Episode 116: How to Control Your Sexual Urges

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 116, How To Control Your Sexual Urges.

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer.

Hey, you guys, welcome to the podcast episode this week. I went to Costco  yesterday and at Costco they had these massive 42 ounce bags of Cadbury eggs. Now, with this hellish winter that we have had, this is a very bright spot that is giving me life and giving me hope for this spring to come. The only thing that’s giving me hope for spring is this 42 ounce bag of mini Cadbury eggs at Costco. 

There is no hope for spring outside with the snow, with the grass. There’s no grass, there’s just snow everywhere and rain all the time. Anyways, by the time this episode is released maybe that will change a little bit. But, man, here in Utah we’ve had a winter. We’ve had a winter. Are you guys sick of people talking about it? Because everyone is talking about it. And I’m going to join with them. 

Anyways, before we dive into today’s episode I just want to thank you guys again. Thank you so much for all the reviews and ratings that you are leaving. I’ve got so many great ones. We’ve got a number of you saying “Free? How is this free?” Jeez, there are so many. It’s hard for me to pick. I’m just going to randomly pick one. 

Okay, this one says, “How I wish I came across this podcast sooner. As it happens I found it after I had experienced my very first 30 days sober period in about 30 years. I was beginning to think that porn use would always be there lurking in the background. I’ve only heard the first few episodes and I feel like I’ve finally found someone who will explain why I feel this way and then hand me the tools I need and show me exactly how to use it in a plain and easy way to understand. 

So many things have started to click for me and I’m able to see my triggers or the bells that are ringing for what they are. And for the first time I actually feel like I can quit porn and never go back. I highly recommend the show. And if you can afford the course I suspect you’ll gain so much more. Others seem to talk around the technique, Sara goes right to the heart of it.” 

Yeah, thank you so much for these reviews, they really help us out. They really, really help get the word out. And I love offering it to you and I love offering so much value for free, it’s one of the things that I really take a lot of pride in. 

I talk about the difference between the podcast and the program and it’s different because the program has a lot more implementation and action, and a lot more individual help. I can’t give you guys all help individually through the podcast. 

The podcast is a lot of learning. Hopefully you’re having a lot of breakthroughs, mini transformations, bug transformations. And then the program is for those of you who, you know, we need a little bit of extra help, we need a little bit of an extra boost, and we need to actually do the work. 

You know, it’s the difference between watching someone snowboard and teaching you how to snowboard through a video or through a podcast. And they’re saying okay, bend your knees. And you want to lean on your toes a little bit and then you want to lean on your heels a little bit. And this is how you get off the lift. You’re like okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. But until you actually get on the mountain and do it, you’re not really going to learn how to do it. 

And so that’s what the program container is, for those of you interested. It’s we’re getting on the mountain, we’re doing it with you. Our commitment is that we work with you until you quit. That’s why we offer lifetime access to the program. We have tons of amazing coaches in there, tons of amazing resources. 

Anyways, I could talk about the program for the whole hour because I’m very, very proud of that too. It’s an amazing program, the best. If you want to quit viewing porn, the best place to be, this podcast and the program. 

So let’s dive into today’s episode. I want to talk about how to control your sexual urges. This is a good one. And you’ve heard me, if you’ve listened to the podcast you’ve heard me talk about this before. But I want to share it a little bit differently than I have in the past. And I want to share it with a metaphor and just talk about it a little bit differently than we might have talked about it in the past in other episodes. 

I remember I used to use this metaphor, or at least parts of it, and I totally forgot about it. So I remembered it and I’m like, oh, it’s time to resurrect this metaphor and we’re going to add on to it a little bit. 

I want you to imagine that you grew up in a village. You grew up in this village and your whole life you’ve been told that tigers are terrifying and dangerous and they will destroy you. And they are one of, if not the most dangerous things out there. You’ve really, really got to be afraid of and watch out for tigers. 

But it turns out that when you’re 13 years old you are given a baby tiger. And it’s not something that you can make go away. And just for the sake of the metaphor, okay, you can’t get rid of it. You can’t kill it. You can’t give it to someone else, it’s yours forever. It’s going to be with you forever. 

And it turns out, you’re not the only one who’s given this tiger. You might think so, but everyone else is given a tiger age 13 too. And they try to hide it. And we’re very scared of it. And we’re trying to keep these tigers from each other. But everyone gets a tiger at age 13, it’s there with you forever, there’s nothing you can do about it. 

So you’re given this tiger, you’re pretty terrified of it. And no one really tells you what to do with it except be very careful. Don’t let it hurt you and don’t let it hurt anyone else. You say how? How do I keep this tiger from hurting me and hurting other people? And they say, we don’t really talk about it, but maybe just build a fence around it and try to keep it away from you and try to keep it away from the rest of the village and keep it quiet. 

Okay, so you build a fence around this baby tiger. And it’s growing and it’s growing. And as you grow, it grows. And you try to ignore it and you just pretend that it’s not there. And the older it gets, the more you ignore it. And you just kind of keep pretending it’s not there. You make sure that the fence is working okay and check on it every now and then and make sure that it’s contained in this cage. 

But as it grows and as it gets bigger, it becomes kind of mean because it’s been so neglected. It gets really loud. It gets really big. It wants out and it starts to tear down the fence. So as soon as you notice it starts tearing down your fence, you yell at it. You push it away, you fix the fence. And this is just making it louder and angrier. 

And so every day you have to go back and repair the fence. Every single day you’re repairing the fence, repairing the fence, repairing the fence. It’s pretty exhausting. But this tiger, it’s just tearing it down every day. You have no other option, you just have to go and repair it so it doesn’t get out and hurt people. Because you see someone else in your village, someone that you grew up with, their tiger got out and it really hurt them and it really hurt other people. 

And this made you even more terrified of this tiger that exists and this tiger that you have to have. So what this makes you do is you scream at it and you hurt it because of the fear of what this tiger can do to you and do to other people. This tiger gets more ferocious and angry, and you continue to rebuild this fence every day. And it’s exhausting. You’re constantly on the lookout for holes in the fence to fix it. 

And then one day you meet a traveler who also has a tiger. But his tiger isn’t in a cage. It’s his buddy and it follows him around. And it’s tame and they like each other. He pets the tiger, the tiger purrs up to him. He doesn’t have any bites or scratches or wounds from the tiger. And so you approach him very curiously and you ask him how did you do that? How is your tiger like this? How are you not afraid of it? How is it not hurting you? 

And so this traveler, what he does is he teaches you how to tame the tiger. He teaches you all these techniques. It starts with love, seeing it, acknowledging it, building trust with it. And being in charge of it. Letting the tiger know that you’re the alpha here. And taking time and time and time to build a friendship, to build trust, to let it know that you’re in charge. To love it, acknowledge it, see it. To feed it good food, to make it your buddy, to make it your friend. 

And you start to do this. You start to tame the tiger like this person taught you and it’s pretty hard and it’s pretty exhausting. And it takes a lot of work up front. And at the beginning it’s pretty mean, you’re getting scratches and you’re getting bites. But after a few months, and then after a few years, this tiger is your friend and you’re not scared of it. And you’re not rebuilding that fence every day. And you’re free. 

You’re free from this tiger, not because this tiger isn’t there anymore. But because it’s not dangerous to you anymore. It’s your friend, you’re in charge of it. You’re buddies and it’s your companion now, instead of something that you’re very afraid of and that you’re always trying to keep contained and push away. 

And again it was a lot of work up front to tame that tiger, but way less work than building a fence every single day. Okay, so obviously this is not a perfect metaphor, and I’m sure if we pick it apart we’re going to find holes. But I really love this idea of the tiger metaphorically being your sexuality. 

Many of us were taught to be extremely afraid of our sexuality and be terrified of it. We don’t talk about it. We’re scared of it. It’s evil, it’s dangerous. But you get one. You hit puberty, you get one and you have to have it forever, it’s just always going to be there. And also, every single person has one too. 

So what we do is we spend our lives building fences around it, hoping it stays contained. And when it doesn’t, when it peeks through, when it starts to get through the fence, we yell at it and we scream at it. And we build more fences because we’re just terrified and ashamed. Ashamed of this tiger. 

Building a fence every single day, that’s that willpower exhaustion trap that we get into. You guys have heard me talk about this pendulum between willpower and giving in. No, no, no, no, I’m not going to view. I’m not going to view. I’m not going to view. I’m not going to give into this. I’m having an urge, I’m not going to give into it. Give in because we’re exhausted. So it’s this pendulum swinging back and forth between willpower, give in, willpower, give in. 

So many of us have spent our lives in this cycle of willpower to exhaustion, willpower to giving in and we don’t have to do that forever. But for many of us, that’s the only option that we were taught or that we know. Anyways, I talk specifically about that in other episodes. The ones that come to mind are Stop Fearing Sexual Urges and Stop Fighting Start Surrendering. 

But back to our metaphor, right? We can build a fence every single day, that willpower exhaustion, we’re really aware. Building our fences, that can look like all the filters we have on our phones. We’ve got our blinders on, we’re not looking around. We’re not looking at billboards. We’re not looking at other people. We’re building our fences. 

We can do that forever, it’s going to be pretty exhausting. Or you can tame it. And your sexuality can become your friend and can become your companion. You can be in control of it. You can be its master. But I know a lot of people, when they say like be the master and be in control of your sexuality, what they think that means is whip, whip, right? Like quiet, quiet it, make it go away. It’s like a very mean master, trying to keep it contained. 

You don’t actually tame it by locking it away, and by hating it, and by hurting it and by yelling at it. You do so by loving it, and building trust with it, and handling it with gentleness. And when you’re learning to do this, it might take some time. You might get scratched, you might get bitten, but that’s okay. 

We just want to hold this vision instead of having to be afraid of our sexuality forever, instead of having to build our fences around it forever and exhaust ourselves just trying to control our sexuality for our whole lives. Instead, you can learn to tame it. Have it sit next to you. Let it become your friend. Let it help you. Let it be your companion. Let it be something that adds to your life instead of takes away from your life. 

And that’s a whole other conversation, how our sexuality adds to our life without just indulging in porn and indulging in sexual acts that are against our value system. I talked about this in depth with my interview with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife that you can go and listen to. 

But I want you to start by asking yourself, how is it true that this sexuality that I’ve been so afraid of my whole life and trying to control it my whole life, and trying to quiet it my whole life, and trying to build fences around it my whole life. How can this actually become my companion, my friend? And how can it add to my life while I am in complete control of it and I am the master over it? 

Now, as long as you can have that vision, you’re going to stick with it and you’re going to do the work. You’re going to give up if you don’t have that vision of this tiger sitting with you. This is a reason that I love to do the what’s possible interviews. And we’re just getting back on the horse to start doing some more of those this year. By the time this episode is released, hopefully we’ll have at least one of those out. We have a bunch set up for this year. 

But the what’s possible interviews, people who have done this, who have quit porn. We have a bunch already in the podcast feed that if you need some inspiration, go and listen to those. You need that vision of what you can have and what kind of relationship you can have with sexuality in order to keep going for it to become your friend to realize and recognize, guess what? I don’t just have to build a fence around it every single day. 

It’s also going to take some hope, right? It’s going to take some hope and some belief. There are people in that village, back to our metaphor, who were like tame the tiger, are you crazy? That is not possible. I’m sorry. You just have to deal with the reality that you just have to build this fence every single day. 

To actually tame the tiger in the metaphor, you have to believe that that’s possible. And you’re going to want some guidance. And you’re going to want some help. And you’re going to want someone to kind of tell you what to do. It’s going to make it a lot easier, a lot faster, and you’re going to get hurt a lot less. 

So those of you who are feeling called to come and join the program and get coached and get a lot of individual help and go through the milestones process of quitting porn, we do have all those different milestones, and you master these milestones. They are the most important things that you need to overcome pornography for good in a way that is healthy, that is embracing your sexuality and not just pushing it away. 

You learn and you master those things and your life is going to be totally different. And you have all the help that you need, coaching opportunities every single week, Ask A Coach, which is where you can go and get email coaching 24/7. Lifetime access to all of that. Lifetime access to the coaching calls. We want to help you, we want to teach you how to do this. 

Okay, so the title of today’s episode is how to control your sexual urges. The answer is that instead of just trying to build a fence around it everyday and quiet it and keep it contained, we want to learn to tame it. And so it’s going to follow us around every day. And it’s going to be there with us every single day. 

And guess what? You’re not going to be worried all the time anymore. You’re not going to be afraid that it’s going to eat you all the time anymore. You’re going to feel very comfortable with it there. It’s actually going to become your buddy and your companion. And it’s going to add to your life instead of take away from your life. Okay? All right, you guys. Have a great week and we’ll talk to you next week. Bye bye.

I want to invite you to come and listen to my free class, How To Overcome Pornography For Good Without Using Willpower. We talk about how to stop giving in to urges without pure willpower or relying on phone filters so that you can actually stop wanting pornography. 

We talk about how to stop giving up after a few weeks or months. And spoiler alert, the answer isn't to have more willpower. And then lastly, we talk about how to make a life without porn easily sustainable and permanent.

If you’re trying to quit porn, this class is a game changer. So you can go and sign up at Sarabrewer.com/masterclass, and it is totally free.