The following is a transcript of a live presentation given at the Cyber Secrets Conference on Pornography at Brigham Young University on February 7, 2001.

Cyber Secrets: The Problem of Pornography:
The Treatment Process: Getting Help For You or a Loved One
Dr. Rick Moody, Dr. Kirk Dougher and Dr. Mike Buxton
Counselors in the Career and Counseling Center
February 7, 2001

Dr. Rick Moody

There is a quote from Elder Featherstone in October 1999. He said, "I love the story told at the funeral of Henry Eyring's father. When he was a young man, coming across the border from the Mexican Colonies to the United States. The customs man said, 'Son, do you have any pornography in your suitcase or trunks?' He responded, "No, sir. We don't even own a pornograph." Now it is wonderful that at this time there was naivete and pureness. Unfortunately as evidenced by the conference we are having today such naivete does not exist as much.

Today we have experienced some excellent presentations dealing with consequences, causes, and prevalence. We'd like to address the treatment aspect of what we do at the Counseling and Career Center, at least the three of us. We will address common presentations that we get from clients who struggle with pornography and masturbation, or both, since they were teenagers. Usually there is a repentance process that they go through and a promise to never continue again. They work very closely with bishops. Usually this kind of takes on a cycle, though. They typically will make several visits to ecclesiastical leaders. When they go on missions a lot of the time they are able to give up the problem for the two years. Sometimes they have a quasi-problem nothing at the magnitude of where they were before. When they return from their missions, however, they usually get right back into the addiction fairly quickly. They make repeated heart?wrenching attempts to try to overcome the struggle. And, once again, resume their work with ecclesiastical leaders. They make very diligent attempts. They are very sincere. What happens is they become very enmeshed with their struggle. It becomes who they are and what they are all about.

What I'd like to talk about just briefly is the temptation versus the addiction. The ways to deal with this issue that are often talked about involves singing a hymn to get our thoughts away from it. It involves scriptures reading and maybe praying. Those things work quite well with someone who has a superficial kind of temptation or curiosity, but frequently what we see is addictions. This kind of approach typically is ineffective. Instead of running from the problem, we instruct people who practice this ineffective effort to become more familiar with the context of where they are coming from, the addiction. In other words, during the initial phases of treatment, we encourage clients to continue business as usual and to become aware of how he carries out the struggle in his daily life. We also encourage them to be where they are rather than somewhere else they are trying to be.

Rarely is the acting?out behavior the problem. We find that there is a lot of other problems that correlate with their struggle. This might be problems with their spouse, conflict with spouse, or stress with school. A lot of people we see go through a struggle of working through independence. This is a key time in their lives when they are trying to figure out what their own values are, what's important to them. Many times it can be a period of vulnerability and inadequacy.

We introduce them to an idea that is perhaps the solution they've been relying upon to be part of the problem. We discuss ways in which they feel stuck. We have them take a look at the logical attempts that they've made to try to overcome this problem. Usually when they show up at therapy they've exhausted all resources. They get to a point where they think they have tried everything, they need help.

We also talk about the inside-out rule. It goes something like this. If you don't like something you figure out how to get rid of it and you get rid of it. In other words, if you don't like a messy floor you vacuum it; if you don't like ignorance, you go to school; if you don't like poverty you get a job. It's very much geared towards taking initiative, to pull ourselves up by our own boot straps.

The inside rule is if you don't want it, you've got it. I would like to use a metaphor we use quite commonly. Let's say I'm sitting in a room with any one of you. What we have in the room with us is a polygraph machine which has proven to be 100 percent accurate with no flaw. It picks up any degree of anxiety that you might manifest, the slightest degree will come out on this machine. I tell you what I want you to do is be relaxed. Just be relaxed, but if you do show any anxiety I'll know it because it will be on the screen. I'd offer you extra motivation too. I will hold this loaded .44 magnum to your head. And all I want you to do is be relaxed. If you're not relaxed, I'm going to pull the trigger. What's going to happen? Boom, you're dead.

We explain to a lot of people we work with that they have something more powerful than a loaded gun to their head, it's called your self-esteem, it's called your own success in life. So when you experience the least of sexual desire, fantasy, thought, whatever, a lot of times they point the gun to their head. They think, "Boy I am scum, I'm unworthy of blessings. I can't believe I'm thinking this again". It is quite a struggle. So then we reiterate the point if you don't want it, you've got it.
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Dr. Kirk Dougher

Often times when we see people coming into therapy they bring in particular treatment goals which we want for them, but they many not be the exact way they want them. Their goal often ends up being about wanting to feel better; they want to have their life go in a better direction. The therapeutic goal we try to work out when we initially start dealing with them is we want them to feel better. Not in terms of having their life necessarily go better, although we expect that to be a part of the by-product of what happens for them, but in terms of doing a good job of feeling; we want them to be present with where they are at.

In regard to the .44 magnum metaphor, not only is there success in life at stake here, but the individuals that we see are extremely intelligent motivated, diligent people who come in and are wrapped up in what we talk about as the word machine. They get caught up in their own thoughts. It is not just their success in life or their spouse, but sometimes they are in direct contact with the fact that there are some spiritual contingencies that they are currently encountering that are particularly painful. To extrapolate from there, there are some immense spiritual contingencies that may fall out in the life to come. Consequently, people have a really hard time with this. It is not a lack of motivation for them. We joke about the .44 magnum metaphor, but at the same time, it is a pittance compared to what they feel like they are really facing.

The type of therapy that we do involves a great deal of philosophy. It involves a great deal of metaphor. We try and get people into a position where they start to examine what is really going on for them. One of the fall-outs from this is that as they enter this phase they get a little confused. At times they are a little perplexed about what is going on and wondering if they are making any progress. We talk about a quitters cough and if any of you have been around somebody who is gone through smoking and has been able to stop, you know that one of the things they develop soon after they quit smoking is this nasty, raspy, hacking cough that tends to feel like their insides are coming apart. They'll come to you and tell you they have to have a smoke, this has got to stop.

If you take a look at that same example from a physiological prospective, one of the things that is happening is that hair cells or cilia cells on the inside of our lungs that are used for filtering out all the stuff that we breathe in every day have been pasted down in one position by the tar that we've ingested over the years. The way that the body is incredibly resilient is part of the process that produces that quitter's cough. What you see with that, after they stop smoking, those little cilia cells will start standing up. If you've ever taken a little nap in the daytime and got up and tried to comb your hair that little painful brush that you use from sleeping on your hair wrong is part of it.

The part is that it is also kicking off some of the crud that's pasted them down and is falling down and irritating other cilia cells. So in the end, when people feel like things are getting worse, they are actually getting better. Sometimes they get into this struggle that they are having and feel like there is just no way out and part of that is the process that we want them to be attending to.

A person's willingness to try things is pretty incredible. They'll go and do a lot of different things to try and make this go away. However, the control that they try to exert over things in their lives like their thoughts, feelings and emotions doesn't work real well and further these things aren't inherently them. Their inherent worth isn't tied to anything that they do or any thought they think. Their inherent worth concerns things that really matter: their worth as a soul.

It is really scary for them to get into a space where they can recognize how safe it might be. One of the things that happens with this stuff, from the time that we're very little, is that we are taught that all of these types of things, these thoughts, these feelings that we have are to be run away from, essentially. What we're not talking about here is somebody that has a thought or an impulse and carries it into fruition or a fantasy. I think that's a very different behavior than an initial impulse or something that comes out of the context of them living their life, walking around day to day. This stimulus conditions that we come in contact with 400 or 500 times a day is something that they are not going to escape simply by running.

One of the metaphors that we use is an ocean wave. If you've ever been swimming in the ocean, especially your first time, one of the tendencies that we have is we wade out into the ocean. Waves start curling over top of us, and our first instinct tells us to run away. If you've ever tried to run in a kiddy pool you'll find that you don't make a lot of progress. The way to avoid being pummeled into the sand and getting that nice sand rash with the salt water into it is to be able to turn and face the wave but not to just to brace yourself but actually dive into it and swim. Now as the wave comes it also passes.

This is one of the struggles that people have a hard time seeing in their efforts to become more willing, is that the wave will pass. The impulse and feelings that they're having will come and they will dissipate as well. In order for them to get to a space where this is possible they have to be able to distinguish themselves from their thoughts and feelings. If we are our thoughts, then inherently by the time we have thought of it - like the polygraph metaphor - we're already doomed because once you've thought of that pink elephant there is no way to get it out of your head. If you actively try to engage in making it go away it just sticks around. It is when you engage in allowing to be what it is and move on when it begins to dissipate.

One of the other metaphors that we use is a chessboard. If you were to imagine a chessboard that extends out in all directions into infinity and you were to side with your favorite pieces, maybe you like to play the black pieces as compared to the white pieces, you would be playing at the piece level. This means you're riding into battle on the back your favorite piece one of the things that you'll find is it that you have to be hyper-vigilant about anything that comes into your arena. You have to be so sensitive to your context because any little piece that could come there could actually threaten to take your life and salvation.

What we end up doing is being hyper-vigilant through that process of trying to avoid something we do the very thing that we're trying not to do, and is that is to come in contact with it more frequently. Now, in the traditional game of chess, when a piece of taken it is moved off the board. But if we have a chessboard that extends out in all directions where is the piece going to go? It is the same thing where it is thoughts that we carry with it. Where are you going to put it that you're not going to think about it? It is much like Jonah and his efforts to run from the Lord. I'm sure he would have been able to tell you he wasn't going to get very far in his efforts to get away, nevertheless he still engaged in the behavior. One of the things that we try to get people to do is to not learn from their intellect, to not learn from the word machine that they've built over the course of years and years but to learn from their experience. It is through their experience in being willing to feel what it is that they feel, being willling to feel the impulse come and the impulse dissipate. It is only when they are 100 percent willing ?? and here is the key question that we ask people. We want them to get in contact with a place from which there is a distinction between them and the things that they've been struggling with and trying to change. Are they willing, and I mean 100 percent willing, to experience those things fully and without defense as they are and not as they say they are and do what works for them anyway? If people get to the space where they are willing to invite in not necessarily thoughts of pornography, not necessarily impulses, and test themselves, when they see something and when they think of something and when the environment and the natural environment causes them to come in contact with something, what we want our clients to do is to be okay with that, step back from it a half a pace so they don't carry it into sort of the fantasy and the fruition it might otherwise go and really examine what is going on with them. What does it feel like in the moment to have that thought, to have that feeling? So they are not examining what it is they are thinking about, they are examining their response to it. So from that space a little window is created in which they can make a choice about where they want to go, what they want to do. And it is from that position only that they can overlay their values on top of their belief system on top of their behavior and choose a position or a direction for them to go.
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Dr. Mike Buxton

One thing that you'll notice from the discussions so far is that we think that choice is something that happens later. Not that you're not making choices all along but your capacity to make a choice about what you're going to do or what you're going to think in the moment of temptation increases? As Dr. Dougher mentioned, the idea of just running away from it all the time and trying to pretend as though it never happened or living that kind of a way of life doesn't work. There is no way to get so far away from it that it won't have its impact in your thoughts, emotions, moods, and behavior. And so what we're doing is to help people face and experience the many emotions, the many thoughts that may come into their mind, during the time in and away from therapy. We have them write about these experiences. We begin to explore what is happening, even if they have a set back. Even if they find themselves on the internet looking at pornography. Like Wendy Ulrich said in another session of this conference, if that moment can be used as an opportunity to learn what is happening and get out of the narrow focus that one tends to be in, in those moments, then your horizon broadens out and you again see there are other things happening in your life even in that moment. You're having other thoughts, you're having other sensations and other emotions.

I like this quote from Tuesdays with Morrie. Many of you have read this book. "If you hold back on the emotions, in other words, if you don't allow yourself to experience the range of emotions even those that you may have that are unwanted, if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them you can never get to being detached. You're too busy being afraid." This does not necessarily mean you have to act on every one of those emotions, right? But nevertheless, we're people with opposition in us and if we're afraid of the fact that there are some things that we may think or feel we may not like them. But, nevertheless, as humans we have those feelings as we begin to explore that and bring those thoughts into therapy and bring what we discovered about ourselves into the treatment group and talk to each other about what we're finding in there. Then what surfaces is an increased capacity for emotional honesty. Just by the process of doing this repeatedly over and over again with the therapist or with other men that are struggling with this or other people in your life even with a parent or somebody, you begin to say, "I can be honest with myself about the many things that I feel, about the many things that I think and about the things I have done and do." That takes some distancing, doesn't it? You have to step outside yourself and look at what is going on inside. And as Kirk mentioned, rather than believing that it has to lead you to certain behaviors, you begin having other interpretations about the meaning of those feelings and those thoughts. Does that make sense? This takes time, but I think its emotional honesty when you become further and further willing to look at what is happening inside of you. Kirk says 100 percent willingness. That's hard. It's hard for anyone one of us to look at something we would rather not believe about ourselves or certain capacities or feelings that we may have. But when willingness happens and as a person experiences themselves-without fear-I think certain revelations begin.

I looked at Alma 37:33 a while back and I begin really pondering upon the word "withstand." What an interesting word! It seemed to me the more I read about it and thought about the fact that the saints are asked by the Lord to be able to withstand things in life, withstand temptations. Not to not have temptations, but to withstand temptations. And the word "withstand" is an interesting word in and of itself. To me it implies several things. It you break the word a part and see the two words that are in there with stand and you turn the words around it is about standing with. I don't think the Lord ever intends for us to do this by ourselves. I was watching a documentary about jazz a few weeks ago. Wynton Marsalis said that his grandmother taught him, "Son, life has a board for every behind." I thought, "Isn't that true?" I don't think you believe it until you're about 30 or 35. But sooner or later don't you begin to recognize that fact? You think some guy or woman is getting away with not having a board laid to his behind in life. But the more I live the more I see that I don't think you can do that. I think the board will be laid to your behind and we have to have some capacity to withstand the very difficult thing that we find our self in a corner with.

I think part of with-standing is to be able to stand-with yourself. You have to be able to stand yourself. That's an interesting thought, isn't it? Can I stand myself? Rick mentioned this self?loathing and the fact that you're feeling these feelings or you've done these things automatically mean you're less of a human being. You're some sort of sub-human, especially within the LDS culture. You convince yourself "I'm not like the rest of the LDS people." That way of thinking leads to not being able to stand yourself. I thank God every day for the revelation that, truthfully, I can't overturn the fact that I'm a precious human being. I think humans would have messed up that fact a long time ago if we could have-but we can't. We are precious souls and individuals. We can stand ourselves. The ability to stand yourself is to be able to go through the difficult emotion, the evil hour as it were and to be able to recognize what is happening inside and more and more the ability to choose what you will do within your values. Your ability to respond to that stimulus becomes increased to the point where you can have choice.

Another type of with-standing is, of course, standing-with someone, with others. I have men who very courageously talk to their parents, very courageously talk to their spouse, they talk to their Bishop, they may talk to their roommate. They talk to me. They begin to include a few people in their life and share their struggle with them. And to me they are obeying part of the very sacred covenant of baptism which is to bear one another's burdens. Some in the church love to bear other's burdens but sure don't like to be in the position of having somebody bear their own. Having another bear your burden takes humility. Most importantly to learn is that in the hours of need the Lord is still there. His promise is to stand with us. His hand is out reached. To me that is a revelation too. A light comes on inside that says "He is here with me. He is standing-with me and I actually want him to stand here. He is not casting me off. Even with all I have done."

Don't you think the Lord gives us these turmoils just to have us right where He wants us: in the palm of his hand? And when we see we can't turn to the right or to the left, I think then he's got us right where He wants us, which is: He is the way out. He and other people that represent Him. From this, something that we can't hardly even describe becomes possible: a feeling of liberation. Even if it is momentary even if it is for a time and even if a person continues to have a slip back. They begin to feel that there is some liberation in this and that they can withstand and stand themselves. Then other, sweeter avenues of finding pleasure in one's life becomes possible and real. Truth and love can replace fear. Choice-just the ability to have choice-can be incredibly liberating.