Let's Keep Talking with Braxton Gilbert
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Let's Keep Talking with Braxton Gilbert
Embracing pain leads to pleasure | Dr. Anna Lembke
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Discover the hidden threads connecting pleasure, pain, and our coping strategies as we dissect the pleasure-pain balance in an awesome conversation with Anna Lembke! Anna is Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University and a New York Times best selling author! (And a super kind and lovely person)
She teaches me why the very things we lean on for comfort, from the instant gratification of adult content to the numbing embrace of drugs, might be steering us deeper into the clutches of depression and anxiety. We take a hard look at the concept of anhedonia and how traditional depression treatments might falter in the face of addiction, offering a fresh perspective on how stepping back from these addictive cycles can lead to ground-breaking realizations about ourselves.
Embark on a journey through the delicate chemical symphony in our brains, where dopamine's role is often misunderstood in the pursuit of happiness. We analyze why embracing 'painful' activities such as exercise and fasting might just be the secret to recalibrating our dopamine levels, striking a contrast with the fleeting highs of pleasure-seeking behaviors. This episode features insights from "Dopamine Nation," providing a nuanced understanding of the long-term benefits of enduring discomfort over chasing short-lived pleasures.
Furthermore, we unravel how commercialization and the easy availability of sex and pornography have diluted our grasp on the sacred nature of sexual connections, steering us into a dopamine-driven void. The episode culminates with a deep dive into the transformative power of vulnerability in addiction recovery and the profound meaning that can be found in our struggles, drawing inspiration from Viktor Frankl's enduring wisdom in Man's Search for Meaning.
This discussion isn't simply about finding happiness; it's an invitation to redefine our understanding of pleasure, purpose, and nourishment in our lives.
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The Neuroscience of Pleasure and Pain
Speaker 1One of the interesting themes that pops up in the book and it seems to be the premise of the entire book is that the things we reach for to stop feeling bad like porn, drugs, entertainment, binging, et cetera might actually be the thing that's causing us to feel bad. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 2Yeah, that's the core message, right, super non-intuitive. But we're always looking for causality and we're trying to understand it, and it turns out that we're really good at noticing immediate causal effects, but really bad at noticing delayed causative effects. And so in the short term, these kinds of highly rewarding, escapist types of reinforcing substances and behaviors work great, which is why we reach for them again and again, but iteratively, over time, they actually change our brains such that we need more and more to get the same effect. They don't work as well as they used to. They can even turn on us and do the opposite, make us more anxious, more depressed, less able to sleep, and then eventually they can actually contribute to pathological mind states like chronic depression, anxiety, insomnia, chronic irritability and, ultimately, anhedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasure in anything that we do.
Speaker 1That's a word that came up in some of the interviews that you've done, that I was watching, that I had never heard before the inability to experience pleasure from anything you do. And is that a result of the incessant pursuit of pleasure by any means?
Speaker 2pursuit of pleasure by any means. Yeah, so it's a psychiatric term, or at least it's typically has been used historically, mostly in the field of psychiatry. Hedonic or hedonia means joy and anhedonia means the absence of joy, and it's something that we have observed for decades in people with severe major depressive disorder, that they can get to a point where they just lose the capacity to feel pleasure in anything that they do, including things that used to give them pleasure. But a severe, chronic depression is almost identical to the kinds of clinical presentation we see in people who are severely addicted to drugs, alcohol, pornography, video games, shopping, gambling, whatever it is. They come in looking very, very anhedonic.
Speaker 2They will report that they struggle with depression and that they're essentially self-medicating with their addictive behavior, that the addictive behavior is the only thing that works for them, and then very often, because they see their addictive behavior as medicinal and not primary, they want me, the psychiatrist, to fix their depression, which they believe would then allow them to stop engaging in the addictive behaviors. But there are a couple important fallacies with that. The first is that in the vast majority of cases, when we use our various antidepressant treatments whether it's medication or it's psychotherapy in the context of addictive use. They don't work okay, so that people don't tend to respond to those interventions. Every once in a while you'll get a responder, but in general what we have to offer is a drop in the ocean of their pursuit of these highly reinforcing substances and behaviors.
Speaker 1But the other. Yeah, I had to click that button so I lost the last point of what you said. You said the things that you guys give don't work are like prescription pills or what yeah, so basically antidepressants, anxiolytics, um psychotherapy.
Speaker 2These are all evidence-based treatments for depression and in general, when someone is in their addiction. And we try, we deliver those treatments. The treatments don't don't work. And again it's because they're. They're overwhelmed and overpowered by the uh, by the physiologic impact of the addictive behavior. And that's the other kind of fallacy of this whole self-medication hypothesis, which is to say that what feels like is medicinal for the psychiatric symptom or the emotional distress is really causative.
Speaker 2But, because we are not good at observing long-term impact. We just are good at observing momentary impact. We often don't realize it until we take a break from that substance or behavior and get enough distance to be able to look back and say, oh my gosh, I don't recognize that person who was so invested in that behavior and I feel so much better now than I did when I was using. And so these are the types of things that we see often in clinical care.
Speaker 1I've, even in the past two years, with venturing into healing from sex addiction, porn addiction. And as I can continue to make my way out of those woods into greener pastures, there are still waves of realizations where I go. How the hell did I? Why did I even think that way?
Speaker 2How did I get so?
Speaker 1messed up and like exactly what you're saying. It's hard, you can't even consider. I think somebody said in an interview that I was watching earlier was like you can't tell what's going on in the box while you're still in the box and you have to get out of it.
Speaker 1And, um, it's so interesting something that it seems to be and please share me, share your thoughts with me on this. It seems to be like be, and please share me, share your thoughts with me on this. It seems to be like it. It boils down so much to just our inability to I forgot the word exactly that you said but like be able to see past the very current moment of what would make my pain go away, instead of seeing that what I'm, what I'm using, is causing. It seems to be like, uh, the the like, the image in my head that helps me a lot with my own cravings is the one marshmallow, two marshmallow, like experiment where they give the kids an opportunity to wait. And it's better later, you know, but it seems to be the heart's component of it.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think one way to kind of think about it is to think about reflexes or things that our brains are wired to do automatically, versus behaviors and actions and inferences that we make using our higher cortical systems. And we are reflexively evolved over millions of years to approach pleasure and avoid pain. Right, we don't have to think about that. Babies do that. You know, adult. It's just like I'm in pain. How can I get out of it?
Speaker 2Like that's just so hard right now Right, and the truth of the matter is that that deeply ingrained, very phylogenetically conserved mechanism in our brain is what has kept us alive over millions of years of evolution in a world of scarcity and danger for the world we live in now, where we are constantly being titillated, invited to consume, seduced to do more of whatever it is that makes us feel good, and so, therefore, we can't actually rely on our instincts in some very fundamental way. We can't listen to our brains. We have to learn how to turn off those sort of automatic responses.
Speaker 1And for the listener, can you kind of walk us through why that's not the best software now in the world of abundance we live in?
Speaker 2Sure. So I use this extended metaphor of a balance. Think about a teeter-totter or a seesaw on a kid's playground. That represents how we process pleasure and pain. One of the major discoveries in neuroscience in the last 75 years is process pleasure and pain. One of the major discoveries in neuroscience in the last 75 years is that pleasure and pain are actually co-located in the brain. So the same parts of the brain that process pleasure also process pain and on a very simple, fundamental level they work like opposite sides of a balance. So when we do something pleasurable, we tilt to the side of pleasure. We experience pain, we tilt to the side of pleasure. We experience pain, we tilt to the side of pain.
Speaker 2Now there are certain rules governing this balance, and the first and most important rule is that the balance wants to remain level, such that our brains will work very hard to restore a level balance with any deviation from neutrality. And the way that our brains restore our level balance is first by tilting an equal and opposite amount to whatever the initial stimulus is. So if we do something pleasurable that releases reward neurotransmitters in the reward pathway, the balance tilts to the side of pleasure. But then our brain adapts by tilting that balance to the side of pain temporarily, before going back to the level position.
Speaker 2I like to imagine that as these little neuroadaptation gremlins hopping on the pain side of the balance to bring us level again. But they like it there, so they don't get off as soon as we're level, they stay on until we're tilted an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain. That's the come down, the hangover, the after effect, the craving right. But if we wait long enough without using again, they hop off and homeostasis is restored. If we don't wait, they start to accumulate on the pain side of the balance and then effectively, they're camped out there and we've changed our hedonic set point and now we're into addicted brain.
Speaker 1Where this started to click for me was I thought initially when reading the book that the balance goes to the side of pleasure and then the you know the pain response pushes back down to get us equal. And I didn't, I didn't, it didn't really click for me until maybe the second or third time, visiting the concept that what you were saying was it actually tilts to the opposite side, right Exactly. Is that correct?
Speaker 2Yes, and when we experience that in a very obvious way, it's like a hangover.
Speaker 2Right, you have a binge drinking episode and you have a hangover many gradations of experiencing that, even outside of conscious awareness.
Speaker 2Just that intense urge to watch another video, even though I told myself that that would be the last video. And that's the kind of a pain that we get when that homeostatic mechanism has been tilted to the side of pain and an overwhelming physiologic drive to want to restore the balance. And the fastest way to do that, rather than just waiting for the gremlins to hop off, is to watch another video to get us back to that level. But all that does is accumulate more and more gremlins on the pain side of the balance and ultimately we can again change that hedonic set point so that once we're an addicted brain, we're now walking around with a balance chronically tilted to the side of pain. We're in a chronic dopamine deficit state. Now we need to use our drug in ever more potent forms not to get high and feel good or solve the original problem, but just to level the balance and feel normal or back to baseline the balance and feel normal or back to baseline.
Speaker 1That is the. I'm so grateful for your work, Anna, and for your book, because it's that kind of insight that allowed me and so many other people I think I could speak for, who have benefited from your work and the stuff that you present in the book Dopamine Nation. Because the inability for us to kind of pay attention to the future and for us to always act in the interest of pursue pleasure, avoid pain, seems like an inescapable prison. You could become a Buddhist monk and meditate the rest of your life and try to free yourself from it, but the insight that pain is coming, insight that pain is coming.
Speaker 1Hey, it's coming and you can. You know, there's some. The one, one thing that I wrote down that I heard you say, uh, in an interview was uh, every, every pleasure has a cost or something to that fact and it just that is. That really helps me to gain some distance when I'm making decisions like pleasure or pain and it's like, well, obviously you'd choose pleasure, but if you really think, well, this is going to cause me to gain some distance when I'm making decisions like pleasure or pain and it's like, well, obviously you choose pleasure, but if you really think, well, this is going to cause me to feel worse in the future, and then even in the near future, the next 30 minutes or so, if I indulge in a habit, then okay, then I'm kind of choosing the pain. You know, is it worth it? Is it worth that?
Speaker 2Right, yeah, and you know, extrapolating from that the kind of big idea in dopamine nation, is that maybe one of the reasons we have a mental health crisis today, and maybe one of the reasons that so many modern people seem to be so unhappy despite having so much, is because we're constantly pursuing pleasure and effectively changing our hedonic or joy set point to the side of pain, which is not something that we are evolved for. We're really wired for pain. We're meant for things to be physically and mentally hard and in the absence of that hardship, our brains get really, really confused.
Speaker 1We are confused yeah.
Speaker 2I know I am.
Speaker 1We're trying to figure this thing out.
Speaker 2I mean, like just the way it makes sense in my mind is just going if you feel bad, wait it out, or even more paradoxically, if you feel bad, do something that's more painful than the pain you're experiencing in the moment, which is completely counter-cultural, right and again, I'm not talking here about cutting or things that are actually harmful. But if you think about that pleasure-pain balance, we know that when we press on the pleasure side, those neuroadaptation gremlins hop on the pain side. But it turns out the opposite is also true. And when we press on the pain side, for example, with exercise, intermittent fasting, ice, cold water baths, even things that are effortful but maybe not physically painful, those gremlins will go over and hop on the pleasure side and we will get our dopamine indirectly by paying for it up front, which is a much better way to get dopamine.
Speaker 1And is it a better like a longer tail, like a little bit of like? You go like, okay, I should go drink or go watch porn and go do my drug of choice I'm going to have a little bit of pleasure followed by a long tail of of down regulation Is that kind of the way it looks, the spike, and then I like this kind of long holdout.
Speaker 2Great. So if you imagine that we're always releasing dopamine at a kind of baseline tonic level, which we are what happens when we expose ourselves to intoxicants, highly reinforcing pleasurable substances or behaviors? We get a sudden spike in dopamine firing in the reward pathway, followed by dopamine free fall not just to baseline but actually below baseline. So then we're in that dopamine deficit state, that state of craving, slash, withdrawal, conscious or otherwise, and then you know, ultimately that's what allows the mechanism to kind of then correct back up to the baseline. That's what I mean by for every pleasure we pay a price.
Speaker 2Conversely, when we do something that's painful, upfront, we don't get that dopamine spike. What instead happens is that our body registers injury and in response to injury because even exercise is immediately toxic to cells, right? So our body then senses injury, starts to upregulate feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, endogenous opioids, endogenous cannabinoids, and we get a gradual increase of dopamine firing, so not a spike, a gradual increase over the latter half of the exercise, and then those dopamine levels remain elevated for hours after we stop exercising, before going back down to the level position without ever going into that dopamine deficit state. And that dopamine deficit state is the state of craving, which is why most of us kind of don't crave exercise, like we have to remind ourselves every day. I got to do this again to feel good Most of us anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1So you're saying it's not so like. One question I want to ask is is it one to one? Is it like you get a one unit of spike for one unit of like down, or is it you actually, if you go up high for whatever habit you have, then you get longer, like a longer tail of having to pay for it, and then when if you did the thing that was hard so you dipped into kind of the pain intentionally, you get a longer tail, like the reward is longer and the pain is longer. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2Yeah, you know, I don't think we really have the data at that level of detail.
Speaker 2We really have it more broadly and conceptually that you know that if you think again about this pleasure-pain balance and how it evolved over millions of years of evolution, really it evolved for a world in which rewards would be very difficult to find scarce, so not much of them, and we would have to do a lot of upfront work in order to get those. So it evolved for that balance, tipping into hunger, cold, loneliness, physical discomfort, and then us doing work, finding the natural reward and then bringing it back up homeostatically or even a little bit to the side of pleasure. But instead what we're doing is we're slamming down to the side of pleasure repeatedly with these high reinforcers that cause this huge release of dopamine that our brains were not evolved for, which naturally our brains are like whoa fire hose right, and then have to compensate by flipping down the other way. And that's what leads them to these binge cycles or the kind of vortex of addiction where this compulsive continued use, despite our wanting to stop.
Speaker 1Do you see that in your because you work with a lot of students in your practice. Yeah, yeah. Do you see that in your cause? You work with a lot of students in your practice.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, do you see that in a lot of students, like a lot of young people, where they're just constantly stimulating, constantly indulging, constantly trying to claw their way out of the, the dopamine deficit that they're incurring through their actions, to their own demise?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2So what?
Speaker 2What we see a lot of we see that in all of our patients, students or not, you know not students, adults, young adults, older people.
Speaker 2I think you know what is very characteristic of students here at Stanford and in Silicon Valley, people in Silicon Valley more broadly is a kind of a work hard, play hard thing, where people are sort of slamming down on, let's say, the pain side of the balance, you know, overextending themselves work-wise, and then instead of letting that be its own natural correction, they're then slamming down on the pleasure side with intoxicants at the end of the day, whether it's alcohol or cannabis or, you know, shows or pornography. So you get this kind of the seesaw's going like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, and that's, you know, the definition of stress, of biological stress, is any deviation from neutrality. So this kind of manipulation or attempt to control what we're experiencing, either by pressing on pleasure or pain, is what we see a lot of and you know is essentially what contributes to stress but also to this kind of physiologic vortex of this compulsive control problem, plus again the things that we've talked about, the changing, the hedonic set point and such.
Speaker 1How prevalent is pornography, addiction, sex addiction, in the patients you work with, and have you seen it change over the years?
Speaker 2Well, there was very clear signal in the early 2000s, after the advent of the internet, and then, especially around 2007, 8, 9, 10, with the advent of the smartphone and the kind of portable internet access, huge increase in the numbers of people coming in, mostly middle-aged men, looking for help with sex, pornography, compulsive masturbation, using the internet essentially to feed this habit. And they almost universally endorsed the internet and smartphones and that sort of access being, where you know, the deciding factor where they went from occasional engagement in those behaviors to a kind of life-destroying, um compulsive use of those behaviors.
Speaker 1So that was, that was a powerful shift in the first decade of uh, this century I've always in my experience with pornography I I've thought like man, if it was that bad, it wouldn't be legal, and that's kind of like something that I've learned as I've matured and moved away from. That way of living is like man. There's plenty of things that aren't illegal. That'll ruin your life.
Reimagining Sexuality and Fulfillment
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly, yes, yeah, Alcohol tobacco. Lots of social media yeah, Alcohol tobacco lots of social media.
Speaker 1Yeah, the sex addiction stuff I think is particularly interesting because in my mind it's an example of stripping a complex like you think about sex with somebody a complex, rich, nourishing, potentially experience down to just the ability to feel pleasure and orgasm.
Speaker 1You know, there's a podcast that I had recently with a guy named Alex A Walsh who is a London based holistic sex teacher for the last two decades and he describes and I want to hear your thoughts on this, what your reaction is to this he describes kind of a different way of viewing sex as in terms of or he uses the phrase a saturation model that sex is a field of which, or an experience that you have with somebody that is rich with emotional substances of love and devotion and play and connection and pleasure is kind of this golden thread that weaves in throughout it. But it is only one of the many beautiful experiences that are to be had during a moment of sex with somebody and I thought it was really interesting in comparison to the way that maybe most people see sex, at least in America, which is more better, more of a thrill, more pleasure, more orgasm, and it's just solely focused on pleasure. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, as a woman in her 50s, it's really stunning to see that cultural shift over the past 25 years, going from thinking of sex as something sacred and something that is part of cultivating intimacy and a meaningful relationship, to being something sort of the equivalent of exercise, you know, plus a jolt of dopamine in the form of orgasm.
Speaker 2And you know, for many people orgasm is intensely pleasurable. So it's not easy, it's not hard to see how, for those for whom orgasm is, you know, uniquely pleasurable above other kinds of intoxicants, how, living in a world where sex partners and pornography and, you know, paths to orgasm have become so accessible and potent and culturally sanctioned and condoned, separate and independent from the cultivation of deep intimacy, plus, just frankly, the commercialization of almost everything that we do, now, I mean I'm not really surprised to see the shift, but I can tell you I'm saddened by it, and you know it's just I mean to be totally honest, braxton just even the fact that that information is a bit of a revelation for you, it is like kind of both stunning and sad to me. I mean, I hope you don't take this the wrong way.
Speaker 1No, no, you're absolutely right take this the wrong way.
Speaker 2No, you're absolutely right, yeah.
Speaker 1It's like, wow, what?
Speaker 2you know what happened, you know what, where, where, where did we decouple those, those two things? And you know it's. It's not like it's not like this. I mean sort of interest in pornography and interest in sex. I mean that's always been with us and people who have a heightened interest in a heightened pursuit, but something has really shifted in the culture that is just sort of like sex for its own sake.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2I don't want to cast judgment on. You know, this is not judgment on people's lifestyle choices or whatever. This is not judgment on people's lifestyle choices or whatever. I don't know what the future holds, but it is, yeah, just sex as a way to get a particular feeling for myself. Just, it just seems inherently, let's say yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, it is. It is which is what led me out, which made me go made me go. Okay, this is this doesn't seem to ever end. I don't think I'm ever going to get this elusive, grandiose reward that I feel like I'm chasing down and on top of that, my relationships romantically are suffering. And sex in real life because of pornography usage, because of the abuse of pornography, just seems less interesting and boring comparatively.
Speaker 2Right, yeah, and that right. There is a key feature of compulsive overconsumption of intoxicants, not just to sex but to all rewarding things that we have a narrowing of our focus and other things become less salient. We have no joy in them, and without this particular medium, whatever our medium is alcohol, cannabis, sex we can't get pleasure from it. So I mean and that's of course the grief reaction, right, I mean not to assume your journey, but the recovery then is about well, how can I find joy in this activity without it being as pleasurable as that other thing that I was doing?
Speaker 2And then there's going to be a grief reaction to that like, wow, I have to completely reorient on what is the purpose of sex in my life.
Speaker 1I have that on a sticky note on my desk at work. It says what's the purpose of this and it says, like love, connection, play pleasure. It's something that Alex A suggested and it has felt. I mean, you know, I'll be totally transparent. My sex life now. Now it feels like this unfamiliar territory where I'm going like I'm successfully no longer focused on objectifying my partner for dopamine hits and personal pleasure and it leaves me going like well, what do we do here?
Speaker 2why are we doing this again, right, yeah?
Speaker 1I had. Me and my partner were talking the other day and I I said, uh, I just feel like we're waiting for something to happen, like during it.
Speaker 2You know, I'm like where's the end, where's the what? What are we heading toward?
Speaker 1it's so, it's, it's so different and I look, I totally, um, obviously it's. It's not the greatest thing to hear, but I I completely accept your comment of like it's sad to see how far off I got with the sex stuff and collectively I think, as I think a lot of people have gotten off, oh yeah a lot of people got off track with the sex stuff.
Speaker 1Right right, I will say that and this is probably the most the biggest part of my curiosity of chatting with you today is it kind of leads me into a like a lens of looking at the world through a lens of, like, um, seeking out things that aren't necessarily, like you just said, necessarily pleasurable, but maybe rich and other things that are that are deeply nourishing. You know, could you speak on that for people that are like me, that are kind of making their way out of the woods and go okay, I'm not being led so much by pleasure. Now, what is the emotional substances and sensations I can start to attune my life to that might be more fulfilling and more meaningful.
Speaker 2Yeah Well, I mean, as part of this reflexive wanting to approach pleasure and avoid pain, one thing that we do, most of us for most of our lives, unconsciously, is that we really run from our pain. And yet, you know, my experience and that of many others is that it's not until we stop running and turn and face that thing that we're running from that we first begin to feel a sense of peace and serenity and the ability to be comfortable in ourselves and in our lives. So it's extremely counterintuitive, but it really does begin with openly acknowledging the negative emotions, thoughts, cognitions, experiences that we're having in the moment. And it's so fascinating to me even now, after years of doing this work, when we open the door to awareness of those negative emotions, we can completely reorient on them and on our experience in the moment in a way that just feels incredibly again, peaceful, nourishing, protected. It's the most interesting thing that happens.
Speaker 1What is?
Speaker 2Just when we stop running from our uncomfortable emotions. I'll give you a very small example. I mean this is sort of a ridiculous example, but anyway, if it doesn't work.
Speaker 1It doesn't work.
Speaker 2So one of the things that I do when I'm feeling like a little bit of shame about just who I am and what I have to offer the world is I will kind of get louder and sort of more grandstandy and try to be more charismatic and funnier. And even as I'm doing that I'm realizing that like it's a little off putting for people, which then accelerates the shame, which then accelerates my tendency to engage in those behaviors.
Speaker 2And then I'll come away from that encounter and I'll feel a mixture of self-loathing and also resentment toward my designated audience for not being sufficiently wowed by my charisma. So it's already majorly convoluted. You can see there, right, A lot of narcissistic kinds of features. But if I am able in the moment to be like, oh, I'm actually a little nervous around this group of people, I don't know that well, and I'm wondering how I'm going to be perceived and I'm feeling shame. Actually I'm feeling shame that is anticipating that they won't like me or that I won't be, that they'll talk badly about me.
Speaker 2After this encounter, the moment I see that I stop all of those compensatory, weird compensatory behaviors that make it worse and I just go. You know what, you know, God, life is hard. And here I am, I'm like kind of in a shame, self-loathing spiral. It's going to be okay, and then you know again. This happens so often. Then, all of a sudden, because I've let down that weird defense thing that I do when I feel shame, like people, they respond better, you know, to me and I can then feel yeah, I'm like a real person.
Speaker 2I'm not trying to like use them and control their you know perceptions which, by the way, we can't do anyway, but we always try, or we often try, and then I kind of settle into yeah, you know, I'm whatever I am, it is what it is, and then, like the, it changes right, the feeling changes. So that's just one example, but it's so hard to do.
Speaker 1Yeah, alchemizing that feeling into something that's different. It's, it is so challenging to do, but it's what, what it's? What is there for you? I had a dream recently that showed me a very clear sensation of the alchemizing of fear into bliss, when you lean into surrender. But those moments aren't available to us, if we don't, you know, because you might go damn, I'm feeling shame, Feel it, you turn to it, you see it, and then it kind of it just shifts. By labeling it, it's like, okay, I'm feeling some shame right now and that's causing me to want to do that whole thing, but I'm not going to do the compensatory behavior. So I'm, I'm not going to do the compensatory behavior, so I'm just going to be here with it. And it changes subtly and then you kind of start to feel potentially a sense of like humanity, shared humanity, you know, to some people Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's so weird I mean alchemizing it is, is a great, is a great term, because it's like it is so fascinating how we pick up on these things and in other people, like when they're at. You know, we don't quite know what it is, but it's sort of like this person's kind of being weird, right, and then we sort of feel like what's going on there and then that triggers us and it's such a weird spiral. But you can really change it by changing your own sort of orientation inside yourself, you can really change the room.
Speaker 1Yeah, it is. This is beautiful. This is exactly how I was hoping that we would be able to kind of steer this conversation into a direction that sheds light on a lifestyle that is less reactive to use the word that you used earlier from for those painful emotions, and maybe it feels like more of a response, more of a tenderness, more of allowing yourself to feel this, to feel whatever's coming up in you. That is like you know, what is it that drives to, especially to the person listening Like, what is it that drives your behavior? What is it the thing that makes you reach for whether it's compulsive use of sex or pornography or video games, or you know what is it, and maybe just for a fun experiment, have you ever tried feeling that thing with more texture, with more sensation?
Speaker 2or sensitivity, nice yeah. And I think, especially in that realm of you know, sex addiction. What I always say is that sex addiction isn't really even about sex. It really is about kind of maladaptive coping, escapism and also, you know, as so often with addiction, wanting attachment right, wanting that connection with other human beings and sort of having found this sort of artificial version of it. But when we realize that that's really what's going on, you know, trying to get that deep attachment without using people and again, the way that we can do that is primarily by awareness of our own tendencies to use people and then letting go of trying to control other people's perceptions or reactions and just kind of like being like okay, you know, I am, this is, this is, it's going to be all right.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, it's going to be all right. The sex is not even sex. Addiction is not even about the sex component. Reigns true for me that it was so much more about just the constant um need for the entertainment and excitement that came with hookups, pornography and all the other things included in my behaviors. Just that feeling of like anticipation that would that. That would give the moment some pizzazz.
Speaker 2Right, right, yeah and you know that's a big part of recovery too is like what do you do with a life that has a lot less drama?
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2There's a lot of drama in it, you know, in that addiction vortex, so kind of like readjusting to like oh gosh, okay, it's not going to be like me, you know, making up all these stories about where I was and what I did and then people finding out, and then you know them getting mad and all that stuff.
Finding Meaning and Purpose Through Struggle
Speaker 1Yeah, beautiful, beautiful stuff. Living a life that's more aimed at living like this, aimed at nourishment, to not not getting caught in the pleasure trap to your own demise. It's something I just really hope that we can encourage the listener to do with this conversation. Is there anything else that you might add to our tool belt for recovery and for venturing into the world less reliant on that pleasure button all the time, to help get our I don't know sea legs or land legs, or get used to it?
Speaker 2Yeah, well, I mean, I just think there are so many messages in our culture today that tell us that we should be ecstatic 24 seven, and if we're not, there's something wrong with us or something wrong with our lives.
Speaker 2I think really getting rid of that trope and recognizing it's the fundamental untruth in that, that life is hard and that most of us, most of the time, are kind of struggling along here and that by trying to run from that fact or deny it or feel that we're alone or isolated in that experience just compounds our misery. But I think by sort of acknowledging, yeah, you know, this is hard, but I can find meaning and purpose, you know, despite the fact that being a human is super challenging.
Speaker 1Yeah, there was a quote by Viktor Frankl, the author of A Man's Search for Meaning. He's a Holocaust survivor. You're familiar with the book. Oh, yeah, yeah. And he says when a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasures.
Speaker 1Yes, that's right, that's right to hang out with me a little bit and talk about these things and share some of your insights with the listeners. Like I said earlier, I am deeply grateful for your work and how it's touched my life and, I know, the lives of so many. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2Oh, you're very welcome. It was my pleasure, hmm.