Pornography is an Avoidance Issue

Pornography is an avoidance issue. There are some who believe that using pornography is about sex. I have had clients tell me over the years that, 'I used to use porn, but that was just because we weren't having sex. It was just a sex thing'. Many clients believe that this is the case. It is important to note that this simply is not true. Pornography use releases dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is designed to feel good and help reward us for certain behaviors. Riding a bike, looking at a sunset, getting a good grade, eating good food - are all among the things that might release dopamine. Masturbation and orgasm release dopamine as well. When you use pornography, which is usually accompanied by masturbation and orgasm, you release more dopamine that your body is designed to take and it feels really good. People often use pornography when they are sad, tired, hungry, bored, etc... When these two things are pa...

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Effective Communication with your Spouse

One of the most common phrases I hear as a couples therapist in Orem is ‘I feel like…’. This is often paired with ‘I feel that…’. Both of these phrases are very misleading in regard to relationships and communication. Many couples I work with in therapy will start talking about their marriage problems by saying something such as, “I feel like he doesn’t care”. This is usually followed by defensiveness from him where he would say, “I do care!”. He then explains why he does care. The problem with the ‘I feel like…’ statement is that it sounds like you are talking about your emotions because you used the word ‘feel’. The problem is that you followed it up with ‘like’. This turns it into a thought rather than an emotion or feeling. Instead of talking about your feelings you are talking about your thoughts and they are usually blaming or at least focused on others rather than yourself. This is, seemingly, a safer place emotionally to be – talking about others instea...

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What To Do With Anger

Anger is a secondary emotion. A secondary emotion is one that covers up what you are really feeling. For example, if you are feeling hurt because of a recent break up with a significant other, it’s easy to also feel angry. Anger, a secondary emotion, comes along and covers up that hurt, the primary emotion. This often happens because when you are breaking up with a significant other there is a part of you that is afraid of being hurt more than you already have. So instead of going to them and telling them, ‘I’m really hurt and sad that we are breaking up’, you might get angry and post something mean about them on social media, or talk badly about them to your friends. This is in an effort to protect yourself from getting hurt more than you have been. If I share my hurt with them they could hurt me even more because I am vulnerable. So, you are acting angry, but what you are really feeling is hurt. The trick is to notice when you are angry and ask yourself, ‘Wha...

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When To Get Help For My Relationship Problems

When it comes to your relationship problems, early intervention is best – however, intervention at any point can still be helpful. Many couples come to therapy years after they probably needed to in the first place. I find that when couples wait it is more difficult to make changes and a lot of damage is done or at least unhealthy patterns already set. I often hear from each spouse that they have been struggling for decades. We work in therapy to undo patterns and habits that have been formed over long periods of time. It is possible to change the ways that couples interact. The sad thing about it is that they have lost a lot of time and also grieve for what could have been if they had sought help earlier. Some souses wait until their partner is ready to go to counseling. This can often be difficult as well because it keeps the willing spouse out of getting help they need – at least individually. My suggestion in this case, when one spouse is willing and the ot...

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How Do I Help My Child Transition into Young Adulthood?

Transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood is difficult. You usually don’t want to be told what to do – and most likely aren’t reading this article. But parents of young adults might be because you are struggling to help your child grow and figure out how to navigate life away from the nest. Depression, anxiety, pornography, drug use, issues with school or work and issues with significant others are among many difficulties young adults face during that transition from high school to college or from serving a Church mission to being back in college. Over the years, as a counselor in Orem, Utah, I’ve noticed a few things that parents do who successfully help their child navigate this period. First, they give them space. Your child is going to make mistakes. Giving them space to do so shows that you trust them and honor their ‘adulthood’. This doesn’t mean, however, that you run the other way and cut them off. They need a safe place to come back to, in a co...

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After an Affair – Couples Counseling

Many couples that come in to see me for counseling are dealing with the devastating effects of an affair or infidelity. There is a process that usually happens as things unfold. For the sake of this article, I will assume that it is the male partner who has had the affair, although this certainly is not always the case. When couples come in they are still, often, in the discovery phase. She is continuing to learn about what he has done or at the least she worries and fears that there is more than what she knows. He seems contrite and sorry to a degree and willing to go to therapy. After talking, it usually seems that there is more to it that what has been discovered or disclosed. Sometimes for women, they are having a hard time dealing with the shock and betrayal. I notice at this time that they are also dealing with fear of losing him. For some women they seem as if they are mad, hurt and afraid. That fear keeps them from really sharing their feelings about wh...

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Couples Therapy

I use Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy in my practice. This is a technique most commonly associated, and developed by, Susan Johnson. One of the things I love most about this approach is that it is here-and-now focused. We deal with what is coming up in the moment. It is geared towards helping couples have successful, even though sometimes painful, experiences in therapy rather than simply teaching them a set of principles to try out at home. As a couple’s counselor, I work to develop couple’s ability to communicate on a deeper and genuine level. Some couples, for example, will say to me, “I’m mad that he keeps putting me off for work”. Using the EFT approach, I will help them recognize that there is more than just being mad at play in this situation. There is, perhaps, hurt or betrayal. Its difficult for couples to share the latter because of how vulnerable it makes them. In a situation where they are already being hurt, it’s difficult to open up and talk a...

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Dealing with Anxiety

Anxiety is a problem most of us face at some point or another. It isn’t a question of ‘if’ we will experience it, but ‘when’. Anxiety comes in many forms. It can be difficult to cope with when it is severe and difficult to detect when it is mild. There is a situation when anxiety is actually covering up, and is a reaction to, other emotions. Let’s talk about how and when that is the case. There are primary emotions and secondary emotions. Primary emotions are our natural emotions to a situation. For example, feeling sad when you get a divorce is a primary emotion. In this example, you might also feel other emotions such as hurt, fear, confusion, betrayal, desperation, abandonment, despair, hopelessness, overwhelmed, etc. When these other emotions, in addition to feeling sad, become too much, a secondary emotion can come in to take the role of blanketing them so that you distance yourself or numb yourself from them. It covers them up so that you don’t see them a...

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Pornography Treatment

Pornography is often mistaken as a ‘sex addiction’. Some have said to me that, ‘If me and my wife just had sex more, pornography wouldn’t be an issue’. This is a myth and false. It has less to do with frequency of intercourse and more to do with the emotions behind so many things. Pornography temporarily numbs someone from feeling uncomfortable emotions. It keeps them from feeling what is really going on in their life. It helps them avoid. For example, feeling rejected, alone and unseen is uncomfortable. Most people don’t want to feel these types of emotion’s so they try to avoid them. They might recognize that those emotions are present, but their main goal then becomes to get rid of them without first picking them up and experiencing them. The only way to do this is to numb yourself. You can’t move something that you first don’t have. You have to pick up the emotion if you are going to do something with it. That act is counterintuitive and difficult. Pornogra...

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Put Depression on the Outside

One of my past clients would often talk about his depression as if he had a relationship with it. I started to believe that it was a real entity in her life. As if she interacted with it and that it did something for her by being there. She would refer to it as coming and going. She would often say that she hated when it showed up because it would ruin things. I started to realize that she was part way down a path towards recovery with this mindset, even though she was hurting because of depression. Depression isn’t something that a person is, but rather it is something that that a person experiences. It is outside of us (even though it feels like it is a part of us). We started to work on externalizing this problem in her life by continuing to see it as something acting on her – from the outside. She was able to realize that she is not ...

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