better than letting it out randomly when one is triggered and feels the need to act out.
With every step you take to be free of the negative, you are freeing up more energy to be used in a positive way. Many people go through the recovery process and then have a great idea for a new business or a fantastic hobby. Most of them move on to find a real-life partner and have a relationship based on true intimacy. Many good things happen when you change your sexual thought process from negative to positive.
Another beautiful technique that you can use every time you notice that you’re sexually triggered is to put your hand on your heart, breathe and think to yourself, “I’d like to shift this energy to some positive thought or behavior.” So you notice your thoughts and behaviors instead of going into auto-pilot mode, then you put your hand on your heart, followed by repeating an affirmation to yourself. Practice doing this regularly; it works wonders. As you do that, you’ll notice that you’ll become more relaxed and have more energy for positive thoughts and feelings, and there’s less guilt and shame going on inside. You’ll also notice that whatever “radar” your inner addict has for objectifying others will start to fade out. With its power fading, you’ll start to notice other things, beautiful scenes, lovely buildings you didn’t notice before, positive emotions displayed by others, and so on. You’ll become more focused on what is happening in the moment.
At least once a day in the coming week, pay attention to when you objectify and sexualize others. You could be in a restaurant, in line at the movies, at a store, at work, or just walking down the street. Notice your thoughts and behavior. When you become aware of a physical change in your body (maybe a rippling sensation of pleasure starts and chemicals are released that signal the onset of addictive behavior), take your hand and put it on your heart. You can be subtle, pretending to check a button on your shirt, for example, if you’re near people. Then, say a positive statement to yourself. It could be something like: “I want to release the energy of objectification, and I’d like the energy that’s running now to be turned into something that is useful and positive.” “I no longer want to objectify and sexualize. I want this energy to be turned to the positive.” “I want to let go of the objectification energy and be closer to the people in my life.” “I want to let go of sexualizing this person and do something useful and creative.” “I’d like to let go of feeling that I want to have sex with this person, and I’d like to be better at my work instead,” and so on. It might not work the first time, or the second, or the fifth. But if you keep at it, it will work. It’s not easy to change your behavior, but you can do it, inshaAllah.
Sometimes we’re triggered, but it feels like a blur; we don’t know where this sexual energy is coming from or what triggered it. In addition to practicing everything we’ve mentioned so far, a good technique to add here is “HALT.” As you may recall, we spoke about this back in episode 12 with Richard Cohen. HALT stands for Hungry/Hurt, Angry, Lonely, Tired. And Richard adds “S” at the end so it becomes “HALTS,” with “S” referring to spiritual, like whisperings from Shaytan or the nafs, or feeling spiritually disconnected from God. When you look at HALTS, you can review many possibilities: You may be hungry for food or love and attention, you may be hurt and in pain, you may be angry at someone or something that’s happened, you may be feeling lonely and in need of company, you may be physically tired or sleep deprived, or you may be spiritually disconnected from God or vulnerable to whisperings from Shaytan or your lower nafs at the moment. One or more of these may have been brewing for a while, a couple of hours or a couple of days, putting you in a “gray zone”, and then, all of a sudden, you notice you’re triggered.
You can use HALTS to remind yourself that you’re getting triggered when you feel hurt, angry, lonely, or tired or spiritually depleted. Saying “HALT” makes you accountable to yourself. You force yourself to stop, even for a second (remember, HALT literally means stop) and consider the consequences. If you are in a location where you can say HALT aloud, it can be a cue to stop yourself from acting out. Give yourself the opportunity to pause and evaluate where this is coming from, and also think of all the agony you’ve gone through and will continue to go through if you give in to the situations and feelings that are triggering you. If you can reach out to a friend, accountability partner, sponsor or support group, do that. If you can’t, then journal about it and let those emotions out in healthy ways. That way, they get out of your system and no longer keep you cornered.
And, of course, it’s very important to remind ourselves that we can’t do ANY of this without the help of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. No matter how hard we try, we can’t be strong enough or pull through without His aid and support. So ask Him to support you and protect you, ask Him to give you strength and willpower, make du’aas that He helps you on your journey of healing and recovery. Many times we’re too busy learning and implementing techniques, and we forget the foundation of it all - we can’t do any of this without Him first and foremost. So seek Him, go to Him and ask for His help. That’s first, last and always. In addition to this, remember that, no matter how many times we slip or fall, we make tawbah (repentance), seek His help, get back up and keep moving forward. No matter how long this takes, we keep striving for His sake, inshaAllah. That’s all that matters.
Of course, the path of healing and recovery is not easy. There are lots of ups and downs. But keep at it. If you get frustrated and give up, you’re giving in to your inner addict and the whisperings of Shaytan. But if you practice and use the tools that we’re highlighting in these episodes, your mind will change, inshaAllah. You will start making better choices and, eventually, you won’t have as many addictive impulses to defend against. Those that do arise will be like fruit flies buzzing around your head. Using the tools that you’ve learned here, you can begin to easily shoo them away, inshaAllah.
59:08
I’m going to read a few passages from A.Helwa’s book, Secrets of Divine Love, as they’re relevant to this discussion. The remainder of this section is from that book. She says:
"Becoming more spiritual and God-conscious does not mean we’re no longer tested with the voices and thoughts of temptation conjured by our ego, but rather that we have more awareness about the voices that call us toward darkness, shame, and separation. Just as the stars are always in the sky but we can only see them in the darkness of the night, so too may the voices of the ego and the Devil remain present. The difference between someone close to God and someone turned away from God is not in whether or not they are tempted, but rather in where they are focusing their attention.
The more we turn to God’s light, the brighter the skies of our mind become and the dimmer the stars of the ego and Devil appear in comparison. Instead of looking to self-reliance to overcome temptation, we are called to lean on God. The Devil is an expert at using our imperfections to make us feel unworthy of having a relationship with God. If we try to fight the Devil on our own, we will always lose, so the only way to overcome the Devil is through the help of God. “Those who are aware of God when a passing impulse from the Devil touches them, they bring God to remembrance and at once they see things clearly” (7:201).
No matter what the Devil or the lower nafs tempts you with, instead of fighting the temptation or trying to figure out a way around it, go to Allah first. A powerful way to do this in practice is to respond to every temptation with a prayer. Take a moment and be conscious of the distractions or temptations you’re experiencing. Whenever you are being drawn away from your heart and toward something that is against one of the commands of God and feels like it will not serve the holiness of your heart, you are being tempted by the Devil or the lower nafs. The voices of the Devil might sound like, “You are not good enough, you will always fall short...you will never overcome this addiction, you are too sinful for God...this is not that big of a deal, just one more time and then you can give this up, God doesn’t really care...God will not accept someone as bad as you anyway, so you might as well do what feels good.”
You may even notice how the Devil thrives on hopelessness and despair. The Devil will use your shortcomings to instill fear and shame within you, trying to make you feel you are not worthy of having a relationship with God. Once you are conscious of the voice of the Devil, don’t fight his voice or be drawn into it; rather, turn it over to God in the form of a prayer. For example, if the Devil tempts you with lust, ask Allah for help in turning your desires toward Him. If the Devil tries to get you to stop praying, ask Allah for help in being more attentive in prayer. If the Devil attempts to shame you through shortcomings in your faith, ask Allah to help purify your intentions. When you become aware that the Devil attacks the places in your faith that are the weakest, his whispers of temptation actually become doorways into how to strengthen your faith and become closer to God."
1:02:39
So far in this episode, we’ve discussed a lot of techniques and exercises to use before and during the moments of trigger. Dialoguing with your subpersonalities is something that you can perform on a regular basis as part of deep continuous healing work. As for dealing with triggers, let’s summarize the many techniques presented so far:
I’d like to add one last point: you can convert every moment of a trigger into a moment of ibadah. The beauty of our religion is that words and actions can become words and actions of worship and ibadah if we set the right intentions and niyyahs for them. Make a niyyah that your mindfulness practices and demystifying of triggers, embarking on this journey of sexual recovery and everything that you do to grow, recover and heal are all for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, and seek His help continuously. And I promise, He will facilitate things for you in ways you’d have never imagined, inshaAllah. You will notice the barakah and Divine openings in your efforts. You’ll get more motivation to move forward, and you’ll be reaping rewards in the process, inshaAllah. Now that’s a paradigm shift: everything that you’re doing on your path of healing and recovery is an act of ‘ibadah. This is time well spent!
Immediately after this episode, you will find “SOS meditations”, which are audio meditations that I have recorded that you can play whenever you’re triggered, so they can help you in the process, inshaAllah. This is based on the content discussed in this episode.
1:09:23
And with this, we have come to the end of today’s episode, which is part II in our series on porn and sex addictions. So far we’ve discussed mindfulness and conscious awareness techniques and how we can utilize them in many different ways to help us demystify our triggers. In the next episode, we will explore together withdrawal symptoms, common pitfalls and mind tricks on the path to sexual recovery, as well as helpful tips and tools to help you along the way, inshaAllah. I would like to end this episode with a beautiful quote by Brittany Burgunder, “You are the artist of your recovery, and you get to create and sculpt it any way you like.” Until next time, stay safe and healthy. This has been Waheed Jensen in “A Way Beyond the Rainbow”, assalamu alaikom wa rahmatullahi ta’ala wa barakatuh.