Episode 119: You Are the Authority

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 119, You Are the Authority.

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 this week. Before we dive in I want to let you guys know we’re doing another free class coming up in April. And I’m so excited, I love those. I love just being in a setting where I can talk to you and you can ask questions. I mean, it’s fun talking to myself and a microphone, sure. But it’s more fun when there’s other people that I’m talking to at the same time. But don’t get me wrong, I could just talk to myself all day long. 

This class is called Overcome Pornography For Good Without Shame and Fear Tactics. We are going to really condense, you know, there are so many podcast episodes, so many great things, we really condense to the most important simple step by step what do you need to do to quit porn and how do we do that shame-free and sex positive and without fear tactics? 

It’s a great class for those of you who have never been to my free classes before. And for those of you who have been to my free classes before, it’s a really great review of all of these concepts that you might have heard before, and an opportunity to ask me questions and get some one on one help with me. 

I’ll stay until the end of the class, until all questions are asked. And some of you might be feeling a little bit stuck with your journey to quit porn and I want to give you that help. And that help is mostly reserved for people in the program, it’s just I’ve got a certain bandwidth and so that one on one and the coaching and the questions is typically reserved for coaching calls in the program. 

But I do occasionally do classes like this, I’ll teach you, I’ll talk about the program if you want to join, then at the end I stay for questions and I answer as many questions as there are. 

And so please come if you are wanting some help. Come and learn, come and get a great review of all of the key concepts to quit porn. You can sign up, we’re going to put it in the show notes because it’s kind of a long url, but it’s sarabrewer.com/podcast-overcome-pornography-without-shame. So podcast-overcome-pornography-without-shame. 

We moved. Did I tell you guys that we moved? I don’t remember if I’ve said that on the podcast, but we moved to a new house. And I’m in love with it. It is just down the road from our old house. It’s really easy to get overwhelmed when you’re moving, and so my mantra has been slow and steady like the tortoise in the tortoise and the hare race, right? 

The tortoise won the race because he just kept going slow and steady. And the rabbit didn’t because he just ran and then burned out and took a nap very quickly. And that is typically, well maybe up until the last five years, three years, four years, that was my pattern for everything, was the rabbit. I would burn out, burn out, burn out, burn out so easily. It was like I was on a train and the train would just speed up, speed up, speed up until it was just going off course and everywhere. And that was my pattern. 

And now my new pattern is more zen like the tortoise. And so that’s how I’m approaching this house. My office is a mess, but we’re going to get to it. We’re going to get to it eventually. We also had a bunch of other stuff come up, like my son broke his arm, both of my kid’s birthdays, and it’s always a little bit busy with my husband’s business. 

My husband owns Axial Knives, for those of you who are into OTF, the OTF knives. And we have a machine shop he works out of that we’ve put a lot of investment into. And so that’s always a bit busy. It’s a good busy though. It’s busy but it’s a good busy. It’s a good life. 

All right you guys, I want to dive into the content today. I’m talking about you are the authority. This might be one of the most important episodes that I do and I’m really excited to share this with you. There are so many opinions on everything. Everything. And especially when it comes to your own healing and quitting porn. 

There are lots of opinions, there are lots of thoughts, there are lots of ways to do it. There are lots of different wonderful, brilliant people out there. And it’s really important that we recognize that nothing is above questioning and no one has all of the answers for you. No one is the ultimate authority for you and your healing above yourself. 

No one knows you as well as you know you. No one has your intuition like you have your intuition. And you are going to know better than anyone else what you need to do. And no one is an authority above yourself when it comes to you and your healing and quitting porn and so many other things, everything. Everything, but we’re just kind of keeping it focused here on healing and quitting porn. 

And a way that I see people hold themselves back is that they think that someone has more answers than they do. And someone else knows what they should do with their life. And someone else has the magic eight ball that’s going to give them all the answers. And there are two ways that I see this in clients. They show up a little bit sneaky, but I want to talk about them. 

The first way that I see clients hold themselves back is thinking that their coach, or their therapist, or whoever it is that they’re working with is the authority above themselves. This might look like your body is telling you something, and your coach or your therapist is saying something else, and you trust that coach or that therapist over you. 

And we’re going to talk about this more in depth, but there is a period where you do need to learn how to listen to your intuition, and what’s intuition versus what’s trauma response. There’s some period that you need to learn that. 

But an example of this is a coach I had hired a while ago who was teaching me how to build my business and telling me some things that I needed to do, I think specifically around consultation calls that I used to do way back when. And the process did not feel good to me. And it didn’t feel aligned with me, but I kept doing it anyway because I trusted them more than me. 

And it didn’t give me good results and it didn’t feel aligned to the business I wanted to create. But that’s not their fault. It’s my fault, because I knew that it wasn’t good for me and for the way I was trying to do things, but I trusted them more than I trusted me. 

Now, I want you to know that this is something we are so, so, so aware of as coaches in Overcome Pornography For Good and I talk about this with my coaches all the time. And if you’re in the program and if you’re watching group calls, you’re going to see me do this a lot, where I always check in. Is this resonating? Does this feel true to you? What are your thoughts about that? Do you think we’re missing something? 

It is not my way or the highway and we’re super aware of that as coaches. Especially because in a coach or a therapist or a dynamic where you’re helping someone, it’s very easy for there to become kind of a power dynamic where the client is trying to please you and trying to make you happy, and also trying to do everything right and listening to you above everything else. 

And it almost becomes like the coach or the therapist or whoever it is becomes this guru instead of what they’re supposed to be, which is someone helping you heal. Bringing awareness, pointing things out, seeing things that you can’t. Offering solutions, offering ways to heal, offering their expertise, their teachings, their own specialties, their knowledge. But then helping you be the authority, you be the healer, and you be the hero and teaching you how to access this for yourself. 

A coach or a therapist or whoever it is you’re working with is not going to be your healer or your savior. You are going to be that for you. And you are going to learn how to do that and you’re going to learn what you need. So for an example that I have experienced recently within the last few years is I had some really intense emotions and panic attacks and anxiety attacks start to come up in certain environments. 

And it really freaked me out and I didn’t know what was happening. I’d never experienced that before. And I was talking to a friend who is also really into the healing world and is a coach. And she said it sounds like what you’re experiencing is trauma. And so I went and I worked with her, she taught me about trauma and she taught me all these beautiful things. 

And then I needed more and I trusted myself, I needed something else. And so then I went and did some EMDR therapy. And I did that for a few weeks and a few months. And then I needed something else and I trusted myself to move on to this next psychotherapist. And all of these people were a beautiful part of this journey of learning about and healing trauma. 

And I would have done such a disservice to myself if I would have made one person my guru, or if I would have made one person the one who has all the answers and given them all that power. And of course, the coaches and all the therapists that I was working with, they were great and they helped me really cultivate this instead of like, no, I am the authority. 

And I’m going to use all these different people and learn all these different things as a part of my healing journey. But they’re not the authority over me, I am. I know what I need. I know what to try. I know what feels good to me. I know my intuition. I can trust my intuition. And I can move from place to place to place and just be grateful that every single one of these people was a part of my journey. 

It reminds me of the success triangle that we teach in the program. The success triangle, to have success you need these three things. You need the program, you need your coach, and you need you. You, you, you. Where so many people get stuck is they do the program and they get coaching. So they’re learning all this stuff and then they’re going to their coaches and they’re getting help. But the you part, the them part is missing. 

Either they’re not putting in the work, or they’re expecting someone else to do it for them. Or they’re not really thinking through things and trying to find answers and trying to create this relationship with themselves. They’re just expecting the program and the coach to do it for them. I have a whole episode on that if you want to hear more about that. 

Okay, so that’s the first way that I see people holding themselves back, is thinking that someone else has more authority than themselves when it comes to their healing. So thinking their coach, or their therapist, or whoever it is has more authority than they do. And that’s not true. You have that authority. You will always know what’s better for you than anyone else. 

This is something you might have to practice and build that relationship and build that trust with to really believe that. Especially because all of us, we’ve been really taught and conditioned that the authority is outside of ourselves and someone else knows better than we do and we don’t really need to look deeply at things if we have someone else who has answers for us. We want to start rewriting that conditioning and recognizing that we are worthy of all the answers. 

We are worthy of finding that for ourselves. We have the healing. We have everything we need inside of us. And we’re going to be guided and lead to the ideas, to the teachings, to those people who might open our eyes to new techniques and new knowledge and new ways to heal. 

Okay, so the second thing that I see people getting stuck on is their commitment and their reason for quitting is because someone else told them that they should. And this shows up sneaky, right? Because you might be like, “No, I’m quitting for me.” But when you keep asking yourself, “But why am I quitting? Why? Why? Why?” When you keep digging deeper, digging deeper, you might find that some of it that’s there is because you’re not really sure why, you’ve just been told that you should. 

This came up recently when I was doing a class. I asked the person, “Well why are you trying to quit porn?” And they said, “Just because I should. Because I should because it’s not good for me. Because my spouse is telling me I should. Because I’ve been told my whole life that I should.” And he recognized very quickly that that’s not really a great reason and that’s why he wasn’t making progress. 

But it’s this idea that someone else knows what I should do with my life more than I do. They know I should quit porn, so I will. And what this does, is it keeps you from quitting porn. Anytime there is a should, I should quit porn, it’s not enough oomph to quit porn. It’s not enough oomph to make it happen. 

And so what happens, because so many of us when we were teenagers – And it depends on your conditioning and where you grew up, and maybe what religion you grew up in, or non religion, or what family dynamics you grew up in. But we were taught what to do with our sexuality and taught very specifically, don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this. And that’s probably a good thing, right? When you’re a teenager, you probably need that. 

You need some really clear direction. You need something really clear like, “Hey, this is going to hurt you. This is going to be bad for you. Don’t do this. Don’t do this. Don’t do this.” But then you become an adult and there’s more nuance and there’s more life to experience. And your life is your own and you have to access that so much deeper, especially with sexuality. 

Sexuality is just especially something in more conservative religions you’re really taught not to have authority over. You’re taught that someone else knows what you should do. And so we get into adulthood and we get all these questions like, is this specific thing okay? Is this okay? Is this okay? Is this okay? Because when I was a teenager they were telling me exactly what was okay and what’s not okay. 

Then you get to an adult and they don’t have all the answers. At least your church probably shouldn’t be telling you exactly what to do with your sexuality, right? Like no oral sex. No masturbation. They shouldn’t be telling you all those little details. 

And so it becomes this point where you’re like, “Well, now I have to decide for myself. I have to take this authority and make a decision with me and God, no one else is going to be here in the middle telling me what to do. I’ve got to make this decision.” 

So with porn, I’ve got to decide that I’m choosing to quit porn. And it’s not because I should. And it’s not because someone else is telling me. And it’s not because it’s hurting my wife, but it’s because I’m choosing this. That’s a much more powerful place to be in, that is acting from your own personal authority. Deciding what you really want with your life, why you don’t want porn in your life, why you are choosing to quit. That is not because I should. 

And I’ve already said this, but I’m going to say it again. We have been socialized, all of us have been socialized and taught that authority is outside of ourselves. That someone outside of us has all of the answers. But this is not true. This is not true. And there are so many different ways for people to get results, that you have to be the authority for yourself to decide what to do, what to believe, where to spend your energy, where to spend your time. 

And when you’re healed, when you’re making decisions from your highest self, not from your wounded self, you’re going to know exactly what to do. So that is, you know, a lot of where coaching and therapy comes in, is it helps you heal and helps you make decisions from that highest self. Not because a coach or a therapist has all the answers for you, but because they’re going to teach you how to make decisions from your highest self and not from your wounded self, okay? 

One of my favorite mantras – And if this is resonating with you, I want you to take this mantra. I have everything I need. What I want is available to me because God does not mess with me. And God does not give me desires without a way to accomplish and to get that desire. What I want is available to me. And as I tune into my intuition and I’m courageous enough to act, I will get exactly what I want. 

So if you’re listening to this, or you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while and you’re feeling that, like that pull to come and join the program and that intuition sparking up at you and saying, “Hey, we need to be there.” I want to invite you to be courageous enough to act on that. And to listen to yourself and to trust yourself. 

You can quit porn for good. And you have the ability to find all of the answers and the ability to heal. And we would love to help you and support you with that if Overcome Pornography For Good feels like a good fit for you. You can sign up at SaraBrewer.com/workwithme. All right, you guys, have a great week. 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 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.