Episode 184: Denial

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 184, Denial.

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, everyone. Welcome to today’s podcast episode. I was going to do our worthiness wounds part two today, but I’m going to save that and record it, try to record it for next week’s episode. I just, honestly, today I’m just really exhausted and it’s my deadline day to get the podcast episode done. And that one is going to be kind of a long one, and I want to have a little bit more energy to give to it. It’s just one that I’m excited for and just want to have the right energy when I’m recording it. 

It’s just, you know, it’s been such a great, lovely summer and we’re just kind of recovering from travel, from sickness, from these things. And it’s the end of a really long day. I’ve already done a lot of work today and so we’re going to have just like a short, powerful episode on denial. 

So denial, right? I’m sure a lot of you have experienced this in your journey to quit viewing porn or, you know, really in lots of areas of our lives. Denial, it’s just this defensive state where you refuse to accept the truth or to look at the truth. What I think is really fascinating about denial is that it is recognized as a stage in the grief process. 

So you have your steps in grief and in processing grief, and denial is one of those. Denying that it happened, denying that this is the reality. And so as I talk about denial, I want to talk about it from a shame-free perspective or an unshamed perspective where if you’re in some denial, there’s no shame here. It’s okay. It’s typically a result of grief. And so let’s talk about this, some examples of when denial might show up as grief. 

Denying that you have a porn habit that feels out of control, right? Denying it, you’re not a bad person. But what’s really there, oh, I’m going to have to grieve this. There’s grief that this has become a problem that feels out of my control. Denying that maybe you do have, if you have like a partner or someone who’s asking you to get some help or to go and see a professional or to maybe do some therapy. And then the denial there is like, no, there’s nothing wrong with me. What do you mean? No, this is just normal. I’m just, you know, I’m having a rough day. I’m fine. I always get back up on my feet. 

It can be part of that grief process of whatever it is that’s going on under the surface, whether it’s just that you’re coping, not coping in a healthy way, you’re overworking yourself. You’re overrunning yourself. You’re really irritable at home. You’re not showing up as an equal partner in your home. Denial is a part of that grief, because if we look at what’s really going on under the surface, you know, oh, we don’t want to look at that. It’s maybe a little scary and it’s sad. And it’s sad. 

Now grief, you know, it’s just something that every single human experiences. And so to grieve maybe what you have done or to grieve maybe where you’re at or to grieve what you don’t have. I thought I would have this by this time in my life, or I thought this is what my life would look like and it doesn’t look like this. It makes sense how denial is a part of that grief process. 

Now, the only way to heal and to get better and to have a better life and to have the things that you want, to accomplish things you want, or to find the peace and the healing that you want. The only way is to go through the grief. The only way is to go through the grief. And so some people think to get what you want, you just put your head down and you work and you don’t think about it. And you just, you know, you don’t get distracted by the sadness or by the emotion. 

And what I want to share with you is that really the best way to create whatever that is you want, you know, let’s talk porn specifically. To get to where you want to be with your porn habit, to have more control over it, or whatever that is, is to go through the denial, breathe into that and go into grief. 

And we can feel that. And we can feel the grief that comes up when we look at it. And it’s safe and it’s okay. And it doesn’t mean that you’re a defective person. This is part of the human experience, right? Everyone has to feel grief, and not just grief for someone dying, but grief for what they thought they had, grief for what they don’t have. Every single person, every single person will experience that. So let’s go into it. Let’s notice the denial, recognize it as a step in the grief process and then go into the grief and feel the grief. 

Now, if you haven’t done this before, if you aren’t used to feeling your feelings and emotions, if you’re really afraid of that, find someone to help you find someone to help you go into that grief process. We can do that in our program, Overcome Pornography For Good. Your coaches can do that with you, we can sit through that with you on a coaching call. Find a therapist that maybe you really love and trust. If you need some help, there’s some help there, right? 

Because grief can feel scary. And especially if it’s something big that feels big, right? That might feel big. Like, oh, I have to accept that this porn habit is a little bit out of my control or how this has affected my life and have to grieve that, right? Every single person who’s listening to this podcast, there’s going to be some grief that comes up as you think about and go into why you are here. 

Whether that’s grief around what you were taught that really hurt you, that you’ve heard me talk about. Grief around the shame around masturbation. And, oh my gosh, like how much did that mess me up? Or grief around what you did or grief around how long you hid it for or grief for how much you beat yourself up for. Grief for how other people treated you or grief for how you treated other people. How you hid and pushed people away and lied. Right? 

Okay, so I feel heavy. And the only way to get past it is to go through it. Is to go through it. And I want to remind you, if I haven’t talked about this on the podcast for a while, but feelings, every feeling that we feel, it’s not dangerous and they are not overpowering. They become overpowering when we push them away and we’re trying not to feel them. 

When we resist the feelings, that’s when they get dangerous. When we resist the feelings, that’s when we act out. That’s when we buffer. That’s when we over drink or that’s when we over porn or whatever it is, in the resistance of the emotion. But the actual emotion is not harmful. It hurts, but it doesn’t hurt more than pushing it away does. 

So how we do that is we go into our body, we notice what does my body feel like? And what are the sensations in my body? A feeling is just sensations in your body. It’s not scary. It’s not overpowering. It’s just a sensation in your body. 

So grief, grief is going to have a really specific sensation in your body, whether that’s, you know, maybe it feels like a rock in your gut. Or you can just feel your shoulders sagging. Or things feel just like hot. Like hot and heavy, or whatever that is. Grief can have very specific sensations in your body. So, you know, grief, we feel it. We let whatever comes up, come up. We cry, we’re sad, we grieve. We grieve and we let ourselves grieve for as long as we need to. 

So denial and guilt and shame, they’re going to go hand in hand with each other, right? We are denying because we feel shame. We are denying because we feel guilt. And so these are heavy feelings. And again, I would encourage you if that makes you really nervous to do, find some therapeutic support to help work through these emotions. 

I also want you to think of what denial does in your body. So we talked about kind of how grief feels in your body. Now, denial to me, and it’s going to be different for everyone, so kind of check in with your own body and see what denial feel like. Denial to me, it doesn’t feel as clean as grief. It feels like, I mean, the image that comes to my mind, right, is just throwing a blanket over a big pile of crap, right? 

If you’ve got a messy room and there’s pizza boxes and garbage and dirty clothes and dirty socks and all these things. And you just throw a blanket over it, right? That’s what denial feels like. And you look around and you’re like, yeah, this looks better. But really like it doesn’t feel better because you’re not, you know, you still can’t walk on that blanket. You’re going to walk on all that stuff, it’s going to hurt your feet or you’re just going to make a bigger mess. 

It’s still there. Anyone who comes into the room is going to notice it, right? You’re not really hiding it from anyone. Denial, it feels a little bit more shallow and it feels a little bit more hopeless, right? So the truth being honest, as hard as that can be sometimes, it sets us free. Whereas denial, it just feels like hopelessness, right? 

Now, I know a lot of you might be struggling with some of this or trying to figure out how to be honest about certain things, how to be honest about maybe your porn habit. Maybe you need some support from some family and you feel called to tell them about what’s going on for you, whether that be parents or a spouse, right? If you haven’t told a spouse yet, that’s a big one. 

And I will always, always say, you know, we always do recommend you tell your spouse because that trust factor is huge. And the betrayal trauma that happens for a lot of people isn’t necessarily because of the porn, but it’s because of the breach of trust that they feel. And so we always recommend that. 

Now, when it comes to like parents or friends or anyone, you don’t have to tell anyone about your porn habit. You don’t have to tell anyone. But some of you, you know, you might really be feeling like I need help and I think that this person would support me and I want to tell them. I have a good relationship with my parents where I feel like they would be supportive and I want to tell them. Or maybe you need a little bit of, some of you might need some financial help for getting some support, some professional support with this or whatever that is, so you want to talk to someone and see if they could support you. And it can be really scary and you want to stay in that denial. 

Now, the way to get out of that denial, there’s not a magic pill. It’s very simple. And what I want to invite you to do, if this is you, if you’re feeling like this resonates with you is just breathe, sit in silence. And I want you to connect to your heart and connect to your inner truth. 

Now, when I say that it can just be as simple as imagining it, just breathing, just pretending your heart’s opening. Just breathing. Just pretending you see that light, like right in your gut that just knows. And then you’re going to connect to courage and ask yourself, what is courage here? I want you to imagine what it would feel like to live in the light, even if that’s being honest about something. 

And even if you don’t do it yet, just imagine what that would feel like. I want you to imagine what it would feel like to finally tell your spouse when you’ve been meaning to tell your spouse. And imagine, oh, that’s going to, you know, there’s maybe a little sinking feeling when you tell them and a little bit of dread, but what else? Freedom? A weight off your shoulders? 

Okay, now imagine what it would feel like to not tell them. Again, I kind of think like the image that comes to my mind is that pond of misery. You guys have heard me talk about pond of misery. We have the river of misery, which it’s rushing a little bit and it’s cold and you’ve got to swim to the other side to get out of it. But there is a way out of it. You just have to go through it, through the river of misery. 

And then there’s the pond of misery, which is just like a murky, scummy, like a gross hot tub, like a pond that’s just like murky and you’re just sitting there, right? So when I think of denial, that’s what I think of. I think it’s just sitting in this pond of misery. And so, yeah, to get to the other side, to get through and to get to healing, we’ve got to go through that river of misery. But the river of misery is fresh and it’s crisp and there is a way out and it’s on the other side. The pond of misery, you’re just stuck there, right? 

So imagine what both of those feel like. Remind yourself, they both feel bad. Ask your body, which feels better. Ask your body, which feels better today and which feels better long-term. And then just ask ourselves to practice courage, practice courage, practice courage, and to do what our heart and our gut are saying. 

All right, you guys, have a great week. I just love, love getting to be connected to you and love getting to do this work. Have a great rest of your week and we’ll talk to you later. 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 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.