okay let's talk about the journey of problematic porn use and recovery uh i'm dr trish lee and
in this new playlist i am going to unravel the journey of sam and his wife chrissy but primarily
sam as he realized that his porn habit was indeed creating problems for him and in his life and how
he came to the realization that he should work on this for himself and when he began to the
successes that he began to have now simultaneously in this playlist i will also be talking about how
knowing about sam's porn problem really impacted me on a personal and professional level and it
really kind of rocked my world which is why i made the first youtube video which has landed me here
and i want to share that journey with you so that you can kind of understand how this
transformational journey can happen for all of us when we learn about porn use and what it's doing
to your brain to your mind and to the behaviors of your mind and body and how that is a silent
tsunami that is here to take you out and that when you decide and commit to leave porn behind how you
might not even know it yet but that that ripple effect can turn backwards and can have all these
positive changes in your life and it's an amazing amazing journey that's why i want to share sam's
journey okay so let's dig in in this first video as an introduction to sam so that you can meet
him now sam was a person who was in my life i knew sam before the moment that he told me about porn
he was in my office and i was helping him using neurofeedback brain training to improve his brain
so that he could focus better and decrease his anxiety so of course now i know that consistent
porn use is what puts a person's brain in the mode of lack of focus and anxiety anxiousness so what i
didn't know when i was working with him is that neurofeedback was working and i could see that
but that the reason that it wasn't there was ups and downs and ebbs and flows and that it wasn't
sticking and it wasn't creating this positive feedback loop for positive change was because
he was going back and watching porn every single day and then it escalated to where he was watching
porn multiple times a day so obviously if we're training his brain in the right direction and
then he's using his brain in the wrong direction all the other times then brain training couldn't
work for him that's not what inspired him to tell me what was going on what happened was on the day
when he told me i was in the neurofeedback suite in my office and the way that the office is set up
is that there's basically in the right hand suite is all of the brain training technology there's
three rooms my office is over there also that's where i primarily would hang out and do my thing
and uh there was one other office that i would meet people for these special meetings it was
a smaller office that was in the main office where the hubs works and where all of the other
team members are doing their thing so of course in my traditional demeanor bebop in across the office
in a positive mood um which of course working with people for such a long time i'm able to temper
that be bopping when i know people are struggling or when they're in pain or when they're suffering
but because sam and i had this uh you know we already had rapport built and i already knew him
and he knew me i didn't know i was walking into this this day so i just come walking into the room
and you know i'm like hey sam what's going on like i normally am and there he is completely frozen
over in the corner and i know something's off because he's white as a ghost he's not interacting
with me he's literally frozen in time and he has a look of panic on his face but it's frozen panic
what i didn't know until a few moments later is that he's completely freaking out under the
surface because he's about to tell me something that he's never told anybody before and i'm sure
so many people can relate to this because there's so much shame surrounding porn use for most people
they have a sense that they have a problem and they're dependent on porn but they don't want to
admit to themselves well let's just talk about sam this is what happened for him he knew he
had a problem but he didn't want to admit it he had a lot of shame surrounding it he certainly
didn't want to tell me someone who he was friendly with but also was dependent or not dependent but
trusting and that i was working with him in a healing capacity so i'm the last person he
wants to tell me tell this too but chrissy had busted him a few times his wife had found him
with porn a few times in the months up to that and she gained the strength to say to him you're gonna
go get help from somebody or i'm out and it was three straws broke the camel's back for her and
i will tell you about those in an upcoming video but in that moment sam looks me in the eyes and he
says i watch porn and of course i'm like you watch porn what does it have to do with anything that
we're doing here with your lack of focus and your brain fog and this anxiety that you can't beat and
honestly before that conversation you know i was never a fan of porn but i really never thought
twice of it um and so seeing the panic in his face i knew the gravity of the situation without
fully knowing it and that is exactly what this girl needs to lead me on the trail of bread crumbs
to try to figure something out so he blurts out i watch porn i'm processing that and trying to
you know figure out the role that i play in this um so of course i reflect it back to him okay so
you watch porn what's going on tell me more about that tells me that in the last couple months that
he had been watching it more and more and now he had been watching it multiple times a day
which led him to be discovered by chrissy led her to that boundary and he's tried to stop and he's
not been successful and that he's found the book your brain on porn and that he now realizes that
this is probably something that's problematic and that i'm a brain professional so i'm the one that
he decided to come to especially since we have a nice connection and he felt like he could trust
me because he has never told anybody else about it and he never wants to tell anybody else about it
so that's how we met and after that first meeting i told him i will dig into this and i will figure
out how to help him and that's the thing i had done in the office anytime i work with anybody
really i work with a lot of people who have different neurodevelopmental neurodegenerative
or have kind of acute neuro issues so if something comes across my desk i always dig in a little bit
so that i can personally help people with the very specific thing they have going on so that's
part of my process too so i'm like okay i'm gonna dig into this porn thing
so i said okay sam i'm gonna figure out my part here in terms of regulating your brain and i'm
gonna figure out if there's any other people in this community that can help you on your journey
and sam went home but i went to work on figuring it out and finding him professionals so that is
where i'm going to leave you for now but after that first meeting i went home with a heavy heart
and literally feeling sick about this that this was bigger than i knew it was i knew it was going
to be different than the normal research that i would do r d as i call it one of my favorite
things where i knew i wasn't just gonna go home and look a couple things up i knew it was gonna
be big i started with your brain on porn which is why gary wilson is one of my beloved mentors god
rest his soul he's passed on recently but he was foundational in that book and i i started
devouring books on pornography consumption and sexual addiction because i wanted to help sam
and i knew also that when sam told me that and how hard that was for him and how it physiologically
was messing with him in the moment and then of course i look back on his brain graphs and i could
see how his brain was off the chain up and down i knew it i just couldn't figure it out i had talked
to him about this before like why can't i get this to stick like i can other people now i saw
it it's part of the porn cycle i knew there was going to be this cyclical aspect to it when i saw
that in his brain which has also made me dig in what's this cycle i'm seeing in brain functioning
how can it be explained so i'm also going to share that with you in an upcoming video but
the magnitude and the gravity of the situation was apparent on me and my true self that's in there
and my ego too which we'll dig into so i went home and it was one of those nights
where i couldn't stop thinking about it and i'd wake up and i kept thinking about it
and it was in my background which means now it's something i have to go to work on
so stay tuned because the next video i'm going to tell you what chrissy had discovered in those
couple months what sam told me about how his habit had developed and how it had escalated without him
even seeing it and honestly he didn't tell me in the next meeting we both discovered this together
i'm also going to share with you what happened when i referred him out to other professionals
in the community and how that went for him and how he ended up back in my office so stay tuned
and watch the next video and as always control your brain or it'll control you