hey welcome back to the podcast i'm really excited to have you back with me today because
i have a mind-blowing topic to share with you on cognitive dissonance i was reading brene brown's
latest book and she talked about it there and it reminded me that you need to hear this
now basically cognitive dissonance is thinking incompatibility and porn use
gives people this incompatibility between what they're doing and what they're thinking about
themselves or that they want to be doing in their lives and i'm going to play that out for you and
this is what we're going to do in this podcast episode is we're going to i'm going to break down
the concept the psychological concept of cognitive dissonance then i'm going to tell you an amazing
story about leon festenger the father of cognitive dissonance and how he infiltrated a cult in 1956
this is a true story because he had the notion that people were going to have incompatibility
of thinking and he had a hypothesis that the people that were more committed to the insane
which he classifies it idea the ones who double down on being committed to it would have to follow
through to help this cognitive dissonance resolve itself in terms of the conflict and i'm going to
share that with you sorry about the background noise there i am in our office at lee braden spine
today and i wanted to be sure to get you a podcast in time so we might have a truck or two behind us
but uh hopefully we'll be okay for a week um so i'm going to talk about leon fessinger and what
he did when he infilted infiltrated this cult and then i'm going to share the four strategies that
people use when something hits their nervous system and it creates this conflict how do you get
out of this conflict there's four main strategies some healthy some less than healthy and the least
healthy strategy is a perfect example of what has happened on tick tock with a a video of mine now
i did not have a tick tock account until recently mainly because i think tick tock is going to take
society down in terms of their cognition their thinking a podcast for a different day am i right
but somebody took one of my videos where i simply and bluntly say porn damages your brain
and they put that video on tick tock and that video went viral and people reached out to me
saying this video went viral but you know they're mocking you right and i'm like yes but they're
doing it because of their cognitive dissonance so basically in the stitches that they created
people are trying to be as ridiculous as possible to show that their brains have been damaged by
porn think about that one why would someone do that it's because my message is upsetting their
nervous system and they have to resolve that conflict very interesting so stay with me until
the end because i'm gonna tell you why okay so let's break it down cognitive dissonance now the
the dictionary definition is that it's a mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions
are contradicted by new information so a belief or assumption that porn isn't that bad for you and
it's just something that you do to relax and you have a high libido and your wife doesn't want to
have sex with you a lot so i just watch porn to relax and it's not that bad for me that might
be your belief or assumption and then along comes this middle-aged woman who's got all these videos
where she says porn damages your brain it creates anxiety the depression you feel the lack of
motivation it's the porn the erectile dysfunction the performance problems that you're having
the performance anxiety in the bedroom porn's to cause for that your relationship issues porn's
at the root of that your inability to think your brain fog your adhd symptoms porns contributing to
that now i come along with that message which is true and proven by science when i come along and i
say that it creates cognitive dissonance thinking incompatibility so the new idea that i present
creates this reaction in your nervous system of conflict and you have to resolve the conflict
because it feels uncomfortable to you so basically you have two ideas that don't agree with each
other and you're already acting in one way that is based upon the initial idea you watch porn
because you think it's not that big of a deal now i come along and i tell you it's a very big deal
how are you going to resolve that we're going to talk about the four ways in just a minute
but let's segue over to leon festenger the father of cognitive dissonance now back in 1956 there was
a woman who was called quote unquote mrs keach mrs keach actually created a cult called the seekers
she told the cult that on december 21st of 1956 that aliens were going to come in a spaceship
from the planet clarion and that they were gonna decimate the earth but the people who followed
her would be saved in the spaceship so here's the interesting thing some of her followers
really believed her and they sold their homes they quit their jobs they gave away their money
and they went to the rendezvous point on december 21st to be saved by the aliens
other of her followers were totally into being saved but they did not sell their homes they
did not get rid of their money they didn't leave their relationships they didn't quit their jobs
so we have a group of people who are very much invested they've gotten rid of everything
they're invested in this idea of going on the spaceship there's the second group that's less
invested they're still interested but they are not that invested in if they leave or not because
their lives are still set up okay so hopefully you're with me on this so now comes december
21st no spaceship now what leon festenger did he's a psychologist he knew something big was going to
happen because he assumed no spaceship was coming so he thought the people who are more invested
they're going to have to double down on this idea because they already sold their homes they have
to get more invested in what mrs keach would say when she had to recover from the fact that
a spaceship did not show up so he became a cult member so that he could be there in the moments
to see people's reactions in the moment and their behaviors after and what he found was the people
who were highly invested when she said that the spaceship did not come and that they were spared
those people who were highly invested left their jobs and money and homes those people followed mrs
keach forward they stayed convicted because they had to resolve the fact
that there were no aliens who came down the people who were less invested left the cult
so when that prediction or that hypothesis came true leon festinger he actually left
the university that he was at me went to stanford and he ended up doing experiments that
proved in a lab a controlled situation that this conflict that a person feels is actually true and
what he did was he had people do a really boring task they would just twirl pegs in like a pegboard
half the group was paid twenty dollars half the group was paid one dollar and on the way out
they were told that they need to tell the next person that the task in the room is fun but it
was a boring task just spinning the pegs so the people who paid twenty dollars they resolved that
dissonance because they were paid and so they actually convinced themselves that they found
that activity more exciting it was more fun because they were paid twenty dollars to do
it of course if you're paid 20 bucks yeah it's more fun you got paid to do it so they were able
to resolve that dissonance and it was much more it was much easier for them to tell the next person
who in fact was part of the experiment that it was fun they had less dissonance the people
who had a dollar or only paid a dollar felt more conflict because it was boring and they
didn't really get paid to do it so there was more conflict more dissonance because they were less
invested and he did a lot of experiments proving the idea of cognitive dissonance this conflict
really really interesting so cool okay so let's now go to the four strategies that people
use to be able to resolve the dissonance the thinking incompatibility that they have
when something like this happens and i'm going to bring it back to porn and masturbation
so here's the four strategies first and then we will personalize it to porn and masturbation
okay number one the person changes their behavior to be consistent with the new thought number two
we change the thought the dissonant thought the new one that came in to restore the consistency
to bring our nervous systems back to the peace that it knew before number three we add other
consonant thoughts or other thoughts that agree with the first thought to justify the
inconsistency and again it's to get our nervous systems back to homeostasis to peace number four
is trivialize the inconsistency altogether make it less relevant or less important okay so let's talk
about that in terms of poor news number one is now you know you're using porn masturbating you're
feeling okay about it most people have dissonance in the first place let me share that first because
we know that there's a lot of shame a shame cycle's at the core of a porn habit and addiction
so there is dissonance there because of moral incongruency and i've made videos on this and
we know most people feel moral and congruency just at their core they don't think it's a great
idea to watch porn but they're resolving that as is and the way that they are resolving it is
now when it comes to me and my videos now this woman shows up and goes porn damages your brain
you know yadda yadda so what you can do is number one change your behavior to be consistent with
the new thought so you thought porn was harmless and a lot of people tell me i heard your videos
i heard your podcast what you say makes a lot of sense it absolutely describes my situation how i
found porn when i was young how it's escalated how now i use it as a compulsion it's become
part of what i do so they choose to change the behavior stop watching porn stop masturbating
two create consonants again in their nervous system so they stop the old behavior because the
new information has shared something new with them new shits come to light right that's the dude from
the big lebowski so new shits come to light and they're gonna change their behaviors because of it
okay number two is we change the dissonant thought to restore consistency or to get rid of that
conflict so you hear me and then you go hmm maybe porn's not that great for me and then in your mind
you go nah it's fine it's harmless like she's talking about other people but it's fine for me
you get back to it's fine you just think about it for a minute like ah it hits the nervous
system but then you just go back to okay you know what that first thought is the one for me
and you know exercise is another example where you go i should exercise so i can be healthy
and you're like ah i'm healthy enough i'm fine and the dissonance goes away that's number two
number three is an interesting one we add other consonant thoughts to justify the inconsistency
justification so justification looks like this you know i wouldn't
have to use porn if my wife had more sex with me i will only use porn until i get married if there's
a justification statement you are resolving that thought incompatibility from the new information
knowing that science shows porn is not good for you number four this is the interesting one
trivialize it trivializing the inconsistency all together making it less important or less relevant
this is what's happening on tick tock and i think it's a phenomenon of huge um numbers because there
are millions of stitches millions and there's one stitch i know has 1.8 million views on it
there's others that have five hundred thousand so there are lots of stitches and millions of views
so let me say that but not millions of stitches i don't know how many stitches are honestly i
don't even know how to use tic toc to be honest i have someone who does it for me but i do know
there's millions of views so people think it's funny and i saw one of them i think i may have
shared this with you before where it's a guy and he's on his bike and his bike helmets backwards
and he's doing weird stuff so basically it's like porn damages your brain look at me with my brain
damage look how funny this is that is making what i said trivialized and so that you can get back to
the fact that it's okay that i watch porn because look how funny it is that i've damaged my brain
which clearly injuring oneself through a behavior that's what a compulsion is when you keep doing
something even though you know it's not good for you and even when you don't want to and a lot of
people get to that point so the inconsistency has to be resolved and it's trivialized
and so actually i think those tick tock stitches are interesting because it shows how many people
are trivializing it because they're caught up in it so what does that mean for all of
us here what it means is if you heard me talk about something in one of my videos and it hit
your nervous system in a way that irritated you or annoyed you or you didn't like what i had to say
it's likely because it created cognitive dissonance thinking incompatibility a new thought
that's rubbing your brain and your nervous system the wrong way because you were already operating
under the old assumption and now you're forced into creating a feeling of peace again through
getting rid of the conflict and you're going to do it in one of four ways what i want for you is
number one number one is you change the behavior because new shits come to light like the dude says
now you know something that you didn't know before knowledge is power knowledge is what
empowers you to make new decisions and i know how uncomfortable it feels because when i get new
information i'm like dang whoa like now i gotta do something new because now i know something new
that's growing pains that's where the growth happens when we take those opportunities
so what i want is for you is to change your behavior to get rid of the dissonance not to just
go back to the old thought not to justify it and not to trivialize it because that will keep you
caught in this loop this painful painful loop of a downward spiral there's no way you can get out
of it there's no such thing as a horizontal spiral there's only a downward spiral or an upward spiral
number one the strategy to get rid of dissonance the number one change your behavior that creates
an upward spiral of positive change that leads you to your full potential the other three
strategies keep you stuck in the behavior that you're in in the downward spiral we know this so
we know you keep watching porn it will escalate escalation will lead to erectile dysfunction
and performance issues like delayed ejaculation or premature ejaculation it will lead to relationship
issues it will begin to decrease functioning in the frontal lobe and to desensitize the
reward center in your brain it will lead to anxiety and depression mental health issues
physical issues cognitive issues we know this so when this cognitive dissonance hits choose number
one because now you know more and it reminds me of an email that i recently got from someone and
it said hey dr trish i recently saw your video on tick tock and i didn't think it was mine i think
was the other person's i recently saw your video on tic tac and i was mad at you i thought you
know what right does this lady have to tell me this information he said and then i took a step
back and i thought to myself why am i so annoyed at this lady and then he thought to himself it's
because she's calling me out on the thing that i'm doing and i know i don't want to be doing
and that moral and congruency that he had in the first place i'm putting a light on it it's on a
platter and i'm shining light into the darkness and he didn't like that and he's like i realized
through your video i have a big problem and then i'm going to have to move towards solution i don't
think he's moved towards solution yet i think he's still caught up in two three possibly four but my
hope is he can come out of those and move into one now if you're caught in two three and four
it's time to come out of it and to go into one his really sweet email was thank you for that video
because even though i was annoyed by it it's really going to help me and since then i made
a short video that says don't blame me blame porn because a lot of people are annoyed at me but i'm
just the messenger don't shoot the messenger look into your heart and go am i feeling dissonance
why and what am i gonna do about it am i gonna escape back into it two three and four or am i
gonna come out and do an upward spiral that's my hope for you that's what i think you deserve
and it's gonna move you into the life that you want okay i hope this helps you out today and as
always remember i have programs for you if you're interested in relieving this cognitive dissonance
and creating the upward spiral in your life drtrishly.com on the website there's a variety of
different programs digital and where you can work with human beings including myself and if you need
more information on the contact page you can reach out and schedule discovery session with jamie my
executive assist assistant she does them basically all day every day trying to help people understand
what they need and moving them through a process of figuring out what the best plan is for them so
if you're looking for help we are here for you all right until next time i hope this helps you out
um