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Unashamed Unafraid is a show dedicated to being unashamed about sexual addiction recovery and unafraid of coming unto Christ for healing. Pornography and sexual addiction are not something you are stuck with to manage your whole life. We share real stories of recovery, the best resources, information from experts, and answer anonymous questions with those who know. All to help you on the path of being 100% healed from pornography and sexual addiction.
Speaker 17: Tryna walk the walk.
Truth on the mic, no shame
here, just real talk.
Came from the outside, never fit in.
Now we tell the story
and the healing begins.
No front, no mask, just telling the truth.
Keep it real, keep it raw,
speaking straight from the booth.
If you feeling like an
outsider, this one's for you.
Uh.
Yeah
Sam: Welcome to another
episode of Unashamed Unafraid.
We are unashamed of sexual
addiction recovery and unafraid
of coming unto Christ for healing.
I feel like I am, kind of in a place of
great healing at this point in my journey.
I went on a, trip to Houston last week
for my master's program, traveling
gave me some time to reflect.
and what I noticed inside myself was
I've just been filled with
so much gratitude for the
journey I've been taking.
You know, it's been three years
now of unbelievable, learning and
healing and growing, lots of setbacks,
lots of discouragement, lots of
shame, but lots of overcoming.
You know, I, I do know that
sin has a tendency to dim the
light inside of you a bit.
But wh- what I find is at the same time
that I trust so clearly that God is
with me and that He loves me and He's
still chasing after me and pursuing me
after a slip-up or after a relapse, , or
after a argument with my wife, my
experience in recovery right now has
just been different than at any point.
And I've just been thanking God
that that's where I'm at right now
as compared to three years ago.
I have not arrived, i'm still not sober.
But I feel like I'm in a place
that I, I've never been in before.
So that's my checking
in for recovery today.
Just wanna let you guys know where I'm at.
And with that, I want to welcome
Curtis Morley to the show.
who is someone That I have, connected
with on a number of occasions.
So Curtis, why don't you tell us a
little bit about you and what you do?
Speaker: If you would've asked me
that question 10, 15 years ago, I
would've told you I'm a tech CEO,
entrepreneur, and that was part of my
identity . And I'm not that anymore.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: I, I call myself
an emotionologist, which
is not a psychologist.
It's not a clinical degree.
It's, it's a, a self-branded title.
In the same way that a psychologist
studies the psyche or the brain, an
emotionologist studies the heart-
and the emotions.
And a lot of the reasons why are because
of things we're gonna talk about tonight.
How I had one plan for my
life and God had another.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: And He provided me
just the right amount of pain
to get me to make that change.
Sam: "Tell us your story,"
Speaker: Most of my life, , even
since I was a little kid,, I
wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I saw a Saturday morning special, an
ABC Saturday morning special, that dates
me, I know, but it was after cartoons on
Saturday morning, and there was this kid
that was the founder of the Snow Shack.
Yeah.
And he lived in California, and he
was worth half a million dollars.
This is in the '80s.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: So that'd be,
like, 20 billion today.
And, um, and they kept using this
word entrepreneur, and I still had
my great big bowl of peanut butter
Captain Crunch that I was munching
on after cartoons, and so I just kept
watching, and they said, "Entrepreneur,"
and I, I didn't know what that was.
So I finished, and I ran to my mom.
I'm like, "Mom, what's an entrepreneur?"
And she goes, "Your dad is."
And I'm like, "What?
My dad's an entrepreneur?"
And I, I, that day, I was like,
"That's exactly what I'm gonna be.
I'm gonna be an entrepreneur."
And so I grew up with that mindset, that
I was gonna be an entrepreneur, and I was.
I started multiple different companies
and, , they all look successful.
A couple actually were.
Um, not all of them, but a couple were.
And, and it was, that was my goal.
That was my life.
After I exited my last company, I wrote
a book about entrepreneurship, and my
whole life was gonna be around helping
people create successful businesses.
Mm-hmm.
And again, from the outside,
everything looked great.
From the inside, I was a mess.
I was an absolute mess, and
my family was falling apart.
Things were really hard.
Really, really hard.
And as I was going through a divorce,
, an extremely difficult divorce, one
of my friends, Jerry Williamson, he
was also going through a divorce.
And, and I started to learn
these principles for me.
I started to understand that there
is such a thing as a counterfeit
emotion and I'd never even had that
thought, and I was like, "Oh, wow.
What's a counterfeit emotion?
I need to take a class or do a
retreat or, you know, something,
seminar, webinar, whatever it is.
Read a book."
And I couldn't find anything out there.
There was nothing.
With this idea that some emotions are
authentic and some are counterfeit.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: And I was like, "Well, okay.
Well then I better dig in deeper."
Actually, the closest thing I found
was a Buddhist teaching, um, called
near and far enemies, and it's not a
one-for-one comparison by any means- Sure
but it's the very closest I could find.
And my friend Jerry was going
through the, a similar experience
with his divorce and Jerry didn't
understand the idea that shame was
the counterfeit of guilt, that misery
was the counterfeit of pain, and that
sobriety is a counterfeit of recovery.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: And he would come over
and we'd s- he'd sit on my couch
and, and we'd talk for hours and
we would honor our pain together.
A- and I mean it in the way of honoring.
It wasn't a bash fest, a blame fest
of, "Oh, you know, life is so hard."
It was truly just getting into the heart,
getting into authenticity and honoring
that pain and every time he'd leave my
house, he'd go, "Curtis, I hate you."
I'm like, "Jerry, why do you hate me?"
He goes, "'Cause when I'm over here,
you make me cry, and I hate crying."
And we would just dig deep and we
would have these conversations,
and then Jerry moved away.
He moved to Arizona.
And Jerry didn't understand that shame
is not guilt, and that sobriety is not
recovery, and that misery is not pain.
And he left us.
And
It still hurts
And I'm not okay with how he left us.
I'm not okay with the fact that he would
still be here if he understood these
principles, that there's so much hope,
and that true recovery is possible.
And I called my publisher because I
was in the middle of my second book,
the first one hit a Wall Street Journal
bestseller all about entrepreneurship, and
I said, "I'm not gonna finish this book.
I'm not gonna finish my
second business book.
In fact, I may never come back to it.
I need to write a very different book,"
and it's called "Counterfeit Emotions."
Hmm.
Speaker 2: So how did that
impact you going forward?
I mean, it sounds like at least initially,
number one, major career change, but
what was going on inside of Curtis as
this kind of transition was taking place?
, Speaker: The way that I found out
about counterfeit emotions was
going through my divorce, and it was
the hardest thing I've ever done.
More pain than I thought I could handle,
more pain than I wanted to handle.
. You're bringing all the good stuff out.
I, I remember being crushed to
the kitchen floor and weeping,
not knowing if I could stop
And as, as I was feeling the
most pain I've ever felt in
my life, I begged for God.
I was like, "Please either stop the pain
or crush me with a mountain . Please."
And Sam, he didn't.
He didn't stop the pain, but
instead he wrapped me in his arms
And for the first time in my life, I
felt pain and joy in the same place.
Hmm.
And it broke my brain because there
always was this wall, and on one
side of the wall was pain, and on the
other side of the wall was joy and
love, and you get one or the other.
You don't get both.
It's exclusive.
You cannot cross that wall.
But in that moment, I was feeling both.
In that moment where I felt his arms
wrap around me, the pain was extreme
So was the joy, and so was the
love, and so was the comfort.
And because it didn't make sense to
my mind, I had to reframe what was on
this side of the wall, and I realized
this side of the wall never was pain.
It was never pain.
This side of the wall is misery.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: And misery by
definition is the absence of joy.
By definition, that's what misery is.
But I get to choose which side
of the wall I put my pain on.
Wow.
I can bury it under the sludge and
tar of misery, or I can elevate
and honor the pain, pick it up,
and put it at Christ's feet.
Speaker 2: For someone like me, Curtis,
who's actively in recovery, still
relapsing, and, Maybe not as far along
in the journey a-a-as it feels like you
are, what would you say to me ab-about
counterfeit emotions, what does that
look like for someone in recovery?
Speaker: So I'm really glad you brought
that up, and I love how you phrased it.
Somebody in recovery,
not someone in sobriety.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker: Because that was one of
the dyads or pairs of emotions
that I discovered was that sobriety
actually counterfeits recovery.
It looks like recovery
because there's abstinence.
It can even sometimes feel like
recovery because, hey, I put
another check on the calendar.
And the trouble is, is that with
the sobriety mindset, there's only
one metric, and that's how long.
And the data shows, the science shows
that there is zero correlation with
the length of time you're sober and the
amount of recovery you've experienced.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: And so, like when you
said, you know, you're in recovery
and still lapsing, notice I
didn't use the word relapse.
Sure.
I'll, I'll talk about that in a minute.
Okay.
But I love that because recovery,
recovery is a completely different metric.
It doesn't care how many
X's are on the calendar.
It doesn't measure how long.
Recovery measures how deep . How deep
in your soul are you willing to dig?
Because the problem, I know this may be
heresy, the problem is not pornography.
It's not.
The problem is the need for pornography.
There's not a clinical diagnosis
for pornography addiction in
the DSM-5, the Diagnos- or
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
It's the psychological manual.
There's no diagnosis for pornography
addiction because people aren't addicted
to pornography, they're addicted to shame.
Hmm.
They're addicted to fear.
They're addicted to these cycles, these
counterfeits that feel like, and act like
and, and pretend to be the authentic, but
they create destructive cycles in our life
. Speaker 2: Chris, I'm really
emotional right now about
what you're saying, um, because I believe
that it's true, and I also believe
that it's what God realizes that allows
Him to have so much compassion on us.
He sees the need, and He sees the
want, and He sees the counterfeit.
Yeah.
I
never got emotional like
this on an episode before.
Say, say more about that.
I, I think there's clearly
a lot there for me.
Speaker: yeah.
It, it really came to light when,
um, when I was dating, Patty.
So she lived in Tooele, and I like to run.
And we wentâ¦
Or I went running on this trail, and it,
it happened to merge without me knowing.
There's a row of bushes.
It merged into another trail.
And right as I got past the bushes,
there was another guy, like, right there.
Like, we literally almost
ran into each other.
And I'm like, "Oh, hey."
And weâ¦
He was about the same pace, so
we just started running together.
Mm-hmm.
And we had this conversation.
I was like, "Hey, um, tell me,
tell me why you got into running."
And he goes, "I have to."
I was like, "What?
You have to?"
He's like, "Yeah, I have to."
I'm like, "Why?"
He said, "Because I gave up drinking."
And I said, "Oh, okay.
You got to tell me more."
He goes, "Yeah.
Five years ago, I, I got sober."
And notice he used the word sober.
Yeah.
I think that's important to the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: He said, "Five
years ago, I got sober."
And he said, "I used to be able to
drown my demons, and now I can't."
And that's why I run, is because when
I run, the demons don't scream as loud
And he used to back the bottle,
and I had a friend whose, his dad
was a raging alcoholic when he
was a kid, like the angry kind.
And his brother followed
suit when he was 18.
And so this last Thanksgiving, they were
at dinner together, and they had both
gone to a program, and it had been about
five years that they'd both been sober.
And he asked his dad, he
said, " Dad, when was the
last time you wanted to drink?"
And his dad thought for a minute, and
he's like, "Shoot, I, I don't remember."
And they said, "Oh, that's awesome."
And he asked his brother,
he said, "What about you?"
He goes, "15 minutes ago
when Uncle Joe arrived."
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker: And he's like, "Wait,
you went to the same program.
You've both been sober for five years.
Why does Dad not want a drink
and brother wants a drink?"
And that really illustrates the
difference between sobriety and recovery.
Because sobriety is that, that
calendar, that stopwatch, and when
we use the stopwatch, when we get the
coins, we do all the things that say
time is the indicator for success.
It's not.
Time is not the indicator.
Because I've experienced this in
my life and the men that I help
overcome this, it doesn't take
years and decades to overcome.
Time is not the indicator.
It does take digging.
The indicator is not
how long, it's how deep.
And his dad did the work
to pull the demons out.
The guy that I was running
with, you know, he'd tip back
the bottle to drown the demons.
Imagine a beach ball.
You try and push a beach ball underwater.
The farther down it goes, the more
pressure there is to shoot back up.
And that's the same as with our emotions.
Our emotions come up, and sobriety
says, "Okay, we're gonna teach you
all these tools to push them down.
We're gonna teach you how to push
these demons back down into your soul."
Recovery doesn't do that.
Recovery says, "We're
gonna pull the demons out.
We're gonna take the demons to
lunch, and we're gonna sit across
the table, and we're gonna ask
it a really important question.
'What are you doing to try to serve me?'"
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker: And we're gonna make peace
with that demon that we used to try
to drown or use pornography to cover.
We're gonna make peace
with that part of our soul.
And when we do, what we find
is it's not a demon after all.
It's a 12-year-old version of Sam.
It's a 14-year-old version of Curtis
that's been trying so hard to keep us safe
because we had an experience that hurt.
We had pain and we didn't know what to
do with it, and it came into our heart
and we s- locked it down in a steel
box and then we buried it in our soul
And now it's time to let it out.
The pain that comes in when we bury
it with misery, it gets trapped.
And the thing about pain is
pain is not meant to be held.
Pain is meant to be felt.
Pain is meant to come into our bodies,
be experienced, be heard in sobs, be
seen in water dripping out our eyes.
Pain is meant to be felt because
when it's felt, it moves us.
We grow through pain, and if you're going
through pain, start growing through pain.
And we s- bury these in our
souls, and then shame says
we have to keep them there.
We have to hide them.
We can't let anybody know
about these demons in our soul
And when we pull them out,
we realize they're a really
beautiful part of ourselves.
Speaker 2: What did you find when you
went back and you met 14-year-old Curtis?
Speaker: It's funny because
actually this hat that I'm
wearing, it's called The Rise.
A guy named Austin Ellis down in St.
George, I did a retreat, a recovery
retreat, and he took us out in the
mountains and he said, "Imagine,
imagine a little boy coming around
this big, big pine tree, and
to the side of him is a lion."
And at first all you see is the lion,
and it looks scary, it looks dangerous,
it looks like it could eat you.
It's a massive lion.
And then you see the little boy
next to him, and the little boy
seems to be guiding the lion.
And he walks up and he and I
just have this conversation.
And I used to not like
the Curtis of yesterday.
I didn't.
I was so disappointed in him.
I'm like: Why couldn't you do better?
Why couldn't you try harder?
Why couldn't you just overcome this?
Didn't you have enough willpower?
And we had the conversation
And for the first time in my life, I
started to love the Curtis of yesterday
, in all his faults, in all his mistakes,
for every time he fell . I started to love
him, and I have never done that . And
not only did I love him, but I found
gratitude for him , that he was doing
the best he could with the tools he had.
And because of that Curtis, I'm here today
. Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: Because of him.
He was the one that got me to today
And having that conversation
with that little boy who was so
traumatized, who was so scared, I
finally gave him permission to rest.
I finally said, "Thank you
so much for all you've done.
You can rest because
I've got it from here."
And it was almost like my entire soul
took a great big breath, just like,
Thank you for letting me rest
Speaker 2: What did the
journey look like after that?
Because we have, and I've noticed this
in my own recovery, Curtis, we'll have
these great moments of healing, and often
they change the direction of our lives.
But I always Get discouraged i- in
the messy middle, you know, in between
those, those very big healing moments.
So I'm curious what that
has looked like for you.
Speaker: Yeah.
The thing that, that shifted, besides this
experience on the kitchen floor and the
retreat and the other things, but one of
the big things that shifted for me is,
i- and this is gonna completely sound
backwards, it's gonna sound so backwards.
One of the big things that shifted
for me was when I got on my knees
and I thanked God for my lapse.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: And I know that sounds like,
wait, what are you talking about?
You're thanking God for pornography?
You're thanking God for, like,
what are you talking about?
No, pornography is damaging, period.
I didn't thank Him for the pornography.
I thanked Him because I realized that I
had been given a gift, that the lapse was
actually a gift, that God took the map of
my soul and He said, "Curtis, right here.
This is the GPS location
I'm giving you right here."
It's not a 100-mile radius of go be good.
Everybody wants to be good.
But where?
Where do I be good?
And when I had a lapse,
God said, "Right here.
This is where I need
you to grow right now.
Not tomorrow, right now.
Get in your car, bring your shovel."
We're trading a shame for
shovel, "And we're going to
dig right here in your soul."
And for that message, for that
message I can always be grateful.
And what happened in my life is
instead of being the, "Well, I've got
four more days till I see the bishop.
Might as well get my
money's worth," you know?
And the, the tornado and the-
I've been there ⦠the binge
sessions and all of that.
Yeah.
It went from a relapse to just a lapse.
Meaning one event, one single
event that I went and I pulled up
my shovel and I started digging.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: And I said, "Okay, this
is where I need to grow today."
And it wasn't a shameful thing anymore.
It was a compassionate thing.
Like, "Curtis, you've still
got one of those in your soul.
It's time to go dig.
It's time to dig him up."
And here's the greatest thing.
It's just like the dad and the brother.
Like, when I dug up, like really
dug deep, and dug up that skeleton
in my soul I was able to make peace
with it, and it no longer haunts me.
So the exact same situation that I
used to be in, exact same situation, I
can be in that environment and have no
compulsion to go back to the behavior
because it's not screaming anymore.
It's not saying, "Curtis, you
have to go to these behaviors."
It's not there-
Speaker 2: Yeah
⦠Speaker: because I dug it up.
Speaker 2: So that begs the
question for me then, what's the
criteria for a counterfeit emotion?
Because clearly the overemphasis
on sobriety for you was causing you
to go back into deep shame spirals.
Speaker: Oh, massive
Speaker 2: shame spirals.
And when you, when you got rid
of that skeleton, things changed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Sam: I know so much psychobabble, Curtis.
Like, I could write a book and,
people would, buy it, you know?
Like, like- Sounds like it's
time ⦠I know, I know the answers.
But it's hard to see how they apply to me.
Speaker: Yeah.
The trap of sobriety is that, is like
you hear it all the time, "Once an
addict, always an addict ," right?
And, in 12-step meetings,
you go in and the very first
thing you start with is shame.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is the problem.
Speaker 2: "Hey, I'm Sam I'm an addict
" Speaker: exactly.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker: And, and think about this.
If you say, like, what do you love to do?
Like, just in general in
life, what do you love doing?
Basketball.
Okay.
So if you say, "I'm Sa- Hi, I'm Sam.
I'm a basketball player," right?
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Then what do
basketball players do?
Speaker 2: They dribble.
They shoot.
Speaker: They- They dribble.
They're in the gym.
They watch, hopefully
it's the Jazz this year.
Come on, Jazz, you can do it.
You know, they're, they're in the
stadiums, they're on the court, they're
at the park, they're, they're dribbling,
they're practicing their shots.
They do what a basketball player does.
Yeah.
When I identify as an addict, I'm gonna
do what an addict does, and that label
is, like, stapled to my chest, and
when we take that on as our identity
It's a trap.
And this idea that once an addict,
always an addict is an absolute lie,
and I know that firsthand, and I know
it from a gospel sense because it
denies the atonement of Jesus Christ.
It says I can fall
farther than he can reach.
Mm-hmm.
And that's not true.
That is not true.
And when I fell down, he reached
And I know that.
And there's a, there's this whole
misconception with, with being sober
that, oh, it's only a matter of
time until your next relapse, right?
And I use relapse with sobriety
and lapse with recovery.
Hmm.
It's only a matter of time
until your next relapse.
When you get into the recovery
mindset, it's only a matter
of time until it's over.
There's so much hope,
and we've believed a lie.
We've believed a lie that
all it takes is sobriety.
That's it.
A- and don't get me wrong, there's
a very specific purpose for
sobriety, and that is to get out
of the dopamine dependence cycle.
But the new research shows
dopamine dependence cycle is
not a year, two year, 10 year.
It's two to four weeks.
That's it.
You can get out of the dopamine dependence
cycle in as little as two weeks.
And the men that I work with, I see it all
the time, all the time, that if they do
very specific things, they get out of it,
and then that, that thing in your brain
that's going 24/7, that misery, it's gone.
Then it breaks down into four components.
The first is sexual.
Like, okay, we're men.
We have male, hormones.
All of that.
The second is physical.
Is our body sending a fight
or flight signal to the brain?
Like, do, are we sleep-deprived?
Are we dehydrated?
Are we lacking nutrients?
You know, all of those things.
The third is habitual.
What have we trained our brains to do?
But then the big one, and this is the one
most people leave out, is the emotional.
And in my research, I'm
currently studying exactly this.
In my research, what I've found
is that the emotional is as bigâ¦
Actually, it's almost twice as
big as all of the other three.
All the other three put together are
about half of what the emotional is.
Speaker 2: I believe that.
Speaker: And so getting out of that
is where we start to find peace.
Like, I used to wake up every
morning with a pit in my stomach,
questioning, "Is today my last day?"
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: I don't wake up that way anymore.
I now wake up with peace.
I wake up with joy.
There's no more fear, and that's one
of the big traps of sobriety is the
longer I go, the bigger the fear.
Because if I have to stop
that stopwatch and reset it
back to zero, that's not time.
That's worth- Mm-hmm ⦠that
I'm resetting to zero.
And with sobriety, fear builds with time.
In recovery, fear is gone.
Shame is worked through.
All of these big emotions that
we haven't been willing to deal
with, they become our friends
Speaker 2: So it sounds like, and
we are totally aligned with this,
Curtis, you would say it's possible
to get sober without recovering.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker 2: I'm curious what
you would say about getting
recovered without getting sober.
Speaker: I love this.
I love that you asked that question
because that's a truth about recovery,
is recovery doesn't mean I'm perfect.
Recovery means I have tools to dig
up the demons when they show up.
That's what recovery means.
And my favorite definition, my favoriteâ¦
Well, if we're talking definitions,
we gotta step back one step.
Sober, the Latin base of
the word sober is sobrius.
Mm-hmm.
Sobrius means not drunkâ¦
dot, dot, dot, at the moment.
It literally includes at the moment.
I'm not drunk right now,
but just wait, it's coming.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: Recovery comes from recuperare.
It's a French word, and it
means a return to health.
It means a return to health, and not
only does it mean that, if you scrape
a couple letters off the sides, right
in the middle of recovery is over.
Recovery is about being done, and to
get there doesn't mean that from today
forward, I am, I am magically done.
No.
It means I know how to dig,
and my favorite definition of
recovery is no longer living a
life I need to run away from.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker: That's true recovery.
Being okay with who you are and
being okay with who you were.
That's recovery.
. Speaker 2: I feel like I need to pause
and think about that for 10 minutes.
There's a lot there.
Speaker: There is.
Speaker 2: In your Own journey
then, did it look like for
you to actually get sober?
Speaker: If you look at the dopamine
dependence cycle, and they've done
phenomenal research on this, like
actually measuring, what happens
during, I'll, I'll call them
relapses because we're in sobriety.
But when, when you look at pornography,
you have a massive dopamine spike, and
everybody has a baseline of dopamine.
Mm-hmm.
And, and dopamine is often misunderstood.
Dopamine is not the reward chemical.
It's the anticipation chemical,
the motivation chemical, and so
it's the excitement of the chase.
That's the dopamine, and you get this
massive dopamine spike, and then it,
it doesn't come down to baseline.
Everybody has a baseline
and nobody is at zero.
Nobody has zero dopamine.
You have to have dopamine to live.
Like, they, they took the dopamine
receptors out of rats' brains, and
they wouldn't drink, they wouldn't
eat, they wouldn't do anything.
Hmm.
They just laid there, like, "I don't
have any motivation to do anything."
Right.
So dopamine is a critical chemical
in your body, but everybody has
a baseline of well above zero.
Mm-hmm.
And just in daily life, there's
motivation to look at a sunset, hold
your wife's hand, you know, all these
beautiful things, sports, like all
these natural dopamine enhancers
but unnatural ones like pornography,
it's one of the highest.
It goes way up, and then it
drops below the baseline.
It doesn't come back down to baseline.
It drops below baseline.
And what goes up is norepinephrine,
which inhibits dopamine.
Hmm.
Um, the corticotropin reaction
factors, those are basically, cortisol.
It's saying, "Do I need
cortisol right now?"
Cortisol is the fear chemical.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: Um, you get all these drugs
that are either fight or flight, fear.
Like, what happens is that it goes
up, and then it comes way down,
and then your brain says, "Uh-oh.
You're, you're down in dopamine.
Let's go get some more."
And then you go have another hit.
Yeah.
And it goes up, but it doesn't
go up as high as the last one,
and then it goes down lower.
Right.
And then it goes up, and it keeps
going down and down until you
get into an allostatic state.
And what that means is that your
body is screaming for dopamine.
It's not a naturalâ¦
homeostatic state and when
that happens, your brain is just
screaming, "I'm going to die.
I'm literally going to die if
you don't give me more dopamine."
Yeah.
And so you're like, "Uh,
I better go get it."
Well, if you can go two to four
weeks and break that cycle and say,
"No, you know, I'm okay, brain.
Brain, listen to me, I'm okay.
I'm not gonna die.
I don't have to have the dopamine
hit," then once you get past that
two to four weeks, all of a sudden
, your brain is like, "Oh, I'm not
constantly screaming I need dopamine.
I need dopamine."
But that's only a little
fraction of the problem.
The rest is the emotions.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: The rest is what's in here.
And if you can not just deal,
but rewrite the triggers.
If you can rewrite the triggers in
your heart, they don't come back.
They don't have to come back.
Mm-hmm.
It's not that I'm scared and
I have this fearful mentality
because sobriety is miserable.
It really is miserable.
Recovery is joyful, it's peaceful,
but sobriety is so miserable because
it's like, "Oh, it's gonna come back.
It's gonna come back."
When you do the digging, it doesn't
have to come back . It doesn't
it can become a part of your
soul that you're at peace with.
And I'll share a personal example.
After I married my Patty, who is the
most wonderful human on planet Earth,
we were watching a movie, and it was
supposed to be a clean movie, right?
And, and out walked a lady that was
topless, and, in my past, if that
happened to me in my sobriety mindset,
I would've instantly spiraled.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: Instantly.
I'd be like, "Oh, no, what have I done?
Oh, no, I'm gonna fantasize about this.
This is just gonna spiral," and I would've
just been completely in fear and shame
This time it was like, "Oh,
shoot, I wish I didn't see that.
That's too bad."
And I even had compassion for the actress
thinking, "I wonder what happened in
her life that got her to that point- Hmm
⦠that she would be willing to do that."
And there was no, there was no spiral.
There was no binge.
There was noâ¦
It was very simply, "Shoot, I wish
I didn't see that," and it was done.
And besides talking about it like this-
Speaker 2: Yeah
⦠Speaker: I have never
thought about it again.
And it's not because I'm getting older
and have lower hormones or anything.
I actually just got it checked.
. I'm over 600, which is higher than most.
, But I was at peace.
I didn't need it anymore.
It was never the pornography.
It was the need to escape what was inside.
True recovery is living a life
you no longer need to escape from-
Speaker 2: Hmm
⦠Speaker: because you're at peace.
Speaker 2: So when you're stuck in the
escaping and the self-judgment and the
shame, that, you're living in counterfeit
emotions . When you're accessing
these real, raw, authentic- Authentic
I know you love that word.
Yes,
Speaker: yes.
Speaker 2: Emotions, you're in recovery.
If I find myself in a, in a
counterfeit emotion, like misery or
shame or fear, or, and I know you
have a whole list of them, which-
Speaker: 42 dyads, yeah.
Speaker 2: How do I snap into an
authentic emotion and reframe it?
Because that's where I get stuck.
Speaker: That's the right question.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: That is exactly the
right question, and if you think
about it like, like in a, a bus.
You're, you're the bus driver
of your emotional bus, okay?
And you're driving around the city, and
you go, and you pick up an emotion, right?
Which means some event
happened in your life, okay?
So all of a sudden, there's misery or,
or shame, or let's say you'd made a
mistake, and you're like, "Oh," picking
up shame, and shame gets on the bus.
And the very first thing emotions try
to do is they say, "Hey, I'm gonna
drive now ." And they try and push you
out of the driver's seat, and, and what
you can do is just witness the emotion.
Just say, "Oh, that's shame.
I know what shame is.
I'm just gonna wit- I'm even
gonna, I got a r- seat reserved
for you on the bus, shame.
It's right back here.
You know, it's row C, third one in.
Go ahead, take your seat."
And shame gets on the bus, and shame
has the twin of guilt It looks the
same, it talks the same, it's the
same height, has the same eye color.
Like, you have a very hard time
differentiating guilt and shame.
And even the researchers, I've read
hundreds of research paper, literally
hundreds, and most of them, until
recently, have said the guilt/shame study.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: But Brene Brown and the
University of Oslo, they both did
two independent studies that said,
"What is the result of shame?"
And they found that shame is a
direct path into bullying, into
suicidal ideation, into addictive
behavior, into sexual promiscuity.
I mean, all of the vices,
shame is a direct path in.
But then they switched it.
They flipped it and said,
"Wait, let's separate these two.
What about guilt?"
And they found that guilt
had an inverse correlation.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: You wanna get out
of addiction, get into guilt.
You wanna get out of suicidal
ideation, get into guilt.
And, you know, our society is always
like, "Oh, don't let him guilt you.
That's such a guilt trip."
No, guilt is beautiful.
Guilt is so healthy.
Guilt says, "I'm willing
to take responsibility and
make repair for my actions."
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker: That's what guilt says.
Guilt is awesome.
Shame is the one that we gotta be careful
of, but we give it a seat on the bus.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: And as soon as we do,
we're like, "Oh, there's shame.
Okay, I need to go pick up guilt."
Because as soon as the twin gets on the
bus, the counterfeit goes, "Oh, whew,
okay, good.
I know you're gonna take care of this.
I can get off."
You don't even have to ask
shame to get off the bus.
It by itself will leave as soon
as you go and pick up guilt.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: As soon as you pick up
guilt, shame says, "I'm done here.
I've done my job.
I've given the message.
I can go."
And then guilt says, "We
know where to drive."
Hmm.
"We know where to drive.
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna try and
take the wheel, but I'll navigate you.
I'll navigate you to that person
you hurt, and that may be yourself.
I'll navigate you to the place where
you're gonna take responsibility."
And it may hurt.
It probably will.
That's the thing w- that's one of
the overlaps of guilt and shame is
they both hurt, and guilt is meant
to hurt because then we're not gonna
do it again because we're reminded,
"Oof, that really kicked my butt."
"I don't want that feeling again."
So guilt leaves a little token
on the bus that says, "Hey, when
you do this action, it hurts."
Speaker 2: Yeah.
" Speaker: So don't do it again."
Yeah.
"Make sure you avoid that big pothole
as you're driving down the bus
down the road, 'cause that hurts."
And guilt helps navigate through that.
So if it's misery, if
misery got on the busâ¦
And, and one thing to know
about misery, misery has two
base emotions: blame and shame.
Hmm.
Notice shame.
Blame.
Yeah,
Speaker 2: shame pops up there a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, blame and shame are the
definition of misery, is I am gonna blame
somebody else for this horrible situation.
I'm gonna blame the person
that hurt me or God or anything
like that, and misery gets on.
Well, in order for misery
to get off, it needs to know
that you're gonna honor pain.
Hmm.
And you're gonna go pick up the pain.
Hmm.
And I use that metaphorically.
You're gonna pick up the pain.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: And only when you
pick up the pain yourself can
you place it at Christ's feet.
Speaker 2: What are some other dyads?
'Cause I'm trying to figure out w-what
are the ones that I run to the most
often that are keeping me stuck and
trying to drive the bus, so to say.
Speaker: Yeah.
So the, the ones we go through
in our program is, we talk
about recovery versus sobriety.
Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Really critical to
understand the difference- Yeah
and have so much compassion in recovery.
We talk about guilt and shame,
we talk about pain and misery,,
we talk about love and lust.
And this is one of my favorite weeks in
our program because it changes marriage.
It absolutely changes
the dynamic in marriage.
Men will come back a, a week
or two later and they're like,
"Holy cow, what just happened?"
They're like, "Curtis, that was amazing."
Because it's, it's not aboutâ¦
It's, it, there's one factor
that changes from love to lust,
and um, and that factorâ¦
Well, I didn't finish my list.
Let me finish my list,
and then we can come back.
So then, um, we do kind versus nice.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: It turns out the nice
is the counterfeit of kind.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker: And the nice- I believe
that ⦠the nice guy syndrome is,
is synonymous with being a victim.
Yep.
And here's one thing that I found to
be a truth: Victim precedes a lapse.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: I will not lapse
until I'm in victim.
Victim precedes a lapse.
And so getting out of that nice
guy behavior and truly into
kind, tru- which is the virtue.
Nice says, "I'm gonna do everything
I can to avoid conflict."
Kind says, "I'm gonna take conflict,
and like alchemy, I'm gonna
change conflict into connection."
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: If there's a chance for
us to have a different opinion or
anything like that, I'm gonna transform
that from conflict into connection.
Because we're different, we can
actually enhance and grow together.
, We talk about excellence
versus perfectionism.
This one is- That's
Speaker 2: a good one-
Big ⦠especially for men.
Speaker: Yes, 'cause we think we
have to be perfect, and sobriety
says you have to be perfect.
You are only sober if you are perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: You have to be 100% perfect.
Recovery, you don't.
Recovery, you have to be willing to grow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get an
excellence versus perfectionism.
Then, we talk about joy versus pleasure.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker: And this is, again,
one of my favorite weeks because
man is that he might have joy.
And I didn't understand that.
Like I said, I'd wake up every
morning with a pit in my stomach
thinking, "Is today my last day?"
And now I understand that joy
can be a daily occurrence.
It absolutely can.
And it doesn't mean there's a l-
it doesn't mean there's no pain.
Remember that wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: That wall was, I was labeling
the wrong thing on this side of the wall.
Sure.
It means that joy can exist even with
pain, and sometimes because of pain
. . Speaker 2: There's a kid that used to,
I don't know if he interned for you.
His name was, I think, was Nathan.
He was one of my cousin's roommates.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker 2: And he was, like, teaching
me all the counterfeit emotions.
But I, I guess I hadn't realized
that authenticity is the,
it's the point that tips the scale.
It's if you can tune into the authentic
self, you can enjoy the parts of life that
are painful, and you can love and have joy
rather than lust and feel only pleasure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right?
Yeah.
And a lot of those are
even paired together.
But I love how that's all coming
together for me in my mind right now.
It feels like all of this just
kind of ties back to authenticity.
Speaker: And when we live an authentic
life, that's when we find the one
emotion that can't be counterfeited.
Yeah.
And that emotion is peace.
That's when we find it, we stop
putting on the masks, we stop
putting on the bravado and, and,
"I've gotta be this perfect guy."
No, we don't.
We just have to be human.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: And when we l- let go
of this perfection idea and say,
"I'm just gonna be human," in our
humanity, we find our divinity.
Yeah.
And when we find our divinity,
there's no way we could ever staple
the title of addict on our chest.
Speaker 2: Curtis, if you had one
golden nugget to share as we're
wrapping this up, what would you
say to the listeners and to me?
Speaker: there's hope.
I know this for myself, I know
this for the many men I've helped.
There's, there's true recovery possible.
Not a fear-based sobriety, true recovery.
And, and I know that's true.
And the funny thing is, if I were
listening to this podcast 10 years
ago, I would've called bull crap.
I'd be like, "Nope."
" There is not, and don't
you dare tell me there is."
Today, I know it.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker: Today, I know there's a
path because I've walked down it.
And Sam, it hasn't been an easy path.
It's been, it has been a path
that has taken me to places in
my soul I never thought I'd go
And I'm so grateful God
blessed me with that pain.
I'm so grateful.
It's not anything I would wish on anyone.
And at the same time, I get on my
knees so often saying thank you.
Thank you for giving me just the
right amount of to change my life,
to realize the atonement is real, to
understand that I too can be forgiven
There's so much hope
Speaker 2: Chris, if people wanna get
in contact with you, take advantage
of your resources, learn what you
have to offer and how you help men.
I'm assuming just men, right?
Speaker: Um, right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, actually, the
newest statistics show that 91.5%
of men are looking at pornography monthly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
60.2%
of women are also.
So we've actually been looking at
developing a, a women's program.
Speaker 2: Good for you.
We've been, I think, kind of torn
ourselves as to how to help women because
we're all men, and I think we kind of
get it from, from a male perspective.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But, uh, I'm glad that
you're kind of in that space now-
Yeah ⦠'cause that's needed.
Speaker: Yeah.
So the best way to get ahold of us,
is counterfeitemotions.com/recovery,
and, um, there's a form where you
can book a meeting with me directly.
Or there you can find out
all about the program.
The podcast is a great resource.
We're on YouTube.
Um, conferences, I speak quite
a bit at different conferences.
But yeah, probably the best way is-
Speaker 2: And you were theâ¦
We, we didn't, I didn't intro-introduce
you this way, but you were the keynote
speaker at Utah Coalition Against
Pornography this, this past year, so.
Speaker: It was a real honor.
Yeah.
That was very special.
Yeah.
There's so much hope, Sam.
There is true recovery available
where you scrape away those
letters and it says, "Over."
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: Where you can be done.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker: You can be done, when I
take men on this nine-week journey,
we teach them what I call the
Be Whole method, and this isâ¦
It, it really is just the shovel.
The Be Whole method is the
shovel of now I know how to dig.
Now I'm not scared to dig.
Now thatâ¦
Like, for me, it's been years.
It's been years, but not just years
in I'm gonna mark the calendar.
I don't remember when my last lapse was.
But more important than that is it's been
years since I felt any compulsion For it.
And it's because I know how to dig.
And could I lapse in a
year, tomorrow, or 10 years?
I could, but I'm not worried about it.
I'm not scared about it because if
I did, it would be one event and I
would dig because I have a shovel.
I now know how because I use the Be
Whole method all the time- Mm ⦠that I
can dig right there and I can find that
skeleton and I can make peace with it.
And that's what we teach.
Like, one thing, one of the magic parts
is that, , I call them emotional ninjas
when they're done with the program because
they have processed over 100 triggers.
By the time they're done, they're in
the habit of saying, "Okay, trigger,"
it used to be go to pornography,
now it's trigger, go to dig.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: It used to be trigger
shame, now it's trigger shovel.
, And it gets rid of the fear.
It's no longer, "When am, when
is it gonna happen again?"
It's like, "I don't know that it will
happen again, but if it does, I'm ready."
' Speaker 2: Cause if guilt can drive
the bus, it's gonna take you somewhere.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If that's a
journey you wanna go on.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Love that.
Yeah.
Speaker 2: Tell me
about your song, Curtis.
Speaker: Okay.
Um, actually this is the first
time I'm sharing this publicly.
, Uh, the song is called Whole
Again, and it's actually a song
I wrote for, my daughter.
Hmm.
When she was little, she, she had a
very rare blood disease, and it was
called idiopathic thrombocytopenia
purpura, and it, the doctors had no
idea, but basically her platelets
went to 4 or 500,000 down to 2,000.
So almost no platelets, meaning if
she ever got cut, if she ever got
bruised, she would bleed to death.
Wow.
And the doctors had no idea why.
They had no idea how to fix it, and
week after week we'd get tested, and we
basically put her in a bubble for that
summer, and month after month went by.
One night I was tucking her in and
I had the, I had the deep impression
to read the story of the woman in the
Bible who had an issue of blood- Hmm
and how she was lying on the
ground and she didn't have the
strength to reach for his hand.
All she could do was reach for his hem-
And she touched his hem and was healed
And I read that to my daughter
and she asked me, she said, she
said, "Daddy, can I be healed too?"
And I said, "Do you
believe in Jesus Christ?"
And she said, "Yes."
And I said, " Then you can be
healed ." And we went back to the
doctor the next week, and her platelets
had gone to four hundred thousand
. And the doctor said, "I
don't understand this."
He's like, "I don't
know how this happened."
I said, "I do.
I do."
And he said, "No, you don't understand.
This can't happen.
This is not possible."
And so I wrote a song for
her called "Whole Again".
And it's about when you don't
have the strength to stand,
when you're lying on the ground
Just reach for his hem
if that's all the strength you
have left, just touch his hem
and you can be whole again.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Chris, thanks for being on, man, and
thank you for sharing that touching story.
Especially since this is the
first time you've gone public
with, uh, with that one.
Yeah.
I really enjoyed that interview
. social social media @UnashamedUnafraid.
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here is "Whole Again," an original
composition by Curtis Morley.