#102: Healing Sexual Brokenness: Your Sexual Brokenness Isn’t Random | Jay Stringer
What if I told you that your sexual struggles could be predicted by your untreated trauma?
Today, we’re joined by author Jay Stringer who studied ~4,000 men and women who struggle with sexual compulsion or addiction, such porn, masturbation, affairs, buying sex, and much more.
In this episode, we breakdown his NEW study and more:
How the sexual fantasies and porn searches of the study participants could be predicted by their untreated trauma
Why we often repeat behavior that harmed us, such as sexual abuse or affairs, and how to avoid that
How anger actually drives unwanted sexual behavior
Why people from rigid or disengaged families are much more likely to struggle with sexual compulsion or addiction
How in order to break free, you have to listen to your lust and understand why you struggle in the particular ways that you do
Why typical lust management strategies like accountability software are not enough
Whether you struggle with sexual brokenness or know someone who does, this episode will help anyone find healing and lasting freedom from sexual brokenness.
Buy Jay’s Book: Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing
Get FREE Mini-Course: Why You Feel Broken
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
What if I told you that your sexual struggles could actually be predicted by the untreated trauma that you've endured in your life. Would you want to know more about that? If so this episode is for you, that insight actually comes from the book, unwanted. How sexual Brokenness reveals our way to healing in which the author says this. He says, I'm asking you to consider the possibility that your sexual struggle is not random. Today, I speak to that author, Jay Stringer who studied almost 4000 men and women who struggle with sexual compulsion or addiction such as porn, masturbation affairs, buying sex. And more in this episode, we break down that new study and more like I mentioned, we talk about how the sexual fantasies and porn searches of the study participants could actually be predicted by the untreated trauma they endured. Why we often repeat behavior that harmed us such as sexual abuse or affairs and how you can avoid that. How anger actually drives unwanted sexual behavior. Really, really interesting stuff. Why people from rigid or disengaged families are much more likely to struggle with sexual compulsion or addiction. How in order to break free. You have to listen to your lust and understand why you struggle in the particular ways that you do. And finally why typical lust management strategies like accountability software are actually not enough, whether you struggle with sexual Brokenness or you know, someone who does this episode will help anyone find healing and lasting freedom from sexual Brokenness. So keep listening, welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents', divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again and break the cycle. I'm your host, Joey Panelli. This is episode 102. This episode is actually part four of our series called Healing Sexual Brokenness on the show. You know that we feature stories and expert interviews about how to heal from the trauma of your parents', divorce and broken family or how to navigate the pain and the problems that stem from it. One of the biggest problems that often stems from your family's breakdown is unwanted sexual behavior like pornography, masturbation, hookup, culture, paying for sex and fidelity and so much more. In fact, one expert found that almost 90% of those who struggle with sexual addiction come from a broken family. In this series, you'll get tactics and resources to overcome unwanted sexual behavior so you can find freedom, little trigger warning. This is obviously a mature topic. So we recommend putting in earphones or at least not listening around Children with that. My guest today is Jay Stringer. Stringer is best known for helping both men and women find freedom from sexual Brokenness and pursue the life. They truly desire a licensed mental health counselor, an ordained minister and an acclaimed international speaker. Jay provides a safe and supportive environment for individuals seeking to address unwanted sexual behavior. Now, based in New York City, Jay has spent more than a decade at the forefront of combating the demand for sexual exploitation and porn geography. Through his clinical work, he offers a comprehensive understanding of the origins of sexual Brokenness, shedding light on the factors that sustain these struggles. Jay's award winning book, Unwanted is the culmination of an extensive research project that delves into the stories of 3800 men and women. That book has sold more than 100,000 copies and has widely been embraced by counselors, churches and small groups globally affirming its impact and relevance. I'm so excited for you to learn from Jay. So here's our conversation, Jay. Welcome to the show, Joe. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here starting out. I just want to say you are the freaking man. I just love everything you're doing. I have so much respect and admiration for you. I found your content so helpful. So thank you so much. I look up to you a lot. I'm honored to have you here. Thank you for reading the book and sharing it with others. So I have so many questions for you and uh so we'll just go, go at them. But uh starting out, I'm just curious, what do you care about, about this so much? Why do you care about this problem? Why do you care about people who struggle with unwanted sexual behavior? You know, one of the first stories that comes to mind is, uh I went through graduate school, got my master's in counseling psychology when I was probably in my mid twenties. And my grandfather whose name was Elmer died when I was about 25 26 years old. And I went to his funeral in sort of the North Florida area. And I remember being in his funeral and not sure if you've ever had this sense, but like the sadness that I felt was not so much that he had passed away, but far more the reality that I never knew this man in his life. Like we knew some of the cover stories, some of the big stories of his life, the headline stories, but we never really, I never really knew uh the man. And so I remember flying back across the country from Florida, back to Seattle where I was in grad school at the time and just having this kind of inner defiance rise up within me of, I need to understand my, my story, I need to understand who these major characters are and I need to get to know my grandmother. So the first one up on that docket was my grandmother, Dorothy, who was my dad's mom. And uh you know, long story I could share about her, but I always referred to her as just like a cold steel door of emotion. Like I have a memory of being eight years old. And she had called our house middle of January. And she had said, uh, you know, are your parents there? I said no. And I said, can I take a message for them? And she said, yeah, if you could just let your parents know that I was quite disappointed by what your family gave me for Christmas this year. I don't know, she's probably in her mid seventies or something at that point. And I'm like, I'm not even allowed to say that. Um And so that was the challenge with Dorothy. But I took her out to a cafe on her 90th birthday, went and got the skeleton keys that I wanted to represent the era of her birth year. So they were keys from like 1916, 17, 18, somewhere in that range, took her out to a cafe. I gave her these keys and I said, grandma, these three keys symbolize three lunches that I wanna take you out to, to learn more about your life. And you know, most grandmothers would be deeply touched by an expression like that. But my grandmother was horrified and five seconds passes, 10 seconds passes she says nothing. Uh eventually she looks back up at me and passes the box back across the table and says, Jay, there are some doors you just don't open. There are some stories you just don't tell. And that was probably what sealed the deal for me to become a psychotherapist is, you know, there are stories that so many of us have that we are too ashamed to tell and then you get closer to those stories and that's where shame defensiveness, blame really begin to rise. And so I think that was really the beginning of i it's not just me that has a story of secrecy and silence and judgment, not just my father, probably not just my grandmother, but many generations. And so part of what we found out about my grandmother was she was likely sexually assaulted by a family member sometime in her mid teens. And that was a story that she was never able to share with any of her friends with any of the religious communities that she was part of. And I've wondered so much since that day, you know, how her life, how my father's life, how my life would have been different if she had had a context to share some of the sexual stories that she was part of in life. And so I think, you know, I have my own history with pornography use and struggles. Uh But I think far more than that, it's a sense of like this is the story that shame narrates in our life has an impact over many, many generations. And again, just that inner sense of defiance of, I don't want sexual shame and stigma to have the last word in an individual's life. Much less many generations from now. So that was kind of the impetus to write. The book is as a therapist, seeing a lot of people struggling with infidelity pornography use and yet most of the resources that were out there were kind of like lust or symptom management of kind of bounce your eyes, put some internet monitoring on your computer or try and just militantly fight it or on the other side would just be like this is just a common issue that everybody faces. So don't try too hard to fight it because it's completely normal. And so I think just that sense of either lust management or just shame management. Those are the two primary ways that I, I see society trying to address these problems. And so that was the decision that I had to do some research of like, what could we find out about the key drivers that are influencing people to use these behaviors and pursue these choices rather than just stigmatizing or normalizing them. So good. And thanks for sharing. So vulnerably. Yeah, I I'm so excited to get into the study. So you studied a little under four 1000 men and women who struggle with unwanted sexual behavior. He also did a bunch of robust data analysis on those findings if you would break down that study and how it was done. Uh So we, we designed a research instrument that basically looked at, you know, we looked at attachment theory like what was people's attachment like to their mothers and fathers? Were their family systems very rigid, disengaged or very emotionally enmeshed. And then we looked at what are called adverse childhood experiences. And those are the kind of the big tea and little tea traumas that we all go through anything from bullying to sexual abuse to kind of uh issues of abandonment and neglect. And then we looked at what were people dealing with in the present? From depression anxiety, uh a lack of purpose in their life and all of that has kind of been researched before. But the really fascinating and slightly maybe even intrusive thing that we did was we asked people to share, not just do they look, get porn, but what are the things that they go to the internet for? Like, what are the search terms? And so several of the major porn sites would publish, you know, the top 10, top 20 search board terms on the internet in terms of porn. So we took, I believe it was like 10 or 15 of the number, the top 15 searches that were out on the internet. And we just were like, what if we put that in the instrument as well. And we had a team at New York University handle some of the analytics with it because I don't have my background or phd and analytics, not smart enough or have the patience for that level of TDO and boredom and expertise. But uh that's what we did. We put all that together like family story, uh role that you played in your family, current problems that you're facing and what's known as the arousal template, which is kind of a constellation of thoughts, images, sensations, fantasies that bring sexual arousal to someone. And we were just really curious what we would find and that was what the data came back is if I were to say like the thesis of my work in that book, unwanted would be that, you know, sexual problems are not a life sentence to sexual shame or stigma. They're a road map to healing and growth. And so we found that sexual fantasies that people were troubled by or wanted to outgrow uh were not random at all. Uh They were actually a direct reflection of the unaddressed issues of their life. And so that's the premise of the work that I do with people is, you know, let's put the problem in the foreground. Let's get really curious about where it comes from, why it might be manifesting in this way and begin to break those things down so that we can understand what driving it. And so we can learn how to heal and then also how to outgrow it so good. And I've read a good amount on this topic, especially just in my past, having struggled with pornography and other un monos behavior and your book is just so revolutionary. There's nothing like it. And, and so that's why I wanted to talk to you. And that's why I, I love the book and I recommend it wherever I go. On. That last note that you mentioned about, um, you know, studying the specifics of people's struggle. I was really blown away about how the sexual fantasies and how the even the porn searches of the individuals in the study, like you said, could actually be predicted by their past untreated trauma. Would you go deeper into that? So, yeah, so a couple, you know, these would be more softball tosses, but I think they're good to be able to understand and break down a little bit. So we looked at, ok, let's say that you were a man and you were drawn towards kind of themes of college or teen porn or maybe you wanted to see someone that was, had a more petite body type or a race that suggested to you some level of subservience. Uh We wanted to see what was driving that and we found that the three primary drivers of that were a very rigid father growing up, a lack of purpose in their life and high levels of shame. So if we were to just play armchair psychologists, just for a moment, if you're growing up with a father who tends to be very authoritarian, very rigid part of what you experience in life is a level of powerlessness, right? So he has all the power, he makes the rules, he has the regulations and he might rule with an iron fist or it just might be like a look that can really shame you into compliance. So when you're growing up in that family, you're gonna feel powerlessness, but also probably some level of humiliation under his reign. So we have that unaddressed story, which how do you talk to your dad about that? You can't, how do you talk to friends about that? You usually don't, but that that issue has to go somewhere. So then this person grows up into someone who's trying to get their career started, but has all this unaddressed family of origin stuff that they've never addressed. And so then they feel a lack of purpose in their life. And one of the things we found in the research was that if the man is struggling with the lack of purpose, meaning he looked back over the course of his life and saw a lot of failure. He felt just a sense of being stymied or stuck with making any movement in his career. He was seven times more likely to increase his involvement in porn compared to those who had, uh, a really solid sense of purpose in their life. So we have this story that begins in childhood where you're, you have no power and then you grow up into a man and you feel like you don't have any power in your life. Well, that's one of the primary allures to pornography is not just lust or fantasy. It's a level of power that for, you know, nine minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes you can get exactly what you want, see exactly what you want to see and you feel like you have power and autonomy over your life. And that's a rare experience for someone like that. So as you can see if you're only trying to fight to stop using porn, but you're not fighting to discover purpose or you're not fighting to heal some of those wounds that your father afflicted you with your struggle with porn is going to remain. And so I think that's the key insight is instead of just trying to fight and unwanted behavior, go back to fight to discover the meaning embedded within it. And if we can heal that and outgrow it, then we have a really solid chance of not just like being free from porn, but far more making movement and finding flourishing in life and living a life of meaning. Precisely. There's so much more there than just, yeah, like the absence of pornography. I hope people don't misconstrue this whole series that we're doing on healing sexual Brokenness, like there's something so good on the other side. And so I love that you're, you're mentioning this. I, on a similar note, I'm fascinated, especially given that we're serving, you know, teenagers and young adults who come from what we call broken families where there's divorce, separation or just a lot of dysfunction. We're fascinated by this idea of repetition, compulsion. We don't talk about that a lot in the show. But this idea of how you might repeat behavior that you even despise. That's my understanding of it at least. And so an example that I often give is like a girl who maybe grew up with an abusive father who ends up marrying an abusive husband, even though she swore she would never do that. And so more particularly for my audience, so many of us come from families where mom or dad cheated on the other and now they're terrified of repeating that in their own relationship. Yeah. So two questions on this. Why has that happened? Like, why do we repeat these behaviors, especially in this sexual context? And perhaps more importantly, how do we avoid that? Let me address like, how do we avoid it first? And then let's go back. So there's this great quote from a guy named Richard Rohr who says the pain that we do not transform, we transmit always someone else has to suffer because I don't know how to. So uh that's what's happening intergenerational is that we have all this pain uh that a lot of us have not always been able to transform. And if we don't transform that pain, we are going to transmit it onto the next generation. And so how do we transform pain? I would say it's a matter of finding grief and finding anger. So grief is that sense of it when you're staring down the Brokenness of many generations, like, you know, the story that I shared about my grandmother when I'm dealing with my own compulsion for secrecy and shame, you know, I can either choose to try and hide that or I can try and will my way through it or I can begin to allow tears to fall with regard to. This has been a deeply broken sexual story in my family for generations, right? And so the only I think real appropriate response to that is a level of grief, but also the other side to that is a level of anger of I don't want trauma to win in my life or my kid's life. And so if we can kind of hold that razor's edge of, sometimes we need grief for some of the tragedies and heartaches that we have known. But also we need a level of anger and defiance to say like no more. Uh this is not going to continue in my family. So any of my clients that I see that are able to hold that paradox of grief and anger end up transforming their lives. So that's how we get out of it. Why does that happen? Uh We are learning more and more and more every day about why this happens. So, one of the fascinating studies uh that's been not just studies but field of studies would be epigenetics and that's the study of gene expression. And so they have done studies with uh something like water fleas. So water fleas that are exposed to a predator, they will give birth to other water fleas that are born with a helmeted or horned head. And that will remain on the water fleas for subsequent generations until the threat is removed from the water. So that's just microscopic water fleas right born with helmeted heads because of the trauma in the water. So if that's happening with water fleas, how much more is that happening with family systems? How much more is that happening with your sexual story? So, epigenetics, I think begins to answer some of that, some of the other things that we know. Uh and this would just be an adage in psychology would be uh we go to people that are familiar to us because they are familial. And so that sense of if you are used to a particular man or woman or archetype in your family, that might be compulsive or uh using substances or having a secretive life that gets coded in your neuros systems, neurobiology is like, this is just a normal person to be around. And so the people that you feel comfortable with later on in life will probably end up resembling what your body has known. And so just that sense of that's part of the repetition. Uh but the other thing I would say, and then I'll pause to see if there's any clarification would be it. You know, all of us that are growing up in these types of home have endured some level of trauma and trauma according to people like Gabor mate and Peter Levine would say that trauma is not just something that happens to us. Trauma is also what happens inside of us in the absence of an empathetic witness. And so just that sense of when the divorce occurred, when the alcoholism occurred, when there was some level of Brokenness, it wasn't just that that event occurred. The bigger question is who held your tears? Who held your rage? Uh who held your face in the midst of a family system breaking down? And if you didn't have someone that offered a face that was able to bear witness to what you went through, you have unaddressed trauma in your life and what's the impact of unaddressed trauma? Uh Three things we have fragmentation. Number one, number two would be a sense of the need to numb. And then the third would be isolation. So, fragmentation, numbing and isolation. So, fragmentation is just that sense of uh when the story is broken. When the family is broken, there's not solid ground to stand on. There is difficulty. We don't know where to go. We don't know what tomorrow looks like. We don't know what five years looks like. And so there's just a sense of how is a nine year old girl supposed to hold the reality of a family imploding or blowing up due to some particular issue where you can't. So you go from this sense of profound fragmentation of life into the need to numb and why do we numb? Well, because the pain of what we are experiencing is far too much. And so that could be finding porn is a great numbing agent, promiscuity. Uh Hooking up with people could be a great numbing agent. Uh Alcoholism, just a lot of substances or screen time can all help us numb and dissociate from the pain that we're experiencing. But then after fragmentation, after you've found kind of the go to numbing device, uh you will inevitably end up in some level of isolation from what you're experiencing. So the shame of what numbing you chose or just the reality that you don't have a lot of people in your life that are able to bear with to what you went through. You end up highly isolated in life. And that's the story that gets repeated over and over again is that we feel fragmented in our adult life. It's too painful to deal with our own family or our own career. So then we find things to numb out with and then we eventually feel isolated and then we're like, dang it. Uh I'm right back to where my family was. Why am I so screwed up? What's wrong with me? My whole family is messed up. I'm messed up. And then that's really where that sense of shame solidifies in our life. Wow. I know that's a lot. No, it's amazing. Generational trauma. But that's, that's how we heal. But also that's why it keeps happening. No, this is so relevant to our audience. And I'd invite everyone listening to actually rewind and listen to that section again because there's so much there. It's so dense. It's so rich. It's so good and there's so much I want to say, but I can relate on such a deep level to everything that you said. So I was 11 when my parents separated and that just shattered my world. Uh They later got divorced and it was just really difficult. And one of the ways that I numbed was pornography. A friend of mine introduced me to it and, um, fell into that habit. Thankfully, I was able to get it out of my life, but it was, um, certainly some an escape, a distraction from the pain in my life. That was just too much to deal with that sense of feeling just broken or fragmented like you said, I, I felt that palpably Jay, like it was palpable through high school into college. It was like, man, I just, I feel so broken. I know I need to heal and I just had no idea how to go about that, which is actually why this ministry exists because I don't want other young people going through the same thing like they deserve better. Um Another thing that you mentioned was just like going to what's familiar. So I've seen this a lot and the young people that I work with, especially when it comes to relationships. It's like, yeah, we, we end up kind of back with people who treat it as similar as our family. Like you said, even to the point that we've noticed that even to the point that healthy relationships feel boring, like they literally feel like uninteresting because we're looking for drama, we're looking for dysfunction and the lack of it seems like this might be isn't the right thing and, and that is just mind blowing as well, so, so much to say there. But thank you for going through it and just want to give you a chance to comment on any of that. Yeah, it's heartbreaking to see these patterns be repeated. But I think that that there's yeah, there's so much in there for healing and growth and I think that's, I mean, that's what we talking about is like there are so many things in our present life that do need to be addressed, that we do need to heal, that we do need to outgrow. But if you are engaging that issue with a level of contempt, like how could I be so stupid or what's wrong with me? Uh You're not going to heal or grow and so growth and healing require a level of curiosity and kindness. And that's what we're getting at is, can you at least be curious about why you might be drawn to the partner that you're drawn to? Can you be kind to the reality that you have an unaddressed sexual struggle uh that you don't know what to do with and most of your efforts to change that uh have actually, you know, thickened the plot. And, and I think again, if we can hold that razor's edge between, how can I be curious, how can I be kind? But also I have a lot of integrity with regard to, I don't want this to, to ruin my relationships. And I don't want this to rob my experience of joy in life. That's really where change will begin to unfold. Makes so much sense. I, I think one of the struggles for this audience in particular coming from these divorced families especially is that so often um because divorce is so common, it becomes so normalized, it's not even called the trauma. So that point that you mentioned about isolation people, I can't tell you today, like how many people we've heard who reach out and say, like I just feel so validated, listening to interviews like this, hearing the experts, like you on the show talk about this stuff because it's just so freeing. And um one other thing I wanted to mention on repetition, compulsion was, um I've noticed and I've heard this from other psychologists as well that you so sometimes kind of go down that path of that unhealthy behavior that you observed growing up almost in an attempt to rewrite the ending of the story. It's like, well, you know, dad or mom cheated on the other. If I maybe start going down that path, I can end it in a way that I wanted them to do that. But uh any final thoughts on that before we move on. Yeah, I mean, there's so much there. Uh one thing that I was thinking about when you were talking uh would just be like we have to think about this in terms of attachment as well. So like when you know, when you, when there's a divorce that happens, your attachments are severed. And so that you found porn at a point where your attachments were severed, that's the work that we want people to be doing is, you know, how have these broken attachments with a mom or a dad actually? Like where is that playing itself out? And for a lot of people, they begin to kind of get a sense of I would never felt attached to my mom or my dad. But that first time that they experience porn or that first time that they uh took a substance, it was like a warm hug that they had never had before. And so that, I mean, I think just even that language would be just really important to understand your attachment. So the point that you were making with regard to people feeling validated and listening to your podcast, um a a little bit bit of kind of neuroscience on that and brain neuroscience, I guess as well would be we have something in the left uh prefrontal lobe called Broca's area. And Broca's area is what's responsible for speech. And so any time that there is a trauma, Broca's area goes offline and so you may have even had that experience in your adolescence or childhood where you know, the divorce happened or something rocked your family and then people are like, how are you? And it's just an aggravating awful question because you're like, I don't know what to say to this. It's like I have no freaking words for what I have been through. I don't know how I talk about any of this kind of stuff. Well, why is that? It's not because you're dumb. It's not because you're stupid and just can't articulate something. It is a form of trauma where Broca's area goes offline. And so again, back to the empathetic witness, but also Brene Brown talks about this in her newest book, she quotes a German philosopher who says that the limits of my language are the limits of my world. And so that's part of what this podcast is doing and what you're doing is you're expanding people's language, which is expanding their world, which is helping them make sense of what they have been through. And so that's where, you know, having an empathetic witness, but also a podcast or just any language that helps people name what they've never been able to name before. Uh group therapy, really important for people coming out of these types of family systems as well because you get to hear other people's experience and you're like, yeah, I had that experience as well like, yeah, moving schools or the shame in my community or you know, how do I deal with the relief of it was really good to get that narcissistic man or what and out of the house. Uh So grateful I can kind of date my life before my mom left and then after she left because it got so much better for me. So we just never quite know in sharing our stories with one another. Uh what's gonna resonate and then what's going to help us develop and cultivate our language for what we've lived through? Wow, so good. And I appreciate all that. If people want to learn more about the neurobiology, neuroscience, are there any books that you recommend starting with because I could tell this is so relevant to our audience. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the, I I would say the body keeps the score by Bessel Van Der Kolk is a great um initial read. If people haven't read it, it's just, I think it breaks down pretty complex uh neuroscience and just the understanding of a lot of what we're talking about, of how does how does the body keep the score from what we have been through? So I would say go there first and then Gabor Mate, uh the myth of normal dives into some of that as well. So there's a lot more neuroscience coming out around all this. But I would say start with Bessel Van Der Kolk or Gara mate. Thanks for that. And I know everyone will, will love hearing that if you were to add anything. Like let's say you were to sit down with a young person. You already said so much. I think that applies to this. But let's say if you're going to sit down with the young person to have that difficult conversation with them about, yeah, just them wrestling with, dealing with their mom and their dad cheating on the other. Would you add anything to what you've already said if you were to again sit across from them and just help them wrestle with that? Mhm. Well, I think it's like the, what's the meaning that they made out of the affair. Right. So, um that's just really important to get a sense of, you know, were there details that they were privy to that, you know, sometimes it was a sense of, it wasn't just the detail of the affair, but they had some sense that their mom or their dad lacked integrity in other areas of their life as well. So, were they brought in, you know, there's just, there's so many different ways that this could play out within a family. So some families, it could be, I, you know, my dad was always traveling and on business and so it, it was never a surprise that he had something of a hidden life or it could be that some parents bring their Children into some of the drama and some of the love affair of what they are developing. So there's this sense of, you know, what did your parent ask you to hold? Was it more emotionally and mesh leading up to that affair? Or was there just more neglect and abandonment? And then that usually has implications from there of kind of what I would follow. So those issue, those questions that you're asking are so good Joey, but it's also, it's so contextual to, yeah, what's the family system like? And you know, all of us have, even though my dad's name is John and my mom's name is Beth. I have a different relationship to my mom than any of my siblings. Uh they have a different relationship to my mom than any of us. So even though we have the same mom, each of us have different mothers. We have different fathers. And so uh that's usually the work of therapy is to kind of get a sense of who was your mother father to you, but also who were they to you as well? Love that. And I think it's an important reminder that there's not just like this one size fits all five step plan to heal anything in your life. Like it is so contextual, like you said, it is so personal and I think it is that way for a reason because like you said, healing happens in relationships. And so, well, that's a relationship with a therapist, a friend, a mentor. We really need people to go into that depth, into the darkness, into the Brokenness with us. In order to come out the other side, we really can't do it alone. And for someone like me who's just like, I've noticed this a lot with our audience too. Like we developed this sort of fierce independence because we felt like, well, you know, I can't really rely on mom and dad, like they're so busy, boring with each other that I kind of have to learn how to stand on my own 2 ft. And then we carry this Brokenness with us through life and these unwanted behaviors. And it's like, man, I really want to get these out of my life. But I have this tendency to just rely on no one just to rely on myself to have this first independence and it puts you in a really tough spot. Yeah. So two things there, part of what we're talking about is the role that each person developed within their family system and you've got to understand your role. So for some people there is that approach of, I can't rely on anyone from here on out. And then yes, you develop a life of a lot of secretive behaviors because you're trying to make your life work outside of the context of relationship. And so that's, you know, the work of healing is to be able to say, I bless that boy, that girl that figured out a way to get through life through being fiercely independent. But then usually at some point in your thirties or forties, there's usually going to be a crisis of the person that you became in response to your trauma is now causing new problems. And so that's always the paradox of this work is let's bless that adolescent, that young adult that learned a way of life to help them survive. But anything that we begin to lean on in the aftermath of trauma will inevitably create problems for us later on in life. And we've got to address that. So that's one role, another role might be, you know, it's the, the son or the daughter who their mother or father never got the therapy or the friendship that they needed in the aftermath of the trauma. And so that child feels like I can't really go off to live my own independent life because I need to kind of tend to my mother or to my father because if I don't, I am something of their lifeline. And so it's that sense of the umbilical cord is still connected to your mother because you feel that sense of if I go off and live my own life, she's gonna be alone. And so I will sacrifice some of my desires and some of my independence. Uh so that she doesn't have to face some of this loneliness. And so then you try and get married, maybe you do get married and then there's this fierce loyalty of like, you know, my spouse wants me to be doing this, but then I really need to go on vacation or at least make a family visit to my grandmother or, or to my mom or to my dad. And again, what is that exposing? It's exposing the role that you learned how to play in a very broken system. And so, you know, don't think that just because you're fiercely independent, you have escape trauma, but also don't think because like you're still very enmeshed with your family system that that event from 20 years ago is still not affecting your life today. So in the words of kind of the writer Faulkner, the, the past is not dead. It's not even past meaning it's playing out right now. One of my guests said that sometimes the past lives in the present. I thought that that's exactly what you're saying. It's, it's so true. And I think that's the work of feeling that we can put the past in the past and live fully in the present, which is beautiful man. There's so much I want to ask you, but let's switch gears a little bit. I was so fascinated by the connection you made in the book between Lust and Anger. Just mind blowing. You said this. You said, I believe male anger to be at the heart of much of the sexual Brokenness and violation in our world want to find out why you're so compelled to pursue unwanted sexual behavior. Figure out what makes you so angry, what's happening here? Why does anger drive those behaviors? Yeah. So we need to think about kind of these behaviors, unwanted sexual behaviors as a river. And so the comparison that I make would be like, think about your unwanted sexual behavior as like a river no different than the Mississippi. And so why is the Mississippi river so powerful? Well, it's because it's fed by so many other tributaries. So the Missouri, the Arkansas, Tennessee Red, I forget how many tributaries the Mississippi has, but it's a lot. And so that sense of what we're dealing with is not just one issue. Uh There are several tributaries that flow into it. And so uh in a lot of kind of faith based communities, they always address, they always try to address the issue of lust. And so what they do is they try and put a dam on that river and they put internet monitoring there. They try and get people into invasive voyeuristic accountability groups. Uh They try to get people to kind of just will themselves to kind of dam it up so that it doesn't flow. And then they find out that it, you know, maybe might work for a little bit, but then it, it inevitably fails. Well, they, they've only looked at one tributary which would be some level of lust, but they haven't looked at other things like unaddressed trauma. They haven't looked at family of origin issues. They haven't looked at the issue of anger. And so anger would just be that sense of, you know, that the man that I was describing earlier with regard to lack of purpose in his life. And also, you know, some level of a rigid father, well, that anger has to go somewhere and for a lot of people, if you don't have a and most of us don't have a context in our world today to talk about the anger of a broken family, to talk about the anger uh that we have towards our moms towards our dads or towards just really anything, uh, any presidential candidate, like we are a people that have so much unaddressed anger in our lives and it's being lived out always. And so that's one of the appeals to porn. You know, let's say that you're in a marriage and someone doesn't like sex as much as you do and you feel like there's some desire discrepancy. Well, if you don't tend to that with honor and delight for one another, there is going to be a sense of I'm angry at you. So I'm gonna go behind your back and feel really justified doing what I want to do because you don't desire sex as much as I do. So therefore, I'm gonna take my anger to this world of porn. Uh Or maybe, maybe you didn't get the promotion that you wanted at work and you feel like that person that so undeserving got it. Well, what are you gonna do with that? Anger? And a lot of times people will begin to find that porn or an affair really begins to kind of help soothe them and calm them down after they're really angry or upset about something. So again, there's just so many different key drivers and don't think that you can just address it through trying to combat lust. It's just, it's not an effective approach. It's a losing battle for sure. Elsewhere in the book, you say this, you say the first key childhood driver of unwanted sexual behavior is having a family system that was characterized as rigid and or disengaged. You mentioned that earlier in the show, Dr Patrick Cars, one of the leading researchers on sexual compulsivity found that 77% of those who struggle with sexual addiction report coming from a rigid family and 87% percent report coming from a disengaged family. I know we can't go too deep into this. But what are the characteristics of those family, families and anything else to add on why they play such a big role? Sure. So, I mean, a rigid family really comes down to this issue of kind of discipline. So discipline for some families might be, yeah, like a, a paddle, corporal punishment. But it could also be something more subtle where you just knew that like you needed to get straight A's or you were gonna be interrogated by a mother or a father. Uh It's usually some sense of like we need conformity in this family because conformity gives us some level of stable ground to lean on. But then if you don't conform in some way, there's usually some discipline that you have to undergo. Well, what's the root word of discipline? Uh It is a disciple which means to teach. And so that's the really key question is, was the disc was the discipline in your home? Did it help you to understand your emotions and why you did the things that you did or was it really trying to use control based methods against you? Um And that's usually, uh you know, a big part of those rigid families is it's gonna create a lot of powerlessness, a lot of humiliation. And so you have to take that somewhere. So what I say in my book is that a rigid family creates fertile soil for anger to emerge, what we were just talking about disengaged family systems would be, you know, much more abandonment and neglect. It's just the sense that care is overlooked in your life. Um And so just from that attachment standpoint that we grow up looking for someone looking for us. And this never ever stops. As long as we are alive and conscious is that we're looking for the delight. We're looking for the faces of people in our world to love us, affirm us, be there for us. And if we are looking out into our family system and there is no loving, compassionate, a deeply delighting face that is given back to us, we are going to scan the horizon looking for someone to look at us. And a lot of times that's what will happen where I will hear people that come from disengaged family systems. And it's like, yeah, the first time that I saw porn, what I was drawn to were the eyes of someone in the porn film because it felt like they were looking into my soul. And I had never had that experience of someone just kind of looking deeply and wanting me. Well, that's an attachment womb that's being sexualized into porn. And so what I say in my book is that disengaged family systems, create fertile soil for lust to emerge. And so I think that's the work is we've got to not just fight against a sexual problem. We've got to go back to the core stories with our parents, with our families. Uh where there is unaddressed, anger and unaddressed grief in our life. Absolutely. No. So good. And, and you're hitting on stuff that this audience deals with so much. So, thank you for, for going into this so well, I've heard you also speak about this tension in families between honor and honesty. Again, we can't go into it too deeply. But what does that look like? And how do you hit that proper balance? Because so many of the young people that I walk with, they really struggle with that, you know, there's like this protection they have of their parents even though they harm them in a lot of ways. Um But they still love them and you know, we want to honor that. So, so how do you hit that balance between the two? So yes, I think we have to hold the tension between honor and honesty. And I would say most people had believed the lie that if I am honest about my mother or father or faith community that I could not truly honor them or the other realm would be if I honored my mother or father or faith community, I could not actually be honest about what I experienced. And I just to point out like that is not the way it is supposed to be. So I think of some of the, you know, ancient. So something like the story of Abraham uh that is held by many different faiths. We know that Abraham in kind of Genesis 12 left everything that he was supposed to leave to go into this land that God had called him to. Uh he is the father of many faiths. And at the same time, we also know that he tried to traffic his wife at least twice. And so it's this sense of like it, the, you know, the Bible is an ancient near east document, which means it's much more of like an Eastern context than anything we would know about it in the western world. So in the western world, we might tend to bend a bit more towards just trying to be honest, uh and unbridled honesty in our day age, but we don't always have honor. But in an, in an Eastern context, I mean, it's all family honor. So just that sense of like we're able to hold, you know, the paradox of this person is full of faith, but they're also a profound coward. And that's the work is, you know, when I've had to address my own family system, I've had to understand that, you know, my dad was consistently reading psychology and theological text together. And so when I think back to my origins of how did I learn how to integrate kind of faith and psychology and being naturally curious about why things work the eyes in the heart and the brain that I have were formed by many conversations with my dad throughout my childhood. So I can honor him for that. But I also have to be honest, that much of the debris in my life and difficulty with attaching and feeling my emotions and having the ability to kind of know what to do with some of the heartache and trauma in my life and his abandonment of my family. And in very significant moments is something that I've had to grow increasingly honest about. And so I think that's the work is uh I, I deeply love my dad and honor him for who he is. And he's a deeply broken man that created a lot of debris in our family. And that Brokenness is not grounds for separation or blame. But I think it's that sense of the grief in our family and in the midst of honoring and being honest about our grief. I think that allows for a new family life to emerge where it's not trying to keep up the appearance of what the stringer family name was supposed to represent. But it's also not trying to kind of just be cruel and angry with one another. But it's a sense of the honesty creates a new foundation of intimacy and that's what we're after. Beautiful and that's healing in itself. We're almost out of time here. But in order to break free, you know, you say that you need to listen to your lust, you mentioned that before. I love, love your analogy of imagining your sexual life as a house. Would you explain that? Yeah. So it probably should have addressed this early on in case people are like, why would I think about my sexual fantasies or porn searches? But uh the basic premise here would be I encourage people to think about their sexual life as a house. So just imagine it's late in the evening and they feel that familiar knock of lust or desire come to their door and just that sense of what are you gonna do in that moment? And some people will, you know, put a force field around their house, they will try and just say no, they might call a friend and say I'm really struggling or other times you just resign to like it's worse to fight this thing. So I'm just gonna let it in and let it ransack various rooms of my house. So as you can see most of the approaches that we take, either try to stiff arm these issues or they just kind of like, let them in. And so the approach that I take in my book and some of the online courses that I have is what would it mean for you to go out onto the front porch of your life and begin to ask your sexual life questions? Like, I wonder why this form of pornography has been appealing to me since I was the age of 15? Or? I wonder why I, I tend to be most seduced into an affair or to porn on a Sunday evening instead of the other days of the week. I wonder what's happening there. Uh So I want people to just develop a sense of curiosity about their life. So get out onto the front porch, ask your sexual life questions. Why am I drawn to this? Why do I love this? I wonder what the meaning is within this particular fantasy or I wonder why I can't reach orgasm without thinking about this particular person or this archetype or this fantasy. And I think that's the, that's the work of healing. It's a bit odd and counterintuitive at first. But I think curiosity can really take us so much further than just a desire to militantly fight something or uh even just praying over and over again to find healing. Uh I just, I think that those, that repetition just doesn't, it's not very generative for us. Yeah. No, so good. I love this approach. So much better than kind of what's typically thrown out there, like less management mastery in some way, like you say. So. Good Jay, you're the man. Thank you so much for your time. I don't want to keep you any longer if people want to get the book and the course in order to kind of be guided through everything that we talked about. How do they do that and how do they find you online as well? Probably the best would be just Instagram uh A Y underscore Stringer underscore the reason for all the underscores is I think there's another British crime fiction that is also J Stringer. So which is actually he was first to market it. Yes, those are your secret identity, right? Yes, exactly. So uh you can find me there website is jay dash stringer dot com and there are assessments that people can take uh if you want to learn this approach and learn the key drivers, there's what's called the sexual behavior self assessment that you can take. Uh the journey course is a faith based course for people that are looking for a new paradigm to address this. Uh unwanted is my book. And then we do a lot of individual intensives uh with my team. And then we also have a training program for leaders. So if you are a therapist, if you are a coach, a clergy of any kind, uh if you're in any type of leadership position, helping people to outgrow these problems we have what's called the unwanted guide program. And that's a 13 week training for professionals to help them understand their own story so that they are more effective in, in teaching others. So good Jay. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for everything you've done. I want to give you the, the last word quickly. Any final words of encouragement or advice for everyone listening, especially those who struggle with unwanted sexual behavior. I just keep going back to curiosity versus contempt. And most of us the way that we tend to engage our own life, our own relational life, our own sexual life is principally out of self contempt or other centered contempt and contempt, especially for us who have known trauma feels really powerful. Why? Because within fragmentation in our current life, fragmentation from our past, we need a sense of sure footing and contempt provides us with a sense of certainty in the midst of uncertainty. So if you can resist the temptation to choose contempt for yourself or to someone else, and you can begin to get curious about your life or someone else's life, it will be so much more beautiful, so much more transformative than anything else that you could choose. So give curiosity a try. Wow, Jay is amazing. His content in his book is just so so helpful. And the main takeaway from this episode, as you can tell is your sexual Brokenness is not random. It's not random. The key to healing. It is actually understanding why you struggle in the particular ways that you do. And Jay's book will help you do that again. It's titled Unwanted. How Sexual Brokenness Reveals our way to healing. Just click on the link in the show notes. If you want to buy that, I highly highly recommend it. And if you're not ready to buy the book, you can get the first chapter for free by going to J dash stringer dot com slash book or just clicking on the link in the show notes. So often as you can tell from this episode at the root of sexual compulsion or Brokenness is trauma. But before you can heal it, you have to understand it. Our free mini on trauma titled Why You Feel Broken consists of five short videos by a trauma therapist that answer the questions. What is trauma? What impact does it have on your body? How does it affect your emotions? What does it do to your mind and how does it impact your relationships again? Once you understand what trauma is and how it's affecting you today, then you can begin to heal and build a life that you long for to get the free mini course. It's really easy to just go to restored ministry dot com slash broken again. Restored ministry ministry is singular dot com slash broken to sign them for free and begin watching the mini course again. Go to restored ministry dot com slash broken or just click on the link in the show notes that wraps up this episode. If you know someone who's struggling from their parents, divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them and closing, always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce in your own life. And keep in mind the words of CS Lewis who said you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
