Sayitha Sam | Finding Freedom From Porn: Deep Clean Coaching, Addiction Recovery & Christian Identity

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I am joined today by Sathiya Sam. And Sathiya is CEO and founder of a ministry called Deep Clean Coaching. And today we're going to be talking a little bit about Deep Clean Coaching and what he does. And they've got a new product coming out that I'm excited to hear about, or new service coming out that I'm excited to hear about. So this is actually the second time Sathiya has been on the program. So if you wanted to go back and listen to that previous episode, I'll link it in the show notes. But welcome back, man. It's good to see you. Hey, it's great to be here. I always enjoy chatting with you, James. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about, I think, just give, let's get a refresher on what Deep Clean Coaching deals with and just give us kind of a state of the ministry a little bit. Yeah. So, I mean, about seven years ago, I felt like God called me to start helping men who are struggling with sexual sin. That came out of my own struggle with sexual sin as a pastor's kid, a Christian school superstar, you know, did did all the kind of things right in Christian school. And then as a pastor myself, I struggled with pornography in particular pretty extensively. And so when I was struggling, I always had this burgeoning desire to create a solution that I felt like there should have been a better solution out there for me. And it wasn't. I had to kind of piece it all together. And so I always purpose in my heart. If I could figure this out for myself, I would help other guys figure it out for themselves as well. And so that's where Deep Clean came into play. I, I quit pornography February 2016. That was the last time I ever struggled with it. And so I'm coming up on 10 years, but I waited a couple of years before I really felt like I was in a place. Well, I honestly, I prayed a lot about it and I wanted I wanted to know I wasn't just doing this out of ambition, but that God was in it. And so December 2018 is when we launched Deep Clean. And yeah, we've we've gone on to help, you know, thousands of guys quit pornography, walk in sexual integrity. And more importantly, step further into their callings and restore their key relationships, whether it's a marriage or with their kids or sometimes it's even friendships. And so so that's kind of what we're all about. And that's that's our mission and our mandate here. Yeah, I mean, folks don't really understand. Well, maybe they do. And that's that's sad as well. But there's a lot of damage that pornography causes just not only externally, but internally. And I mean, I think I assume and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but, you know, the anonymity of pornography, especially nowadays where you can get it anywhere and you really don't have to go into a video store or, you know, I remember growing up and there were blockbusters and they'd have the adult section. And it's like you could kind of watch people walk in there and some of them were ashamed and others weren't. But there was a public aspect to it. Now there's not that public aspect to it. And I have to think that exacerbates things. Yeah, the important is the three A's. So it's affordable, it's accessible and anonymous, like you said. And it's different than any other drug or addiction. They all have those qualities in varying measures, but pornography has all three at kind of the umpteenth degree. And so the anonymity is a huge part of it. The accessibility is another big part of it now because technology has really taken that to a completely different level. Like you said, you know, you before you had to get into the video store, there's the back room, there's kind of barriers to entry. You know, when I was a kid, it was on the family computer. So I had to wait until the home was empty. And then I had to obviously know my way around the computer a little bit, the logins and whatever it might be. Yeah, all that's basically gone now. Once you put the smartphone in someone's hand, they have access to all of it. And then the affordability is another big one. You know, it's very confusing almost if you don't understand how these things work. The porn industry is worth $100 billion, and yet, you know, 99% of pornography that's viewed has no actual cost to it. And it's a famous marketer who said if the product is free, then you are the product. And that's something we don't realize when we're watching this stuff is we're actually being productized, our data, our attention, all of that is become incredibly valuable. And it's what actually has made pornography so addictive because they know what keeps people coming back. They know that the younger you get exposed, the more likely you are to continue watching into your adult years. And so that creates retention. It creates lifetime value for as a customer, quote unquote. And so all of those things are at play. And it's why a majority of the world is actually hooked on pornography without realizing it. You know, when you think about it, it's interesting. I was just talking to a woman who works with sexually exploited women and men in the Kansas City area. And one of the things she mentioned was that pornography drives a lot of that sexual exploitation activity, that there's almost like a, they see, and she didn't have research on this or anything, but she sees it as a trending up from pornography. That once the visual is no longer sufficient, there's a fairly relatively clear path upward toward prostitution, you know, purchasing sex, those kinds of things. But she also mentioned that in addition to that sort of tiering, she's like, I think a lot of people have the misconception, especially with their kids, that if they can control their kids' devices, they'll be okay. And she said, the problem is you can't control other kids' devices. And so I can remember early on when I was first introduced to pornography, it wasn't anything that I went and got. It was something that an older cousin showed me. Yes. Right. And so it's like you couldn't control. There were just certain controls you didn't have. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean that, that's still true today. Like I think a lot of parents are much more anti-sleepover for that reason, because I know for me, like as young boys, like all the trouble I got into was pretty much always at a sleepover. Right. Yeah. Cause somebody, somebody got access to some, you know, and that back in the day it was a, it was a VHS for me or a magazine or whatever. But yeah, there, there's only so much you can do. Uh, I think the best thing that parents can do, like if there are any parents listening or people who want to be parents, I think it's not. Yeah, you, you can't control everything. I do think there's definitely a lot of wisdom around, you know, how your kids access phones and tech and social media, all of that. But I think the best thing parents can do is have conversations about this stuff, about sex at large, to be honest, in the home, the safer those conversations are. Um, it doesn't necessarily prevent exposure, and I, I don't think that's even necessarily the goal as a parent, um, especially because pornography is so prolific now. I think the actual goal is that when they do get exposed to pornography, they come and talk to you about it instead of talking to their friends about it or bottling up and internalizing it. I think if there's a safe place for them to have those conversations, then you actually have a fighting chance that sure, your kid might get exposed, but it doesn't have to lead them down the path of becoming hopelessly addicted to it for the rest of their life. Very good. Well, talk to us about a little bit of what the new thing you're doing is. Um, you sort of emailed me and you said, hey, I'd like to come back on and talk about this new aspect of our ministry that we're doing. So I'm curious, what are you doing? What's it look like? Well, I, I love what you guys are doing. I know you guys have a huge heart for, um, you know, the college age and younger, um, and people that are, that are in that kind of formative pivotal educational stage. Um, admittedly, when I started deep clean, my focus, I felt like God was calling me to really focus on, um, people that were more established in their careers. And so that's where deep clean has had a concentration for, um, well, I guess seven or eight years now at the time of this recording. Something that God put on my heart this year, uh, was really kind of just reminding me of where this all started, which was in the local church. You know, I grew up in the local church as a child, um, but then I became a local church pastor myself. And I was working for a local church when I started deep clean. Deep clean was kind of just my side hustle that I did, um, you know, in between pastoral appointments and worship team practices and, you know, all that kind of stuff that I was up to back in the day. So, um,

we just witnessed that time and time again. I even remember when Deep Clean was scaling, you know, like I said, I was kind of cramming in all my appointments around my nine to five responsibilities as a pastor, nine to five, quote unquote. Any pastor knows there's no such thing as a nine to five. You know, you're in ministry. I'm sure it's the same way for you, right? You mentioned an impromptu meeting right before we're recording. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a fallacy. But, you know, squeezing in the appointments, I just realized, man, I can only do so many clients one-on-one. I'm going to have to start running groups. I started doing it out of necessity. And the first group call I ran, the guys are, you know, making jokes back and forth. They're engaging more deeply. And then the second call with that cohort, you know, the guys just seem to take their homework more seriously and they were communicating outside of the group without me even really prompting anything. And all of a sudden I just realized, wow, I had no idea how powerful a community was for guys that are healing from sexual issues. But, you know, of course it makes perfect sense. And I was a university researcher before I became a pastor. All of the research as well would dictate the same thing, that just the more uh connected people are, the more community there is, generally the better the outcomes are. So what we did is we took the system that's been really effective helping guys all these years, we took some of the coaching elements that we felt were maybe the most necessary for guys to get an outcome. And then we put all that in the context of a digital and online community. We use a private platform called Mighty Networks. We used to use Facebook groups and stuff like that, but obviously social media is a huge trigger in this space. So we just thought, you know what? Yeah, we'll, we'll build something more private and we call it Deep Clean Inner Circle. And so we've had a couple hundred guys come through there now. Sorry, just under a couple hundred guys come through there, um, that are in the community. And the, we did kind of a soft launch with our own audience since we just wanted to see, Hey, does this thing have potential? Is it working? How can we make it better? And so we've been getting lots of feedback. Um, but I reached out to you and several other people, uh, once we felt like, Hey, it's in a good place and we want as many people as possible to be aware of this opportunity for them to get really high quality, um, material and, and content, uh, with high quality coaching in the context of a really safe community of guys who are pursuing freedom together. And so that's what the inner circle is all about. And that's what we've been building. And, um, it's been really, really cool so far. So how does it work? Do you get into the inner circle and there's a coach that's sort of roving about, you know, uh, digitally, I assume like sort of the, there's some, there's a coaching presence there, but it's not like a coaching session. And then you have an interactive community of, of guys who are struggling with the same issue. They're reading through different resources. They're communicating with one another and they're really just developing those sort of social ties that are intended to help them move forward in their journey away from porn. Is that, uh? Yeah. Yeah. So hit the nail on the head with the, the interactive digital community. That's exactly how it functions. The real backbone of inner circle is actually the course. Um, we're, we're big systems people over here. Um, we've just found, especially with men in particular, if you give men a system, that just seems to be the best way to get the best outcomes. Um, and so, you know, you and I were talking before, like about lifting and stuff, right? It's kind of the same way. Like when you have a plan, like you and your daughter are working towards a serious goal right now. So you, you need a plan of some kind. You can't just wing it. And so we found that with quitting sexual sin, it's the same way. The more systematized you are, generally the better the outcomes are. So that's the backbone is the guys, yes, they're, they're connecting on the fact that we have this struggle together. Um, sometimes there's specifics of it, like, Oh yeah, like my, my wife had a similar response when she found out, or, you know, there's those kinds of things. But what actually kind of the glue that keeps everybody together is they're doing the course together. And so they're able to, um, to, to go through the lessons together. Hey, did, is this how, is this what your assignment looked like? You know, we're, we're big on making sure there's always a practical part to a lesson. And so, um, that's what kind of unifies all of it. And then we do coaching calls myself and my team of coaches. So we're not just, we are very present in the digital community, but then it's the calls as well. We give people a chance to interact, to answer questions. We'll do trainings. Um, sometimes we, we bring in people to just, um, share their stories of recovery to just inspire the guys. It's a little bit of everything. Um, but we really try to be as hands on as possible, um, to basically stack the odds in their favor of, of quitting and walking in sexual integrity and freedom. Yeah. So what does the system involve? You've got a course, like you're right. So is it just a series of activities that they're walking through different, um, you know, obviously you're providing information, but do you also have like sort of practical tasks for them to carry out? What does that look like? 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Yeah, so at a broad level, the system is comprised of three pillars, which are building self-awareness, healing the heart and shifting your identity. And so all of, all of the modules would kind of distill into one of those three pillars. We go in that order. So we started pillar one, which is building self-awareness, then pillar two, then pillar three. And so that's what I mean by a system. There's a specific process. Um, and the nice thing is, like, there's a, there's a system that you follow. It's very principled. It's biblically backed and it's got lots of research as well to support what we're teaching. But then, um, there's lots of space for individual variants because obviously no two people are the same. Everyone's got their own experiences, their own reasons for viewing. And so, um, it allows room for that, but the backbone is, yeah, you go through the course material and then it's in the exercises and the activities where there's, there's much more practical things and much more, um, much more individual nuance comes out. So I'll give you an example. There's, there's two tools that we get the most feedback about the guys love the most. Um, the first is called the progress tracker. It's very simple, but one thing that a lot of people fall into is street counting in this space. So it's, I'm 30 days clean without pornography. Or if I could just hit 60 days, I'll be good to go. And typically what happens when you street count is you will push all the bounds necessary to just hit that target, but you're not necessarily undergoing any kind of inner transformation in the process. Understood. You get these short-lived results that don't really have any lasting impact. What we encourage guys to do instead is to track trends. So if you go 30 days and then you have a slip, if you're counting streaks, that's a failure. And you're back to the drawing board. You start from zero again. But if you're tracking trends, that means you've had two slips technically, right? You would have had one, I guess at the beginning when that started and you would have had a second one when the 30 days ended. You've had two slips in the last 30 days. And if we, if we could do, if you could string together a few months in a row where you only had two relapses and then eventually if you're doing some work and maybe that goes down to once a month and then eventually zero a month, maybe that takes a little bit longer. It's not quite as sexy. But if after six months your relapse rate, quote unquote, is down to zero. To me, I'm, I'm much more confident in those outcomes long-term than I am in somebody who said, Hey, I went 30 days and it was amazing. So the progress tracker is just a little tool. It's, it's honestly a simple spreadsheet. Um, you can go to my podcast Man Within. We did an episode on it. We

Rather than pushing the panic button and jumping into the downward spiral, which we all tend to do when we have this kind of pressure of trying to hit a goal. If you can, there's two things that we say. Number one is we say, connect. If you have a relapse, connect with other people. It's one of the quickest ways to kind of like regulate again. But number two is correct. The relapses sometimes actually have data. We had a client recently who, you know, had gone, he went eight months, eight months without porn or masturbation, doing really well, you know. He, he also kind of jokingly says, I've also gone eight months since I yelled at my kids. And he says that jokingly because he has so much anger and so much frustration and so much shame about his struggle that he would take it out with his kids. And he doesn't do that anymore because he's quit watching porn and he quit masturbating. So it's a really powerful story. But he had a slip. He had a slip at the eight month mark. He started kind of going down the path of watching porn. Now he didn't actually watch explicit content, but he counts it as a slip because he went down there. Now, whether or not that's a slip or not, you know, everybody draws lines in different places, but he was feeling, he could feel the onset of the, like, this was a waste. I just pissed away eight months of work. You know, like he was going, he was going there, but because he's in a community, right, he's got all these brothers he's been running with for eight months now. He was able to reach out to a couple of guys. He also sent me a message that, hey, I just want to be transparent. I want to let you know this happened. And he, he was able to actually basically thwart what was going on. So number one, it didn't lead to this epic like binge and total relapse. It was, you know, it was a bump in the road, but secondly, he realized, man, I was actually slacking. I was starting to kind of take my foot off the gas. Uh, there was two things in particular. One is he was a, he was a daily journaler and he kind of eased his foot off because he's like, you know what? I'm eight months clean. I think I'm good to go. And then he had a practice with his wife where he was, he was just regularly kind of talking to her about his day, what he was going through. And he had kind of eased off on that a little bit as well. And so he said, this was really eye opening for me because it had only been, I think about two weeks that he had sort of taken his foot off and then lo and behold, all of a sudden these old behaviors are starting to creep up again. And so the relapse or the slip was actually really beneficial for him because number one, it sort of jilted him back into, you know, the straight and narrow, but it also revealed, hey, these, these things that you're doing, you're not just doing them out of some rote ritual. These are actually helping you and they're keeping your momentum going. And so he's able to learn. He's able to leverage that relapse now. And now I think, you know, he was on my coaching call this morning. I think it's 11 months, 10 or 11 months now. And yeah, for him, like that's just, it's, he's had one slip in the last 11 months, and that's really not like, I don't have any concerns about him and his situation as a result. So I think that's the power of, again, if, if we don't have all this pressure of you have to be perfect and, hey, you might have some stumbles along the way, but if you have a community who can support you, if you have some coaching and some expertise to guide you through those moments, it can actually be really beneficial. That's great, man. It reminds me of, and I'm blanking on who this psychologist was who put this out, but I'm wondering if you encourage people, maybe it's different for everybody, but like the theory talked about you have these restraining forces, things that are keeping you from change. And then you have sort of forces that are pushing you toward change and the forces that are pushing you toward change have to be greater than the forces keeping you from strength, from change in order for that change to happen. And so part of the theory is you have points where you can, sure, you can resist some of those forces that are keeping you from changing, but almost what has to happen is you have to eliminate things that are hindering your progress and put in things that are actually going to accelerate your progress. And that's the fastest way you can do it. And just as you're talking, it seems like that's where you all have sort of rooted this is in looking at those triggers. You're saying, look, let's try to marginalize those, right? Push those to the side. And as we're pushing those to the side, we're not just going to leave them on the side of the counter and then not give you anything to eat, right? You got to, you got to push the Twinkies to the side and you got to put something healthy in front of you. Is that sort of the vibe you guys are going for? Am I, am I catching that right? Oh yeah. 100%. It's something we talk about this a lot. Um, the, the word we use is momentum. And, um, like somebody, somebody just who just joined the program last week asked me, you know, I just joined the program. What's your top piece of advice? And I told him, when you, when you make a decision to, you know, to quit sexual sin, the same way that when you make a decision to, you know, to train for a powerlifting competition or to lose 30 pounds, when you, you know, you swipe your card, you buy running shoes, you get rid of the, the Twinkies and the junk food like you're talking about. You have so much momentum and I used to kind of slow people down because, you know, they're so excited and they want to do a thousand things. Um, and there, there is something to be said about kind of, you know, maybe distilling your efforts. But the one thing I realized is I don't, I also don't want to thwart the, the momentum because you get these small windows where there's all this excitement, you're taking action, you're moving. And so we're really trying to harness that. And then after that window, eventually that window will pass, you know, maybe a month in or a couple months in. And the questions that we always ask people again and again is what's working and how can you do more of it and what's not working and how can you do less of it. And part of the reason why in our, in our situation is because I think over the course of the system, people learn about, there's about 35 tools or, or primary concepts. So that's a lot. And the reality is most people are not going to benefit from all 35 or they may benefit from all 35, but in varying amounts. And so it's a constant refining process because number one, some things are going to stick more than others. Number two, there's a seasonality to this. So, um, you know, something that worked for me early on in my recovery, eventually it maybe doesn't have the same impact because I don't know, I changed, my relationships changed, my life changes, and I need to revisit it and maybe see what other tools are working instead. So this is a huge part of it. This is why I think it's really important that this is why we didn't just give people an online course to go through on their own because I think have some coaching and some guidance, somebody who can just ask you these questions every once in a while, it can really make sure that you are making the most of every single minute that you put into your recovery so that you're getting the most bang for your buck. Yeah, I mean, this is where I'm assuming that self-awareness piece really comes into play. Like you have to, you have to be able to identify these things that I'm doing. They're just now activity, right? To go back to a gym metaphor, they're what we've called junk volume, right? They're not actually doing anything for me. It's not that they're bad. They're just not as effective as these other things. And so why am I not focusing on these things that would accelerate my progress forward and setting aside some of the junk volume as good as that stuff was, it's just not working for me right now. And so there's no reason to keep doing it. I can see how that would be an editorial process, almost like a self-tailoring as people go through the program where they're sitting like, yeah, this, this jacket that I had, you know, it's not fitting as well as it was six months ago. I think I need to sort of get something a little different, right? It, it has that, but I, I'm, is that, um, is that why you start with the self-awareness? So is that part of the reason why you're starting with the self-awareness so that people can have at least a deep sense and a, and intuition almost about when this stuff just isn't being quite as effective as they need it to. Yeah, it's a huge part of it. I would say it's a natural byproduct. When, when we talk about self-awareness, what we're really doing is helping guys to become aware of two things, which is their thoughts and their emotions. And, um, to, to me, that's ultimate power. When you know the emotions you're feeling, you know, your emotional tendencies and you, you can

And I said, okay, you know, like, you're the first person that's not faith-based to come through. Let's see what it's like, and, you know, if you have a bad experience, like, we'll refund you your money, whatever, not a big deal. He wound up being one of our best clients in that particular cohort because he really locked into the concepts. And by the end of it, he was asking a lot more questions about God. And I think that's just the beauty of structuring something around biblical principles is that, number one, they're going to be effective. Like, you think about even the world's wealthiest people, a lot of what they do, it actually capitalizes on biblical principles, specifically as it, you know, for gaining their wealth and building their empires and all that. Most of it's just out of the book of Proverbs, right? So we know that the principles of the Bible can be effective even without that relationship with God for specific outcomes. Don't get me wrong. The most important thing, eternal life, obviously, is a different story. But I think the secondary thing that we weren't expecting but secretly was always a desire of my heart is that the program and the way we've designed it actually draws people closer to God. And whether that means you don't know who Jesus is and now you want to know more, that's happening a lot. And actually, a second contingent of this would be people that have backslid. We get lots of people that are in that position of, I don't really go to church anymore. I still believe in God, but I'm not really sure, you know, we get a lot of guys by the end of that program are saying, like, hey, I went back to church. I took my family back to church. Somebody just said that in a call this morning, like, six months ago, you know, I wasn't part of a church, but now we're plugged into a small group and all that kind of stuff. So anyways, so I think to cut this answer a little bit short, I think people, they get great outcomes because things are biblically based, but then I think they also get drawn closer to Jesus and to God just because it's an inherent byproduct of learning these biblical principles. Yeah, there's something about helping people sort of move with the grain of the universe, right? You know, sort of truing themselves to the reality that's there, even if they don't recognize Jesus as Lord. There are certain things that just work because God ordered them that way. And so as they get closer and closer to that order, hopefully they'll recognize, oh man, something had to order this. And it sure seems like these Bible passages I'm reading and these principles I'm following, the Christians might have some idea of what's going on here. What's that all about? It does seem compelling. I was just interested. I could imagine this being extremely helpful for anyone, but I just wondered how you handled some of those identity issues within a curriculum and a process, right? Where I know you're a Christian ministry, but yeah, that's an interesting dynamic, I'm sure, as people walk through that as Hindus or as agnostics and those kinds of things. Yeah, definitely. And I guess I didn't comment on the identity piece specifically. I mean, we have two, there's two components we really try to forge in that pillar, which is authenticity and boldness. And from a faith perspective, nothing gives me, nothing gives me boldness more than, you know, than knowing that God has my back. Like knowing that, you know, that Jesus is gonna back me up and that as long as I'm walking in truth, as long as I'm standing by, you know, his word, that's where my confidence comes from. And, you know, if he says that I'm a son of God or if he says that whatever he says about me, like that's where my identity is. I think for somebody who doesn't have the gospel, for somebody who doesn't have the Bible, you can still, you can still learn to be authentic, to be true to yourself and to be bold in it. I just don't think you maybe get it to the same degree, but at a deeper level, this is where, you know, we talked about 12-step earlier. So this is where one place where I would, I would say I deviate from the 12-step model a little bit because one of their, their philosophies is once an addict, always an addict. So the idea is that you, you have that identity as an addict, but you're learning to tether it, to manage it, to keep it at bay and to, to kind of like, you know, live, you know, clean of the addiction. I think the gospel message is that you were an addict, but you're a new creation in Christ Jesus and, and integrity, freedom is literally in, you know, your new creation DNA. And so I think those, those elements are, I think they're a little bit harder for somebody who's not faith-based to fully grasp or internalize. That being said, they can still ditch the addict identity. That's something that anybody can do regardless of your faith. I think your new identity, the way they, they construct that might look a little bit different, but those are, those are the facets of identity that I think again, are applicable. You can always be true to yourself. You can always be bold. You can always find a way to be bold and you can ditch your old identity as an addict. You don't have to embrace that identity anymore. Those are things that anybody can do no matter what you believe. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. I don't know whether you're—that's really fascinating. I don't know whether you're familiar, though, with Mark Lewis has written on addiction more generally, and he talks about addiction in terms of learning. He goes a little further than I think I'd be comfortable with, you know, saying there's these physiological effects and the chemical dependencies and the disease model probably needs to be kind of thrown out the window. I don't know that I would go that far, but I think some of his insights with regard to learning and how he thinks about addiction are actually really helpful. And one of the things he talks about, and I think this relates to this identity piece that you're talking about, is that he says, like, addicts, they tend to arrange their social worlds so that they can get exactly what they need to get. And as they arrange that social world, now it just becomes easier and easier and their perspective narrows and narrows and narrows so that everything's about getting to the point where they can get the fix for whatever addiction they possibly have. And what strikes me is that part of breaking out of that cycle of I'm an addict, using that as your identity, has to be about constructing a different social world. Like, you just become a different person. And so you're not falling back into those same social relationships, whatever they may be, whether that's isolation or what have you. But I could see that being a really powerful way of, you know, his work just—it just struck me when I was reading it, like, there isn't just, you're an addict and you're always an addict. No, you were an addict, and now your life has been transformed and you're in a whole different space and now you are a different person. And the threat of you falling back into addiction may always still be there, just like it could be there for any of us. But you've constructed a life where your identity is not primarily that, secondarily that, or even tertiarily that. It's completely separate from that. I don't know whether you've ever read his stuff, but really interesting sort of concepts there. No, it's bang on. It's totally accurate. And I would say we observe that. Like, as clients go deeper in their journey with us, that word you use is perfect. They literally just start to reorient their lives differently. They start spending time with people differently. Somebody, you know, this was with the inner circle, in an inner circle call yesterday, somebody, what did they—they, I think they reported they had gone two months with Clean Without Pornography. And I asked them, oh no, sorry, it was a hundred days. There was a guy with two months as well, but a hundred days. So he was really proud, you know, it was this hundred-day mark. And I said, okay, well, just share with the guys, like, what's your top tip or what's been the most impactful for your hundred days? And he said, being religious about my nighttime routine. And this is a man in his fifties, I believe. And he basically said, I have just altered my nights so that when my wife goes to bed, I go to bed. And he said that that alone has changed everything. And so what I love in this kind of reorientation of people's lives is, yes, I think that happens naturally. And then I love it when guys

Note that even if you had good character, there's something that could corrupt it, and that's not having the right people or not orienting your life appropriately, but you have the right supports that facilitate not just the development of that good character, but the preservation of it. And so I think that's, again, where this community thing comes into play, James, because when, if you're a solo act, you know, like Proverbs says, like he who isolates himself seeks his own desires. He rages against all wise judgment, right? There's something about us having that support, having people around us as we pursue sexual integrity and sexual freedom that I think really makes sure we forward to healthy character development, but it also allows us to just orient our lives in a way that's pleasing to God and naturally facilitates a lifestyle of freedom. I'm wondering, just as you're talking there, it strikes me that you might be seeing people move from a task orientation to an identity orientation. So like, let's say the guy who's decided he's going to go to bed with his wife, you can see that as like a change in behavior. And it's easy to sort of write that off cynically and go, well, it's just a behavior change. If he didn't, if he ended up not going to bed with his wife, he's going to fall right back into the same trap. And so it's just behavior modification. But I think there's a different way to see it. And you start to say to yourself, yeah, that might be what you're doing at first, right? You're sort of guarding yourself against something. But then ultimately, don't you just become the guy who goes to bed with his wife? Right. You know what I mean? Like, this is just what I do. This is who I am. This is like, it's part of who I am now. Do you see that bridge between like behavior shifting or reinforcing or constructing an identity? Like, how does that, how do you guys think about that? Yeah, well, it's got to be one of the most confusing parts of this because in some ways we're saying, yeah, we don't want you to just fall into behavior modification, right? Yet it's the behaviors that we ultimately need to modify because they're the problems, right? And so I think you hit the nail on the head. I think if there's beliefs underneath, so my personal conviction is you cannot outbehave your beliefs. And so if you believe that you're a pervert because you struggle with sexual sin and you're watching pornography, as long as you believe that you're a pervert, at some point along the way, you will do perverted things. Because if that's your identity, why wouldn't you behave within that identity, you know? And so that's why I'm not a huge fan of the once an addict, always an addict adage either. So conversely, the question then is, well, do I just start believing good things and then all of a sudden my behavior is magically going to change? No, not quite. There's a little bit of a bridge there where you are trying to identify what's actually true, but what it reinforces the truth is acting on it, right? James wrote, faith without works is dead. And so at some point you have to actually act on what you believe and that's what reinforces the belief. So there is an element, and I don't talk about this a lot because sometimes it gets misconstrued, but there is an element of fake it till you make it or do the thing that you know you're supposed to do, even if you don't fully believe it. That's how you kind of get started in believing the truth. And so for this gentleman, I think what you just said is very pertinent. When he first started out, I'm sure he wasn't thrilled about it. I'm sure it felt like he was losing his night, right? I'm sure he wasn't doing all terrible things at night. He's probably just watching movies or watching some news or whatever, like some things that, you know, are relatively harmless by the looks of it. He had to make some sacrifices, but he's doing it because he wants, he really, really wants to quit pornography. He really wants to step into that new creation identity as a man of integrity. So he does it. Now, night one, does he wake up and think, man, or does he wake up in the morning and think, man, I'm a man of integrity? Probably not, but it's a step in the right direction. You know, it's charting a new path. It's water running to a place for the first time. But if water runs there enough, eventually that path starts to get carved out and water runs there way more easily. And so for him, day 100 now, this is, like you said, it's not just habit. This is literally, this is just what he does. This is who I am. This is part of me being a man of integrity as I protect my nights and I just go to bed when my wife goes to bed. And so I think there's both. You have to find out what are those right behaviors that reinforce the beliefs. But I think eventually with time, eventually those beliefs start to drive a lot more of what you do. But yeah, there's a little bit of a gap that needs to be bridged first. Yeah, it's almost like you have to understand what you're working toward. Like you're, yes, there's going to have to be behavior change, but it's not all about behavior modification. What you're trying to do is use these changes in your behavior in order to become someone completely different. The passage I'd go to is something like Malachi 3, where God tells the Israelites, Hey, you've been keeping the food out of the storehouse. You haven't been bringing sacrifices to the temple, right? And what does God tell them? He says, test me in this. And basically it's test me by trusting me. Bring the sacrifices and see what happens. I don't think he's thinking the Israelites are going to have this massive change of heart in a moment and they're going to go, Oh yeah, I forgot. If I bring the sacrifices, God will provide for us. Like I knew that all along. What was I thinking? I think what he's really doing is just challenging them to take this step and let him prove himself out to them. And it's this really beautiful moment where I think he's just allowing them to kind of, as you said, fake it till you make it. It's like, just do what you know is right and see what happens. Even if you don't really trust that something good is going to happen. And so I think there's a, there's a sense in which we just have to step into some of these things, even if we don't really fully grasp what that's going to entail and what's going to happen to us. Yeah. That's what faith is, right? Like if it all made sense and you'll perfectly believe it from day one, then you wouldn't actually need faith, right? But as believers, at some point we have to believe. Yeah. Right. At some point you have to take that leap and say, yeah, I, I know this is the right thing to do. It doesn't, it doesn't feel like it. It's not what I want to do. I'm going to do it anyway. But, um, again, like to your point with the Israelites, um, as it's described in Malachi, like they, if they test God on that and they actually take a, take a step and then God proves himself faithful, well then of course they're going to, it's going to be easier the next time, right? And the next time and the next time after that. And so it does become kind of this positive feedback loop, but you do have to take those initial steps first to get the ball rolling. Yeah. Very good stuff, man. Well, let me ask you, uh, cause we're getting close to the end of the interview here, but let me ask you, um, do you see, uh, I mean, I think I see them, but do you see the potential of your model bridging out into other areas? Like to me, yes, you're dealing with a serious addiction and I don't want to minimize that at all. Right. But I also see it as there are a lot of people who are distracted by many things that we wouldn't call addictions who could use more self-awareness, who could use an evaluation of the triggers that are keeping them from doing what they know is right and growing spiritually. They could use a community around them of people who are aimed at becoming disciples of Christ. Like, do you see that application or am I just so far off? Like am I just missing the details? No, no, no. It's a really good question. And we get asked it all the time. I actually had somebody at a like a business mastermind event. Um, she came up to me and she's like, Hey, are you working? Would you ever work on anything for people that are addicted to their phones? And um, and I said, actually, yeah, like I, I thought about it. You know, I said, are you having some issues with your kids? She has like six kids and she said, Oh no, not for my kids. It's for my husband. I was like, Oh shoot. Um, and she's like, trust me, I have like a whole flock of women who would be very interested in that program if you ever developed it. Um, so, uh, the short answer is like, I think there's that potential there. I feel like this is the assignment God's given me right now, but we definitely see ways that it branches out. Um, and like, again, we worked solely with men right now. So like there's even easy offshoots of, of serving women because women are really struggling as well and don't have a lot of resources. So we, we, we're just thinking about all of that. We're trying to kind of see where

I highly recommend, and, you know, always love having you on the show, bro. So thanks for coming back on. Thanks for having me, man. It's always my pleasure. All right. We'll close it off there. Thanks, everybody, for listening, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hi, I'm Nicolette Bell, host of the Everyday Prayers podcast. Each weekday, we take just a few minutes to focus our hearts on God's Word through powerful, Scripture-based prayers designed for real life right where you are. Whether you're in the car, folding laundry, or taking a rare quiet moment for yourself, Everyday Prayers is here to help you connect with God and center your day with truth. Follow Everyday Prayers with Million Praying Moms wherever you listen to podcasts.