Rabbi Shais Taub and Eli Nash: A Conversation About Shame

all right so let's jump in um i guess uh we've spoken about some pretty intense topics you and i but maybe this uh takes the cake we'll dive right in so should i give some background to uh our audience and how this yeah tell a story yeah yeah we'll tell the story so rabbi taub has uh now now that now that it's three it's a it's a it's an entity in three fundraisers so far charity campaign and each one around this time of year and the second one which is a little over a year ago uh robbie taub held a um all-day stream-a-thon we had learning and singers and special guests so i was one such special guest you are one of the special guests sally guests so now tonight i'm returning the favor so 12 30 or so on a saturday night we begin talking and i believe i started sharing about how your book on addiction god of god of your understanding of our understanding had impacted me and while i was talking i shared about my own addiction my addiction to sex my addiction to pornography and shortly thereafter day or so later i get an anonymous email from someone it's clear from the email address and i'm sure you've seen this a number of times that the email address was created specifically for the purpose of sending me this email yes and the gentleman says you know i signed on to rabbi taub's um streamathon i was hoping to hear either a share by him or a singer ali marcus but instead i bumped into uh one of his special guests quote unquote and there you are talking about pornography and i have an addiction i've tried to stop many times i haven't shared this with anyone and he shared how it's affecting his life i recommended that we get on a call he was worried about his anonymity i said you know i don't have the technology to figure out who someone voices if you don't tell me who someone is by their voice if you don't tell me your name i don't know we could have a conversation but i feel i could be more helpful over the phone so we speak in the email actually he said as much that he was a rabbi of the community etc and he's successful and growing and everything else but this problem on the side existed and uh as we got to talking i explained to him that at some point in time this is going to have to it's going to have to talk to his wife about it he's going to have to attend therapy or meeting something you don't uh you don't get you you don't heal this on your own i shared with you my story but it's first of all in a relationship how it's going to affect number two which i guess the topic of tonight how it's gonna affect himself when he has this part of him this this part of his life that he's suddenly working on and he feels that it's a secret from the people closest to him and uh that was that conversation we continue to dialogue mostly anonymous over the course of the year and several about 10 months into our conversation i get an email one day from his real address and he tells me how he shared with his wife and somehow it even came up with his wife's family and thank god he's doing much better he's sober and in all areas of his life he feels that uh things are things are doing better so this year when you invited me again to a more prime time slot on uh your uh you did so well last year ellie we decided to bring you on during the normal hours yeah i hear the uh the i heard the numbers started rolling in as soon as i got off the phone cohen your illustrious host offered to nickname me elijah the prophet and spell prophet p-r-o ah f-i-t nice in any case i thought you that's a rabbit-shaped kind of joke in any case i'll finish the story someone is asking about asking questions there's a q a section and should you uh want to put the question in the q a section at some point in time during our conversation rabbi taub or i we will mix it into uh to our thoughts either address it directly or mix it into our thoughts in any case this year when i was invited back i thought to share the story that you know you thought we were just doing a fundraiser but obviously we're doing something good from that fundraiser came a conversation that enabled the sky to share a secret and how do i know it's good because i know from my own life what it was like to live with um with secrets for so many years the secret one of my addiction that was a secret i helped for so many years so much so to the point that my own therapist who i had opened up with about my other secret the fact that i was sexually abused as a child who was the first person i told i lied to him about the severity of my porn addiction for five years i mentioned yeah i watched from time to time but i never spoke i was too ashamed to talk about the dependency and how many times i tried to stop and what i had done to try to stop and that i couldn't etc anyways back to here i share this story again i share i share this story on the on your event this year and i got an email from someone else again how soon after the same week um you know i think we spoke on sunday night does that make sense yeah saturday or sunday night yeah yeah i yeah i think it was sunday for whatever reason i probably by tuesday i got an email from someone so a few days yeah very similar um email address is created specifically for this purpose and this person as well shares about an addiction a little bit more graphic than uh than the previous one we can choose to share not sure i'm not uh i'm not sure based on the audience whether it's it's relevant to share the extent but it was it was a sexual addiction that had progressed uh pretty significantly and he had this secret a young adult and we as well got on the phone so when i shared this with rabbi taub that you know this similar experience he said maybe there's something about our conversations that's uh inspiring people to relieve some of their shame why don't we do a uh a webinar specifically about shame and tonight we are here talking specifically about james so welcome robbie taub thank you thanks for having me okay you're the boss yes so where do i start with this uh with this um huge topic i guess where i'd like to go with this is in terms of the um let's let's talk to us what what is the jewish word for shame what is the jewish feeling what is this what is this feeling how is it different than other feelings how does judaism understand it i know from a psychology and psychology brene brown i love her um translation of shame and i'll share what she explains shame she explains shame is a fear and it's the fear of not being worthy of connection and being that humans are relational beings we can't live in a vacuum the worst punishment you can give to someone is solitary confinement most people would choose lashes over solitary confinement or extreme pain it's that disruptive to us as people so when someone has the fear that they're not being that they're not worthy of connection it's effectively emotional solitary confinement i can't really be in the same room as another person a mask of me could a fake version of me but not me and that fear of not being worthy of connect of connection is corrosive it's all uh it's all um it's all encompassing and it affects literally every year of her life that's the way she understands it so i'd love to hear from you from a jewish perspective what is the word for shame what do we how do we understand it is it viewed in the same in the same way that's my question to kick this off okay so you know it's interesting i was just having a very interesting discussion a good discussion last night with my father may he be well he was my mother and father were visiting for hanukkah and we had a very interesting discussion last night um actually i took video of it couldn't resist i said i sat up the camera in the new studio and i got a very geshmak uh half an hour podcast with my father i don't know if i'll make it public at any point but my father's a psychologist and one of the things we're talking about was general semantics which was a theory that was very fashionable back in the 60s basically about the way that people relate to words and they get trapped they get stuck with certain words and uh i won't elaborate now but uh it's worthy of another discussion another time um for the context of our present discussion i'll i'll just say like this one word can have vastly different meanings and more poignantly vastly different experiences what it's like to experience that what that which the word describes can be vastly different depending on the context so even if we'll say there's a word called shame and in the holy tongue it's called busha orbitius just knowing that word itself doesn't account for the fact that there can be a vast spectrum of experiences that all can be described with the with with that word and it can run the gamut from the most holy and sublime to the absolutely most toxic and destructive now i i understand that tonight we're probably going to focus more on the destructive kind of shame that that's john bradshaw which is another one of my favorite writers on shame refers to toxic shame and healthy shame so right yes toxic shame right so let let's just first talk about healthy shame because you know there is such a thing and it's and it's a wonderful thing and it's it's funny because i think understanding healthy shame can actually help you understand toxic shame um and i'm using brad trust terms although i'm not going to try to match his definitions but we'll use those words those are good words you you called it um you know the the feeling of being unworthy of a connection the fear of being or the fear of being unworthy of a connection and that's actually you said that's from uh brown yeah renee brown yeah yeah and that's pretty actually aptly uh a good description of what it talks about siddhis about something called yirabyus it's a an awe i don't like to use the word fear because fear is like boogie man in the closet right but a sense of awe um that hashem is so great hashem is so massive hashem is so infinite i don't want to take up space how can i take up space if hashem is the all then how can there be anything else but him i just want to dissolve into him i just want to be part of him and that that's a healthy sense of shame but let me point out a couple features of that first of all it doesn't mean that i'm bad or that i've done anything bad it's actually not even talking about me it's talking about him he's so infinite that even if i were an angel it would feel inappropriate to be a secondary existence aside from his existence so that's first term exists eurobasis yeah yeah this sounds like a good thing it is a good thing yeah so first of all it's not about me it's about hashem it's not i'm so unworthy it's that hashem is so infinite that i don't even want to take up space i don't even want to i don't want to subtract so to speak from his everythingness but a second important point to realize is that the the consequence of this this fear is not that and therefore i should get away from him and therefore i should go disconnect myself from him but rather that i should surrender and become one with him so it's not that i'm gonna allow this feeling to create a rift in the relationship to the contrary what i'm really fearing is the separation from him and that if my own is a little bit deep here if my own sense of selfhood is causing me to feel othered that i'm afraid of that i don't want that sense of selfhood to be an interruption between me just surrendering and becoming subsumed within the oneness so the end conclusion is intimacy with god not going and hiding and running and not trying and and and thinking that i shouldn't be close to god now let's flip to turn that on its head so toxic shame is the opposite of both of those things first of all toxic shame is really not about the greatness of god it's really self-obsession it's about how awful i am and it's not about and therefore i should surrender and become one with godliness it's like now i got to go and have this life that's totally separate from godliness or a part of my life that's totally separate from godliness so so you're you're taking this to a shame as disconnection from god what could it also mean from people because i'm sure that's what brene brown meant in it right the fear of not being worthy of connection you're just talking about the time the term eurobasis yeah well you're asking me specifically for the religious mystical definition so right that's that that's what i gave you but um we were saying how bernay brown's definition jives well with yeah if you apply if you apply those words to one's god concept yes right i mean if we talk about healthy shame right healthy shame is what lets me know that i'm separate from you in the sense that when i use the bathroom i use it when you and others are not in it right it's that's healthy shame when i uh go out in public i get dressed appropriately i make sure i spell um i carry myself in a certain way because that would and healthy shame is what tell someone that right don't this is a fully appropriate by yourself there's nothing terrible about doing these things just when you go out in public or whatever in certain settings you act in a certain way you carry yourself in a certain way and that's what enables connection right right for example if someone doesn't have that fear maybe they'll have a a toxic smell as an example which would make it very difficult to connect with this person because they don't have this healthy fear of taking care of some basic things the way i say toxic shame it's there's almost nothing we can do about it we can't shake it there's a stain that i can't get off there's a smell that won't be removed it just feels so at least that's the way it feels uh you know you when you're describing healthy shame or call it even you know let me let me lower the bar even and call it functional shame or shame that serves us well basically you're describing things that i do out of consideration for others so it really has nothing to do with me it's not like i think that i'm so uniquely whatever that i need to hide it from others it's more like i don't want to impose so this is similar to what i was saying before about healthy shame or holy shame where it's not that i'm so bad it's that hashem is so great so also in interpersonal relationships it's not that i think that you will be devastated if you find out that i have biological functions it's that out of politeness to you i'm not going to expose you to that you understand it's the difference between is it about me or is it about you if i'm trying to let let me change the the the example forget about uh a shame right now let's talk about pride let's talk about pride which is the opposite of shame um pride can be like let's say i dress nicely but am i dressing nicely for me am i dressing nicely for you it's an interesting question if i'm dressing nicely for me meaning i want the attention i want to be known as such a person so that's the focus is on self i'm dressing nicely because i want to show you that i respect the fact that we're meeting together and i want to be presentable and i want to make a pleasant presentation just like if i were to tidy my office if you were to come over and have a meeting with me right so i would put on a a clean tie if you're coming to have a meeting with me right so again it's not about me it's about you i'm trying to be polite i'm trying to show consideration for you it's not that i think there's anything that's wrong with me that needs to be fixed and certainly nothing that needs to be hidden it's just i'm trying to make you comfortable so that's that's called being polite and there's nothing wrong you're using a word often um when describing it things like something has to be hidden or not known or a secret i don't use the word secret but i think i didn't use the word secret but yeah that's hidden a couple of times yeah right right hidden so i i think that's an important distinction when i think back to what started this this conversation are you talking about two two emails that i received from people that they sent anonymously in other words they wanted to hide their name here they were at least they were writing the details let me just here the reason that they wrote an anonymous name wasn't because they were afraid of offending you correct it wasn't about their concern for you it was they felt they had to hide something for themselves correct and that's where you you you start to see the hallmarks of the toxicity in other words polite people don't discuss certain things with others even though everybody there's a saying everybody knows what happens after a chuppah but polite people don't discuss it there's nothing shameful about it right it's just not something it's it's private i mean we should talk about the distinction between secrecy and privacy but again going back to the examples of these emails they didn't make it anonymous because they were afraid ellie nash is going to be so shocked by what i'm going to tell him that uh i want to shield him from it they weren't trying to shield you right they felt there was something repulsive within them that needed to be shielded correct correct so yeah maybe it is appropriate to explain the difference between privacy and secrecy because i think it matches well with uh with what you're saying so private so privacy i don't know where i heard this but i've been repeating it for a while so private is something that i share only with specific people sometimes it's myself but i only share it with specific people and a secret is something that i keep from specific people so for example someone may not want their wife to know about a detail but they'd be perfectly comfortable meeting a stranger on the train and talking about this thing because whatever this this thing is that they're keeping hidden from their wife but um they won't they don't want their what they don't their wife a specific person to know so i think privacy and secrecy are polar opposites one is about who do i share this with for example it's not a secret that you and i have a bank account it's private how much is in it it's not something you don't walk around announcing it it's just not a uh a decent it's not just it's not a decent way of behaving however that private information is shared with accountants with attorneys with um you know spouses et cetera et cetera not a secret right medical information medical information it's not a secret everyone has a medical condition but it's private and you that that's why there are hipaa laws to perfect to protect the patient's pro patient's privacy and you share their this information with the people you want to share it with well we'll try not to get political and talk about hipaa not kidding i'm i'm the most analytical guy in the world ellie you couldn't even get me political understand if you tried but i don't want to challenge you the uh and secrecy on the other hand is something that we keep from other people so it promotes disconnection it's in the furtherance of this connection this has to be disconnected from that person whereas something private is this is to be shared with that person right and when you share something private with somebody that creates a bond correct and it doesn't sometimes the sharing is just oneself it's not something i share with oneself one thing i noticed uh just to add to that point is in both these emails even though they kept it private even though they kept their name hidden there was an intensity to the email meaning it was clear that it was difficult in some way for them to write and why to me why do i why do i think it was difficult is because they were sharing some of these things with themselves for the first time to clearly write it in this way and to identify it i'm sure of it that it was not you weren't just the first person they told it was probably the first time they saw those words in writing about themselves yeah about that that's the way i felt yeah yeah yeah so i interrupted you so that that's called keeping a secret from yourself correct which causes dissonance internally there are parts of myself that i can't recognize parts of myself that i can't listen to and even though it's clamoring to be heard and i'm just sort of stuffing it down and saying don't you dare speak up i don't want to hear from you right so what's what's coming up for me as you're speaking is that there are certain there's certain messages that um definitely seemed to let's let's talk about the the first secret i don't want to go to addiction because that has its own let's say the first secret the secret that i was sexually abused that was a secret that i carried from when i was eight years old until roughly 23. it was the first time i walked into a therapist's office i was dealing with issues in my business and a friend recommended i speak to this therapist i walked in when i came to his office within 10 or 15 minutes he says ali can i ask you a question i said sure he said were you sexually abused he was the first person i told he was also the first person i asked who asked the first person did you say that before yeah the first person you told was the first person who actually asked right and and the reason i say that also is because when i was 13 or 14 i got kicked out of school for getting into a fight with another student a physical fight and i guess something about the interaction or the way i explained what happened i made my teacher a little bit nervous and he in addition to kicking me out of school also wanted me to go to a therapist and i went to this therapist every week for six months maybe yeah and the therapist didn't ask and i'm i'm kind of surprised but i i guess it was also a different time right we're talking probably 1998 1999 i don't think a lot of people had the idea that these things didn't exist in a jewish community so what's you what's even to ask i'm going to ask a community a kid from crown heights whether it's sexually abused certainly these things don't exist here so and that actually brings me back well to my point is there seem to be certain things or certain messages that i received as a child that supported me keeping it a secret maybe i'm imagining it but it supported me keeping it a secret in in some way maybe it was the fact that the word sex wasn't okay to say so if i can't say sex i'm never going to say the full sentence or the full term sex abuse but there was something there there was some messaging that i felt i got that delivered the message that um this secret is one worth keeping and maybe i guess that's the point of i don't have a question there but do you agree with me on that is do you see that and maybe that's why we're doing this event this evening i guess what do i agree with what reformulation that the message that that that existed right i mean i'm referring to something specific right i grew up in crown heights i grew up in a certain and in a community in the chabad community and i felt like i got this message home the community the larger community maybe it was the united states of america that's you know i know for example for men it's not as if i was unique in that regard the average male who sexually abused doesn't talk about it to their 40s but it certainly seemed like i got a lot of messaging that supported me keeping it a secret i guess some was cultural right the wider maybe new york specifically maybe america specifically and some was definitely religious as well they seem to say hey keep this keep this a secret it's worth keeping it a secret i think there are multiple factors and they're all true and they were all part of your experience and they continue to be part of many people's experiences there are multiple factors causing people to experience the shame of a secret and and a feeling of being compelled to to keep that secret but you you want to talk specifically about the religious uh community not necessarily no more than messaging but maybe maybe we can because i get to that because okay so i i would like to go there okay so go ahead okay you have a longer beard okay so i think this is a very important issue for the religious community the jewish religious community to uh to examine obviously modesty what we call modesty is a very important value and the sanctity of human sexuality is a very fundamental concept in judaism and we want to protect that there's no question it's uh to me there's no question that that's a good thing and it's something worth protecting at the same time if people don't know how to do it well it can end up causing some un unforeseen and undesired consequences such as what you're describing as being part of your experience well we're definitely in agreement on the uh the part of keeping sexuality sacred right that that is a that's that's a value that important i think that i mean certainly it's a value within the religious community and it's clear how a value such as that could very quickly turn into a poor messaging and shameful messaging around certain topics but it's it's a value that i believe i think is important i think it's consistent with uh a lot of not only religious ideas i believe but also just seeing the recovery process of from addiction and how part of that was learning to respect sexuality and the role it has and not to not to denigrate it like it's not meaningless like okay just watch porn and it makes no difference but also not to relegate it to the secret it's it's it's more of a holy sacred um idea and i think that's the certainly what i found to be the healthiest approach for maintaining some uh [Music] sobriety in my life some periods of time away from pornography and other such uh addictions so let me describe something to you that i see as being a vicious cycle and it's certainly not unique to religious people but i think definitely being religious can exacerbate it and at the end of the day that's what i'm interested in i mean i'm interested in in not just religion but in judaism and so that's that's where i want to focus so i want to describe to you a vicious cycle and the place where i learned about this or where i first saw it described very clearly as a formula is in a book called tanya specifically in chapter 26 of tanya he describes this cycle very very clearly he says that the uh the negative force whose job is it is to [Music] resist cause it causes resistance let's call it that sometimes these the most strategic thing it can do if it's doing its job well the most strategic thing that it can do is bring on feelings of inadequacy spiritual specifically religious and spiritual inadequacy and that that causes pain and the person naturally will feel discomfort they don't want to be in pain so they will look for relief distraction and being that they have a low opinion of themselves at the moment they're not going to be that picky about the distraction they're not holding themselves to a very high standard right now after all right think about what i'm feeling shame about right now and then they'll indulge and the distraction the indulgence will provide some measure of relief and then it's immediately followed or if not immediately definitely inevitably followed by a period of even greater self-loathing which is greater pain which requires greater distraction which then brings on a greater indulgence which brings on greater self-loathing and lather rinse repeat and it just keeps going the cycle it's referring to in tanya is not a specific area right you can say with food we can say it's sex we could say with uh right specifically there would be of a sexual nature it doesn't say specifically no but um elsewhere in in the holy books it's very clear that sexuality is the area where self-consciousness is most pronounced i mean we see that from the first story of sin the story of adam and eve where immediately when they they ate from the tree of knowledge and they gained self-awareness or self-consciousness it's a sexual organ right the first symptom of self-awareness was sexual shame so we know that shame is this sexual shame because they wanted to cover their sexual organs they made yeah right they made clothing because previously they were innocent like babies there was nothing shameful to them the shalom says that before the sin of the tree of knowledge adam and eve would would look at their reproductive organs the same way you would look at the arm that you wrapped fill it on right i mean there was no shame whatsoever was just a body like an animal like we'd see an animal in the wild the same thing there's no but but but not just an animal because adam and eve were were humans and they were deep humans and they were spiritual humans they just didn't have that component of self-consciousness ingrained in their psyche yet so it was a it was a certain innocence it wasn't coming from uh being like a low-level creature they were they were geniuses but they uh they didn't have that level of self-awareness so sexuality and self-consciousness and shame are all very intertwined in the story of humanity and just going back to what i was saying if there's anything that can bring a person low to a low level spiritually it's self-awareness crippling self-consciousness so what i wanted to sort of bring up is this this vicious cycle and talk about the fact that ironically people who i have to be so careful how i say this because it is certainly a case of not wanting to throw out the baby with the bath water as we were saying five minutes ago how there's something very precious about the jewish view of sexuality that deserves to be preserved and we we don't want to lose that god forbid but there's definitely a component of and and and i want to just make it clear i do not think this is inherent in the torah's view of it but i do think it is very common in the in the imperfect human implementation of it through parents and educators and and and adolescence figuring out their own uh sexual identity and anyway what i'm describing is the fact that a person with good intentions will actually undermine their own ability to um to gain some level of sanctity in this area and and it's tragic it's it's tragic to see somebody who hates it they despise it they don't want this as part of their lives and that itself is a big part if not the main the major part of uh what's causing it to continue to be this this uh bedevilment in their life right so when you're saying that's been my experience certainly with with pornography and i wonder how much um i think there's a study out of harvard uh somebody i didn't read it but someone uh said to me that there there definitely was a correlation between heavy religious messaging and actually i would put heavy christian messaging as way more toxic in this area than heavy jewish messaging because the the christian view of a sexuality i mean there at its core is you know the priest doesn't get married it's a it's a base desire almost that doesn't need to be fulfilled by the purest amongst us whereas the jewish messaging there's from what i understand is very different message one of this is sacred but that can get a little bit distorted so anyway in this study from harvard use your terminology from from earlier you know the jewish message is it's private therefore you by sharing it you are creating intimacy as opposed to it's a shameful secret that nobody knows that i'm the only one who has these desires and i have to make sure that no one should ever find out correct so [Music] what the study said was that there there seems to be a link between that type of religious messaging or religious upbringing and addiction to pornography not in the sense that someone can't get addicted to pornography otherwise but in the sense that that's part of the cycle that you're talking about right someone acts out on it for example we're using this the classic example but of course it extends way beyond this i know people who have described addiction to food in exactly the same way all of the same the same uh same dynamics but like you said there's something uh about sex that is uniquely intertwined with shame so we'll use that as the example but it's not the only example and then after acting out on a certain whatever it is that i'm trying to stay away from after going there that feeling of shame brings me right back to that that same place so interrupting that in some way as you were saying with that cycle interrupting that in some way is probably the most important thing one can do to relieve themselves of a lot of the power that the addiction has right here i am doing something the drive doesn't necessarily come from a shameful drive to drive i was there but now there's this messaging that i bought into cultural religious all wrapped together maybe some familial and and blame it on the tree of knowledge i'm saying right even without culture even without anybody giving you faulty messaging there's a certain existential issue that is that is universal to the human condition which comes it comes from the tree of knowledge correct it's part of being human correct what we're trying to do i guess with this is can we offer a message and if i can dissect when i said so what you said earlier it almost seems like there's two choices with sex either it's a secret that no one can talk about it or it's strewn about haphazardly and everything goes and maybe there's the the other message which is probably the healthiest for uh certainly healthiest for mankind but certainly the healthiest when someone is dealing with shameful secrets or addiction etc is can i view this as something sacred to be protected and shared with someone private and if something happens that i don't want to happen okay so that's human nature and we deal with it but we don't allow ourselves to enter that cycle of of shame that you spoke about in chapter 26 of time right exactly and and i i just want to speak to something that you mentioned very much in passing and maybe ask you to amplify upon it obviously we're not oblivious to the fact that there are many many people and there are movements who will specifically take the approach that you mentioned in passing where the way they interrupt the shame cycle is just to tell you hey whatever you want to do is fine don't worry about it it's all good right and i'm not saying that i don't think you're saying that but i think it's important to address that approach because you know you have both extremes there everything is shameful and nothing is shameful absolutely right okay so i think before we talk about the the middle path i think we should speak a little bit about the extremes i can talk even my own um my own experience with with healing uh from um addiction to pornography which i see are some of the questions as well as a possible uh um be released and how that dovetails nicely with with this so first i did have that um incredible shame around it and my instinct was to throttle away like okay it's fine it doesn't matter it doesn't matter it doesn't matter it doesn't matter everything's fine everyone does it uh you look at the statistics so it be so where did the shame the shame was still playing a role it's very interesting the shame wasn't that i was doing it when my therapist brought it up yeah i watched pornography everyone watches porn oh but look at this look at the data right it's the most watched right does anyone not shop on amazon well more people shop on amazon right there's more visitors to pornography so yes i had these things what i wasn't comfortable sharing what was a shameful secret that i was dependent on that i couldn't stop meaning in that process of saying everything goes then it like it owned me in some way so then i went to the other stream and okay i have to shut this down and i get into recovery and this became something that's i can't think of thought i can't go there i have to do everything to prevent um like i put it i went somewhat to the other extreme and uh i wouldn't say it was so long ago a few years ago it dawned on me that sex in its natural form sexuality and natural form wants to be expressed in its purest form and its original form wants to be expressed with intimacy and somewhere that gets interrupted it wouldn't be very surprising in my case if it got interrupted and the way i was introduced to sexuality it was anything but intimate it was forced it was a secret it was all of those things so then sex and intimacy became two separate things two separate tracks and many people who are addicted to pornography will tell you that who they are intimate with they have difficulty having sex with and who they have sex with they have difficulty having intimacy with so it almost becomes two parallel tracks that that run so how would that express itself by specifically right wanting a non um why is pornography almost more attractive than actual person because there's no intimacy it's a screen there's zero intimacy here so it's sexuality and these same people with their own spouses who there may be full attraction and everything else but there's intimacy there's a closeness it's very difficult for them to engage in sexuality i think some people call it have you heard of the madonna complex the various descriptions yeah yeah yeah that it's either they view a man either views a woman as the mother or a sex object right so this this idea and and i think that by the way i i wasn't gonna i i this wasn't on the agenda for tonight but being that being getting married doesn't automatically cure people of their issues so there are plenty of people who are married and have these issues and their spouses are absolutely beside themselves and i don't want to i think that that's worthy of a whole podcast unto itself but i think it's important to note what you're saying is that when this toxic shame reaches this particular level of disorder there's such a a complete separation between sexuality and intimacy that um and we'll see the two has two sides of the same coin like going to that extreme of either it's got to be like in the closet tucked away or it's got to be like anything goes there are two sides of the same coin right right the the the extreme secrecy and the extreme licentiousness openness anything goes are two sides of the same coin and neither of those sides have anything to do with intimacy and bonding and love both of those brought me shame in different ways that's what i'm talking about one was the shame of the secret right that i'm i'm engaging in this and this is something that should be non-existent right you know as a teenager or yeshiva i'm giving all this messaging around how these are the biggest sins in the world then i say okay i can't maintain this so i go to the other extreme now my shame is what that is controlling me that i'm dependent on it that once i go there i can't stop thinking about it and it's not that i'm doing it it's that i can't stop doing it and then i'm losing confidence in myself because i tell myself i want to stop and three or four days later i'm right back there sometimes three or four hours later i'm right back there so the shame is it's getting me from one way or another it's getting me and then eventually trying to bring a place where okay can these two things be in harmony harmony can sexuality and intimacy be in harmony where it's like oh it's a beautiful um sacred uh idea or thing only to be shared with my significant other in an intimate manner right and then this i think this is the middle ground in more ways than one that we're talking about because that is that's some of the criticism we can get for doing something like this which i'm sure is is also the reason why it's important why is maybe not so much me but why is rabbi tao talking on a podcast about sexuality around shame around secrets okay if it needs to happen one-on-one i have these conversations one-on-one why do we have to talk about these things i think it's the obvious that's that's the obvious question and i and the shocking answer is because it is an absolute plague i i i don't want to frighten anybody and anyone who's not exposed to what i'm exposed to i'm happy for you but the degree to which people are struggling with these issues and you can blame it on internet i i'm not interested and honestly to me that's not even important right now the the fact is the the fact of the matter is the degree to which people are struggling with this issue and the degree to which is causing them disorders in their intimate lives marital problems which then become parenting problems and children growing up without the the support and the love and the stability that they need it is an absolute crisis it is an absolute crisis and that's why we're talking about it publicly among other reasons as well right because i also believe that it is life-saving and there are plenty of people who are so ashamed they're not going to reach out to anyone so we're hoping that somebody will come across this video and i have no doubt ellie that right now somebody's either watching on zoom or they'll watch later on on youtube and they're sitting there full of absolute self-loathing hating themselves feeling so alone so isolated so separate from everyone in their life it's separate from from their own maker and if if they can just see us talking and feel that there's a place for them in this world and there's redemption and there's a future and there's there's hope and there's a life then i consider pikachu to put this it's a life-saving measure to put out this this discussion on a public forum can i challenge it just a little bit yeah be my guest would you not if it wasn't a life saving measure if it wasn't that extreme but it was something important is there's is there some validity in demonstrating um handling the topic of sexuality with some with a measure of uh for both sides right we spoke about the two extremes but handling the topic with some measure of discretion and class for lack of a better word i hope that we are dealing with it right now no meaning independent of the emergency independent of emergency is it just to have the conversation meaning how did why am i saying this because part of how we got to this emergency i i know some people will like to blame it on the on the internet but it's not only the internet the the part of how we we got to this emergency is by there being message heavy messaging amongst other things right you spoke about this is human nature starting from uh the the uh first person first couple but part of it is this messaging where sexuality is one or the other right it seems to be the only the only two messages one here so is there a value independent of oh there's a true side situation is there value just in demonstrating a way of talking about these subjects and hopefully we're doing it with some discretion in some class some attending to it as something sacred but not as something that needs to be kept secret i hear what you're saying in other words there's so much content available out there that will tell you there are no limits everything goes there's no such thing as shame just get over it there's plenty of that messaging correct and there's also plenty of messaging that'll tell you that this is something shameful and to be kept kept secret but where is a sane voice to be found that will offer a way a a manageable and and wholesome way forward in this area you're saying it's a rarity that it's a rarity to be able to hear people talking in this way so maybe there's there's there's value just in putting out this conversation with this tone correct and the fact that there's an emergency right as you say there are many many many people of all shapes and colors and who who struggle in this area and or who know someone who struggles in this area and you know we speak about shame i've had women email me or message me um sharing with me the shame they have that their husband struggles in this area that's what i was thinking who can they talk about right i was touching upon that earlier we kind of drifted away from it right i don't want to focus strictly on that shame because ellie i want to tell you something i don't know who's watching this but i can tell you something funny it's not funny it's tragic it's heartbreaking the whole subject is tragic and heartbreaking but i can tell you something peculiar about people who call me about um these issues i don't know about your experience but my experience is that if somebody will call me about somebody who is probably what we would call a sex addict 80 percent of those calls are from the spouse right um is that my experience i mean that has been that's that's that's my experience 80 of those calls for help are not from the identified addict but rather from the spouse right who's facing feelings of rage of betrayal of isolation of loneliness of inadequacy like like you were saying before i i'm not good enough and and maybe they've even been told by people they've confided in well if you do more to uh to keep his attention to validate him i i it always breaks my heart when i it's when i hear again i don't want it to seem like this is this is always gender specific but very often it is a woman who's calling about a husband who's very uh immersed in these things and she feels very inadequate and she's even been told by some people that she's confided in that really ultimately it's her that if she wore more this or more that he wouldn't be an addict which to me is patently ridiculous but i i think if if the demographic who watches this video is similar to the demographic of people reach out to me what i'm saying is i bet you it's possible there's a lot of spouses watching this video right now possible and i think although i hadn't planned on it but it came up a little while ago i i think it's worthy to speak about because i i i there's such a you talk about shame talk about shame the internalized shame the the the the intimate wound of being betrayed in that way and that if i were only this or if i if i were only that i wouldn't be worthy of rejection my spouse wouldn't pay a story yeah i'd say personal story so one of the things that when i was steeped in addiction it was a video i came across um i haven't seen it in years but i'll never forget it it was a video i came across on youtube where um i think it was titled something like why i stopped um being filmed in porn videos or something like that and a woman was explaining why she why she left the industry and she said that she she was in the industry for years she was in a committed relationship and she one day walked in on her boyfriend viewing pornography and she said until that moment she thought i'm more attractive than the other than the other woman that's why other people watch me and here you have right and here you have one person who i'm choosing to actually be with me in a in a real way not for the money i i really love him and she says and i walk in i see him watching pornography he said then she said it was at that moment that i realized that there's something much deeper going on here and that many people are using the pornography and this is some of what i'm sharing earlier specifically as a way to avoid any intimacy so it has nothing to do with attraction or wow not attraction it has to do with it has to has to do with avoiding what what we talked about earlier with natural ways we've discussed this before we you and i have discussed this topic many times i've never heard that from you before that is incredibly powerful when i saw this very powerful for me when i saw this this was right around the time that i was coming to terms with my own addiction and starting to talk to a therapist about it and i saw this film or this interview and i've never gone to look for it again because i don't have a good healthy way of looking for it and i'm bumping it wrong it's not the kind of thing you want to google for how do you write how do i start searching i've never gone to look for it again i never got to look at it and nobody out there needs to google it you heard the bottom line ellie nash told you to take away you don't need to you don't need to look for it correct so the um that that message to me i remember hitting me hard and saying like wow there's something else going on here it's not just it's it's not just the sexual drive there's something else that this is being used for and it allowed me to peel much deeper and maybe i'm tempted to go into some of that subject because we're talking heavily about pornography and someone asked the question you know how can i how can i get free from it or how can one get free from it i think it's it's useful to um maybe talk about unless you wanna before we go in there because that's the whole conversation its own right do you wanna share some other thoughts on on what we're talking about here around the spouse i wanna continue this again this is not where i thought we were gonna go but i think it's really really important i don't think our conversations ever go where we think it's no they never do nando photofast said there are two fabregans the fabregan you plan and the fabrega that actually happens and then there's a third and if i bring in people say say happened so one one point i think needs to be repeated is that somebody in a relationship with somebody else who's struggling in these areas as hard as this is to accept and maybe it's no consolation but at least cognitively you may be able to wrap your mind around this this is the very opposite of intimacy and it doesn't make it feel like less of a rejection or less of a betrayal but um i think for for quote unquote normal people or people who are experiencing their sexuality in a normal way it's it's impossible not to equate the two and i think it needs to be understood that um i mean your example was a such a powerful example of the fact that it's not about you aren't desirable enough it's not about that you haven't done something or or something you should have done more or less or sometimes they think if i would have been tougher and meaner and made you know more ultimatums or if i would have been sweeter and more uh and and uh more attractive or if i would have done this or would have done that at the end of the day what the person's looking for is not something that you would want as another human being to be the source of what they're looking for is to use a cliche term the avoidance of intimacy and i i think i i think for someone who's in a relationship with someone who's struggling in these areas it's almost impossible to to wrap your head around it's like well why does that person want intimacy elsewhere and the answer is no it's not that they're looking for intimacy elsewhere they're looking for anything but intimacy which is why they can't bond properly with their with their spouse it's what what my sponsor tells me all the time reminds me over and over and over he says sexual addiction is an intimacy disorder intimacy disorder and intimacy disorder all the time your pizzas over and over and what you're saying matches well with uh his message so that that's one thing i think another thing that um that emerges from this from this uh insight or from this realization is you know people are asking i see in the q a how do you avoid it how do you get away from it and you know there's a there's a big unspoken part of this which is not about how do you get away from this bad thing okay fine so you'll get away from it but let's say even you're free from this negative distraction in your life how do you become open and available to the real intimacy that a human being was designed by god to seek out so if th there's go away from bad and do good so even let's say you were able to get away from the pornography are you able to experience intimacy with a human being and that's a whole other discussion that people aren't really prepared to have they want to talk about the this demon okay we could talk about that but i don't think you could you can have a a a productive discussion about that in a vacuum devoid of the discussion of well well what's the real thing that this is substituting what's the real thing that this is blocking off and getting in the way of i often find myself uh sharing this idea with people who are in recovery from addiction have already begin to um learn to live a life free of pornography and someone asked a question the way they worded it kind of you know i mean i've um is pornography something i can ever get out of right so like the way they worded it there was a time in my life when i watched pornography every day then there was a time my life where i watched pornography every couple of weeks and every week and outside then every month then every few months and then it got longer the times between got longer and longer and longer right until it became years but it's not about if if i watch tomorrow did suddenly uh okay everything is that the f the five or so years that i didn't watch like that's nothing that's meaningless i didn't get out of pornography so i when we think about it in those ways it's one reason an addiction they say one day at a time it becomes this feat that's very difficult to accomplish no one's saying like you're never going to drink wine again in your whole life if any addict thinks like that there's no way there's no way because you start thinking of the most stressful moments of your life and this was your companion this was your friend this was there this was like the the the wine the alcohol was something that got this person through so now you're trying to get to a place where you're not having such intense downs so someone doesn't have to go there but not thinking in terms of lifetimes or you know decades it's one day at a time today my intention is to stay away from pornography and tomorrow i'll wake up and i'll do the same thing all over again and if god forbid i slip one day that's that day and the next day i wake up with the same intention as a as as as a prior day i think going in with that mindset is one that can get people in there but before i went to that i was talking about the fact that we're speaking about shame we're speaking about secrets but i don't want to pretend that okay so someone is in this situation they have this secret for a long time this person who emailed me and suddenly he shares it with me we got on the call the shame is gone twenty percent then he shares his first name with me now it's at forty percent he shares his full name and his address and now it's at a hundred percent the secret's gone not exactly not exactly and i can say enough for my case there was a toxic level of shame that was destroying me when i wasn't talking about it and there was nothing i can do to to make it better and once i started talking about it now there was the potential to start healing it but it didn't go away in one day just because we start we start just because we start talking about it and i did want to just in case we're over focusing on secrets and someone here is coming feeling that shame and they're saying but i don't have that secret anymore i've already spoken why do i still feel the shame it takes longer than just sharing the secrets the secret makes it impossible to we have have you heard this saying i don't know where it comes from rip chase you can't save your chocolates on your face on the same day i think you're on me i can't read this do i have to unmute oh perfect yeah yeah have you heard that sink yeah yeah i mean what it means uh you know for those who haven't heard it before is that and the way you're using especially is to remain healthy the process of maintaining good spiritual health is going to require continual embracing of him of humility and uh as soon as as the pride gets in the way and the the the sense of you know terminal uniqueness and somehow i'm different or my story is different then uh things start to unravel i mean i i said this earlier but i'm going to say it again in a little bit different terms you know i was speaking before about the the the guilt cycle where a person feels self-loathing and then they indulge in pleasure in order to cover up to distract themselves from that pain sometimes the pain is not even guilt sometimes the pain is just the pain of being in existence separate from god which which pain specifically the pain that we're seeking to numb right meaning it's unavoidable it's it's it's an existential fact that we are created beings and as created beings we are we are the creation not the creator and hold on though but god is all oneness and if he's oneness how can there be a me and a hymn and that puts us in a very unusual predicament and it feels funny to be a something we should be at one with the everything and that itself can be the the discomfort that we're seeking to numb and that's why often we talk about in recovery that the ultimate solution is a vital spiritual experience and a relationship with a higher power because really what is the addiction an attempt to to numb it's the the pain of of separation from god so if a person has religious based shame obviously that's an even more acute exacerbated feeling of separation from god but what i'm saying is even when a person is a toddic even when he's holy and he's doing good things there still can be a sense of existential pain that would it could drive someone to self-medicate through through numbing behaviors and that's where um constant humility and and and surrender play play a role because as as soon as that that self consciousness creeps back in that sense of separation that sense of ego it can really it can scream out for for numbing it's it's enough of an interruption it's enough of annoying feeling that will scream out to be numbed and if it becomes aggravating enough who knows what a person will do to distract themselves from it and then once they do it if they're entering that cycle that you spoke about earlier and from there it's off to the race yeah because then my selfhood becomes even more shameful yeah yeah so what is it so so what is the the practical recommendation for someone struggling with debilitating shame i think we we kind of spoke about the first part which maybe if i can just say it succinctly is find someone safe to share the secret with it doesn't mean to get from the rooftop and and blur it right i didn't start by talking about my porn addiction on the ted stage i started in a therapist office who was a therapist i knew for five years and there was certain safety and this was something risky for me that i was talking about it and once i got to the point that i was able to release some of that shame with him then it became so forth right but that seems to be a good first step for someone who's who's struggling with with shame yeah what's beyond that well you know we've been kind of alluding to it but we haven't said it clearly we have to adopt the healthy definition of human sexuality and of humanity we have to adopt a healthy working definition someone say humanity because this is more broad than sexuality for sure sexuality is the is the chief symptom of self-awareness like i was talking about before the story of adam and eve but it's really about self-awareness it's about self-consciousness it's about about what am i as an existence it's deep stuff and it's it's it's it's universal it's ubiquitous it's the human condition but this is something interesting you're saying you're saying the human condition is shame yes so it almost becomes if the human condition is shame the the uh the well ellie could ask you a question does the pain is uh does the chair have self-consciousness no no because it has no consciousness right that's human right the human condition the fear what is shame the fear of not being worthy of connection right what is the area we can most connect on yeah yeah that's the irony yeah yeah correct so the thing that really you and i could bond most you know we could really really confide in each other and really become bonded and trusting each other and and really validating each other is the fact that we both will never tell each other that right right so the i in in some way right it's been i guess in my life it's been somewhat of my story right that i have this secret the secret is let's talk about the the we're talking about pornography the sexual shame so i have this secret i begin to talk to a therapist the first recommendation for my therapist is let me introduce you to another one of my clients who has the same problem over lunch with him we connect right so there's a connection that's formed because of the fact that i have this problem he introduces me to a group a 12-step group and now i'm going to have 12-step group and some of my best friends and closest relationships are formed over there and then beyond that i begin to speak about this share about this and it becomes an additional source of connection that i have with many people where someone who i don't know a stranger is listening to chase and i speak and decides that he's going to make an email address to talk with me and that becomes a connection i wouldn't recognize him if i passed him on the street but some of we had very intimate conversations the irony yeah the irony so that's the solution we that's that's the solution the solution is in the shame well the the problem is always the solution any good answer any authentic answer is a repurposing of the original question that's how jewish learning works that's why the bigger the question the better the answer explain the the you know if i'll i'll speak a little bit uh rabbinic for a second there's a jerusalem talmud and a babylonian talmud and if there's ever a dispute between them meaning they come to different conclusions about the law the accepted practice for the millennia has been that we rule according to the babylonian talmud does they argue more well do they argue more yes no is it because they argue more that that's the accepted because the babylonian talmud style is much more convoluted with a lot more a lot more dialectic you know point counterpoint refutation counter refutation so therefore its conclusions are seen as more decisive and to bring that back to here what we're talking about so anytime you have a problem the the real resolution of the problem is not to get rid of the problem bury the problem or figure out some smart way how it's oh don't worry you can you can ignore it no it's to identify how the bigger the problem the bigger the potential there is to get some productivity out of it and that the whole thing is saying over here the fact that there's this problem that they're wrestling with in the babylonian talmud is exactly what gives it the strength that's more forceful and more impactful than jerusalem talmud right so i'll bring that to here yeah when i'm faced with a challenge oftentimes i'll say i i got over my porn addiction i got over i i uh you know i'm no longer dependent on porn the way i used to be i can certainly tackle this whatever this is right so was the problem that had me feeling intense shame intense unworthiness intense inadequate inadequacy and is probably a larger storehold of confidence than anything else in my life yeah and and even deeper than that i would say that the thing that caused you the most isolation has become the source of meaningful human relationships okay so i think if i i'm thinking if i was listening to this because oftentimes what i like putting out there is what i would have liked to hear when i was in the place of the people that i think i'm speaking to now right so so paint the picture ellie paint the picture the guy who's sitting here right now watching this or the man or the woman who's watching this right now with headphones on god forbid anyone should know with their hand ready to you know click to some other browser tab that god forbid anyone should see what they're watching right probably even more shameful than the schmutz that the right the god forbid anyone should know it's like the people were more embarrassed to walk into a 12-step meeting than than into a black house right but right so paint the picture describe the feeling right now the person who is in crisis and who's watching this and who's desperate go ahead just describe it right when i think about where i wa right so when i think about where i was the oftentimes when was when did the demoralization completely set in was after i'd made a commitment to so the cycle would start right i do something for whatever reason some discomfort some boredom some success something goes well and i'm feeling good and i don't know what to do with these feelings this brings you back to baseline whatever it is now i'm in the cycle okay i feel bad that i did this so what i do what i feel bad i do more of it and until it kind of reaches a breaking point and i say i'm done i'm never watching this again sometimes what i'm done looks like and it has been in my case taking a laptop smashing it and throwing it down a garbage shooting building okay i'm done never watching this again i'll never bring a laptop in my house i'm figuring out something else somehow a week or two later i'm back that feeling the first time is so demoralizing there was a commitment a promise i'm not going to do it there was an action and the the i use i like that word demoralization for because it's so hopeless feeling it's like this is never going to end could i have had more conviction than this i'll tell you even a better story i've shared this uh on a number of occasions i got an eye infection once and when i went to the doctor the doctor said that i have something called a corneal ulcer and he didn't say this but right away i said i have a cordial ulcer because i watch too much pornography and he said it's sometimes resistant to antibiotics god is punishing me i need to see you every single day for the next 14 days let's make appointments and the reason is i need to see how it reacts to the antibiotics i give you because if it doesn't respond well it could cause blindness when he said that i was convinced i am going blind in one eye because i've watched too much pornography not maybe not a theory in that moment i felt it to the core of my being so i walked out of that office committed to never watch porn again two or three days imagine you were highly motivated at that moment right it's not even the word there's just there was nothing that was going to in that moment there was absolutely nothing that was going to get in the way so moments like this right leaving that doctor's office or smashing the laptop and throwing it down the garbage i'm done i'm not even bringing one back into my house and then a week or two later going back to that same place there's a feeling of uselessness of hopelessness of inadequacy of i'm never going i i can't figure anything i won't be able to figure anything out this is something that i said i'm not going to do and here i am back again in this place and that's that's what would i even be on something like this i'm probably a step before being on something like this to be honest right if i had a destination i had an address maybe i'm feeling like this i'm probably not on something like this maybe i'm on the recording of something like this [Laughter] ellie when you talk about that you know the the diagnosis and by by the way i i'm assuming i mean this was years ago so your eyes are okay now so yes two or three days later i got the doctor said it's it's reacting well i don't have to see you tomorrow i can see you in two three days and i didn't do 14 days like clockwork we set it up let's say i saw him five times over the next couple of weeks and it responded well and when it responded well with the corneal also going so did my conviction and i was back to porn in a week and that's the cycle that's exactly the cycle it feels so different you feel like different boys like here i'm con i'm committed i'm never doing it it's out with the trash and i'm back to it a week later because i'm in the the cycle you you spoke about chapter 26 yep yep so somebody's out there right now and they've experienced this ultimate let down this self-betrayal um and they're feeling what disgusted with themselves feeling hatred there's a lot of self-hate there's a lot of self-loathing there's a lot of um the the inadequacy that's like i can't do anything like i'm i'm just useless even if there's an area of my life where i'm seeing something productive there's like if only this person knew how incapable i am of just functioning like just a basic person i've my word doesn't mean anything nothing means anything nothing my commitments mean nothing i'm just there's a there's a definitely an emptiness and it's a sense of um utter loneliness i think this is important for another reason to to talk about this from a little bit different angle and that is you know sometimes not too many of my colleagues because i think most rabbis who are who deal with people understand what we're talking about at least on some level at least on some level they understand that the shame is part of the problem but but some people don't get it and and they'll ask me like you know aren't you afraid for instance people ask me aren't you afraid you're normalizing this you're causing people to take it more lightly and shouldn't you rather you know put the fear of god into them tell them how bad it is and my response is that they know how bad it is it's not that they didn't learn in relationship about the gehennam of zeralavatola and all these things are true we know they're true that's not the issue here the issue is my question is do you want results do you want results i'm saying to to someone who's asking me or making a religious argument about are we god forbid speaking about these matters in a cavalier way and my response is do you want results you want more of this behavior or less of it if you're legitimately on the side of torah which doesn't it doesn't like these behaviors we know that god frowns upon this okay we know that this is undesirable so if you really think that it's in this undesirable you you should want less of it what if i were to tell you that talking about this in a way that exacerbates people's religious shame surrounding it causes more of it right there's more of it so then what do you want you want to be able to talk about how bad it is or do you want there to be less of it in the world and in people's lives right right what's what's interesting is that i'm at a place now where i have much less shame much less fear much as a fear of punishment or any of these other things if i got a corneal ulcer today even if i went back somehow to watching porn on a regular basis the thought wouldn't cross my mind that this is here as a punishment from god it's no longer my relationship with with god however um that like i said kept me in it and then the opposite messaging of it's okay you did it for certain reasons find instead of asking you know gabor mate says a famous addiction author and addiction instead of asking why the addiction ask why the pain and he has a method called compassion inquiry it's almost like instead of asking what's wrong with you what's wrong with you that you watch porn ask what's right with you that you watch porn what's right what's right about the portal well what's right about it is that when i'm feeling lonely and depressed and anxious the porn suits that oh great do you want me to give you a better a better technique than porn for loneliness and anxiety and everything else and it'll work and you won't have the the shame and all the negative side effects and here are some things i can recommend for example uh a meeting right a 12-step meeting is much is much a much better and long-term cure for loneliness than is watching porn so i'm not sitting here anymore with i'm a terrible person who's going to lose my eyesight if i watch porn and when i believe that what did i do i stopped for a period and i went right back to it instead i'm like hey there's this problem that porn was solving for me and i found a better method so now it comes up okay so loneliness i know what to deal with it is porn an option it's certainly an option it's not a good option anymore it doesn't have to be this this massive um monster hanging over my head and when it was it didn't work but i do want to dig in on that because i wonder if there's a difference between let's say someone who's addicted to pornography who's kind of crossed that threshold or someone who's not and this i'm not 100 sure but i think i heard this from i'm i'm sensitive to quote them but i think it was from guard your eyes that i heard this concept so guard your eyes is an organization that helps people with pornography with who struggle with pornography and if i recall what they told me and maybe they still do this or don't when someone comes into them the first thing they want to understand is what are we dealing with here are we dealing with someone who struggles with this from time to time whatever you know every so often is up in this place and is looking for a little bit of strength to not go there or are we dealing with someone who's in that spiral in the addiction spiral and if i recall correctly the messaging is somewhat different so the messaging to someone and i'm not saying this is right i'm just i'm i'm actually asking for your input on it what you think about this the messaging to someone who hasn't crossed a certain threshold is a little bit stronger and saying do you you understand the sins you understand the the spiritual calamity that's being created by you engaging in this behavior do you understand the the risks you're taking spiritually and physically and we can talk about some of the physical symptoms of it right i think the gemara says right the the breath gets bad and like teeth fall out and whatever right there's some physical symptoms that are connected these things also so they'll start sending some of those messaging and it'll be effective but for the addict it's counterproductive it does exactly the opposite so the messaging has to be somewhat different taylor does that sound does that sound right i mean is there is there room ever for this tough hard-nosed approach never make categorical statements that's that's in everybody yeah never say never are there people who respond well to the fire and brimstone i'm sure there are i'm sure there are that's not the question the question is what if you are such a person who knows the fire and brimstone and you keep on experiencing these terribly demoralizing shocking baffling self-betrayals and it's like what else do i need what motivation am i lacking here what clarity am i lacking why am i back here again so is it that we need to scare you more is it that we need to impress upon you the destruction that you are causing even more is is that what's lacking ask yourself you're saying that message has already been sent those things exist people can read those books it's very clear what it says if someone has gone through the system of yeshiva they've heard enough of those that if that didn't if that hasn't done the job doubling down on it is not going to do it if anything it's going to send you in the opposite direction right well that's that that's what i'm saying that do you do we think that we haven't been articulate enough in describing how bad it is maybe there's somebody maybe there's a tiny shinishbo somebody who was raised completely outside of judaism somebody who's raised completely outside of morality and they have no clue okay so we gotta clue them in we gotta tell them how bad it is but what about the guy who knows how bad it is and be precisely because he knows how bad it is every fall is accompanied by deep deep shame and self-hatred which ultimately brings him back to the escape the numbing the distraction of more of the same stuff that he's ashamed of so rather than asking me is there a place for more fire and brimstone because for that sure there's a place for it how big of a place how many people i don't know that's not that's not my concern ask me instead what if you're a person what if you're watching this now and you know all the fire and brimstone and you're still coming back to these um terrible moments of shocking self-betrayal is it do you really honestly believe that you just need more hell fire you need more fear of god or is it perhaps that you need a different approach altogether and is is it is is the other approach if someone's saying this is okay i'm going to lie to someone to make them feel a little bit better about the situation no god forbid we never lie to anybody and if anyone would push me to the wall and say how bad is this sin i wouldn't lie to them it's terrible it's you wanna you wanna know how bad it is i mean it's it's i mean as far as polluting someone's soul as far as causing numbness to everything that's good and holy there's nothing more devastating than these types of sins it's absolutely a soul killer but it's precisely because this stuff is so devastating that driving the point home is such an ill-advised idea again let me let me repeat something i've said if i really hate this stuff which supposedly or ostensibly i should because i we know that hashem hates this stuff we know that when when bielem wanted to trip up the jews he told balak this whole story in the book of numbers he said look if you really want to get the the jews on god's bad side trip them up with promiscuity because alakayam shall israel say nazimahu the god of the jews hates lewdness he hates it okay so you're going to really push me to the wall and say how bad is this stuff the worst the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst precisely because this stuff is so bad i'd like to see less of it in the world i'd like to see less of it in people's lives and if merely doubling down like you're calling it on the severity of it is actually causing a cycle that's making more of it then i think we have to be humble enough to stop and back away and say hold on a second is there another approach that's going to be more productive like if you're not making money but that approach has to be true but that approach has to be speaking of course it has to be true so so what is the truth that we're saying we're just not paying attention to the fire and brimstone or we're saying i i think that part of the messaging when i think about it it's not that i need to be reminded now of how much it messes me up i don't even think of it in terms of um a punishment like it's in and of itself if i go there i'm i'm numb i'm disconnected i'm not feeling good um it the the consequence is you know embedded in the action there's nothing to uh i i don't need you know i don't need a an outside force well i don't separate those two things ellie i don't separate it because yeah it doesn't have to be a lightning bolt from the sky divine punishment could be just a feeling of loneliness and shame and disconnectedness so it doesn't have to be a lightning bolt from the sky right you ate too much and you feel full there's no uh we're going to give a punishment to this guy he's going to gain success what i'm saying is everybody knows the negative consequences right and in this particular case but it's not irredeemable as one it was white because i think that's the separation that was a distinction for me there was something about it is that this sin is somehow in a special category right that can't really be forgiven so it's compared to murder or whatever else it can't really be forgiven and as a result there's there's no redemption for it there's nothing there for that point and therefore i'm doomed anyway keep going so yeah so live it up if i were a thief i would be redeemable but this this is irredeemable and and and that's what i'm telling you you know what we see from the story of adam and eve that their first experience with self-consciousness was sexual shame and they wanted to make clothing to cover their reproductive organs sexuality and self-consciousness are so intertwined they're so intertwined so you know it's like the uniqueness quote unquote of this of this sin where is that coming from the uniqueness of it like why is this so uniquely irredeemable so uniquely um independent so so what not to use the word irredeemable we don't want to use that word no but the feeling is that it's irredeemable oh right the feeling is yeah yeah the feeling is why does this feel so uniquely irredeemable oh right okay i didn't hear that word feeling yeah i didn't say the word but that's right context here why does it feel so uniquely irredeemable why doesn't it feel like being a a thief why does it feel different the reason i think is that our sexuality is so tied up with our essence it's like right there that's right it's like here my whole sense of self my whole sense of self this is this is deeper this isn't just a behavior this isn't just what i do this is who i am this is my identity i i i know a lot of people i'm judging from the q a and it's probably uh um representative of what people are thinking when they're watching this they want more practical guidance and here's the thing practical guidance okay maybe at the end we'll give 30 seconds practical guidance but if you've spent hundreds of hours trying to figure this thing out so just spend a couple more hours with me and ellie listening to another way of thinking about it you've already spent hundreds of sleepless nights thousands of sleepless nights trying to figure this thing out slow down a second listen to another way of thinking about it think about it like this again you know if it were if the if the if i were a thief if i were a liar if i were uh you know uh dishonest in business all these things are are shameful they're all uh you know that none of these things are things that you would you would brag about but there's no question there's a certain unique feeling of of shame when it comes to anything that has to do with sexuality right okay so here's the thing self-concept and sexual identity according to torah are completely intertwined before adam and eve ate from the tree of knowledge they had no self-concept and they had no sexual identity those two things came on exactly at the same time one being a symptom or a manifestation of the other so what does me know sexual identity would they not have children of course that's what to be celibate is not to have no sexual identity it's to be in flight from your sexual identity no to have children and to reproduce and to be married and yet it's nothing you think about so much you know it's like right it's like breathing there's nothing you know are there people who secretly go in the corner and take sips of breath you know they're breathing nobody has shame about the fact that they breathe although when somebody feels really deep shame they might hate themselves for even breathing the air of this planet right if you hate yourself enough i don't even deserve to breathe the same air as normal human beings okay but again that comes from the sense of self-consciousness that comes from the sense of of hyper awareness of one's ego and generally people don't automatically by default have shame about the fact that they breathe although they do have def by default automatically shame about their sexuality why because that's something that we equate not just we equate it it is it is interlinked with with self-awareness that's why and not to get into a whole other discussion but you know you you you ask you know what what's worse to get beaten up or to be sexually abused i was going to go there actually so okay so you know what so then let's do it because so i mean i've made this point before and actually for myself it's one of the things that's given me appreciation um for the sacredness and unique um connection to our identity that our sexuality holds because when i heard people's stories you know for a while i was doing a lot of work and speaking on child sex abuse and oftentimes i hear people say something like you know i had a pretty good childhood i wasn't sexually abused you know you know i was never sexually abused so everything was okay or someone would say i i was sexually abused right like and so what is this some like unique pain that sexual abuse has that nothing else has right like what about growing up in poverty what about growing up in a war zone what what about growing up with starvation but being molested what about like category or what about or you know you mentioned being beaten up and the answer is yes and no and here's here's here's what i came to and tell me what you think is that suppose someone had a good childhood okay normal right nothing attentive parents loving parents on one occasion for whatever reason okay their uncles in the house and beats the kid up 20 years later you run into the kid how's he doing i think he'll be doing okay as long as there's no physical like a broken arm or something that hasn't recovered there's this moment in childhood that's not pleasant possibly traumatic but by and large you're going to see a healthy well-adjusted person they've had a good childhood and they have this one occasion of getting beaten up whereas in my experience meeting people it wasn't my experience i was sexually abused tens of times so it's not my ex that's not my experience but in speaking to people who had wonderful lives they were good and then one day jogging for example a woman is raped other than that they had a charmed life but suddenly it's not the same if someone was beaten up once or if someone was raped once there's a completely different person that you'll see sitting in sitting in front of the person so what i came to is that the effect is the same sustained psychological emotional physical abuse will get someone to pretty much the same place as sexual abuse but there's something about sexual abuse that felt to me like it only takes one time literally only takes one time and the person can be scarred in a way that that creates an unrecognizable person there is no dilution of it right they say in certain things if if a parent i i did a i had a conversation a few weeks ago with um what is it a lesser bloom his name was a relationship therapist he said that children if you get it right a third of the time something like i think was it three to ten times you're present you're attentive to the child it's usually enough they'll be okay you'll have someone who's who's well adjusted a parent doesn't have to be perfect for a child to be well adjusted but in the arena of sexuality a parent has to be perfect right if a parent god forbid sexually abuse a child one time yeah three and ten you know i'm saying nine and ten i'm saying there's no dilution of that experience where other experiences and my fro from what i've seen can be diluted and i think that's like attaches to the essence right the essence can't be diluted and when the essence is kind of affected dude i do want to clarify that it's obviously not the essence essence because it's possible to heal from it but there's definitely a quality to it before it's healed that's like uh the uh the seed has been scratched not the not the branch the seed has been scratched i i agree i couldn't agree more that these things have a different way of affecting us and if ever there were a window to the mystical if ever there were a way to glimpse some of the things that kabbalah and siddhis say about about our souls and our humanity i think this is one of this is a pretty pretty compelling insight um even someone who's not spiritually inclined i think would have to be at least give pause to consider why sexuality has such a different place in our in our experience both of of trauma and of bonding i've made that point during speeches when i was probably as disconnected as i as in my as this my experience with judaism hasn't been a straight line in either direction right there's been upsells but at a period that i was most disconnected or felt most disconnected or was acting most disconnected i um made that point that i do not think it would be possible to understand the devastating nature of sexual abuse without looking at the spiritual dimension and the spiritual components that are plagued it doesn't make sense there's no logical explanation to me that you can that you can offer for why someone who's sexually abused once will show physical um trauma that you will not see from someone who one time you know was yelled at by a teacher or something like that not that it doesn't have an effect of course it has an effect but it sits almost as an isolated incident that needs to be solved not that you see the shell of a human being sitting in front of you oftentimes from from one experience you're like wow you talk about complex trauma where there's repeated traumas or micro traumas yeah cptsd right the the the of the cumulative effect you know millions of paper cuts but there's something about a breach of our sexuality which is the there's a um there's a puzzle someone showed it to me the rubber shop as a whole my miranda little breeze it's like you know the the passage from uh we just had your test kiss live so yeah there's a part of a shallow we have uh but there's a line in there someone said the rubber shop translates it like that i forget the exact uh line but i'm sure we'll pick it up so the whole verse is say right so so right so he connected which translates like i'll let you translate it better um they sent out their hands against your peace they uh they profaned your covenant or his covenant right so the way he explained that derjab is sent out of his hands to slam of against his like his completion and what is that like he profaned his bris right that when our sexuality is touched it's like touching someone in their slammers like in their in their essence that's the way it's a rubber shop i can share with you it was very interesting when i saw it and it was taught to me i really simon jacobson showed it to me and he said it can be read and understood as either you know what's funny is either one of these things we're talking about which is interesting tonight is either a sexual transgression or sexual abuse he says like when you read it it's it's clear that you can interpret either way when that is touched when the essence of someone is touched either by themselves or by someone else then it affects the essence of the being of the person because and that's why and it goes on say that's why a different level of um tickle of healing of repair is needed for these types of transgressions but i'm using transgression both ways a personal transgression or transgression against someone in this arena you know when you when you're equating uh sexual transgression with sexual abuse i mean should it really be such a difficult concept you're not allowed to punch someone else in the face you're not allowed to punch yourself in the face i'm saying according to halakha according to torah law you're not allowed to harm someone else you're not allowed to harm yourself so you're not allowed to sexually abuse yourself either and i'm not saying it to make people feel worse than they already do what i'm saying is that yes it's a form of abuse meaning it does harm and where and where does that harm reach like we're saying it reaches to the essence and that's part of what makes it so insidious because it's not just a part of me now that is that is um broken there's a there's a existential feeling of brokenness and when you're feeling that existentially broken obviously you're going to be desperate for some type of soothing some type of relief even if it's by indulging in the very thing that's causing the feeling of of deep brokenness and that's the cycle that's the vicious cycle and and and i know maybe you know people are sitting out there in tv land and they're like why these guys talking for two hours about such deep spirituality and and then the identity and self-consciousness and shame i i think you you want a list of you know five tips and tricks like click bait titles do this do that you know a little uh short list of things to do conquer your porn addiction i'm going to say it straight up this isn't a small matter this is a big matter it is all-consuming when a person when a person is being um when a person is experiencing pain in this area whether it was inflicted upon them or by themselves or a combination of the two but when a person is experiencing pain in this area what part of them hurts it's not a part it's all of them it's all of them and if something is hurting all of you then the healing has to involve all of you and the healing is not going to be compartmentalized the healing is going to be holistic the healing is going to be getting down deeper to your essence than you ever thought you ever were going to do so to those who are asking well what's the solution the solution is the intimacy with yourself that you're in flight of and that many people have the luxury of avoiding their whole lives you will be forced to confront and to encounter for your healing the problem becomes the solution the problem was you become divorced from your true self fragmentation of yourself of deep your deepest self the solution is this will force you to become whole to be complete with yourself and anything short of that is a temporary fix that will probably god forbid blow up even bigger than whatever it is that you were trying to fix beforehand this is deep stuff you know in terms of uh what you were saying about the um like sexual transgression and transgression i'm exploring these subjects i'm not coming coming at it with the same religious conviction that you are certainly but the i'm hearing it it's making a lot of sense so one of the things that i found very often with people who are sexually abused and this was somewhat of my story because i was abused by a teenager so for a long time i started was like maybe you didn't do it on purpose maybe you didn't know what he's doing maybe stop doing it afterwards like how can i hold a teenager accountable and everything else and at a certain point in time you know i don't know if it was seeing a picture of a teenage kid dressed in hamas attire shooting a rocket that said like are you going to tell the guy who on the other end of that rocket oh don't like put your leg back on it was a teenager who shot the rocket like everything is fine i have to tell you what happened so that was one but another part and this i've shared with a lot of people who are struggling with was i sexually abused or not and i remember this one guy who i spoke to who um his father was very concerned not a jewish guy his father was very concerned for whatever reason that he was going to become gay when he was older so he taught him to he showed him porn and he taught him how to uh what to do with porn so for him he was at a very young age five six seven years old so he heard me talking about abuse and he shares his story with me and he's like was i sexually abused was my father teaching me it was everything else so i shared this with him and since then i've shared with many others i said maybe instead of saying like was i sexually abused which is a confusing question says was your sexuality abused like when i got sexual abuse i need a monster on the other end like who is the monster who's actually abused me what's my sexuality abused he said let's say a five-year-old an eight-year-old even a 12 year old walked into a room and there was porn playing and how did it get there whatever a lightning strike okay that nobody did wires together like they say an insurance yeah there it is okay there's porn oh he doesn't have a monster to point to and say this guy took me into a back closet and and did with me as he pleased to gratify him sexually so he does so so this person's not sexually abused or would you say objectively that this friend of mine who i spoke about was introduced in sexuality introduced his sexuality at too young in age his mind couldn't comprehend it in a way that to this day doesn't make sense to him or to any therapist or anyone else he can he can share this with and as a result his sexuality was certainly abused it was not treated with the sacredness and um specialness and care that it needed and as a result there's uh there's effects and of course there's different levels of sexual abuse both in terms of what you mentioned earlier says complex did it happen there is a difference with someone who is sexually abused one time or multiple times certainly there is a difference between someone who is sexually abused in more horrible ways or less hard ways of course all of those things um all of those things play a role but we can objectively say in certain situations and it's much easier conclusion to come to was someone's sexuality abused and that's that's usually a very easy question to answer and i guess if i'm looking back right taking a full circle to what you were saying was my sexuality abused by myself right and since spending hours and hours watching pornography was my sexuality abused by me and and since you're you're accusing me of having greater religious conviction than you which i'm not i'm not sure of but i play one on tv so i will i will say something that smacks of great religious conviction if you're asking yourself was any particular experience one in which my sexuality was abused then you have to ask yourself if you to define abuse you have to define proper use so what what's the proper use of sexuality and the simple answer to take something so grandiose and try to put it into a a sentence is sexuality is the you know the problem is the solution it's the one thing that makes us feel separate from god and it's the one thing that unites us with god so the proper use of sexuality is to feel oneness with god and therefore the answer would be was my sexuality abused did it do anything other than make you feel one with god then on some level even on a very subtle level that's an abuse of your sexuality [Music] and we can and we deserve to have really high standards in this area not because we're ashamed of ourselves but rather because we value ourselves and we have really high standards for what sexuality should mean in our lives and we have the goal of speaking collectively for all of us we do have the goal uh with at the same time a certain gentleness and and compassion with ourselves about our human failings but yes we do have the goal that all sexuality should be something that creates more god consciousness and less self-consciousness right so at the risk we're seeing even in this conversation how easy it is like in our conversation to veer off and start sounding like fire and brimstone or veer off and start sounding like the um everything is like everything goes right it's like that the uh like the wire is like the the line is so thin between this is so sacred i i thought about sharing this before or not i haven't shared it publicly so i'm afraid that i won't uh be able to do it with the has and then i haven't refined my way of saying it yet enough to to the point that it's with this question but i think the point is important enough so i'll risk it so we we spoke i spoke about the you know the people who've reached out to me right at the beginning stage right that those those those emails those anonymous emails but i often get i've been on this path for eight years and i'm sure i have much more to i'm sure i have much more to learn from people who've been on it for many more years we're talking about something that's at our essence it's obviously infinite in terms of the uh the perfection one can achieve in this arena but one thing i do find that i stumbled on and that's almost uniform and people who start this path of recovering from addiction is this shift i use the term earlier um i forget the term we you you use the celibacy right it's the shift of almost like okay let me take this and throw it into the corner as far as possible okay so i'm married i need to um you know bring it out from time to time for some sort of reproductive reasons or something else so okay so i will but it's comes in and out and it's not something it's not a uh there's a an anorexic quality almost to it right i'm eating and i'm throwing it up right there's not this well what you described as this unification or union with god or this connection there's certainly not that feeling there's this um sexuality which when i let out of the bag destroyed me and now i'm trying to get it back in the bag and while i do have to let it out on occasion in certain settings i can't fully explore it or enjoy it or you know anything else and on a number of occasions i shared with others and i shared with um and i i found it myself is that the goal in healing is not like to achieve for lack of a better term like worse sex like okay so here's like this guy's having this incredible sex right with all sorts of people and being promiscuous and what we spoke about right the everything goes and here comes the uh the new approach the monk where what the monk right and no so what we're talking about here and what i think the goal is is an experience of sex that is better than any other physically better than any other of course certainly yes so that actually having and this is what i tell people that's why i was that the goal when i come into recovery like now the way i see it i'm not here to control my sexuality anymore i'm here now and the golden destination is to have the best sex life yeah but that sounds terrible if people it sounds different and what it means right it's right it's right and that's that sound bite is the worst sound bite unless you listen to the two hours that came before it then you realize so then you have to do ali's saying that there's this thing that is part and parcel with my identity as a human being it's imprinted in the human psyche since the time of the the tree of knowledge we can't run from it we can't hide from it and yet we can't master it we can't we can't own it when we try to control it it consumes us ultimately the only thing we can do is to surrender as as a divine power to surrender to it as a divine power it's bigger than me i if i'm going to try to control it i'm going to be made a full love every single time and that's the demoralization that you're talking about here i'm going to control it and then what what a sucker i was right and there's two ways to control it is one as i put in the closet right or uh there's this um movie on porn addiction i watch one it's called thanks for sharing and uh this guy says emotions are like kids you don't want to you don't want them in the trunk but you don't want them driving the car either that's good that's like it's kind of like right so it's like uh sexuality right yeah right you don't want to put it in the trunk but you don't want to drive in the car like everything goes wherever it wants to take me it takes me there's a certain parameters the reason i said it is because the reason i brought that up because i knew it was sensitive and i um clarified in that way is that it's kind of what you referred to earlier with the sur mera and ase right that what we're going here is not just like okay refrain abstain refrain up staying referring to saying no that's not what we're talking about so we're talking about intimacy greater intimacy greater connection greater love you know a a deeper a much deeper i'm not talking about sex now talk about just in general like the overall we're not talking about um okay i'm afraid of connection so i'm going to sit here huddled in a corner with a few people who also have the same secret and share with them in a meeting if you walk in what do you what do you hear normally a lot of laughter right a a very pleasant atmosphere for the most part you can have someone struggling but warm embraces when you come in loud talking right there's a very often uproarious laughter in in meetings and i i know i was surprised by that it's like okay i'm coming to this serious dark dingy corner you know oftentimes that they are right they're often not uh they don't have good funding or funders they don't do charity campaigns [Laughter] these places but what you do find by and large which is the attraction is you find people enjoying life you find people who are on the happier end of the spectrum not like i'm so miserable and maybe that's a better way of saying it you're not finding someone who's like oh i can't drink alcohol anymore poor me no you're saying the alcohol was good right it was good i enjoyed it and it was a lot of fun but it always had the side effects and always had the risks and now i found a way to have more fun with less with less risks and i'm much happier than i ever was i didn't go from poor me i can't have a good lives right to cut out all these things and i become a monk just the opposite and i think the same is true with sexuality and that's why i think the fire and brimstone isn't necessary we're not promoting a lifestyle with any of these things and i think the same is true with um probably what i think i've heard you speak about that just in terms of orthodox judaism and hasidis and everything else about poor me i have to live this lifestyle no i get to live this lifestyle that is that's same essence that we understand that every enjoyment in this world is the way that it is because it is the manifestation of a spiritual paradigm then spiritual health is the source of all other health physical emotional social so it's not possible that we would do something that would be morally better and it would cause dysfunction and i'll flip that statement as well and say if something's causing dysfunction maybe it's not really as moral as you think even though you might might think that's what toyota wants you to do but maybe actually the fact that it's causing so much dysfunction is you need to get a better idea of what toyota would actually guide you to do and i think that's happening a lot is that well with well-intending people earnest sincere people are trying to do the right thing and causing themselves not only more emotional pain but more religious failure by trying to do something that they believe their religion is compelling them to do so just to spell this out because i know this is very confusing uh again bottom line we want people to be free from all types of misuse of human sexuality and we want people to be free to engage in god's intended purpose for sexuality and when it's done in that way there's less shame less guilt and a a deeper experience on all levels physical spirit spiritual emotion and it's done in that way it will be aligned on all levels correct correct now let's be honest most people who come to let's say their first 12-step meeting aren't doing it because they're looking to explore deeper intimacy no one's coming in for that reason at their first meeting they're coming because my life's falling apart i hate myself it's either this or or die so in early recovery you don't talk a whole lot about you know the the ultimate alignment of the spiritual the physical the of what does intimacy really mean and and how how can you bring your your sexuality into your connection with oneness that's that's not something that somebody in their first 24 hours is probably ready to hear right i became more sensitive like as as i was thinking about who might be on this call i thought there may be a number of people listening in now in the future who have already shared their secrets have already embarked on a path or already you know in recovery for a period of time but they're still feeling some of that shame there's still that feeling and just saying share your secret write that email send that message you know book that session with a therapist is not the answer for that person because they're past that so what is the message to them is that we're not here to get away from the worst parts of life we're here to embrace the best of life if if um so so if recovery doesn't offer me everything that addiction did the good parts of addiction right everything that it did on like times 10 then why would i go why why do i want to be there if i had that great feeling of sitting with my friends in the bar laughing and drinking and like that was a highlight of my week why would i trade that for a recovery where i don't get to sit and you know hang out with my friends laughing like i i love that experience yeah there were some other stuff that weren't there and i think oftentimes these lifestyles are uh presented as this this sort of you know aesthetic lifestyle we're moving away very much very spartan but ellie i want to go even deeper than that because it's not just oh um i used to have such a good time fun with my friends at the bar okay let's go deeper than that you you're talking about what was the addiction doing what was it what purpose was it serving because if it didn't serve a purpose no one would do it obviously you wouldn't do it right especially not considering the cost most people see it's exactly right in their life correct so obviously it's serving some type of purpose okay what purpose is it so you could say fun you could say pleasure but i want to go deeper than that i want to go deeper than that there are experiences which are sufficiently intense enough whether they be through chemicals or whether they uh be other types of stimulus but these experiences are stimulating enough and they're intense enough to draw me out of myself for a short period of time and to be free from to finally be relieved from myself from my own self-consciousness my own self-awareness my own thoughts the self-talk which is incessant the self-awareness the the terminal uniqueness of always looking around and feeling you know where do i belong are people looking at me how can where do i fit in what do people think about me all of this deep deep deep stuff that's almost unavoidable inescapable because it's like that is identity that is self self concept and and it it can become unrelenting it can become just it wears away at a person and and they need an escape where can i go where can i escape from me wherever i go there i am and then you find an experience which is sufficiently intense enough whether it's pleasurable or it's numbing or it's different people seek different types of self-medication some people like high some people like low the some people like adrenaline some people like heroin some people like uh dopamine different the point is i have an experience which is intense enough and stimulating enough that it allows me to have an escape from me for a moment and that's what every addiction really does that's the purpose that it serves and so when you say will recovery give me what i used to find in the addiction before it started having too many side effects the answer is not only will recovery give you what you are looking for in the addiction but what you were trying to get out of the addiction all along was what you only could have found in recovery and that is the only real way to brief be to be free from the bondage of self the only real way to transcend ego and that feeling of of separateness is through union with god and that's why the solution here is the problem turned on its head the problem is it's an intimacy destroyer it destroys relationships with other human beings it destroys relationships with your own self it destroys relationships with between you and god it's an intimacy destroyer both porn and shame are both of them whichever subject they're synonymous correct it's all one thing that's why it's a destroyer of intimacy because it draws attention to the self-concept that's why sexual abuse is is so devastating because it forces somebody to look at their own selfhood before they're ready to in a way that's far too intense to look at it before they're ready to in ways that aren't that is that are unsafe and jarring and shocking to the system the point is that selfhood and sexuality are synonymous and all always have been since the time of the tree of knowledge and the two are inseparable and therefore if it's tragic to describe the cycle again but if my experience of sexuality is making me more self-conscious and let's say the self-consciousness is specifically my own self-loathing about my sexual failures what's going to happen is that i'm going to seek out more distraction from that which is going to cause me more self-obsession so the only way and here's the answer that people are asking well what do we actually do what do we do what do you know what you do you find god oh but god's been my problem because i have all this religious guilt no no put aside the religious guilt for a second find god can you find god in your story of failure can you find god in your story of feeling separate alone isolated can you find god in this story can you somehow see how the culmination of this journey will bring you closer to him the the the the the chew of like it talks about in tanya in chapter seven that when you return out of love so then darkness becomes light and the the the sins become merits can you say that if not for this assault to my selfhood which made me hyper self-aware i would never have been able to achieve this level of surrender where i can be this self-transcendent this humble this selfless this service oriented as opposed to self-oriented so you want to know the solution this is the solution the solution isn't giving yourself ultimatums giving taking an oath a solemn vow making promises hearing scarier fire and brimstone speeches the solution is to realize that you're in search of wholeness you're in search of intimacy with god and that means vulnerability and that means facing all of your fears see who knew if someone knew that becoming addicted to porn meant that in order to recover they'd have to face all of their fears they would never start watching porn because who wants to face all of their fears but this is what we're talking about we're talking about deep healing a healing of what what part of me was broken what part of me was injured what part not apart your essence and therefore it is your essence which is going to be healed and it's your essence which is going to be revealed through this process which is an amazing thing and no one could ever give you permission to purposely engage in such a descent for the sake of a radical ascent if you would ask someone are you allowed to fall so low in order to rise so high no you're not allowed premeditated never god forbid anyone says act of oshu i'm going to purposely sin in order to return no you're not allowed but we're talking about someone who already is there they don't they don't need to go out and find and find a way to fall they've fallen how can you take that full and see it in the continuum in the bigger picture as a story of true healing of your essence and of your intimate connection with god and if it's anything short of that it's not powerful enough and dare i say if it's anything less than that it wouldn't it wouldn't be worth it wouldn't be enough of a payoff to have to go through the hell that it takes to go through in order to get to it right right i'm going to share i'm going to share a story um i i think it connects well with what you're saying but maybe it's a little jarring but it's true true story so this guy reached out to me um years ago years ago reached out to me and somehow i missed his message when i was talking about sexual abuse and doing those speeches and then um he gave up and tried through i don't know facebook or a different medium and when he saw me do a talk on porn addiction he reached out to me again it's like five years later and the first time i spoke to him like i knew there was like a really really shameful secret he was holding on to i just saw it he was he's asking me a lot of questions he shared his first name but he wasn't telling me much and i just sensed that there was a really shameful secret holding on to so i said just i said listen i said if i haven't done it myself i'm a friend of mine has like you know you ask me questions about sexual abuse sexuality like these kind of things like i've heard the story or i've been there myself it's you know just you can speak comfortably you're in a safe place just say what you need to say you're not going to knock me off my feet i'll be okay so he shares with me that he was abused it's actually more times than he can imagine and the abuse never really stopped like there isn't a clear like day that is abused so for example he he entered into a kind of relationship with a man who was 20 years older than his was sexually abusing him and it continued into adulthood so it started as a teenager and continuing to adulthood so what day was he a consultative consenting adult and in what day was he a um a child who was being abused by this adult which is this is someone who grew up from eventually that became for lack of a better turn his orientation it's what he what he wasn't sure was this who was distracted was it not it was still anything ever knew he was only with man and it was he was in his late 30s davening every day to fill in like the works his life was from shabbos kosher everything else but this was like this part of him that he could not reconcile he could absolutely couldn't reconcile with and uh we started speaking fairly regularly and and i say that's why there isn't like a solution like i've never been able to i like that you're saying that because i've never been able to find it myself well for someone i go to one meeting i get the magic bullet i read one book i get the magic bullet it quite literally is when someone asks me about porn i say whatever it takes like addiction you embark on the path of whatever it takes in order to to kick this and whatever it takes is going to is going to take you to different places and for me i want to share you want me to tell you my story whatever it takes is me right here right now inclusive does that mean that this is going to be your path in eight nine years because you started maybe yeah maybe no it's each each soul has its expression and each person has his journey in his way of um his way of going but can you enter on the balcony for a second yes i don't know if everybody caught that were you just saying that right now being here right now talking right now is part of your recovery correct yes of course okay i don't know if that was clear to everyone see i i think so they think that it was some revolutionary thing that happened for you and now you're free now you're out of it you said it before what is it this that you and i are talking right now and we're we're connecting and we're connecting on a very deep level i mean we're talking about spirituality we're talking about psychology we're talking i mean about emotions this connection we're having right now is part of your recovery and part of your journey from a place that when you were in it you were feeling disconnection correct okay so i i just want people to hear what what we were really describing when we're talking about the healing journey right it's not a it's not it's start and it's over it may take on a different form when i started they told me come to a meeting every day for 90 days okay now now that's it doesn't look like that but it's there's no less a commitment to the process and i don't the same thing happens like i i there it can easily reverse itself there isn't this sense of i am cured there is a sense of i found things that work for me and i continue to do that and if you start i mean spell it out and if you start self isolating and feeling self-pity right i'll you can reverse god forbid yeah i know and i've and i've experienced that and i've i've experienced those processes years of um no i want to say sober sober's not a good word because dead people are sober too years of being in a place that i i felt like it doesn't mean no bad days but i felt that i say i wasn't thinking about drinking i wasn't thinking about not drinking right years of feeling liberation from it years of yeah i'm talking about not watching porn because that's the way my service expresses itself today but i'm not thinking about not watching foreign okay don't go here or go there it's not you know i had a lock on my phone for years as an example i don't have a lock on my phone today i'm not like every single website i got to be careful not that my fingers don't type and then it was like that for a while so it's certainly it changes it evolves but there's no less a commitment to the process of i'm doing certain things in order to maintain the level of freedom that i have and i know that it can revert back and i want to bring back to this this individual so he's struggling mightily and his addiction is manifesting itself and always pixels people you know everything and obviously he has this additional level of shame that his addiction is expressing itself with people the same sex and the fact that he's still religious but it's the only thing he knows and you know he said i've tried to date women i i can what am i should i tell them should i not tell there's nowhere to go for me so uh i asked him i said um you say you pray every day right every day who do you pray to this is god so it's so where is he in the story where's he in your story so he won't even know where to see my story so we see there when you were abused the first time the second time the third time right was he there all those times he says i don't know i know that means right either he was there he wasn't there was he there okay yes he was there okay are you angry at him how can you be angry at god why can't you be angry at god is it a relationship or it's not i'd be pretty angry this guy sent me on this journey i'm angry i mean if that's where it starts if that's where the communication has to start that's where the communication has to start should it start i'm going to repeat the same sentence okay it says okay same thing in the world but that's not where you're feeling right now right the relationship is going to start with hey what the hell right i've shared with uh i've shared sometimes almost everyone that i've worked with i advise them to write two letters the thank you letter to porn and the f you letter to god right i don't mean literally right after you let it there's probably some anger in your story there's some resentment and you're trying to get to a path you said of having a relationship with god so where is it at now where's where's the relationship now if my god doesn't have big enough shoulders to hear my anger to hear my disappointment to ask me why as an eight-year-old child he decided to drag me into this guy's room and abuse me that that was my path and if he wasn't part of the equation then what then then who is he and if he was part of equation then why did he do that but i i'm i said the only thing is when you ask the question be prepared that there might be a response right it's like why do you like why do you do that to me okay be prepared there may be a response you may actually find as you go through your story you may find something beautiful in it you may actually find a reason or a beauty or some gem that can be uncovered from the fact that you went into the wedding that you went into the into it in that way and it took a long time probably three or four conversations for him to feel comfortable to write the le to just start like god i think the way he started he shared the letter with me god i'm angry with you and i to be so sometimes that's the way when we say want to drag god into the story we got he's got to be able to meet us if he's big enough if his shoulders are big enough he's got to meet us where we're at and that's where we're at right now i've all this anger and all this resentment at either this either this entity didn't do it right i said either either god either i hate him or he doesn't exist right so yeah so i went back and forth between those two things so if i'm accepting that he exists okay so i'm in the hate right now and i have to be able to express that and that itself to me is where the process started and where i encourage others to start the process and start there and start that level of communication and dialogue but be open be open to hear something in in response and in my own case i found it and i've shared with with others that if i was writing my own story if i was given authorship over it and i've heard this tell me if i'm right that the soul enters into a contract before it enters the world and it does get authorship over its story and it chooses to go through its experiences that it does so the way i say it now is that if i was given the pen and say ellie write your own story i would choose those most difficult moments from childhood and then the moments more recently there's certainly some moments in the last couple of years that i would not choose to add to it okay so now i say that those have to be worked on those are the experiences that still that god needs to be brought into he hasn't been brought into yet because i'm not accepting of it is that soul contract point have you heard that that is soul before it enters the world signs up is that a jewish concept when hashem created the world it says with whom that hashem consult it says he consulted with the nishamas so it's not only that the soul has agency but it's that kavya so to speak hashem gave us authority over the whole project whether or not he should create and create all everything the creation means with all of the difficulties that that entails for each of us so it's like when did i ever sign up for this sign up for it you created it you created it right now right okay partner in creating it right okay i hear that but there's a collective to it okay so it wasn't like my soul that was engaged in it the way i heard it right the way the way i heard it was let's say someone grew up in intense poverty right a very very intense property that's a crushing property the soul before it the world is do you agree to enter the world knowing that you're going to go through the experience of the physical pain of intense poverty or maybe of losing a parent very young or maybe being sexually abused or maybe an addiction and until the soul says i'm in doesn't get it i don't know where i heard this but i heard it the question is getting back to the the theme tonight's uh title of tonight's discussion if your soul knew before it came to the world what it would mean to have a body and the wiring neurologically and and biochemically what it meant to be a sexual being and the challenge that that inherently entails and the risk the major major risk involved there would your soul accept such a a mission and i think part of healing for anyone who's watching this and they're still in the middle of the struggle i think part of healing is to be able to answer that question and say yes yes my soul would be willing to face this specific challenge and uh anything short of that what do i mean anything short of that what i mean is an attempt to just sort of say look this is a weakness and i'm going to master it i'm going to get stronger i'm going to get on top of it i'm going to get control over it okay so try that so try it and if that works that's fantastic i'm only concerned with the bottom line obviously the net results are what matters to me so if you can by willpower say i'm gonna get a handle on this and i'm gonna get more motivated i'm gonna read some more fire and brimstone and then i'm gonna stop and i'm gonna get control over if that works for you that's that's fantastic but um what you may find is that the very fact that this issue is so uniquely all-consuming is because it is calling upon you to engage in a solution that is uniquely all-consuming i love that and to examine your entire life and existence and purpose so with all apologies to the people who want practical tricks and tips yeah so what's what's the practical tip and trick eight years into your sobriety journey do a podcast with a rabbi for three hours i mean that's your journey it's every person out there is gonna have a unique journey but what's clear is it's gonna it's gonna it's going to call upon your essence nothing less than that and it's gonna call upon you to enter with your essence into an intimate relationship with god's essence nothing less than that so so i want to refine you see you're saying that these things crush our essence yeah and engage our essence yes and then the solution is to do that to fully engage our essence yeah and then all of these experiences the ones that we felt shameful for they want to feel guilty of the one we felt angry at god for and everything else we see it as part and parcel of engaging our essence like had these had this not happened and that's i share with people is that some some people go through a specific level of pain experience level of pain and i don't think there's a threshold for everyone i think anyone who has children knows that there's um we come in with different sensitivities so some maybe on paper it wasn't such a crazy experience but they're very sensitive to there's no one definition of of rock bottom right there's no one one definition of rock bottom but there's also no one definition of a difficult experience right right it's two people can go through identical homes you know twins practically right identical experiences same level property one is right i can't uh they they can't uh they can't find themselves and the other seems to be okay so what what my experience when someone reaches a certain level of pain in their life whatever that is then it's it's kind of like they don't have the choice or the way you said it and uh god of her understanding is everyone's gonna benefit from spirituality right but for the average person it's a luxury for the attic it's a necessity like there's a certain level of pain that call it a blessing call it not it engages you and say okay you have no choice for you spirituality is a necessity okay the other person may or may not find it but there's a select group of people who are chosen they're going to find that they're going to have to find it it's a necessity for them to experience any sort of peace in their life and sometimes it looks right what's nice about it my sponsor says recovery you know recovery is very recovery is unpredictable the addiction is very predictable the addiction you know you know where you're going that's gonna happen all right how are you going you know they're gonna feel okay there's some variety you're the kind of addict you know who doesn't like whiskey every night right sometimes you like bourbon sometimes you like you know a couple of beers that's the level of variety but you're getting to the same feeling you're getting to the same place and there's something about he says recovery you enter a path you don't know where you're going you don't know where it's going to take you and the demand is almost of uh i don't know a spiritual or not quite like something you can put your finger on and it just moves in that direction and it unfolds and it takes you where it needs to take you and you go where you need to go and some are kind of thrust into that path and it's like okay you either do this or you feel this uh existential terminal uniqueness self-consciousness yeah can you address the um the i don't know if you see the q a there's a last question over there i can address it but yeah i see the q a yeah the last one it says but addiction allows the frame so it's anonymous people don't see the names other than i think us so we don't have to mention the name but just the uh the question about but addiction allows the freeing of self at any time yeah i want it i'm sitting here telling god to come but he doesn't ever spark my blunt i have it on demand yeah well see that's the opposite of intimacy that is what can this thing or this person do for me right now i'm burdened i'm burdened with self-consciousness and some some things make my self-consciousness feel better some things make my self-consciousness feel worse but that's it i'm stuck stuck in that trap so uh i'm gonna seek out pleasure i'm gonna try to avoid pain and i'm going to evaluate everything based on what it can do for me and that's how i look at people what can people do for me and when a person becomes when seeking out pleasure and avoiding pain becomes one's entire preoccupation that may be synonymous with addiction maybe that would be a one one working definition of it of addiction where i have no other job than to figure out how to not feel bad and try to feel good recovery would be the exact opposite i'm not going to try to manage what makes me feel one way or another i'm not even going to try that's not my job anymore my job is not to figure out what's going to make me feel good and what's going to make me feel bad my job is to be of service hiney like you said recovery can look so many different ways because you're just writing a blank check that's it i'm showing up whatever i'm going to be called upon to do that's what i'm going to be doing i'm here reporting for duty sir so you know when you describe i call god he doesn't come on demand if i take my drug of choice boom it's obedient it's faithful it's reliable does the trick until it doesn't anymore or until it does but it lasts for two seconds the consequences last for two months or whatever whatever diminishing return there may be but that's that's the addiction what is it going to do for me come i called you i called you come on get over here the recovery is the exact opposite i'm reporting to god i'm saying i'm here i'm here for you how can you use me how can i be of service at this moment how can i do something for one of your children what am i gonna get out of it i stopped worrying about what i'm gonna get out of it i i can't i can't i can't go down that road some people maybe they can they can dabble casually in what makes me feel good what makes me feel bad no i can't i can't go down that road i i have to just be surrendered i have to be mission driven and if i do that everything else will work itself out like we were speaking about before if i'm spiritually healthy then everything else is going to come into alignment sooner or later and it's going to be good for me on all levels psychologically emotionally socially physically emotionally so when when this person in the q a is describing you know god's not he's not as reliable as my drug of choice that's right that's exactly the point recovery isn't realizing oh god is a better drug than all the drugs it's realizing that what i was trying to get by filling myself up i'm never gonna get but if i forget about filling myself up and i just try to be of service to others and to my maker something wild happens and that peace and that relief and that freedom from pain that i was seeking it crept up on me as a as a side benefit of trying to live a useful life so you know you're sitting here you're talking to me probably your your your most conscious motivation is it may help somebody now does it make you feel good probably also makes you feel good but that's not why you're doing it that's a side benefit the minute you start doing these things because it makes you feel good that becomes your new addiction and then that can turn on you will turn on you so this is this is about flipping the whole paradigm flipping the whole paradigm i'm not trying to self-medicate i'm not trying to nominal trying to make yourself comfortable anymore i'm reporting for duty in god's reality as he's making at this moment prepared to feel completely uncomfortable and this guy who's of means and gives money and he said i told myself um a couple of years ago i was like enjoying it too much from seeing my name on stuff that i have to do everything anonymously it's coming from arrogance so it's okay i heard so he said what do you think about that so i said i think you'd make a weak soldier so he said what do you mean i said if the general gives the order give this one anonymously and the next one he gives the order give this one publicly you're you're only capable of listening to one of the orders you're not much of a soldier so right right the right that's been um right that's been we always get to a certain point in a conversation that's been like an interesting part of kind of my journey where my instinct is always to kind of be behind the scenes to not be public my i had a very powerful fear of public speaking at a certain point in time when i got into recovery my fear of sharing in the meetings with six people seven peoples was so was so palpable wow but slowly that started pushing out and like it turned the whole thing it turned the whole thing on its head you know where a lot of stuff that i saw is my personality i'm a loner i'm quiet i'm private and this for whatever reason i didn't plan some of these things i felt the moment of inspiration i said i have to do it i have to do a ted talk and i just felt that feeling and i felt where i thought it was kind of okay that has to happen and then from there one went to uh one to another but it's so when you write some ways points for how to recover you have to give a ted talk it's one of the bullet points how do you recover you have to give a ted talk right right no it's literally experience and you say you know what start saying yes you started even this one we said you mentioned it as an idea you said hey i said okay you know it's coming let's have this conversation about uh about shane but i see the risk right you say there's always the um what do you call like the occupational hazards like each one presents itself with with a different risk so the point you're making over here because you say okay like you start liking this you start liking this mission after us okay i enjoy this all right this is this one's a fun one this one's meaningful this one's everything else and then that too becomes and then you become a poor soldier again because maybe the next mission maybe the next mission is very uh very different so very interesting okay maybe uh maybe over there we went a little past a little over some uh some heads but it's okay it's okay it's okay because there'll be one person who's ready and they'll hear this and they'll say this sounds way more demanding than i ever dreamed it would be but it sounds right and you'll get an email or i'll get an email from this person maybe not today but i'll tell you one thing i've learned from experience any time i've gone out publicly speaking about this kind of stuff there's always one person sometimes it happens the next day sometimes it happens a month later a year later there's always one person who says that i was at a turning point in my life and this came at the perfect moment so you know we're putting it out there for for whoever but for one person this is it's worth it no i've i've had that i shared at the beginning of this about uh um brene brown and the shame and i remember being in a incredibly dark place one night and seeing her ted talk on um what was it called uh it was out of shame it was on vulnerability i think it was something about vulnerability the power of vulnerability something and i watch that talk and from that talk i reach out to someone for help i remember that so you never know they live there and that spark is you know two in the morning after another bout of way too much porn and feeling completely demoralized and then feeling like i'm supposed to feel good because my business is doing okay so i don't even get to feel shame because who am i gonna call and say like i'm feeling miserable is it what do you have to complain about see i'm not so worried about how many people are on the zoom right now what what i'm thinking about is the person who's watching this it's now five in the morning okay this is two hours and 50 whatever minutes into this recording they started watching it like you said at 2 a.m after about and now we're watching them at double speed it's not so bad and uh you can't watch me on double speed by the way you can't watch me on double seat maybe one and a quarter you can't turn one into a quarter okay someone told me that says ellie you do these very long podcasts and i can't put on double speed you talk too fast so so we'll say it's four am it's four a.m and uh that that's that's the person who this is for this is the person who's watching this and it's 4 am right now hi how you doing um ellie speak to the person who it's 4 a.m right now and he's ready to change he's listening she's listening they are listening right now what's that message and i guess we'll uh we'll wrap it up on this uh this note so joe rogan doesn't feel threatened that the length of our podcast comes out yes um someone is at that place you know i wonder if we scared them because had i known we scared out we scared off everybody else i'm telling you right now the only one watching is the person saying they see right into me how do they know all this about me tell me what to do and i'll do it so go ahead there's one person left yeah there's one guy left but it's fine it's all for him or her right i think i i think you get to a place that you um let you get to a place you'll get to a place someone who embarks on this past will get to the place this place where they feel and it's not from an arrogant place it's not from an egotistical place they feel that there's a unique contribution that they can make not that they can make that they need to make literally that they need to make it needs to be made and um they'll feel it they'll feel it deeply they'll feel it intensely and that day that day exists on the horizon by following this path and once that's there that feeling it doesn't it doesn't quite leave us it can be felt more intensely or less intensely but that feeling of it's not i matter it's more than i matter it's that i'm like i'm important to this machine there's a role that's that's so perfect so specific and all of the experiences and all of the challenges especially the talent not all of them especially the challenges especially those most difficult moments and i like the way you spoke about it in terms of engaging the essence like these experiences engage the essence that engage they crush the essence and by crushing the essence they engage the essence so now the essence is here it's engaged and that's what we need we need your essence and that so while it's hard to imagine because when you're feeling in that place it's like okay not me i'll never get there i uh if you're listening this late i encourage you to trust me and embark on the path i think the path often starts by asking for help and then listening to the answer you know um when in in that question that you answered first said i tell god to come and he doesn't come so maybe stop telling him stop telling him what to do ask him and then see what happens it's a different experience and calling someone and asking for help but then listening to their response and listening to what it is they offer and the path they take it on i i remember that day when i called the person who became my first sponsor and i'd already spoken with him i had the lunch i already seen a little bit right i've gone to a couple of meetings but i'm like do i really need this do i really need to like cut it all out is there a way that i can still have some of it okay so it got too much fine but i got to go to these meetings with these crazies like is this the what i have to step into it i'm not saying for everyone's path it's 12 steps like it's not everyone has a different path and people have found meaning and purpose and value and peace in in many different ways for me it was the meetings i remember after this i called him i was just i was desperate i was just right i just acted out and it did nothing for me you know it did nothing for me which brings me to the second part of this question if i spark by my my splunk i have it on demand for now for now i had it the same way i had a ritual that was my go-to ritual and my toughest moments and i didn't want to go to it too often without going to the specifics it's not relevant i didn't want to go to it too often because i was afraid i would burn it out i was afraid if it became commonplace even though it was accessible it was something that i could do as often as i wanted i said i reserve it for special occasions and this was what a special occasion mean that i felt like hell and i i went on this occasion engaged in this special ritual and i walked out feeling nothing it didn't hit the spot it didn't do anything for me i felt the same pain i felt before i felt afterwards and i walked out i walked out of that place and i said oh man what's next where does this go to from here fortunately i had this guy's number because i'd gone to a couple of meetings and my therapist introduced me to him i remember that feeling when i called him and i called him i said tell me what i got to do anything i need your help anything tell me what i got to do and he gave me a very modest list to start it was a very very modest list but the question and that's what i'm that's what i'm recommending that's that whole long to do was call someone and ask for help but ask for help don't tell them to help you ask for help i called this person i chose this person it was him not someone else and he had his direction that he gave to me in that moment trusted you're speaking from your essence that guy will speak from your essence that guy or girl will speak from his essence you're gonna get a message that's for you and i got a message that seemed to be simple but landed me on a path and i'm still on today and i'll never leave okay chase it's on you now there's nothing else to say i think that help is out there people know where to find help and i respect the fact that you're being very humble and not insisting that people find the same solution that you found you're saying for you it was the 12-step program and you're being very humble and you're saying it doesn't have to be that for everybody and that you know you've seen people who found other solutions i'm not saying for porn i've had not solutions other problems have other solutions right so you've said what worked for you you've described it very clearly that it's not just uh you know go to a couple meetings for a few weeks it's a lifetime devotion to service selflessness being true to your deepest self and your deepest mission and uh you know it becomes a lot more than just how to not watch porn correct it's almost a uh how many meetings do i go to today that i even hear the word porn in it word porn in