Overcoming Pornography: an Interview with Marie Poulter

Rock Solid Relationships

[00:01] Sara: Ready to create rock solid relationships with the people that matter most to you.

[00:05] Sara: You are in the right place.

[00:07] Sara: My name is Sarah Payne, and I'm a master. Certified relationships coach. And each week I teach you how to create the connection and love that you desire, because you know that the quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your relationships. I'm so glad you're here. Safe episode for you, where I get to interview Marie Poulter, who is a life coach and who specializes in helping people overcome their habit of viewing ***********. And I think this episode will be really insightful for you if either you want to stop looking at *********** or you have someone in your life who wants to stop looking at ***********. Marie's take on *********** is possibly different than any other way that you've thought about it before, and I think that it's so enlightening and refreshing. So tune in to listen to how to overcome your own habit of viewing *********** or to help a loved one who also wants to overcome their *********** habit. And if you want to know more about Marie, you can find out information on her website. She has some resources there and information about how to work with her, and the website is pornographyfreedom.com. All right, I look forward to hearing about how you like this episode.

[02:12] Sara: Hey, Marie, welcome to the podcast.

[02:15] Marie: Thank you, Sarah. Glad to be here.

[02:17] Sara: I'm so glad you're here. This has been a long time in the making. Yeah, we've been talking about this for a while.

[02:23] Marie: Yes, it tell.

[02:25] Sara: Will you introduce yourself to my audience?

[02:28] Marie: Okay, so my name is Marie Poulter, and I am a certified life coach, but I now focus on helping people who want to stop looking at *********** stop looking at ***********. And I think that's really a big key just to start out with. It's people who want to stop. I get a lot of people who are like, will you tell my husband how bad this is? Will you tell my kids how bad this is? That's not really where we're going with our coaching business. We're not trying to do that. There are some really good organizations who are making that stuff happen, but our focus is on those who want to stop, who really have a moral compass for whatever reason. It's just morally, it's not what they want to be doing. Often they're like a high functioning, successful person who has goals and dreams and can really do good at a lot of areas in their life. And for whatever reason, they just can't quite become free from ***********. So that's who we really focus on. And I make it sound like it's men, but we do have women that we work with, and it is definitely both genders, and both genders struggle with this. Men typically are introduced to it at a younger age, and research shows that they are often introduced as early as, like, nine years old. And so my heart goes out to all the little nine year olds right now in 2023, who are devastated that there is a part of them that just hates this when they see it. And then it kind of makes me emotional. Sorry. They're devastated about it, and then they kind of like it, and they don't understand why. And so they start to develop this identity that maybe something is wrong with them. And then we're going to fast forward 20 years, and they've created a life they love. They still have this one little dirty secret, I guess, that they kind of call it, and that's the people we really, really want to help because there's so much misinformation. We were just raised in a totally crazy place about the facts around *********** view. And so I'm so excited to help people with that.

[04:38] Sara: I have so many questions already. I'm writing them down because I don't want to interrupt you because you're giving so many nuggets away. But what inspired you to want to work with people who want to stop looking at ***********?

[04:50] Marie: So I guess if I back up a little bit and explain where I even found life coaching from. I'm an educator. I have a teaching certification or teaching degree, and I always knew that I love teaching, but I always felt like there was going to be something more. And I would tell my husband, someday I'm going to go back and become a therapist, a counselor. I want to help people more than just teaching them. And so I continued on in my life, raised five kids, or was in the middle of raising five kids, but I noticed that a lot of things happening in my life were just kind of out of my control. I felt a lot of times like, this is just happening to me, and I don't know what to do about it. One such instance was my little son that was six, and he was really struggling with anxiety, and I was so frustrated with him. He was, of all things, anxious that I wasn't going to pick him up from school on time. I'm the mom that gets in line second or third every day. I kind of like getting there, and I'll read for a few minutes, just have some downtime, and so I would get in line and be there. There was one day of all the days of all of my kids that I can't remember, I was a few minutes late, and he had grabbed on to this little anxiety from this one day, and it was all he could see. So I came across something on Instagram that was like, you want to help your kids with anxiety, and it was free. And something happens when something's free, we tend to not do it right away. Right?

[06:09] Sara: It's free.

[06:10] Marie: Threw it in my inbox for a few months, and then when it kept continuing. I ended up opening it up, and I did what the suggestion was, and it was from a life coach. And Sarah, I'm not kidding. Within one day, the anxiety was just gone. And we haven't ever dealt with it again. This little guy, his name is Chase, and he's now 15, and he is so cute. With anxiety or negative feelings in general. As soon as he sees them coming, he's been trained to say, oh, there it is. And he goes through the process that we process and release emotion, and it's so cool to watch him. So when I saw that, when I saw that in him, it just turned something on in my brain, and I was like, wait a minute. Are you telling me that we have power to change our lives the way that we think, the way that the six year old thinks, that he can actually change something so drastically and affect his result? It just blew my mind. And so I started following coaching and then eventually got coached and then became a coach. And one of the biggest things that I was so excited about was this issue that I had seen in so many family members and loved ones around me. It was kind of quiet. If you look back 30 years ago, 20 years ago, even ten years ago, people with *********** issues, when we would hear about them, we would just be, like, shocked and devastated and so scared. I remember so vividly talking to a church leader about a loved one, and I was so scared for this loved one. And the church leader, in all of his, well, meaningful guidance and love, just said, you know, it's a tough one. They never overcome this. It's pretty hopeless. And I remember my stomach just sank. But there has to be something else. You can't just tell me that they're just sunk. And so when I learned about coaching, it started clicking. What if all these people aren't sunk? What if there actually is an answer for them? And maybe some of the information that we've got is wrong and maybe we can retrain our brains and we can think in a different way that creates success with this. So I had four little boys at the time and one little girl when I started coaching. And I started focusing so much on how do I help them at this tender age when I know they're going to see ***********. 91% of kids by the time they're 16 have used ***********. So we're silly as parents to think not our kids, right?

[08:33] Sara: Gone are the days when we can protect them from it.

[08:36] Marie: You can have every filter, you can have all the restrictions, you can have a Gab phone, which there's some great things with that, but they are going to see ***********. Research shows that it's factual. So when I started realizing that I could give my kids tools and that I could help them avoid this 2030 years down the road. Then it really started me getting excited. And then as things happen, I started coaching people individually. And I'd be coaching these men and women and they would so shamefully tell me what I've really been struggling with is ***********. I said I was coming to you for marriage coaching or just general coaching in general. And really it would come down to *********** a lot of times. And so as I coached them, it was so humbling to see that so many of the things that they thought were not even real and we could change their thinking and retrain their brain to do something completely different than they'd ever done before. So it's a multileveled process with *********** because there's a lot of emotions that they've been escaping emotion for years. But then one of the things that's really, really big is the lack of understanding of human sexuality. And this is where it got really exciting for me, because I was working with people for a couple of years with ***********, just one on one, and we were seeing great success. And then it hit me. They kept asking me questions that I really wasn't equipped with. I'm over sexualized. I just have a really high sex drive, and I have some pretty perverse ways of thinking about things. And I realized that I was a little bit out of my league. And so my husband is a physician and he's a pain management doctor and anesthesiologist. And I would ask him after I'd worked with a client, I would say, hey, tell me about this. Like with human sexuality, how does this work? How does the body work? Like that? And so he would start giving me information, and I'm like, Wait a minute. They're not hypersexualized. They're not perverted. They were created as humans. We're all created to be sexual beings. And so I brought my husband on board, and he is such a foundational part of the education for my clients because for the first time, they have so much relief. They're like, oh, I'm not disgusting.

[10:55] Sara: There's nothing wrong with me.

[10:56] Marie: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with me. And even teenage girls and young elementary age kids, they're not getting the information. Like, you were created to be a sexual being. And we're kind of getting that in 2023. We're getting to that place a little bit where we can recognize that that's who we are, that we're created sexually. But I feel like finally, for the first time in my life, I'm taking back sexuality from the yucky, dirty *********** industry and putting it where it belongs, that humans are created as sexual beings and there is healthy sexuality there.

[11:37] Sara: Good.

[11:38] Marie: So the difference, I think, is that *********** is degrading. Sexuality is not degrading. We have so many people who go into shame with *********** that's the number one thing is shame.

[11:48] Sara: I was going to say is that the number one challenge that your clients face is the shame.

[11:52] Marie: The number one challenge is just the shame. They are so embarrassed. And a lot of them like, if my wife knew, if my mom we hear this a lot. If my mom knew, bless their hearts. I want to say, though, too, Sarah, that most of the people who want to stop looking at *********** are incredible husbands, incredible workers, incredible students. Whatever phase of life they're in, they're incredible. They're honestly some of the strongest men that I've ever known. And so to be able to work with them and help them see this from a totally different standpoint has been so gratifying.

[12:28] Sara: So how do you see this, particularly the shame around ***********? How do you see this affecting the relationships that matter most to your clients?

[12:39] Marie: Wow. So research shows there was this big research study a few years ago that showed that men this was just for men. They would rather admit to having an affair if they were married, cheating on either their girlfriend or their wife right. Than they would admit to *********** viewing.

[12:57] Sara: Why do you think that is?

[12:59] Marie: That's mind blowing to me, right? There's so much pain we have created in our society an awful you are awful. You are disgusting. You are dirty. And don't get me wrong when I say this. I am not talking at all about abuse of any kind. We don't work with if they have a fascination with children or using someone in any way, we get them to the right sources. That's definitely not what we're doing. We are working with healthy brains who want to stop looking, but all of them will come to us and say, I'm addicted, and this is so shameful.

[13:36] Sara: Okay, so that label addicted. Tell us more about that because that seems like it could be very detrimental.

[13:43] Marie: It's so detrimental because addicted, that is like back to that church leader, right? Like, you have got a label on you. You may as well just put it on your forehead. It's never coming off.

[13:54] Sara: And it takes away agency. Like it takes away their right to choose.

[13:57] Marie: You have no power. I have multiple stories from clients saying, well, I went to a counselor, I went to a church leader, I went to a parent. And they said, studies have shown that this is harder to quit than heroin. I don't know where those studies were. They're not true.

[14:14] Sara: Yeah.

[14:15] Marie: Not even real. But how damaging when you hear people say, that is the plague, you have the plague. Right. That's so hard. So there is just so much shame around it. So much shame, so much fear. And then you will have different I don't know what who do I want to say that you hear different leaders of different whether they're thought groups or religious groups or whatever, saying that it's going to lead you to you're going to murder somebody or abuse somebody or you're going to ruin your whole life. That's really scary way to live.

[14:53] Sara: And then we wonder why they're ashamed and don't want to tell anybody and they can't tell.

[14:57] Marie: Yeah, there's a story of a why.

[14:59] Sara: They'D rather admit that they're having an affair than even if they weren't, they'd.

[15:02] Marie: Rather just be like, oh, it's an affair, rather than just an affair with my computer. And I get that it's a very sensitive issue. And it's really hard for a spouse or a girlfriend because there is that physical component where they feel like they're being cheated on. And so there's some education for the spouse or whoever's in the relationship with this person because they really have to if they want to be a part of this habit change, then they have some work to do on their own brains.

[15:29] Sara: Can we talk about that for a second? Because I'm thinking of my listeners and of course I know that there's some that are like, I need Marie's help, and so we're going to talk about how they can get more help from you. But I'm also thinking of the spouse or the mother or the parent who's thinking like, so and so in my life that I care so much about, really needs this. They need to see that this is a problem.

[15:55] Marie: Yeah. And to that, again, it has to be from the person. And we all know if you're eating chocolate cake every day and somebody else tells you you need to stop eating chocolate cake, you're not going to stop eating chocolate cake until you decide that you want to stop eating chocolate cake. But I think that sometimes we'll say the spouse right. We'll say that it's a female espouse. And your husband needs to see you're thinking. He needs to see how tough this is. If you can approach him with, I'm not going anywhere. I'm here for you. I'm going to learn as much about what's going on for you as you are. I'm willing to go all in and I'm not leaving. So often they're like, if I don't get this figured out, she said she's leaving. The shame, fear, and then my whole life is ruined.

[16:43] Sara: Some tough, tough things like an ultimatum.

[16:46] Marie: Too yes.

[16:48] Sara: Which we want to give space for the partner who feels betrayed.

[16:52] Marie: Too absolutely. There's big betrayal that happens there. But there are also things that we can do with our brain retraining us right. To look at what is a fact here. Am I really being betrayed? And then set your boundaries. Of course. Set your boundaries and figure things out together. But this is probably a little bit silly that I use this example, but I ask spouses sometimes. So let's say that you have this online shopping habit you got going on, and sometimes the husband will be like, hey, we have to stop doing this. We don't have the money for this isn't healthy. Very seldom do you hear a husband it's like, I'm leaving you if you don't quit shopping at night.

[17:33] Sara: Right.

[17:34] Marie: But this is tricky because they're like, no, but this is another woman. So we invite spouses, learn as much as you can. And there are coaches who coach with that. In fact, that will be part of our program, where we will have a coach that specifically works with betrayal and.

[17:49] Sara: That there is a way. I just want to make sure that that spouse knows that there is a place and a space where you can be in where you actually don't make their *********** use mean anything about you.

[18:02] Marie: Absolutely. It isn't about you. And that's one of the things to recognize, too. I would say that 99.9% of the clients that we work with discovered *********** and started struggling with it years and years before they met. You were going to be with yeah. And so then we put it back on the moms, and then the mom's feel terrible. Right.

[18:23] Sara: I was going to say, what about the mom who's hearing this? What would you say to her?

[18:27] Marie: Yeah, so the mom, if you're my age and you have four, three adult sons, right, and one that's 15, then the work is for you too. To figure out, how do I train my brain to have a relationship with this son that maybe is struggling with this? And rather than beat yourself up and be miserable about it, to train yourself to see things the way they really are, to see the facts, to see this. This didn't have anything to do with you either.

[18:55] Sara: This is just one so good. I think that it is work so worth doing as a mother to separate yourself from your children's choices. For all the moms out there, that is work worth doing. And I think about the mom who maybe has little kids that are like five, six, seven years old, who's just like, how can I just get this to never be a problem in my kids lives? Yes, that might be the wrong question to ask. Tell me what you think about that.

[19:27] Marie: And I guess I'd say yes, it's the wrong question, but also the right question in some ways. And actually, you should probably get there's. Another coach, actually, my sister, and she is actually coaching moms on what to do, moms and dads, parents, how to create resistant, *********** resistant children. And if I could have had that as a child, that would have been amazing in so many aspects, not just ***********. Right. We've been raised by parents who are like, don't feel your feelings, don't think about things too much. And now we're shifting to where we're learning more about that. And so there are ways that parents today can say, oh, if I can teach my kids how not to escape emotion, how to understand what's going on in their brain, and to process emotion and release emotion, that's a big step in the right direction towards becoming resistant to *********** in the future. Because I don't know that I explained this earlier, but it's really important to recognize that *********** viewing is not about sex. It's always about an escape. Escape from your feelings, escape from whatever. Yes. Whether that was boredom. Some people, even when they get really.

[20:43] Sara: Excited, it can be a quote unquote positive emotion, right?

[20:47] Marie: Yes, from emotion.

[20:48] Sara: We do it with food too.

[20:50] Marie: Totally. We do it with food. And I invite the people in relationships with my clients who are viewing **** to just have some mercy and some grace towards the person who is struggling and wants to stop. How would you feel if we saw everything that you did, every piece of cake you ate, everything that you shopped when you didn't need it, every way that you escaped from emotion, if you were in the spotlight for it and everybody's watching, like, you're going to be in big trouble if you don't stop this. So what that does usually is help the client get in a safe space. If they can get in a safe space in their own head and in their own future, knowing that I'm safe here, I can change. Then we can totally work together to create new habits and to let go of the old habits. So right now, I think it's an important thing to point out we have multiple, multiple people just in my little realm of influence that have not had the desire for ****. So it's not just, we're going to help you how to stay away from ****. They lose the desire to look at ***********.

[21:56] Sara: So this isn't about you teaching them to resist it forever?

[22:00] Marie: No. In fact, I love this well, I hate this story, but I love this little story. I met a man just randomly one afternoon and he was asking me we had some downtime, I was purchasing something from the place he worked. And so we had some downtime, just sitting there, small talk. And I ended up telling him that I work with people who struggle with quitting ***********. And he just slammed his hand down onto the desk and said, where were you three years ago? And I kind of laughed and he said, no, 200 pounds ago, where were you? And he said, I went to get help for years with ***********. My wife had said, I'm leaving if you don't get help. He had struggled with *********** for over 30 years and he said, I haven't looked at it in several years, but I have gained over 200 pounds.

[22:43] Sara: Wow.

[22:45] Marie: And so yay for him for stopping ***********. But there's a better way. There's a way that we aren't just replacing what those emotions, right? The emotions that we feel, the negative emotions, we're not just going to a different outlet. And so it's exciting. There's so much excitement, really, when you look at it, that you can retrain your brain, you can think a different way. And along the way, you can create a healthy sexual life, the one that you want to have. There's no shame in that. And so some marriages right now that I'm seeing, they're flourishing with some of my clients more than they ever had before. Because they've got right information.

[23:24] Sara: Yes. They release the shame. They learned how to process their feelings instead of looking at **** or replacing it with something else. And then it just frees up so much space in your brain to connect with the people that you love.

[23:36] Marie: Yes, it really does. Another thing that is really exciting that when you let go of **** and viewing that and that burden, you actually can start creating the life that you want. So we see a lot of people taking up weightlifting or biking or hiking, and it's not because they're replacing it. They're like, I have a new life. I have a new lease on life. There is so much brain space taken up with shame where these poor individuals have spent so much time in just this. I'm living a double life. I'm living a double life.

[24:08] Sara: Yeah.

[24:09] Marie: That is not addiction. Addiction is you are all day, every day. You cannot have a job, you cannot have relationships, you can't do anything. That's addiction. These are habits that we're dealing with.

[24:21] Sara: No, I love that I once heard that distinction. If you can go without whatever it is you are telling yourself you're addicted to, if you can not view **** while you're at work, then you're not addicted. Or if you can think of people say that they're addicted to food.

[24:36] Marie: Right.

[24:36] Sara: Well, can you go like 4 hours without eating? Then you're not addicted.

[24:40] Marie: Yeah.

[24:42] Sara: So good. So do you have any more advice for someone who wants to stop looking at ****? Where would you have them start? Aside from, of course, hiring you, which you'll tell us how they can get in contact with you. But what's one first step that they can take?

[25:01] Marie: 1St 20 steps. I'm kidding. Okay, so first I would say is to start just noticing when you view ****, what happened just before.

[25:09] Sara: Okay.

[25:10] Marie: And you will start to notice you're escaping some emotion. There is something negative that happened that is causing you to view ****. Just that one little step really opens up your brain to be like, oh, this is a possibility that I'm just escaping.

[25:25] Sara: And it might be something like some kind of shame attack. But it also might just be like, I'm bored. Right?

[25:30] Marie: Totally. Yeah. It can be I'm bored, I'm frustrated. Something happened at work, something happened at home. Or just also like, it's this month. There's nothing much going on this month. Or I just got done. We find a lot of times that somebody gets home from vacation, you think that they're just on top of the world. Right. It was just an amazing experience. But then just that what I had to look forward to. Yeah. So just notice what happened before. I call it backwards. Dot to dot. We all remember when we were little kids, right? And we just dot to dot. If you dot to dot backwards, you will find that there's some emotion tied to this, and that's exciting. If there's emotion tied to it, we can work with emotion. You can work to do something different. Right. But if you're an addict, you really can't. But when you have a habit, you can change that.

[26:16] Sara: Oh, so good. So just with curiosity, pay attention to what was going on right before they started looking at ****. That's the first step.

[26:26] Marie: Okay.

[26:26] Sara: And how can they get a hold of you? They want to learn more.

[26:29] Marie: So I have just been coaching. We've just been doing one on one coaching, and we decided that I've only have so much time in my life and I can say the same thing over and over again to create that foundation right. The facts that they need about healthy sexuality and what's going on in their brain. So we just created a course that will give access to more people, and I don't have to keep saying the same thing over and over again. So you can find information about that. It's pornographyfreedom.com. And the course is called Freedom from ***********. And I'm really confident that that is what the future holds for upcoming generations to come. We all have cell phones now, right? It's everywhere around us. And we can either wring our hands and be like, oh, we are just in trouble. It's just everywhere. I think the more education that we get, the more understanding that we get of our emotions and our brains and healthy sexuality. In a couple of generations from now, they're going to be like, oh, remember that *********** thing? We got this.

[27:29] Sara: I love that. I love that.

[27:31] Marie: It's really hopeful.

[27:33] Sara: Yes. So hopeful and so just inspiring that this is not something that has to be a problem for you forever or for your loved ones forever. There really are solutions, and it's so much easier than what they're doing now, which is living in shame. What's the word? It's like helplessness, right? And hopelessness.

[27:58] Marie: Just hopeless and helpless and dark and just scared. There's just a lot of fear out there.

[28:02] Sara: Yeah. So pornographyfreedom.com is where they can yes.

[28:06] Marie: And I have to say that I just overcame a lot of fear, and I'm starting an Instagram page. For some reason, this is just so something I never wanted to do. So Mariepolter coaching.

[28:18] Sara: They can follow you there as well. Hey, go check Marie out. Thank you for being here, for educating my listeners so much on thank you.

[28:28] Marie: So much for letting be.

[28:31] Sara: Yes. I can tell it's like oozing from you. And it doesn't have to be something that is a burden for the rest of their life.