Read the Transcript of the Show:
Today, I’m going to talk about the two actions that you must perform to beat sex and porn addiction. Welcome, everybody. My name is Craig Perra, the host of this podcast Sex Afflictions and Porn Addictions, and also founder of the Mindful Habit System. For the past ten years, my company. With me at its helm, has been helping men overcome the challenges surrounding compulsive sexual behavior.
If you want the opportunity to join me live and jump on the stream, I see we’ve got someone here now in. Want to ask me questions? You can follow me on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Did I say that already? Anyway, you can find me on those platforms and that way you get notified when I go live.
So to check me out. And if you’re listening later, thank you so much for joining me. Very, very important topic today. And I want to start with the premise. I want to start with the founder nation that the condition that we are treating is in the body. What I mean by that is because it’s in the body, we need a body solution because it’s in the body.
We need a body solution. And to unpack that a little bit, we sex addicts and porn addicts are completely disconnected from our bodies. Right. This is not the condition of someone emotionally regulated, someone who is integrated, someone who is emotionally intelligent, someone who who is in control of their body. No, we have lost control. And often that loss of control impacts the lack of exercise that we do and the poor food choices that we make.
So let me say it again. If you are struggling with compulsive sexual behavior of any kind, remember this. It is in the body and you need a body solution for my brothers and sisters joining me live. If you have any questions, put them in the chat and I’ll do my best to answer them as we continue the broadcast.
So it’s in the body. You need a body solution that is a bit contrary to the primary way in which sex addiction and porn addiction is treated with 12 step meetings and talk therapy. Those modalities, the communication that comes with meeting and talk therapy are incredibly valuable. Let me be abundantly clear on that. This is not suggesting for a second that those things are critically important.
You have to talk about this problem. But what I’m here to tell you is that talking about this problem is not enough because we are treating a physiological condition. When you get triggered, that is a physiological condition. That fear based response, when you experience stress or anxiety, that is a a physiological condition. When your energy shifts from a sex in regards to a sexual trigger that is a physiological condition.
The reward that the behavior gives you through the orgasm, the release, the escape that it provides. That is a physiological condition. That’s what you also have to treat. It’s not just emotional regulation, it is physical regulation. Develop in the conditions that allow you to feel safe. Crazy word for us, guys. But I am telling you this. If you listen to my last podcast, the three or four most important words in recovery.
Number one was safe. And what I mean by safe is that let’s pretend I make a mistake and I’m having a stressful day and I failed. I made a mistake with a client. I I’m not feeling well. I’m a little under the weather, right? I stub my toe. Michelle asked me about the project and I said, Michelle, my wife of 25 years, by the way, we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in Hawaii.
It was amazing. We made it and looking forward to the next 25, 35, 45, 55, however long we get to live. But she says, Ask me a question about the project Instant Energy shift in my body. I get angry, right? Anger, tightness in the chest, heart rate start beating a flood of stress. Hormones enter the body. That’s a physiological condition.
And even understanding exactly why I react that way and how I’m projecting mother onto my wife, how I’m projecting control onto my wife, how when she asked me that question, I felt like a little child and she was controlling me. And there’s all sorts of reasons that intellectually I know why I reacted that way instead of reacting as an emotionally mature adult while I am.
But I’m just using this as an example because of course I lose my temper, I make mistakes and I say stupid things. But here’s the difference. The difference now is that when I experience that energy shift in my body, I am now able to like it’s like an alarm bell. Your triggers become your gifts, your triggers become your radar, your triggers become your early warning detectors that you are off and that a need is not being met.
So my response, the feeling in my body regarding that response, the snappy tone tightness in the chest, I feel it. I I’ve experienced so much stress in my life. I developed early onset Barrett’s esophagus and essentially the acid is rotting out the throat that has a high chance of leading to esophageal cancer. So I got to get one tube going up the but one to going down the throat every five years.
I have to do that. I’ve been doing that since I was 30. So I feel that like right in that that that place where that that that burning is permanent. Right. That’s my cue to stop. That’s my cue to back off. That’s the trigger to take a breath. That’s the trigger to close my mouth. That’s the trigger to engage in some physical activity.
I have tools to emotionally and physically regulate, and I’m sharing that with you guys because people think of this journey too much as I’m done. I’m no longer doing the work. What happens to everybody, right? Everybody who slips and fails stops doing the things that make them successful and they haven’t learned to emotionally and physically regulate their essential nervous system.
So I’m going to give you two things that you can do right now or today, tonight, tomorrow that are very simple and ridiculously easy. Let me stress this, right? So this isn’t for the mindful master, This isn’t for the guy who’s doing great. This isn’t for the guy who’s acutely aware of his body and how it reacts and how he feels safe and how he feels unsafe.
That’s this is for the guy who is very reactive. This is the guy who does not have control over his body. And this is for the guy who might be new to mindfulness and the two kinds of mindfulness that I want to talk about or sitting mindfulness. And I’m going to give you the most ridiculously easy technique that you can do to start this incredibly frustrating but incredibly rewarding practice and active mindfulness.
So we’re going to talk about it from a brain training perspective, and we’re going to talk about it from a body perspective. And both of those things contribute to emotional and physical regulation. First, why mindfulness? Mindfulness is critical to sustain ability. My company is called the Mindful Habit because if you can become mindful of your habits, which we need to survive, your life can change dramatically.
Mindfulness has been scientifically proven to reduce depression, reduce anxiety, reduce PTSD, reduce the stress level cortisol in the body, reduce compulsive urges, increase emotional well-being. The list goes on and on. It goes on and on and on and on and on in here. So what I want to talk about is a sitting mindfulness practice. And let me tell you what the exercise is and let me tell you how to do it right.
Because if I if I tell you just what it is, I don’t know. I feel like this is a little light like bass here. Listen, here’s what I’m telling you to do, okay? If you are struggling to start a mindfulness practice, what I want you to do is to create a new habit in your life where you close your eyes, sit up nice and tall, and count your breath for 60 seconds.
That is it. Count your breath for 60 seconds. Now, when you get to 60, you go to 120, you go to 180. Eventually getting to 10 minutes. If you can sit and breathe for 10 minutes still, I promise you at least some aspect of your life will be significantly. Or the chances are great, great that if you can cultivate a ten minute per day mindfulness practice, not only will the gray matter in your brain have changed, right?
30 days, 10 minutes a day, the science says your brain looks different under a f MRI machine. Here’s how you start. First, we’re going to take this new habit and we’re going to anchor it to something that we already do. Okay, So let’s say, for example, every day I get up from bed and I use the bathroom or I brush my teeth, my anchoring.
When I start my mindfulness to bring an awareness into my body is when my right foot hits the ground in my left foot hits the ground when I’m getting out of bed. I am anchoring my anchoring to this new habit to an existing one. You dramatically increase the chances that this habit will stick. And why am I recommending one minute?
Because this is ridiculously hard. Everybody thinks it’s easy. Most people can get to five bread, six breads. Most people can’t count to ten. And listen, this is what it is. You breathe in nice, long breath. Right? Long inhale, long exhale. Triggers the body’s vagus nerve, which tells the central nervous system that you are safe and helps you relax.
So a four or five count inhale, four or five count. Exhale one, four or five count. Inhale four or five can exhale to do that for 60 seconds a day. Do it by anchoring that habit to an existing one. And why so? So here’s what you get out of this simple habit. One, you get the beginning in the foundation for a mindfulness practice that will grow.
If I tell you 10 minutes now, you’ll think it’s easy. You’ll be so frustrated, you’ll never do it. It just isn’t going to happen that way. This is a hard thing to do. And people say, Oh, you know, it’s easy. There’s this perception that it’s only one minute you’re here because your monkey mind is bouncing all over the place.
You’re here because you do not have control. Or let me say it this way you’re never going to control the beast. You don’t know how you’re going to attach to the thoughts too easily. You get swept away by the negative thinking too easily. So we’re going to start small. We’re going to use what is called a Tai Zen k, i z and goal strategy.
Hey, warrior, glad you’re here man. Which is a high Zen goal is a goal that is ridiculously attainable and that’s ridiculously attainable. That’s how you define a Kaizen goal. Is it ridiculously attainable? Almost silly. Almost silly. Why do I want it to be almost silly? Because most people like New Year’s resolutions, set the bar too high and they fail.
The overwhelming majority of New Year’s resolutions fails. So if you start with one minute of the day and you anchor this habit to an existing one, and by starting one minute per day, you are embracing Kaizen goal setting, which the concept alone will change your life, ties and goals. Meaning myself, where I was and setting attainable goals was one of the most important things that I’ve done in my life.
So your embracing the anchoring concept, you’re embracing the Kaizen concept, and the result is greater emotional and physical regulation in the ability to have the negative thoughts that have the crazy thoughts, yet not get swept away by them. But you do not have to react to your thoughts. You have the power inside you. I have the power inside me to use these mindful techniques to better regulate pain, physical pain.
Mindfulness has been proven to reduce physical pain. And let me tell you something. If you’re using sex and porn to numb coping escape, you are experiencing physical pain. You may call it emotional pain, but that emotional pain is in your body. That emotional pain is impacting your central nervous system, your hormones and everything else that happens when you have a fear based response.
So my first tip, which is a ridiculously simple tip, but an incredibly difficult one to execute over extended periods of time, as Nathan in the chat says, So true. Do it. It works. 60 seconds a day. Inhale, exhale. One count your breath, anchor it to an existing habit and start small. Okay, that is tip number one. And that is going to help you emotionally and physically regulate your central nervous system.
And why is that important? Because the condition that you are treating that I treat it and can continue to treat in myself, it’s in the body. And because it’s in the body, you need a body solution. So here is the second thing. The second action that you must perform in order to be sex and porn addiction. From a mindfulness perspective, what I just talked about would fall in the category of sitting mindfulness sitting.
You’re sitting, you’re intentionally concentrating, contemplating, you’re sitting. That is really, really hard for some people. And that’s why I recommended you start at one minute a day, because most people can’t count to five before they lose track of what they’re doing. Again, morning. Incredibly frustrating. So I want you to know that the second thing is called active mindfulness.
And active mindfulness is simply whatever you are doing, do that to the exclusion of all else in pay as much obsessive compulsive, assuming you do not have obsessive compulsive ruminating issues, but like a sharp focus on whatever it is that you are doing. So here’s an example of active mindfulness now sitting mindfulness. This is critical. So I beg you, please, please, please.
And if you missed the beginning, go back and listen to the first action. Absolutely critical for long term success. Based on my experience, active mindfulness is also a very powerful concept, and frankly, this is where my mindfulness practices grow because sitting mindfulness was so difficult for me. My A.D.D. brain. I used to take Ritalin. I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder virtually every client that I work with has some degree on the spectrum of ADHD, and I think it’s a natural thing for us guys, for our heads to be bouncing all over the place.
There’s studies that suggest it’s a evolutionary protective attribute that kept us alive at one point in time, you know. Anyway, so so the active mindfulness was a lot easier for me. And the active mindfulness is here’s what I invite you to do, is to pick a task or a chore that you do not like. Well, yes, you can do it both ways.
Let’s look. Let’s pick something you like. I love drinking coffee. Okay, So if I were doing an act of mindfulness while drinking my coffee is I’d be focusing on the cup. I’d be feeling the cup in my hand if there’s any heat there. I’ve noticed the heat. Put the cup to my lips, feel the plastic, notice the smell of the coffee.
I would put the coffee in my mouth, close my eyes, feel it in my mouth, taste it, swallow it. Notice how it makes me feel. You just pay attention to whatever it is you’re doing now. That’s an example of something that you like to do. Now. What’s going to happen to me? What happens is, is that when you’re paying attention to when you’re present, you know, when you’re not present, and as you continue to work on yourself and as you continue to regulate your central nervous system, the better able you are to tell when that energy shifts, when you’ve been triggered, when you’ve got an angry, hungry and angry, lonely, tired, bored, all feelings that
you are going to experience. But if you have a baseline of what presence is and what it’s like to be in the moment and not be bouncing all over the place and have your mind fear of the past, fear of the future. Through this active mindfulness, you will accomplish a lot. It is often the foundation of a mindfulness practice for guys who have the difficult time with the sitting mindfulness.
So here’s here’s another technique is to pick a chore that you do not like. I don’t know what the heck it is, man, but I got issues around doing the dishes. These are there was an injury, was a child doing the dishes that resulted in some stitches from a traumatic event. When I was a kid, there was the feeling of never being good enough in the dishes that I watched.
You know, Mommy issues, control, etc., etc., rebellion, whatever it is. Well, I have a sense of what it is. There is an repulsion to that task. And it’s so helpful when I wash a few dishes. And it really goes a long way in helping and then picking up around the house. So what I do is the dishes becomes a mindfulness exercise because it’s a chore that I don’t like to do.
I should be doing more important things, blah, blah, blah. The kids should do it. Whatever my story is, when I wash the dishes, it becomes an exercise in gratitude. Grateful to have the food that I ate with my family who is healthy in my sink that has hot, cold, clean water and feeling the warmth, the soap on my hands, on the pan, paying attention to the bubbles, noticing the frustration, coming back to the breath, noticing the frustration, coming back to the breath, noticing the frustration, irritation throughout and coming back to the breath and coming back to the present moment of using all of my senses to wash the dishes, all of my senses to go
for a walk. All of my senses to drive, all of my senses to walk, all of my senses to eat, all of my senses to do whatever it is I am doing in the output of you practicing sitting mindfulness for one minute, a day and anchoring that new habit to an existing habit. Step one to building a successful mindfulness practice which will change your life.
It just is what it is. I wish there was a different way. I wish there was a path that wasn’t so frustrating for so many people. There is not. There is not not not to my knowledge. The people who take the mindfulness to the next level, the clients who do that thrive. They thrive. They thrive. They thrive. They can sit for 10 minutes.
That’s the metric. And you sit for 10 minutes. Does that mean life is easy? No. Does that mean there aren’t a host of other things that you must do to be successful? No, that does not mean that. But it’s easier. But it’s easier when you’re able to not get swept up into the thought. When you have that emotional and physical reaction, you’re able to suppress it.
You’re able to regulate it, you’re able to get presence in the two ways that are going to help you do that is, one, a sitting mindfulness practice. And my recommendation of counting your breath for 60 seconds a day. And number two, active meditation, which all it means is whatever you’re doing, pay attention to whatever it is you are doing.
Your mind drifts away. Bring it back your mind just away, Bring it back. Don’t get frustrated. That’s part of it. Don’t get frustrated. That’s it. That’s the that’s the exercise. Mind drifts away. Bring it back. Right. You do not have to be defined by your thoughts. In fact, when you practice mindfulness enough, you learn this crazy reality. And I’ll just put it out there as we wrap up today.
Anybody have any questions? Put them in the chat, your night, your thoughts. The heck does that even mean? That sounded preposterous to me, preposterous to me when I first heard that, like, what the heck is that mumbo jumbo Baloney. It’s true. It’s true. And the science around mindfulness. Absolutely tells us they’re not your thoughts. But if that sounds completely far fetched, don’t worry.
Start small 60 seconds of mindfulness Counting your breathing every day, one mindful activity per day will move you towards that goal of better emotional and physical regulation. Thank you for listening to sex afflictions and porn addictions. And if you are struggling and if you want a discount, use the coupon Code podcast for our budget friendly core training option that includes a weekly webinar where you get the opportunity to ask me questions and when it’s a fit, that ability dramatically accelerates.
My clients recovery, just like like boosters on it, right, and help it stick. Okay, so use the coupon code PODCAST to send them the website, www.themindfulhabit.com – It’s our core training budget friendly webinar program. It is 16 weeks with a weekly webinar that gives you access to me if you’re struggling and if you need more help.
Thank you so much for listening. Embrace your power of choice and find the right wolf inside you by practicing mindfulness. Thanks for listening, everybody. Have a great day.
