Episode 182: What to Do When Everyone Around You Takes a Shame Approach

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. We've had some really great Ask a Coach episodes. I hope you all have been enjoying those as much as I have. We really have the best coaches in Overcome Pornography for Good. I take my hiring process really seriously and we get tons of applications. I really choose carefully and I always do a lot of training with my coaches as well. They have to have certain certifications, they have to have a certain amount of experience, they have to fit the mission, and then they have to undergo training with me. They're all fabulous, and I just trust them all so much.

I want to hop into a message today that we kind of covered when I did the Q&A episode. Someone had asked, "What do I do when it seems like everyone around me is making this really difficult and they're using the shame approach? It feels like my church and my partner and even my state that I'm living in are really into the porn panic and fear and shame methods. What do I do?" This has been coming up quite a bit and it's difficult. It's hard to work through.

First thing I just want to say, if this is you, if you're learning all these things, it's changing your life. It's such a good thing. You're feeling the goodness of it all. And other people maybe don't get it or other people aren't willing to listen to it or other people haven't seen it yet. That can be a hard place to be. Tons of compassion and love and just sending the support I can your way.

I want to teach you where your power is today. I want to dive into this a little bit more and really talk about how you can show up very powerfully here, very aligned with yourself and how to manage this hurdle of finding a really great way to address all of this. It's working for you and it's working in your life. And you're hearing the panic and the fear and the shame from all these other places around you.

I have clients who come in and they're like, "I love it here. I love coming to calls. I love being in the program. That feels so good, I'm making so much progress,” but then, depending on the person and what's going on in their life, some have more of an issue than others. “What about when I'm just confronted by this other programming all the time? I'm confronted by the fear and the shame programming all the time, and the porn panic programming all the time, and it just feels all-encompassing and depleting. What about if this is all I hear at church, and what if this is all I hear from my spouse? Or what if this is all I'm hearing from everyone around me is all of this other messaging and it's just I'm tired and I'm hurt and I don't know what to do. It's exhausting." So if that's you, I want to speak to you.

Now I have two kids and they're really fun and really hard. Mostly fun. They're actually really great kids. But just parenting is hard. Parenting is freaking hard, but also a blast. I have two kids. They're four and six. One funny dynamic between the two is my four-year-old really pesters my six-year-old. She will just poke him and poke him and poke him and push his buttons. It's just so fun to her. It's like how she plays sometimes is "Let's just see how much we can make big brother cry." It's funny because I was very similar as a little kid. I was the button pusher and just really liked to cause trouble.

So one funny dynamic that happens between them is they'll be maybe watching a movie on the couch together. And then I just hear crying and crying and crying and crying. And my oldest son is just sitting there, he's six. He's just like, "Andy keeps pushing me. Andy keeps poking me. She won't step away from me. She keeps kicking me. Make her stop. Stop, Andy, stop poking me." So he's just crying and she's just sitting there poking him. And he's just sitting there not moving, just crying about her poking him.

Now, I come in, try to do my parenting thing. I don't always know what I'm doing, but I always do my best. And I tell my four-year-old, I tell her, "We keep each other safe in this family. And if Benny doesn't want you to touch him, you don't touch him. It's his body, it's his choice," and I remind her those things. She's four, and she doesn't really listen to me all the time. And two minutes later, from the same room, you hear, "Wah, wah, wah, stop poking me, stop poking me." He's just sitting there, just staying still on the couch, just sitting there.

So what I'm trying to teach him, have him do is I'm trying to teach him that instead of just sitting there and being poked and crying and trying to get her to stop by just sitting there, his power in this situation comes from walking away. Comes from walking away from being poked and getting out of the line of where she can poke him and bug him. And usually if he just moves over to the other side of the couch, it's good. He's out of her line of poking.

It's such a great analogy for those of us who find ourselves in these situations where we do feel like we're being poked or even attacked relentlessly and poked and poked and poked and poked. Our power in these situations comes not from just sitting there and telling them to stop, but our power and our peace comes from not participating.

Listen, not participating can mean a whole number of things. There is not just one way to not participate. Let me give you some examples here so I can be a little clearer. If this is you and you feel like you're constantly being poked and prodded and hurt by these shame messages, your greatest power comes in not participating in those and walking away in situations where it makes sense to walk away.

So what this can look like is it can look like setting boundaries with religious leaders. And I've done podcast episodes on this before. So if you want to deep dive into how to do that, just look up "Boundaries with Religious Leaders," I think is what it's called, that episode. 

So that can be like, "I'm not participating in this meeting where there are shame and fear tactics. My power here is that instead of going into these meetings and just being poked and poked and poked and it's hurting and my body feels unsafe and I'm feeling panicky, I'm going to not participate. As soon as the conversation turns into something fear and shamey, I'm not going to participate. I'm going to have a boundary there."

It can look like, we talked in that Q&A episode, I talked about the analogy of dropping the rope. Instead of getting in these tug of wars with people, let's drop the rope and just stop playing the game. So my son, he can poke her back, poke her back, then they're going to get in a tuffle and a fight. Or he can just sit there and cry and tell her, "Stop, stop, stop, stop." Or he can just stop playing the game.

So his power comes in not participating and getting up and leaving and moving to a different room or moving to a different part of the couch or just not playing her games anymore. She gets bored when he doesn't react. So you can drop the rope with your spouse.

Let's say maybe the example is that your spouse, you get into these really heated conversations where maybe there is a lot of fear and shame and a lot of your spouse's stuff is really coming to the surface that is really wounded and hurt and needs to be hurt. And so instead of participating in that shame and fear game, you can drop the rope.

So what this looks like is "I'm going to participate with you as your spouse. I love you. I'm going to listen to you. I'm going to work through things with you. I want to be an active healer in us and in our relationship and I'm not participating in the shame story. And I'm not going to try to convince you to look at this differently. I don't need to convince you. I can just love you, work through some of this with you and I'm not participating in the shame story anymore."

So that can be boundaries where maybe you do leave a conversation if it becomes shamey. It can just kind of be energetic boundaries where you're like, "Yes, I'm letting you have all of your things and all of your feelings and all of that, all of that. And I'm not participating in that. And that's not mine. And I'm not taking that shame story on me."

So depending on your relationship dynamics, that'll look differently. But you can drop the rope and not participate in that shame story and still be a really lovely, amazing spouse. In fact, it will make you a better spouse to drop that. You can get out of the line of fire, out of the poking.

If you know going into a specific meeting or there's a specific topic being discussed and you don't feel like you have the energetic capability to do that without just feeling hurt, you don't have to go. You don't have to go. You can get out of the line of fire there, out of the poking.

What do I need to do? What boundaries do I need to have in place so that I cannot participate in this shame story anymore? Your power comes inside of you choosing not to participate in that. There are many ways that you can choose not to participate and it's just going to kind of depend on you and where you're at with life and what you want.

For some people, not participating will be a very literal thing where you literally are not participating. You're not going to that place anymore that is really hurting you. You're taking a break from some of those environments. For other people, it's going to be, "I can still be there, but I'm not going to participate energetically. I can still show up to these meetings and I'm at peace enough that I know I don't have to participate in this, that I don't have to participate in the shame stories, that I don't have to participate in the fear stories."

You can still speak up for yourself and still be a voice for people who might be the victims of some of these harmful rhetorics, but you can speak up for that and be out of the line of fire. So you can be safe and be where you're not participating in that and it's not affecting you, it's not hurting you, and you can also speak up for yourself or for other people if you hear it.

The big energetic and mindset shift here is that they don't need to change for you to be safe. They don't need to change what they're doing for you to figure out how to be safe for yourself and how to stop participating for yourself and how to get out of that shame and fear and panic conditioning. They don't need to change for you to get out of that.

We're going to keep doing the work to try to get them to change. So you're prioritizing yourself, prioritizing what you need, learning how to stop participating without the other person changing or without the organization changing or without whoever that is changing, the spouse changing. And once you're there, then we can do the work of "Let's tell them to stop. Let's tell them how this hurts us. Let's see if they're open to this."

But a lot of the distress really comes up if you aren't safe first. Distress if they're not listening, if they're not getting it. It becomes really distressful if you're still kind of really participating in that system and you need that system to change for you to feel better.

Now I'm saying this, and there's so much nuance to it, just like there's a lot of nuance to everything I talk about because I say this and yes, and yes, you are not responsible for being hurt. You are not responsible for the traumas of that messaging that you've heard forever. You're not responsible for that. And yes, there should be some accountability. And yes, there should be changes. And yes, we want to do what we can to start changing things so that more kids aren't hurt.

So I want to make sure with this message of "Your healing and your power comes from not participating," I want to be careful that what doesn't get lost here. I want to make sure that what isn't communicated here is that you're responsible for all of your own pain and all of your own traumas. That's not true. That's not true. But you can make a much bigger difference in your communities once you stop participating in that shame messaging for yourself. That's when you can speak up and continually speak up from a place of groundedness and of safety in yourself once you're out of that line of fire.

Let me give you another example of what not participating might look like. So sometimes I get weird little pokes from certain people in my circles about working instead of being a stay-at-home mom, which I think is so funny, but sometimes I get little pokes here and there.

So I have choices. I can just sit there and take it and just get poked and poked and poked and then eventually blow up because I just can't take it anymore. Or I cannot participate. I can walk away. I can tell them, "Stop, that hurts" and get out of the line of fire energetically.

So I can tell them stop, but I'm not just going to stop there. I'm going to not participate. I can stop participating in that energy. I could do that a number of ways. It could be literally leaving the conversation, leaving the room. It can also look like, "Oh, that's just amusing. That's funny that you would say that." And I'm not participating energetically. It's not even bothering me energetically.

Both are fine. Both are needed. Both are needed at different times in your life and for different things. Sometimes I am in a place where the little poke, it does feel kind of funny and that is a result of years and years and years of my own work on myself. The clearer that you feel about where you are in your life and the approach that you're taking and that it is good and that it is helpful, the clearer you are on that, the less the poking is going to bug you and the more it just becomes kind of funny.

So that's one way that you can stop participating energetically is you just kind of let it be amusing instead of something that's hurtful. Sometimes that's a little too difficult to get to and you're not supposed to get to that. Sometimes it really is more of a physical boundary that you need to place. And you need to ask yourself, "What am I okay with participating in here?"

For example, if you're going to, if you're meeting with a bishop over and over and over again, there's a lot of fear and shame and stuff going on in those meetings. Maybe the first couple of times it comes up, it could be just kind of amusing. But after that, you wouldn't want to just continue to keep going. A physical boundary there, an actual not participating in and that might be a little more helpful there.

Anyways, this is going to look different for everyone, how you actually stop participating, but those are some ideas. Your peace and your power does not come from other people finally seeing this differently. They will, they will, I promise they will, eventually. Eventually, even if it's years down the road, but it's okay because guess what? Your peace and power comes from you learning to stop participating for yourself in that fear, shame, panic messaging. It's hard to learn, but once you do, you'll have so much freedom and peace.

So again, if I'm thinking of this example with my kids, and I want to help solve this conflict between lots of fear and shame and hardcore panic around porn and the porn users. So I'm going to have two different messages. And if you follow me on Instagram, you see that I do send this message a lot.

I just recently, just this week, posted something that said, "Stop shaming boys for masturbating. Knock it off. Stop, stop shaming boys for masturbating. We need to stop this. It's harmful, it's hurtful. This is what it's doing." I'm going to do that, I'm going to say that. That's an important part, is to tell that person to stop.

Listen, in this family, we keep each other safe. That's what I'm telling my daughter. "In this family, we keep each other safe and I love you and let's keep each other safe and his body is his body. So don't poke him. Listen, we want to help each other out and shaming boys for masturbating is not it. It's actually creating more harm. So let's stop doing that."

And then my message to the other person who's just getting poked by these messages over and over and over and over again, what I say to my son, "Hey, walk away, stop participating in this. Go to the other side of the room. You can protect yourself. You can protect yourself. Stop participating in this, and she'll stop."

So again, that's kind of my message to you, my podcast listeners, is if this is really painful for you, your peace and your power is going to come from learning how to not participate. There are so many ways that you can decide to do this. It can be energetically, it can be physically, it can be all the things. You and your gut is going to know what you need.

Even if you don't know long-term, you can decide for, just for the next couple of months, "I'm going to take a break. I'm going to stop participating in this, which means I'm not going to have conversations with this around these people or whatever that looks like. For this amount of time, I'm going to stop going to these meetings because they're hurting me."

Now, here's when it gets difficult. When the person who's being poked thinks that they deserve it. When they think that they deserve it they think that it's helping them. These are those people who are struggling with porn. I'm thinking, one of the clients I think about a lot is that 20-year-old client who's home from missionary service, started doing porn again, and they just think that they 're horrible people. 

And then they go into these meetings and sometimes, and I'm hoping this is changing, but I get many messages from many of you that are saying, this is what's happening for you, where they're just getting really shamed and a lot of fear and being withheld things because they viewed porn. They can't, their bishop isn't giving them permission to get married or whatever that is, which is crazy.

I know for those of you who have never experienced anything like that, you're like, "Whoa, that's really intense." It is really intense. Those people just getting poked and poked and poked and poked and poked and thinking that they deserve it. That's when it gets kind of tricky when they think they deserve it. Or when the person who is doing the poking, doing the hurting really genuinely thinks that it's helping, really genuinely thinks it's the way to go about things.

So there's lots of work to do when that's the case. There's a lot of coaching, healing on both sides that need to happen. And someone can have really good intentions and be doing the poking because they don't know anything else that would work, but it doesn't matter if their intentions are good or not. If it's hurting you, your power and your peace comes from not participating.

Also difficult. Another difficulty here is when there are power dynamics in play, which is what you often see. Power dynamics maybe between parent and child, where the child doesn't have the power to walk away because they're a child. The power dynamic doesn't let them walk away. Power dynamics, even religious leaders and followers, there's some power dynamics there, which is why developing personal spiritual authority is such a huge important part of development.

I've talked about that in previous podcast episodes that you can go listen to if you're finding yourself stuck in that dynamic where "I want to stop participating in this, but also they're the authority, so don't they know better than me? My heart, my body is telling me that this isn't right and this isn't safe, but they're the authority here, so I should still just do what they say." That's a dynamic where this gets hard and difficult. And so that's why, again, developing spiritual authority if you're stuck in that dynamic, developing spiritual authority. Go listen to that podcast episode and then come let us coach you on that if you'd like.

And a quick shout out to all of the religious leaders that I do have. I have that ecclesiastical leader training that gets a lot of downloads every month. And so many of you are out there trying to make it a safer and better place and really trying to help your people who feel stuck in a pornography habit, you want to help them. You want to help them. You're doing such a great job.

So just a shout out to all the people who are really trying to make a change here and to those of you who just feel depleted and exhausted and afraid and every at church and my relationship everywhere. I just can't get a break from this. Your power comes in learning how to not participate in it. Not getting that rope, that tug-of-war rope, where they're saying one thing and you're saying the other, and you're trying to pull them onto your side and trying to convince them. That's exhausting, and that's not near as powerful as dropping the rope.

Stop being participating. Let them do what they need to do. Let them say what they need to say on their side. Let them just be pulling that rope around, but you're not participating. You're not participating. That is such a powerful place to be. Oh my goodness. And you can still, from that place of not participating, you can still show up with love. In fact, you can show up with love a whole lot easier than if you're sitting there pulling the rope with them.

Okay, everyone, I hope this was helpful. Have a great rest of your week and we will 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.” 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.