Introduction and Guest Background

Tony Litster [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin and today we have a gentleman by the name of Tony Litster with us. Hey, Tony, how's it going?

Tony Litster [00:00:40] It's a mouthful, John, don't worry. I wondered if you get it right when you said it the first time.

John Dehlin [00:00:44] I got it. I think I got it. You did get it right today. The topic is a sensitive one, but an important one and one that I'm passionate about and that Tony, can give us some firsthand experience about. The topic today is pornography and what's bad about it and how it happens and how porn addiction sort of develops, what we might do to help, to help cause or contribute to its development and then how people work through it and find a more happy place on the other side. So, Tony, thanks for coming to talk about such an important topic.

Tony Litster [00:01:29] You're welcome, John. I thought we'd have a. Excuse me. A little bit more open minded conversation though. You didn't give any of the positive side effects of porn.

John Dehlin [00:01:38] Oh, we'll talk about that too.

Tony Litster [00:01:42] It was so one sided. It was like, we're going to talk about what's bad about it and what's wrong about it and what's horrible.

John Dehlin [00:01:49] Let's talk about what's awesome about pornography.

Tony Litster [00:01:51] That's right. Yeah. Why do 7 out of 10 guys have a problem with it? 4 out of 10 women have a problem with it. There's got to be something there, right?

John Dehlin [00:01:58] All right, all right, so we'll, so we'll get to that. So Tony, before we begin, we should probably know if there's a disclaimer. Are you, you know, tell us what, how you are and aren't sort of credible in terms of your ability to talk about this stuff.

Tony Litster [00:02:16] So in the, in the, in the world of educated people, I have no, I have no credibility. Right. So mine's all street credibility.

John Dehlin [00:02:24] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:02:25] I'm not a licensed therapist or licensed doctor, lawyer. I have a driver's license. That's about it. But my background is in personal development. I've been teaching personal development trainings for, oh, we're going on 10 years and for years I was hired as, I guess as a Life Coach. This is kind of before it was called the Life Coach, but I teach seminars and do trainings and breakthrough workshops, and people would hire me to take their business to the next level or to take the relationship to the next level or whatever it is they were creating. And I've coached a lot of creatives athletes and artists and business owners and that kind of stuff. I got into that industry because my life was totally screwed up, you know, 20 years ago. And I just really dove into how to change the broken belief systems I was handed as a kid, how to get over the, you know, that had massive self esteem issues. And, and, you know, I wasn't making any money and my, my marriage was on the rocks and all these different things, and I started to learn principles of what worked for change. And.

John Dehlin [00:03:28] And you also, you also struggled with pornography yourself, right?

Tony Litster [00:03:32] Totally, totally. So. So I wanted to say this first, though. You know, I, I got into personal development to work on me and my junk and my relationships and, you know, to make more money. And then I started doing this as a. As living. And then one day, you know, just in my own meditations, got the answer to take all the programs I had created and create a recovery program for pornography addiction. And I didn't want to. I was just like, ah, I don't want to do that. Like, who wants to go into that arena? Who wants to talk about that? It was interesting because I went from being. I was really in demand as a public speaker. Every weekend I was in a different city. And when I transitioned over to this topic, I didn't do a speech for three years. This was a topic nobody wanted to talk about, but I felt passionately about it. I had watched somebody very close to me go through a divorce because of a porn issue. And I watched that family get torn apart. And I'd had issues with this in the past. And so I, you know, I knew from a personal standpoint, even though it's, you know, it's, it's. It personally took me a while to even talk about it because there's so much shame around the topic. But, you know, now it's like, whatever, I'm an open book.

John Dehlin [00:04:45] All right, Tony. Well, if it's all right, let's begin. Just talking, just briefly, about how you fell into porn use and what, how it affected your life.

Early Experiences with Pornography

Tony Litster [00:04:54] You know, growing up, it was. All my teenage friends were into it. It was just. What, you know, it's just part of teenage stuff. You know.

John Dehlin [00:05:01] Where was this?

Tony Litster [00:05:02] In Idaho.

John Dehlin [00:05:03] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:05:03] In Boise, Idaho. And it was interesting Because I grew up in a Mormon community. And I remember it was. I kind of joke about this when I'll talk about the issue, but if the scoutmaster was there, we'd. We'd practice tying knots. And if the scoutmaster wasn't there, everybody would like, you know, break out the porno and drink some beer.

John Dehlin [00:05:23] Really?

Tony Litster [00:05:24] Oh, totally.

John Dehlin [00:05:25] It's like kids in junior high or high school or what.

Tony Litster [00:05:28] Yeah, it was. I remember when I was about. I don't know, I must have been about 16, maybe 15 years old, and I was hanging out with some of the older guys, and we were sitting there and at the scoutmaster's house, and he was out of town, and one of the kids was 18, so he had gone to the. You know, he went to the rental place, rented a porno. And, you know, about three fourths of the guys are down there watching it. And I was sitting on the front porch with another kid talking about how he was scared to go on his mission the next year.

John Dehlin [00:05:53] And these kids are lds?

Tony Litster [00:05:55] All of them? Every one of them, yeah. Some of them are having beer. It was just. It was a very interesting setup.

John Dehlin [00:06:00] And you think that's. That was normal or maybe a little bit abnormal?

Tony Litster [00:06:03] It was pretty normal. For where? For what I saw.

John Dehlin [00:06:06] So in sort of Boise. Let's just say Utah. Kind of Utah. Idaho area kids have a bit of a rougher upbringing in terms of word of wisdom and law of chastity kind of stuff. You think?

Tony Litster [00:06:17] I just think that most kids dabble. You got a few straight arrows, but I think most kids dabble on some level. And that's just what I saw. It's interesting. In the last few years, I've been talking about this issue. I've had conversations with bishops and young men's leaders from all over the world. You know, they'll find my website and they'll call me and ask for resources and ask for help and that kind of stuff. And they all tell me the same story, all of them. And I don't. I don't try to, you know, get this story from them, because I want their honest feedback. And what they're basically saying is they say all of the young men have a porn issue. You know, the bishop over in the uk, where they have. Their technology, is more advanced here in the US he said all these young men have smartphones and all of them have porn issues. So, you know, as we move into the future, you know, the statistics say like 7 out of 10 guys have a problem with this. Well, this up and coming Generation, it's going to be nine out of ten.

John Dehlin [00:07:12] Right? Okay, so what, so you saw this, this movie that your buddy rented and then what happened from there?

Tony Litster [00:07:19] Well, look, for me it was. I was pretty rebellious. I dabbled in a lot of the forbidden paths and, and then had a spiritual awakening when I was about 16 and, and that stuff didn't serve me anymore. So I put it aside and you don't have to apologize. When you and I tried to do this interview two days ago, I had completely lost my voice. So we're going to see how it holds out.

John Dehlin [00:07:42] That's all right, that's all right.

Tony Litster [00:07:43] I talk for a living, so that's not a good thing. But anyway, so, yeah, so it was interesting because I put it aside for several years. I went and served an LDS mission and I came back, I was going to BYU and was absolutely riveted with cravings to look at porn. And it had been like seven years since I'd looked at any. And I went to the counseling center there at BYU this one day and this guy who was the PhD was the head of the counseling department down at BYU. I won't say his name because, you know, he's a well meaning guy. But I went and sat down with him and I said, man, I'm going crazy here. I'm going nuts. I'm having cravings to look at porn and I don't want to go back to my old lifestyle. And he goes, well, how long has it been? I said, about seven years. And he goes, well, looks like you're doing pretty good, buddy. And pass me on the back and sends me out of his office. And so there was nothing that was helpful and I couldn't talk to anyone about it either. And what I understand now from my own recovery process is that this, you know, whatever addiction we choose, whether it's chick flicks or chocolate or movies or work or exercise or porn or alcohol or drugs, whatever it is, once we wire our brain up to have some kind of addictive escape, anytime we have too much stress in our life, our brain is going to crave that escape.

John Dehlin [00:09:04] So we'll talk about the ideology of it, but let's drill into what it did to you first.

Tony Litster [00:09:11] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:09:14] So you left that counselor's office at BYU and what you started watching?

Tony Litster [00:09:19] No, you know, it was a while. I eventually relapsed with the Internet. It was a while. It was a couple years of a long slide of, of just having my own personal inner hell, okay? Of, of, of just having cravings and not Knowing what to do with it and just try to stuff it and suppress it and run from it. And. And then I got married, and. And I thought getting married was going to fix it. I figured, oh, if I can have sex and this will just. Right, that'll be. That'll be my outlet. But the emotions of sex are totally different than the emotions of porn. Completely absolutely different. And sex in a relationship with someone where there's love and commitment is a very fulfilling, connective experience. And that's the way it was designed. I think the brain chemistry is so that we bond with each other with orgasm. And so that was great, and it was satisfying. But what it didn't do is take away the cravings for the adrenaline factor. And so once again, I went into this sort of, like, this place of inner shame, of going, man, I'm craving this forbidden thing. And I knew the patterns because I'd been through some addiction stuff as a teenager, and I could see myself on a slippery slope. And prior to ever relapsing, I started to look for help. It was interesting. I tried the treatment.

John Dehlin [00:10:39] So you started looking at pornography?

Tony Litster [00:10:41] No, I didn't start looking till after I started seeking help to deal with it.

John Dehlin [00:10:46] Okay, so you started feeling these cravings and urges.

Tony Litster [00:10:50] Totally.

John Dehlin [00:10:51] And you started looking for help after marriage?

Tony Litster [00:10:54] Yeah, I was married. And I was like, man, I'm going crazy here. I got to do something about this, because it's going to ruin. I could see it was going to ruin my marriage.

John Dehlin [00:11:00] Even though you weren't doing it?

Tony Litster [00:11:01] Even though I wasn't doing it was haunting me. That's what's so interesting about this issue. So often people are like. They look at sobriety as not viewing, and they go, oh, that's good. You know, if in terms of porn, it's like an alcoholic that doesn't drink, they go, oh, that's good. I don't look at it that way. I don't think it's healthy for somebody to live in insane cravings because eventually they're gonna. They're gonna fall off the wagon.

John Dehlin [00:11:23] Okay, so we're gonna. I'm. What I'm doing is I'm writing down all these points. You're. You want to.

Tony Litster [00:11:28] I know you're gonna return to us, but.

John Dehlin [00:11:31] But we always tell the story first, so.

Speaker C [00:11:33] Got it.

John Dehlin [00:11:33] Got it.

Tony Litster [00:11:34] I'm not following the protocol.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] Oh, that's okay. So you sought help, and then what happened?

Seeking Treatment and Early Recovery Attempts

Tony Litster [00:11:39] Yeah, so I tried traditional stuff.

Speaker C [00:11:41] Right.

Tony Litster [00:11:41] So what did you try? Yeah, I went to, you know, traditional therapy, and they'd Sit and they listen to me. And, you know, it was nice to have someone listen to me at first.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] I can see these therapists just thinking, well, you're not doing it, so you have a problem. Right?

Tony Litster [00:11:56] Pretty good.

John Dehlin [00:11:57] Yeah.

Tony Litster [00:11:57] Yeah. One of. One of them told me to schedule my behavior, which was kind of interesting.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] What behavior?

Tony Litster [00:12:04] Once I started relapsing, then he would. The. The guy said I should schedule my acting out so that it wasn't compulsive. So I actually put it on the calendar and be like, okay, Wednesday at 3:00pm I'm gonna. I'm gonna. You know, I'm gonna go throw one off. Okay, wait, so. So.

John Dehlin [00:12:21] Okay, wait, so that. But that's. So let's just. In the. As far as the story goes.

Tony Litster [00:12:26] Yeah, chronologically, I'm a little bit out of order. So I started going to therapy.

John Dehlin [00:12:30] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:12:31] Didn't. Didn't get anything.

John Dehlin [00:12:33] Because you weren't really doing anything yet.

Tony Litster [00:12:35] Well, I was. I was emotionally in a lot of pain and.

John Dehlin [00:12:37] Right, right.

Tony Litster [00:12:38] Had a lot of broken belief systems. But I. I wasn't technically acting out. In. In. You know, it's like that. There's this. This box that Mormons like to walk. I call it the BS box. And this is where we have clearly defined boundaries of, this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong. And so we walked this box. It was like, you know, at byu, there were. There were like, certain ways you could make out with a girl and not have to talk to the bishop. And there were other ways you could make out and you had to talk to the bishop.

John Dehlin [00:13:08] Totally, totally. So what were you. What were you doing?

Tony Litster [00:13:12] I was. I would. I would look at swimsuit magazine type stuff.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:13:18] So it was in. In the technical BS box. I was within the box going, well, it's not naked, so it's not porn. But it gave me the same brain chemicals, right? So I felt myself just becoming kind of compulsive. Or I'd be, you know, watching TV and. And surfing the. The TV at night, and there'd be something aggressive that was on but wasn't necessarily, you know, naked. So though there was this. It was interesting because it would give me the chemical rush I was looking for, but it. Well, I could still walk within the BS box and be like, no, I'm still okay. When I knew I was not okay.

John Dehlin [00:13:53] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:13:53] I knew I was in trouble. So. So the. So it was interesting. The first thing I did is I went to see a. I was in this space, and I joined a group program that they had. And this is over at byu. And, you know, I sat down in this group, and it was like, I don't know, 15 or 20 guys, and we all had to put in 500 bucks at the beginning. And I think it was like 10 weeks or something. You get 50 bucks back a week. So it was like this. This extra incentive to show up at each meeting because you get your money back. So I'm sitting in this meeting, and these guys were all way, way, way worse with their relapses than I was. Okay, wait.

John Dehlin [00:14:27] I just. I just want to make sure I understand the story. So you were watching these TV shows and looking at swimsuit stuff. Were you masturbating to them or.

Tony Litster [00:14:36] No, not really.

John Dehlin [00:14:39] Okay, so you weren't really even doing anything yet?

Tony Litster [00:14:41] I was on the. No, I wasn't. It was all internal.

John Dehlin [00:14:44] But you went. You went to a. You went to a group and paid 500 bucks to get treatment for something you weren't doing?

Tony Litster [00:14:50] Yes, because I was scared as hell. I was. I was in this place where I was terrified of myself.

John Dehlin [00:14:56] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:14:57] Because I knew what I. I'd already been there. And once you've already been there, it's way easy to go back.

John Dehlin [00:15:04] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:15:05] You know what I mean? Like, there's certain social boundaries once you've crossed them.

John Dehlin [00:15:09] Yep.

Tony Litster [00:15:09] Far easier to cross the second time.

John Dehlin [00:15:11] Sure.

Tony Litster [00:15:12] And I saw my behavior as a teenager. I was reckless, okay. And I saw where it would lead. And, you know, I'm smart enough to go, okay. If I keep going down that road, I know where it's going to take me, because I've been there. It took me there.

John Dehlin [00:15:25] So that's weird. So you're so. And what age are you at this point?

Tony Litster [00:15:28] Maybe 23, 24.

John Dehlin [00:15:29] Okay, so 23, 24. You're seeking treatment for something that you did, you know, many years ago, but you hadn't been doing for a while. Okay, keep going. So you went to this group.

Tony Litster [00:15:39] So I went to this group, and I sat there for 12 weeks, and it was like a band aid on a gushing wound. You know, they just tried to cover it up. Didn't. Didn't really address any of the core issues, you know, and they were, well meaning. I don't want to dog on these guys because this was, you know, a long time. This is years ago, where they really didn't even have any understanding of this Internet was just coming out. Didn't really even see this as an addiction.

John Dehlin [00:16:05] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:16:05] So they were doing their best. Right. But it was pretty useless, was Interesting to be in that group. Once the group was ended, that's when I finally started actually relapsing. And did they make it.

John Dehlin [00:16:16] Did they make any money off you? Did they give you all the $500 back?

Tony Litster [00:16:19] They gave it all back.

John Dehlin [00:16:20] So they didn't make any money?

Tony Litster [00:16:21] No, it was run out of byu, so it was some. It was a private group.

John Dehlin [00:16:24] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:16:25] And the interesting thing is this was back in maybe 2000.

John Dehlin [00:16:28] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:16:29] Or maybe before that, somewhere around then. And they had about. I think they had a dozen groups or 15 groups going on at that time. And so it's just grown from there. I mean, now it's just like. I think they should just have every guy in the group at BYU these days. But.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] Yeah, these are popular groups at byu. Yeah.

Tony Litster [00:16:49] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Everyone has to. It should make it part of the general ed classes. But anyway, so I was in this group and it was at that point I had started relapsing.

John Dehlin [00:16:59] And what does that mean? So tell us about that.

Tony Litster [00:17:03] Pornographic on some level.

John Dehlin [00:17:05] Okay, so this is around. Let's see, around 2000, the Internet really came around. I don't know, around. Well, it sort of popped on the scene. 94 by 98, 99. It's getting pretty big now. So was the Internet part of this for you?

Tony Litster [00:17:22] Not yet. No, not yet. So I didn't have access. And so it would be like, you know, I'd watch cable TV at night or something.

John Dehlin [00:17:29] So you'd see porn?

Tony Litster [00:17:31] Yeah, some pornography thing on there.

John Dehlin [00:17:32] And then. Would you. Would you. Is it masturbation to get it? Was it to get a release?

Tony Litster [00:17:36] What was it, you know, at that time? It wasn't okay just because it was. There's a different brain chemistry. There's a lot of times people masturbate with porn and A lot of times. Well, at least in my case, that wasn't always the case. It was a different rush for me.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] Okay, so you would just.

Tony Litster [00:17:55] Like this. There's like this danger, this adrenaline rush of doing something forbidden and dangerous that I just craved like crazy because my life was kind of boring, you know, it just. I was used to living a little on the wild side, and it was pretty boring just to, you know, be a good boy and go to, you know, wear my white shirt and tie at BYU all day long. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:18:14] So you would just kind of sneak out and sneak. Sneak in the dark and watch some porn on cable.

Tony Litster [00:18:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:20] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:18:21] Yeah. So it was. It's not like it was even. You know, it's interesting in terms of, like, my behavior at that time, when I started really seeking help, it wasn't extreme. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't going to strip clubs, and I wasn't cheating on my wife, and I wasn't even looking at porn every day. But I knew the cycle. I was scared, right, Because I saw where it was going. So anyway, so I heard about this guy at my dad's office that had come in, and he was a hypnotist. And he had hypnotized the. Some of the workers there, the attorneys at the office, and helped him quit smoking. And I went, you got to be kidding me. If somebody can quit smoking through hypnosis, like, this has totally got to help. So I look up a hypnotherapist in the phone book. I'm like, I got to get some help for this. And I go see this hypnotherapist, and she has me sit down in this chair, and she goes, okay, close your eyes. And I'm like, well, I don't feel like I'm really hypnotized. I'm still able to talk to you. I didn't know anything about it, but it was a triggering process. And she goes, okay. And she takes me through a little process, and she goes, I want you to think of the first image that comes to your mind. And the image that comes to my mind was this memory I had totally forgotten about. I was like 5 years old and I was on the stairs. My parents bedroom was upstairs, and we slept downstairs. And I was on the stairs. And I'm laying on the stairs on my stomach, and I'm holding my arms up. And my dad is at the top of the stairs and he wants me to go to bed. And he has his belt. He took his belt off and he looped it so that he could, like, snap it and make the smack noise, you know, like you do with a belt.

John Dehlin [00:19:47] Yep.

Tony Litster [00:19:48] And he's smacking his belt. He didn't actually hit me with it, but he was, you know, he's just like, go to bed, kid. Whack, whack, whack. And. And I'm laying there cowering, crying as this little kid, because I want to be with my parents. And I didn't. I don't know what I was like, what does this have to do with anything? She says, I want you to. But. But as I went back to the emotion, I was like, sitting in the chair crying, like, this is weird. And she says, I want you to see your higher self. Go talk to this little boy. So all Of a sudden I see this noble version of me sit down, put to put his arm around this little guy and be like, start telling him things like, hey, you're going to be fine. It's okay. You know, you're. You're loved, you're safe. And I was just weeping as I'm having this profound emotional healing experience as I'm talking to this little child version of me. And I came out of that experience and it was just like, I didn't even know what had happened. I'm like, what in the world was that? But it was so healing. And as I. So I went back, I don't know, 20, 30 times, did all kinds of emotional healing work, and it really helped in terms of starting to understand why I was wanting to escape what was going on within me. Eventually I moved out of Utah, relapsed for a while.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] And again, this is just the same type of stuff we've already talked about.

Tony Litster [00:21:08] Same thing. Yeah. So basically it was. I was in and out of different. I tried all kinds of different techniques. So anyway, it set me on this course, man. I've experimented. You name it, I've probably tried it in terms of some kind of transformation work. Neuro, linguistic programming, hypnosis, eft. I've studied meditation with one of the best meditation teachers in the world, Transcendental meditation, all kinds of different techniques for changing the brain, and eventually started to learn some stuff.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] Can you, can you tell us when it. I mean, it's not sounding very severe. It's sounding like occasionally you're going down and watching a little tv.

Tony Litster [00:21:54] No, I got to where I was looking at it every single day.

John Dehlin [00:21:56] So talk about like the worst it got just so that we know that you understand.

Tony Litster [00:22:01] Yeah, so. So I was at a community college. I'd moved out east and I was going to community college. And I would sit there, man, I'd sit there for like three, four hours at the computer lab, and it was every single day. And so I was in a public setting.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] And this is at what age?

Tony Litster [00:22:17] I don't know, maybe 25. Okay, and did you not, did you

John Dehlin [00:22:21] not graduate from byu?

Tony Litster [00:22:22] No, no, I, I didn't. I didn't handle BYU very well.

John Dehlin [00:22:27] Okay, so you've. Okay, so you're to community college and

Tony Litster [00:22:30] you were looking out east and was. Was going to community college and. Yeah, it was, it was, it was like this trance and it was, it was like this. I'd be sitting there and I knew from the minute I woke up that morning that I was going to look at porn that day. It was crazy. It was like this weird compulsive emotional trance of, of going. It was like this hunger that kicked on right at the beginning and I already knew that I had failed. And this is like six or seven hours before it was going to happen. I knew I had failed already.

John Dehlin [00:23:04] Now, did your, did your wife ever know you were doing this?

Tony Litster [00:23:07] Yeah, yeah, she. She.

John Dehlin [00:23:09] What was that like? Did she ever catch you? Yeah, talk about that.

Tony Litster [00:23:13] Awkward.

John Dehlin [00:23:15] So she would just catch you. But, but, but it was never. There was no. She. She never like caught you masturbating or anything like that?

Tony Litster [00:23:22] No, never caught me masturbating. She walked in once, I opened an email on the computer. It was back when spam emails came out and opened an email and it had a porn image in it. So my wife is not the typical sort of suppressed. I don't know, I shouldn't say it like that. She wasn't raised in an LDS culture. Her parents were hippies that converted to mormonism in the 70s, so she's way more open minded. She didn't like it, but she didn't throw me under the bus and tell me I was a bomb and to get out and all that kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:23:55] Okay, well, you had that in your favor.

Tony Litster [00:23:58] Totally.

John Dehlin [00:23:58] Because that's a huge problem.

Tony Litster [00:23:59] Huge issue. And yeah. And anyway, we can talk about that part of it later. So. Yeah, so basically I really started seeking help for it. And what was interesting is I started going to personal development training.

John Dehlin [00:24:11] Okay, wait, did you ever go to your bishop? Sure. And how'd that go?

Tony Litster [00:24:16] Well, like anything, you sit down and go, hey, I got a problem with porn. And he goes, well, have you tried to sing a hymn? Right? And I go, yeah. And you know, one bishop was like, oh, well, you're just depressed here, you should just take antidepressants. He was a doctor. So I tried that for a few months, but just I hated how I felt and I just went back.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] What about just personal righteousness?

Tony Litster [00:24:38] Yeah, sure. Read your scriptures more fast. More.

John Dehlin [00:24:41] No, I mean, for a lot of people that's serious stuff. Like, did you try that?

Tony Litster [00:24:46] Of course I tried that.

John Dehlin [00:24:47] And what happened?

Tony Litster [00:24:49] The more I fasted, the more cravings I had.

John Dehlin [00:24:53] So the more righteous you tried to get, the worse it got?

Tony Litster [00:24:56] More I pushed in the direction of overdoing things to be enough. The more I pushed in trying to finally be good enough to connect with God, the worse it got.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] Really?

Tony Litster [00:25:08] Totally. Okay, the more. Then I'll just say it like this. The more religious I became, the Worse it got.

John Dehlin [00:25:15] Oh, that's not good.

Tony Litster [00:25:17] You know, like, look, my spiritual path was. I just. I had some experiences of feeling this incredible sense of being loved as a rebellious teenager and had these profound healing experiences. And in those experiences, the substances and the porn and all this other. The music, every. All those aspects of the lifestyle I was living, they didn't feel very good anymore. So I just changed. Just not because someone told. I didn't even know it was wrong. I just changed because it didn't feel good anymore. So then I became that spirituality, led me to get very active in the church, and I became very religious. And the more religious I became, the worse my cravings got and the less spiritual I was.

John Dehlin [00:26:01] Well, that's a trap. Because if you've got bishops in the church telling you to amp up your righteousness, and yet that's making your porn worse, that's a. That's a trap.

Tony Litster [00:26:12] Yeah. Look, I mean, I think it probably works for some people, but I don't see. Like, I think scripture study, if someone wants to do that, can be very useful for getting impressions and answers in their own life. But scripture study to try to make cravings go away or prayer can be a profound experience. I've had. I've had, you know, some experiences in my life where I've had a very peaceful experience, praying, and that's a great thing. And if that's something someone wants to do, I encourage that. I mean, I do it, and it isn't an effective tool for making cravings go away.

John Dehlin [00:26:44] Right. So it's the function of the prayer and of the scripture study.

Tony Litster [00:26:49] Yeah, we're using it for the wrong thing.

John Dehlin [00:26:51] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:26:52] I think that if you look at the purpose of prayer, to try and have communion with your creator and connect, I think that that's the purpose of prayer, and that's a fantastic thing. You can't make the brain chemistry go away unless you actually meet the need. It's trying to get right.

John Dehlin [00:27:11] Right, right. Okay. Got it. This reminds me of people who try and. Well, it's different. But people who try and pray away their homosexuality, it's just. It's devastating. I'm finding in my research for my dissertation.

Tony Litster [00:27:25] So that's interesting you say that, because I want to say this point. I got to this point before I started, before I went to that hypnotherapist where I said, God, I've asked you to take this away from me, and I've asked you to heal this for me. I don't want this. And I had abstained from it. I mean, it's not like I was still looking at it, but prior to relapsing, I had this conversation with God, and I was pissed. And I was like, I've asked you to take this away for. And you haven't taken this away. I've asked you to help me. And it's getting worse and worse and worse. And I finally said, if you're not going to help me, I'm going to go find help. And then I went. That was when I went to the hypnotherapist. And it was interesting because it was like I started having these profound healing experiences when I went down that path. And I kind of. I don't know. This is my take on it. I was trying to force God to show up in my box, and I drew this little box that said, this is how God gets to show up. This is how, you know, the universe can show up in my life.

John Dehlin [00:28:23] Right.

Tony Litster [00:28:24] And it wasn't showing up that way. And it kept showing up outside of the box. And I'm like, what are you doing over there? No, don't you show up over there. No, you're not supposed to be like that. You're supposed to get in my box.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] So help me in the way that I think you're going to help me.

Tony Litster [00:28:38] That's right. And I basically was like, look, I want you to take this away. And I want to keep my broken beliefs, and I want to stay out of balance, and I want to overdo things in my life, and I want to eat like crap, and I just want it to all magically disappear.

John Dehlin [00:28:54] Okay. Okay.

Tony Litster [00:28:55] So.

John Dehlin [00:28:55] So you're saying that there were some core issues with your life beliefs and behaviors that. That were dysfunctional, that played into the pornography.

Tony Litster [00:29:08] Not dysfunctional, John. Broken.

John Dehlin [00:29:10] Yeah, right. They were broken broken. And. And. And until that stuff gets fixed, the porn stuff is more just a symptom of a deeper problem.

Tony Litster [00:29:22] Totally. I wanted to keep my belief system that I was unworthy, that I wasn't good enough, that if people really knew me, they wouldn't love me, you know, that I was a bad person pretending to be good. I wanted to keep pounding my body with substances with caffeine and with sugar and with. And overdoing it, not working enough and. Or not sleeping enough and overworking. And I wanted to. You know what I mean? Like, I wanted to keep all the imbalance. I wanted to have massive. Loads of stress without any positive release. I wanted to not exercise, and I wanted all the cravings to go away.

John Dehlin [00:29:56] Okay. Okay. Got it got it. Anything else about your story before we jump into getting better recovery?

Brain Science and the Path to Recovery

Tony Litster [00:30:04] So this was my. The journey led into starting to read a lot about brain chemistry. Okay. And brain science and transformation. And then I started to get into the stories that we make up about ourself.

John Dehlin [00:30:16] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:30:16] And I started to realize that I had these broken stories that I developed as a kid. You know, traumatic things happened when I was a kid. There was some abuse. There was, you know, I was in a car accident and had scars on my face. And kids used to ask me, what happened to your face? You know, they asked me that all the time. So there's these. These wounds that happened in my childhood that were unresolved. And so we've all got them.

John Dehlin [00:30:39] We've all got them, right?

Tony Litster [00:30:40] Everyone has them, right? Yeah, absolutely. Everyone has them. And so I started. So I started to explore that and look at some of these wounds and finding deeper levels of healing, and started attending. I spent $150,000 going to seminars and started hiring coaches and teachers. I tried every form of change that's available on the market. And what was interesting, I started making more money in my business because the principles work to increase things in your life. And then I could then go to more and more and more of these trainings and seminars, and a lot of them I went to for business. But at the back of my mind, there was this what do I do about this porn thing that comes up once in a while.

John Dehlin [00:31:21] Okay.

Tony Litster [00:31:22] And so in this. In this, that's how I got into personal development and then started coaching and all and eventually created the program that I've created.

The Biology of Pornography Addiction

John Dehlin [00:31:30] Okay, so let's jump right into then. How. What is it about us biologically or whatever? How does what makes up what's the recipe or the formula for the development of porn use in a male or female?

Tony Litster [00:31:47] Yeah. So I'll tell you from a male, obviously, when a guy starts to hit puberty, his body starts producing 100 million sperm a day. And the new sperm is good sperm, old sperm is bad sperm. The machines always got to be ready for the chance to reproduce.

John Dehlin [00:32:05] That's why the little factory pumps, because it's got to produce new stuff because new stuff is better that all the

Tony Litster [00:32:11] new stuff's way better. And, you know, it only has a shelf life of 72 hours. So you always have to have new stuff and you always have to be ready to go in case nature presents an opportunity to plant some seed.

John Dehlin [00:32:23] So this is just how biologically we've. We've evolved over time.

Tony Litster [00:32:26] That's Right, okay. So, so we're in this space of, you know, little, little guy's body starts producing the, you know, the sperm. And generally kids start having wet dreams. Teenage boys start having wet dreams when, which is they ejaculate during their sleep and it starts to produce that. So then the natural interest becomes in seeing the forbidden. And we've made through marketing, you think about, in terms of the kind of marketing images that are flashed at kids and, or flashed at us. Breasts have been turned from mammary glands, milk ducks into power items that sell things, right? And so it creates this allure of going, of just creating this, this attraction response through marketing when we go, whoa, boobs, or you know, whatever, like fixated on different body parts and it becomes this forbidden thing. And they think, oh, if I can, if I can just see more, then it will be interesting. But what happens when, when, when a man sees a sexual image in 3/10 of a second, it creates a chemical response in his brain. It's actually faster than his ability to consciously react to it. And so before he can consciously react, there's a knee jerk response in the brain and it releases a chemical, it releases adrenaline, it releases serotonin, it releases dopamine. These chemicals are 100 times stronger than heroin. And it's this knee jerk response. And I think it's just nature's way of creating attraction. And marketers have figured out how to associate their products with those chemicals and to create that chemical hunger for their products. You watch how products are placed and when the sexy image comes on the screen, it's all about creating that, the compulsive knee jerk response that they can't stop now. They can suppress it later, but they can't initially stop it. It happens so fast in the brain. And then they get that associated with their product because then they flash their product. Next. Sexy image product. Sexy image Product Hunger product. Right? So we have this. And so it's totally normal for a teenager to go, well, if that bikini gives me this kind of chemical rush, I wonder what seeing the real deal would do, right? It's such a. We make it so forbidden. We make nakedness this crazy forbidden thing. Instead of it just being natural and normal, we make it so forbidden that the first time someone who's raised in this environment of this forbidden stuff sees a naked image, it is fireworks in the brain like they have never experienced. It's literally a high that triggers the same center, pleasure center in the brain as using cocaine.

John Dehlin [00:35:20] Now that's, now that's fascinating. And, you know, I met someone once who was raised in a third world country where he just had a rough life, right? And I think he was exposed to pornography at a really young age. And he wasn't raised in sort of a puritanical religious environment because I think he was raised by a single mom. And so for him, it was really interesting. He's like, yeah, you know what? I saw porn as a little kid. It was never like this horrible, terrible thing. It was just something I was always exposed to. And it doesn't do anything for me. It's just like, yeah, porn, whatever, blah. I'm not interested. He doesn't. He doesn't spend his time looking at porn because it's just no big deal. It's just like the human body. It's like, what? And that's. That's kind of the way I. That's the vibe I always got in Europe. It's just you see a naked woman in a magazine or on a billboard, it's like, yeah, whatever, blah. What is it. What is it about the fact that it almost seems like making it so scary and forbidden? Drives. Drives.

Tony Litster [00:36:29] The problem totally does. I mean, can you explain that? Well, I mean, one of the things. My wife and I, we have five kids, and we've been really open with them about our bodies. And as they get older, I'm a little bit more modest around them, but we don't create any shock factor if our kids walk in and see us get out of the shower or changing clothes. It's just. It's totally, absolutely normal. And the net result of it now, I don't know, once they get older, we'll see whatever problems they have, but the net result of it is, you know, they don't. They don't react strangely. To see my wife nursing the baby, it's just normal. That's just, you know, that's mom's chest. That's what it looks like. It's not weird. And I watched some of my extended family members, kids, one of them in particular, has been hyper, hyper, hyper sensitive about immodest images and has made this giant issue with her boys. Oh, boys. Don't look at an immodest, immodest image because you can get addicted to it and you don't want to, and it'll ruin your life. And I've watched these kids, you know, they're like 10, 11 years old now, and they'll go through the grocery store and they'll look up at the magazine rack, which does nothing for my kids. It's just like, huh. Okay. They look over at the candy instead, right? And I watch these boys and they look up and then they look away in this horrified shame, and they go, mommy, I saw an inappropriate image. It's over there. Or we go to the swimming pool and somebody's in a bikini and they go, oh, my gosh, Mommy, there's an immodest bathing suit over there. And I just. It breaks my heart.

John Dehlin [00:38:14] Okay, so what is that doing? So that's, you know, that strikes at the heart of my biggest concern about pornography and Mormonism. And it's not just Mormonism. It's any really conservative sexually sort of organization. I sometimes feel like we're creating the problem that then we put ourselves forth to solve, even though we don't really have a good solution. And that feels kind of sick to me. So just to restate, we make a big deal out of nakedness, the naked body, and put a lot of shame to it, which makes people simultaneously try and avoid it, think it's terrible. But also what. What does it also do make?

How Shame and Forbidden Fruit Intensify the Cycle

Tony Litster [00:39:02] The forbiddenness is what creates the intense brain chemistry, right?

John Dehlin [00:39:08] So making it forbidden actually drives the desire to look at it.

Tony Litster [00:39:14] Just gives that adrenaline rush.

John Dehlin [00:39:16] It's like.

Tony Litster [00:39:17] It's like it's dangerous.

John Dehlin [00:39:18] It's like telling a kid, don't go in, don't go in the closet. Oh.

Tony Litster [00:39:22] And then they want to know what's in the closet. But it's more intense than that in terms of the adrenaline rush because we make it so forbidden. And Christian culture does it, but LDS culture does it way more where we sit and talk about it. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. And we have an all or nothing approach. I have a cousin that attempted suicide this week, and his thinking is all or nothing. It's either I walk the line or all is lost. Well, nobody can walk the line he's trying to walk. He has an impossible standard. His standard is, I have to be perfect in all things, at all times, in all places, all at once. Because that's how he's been raised. This hardcore environment. And at least for guys, man, as soon as a guy becomes a teenager, his sex drive turns on. He's going to be a conflicted being. He's going to have urges and emotions he wants to do something about, and he's going to have to figure out how to manage that. And so guys can't walk the line of perfection that we develop within the culture. And so he has this story in his head that he goes, oh, well, I smoke some weed, therefore all is lost. I better off myself. And it's that all or nothing thinking that breeds the addiction. It's the forbidden nature of it that breeds the addiction. Now, with that said, do I filter the computer use at my house? Hell, yes. Absolutely. Because there's disturbing things that can start a child on an interest that they won't know how to control. Yeah, you expose a kid to sexual emotions, they don't know how to handle that kind of sexuality. They don't know how to handle those emotions. And so they get suppressed. And then they end up. They end up trying to figure out how to cope with the demons within. Right. So, yes, I still. I'm still a fan of filtering content. I don't just go and get pornos and show them to my kids and be like, here, look at these. So you won't have a problem.

John Dehlin [00:41:23] Awesome.

Tony Litster [00:41:24] No, no. What I do is I try to keep it around. Natural law.

John Dehlin [00:41:28] Okay. Okay, so let me just back up for a bit. Here's my. And this is my biggest concern. You know, it seems like pornography use is a. Is a bigger problem somehow in Utah than in other places. I don't know if that's true.

Tony Litster [00:41:44] Well, statistically speaking, they did. A Harvard professor has a friend that is one of the largest pornography distributors in the US and he got him to give the data for purchases based on zip code and date in the US because he wanted to see per capita where pornography subscriptions were the highest. And five of the top, like 10 or 12 counties in the US were in Utah.

John Dehlin [00:42:11] Right. And, you know, there are people who have explanations for that, and I don't want to, you know, come off like we're trying to criticize the church, but, you know, that reflects my own experience. You know, we did a study on this at Utah State University on compulsive or problematic pornography viewing. And man, just return. Missionaries were just lined up to do our treatment. And here's my little theory on why it's just so bad. One is that we introduced the idea by talking about it so much. Like, if you can't watch a general conference session without pornography being mentioned, if you can't go to priest quorum or young men's or, you know, if you can't, you know, it just seems like every month the church is saying the word porn. Right? And so that's. That's introducing the idea of porn, even independent of how it might develop, you know, on its own in the world. So we're sort of planting the idea about pornography in their minds by talking about it so much. That's the first thing. And then the second thing is again, by making it forbidden by saying that it's terrible, by saying, stay away, then we're creating even more on top of just the basic teenage hormonal drive to be curious about all things sexual, by making it so terrible and forbidden, we're actually increasing their desire and their likelihood to look at it. And then you add on top of that the shame and the degree to which we blow it out of proportion, equate it with murder or with severe sins or the ability to go on a mission or not, then you've really amped up the stakes as well. So you've not only introduced the idea, you've not only made them more interested in it by making it forbidden, but then by increasing the stakes and doing what you said, which is the absolute all or nothing perfect or sinner,

Speaker C [00:44:19] and

John Dehlin [00:44:19] then compounding shame upon that, we're sort of creating this lethal perfect storm of a trap that invites, seduces people into it and then locks them into the behavior in really severe, drastic ways. Does that sound like.

Tony Litster [00:44:35] Then you couple it, you go one step further in the Mormon community and you have this story, this narrative that God's mad at you. And so from a spiritual standpoint, they disconnect spiritually out of their own shame, and they're only left with one option. So they go along in this place of, well, I did the forbidden, so now I'm naughty and I'm a horrible person, and I'm trying to get this fix. And they believe this emotional illusion, if I can have enough sex or the right kind of sex, I can be happy forever. It's like the food addict who looks at Thanksgiving dinner and says, if I can just eat all the pies, I'll never hunger again. But it's not the nature of the body. In three hours it's going to be hungry again. And so then they're left with this story that says, well, I married the wrong person, and the reason I'm not happy is because she doesn't like sex like this or he doesn't like sex like this. And then they go on this rampage of trying to get a fix. And the only way they get a fix is through dangerous behavior, because normal sex doesn't trigger the adrenaline of porn. And once sex becomes familiar, it no longer triggers that dangerous adrenaline. So they go on this rampage of trying to get that adrenaline fix. The longer they go after that Adrenaline fix. Every time we experience that kind of intense chemistry in the brain, the brain becomes more numb to it. Right. There's these things called opiate receptors in the brain. When we feel those chemicals, they fit in these little opiate receptors. Well, the brain, because it knows the body will die if we keep feeling chemicals on this level, it removes some of those opiate receptors. So the next time, it takes a higher dose to get the same fix. And then it leaves them more chemically exhausted and it leaves them more hungry. So the more they act out, the hungrier they become. And they think the next episode is going to fill them, and it leaves them emptier, and it creates this giant chasm emotionally that they can never cross. And they've been told that they're a piece of crap and they suck and they're a loser and God doesn't love them. And so the only place they can go is rock bottom, crash and burn.

John Dehlin [00:46:47] Yeah, and that's, you know, and I've seen that myself, is that when the bishop says, okay, you can't take the sacrament. Okay, you can't go to the temple. Your wife says, oh, you're not a worthy priesthood holder. And the. And the church is not only sending you all these messages that God is unhappy with you, but then also taking away whatever spiritual resources you have available to you. That's pretty devastating, right?

Tony Litster [00:47:14] I think it's bullshit. I don't know if I can say that on your show or not.

John Dehlin [00:47:18] Why do you say that from? Why do you use such strong language when I say that?

Tony Litster [00:47:24] I'll just tell you from my experience. I had a whole bunch of people in my life tell me I sucked and that I wasn't good enough and I wasn't toeing the line. And it was a lifelong story, a narrative that was told to me. And in the moments when I have had spiritual experiences, the message was always, you're okay. You're loved the way you are in the midst of the sin. And I've had some profound healing experiences in the midst of relapses. And so I just. I don't buy it. I don't believe it. Based on my own personal experience. You can read to me from some book that tells me I suck. But my personal experience of it was as a teenager, I was breaking all the rules, and I had some profound healing emotional experiences that I call my spiritual experiences. And I still had a stack of pornos underneath my dresser and. And I had rolling paper in the drawer, and I had, you know, terrible music playing on the radio and all this stuff going on. And I had some profound healing experiences. And then later, as an adult, as I transitioned from being. From my focus being on being religious to being more spiritual, I once again had profound healing experiences. And every time, the message was, you're good. You're good. If you want to have more happiness, follow natural law. So I want to go back to that list of things that you said. So, number one, they introduce porn a lot.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] Yep.

Tony Litster [00:48:50] This. You and I differ a little bit on this because I think it should be talked about. However, the angle they use is creating the problem because what. What it's saying is this is generally a guy issue. I mean, I have a lot of women joining my program now. We have a free anonymous program for pornography addiction@curethecraving.com I hope I can plug it.

John Dehlin [00:49:12] Yeah, yeah, I was gonna have you plug it at the end.

Tony Litster [00:49:13] Yeah, that's fine. So anyway, so. So, you know, probably 80% are guys, but I'm, you know, 20% of the participants are women. And. But. But let's say this in a guy setting. So Mormon teenage boy is sitting there, and. And he's hearing the lesson, and they go, don't look at porn. Don't look at porn. Don't look.

John Dehlin [00:49:28] Porn.

Tony Litster [00:49:29] And so then he becomes curious, and he does. And then he goes, I'm the worst person ever. Why? Because I looked at porn. I. I must be the only one, because no one talks openly about it, even though they all have the problem.

John Dehlin [00:49:38] Right.

Tony Litster [00:49:39] And then he develops this secret coping mechanism. Porn and masturbation. That's how he copes with life. That's how he copes with stress. That's how he copes with loneliness. That's how he copes with boredom. That's how he copes with spiritual disconnect. That's how he copes with thinking he sucks. He can always go and make things feel better because he can trigger these brain chemicals. Serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline. It's the top of the favorite three. And so he develops this appetite for sexual release as his fix. From the time he's like 12 till he's 18, 19. And then he cleans up his act for six months before his mission and strong wills it. Doesn't look at porn or masturbate. Gets to go on a mission, and then within six or eight weeks of being there, he starts masturbating again. Feels like a piece of crap for two years. Thinks he's the worst missionary ever since. No one talks about it, even though I'VE had multiple mission presidents come to me and I had one of them. They're all saying they have this gigantic problem of masturbation in their missions. Gigantic. Like the majority of the missionaries have a problem with it. And then they're asking me for programs of what do we do. One of them asked me for a program for when they go home. He's like, can I give them a disc or a CD or something they can take home to help them avoid relapsing back to their porn issues.

John Dehlin [00:50:57] Right.

Tony Litster [00:50:58] And so because they do, if not

John Dehlin [00:50:59] on, then then after their mission.

Tony Litster [00:51:01] Yeah, totally, totally. They don't look in the mission because they don't have a computer.

John Dehlin [00:51:05] Some do, though. Some.

Tony Litster [00:51:06] Yeah, some do. But you got to be pretty creative to be able to do that these, these days.

John Dehlin [00:51:09] It's easier and easier. But anyway.

Tony Litster [00:51:11] Sure. Anyway. Yeah, right. So there's some look, some don't. But not looking is not the solution. It doesn't address any of the core issues. Anyway, we'll talk about that in a minute.

John Dehlin [00:51:20] No, that's good.

Tony Litster [00:51:21] So that's so. So then the women are raised in this environment of sex is dirty. Only bad girls do it. Keep yourself virtuous and chaste and behave yourself. And porn is the worst thing ever. It's the devil. It's the. It's horrible, it's destructive, it's addictive, it ruins families. It's all these things. And then they get married. And the guy, even if he hasn't looked at porn, has this expectation of sex that it's going to be porno style sex. Well, look, somebody who hasn't had an education in sex is not going to do porno style sex. You know what I mean? Like, these young women aren't going to like be. They're not going to be into expressing themselves that vulnerably.

John Dehlin [00:52:07] Right.

Tony Litster [00:52:08] If they haven't had some sort of education in it.

John Dehlin [00:52:11] Yep.

Tony Litster [00:52:12] So the guy comes in, he has a sex addiction. He copes with life through masturbation. He, even if he's never acted out and had actual sex, he copes with life through orgasm. And it's the only way he knows to cope with life. And he generally doesn't go a week without it and sometimes a day without it. So he gets in with this totally unrealistic expectation of sex because we won't talk about married sex openly and bluntly and clearly I do, but a lot of people don't. And so he has this emotional expectation that sex is going to soothe this monster, this craving, this story of if I could have enough sex or the right kind of sex, I'd finally be complete.

John Dehlin [00:52:53] Right.

Impact on Relationships and Spouses

Tony Litster [00:52:54] And. And his wife rightfully feels used.

John Dehlin [00:52:57] Yep.

Tony Litster [00:52:58] Because he looks to her as his fix. It's so ridiculous.

John Dehlin [00:53:01] It's objectifying the, the female.

Tony Litster [00:53:03] It's horrible.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] Yeah, yeah.

Tony Litster [00:53:05] And so, so she feels used rightfully. She intuitively senses this and then she doesn't want to have sex. And then he goes, oh, I married the wrong person. Oh, I can't believe it. What's wrong with you?

John Dehlin [00:53:15] And he's trying to get her to do everything every which way.

Tony Litster [00:53:19] Yeah. And he doesn't have any respect to the vulnerability of how difficult it is to be peeled open and objectified like that.

John Dehlin [00:53:26] Right, right.

Tony Litster [00:53:28] And so then he is in this mental space of it didn't fix him and his cravings come back because he hasn't adjusted his lifestyle and he can't talk to his wife about it because porn is the worst thing ever.

John Dehlin [00:53:39] And he blames her for not being open.

Tony Litster [00:53:41] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:53:42] Being, you know, progressive for that's right.

Tony Litster [00:53:45] You know, that's right. Not when in reality he's probably, and

John Dehlin [00:53:50] this could happen in reverse. But we'll just say for the sake of discussion, we're saying the male is the pornography user in this case and the female is the one being objectified. He almost creates, he almost shuts down her desire to be sexual because she's being objectified.

Tony Litster [00:54:05] Totally. And nobody will talk about it, nobody will explain it. And so then they end up in this place where he's pissed off because she won't fix him.

John Dehlin [00:54:13] Right.

Tony Litster [00:54:14] And then Mormon men are taught to be sexual victims, right. They're like, you're not allowed to manage any of your sexual needs. They tell boys, don't masturbate, that's not okay. But then keep it in your pants. And then as soon as you get married, you can do whatever you want, which to a boy, that means porno style sex. And it also means his wife is going to fix him. And they look at her like it's her duty and her responsibility to fix his addiction. And so this is what's so interesting. We teach self reliance in the culture, right? We're supposed to be self reliant with food storage. We're supposed to be self reliant financially, we're supposed to be self reliant spiritually. Right. Can't live on borrowed light, but we're supposed to be self reliant with our own physical body and managing it and the food we put into it. And Resting it and, and, you know, taking care of it. And yet when it comes to our sexual needs, we're supposed to be a victim. So I'll see these guys, it's like they're sitting at the table and they're starving and withering away and they're going, I haven't eaten for three weeks. Well, why not? Because my mommy won't give me any food, right? So there's this element of looking at their wife saying, fix me, fix me, fix me. These are my sexual needs. Fix them, fix them, fix them. And the wife's just like repulsed by it. She's like, this is crazy. Like, I'm not your fix, I'm not your drug, I'm a human being. And it just creates this terrible rift in the relationship. And so this kind of goes. My wife and I teach marriage workshops. This is one of the things that we talk to couples about, is to be sexually self reliant and to be able to.

John Dehlin [00:55:50] That sounds like what you're saying is you should masturbate.

Tony Litster [00:55:53] If this is how I look at

Speaker C [00:55:56] it,

Tony Litster [00:55:59] the way that we teach, not my wife and I, the way the culture teaches is we say only your wife can fix you. Only your wife can touch your penis. Unless you're just going potty. It's really weird, but I know I'm sort of going off on this one. But the guy sits there and looks at his wife like it is fixed. And that's unfair, it's unrealistic. And someone's not always going to want to have sex. I can't imagine forcing someone to have sex that didn't want to have sex. And yet that's what we're creating. It creates this resentment.

Understanding Healthy Sexual Frequency and Stress

John Dehlin [00:56:30] So are you saying that at least with men, and probably with women too, there's some frequency that people's bodies just require for orgasm and that it's going to come out one way or the other. You're either going to have a healthy, robust, frequent enough sex life with your spouse or it's going to erupt in other ways. Is that a fair way to look at it?

Tony Litster [00:56:56] The ideal is a connection, oneness between a husband and wife sexual union. And that creates a bond. It's a chemical bond in the brain because they experience that pleasure together. And there's a connectedness, there's an emotional connection, a spiritual connection. That's the ideal. And this is what happens if someone resists cravings long enough. The hypothalamus gland of the brain is what regulates cravings. And when the body gets chemically out of balance. It searches the brain cells to identify where they got their chemicals back in balance in the past. So whatever activity that was, they crave it. You know, like, I personally, I crave meditation now more than I crave masturbation. Because I've trained my brain. The way we settle things out is I meditate. And so I meditate every day, not because I'm consistent, but it's like food. I eat food every day because I'm hungry and I feel weak if I don't. So I meditate because it settles things out. It like settles my system. And I have a sense of well being. And when I don't have that sense of well being, I crave it. So the brain creates cravings for whatever outlet we've taught it to be the thing that's going to get us chemically back in balance. And so what most, you know, in religious cultures, we teach people to resist the cravings and then to work extra hard and actually punish ourself to make up for being a bad person that has cravings for something forbidden. Right? We're naughty, we need to work extra hard. And what happens is then eventually the limbic system of the brain will shut down, what's called the prefrontal cortex. And the prefrontal cortex is where we think about consequences. It's what makes us different than animals.

John Dehlin [00:58:43] It's our rational brain.

Tony Litster [00:58:44] The rational brain gets chemically shut down and we can no longer rationalize our behavior. And the limbic system, which is the animal brain, it's the part of the brain that gets a lion to chase a gazelle and eat, takes over. And it goes, this person is trying to kill us by withholding these chemicals. We have to take over and keep this machine alive. So we can't think rationally, we can't think about the consequences, we can't think about the future. We act out like an animal, compulsively. We get the chemical rush, it resets the chemicals in the brain, and then the blood flow returns to the prefrontal cortex, and we have this incredible rush of shame.

John Dehlin [00:59:23] Now, how does that relate to just a basic biological need for a certain frequency of orgasm?

Tony Litster [00:59:30] So within a relationship, if a guy goes long enough and starts to go into cravings, generally what will happen is he'll act out compulsively on some level because his body will get the release. If he doesn't masturbate, he'll have a wet dream, right? His body's going to get this out one way or another. And so there's a certain biological aspect of settling out those chemicals to have a sense of well being. What I suggest with couples is that they have an agreement that neither couple has to have sex if they don't want to have sex and if they don't feel safe and if they don't feel physically up to it and that there's no secrets. And if the person is in so much craving and in so much of a place of being horny that they very openly masturbate and take care of themselves so they don't blame their partner for why this isn't working.

John Dehlin [01:00:22] Is there a frequency for men that you sort of see as a normal frequency?

Tony Litster [01:00:28] When I have a guy in my program that's acting out compulsively, what I'll do is I'll tell him to schedule it once a week. And sometimes some, some guys, if they're, you know, if they're looking at porn, masturbating every single day, I'll say, well, why don't we just schedule masturbation once a week or twice a week and we'll actually schedule the time and day. And the benefit to this is that they, instead of it being this compulsive out of control failure experience, it's more of a natural experience and it's less of the, the crazy out of control failure, shame cycle.

John Dehlin [01:01:01] But let me, let me get back to this question. Is there sort of a normal frequency for a guy to need an orgasm?

Tony Litster [01:01:07] I don't know. I mean just, there's a normal curve.

John Dehlin [01:01:10] So I know that there are people that fall outside the curve. But do you have a. I mean

Tony Litster [01:01:14] I would say like most guys, if they, if it's once a week, they're, they're pretty, they're kind of like that's the okay factor. Most people want, most guys want it more than that. I don't know, man. I've never really surveyed.

John Dehlin [01:01:28] So let's just say between one and three times a week is where most guys maybe fit on, on, on frequency that sort of works for them.

Tony Litster [01:01:38] Yeah. If most guys are having a healthy orgasm one to three times a week, they're generally, they have a sense of

John Dehlin [01:01:43] well being and this is separate from someone who's become an addict at porn and masturbation as a, as a way of coping. That's separate, right?

Tony Litster [01:01:52] Yeah. And here's the difference. I'll just from my own experience because I don't know what orgasms are like for anybody else. So I can just talk from me, when my wife and I had this arrangement where we were just like, you know, she's like, I don't want to have sex sometimes. I'm like, I totally get it. So we came to this agreement. There's no secrets between us. We'll do this right next to each other if the other person isn't into it, right? So we just say, okay, I'll take care of myself. Cool. All right, great. And then all of a sudden, there was this openness in the relationship. There was no pressure on each other. She didn't feel pressure for me. And then she became more interested in sex.

John Dehlin [01:02:26] Okay, wait a minute. You're masturbating in front of your wife?

Tony Litster [01:02:29] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:02:30] What?

Tony Litster [01:02:30] Yeah, just, like, lay on the bed next to her.

John Dehlin [01:02:32] Wasn't that creepy?

Tony Litster [01:02:36] Isn't all sexual behavior creepy if you really think about it?

John Dehlin [01:02:39] No, but, like, isn't she thinking, wow, that could be me. Or.

Tony Litster [01:02:43] Or.

John Dehlin [01:02:44] But you're saying she doesn't want to.

Tony Litster [01:02:46] Well, so. So in. During one of the pregnancies, my wife was on bed rest, so we didn't have a sexual relationship. We couldn't have intercourse for, I don't know, five or six months. And so we had to come to some sort of arrangement of, okay, well, does that mean I have to become asexual? And I'll just say from my own vantage point, I don't like to put myself in a situation where I'm going to have insane cravings and give my limbic system a chance to shut down my prefrontal cortex to act out compulsively.

John Dehlin [01:03:19] So you're saying if you get ahead of your limbic system and take control of your life and realize what your frequency needs are and arrange for them to happen in an open way, either with your spouse with some type of loving frequency, or where you take care of yourself in some sort of planned, thoughtful manner at a frequency that works for you, then the combination of those things fills your needs in some respects such that your limbic system doesn't take over and make you the animal that. That you don't want to be.

Tony Litster [01:04:01] So this is where I probably should bring in the conversation of stress.

John Dehlin [01:04:07] Okay, so let's say that that's for a generally healthy, functioning person. That's the prescription.

Tony Litster [01:04:15] Yeah, but here's the thing. There's a difference between having a release because you need a release and using it as coping tool to deal with stress.

John Dehlin [01:04:25] That's medication, Right?

Tony Litster [01:04:26] So that's a totally different. So what I'm suggesting is you learn to listen to your body's needs. Let's take this in the context of food. If I eat a healthy breakfast and if I have something for lunch and if I have something for dinner, I never get so crazy that I go and I break open a bag of Oreos and £10 of them and not taste them as they go down and then have a belly bomb. Because I've been eating and taking care of, I've been listening to the machine and giving it what it really needs.

John Dehlin [01:05:00] Right.

Tony Litster [01:05:01] Well, the problem is most, most guys, they're not in touch with their sexuality. They don't really even know what they need. They're still buying into the illusion that some form of sex could make them happy forever. It's biologically impossible because it's a chemical rush in the brain. And the more you have that chemical, the less you'll feel that chemical. So there is no amount of sex that will ever fix someone. The more they chase it, the more it will elude them and leave them emptier and emptier, emptier. So there is a certain, there's a tipping point here. If a guy's like, well, I need to masturbate every day. And then, and then I'm good. I think that they're using sex to cope with stress, right? And it will leave them emptier and emptier. It will actually physically exhaust the body. Because these semen is the most complex fluid that either the male or female body creates. It takes a tremendous amount of proteins and all kinds of nutrients to create this fluid. And if they're over exhausting this fluid and overusing this fluid, it severely depletes the body's resources and leaves them exhausted. And when they're exhausted, their brain craves an up. And what does their brain crave? Well, the way they felt best was when they felt serotonin, dopamine and adrenaline. So they have cravings stacked out again. It's a vicious cycle that they get caught in. So I'm suggesting that couples have an arrangement where it's just very open, that if there is a need and the other person's not up for it, that rather than have that person go into resentment or into compulsive cravings or anything like that, just manage the need. Now, my personal experience with having done this is I would rather just wait and connect with my wife because the connection is far more, more satisfying than just having a sexual release.

John Dehlin [01:06:46] So you're not saying poor masturbation is the way you're saying?

Tony Litster [01:06:49] No, no, I don't think it's. I think it's way less Fulfilling, right. Far less fulfilling than actually connecting sexually. But if a guy's in a place where he's having cravings out of his mind, he's going horn. You know, he's getting super horny and, and it's been a week or two, and rather than just hold out and then act out compulsively and look at a bunch of porn and, and feel like a piece of crap afterwards, schedule it every week or two. Just. Just get the release and then settle things down a bit. I'm not saying to do it every day because if you do it every day, you'll exhaust your system.

John Dehlin [01:07:18] Right.

Tony Litster [01:07:20] My.

John Dehlin [01:07:20] But. But you're saying schedule it and the wife needs to know and it needs to be open. Now let me ask you this. Some people view masturbation as a sin as just as wicked as evil.

Masturbation, Doctrine, and Natural Law

Tony Litster [01:07:33] If you want to split hairs, Mormons love to split hairs.

John Dehlin [01:07:36] No, not split hairs. Just don't split care.

Tony Litster [01:07:39] Let's look at what was said in General Conference, because this is where the hair splitting. This is where Mormons love. They take every word and every nuance of every word that's spoken at General Conference and they split hairs around it. Elder Richard D. Scott gave a talk a few years ago on the law of chastity. Twice in the talk, he said the phrase. And I'm paraphrasing, I'm not quoting, but he said. He's talking about. He says intentionally stimulating the sexual organs of another person that we're not married to is a sin, and intentionally stimulating these within ourselves is a transgression. He differentiated between the two and he called masturbation to transgression. Twice in that talk. So if you want to split hairs,

John Dehlin [01:08:24] what's the difference for you between transgression?

Tony Litster [01:08:26] Transgression is using something out of its fully intended context. So I look at this from take.

John Dehlin [01:08:34] Not as bad. So, like, not as bad as a sin.

Tony Litster [01:08:37] Take. Take the. No, take this like we look at Adam and Eve and they're, you know, the conversation of transgression. That wasn't a sin. It was just.

John Dehlin [01:08:44] When you say no, you meant yes. You mean it's not as bad as a sin, Right?

Tony Litster [01:08:47] Correct. So let's look at it principally. I take away all these other stories and let's look at it principally. If someone is in a space of. Well, first let's look at the. It's okay for. I say this with couples sometimes when we'll coach couples and they have an issue with this, I'll go, well, okay. Is it okay for you to Touch yourself. And they go, no, I can't touch my vagina or I can't touch my penis. And I'll go, what if you have to go to the bathroom? Well, then it's okay. Okay. What if you're washing yourself in the shower? Well, then it's okay. Okay, so it is okay to touch it? Yes. Are they really, like, struggle with this idea? And this is what you have to do when you have a hair splitter. You have to just keep splitting the hair until it becomes ridiculous. And so then I'll say, okay, well, with your partner, if your husband, is it okay if you touch his penis? Yes. Is it okay if he touches your vagina? Yes. Okay. And what if when he's having sex with you, can you guide him so that it feels better? Is it okay that it feels better? Yes. Like, I split hairs like this. And it's like, okay, so what if. What? Is it okay for you to put your hands on your hips while he does this? If that helps the angle? Well, yes. Okay. How about in the front of your legs? Yes. Right. So you split the hairs down to going, it's okay to touch your body. Right. You should see this when I bring this up at the dinner table.

John Dehlin [01:10:17] Anyway, can I just add something. Yep. To my understanding? And I'd love a listener to disabuse me of this understanding. I have actually searched the General Handbook of Instructions PDF for the word masturbation, and it is not anywhere that I've been able to find it. So I do. I do not know of any doctrine, church doctrine, or policy that actually prohibits masturbation. Everything.

Tony Litster [01:10:44] I'm sure you can find somebody giving a talk saying, don't you know, like. But Packer had his thing that said, yeah, Packer.

John Dehlin [01:10:51] And you can go to Spence W. Kimball and Miracle Forgiveness. But I'm just telling you that there's such thing as culture, there's such thing as perception, and then there's doctrine. And Spencer W. Kimball said all sorts of things that we don't believe now. And Boyd K. Packer even had one of his talks revised, one of his conference talks revised. And so we can't. We cannot live purely on a random general authority talk given here or there or a book that was written 40 years ago as doctrine.

Tony Litster [01:11:28] You know, everything that I teach, I bring it back to saying, what is the natural law fruit of that behavior? And if within a couple like my wife and I, we couldn't have intercourse, but we were still able to have nice connections and to have a sexual release without having the intercourse. And so is that somehow princip. Like, am I only allowed to ejaculate inside of her? Well, then, no, it's okay if she touches me and I ejaculate. Okay, well, what if, you know, we're helping each other anyway? It's just. It becomes a level of ridiculousness.

John Dehlin [01:12:01] But no, I'm with you, but I just want to. I want to make the point that somebody show me that it's doctrine that you cannot masturbate. I. I don't think it exists. I think it's perception. I think it's culture. I think it's something that bishops maybe tell bishops, or you learn and you just perpetuate. But a culturally perpetuated sort of norm is very different from church doctrine.

Tony Litster [01:12:26] Yeah, well, it becomes the doctrine of the culture, though. So let's look at it in principles of natural law. What is the impact of masturbation? So the physical response is totally normal. Natural part of the body preparing to be able to mate, right? That's why a man gets an erection every single morning as he wakes up. And that's why he has nocturnal emission. If you don't use a muscle in your body, it will atrophy. It'll go away. And so that muscle has to be ready to go, has to work every single day. And so, you know, that's why men have that erection. That's why women shed the uterine lining once a month. So there's these optimal conditions for having the release. I look at from. In terms of we don't make women wrong for having a menstrual period and shedding the uterine lining. And I sort of see having a sexual release for man is similar now. It's part of the body always clearing the channels to be ready for. For that opportune moment to mate and reproduce.

John Dehlin [01:13:29] The species with optimal offspring, right, with

Tony Litster [01:13:32] health, with the healthiest semen that are available. Fresh stuff anyway. But then you look at it in terms of what's the fruit of masturbation in someone's life? The Bible says, all the time, by their fruits, you shall know them. Well, the challenge with masturbation is that most men. I don't know about women because I'm not a woman. I don't know what that's like. But most men, when they masturbate, think of some sexual fantasy while they do it. And what happens is that becomes an anchoring in the brain. It's actually a process of goal setting, like I teach a process of visualization with clients where we see the outcome that they want. I have them visualize it so clearly that they can feel the emotions in their body, and then they start moving towards it to actually go and achieve that thing. And it's the most powerful form of goal creation I've seen incredible things achieved by that process of visualization with emotion. So the challenge with. And part of the reason that works is there's this thing in the brain called the reticular activator that whenever we focus on something, we start to see it more in our life. Like if you get a different kind of car, all of a sudden you notice all of that same car wherever you go. And you never noticed it before. Right. It's a reticular activator. So if someone is focusing on some sort of sexual fantasy, which tend to be forbidden, that's what makes them exciting. So someone focuses on a forbidden sexual fantasy, and at the same time they have an orgasm, it becomes anchored in their brain as if they just experienced it. The brain releases a chemical called norepinephrine, and it's anchored as if they're actually experiencing that real thing in their life. And then the reticular activator kicks in and they want more of that, and their brain gets anchored that that's where they're going to get their pleasure. Well, then they start to go out in the real world and. And they start to see possible scenarios for those sexual outlets. And then they dig their heels in and they go, no, I can't do that. No, won't go there. No, won't do that. Then they go back home and they set another goal. They masturbate to another fantasy, and then they go out in the real world and they go, no, I won't go there. Won't go there. And they break their ability to create. It creates this cognitive dissonance in their brain of I want this, I don't want that. I want this, I don't want that. And they get a disconnect from their ability to take their vision and turn it into something real in the world, because they've created all of these visions that they don't really intend. And that's, to me, that's the problem with masturbation. It also creates this craving for this illusion that sex will fix them. If they go out and actually have the fantasy, it will fix them. And that's an illusion. It'll actually leave them emptier the more they pursue it. So there is a challenge with masturbation when it's coupled with fantasy. And so one of the Things I challenge people to do is to figure out how to stay present in their body and if they need to have a sexual release, be present in that experience. Just like with couples, how does the couple stay with their partner while they're having sex instead of fantasizing something else to get off? Because that's a problem for people that have looked at porn, is that they'll be having sex, and in order to have it, in order to ejaculate, they have to think of some fantasy, because that's what they've trained their brain to do. So part of this healing process is retraining ourselves to get present in our body with what we really need to experience and take down the level of intensity of what we're doing.

John Dehlin [01:16:58] Okay, so we're. We're saying that masturbation is suboptimal. That the optimal relationship is a loving, you know, loving, committed sexual relationship with your spouse that's of a good enough frequency to where, you know, both are satisfied and feel loved and nurtured. We're saying that masturbation sometimes is necessary when one or both of the partnerships needs some type of release that they're not able to get for whatever reason. That if it's done, it should be done openly and not shamed and stigmatized, even done together if possible. And that the risks of masturbation are. I hear two things. When you're fantasizing to be able to masturbate in ways that take you mentally askew into areas that are risky or problematic in terms of developing other problematic behaviors later, or when you start doing it so much that you're medicating yourself for other types of issues that you need to address in your life. Is that right?

Tony Litster [01:18:07] Yep, totally.

Practical Steps Toward Healing and Recovery

John Dehlin [01:18:08] Okay, so let's now focus really strongly on how to get better. So somebody's just caught in this trap. They feel horrible about themselves. They're 30 years old. You know, shame, guilt, maybe the wife knows, maybe the wife doesn't know, but they're in it. Porn, masturbation, and they're spiritually sickened from it. What are the steps to getting out of this trap?

Tony Litster [01:18:38] So there's four things that I focus on. And again, this goes back to natural law. These four areas we look at are the body, the mind, the spirit, and stress management.

John Dehlin [01:18:50] Okay, body, mind, spirit and stress management.

Tony Litster [01:18:53] Yeah. So let's look at the physical body. So when we are in a compulsive cycle of acting out sexually or with any addiction, we're exhausting the body's chemical factory, and it starts to then deplete the system on deeper and deeper and deeper levels. If we continued, you know, the studies with the rats, they would let these rats stimulate the pleasure center of their brain and, and initially they would run a race, and then the scientists would trigger the pleasure center and reward the rat for winning the race. So they'd go faster and faster and faster, and then they gave control of that button to the rats. And the rats would then start to stimulate their brain, and they would just stay there at the button. They'd become antisocial, they'd quit eating, and they would push the button until they died. Which sounds sort of like the Internet. All these people just click, click, click, right? So, so we look at the physical body and we have to, we have to get it back in alignment with natural law because we've been depleting it. We can't just take away the masturbation because the system's depleted. It's depending on that to function. And so we look at it in terms of, number one, you have to learn to slow the body down. Number two, you have to learn to feed the body the way nature intended it to eat. And I can tell you from my own life, when I got rid of the caffeine and a lot of the sugar, and I'm not a purist on this, sometimes I have this stuff, but as a daily regimen of what I was pounding my body with, I got rid of the caffeine and the sugar, and I went more towards foods the way nature intended them. They weren't in a box, they weren't in a bottle, they weren't in a package. It was spinach and kale are some of the most effective things that we can eat. But when I did that, my cravings went down in a dramatic way. And I was just like, whoa, eat healthy, eat healthy. Eat food that will rejuvenate your body. And kale is the most effective for doing that. Spinach, kale, broccoli, green, things like that are incredible.

John Dehlin [01:20:50] And we're not saying eat those things and you won't masturbate. We're just saying that that's.

Tony Litster [01:20:53] We're saying you need to start to fill the vessel with what it needs. You got to slow it down. So when we talk about slowing down, that means rather than masturbating three times a day, okay, maybe we need to schedule it every third day. And what that does is it allows the person to start to flex their muscle of self control and not get so compulsive that the limbic system of the brain takes over and they act out like an animal.

John Dehlin [01:21:15] Okay.

Tony Litster [01:21:16] Slowing it down.

The Abstinence Violation Effect Explained

John Dehlin [01:21:17] Okay, so I want to jump in there and just talk about something really quickly. There's this concept that I've learned called the abstinence violation effect. Have you heard of that?

Tony Litster [01:21:28] No.

John Dehlin [01:21:29] Okay, so it's something you've already addressed just without using the buzzword. But basically it's this idea that all or nothing, you're either a terrible porn user or you don't use porn, Right? It's either you are a virgin or you're super promiscuous. And so we have this idea that we must have abstinence, we must have complete abstinence, or we're off the wagon. And we may as well not even be trying because we're still doing it, right? And so what happens is you go on the wagon and you really white knuckle it and you try and not do something. You try not do something, you try not do something, and you go for a while and you're able to do it. This happens in dieting all the time, right? You really deprive yourself. You really try and be perfect, and perfection is your goal. But what happens is you put so much pressure on yourself to be perfect, and your goal is binary. It's not trying to reduce. It's not trying to slow things down. It's just you're either doing it and you're not. And when your mindset is so binary that it's either all or nothing, then what happens?

Tony Litster [01:22:34] You get one thing for sure.

John Dehlin [01:22:36] What?

Tony Litster [01:22:37] You get the nothing?

John Dehlin [01:22:39] Yeah. What do you mean by that?

Tony Litster [01:22:41] Well, I call this the impossible game, right? This. This idea perpetuated in the culture that I need to have it all together at all times in all places in my life, and then I can finally be okay with myself. I need to have my relationships perfect, and I need to have all my thoughts holy and clean, and I need to have my body in great condition. I have to have all this money, and all these things have to be together. I have to be making this giant contribution. All these things have to be together all at the same time in my life. And then I can finally be okay.

John Dehlin [01:23:13] And what happens when that doesn't happen?

Tony Litster [01:23:15] It always never happens. No one's ever been there. Not even Jesus was that way.

John Dehlin [01:23:18] And so what happens?

Tony Litster [01:23:19] Well, then we. Then we go, I suck.

John Dehlin [01:23:21] That's right.

Tony Litster [01:23:21] All or nothing. So it's like, oh, you're a loser. Why even try? I've done the car. I might as well go off roading Yep.

John Dehlin [01:23:27] Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, I lost my virginity. I may as well sleep with 20 people. Oops, I drank some alcohol. I may as well go get totally drunk and blasted.

Tony Litster [01:23:38] And this is. This is where natural law comes in. If we go, I like to take away those ridiculous stories and then just sit back and go, what is the fruit of the behavior? You know, if you're going to drink, see how it really makes you feel in your body? I have a guy that's hired me to coach him, and he has diabetes, and he's been pounding candy bars like crazy. And I said, okay, you've been pounding candy bars. So today what I want you to do is go buy your two favorite candy bars and I want you to savor every bite, like 15 minutes. Taste it, feel it, experience it, and then be really quiet for 10 or 15 minutes and listen to your stomach and see how it feels.

John Dehlin [01:24:17] So mindfulness.

Tony Litster [01:24:18] This guy called me up. Yeah, this guy called me up the next week. And he goes. He goes, if I told you yet that I hate you on this phone call, I'm like, no, not yet. He usually does. I think it's funny. I'm like, I don't care. I'm not attached to you liking me or not. I'll just tell you the truth. And he goes, you ruined my favorite candy bar. And I said. I said, you know, why is that? He goes, because it doesn't taste good anymore. I'm like, no, it's always tasted like that. You've just been ignoring it because you're trying to offset the chemicals in your brain by pounding your system with it. You're trying to eat candy.

John Dehlin [01:24:49] Totally. And I. And I want to just really quickly loop it back to the point I was just trying to make it. I hope I'm driving it home too much, but. But I think we need to get out of the mindset. You said, slow down, which is different than stop, right?

Tony Litster [01:25:01] Totally.

John Dehlin [01:25:02] Because stop. While that may be the long term, hope it's not productive to have this all or nothing. I'm either an evil porn user or I'm clean. What seems to be more healthy is to say, I'm going to just try and do it a little bit less. I'm going to try and slow down. And doing it eight times instead of 10 is better. It's an improvement. And there's nothing wrong with that. And that should be celebrated by the spouse or by you or whatever. You know, if the goal is reduction. Right.

Tony Litster [01:25:38] So totally. And. And I see. I look in my own recovery. It was not all or nothing. It was. I went for three months and then I relapsed. But I only relapsed for, you know, one day. And then I went six months and then I got all proud about it and cocky about it and, and arrogant. And then I relapsed and then went back to being humble about things. And then I went nine months and then I had to relapse. But what happened is the time between looking got longer and the episodes of looking got shorter. And so then if I look at a five year stretch, well, there may only be five or six times I've looked at porn over that stretch of time. And I look at it like eating. I don't always eat perfectly, but if you look at the last few years, my eating habits. Yeah, there's been some times when I've binged on things or I've pounded my body or I've cheated the system or I've eaten way too much chocolate cake or whatever. Right. But the overall net effect is I have a sense of, well, being in my physical body. I'm generally healthy.

John Dehlin [01:26:39] Right.

Tony Litster [01:26:40] And that's what we're looking for. So this idea, you know, I had one wife in the program and she says, well, I just don't know if my husband's going to be able to go along and never have a lustful thought again. And I said, well, if that's your expectation of him or any man or any human, then you should get divorced now and just be alone because there is no human on the planet that will go their entire life without having lust. Lust is part of the process. I said to her, I said, that's fine with me. I said, there's a difference between having lust and acting out compulsively in a way that violates your marriage agreement. I said, as long as you're going to have him on that standard, then I want to make sure you're on the standard that you never crave a chick flick and you never crave chocolate ever again. And if you ever crave, I'm not saying watch it or eat it. I'm saying if you crave a chick flick or chocolate, it's over.

John Dehlin [01:27:31] Yeah.

Tony Litster [01:27:32] And she was like, oh, I see what you mean.

John Dehlin [01:27:34] Yeah. And so to the, to the wife who says, I'm leaving my husband because he masturbates to porn, what do you say?

Tony Litster [01:27:43] Well, look, it's a devastating thing. I don't want to. My wife and I did a program that's a free like a five month Call series for women who. Whose husbands have porn issues. It's devastating. And it's partially devastating because it's a. It's an emotional violation of the marriage agreement. It's a shocker of a thing. And it's partially devastating because for all these years in general conference, it's been called the devil. And unfortunately, look, we can call it the devil all we want, but the reality is our culture is saturated with it and it's not going away. The demand for it's too high. So part of the healing process is to just recognize the nature of man is to be sexual. It's how we were wired. It's how we were designed. The highest level of, of creation is the creation of another human being. And so that the nature of sex is spiritual and it's good and there's a lot of positive fruits that can come from it. And this recovery process needs to be rooted in natural law. You can't just expect the person to keep violating natural law and then just to go away. Okay, so I want to make sure here we get through these four points. And then obviously, if people want further information, they can go and check out the website. And so slow.

Slowing Down the Body and Letting Go of All-or-Nothing Thinking

John Dehlin [01:28:57] So slow down the body, slow it down. And it's okay to make progress. It's not all or nothing.

Tony Litster [01:29:04] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:29:04] It's. It's about just making slow, measured progress.

Tony Litster [01:29:07] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:29:08] All right.

Tony Litster [01:29:09] And getting back in alignment with the natural rhythms.

John Dehlin [01:29:12] So eat right, exercise, be healthy. If you're not taking care of your in listening, you're saying, be, be mindful of your body. Listen. Learn to listen to your body. And eating right, exercising and listening to your body will help.

Tony Litster [01:29:28] Cravings are a message from your brain. They're not wrong.

John Dehlin [01:29:32] Right.

Tony Litster [01:29:32] They're a signal that say you've been cheating the system. It's like when I lost my voice this week. That was my body saying, you've been. I'm leaving tomorrow for Africa for two and a half weeks. I'm going to build a school in the slums of Nairobi. Well, I've been packing in two and a half weeks worth of extra stuff in the last seven or eight days. I've been talking too much. And so my body said, you've been cheating the system. We're going to take your voice away.

John Dehlin [01:29:58] Got it?

Speaker C [01:29:58] Right.

Tony Litster [01:29:58] So cravings. When I start getting cravings, because I still get cravings, sometimes it seems like a great idea to act out and look at porn or go get drunk or do whatever. Sometimes my brain's like that. Would feel really good. And when it feels that way, it's because I've been overstressed and I've been cheating the system, right? And so we, we slow the body down, we feed it, we move it, and we rest it. Then we move to the mind. The couple of factors in the mind that are a big problem. One is the shame conversation that says, I suck. If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me. I'm a bad person pretending to be good. I'm not lovable. I am bad. That's shame. So what we want to do is separate our behavior from our sense of worth. And without going deep into it, I have exercises in the program using neuro linguistic programming and some other techniques to radically shift how you see yourself so you can actually separate your behavior from your worth. You can say, I'm a worthy, I'm a good person. I'm a valuable human being. I'm a child of God with infinite worth. I'm a one of a kind creation in the universe worth celebrating. And I have this behavior that doesn't serve me. And then you can observe the behavior and look at why you acted out in that way, what you thought you were trying to get, did you really get it, and see if there's a better way to get it. So we break the shame cycle, and then we replace that negative inner dialogue with positive thought. And the way I do this with people is I'll have them record affirmations, statements, positive statements about themselves, and it's their voice speaking it. And then I mix it with Mozart music. And Mozart music has been shown to fire the left and right sides of the brain while you listen to it. So it creates the synchronicity in the brain. It's a deeper level of emotional learning. And it's your voice saying things like, I'm a child of God with infinite worth. I'm always taken care of. I'm always more than enough. The worth of my soul is great. I now fully accept myself. My body is now in perfect balance. I'm always healthy and strong. Everything I touch prospers. Other people experience their worth when they're in my presence. Everything works together for my good. So you hear this over and over and over. And the brain goes into this, it's called entrainment because of the specific music that we use. And there's deeper levels of emotional learning. And we can literally replace those old broken beliefs with this new series of beliefs. The brain studies say that if you experience an emotion every day for about 30 days, it creates a new neural pathway in the brain. And if you keep feeling that emotion over about 90 days, it becomes the primary neural pathway in the brain. Or on a cellular level, it becomes who we are. So we can literally transform the story we have about ourself. When we were born, we didn't have a story that was developed over people saying to us over and over, you are, you are, you are. And then we bought into it and said, I am. And I think that story is broken. I think it sucks for most people. It did for me. And finally, as an adult, I could look at it and go, that story doesn't serve me. I don't like that story. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm just gonna pick a new story. I just picked a broken story. I'm gonna pick a better story because I like the fruits of it. And by their fruits, you shall know them. So we transform the story they have. So that's the mind. Then we look at the spirit.

Self-Love, Mind, and Releasing Shame

John Dehlin [01:33:16] Okay, wait, so. So with the mind, it's radical self love, right? Total self love and. And self acceptance. Anything that brings you shame and guilt and that makes you feel low about yourself, you got to look at that really hard and say, I got to find a new way.

Tony Litster [01:33:33] Totally.

John Dehlin [01:33:33] Okay. Very important.

Tony Litster [01:33:35] Very important thing. When we separate our behavior from our worth. Some people go, oh, I can just accept myself, and then I can just do whatever I want. And I say, yeah, that's true. And. And then you will have to look at the fruits of those choices and see if you like the fruit.

John Dehlin [01:33:54] Right?

Tony Litster [01:33:55] If you like the fruit of porn, then keep using it, Whatever. That's fine. But. But porn leads. The outcome of porn, it leads people to isolation and being alone. And the reason for that is because it expects. It's cheating nature. It's triggering the natural chemicals that occur at the beginning of a relationship over and over and over, more than nature could trigger.

John Dehlin [01:34:18] Right?

Tony Litster [01:34:19] And so the only way to get it is through extreme behavior. And extreme behavior is not connective, it's not nurturing to other people. And so the further we act out in extreme behavior, the more people. Real relationships will withdraw from us. Right? And we become alone.

John Dehlin [01:34:34] But also, what I'm hearing you. I'm not hearing you say that. That, you know, behavior doesn't matter and that you can just tell yourself you're awesome and then do all sorts of terrible things. I'm not hearing you saying that. What I'm hearing you say is if you. If you really want to work on the behavior, you don't you?

Tony Litster [01:34:52] Don't.

John Dehlin [01:34:54] You don't become worthy by doing the right behavior, because that's a trap. What you do is you start with self love because it's shame that can fuel bad behavior. It's this shame cycle that creates the sadness and the misery that then people medicate with either food or porn or other things. What you do is you start with the solid ground of self love. Then you look at behavior and you just ask yourself, how's this working for me? Does this have positive fruits? Is it anchored in a healthy natural law? And then if you have that sense of self love and acceptance, you're not adding problems by creating the shame and the misery and the guilt, which just makes it harder to change your behavior. But if you start with the self love and acceptance, listen to your body, listen to your life, see what positive fruits are happening. Eat right, you know, exercise and all those things. Then you're giving yourself enough room to then start working on behavior management and trying to move your life in a more positive direction in terms of.

Tony Litster [01:36:04] Yeah. And you look to fill your life with the things it really needs. And then there's less. Then there's less need for. For the escape.

John Dehlin [01:36:10] Exactly. And so instead of, instead of your life being about symptom management, about what you're not doing, because there's big, this big hole in your life that you're trying to fill, you fill your life with positive, happy things and there's less interest in, or time for porn. Is that right?

Tony Litster [01:36:30] Yeah. And then when. And then if you relapse, then you get to sit quietly with it and go, okay, what was I trying to get? You don't make yourself wrong. You just go, I made a choice. And how does this choice make me feel? And the net result is, at least from my experience, that stuff makes me feel like crap afterwards. Even if there's not any shame, it's a giant physical letdown. There's this, this empty void afterwards, and it's like, oh, I didn't like that void. Yeah, I must have got out of balance. I was trying to get an escape out of my mind. Yeah, the escape was kind of interesting at the beginning, but I don't like the fruits of it. Okay, what do I really need? Maybe I need to eat. Maybe I need to sleep. Maybe I need to connect with another human. Maybe I need to be authentic and real. Maybe I need to have a spiritual connection. Maybe I need to go spend time in nature. Maybe I need to meditate. And you actually take care of the need you self nurture instead of self abuse.

John Dehlin [01:37:21] Got it? Okay, spirit.

Spirit, Meditation, and Addressing Underlying Needs

Tony Litster [01:37:22] So then that leads to spirit. And see, a lot of times in the religious culture, we'll say to people, you just need to go meditate and pray about this. And what happens if somebody's body is out of alignment with natural law and they're jacking it up with, you know, with all the substances they pump into it and they're out of balance and they don't know how to slow down, and their mind is full of shame and chatter. Then when they get quiet, all they hear are, they're demons. They go crazy. All the shame kicks in, all the voices kick in, everything. They can't get quiet. So I tell people, do it in this order. Body, mind, and then spirit. And this can be a religious connection if they want. This can be just getting quiet and listening to their own inner voice and their own intuition. It can be going out and deeply connecting with nature. It can be religious, or it can be just a connection of your own soul, like getting quiet within you and hearing the inner voice and being able to be peaceful and still. And that's where for me, that's where my calling comes out. That's where I get my answers of my life purpose. And that's where I create my programs from, is from that place of quiet. And it's super exciting. And I get impressions to call people and I'll call them and they'll go, man, I was just thinking about you. Or I'll get impressions to say something and I'll say it, and that person will just break down and cry and say, you know, the words you used were the exact words that, you know, this person just used with me. And it was the synchronicities are unbelievable when you listen from that space. And so that's the magic. And you feel alive and, you know, in the moment. Even though I'm this mixed up, beautiful mess of a human being, and even though I have cravings to do things that wouldn't serve me, and even though, you know, I'm like kind of jacked up in all these different ways, I have these crazy beliefs and, and my life isn't all in order. I'm in. I'm in alignment right now with some greater force than me, and I'm part of a bigger picture than me. Even though I'm all screwed up.

John Dehlin [01:39:21] And I think that this is something where LDS people sometimes really get hung up. They sort of equate spirit with, I got to do my own teaching, I got to read my scriptures. Every day I've got to fulfill my callings. I've got to go to church, I've got to go to the temple. And there's this big checklist of quote, righteous things that they're supposed to do. You know, sing a hymn, read your.

Tony Litster [01:39:42] Most things are fine.

John Dehlin [01:39:44] But, but it sounds like that isn't necessarily spirituality.

Tony Litster [01:39:49] You could do those things. I'm just going to say from my own personal experience, my spirit, my genuine spiritual awakening. And it was a profound, life changing awakening that transformed my life. My cousins I hung around with back then, they all went to jail. And I had a radical shift in the direction of my life because of this inner awakening that happened in the midst of not doing any of those things on the checklist and having my own checklist full of all the things I shouldn't do. So the checklist can be useful at tempering our life or finding ways to serve. And those also could be useful ways to connect spiritually. But it is not necessary to have a spiritual connection. Now if someone is drunk, they're probably not going to have a spiritual connection in that moment because they can't connect with anyone, right? Someone's acting out compulsively, they're probably going to be fixated on their whatever they're acting out and there won't be any spiritual connection. But when we seek spiritual connection, we can have it. And even if we're living it, if we're not in alignment with all those different things. So that then leads to the last step of stress management. And I had the blessing of studying meditation with one of the greatest meditation teachers in the world. And then he taught the Beatles and the Beach Boys and Diana Ross and Anthony Hopkins and Michael Jackson, all these. He was the premier meditation guy. And he happened to come to one of my seminars once and he saw how jacked up I was and so he came up and offered to teach me meditation. It's been a wonderful blessing in my life. What he taught me was when the nervous system accumulates stress throughout the day and there's no way to stop that, we're always going to have stress in the nervous system. The nervous system accumulates this stress and when it does this, the brain craves adrenaline. It's the brain's preferred release of stress, is to experience adrenaline. So if we have too much stress on our nervous system, we will crave something that will trigger adrenaline. Now the primary mechanism for releasing stress is rest when we sleep. The problem is 100 years ago we got 10 hours of sleep a night. Now we get six and a half on average. And so we're not getting enough rest. And so what happens is we have this uneasiness in our nervous system and our brain doesn't like it. It wants to get away from that uneasiness and wants to get back to a sense of well being. So it craves adrenaline to offset this emotion. So you think about how we start our day, right? We either have our coffee or if you're out of the S, you have your cold coffee and we spend spike it with the sugar. We read the news, which is fight or flight triggers adrenaline. And we get in the car and we have this race car drive. It triggers all this adrenaline to the office and then we go to work all day, we get tired and what do we do once we're tired? We don't go rest or we don't go meditate. We pound some more caffeine or some sugar, some carbs. We just keep pushing the machine, pushing the machine, pushing the machine. Finally, when we get home, we just want to get out of our mind. So what kind of entertainment do we use? Video games triggers all kinds of adrenaline. Porn triggers adrenaline, Sports triggers adrenaline. Er, blood and guts and sex. Courtroom drama. And you have the big thing now is reality TV where we get to see people's raw emotions on the screen laid out in front of us and we feel that adrenaline and then we take a sleeping pill and go to sleep. And we wonder why things are so jacked up. Because we're cheating the system, we're violating natural law. And that's why I have stress management as one of the four steps. Because even if someone does the other three steps, if they do not choose, actively choose new habits of stress management, then by default they must choose an addiction.

John Dehlin [01:43:24] Right? We all medicate in different ways, right?

Tony Litster [01:43:27] It's one or the other, it's an addiction or it's a positive release. So the most effective ways, and I teach this in the program, I know I'm kind of buzzing through these steps here at the end of the podcast, but this is a nine month program. We go step by step by step through each of these, one week at a time. It's a free program. People can join at cure the Craving, but so I don't have time to teach all of the elements of what we teach over nine months. But the idea is, as we learned, the most effective way to release stress out of the nervous system, according to the brain studies, it's four times more effective than rest and sleeping is meditation. And you've Talked a little bit of it about mindfulness. And if you want, we can do a whole other conversation on this process of how to get into a place of mindfulness and how to practice it and how to learn to meditate and eliminate the chatter from our mind. But when we can develop a habit of decreasing our stress, meditation, walks, you know, just going on a walk, just out in nature doing yoga, sometimes exercise can be this. But we take daily habits and we go, I have to decrease this stress that's on my nervous system. It's there, it will be there every single day. And I have a choice. I can do it healthy or I can have a compulsive activity, but I need to consciously choose one or the other. If I'm going to choose not to have a healthy habit, then I have to acknowledge my brain will go compulsive at some point and get a fix. And so as we look at that as a holistic approach, body, mind, spirit, stress management. And it becomes habits of keeping our life in alignment with natural law. When we know when we're out of alignment because we experience pain, we know we get back in alignment because we experience well being and we fill our life with the things we actually need. There's not as much need to get out of our mind and look at porn. There's not as much need to use sex as our fix, as our drug to get out of our mind. Then sex falls into alignment with natural law and it becomes this wonderful, connecting, powerful, wonderful, fantastic experience of connecting with our spouse and of being able to experience within ourself if that's what we choose. This positive experience in this release that draws us to mate with another human being and, and within that, that's the holistic approach. Those are the, those are the steps. And it becomes lifestyle. It's just a matter of managing lifestyle and.

Personal Disclosure and Honest Reflection

John Dehlin [01:45:56] Tony, I, I know you need to go, so do you mind if I just say one quick thing? Okay, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna disclose here and admit something privately because this is really important to me. I, I, I'm in this weird situation where I actually never masturbated before I was married. Never, not once, not even once as a child. But once the sexual genie was out of the bottle for me, then I sort of needed a certain frequency. And so, you know, a year or two into my marriage or whatever, I would occasionally start masturbating when my wife was pregnant or when she just had a baby and I just felt like I needed a release and I carried that Shame and guilt for a long time. And I would always try and do it secretly. It wasn't some compulsion, it was just something I would do. But I always felt really dirty and shameful about it and I never told anyone. And I went, I don't know, more than a decade in that situation. And then slowly I would look at little YouTube images or whatever I needed to, to help me, you know, get to the point where I could do that, you know, when I needed a release. And eventually it got into the place where I would occasionally look at some porn. You know, not terrible stuff, not compulsively, not for a long time, but occasionally. And I just felt more and more guilt and shame and it was, it was pretty terrible. It made me feel really bad about myself. And then I'm just going to make a long story short. I one day just told my wife, I just said, you know what? I occasionally have masturbated and I've occasionally looked at pictures to be able to do that. And she cried. She was sad. But something really magical happened. When I told her the first thing is, she said, well, you're not getting your needs met. And I'm like, yeah, but I don't want you to feel bad. It's not your fault. She's like, no, no, no, I want to be there for you. And so she made a conscious effort to be there for me more in a way that worked for her and in a way that brought us closer together. And then. So that was an important thing. But just for me, just saying, you're going to have to accept me for who I am. And I do this and this is just who I am. And getting it out in the open, there was something really powerful about that that made it so when I looked at porn after that, it wasn't as interesting to me anymore.

Tony Litster [01:48:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:25] I was just like, you know what? This doesn't, this isn't doing it for me. And I swear now if I ever bump into porn, I'm just not interested.

Tony Litster [01:48:34] It's weird because you got things back in alignment with natural law and you had transparency in your relationship.

John Dehlin [01:48:40] Yeah.

Tony Litster [01:48:40] Far more fulfilling than any kind of external fix.

John Dehlin [01:48:44] Yeah. And I don't want to make it look like I have a perfect relationship. And I don't want to make sure that if you told your wife that, you know it's going to fix everything or. But I'm telling you that. And this isn't just a week or a few months. This is a long term solution for me. When I look at porn now, it's disgusting to me. When I used to look at porn, it used to be exciting and stimulating to me, and I can't explain exactly why, other than to say that talking to my wife about it openly and getting my life in a more healthy place somehow made it so it was no longer interesting or compelling to me. And that's.

Tony Litster [01:49:20] You know, that's. That's incredible. It's. It's kind of like when. When my wife and I had the new agreement of, yeah, if I need to take care of myself, I can. Suddenly, it wasn't this forbidden thing in my world, and I would just. I would just rather connect with her.

John Dehlin [01:49:34] Exactly. And I. My. My interest in masturbation is almost. Almost none. It's almost. It's pretty much zero.

Tony Litster [01:49:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:41] I don't want to say never because you never know, but.

Tony Litster [01:49:43] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:49:44] So I just wanted to add that as my testimony that, you know, things can get better if you follow some of these principles.

Tony Litster [01:49:53] So I like that, you know, and I'll say for my own journey, you know, it hasn't been, like, the perfect path for me, that's for sure. There's. There's definitely elements of. I'm still learning new things about myself, and I'm still dealing with. I'll have, you know, like, little surprise things that'll come up where I didn't even know it was an issue, and, you know, out of nowhere, get triggered again and go, whoa, okay. There's still some vulnerability in terms of, you know, I just stay away from access to that kind of stuff, you know, the pornography and things like that. And so it's, you know, it's this ongoing learning journey. But I can tell you this. So I don't know that I can say, oh, there's a perfect path. Take this pill and you will never look at another booby again. But I look at it like that's not my journey anymore. I like who I am and where I am and where I am on this journey. And that is a huge thing for me because I was always striving but never arriving. Didn't matter how much stuff I acquired or got or success or any of those things. It was never enough. And I finally got into this place where I'm enough just because I declare it. And then I get to have some joy in the journey. And there's still challenges. I still have a body. I still have my relationship with my wife that, you know, we were two very opinionated human beings figuring things out. But it's. The journey starts to become kind of fun. And so it's a matter of. A lot of times when people are stuck in this, either as the partner of an addict or as the addict, it's such a hellish experience. And they just feel like their whole world has fallen apart and that there's no hope for it and that they start trying to fix it and they relapse and there's so much despair around it and darkness around it. And as you start to follow these natural laws, the fruit is a greater sense of well being and you can experience forgiveness and you can experience closeness. And there's all these wonderful fruits that start to happen if you start following the rules that nature designed. And so it's not a hopeless journey. You know, we don't have much more time to talk on this, but my wife and I went through a period of time where we were days from getting divorced, and it was. And I didn't think I could ever have good feelings for her again. I was so emotionally wounded in the relationship and we just had so much baggage. And in that space, that's when I learned to be transparent and real because I had nothing to lose. I just like figured, well, if we're getting divorced, then who cares if she judges me? And I just show up how I am. And it was in me showing up real in the relationship. And she went through a lot of healing for her childhood trauma, and I started healing my childhood trauma and the relationship was able to come back together. And it's been just. I don't know how to say it other than it was a miracle for us because there was so much pain and so much baggage. And now it's at this place where it's working and we know it's working and we know why it's working. It's not accidentally working. And you know, we teach marriage workshops, do marriage coaching. As a result, we share this with other couples. But there is a possibility of getting from this place of. And I was there, this dark despair where I just thought I was the biggest piece of crap on the planet and there was no hope for me. People really knew me, they couldn't love me. Getting through the journey to this place of having the experience of being good with myself. And is my life perfect? Of course not. Am I still growing? Absolutely. And that's the journey. That's where I see it as perfect. It's this incredible path of evolving and growing, developing as a human in our capacity to love ourself and then in return, our capacity to love others and to have compassion for others. Because we had it first for ourself. So I want to invite people that are struggling with this on whatever level, there is a place that you can grow and get to, and it's a journey, it's a ride, and where you can get to where it's better. So.

John Dehlin [01:54:04] Yep. And I'm just going to add one final thing, and that's just that if you ask yourself whether in your life you have things that you love, that excite you, that you wake up and live for and can't wait to do in your spare time, you're thinking about this constructive, happy, positive thing. For me, it's Mormon stories, you know. For you, it's being a life coach. For other people, it's going to be different things, hobbies or whatever. But if you don't have that space, special something that gets you excited and motivated existentially, you're going to be medicating and filling holes in all sorts of ways. So find that special purpose that you live for and love, and that can carry you a long way if you follow a lot of these other principles that Tony's talking about.

Tony Litster [01:54:55] And John, can. I want to finish with this. I just want to give you an acknowledgment and say thank you for creating what you've created, because I know you've taken heat for it and you've sacrificed a lot, and it's, you know, there's been some. Some big stretch in this journey and the gift you have created, this life raft of helping people at whatever phase they are in their journey of navigating some waters that otherwise would be alone and treacherous, is a. I just think it is one of the most beautiful things that we can do for other human beings on the planet. And I appreciate you for getting out of your comfort zone, getting around the voices in your head and all the stuff I'm sure had to show up for you, because that's the game and all the challenges, all the stretches, all the sacrifices. I just want to say thank you for being willing to listen to that, whatever it was that called you, the inner voice, the sense of contribution, to create this and share this for other people. Because it is. It's like a soothing place for people who are in a lot of pain. So thank you for what you've created.

Closing Thoughts and Resources

John Dehlin [01:56:02] Thanks, Tony. Thank you very much. And shameless. Plug time. So where do people go to learn more about you?

Tony Litster [01:56:08] Okay, so if it's pornography addiction related, go to curet. Com.

John Dehlin [01:56:15] Okay.

Tony Litster [01:56:15] C U R E T H E C R A V I N G My wife and I, our relationship program is@radical relationshiprevolution.com and if relationshiprevolution.com and if

John Dehlin [01:56:30] you'll send me those links in an email, I'll put them on the post so that people can see that post as well.

Tony Litster [01:56:35] Very cool. Thanks, John. This has been a lot.

John Dehlin [01:56:36] Tony, man, thank you so much. And good luck in Africa. Stay safe.

Tony Litster [01:56:40] Thanks, man. I'll do it.

John Dehlin [01:56:41] All right. Thanks a lot brother. Bye. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Speaker C [01:57:01] Come, come ye saints no toil nor labor fear but with joy when you're waiting Though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo your hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our lot is high Tis not so, all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight? Gird up your Lord courage take our God will ever us for sake soon we'll have tale to tell oh, all is well, all is well oh, all is well, all is, all is well. Sa. And should we die before our journey is through happy days all is well we then are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared Again to see the saints, the rest obtain. I will make this chorus well oh, all is well all is well all is well all is well all is well oh, is well, well.

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