The Power of Rituals

Dr. Mark Laaser

Rituals are that space of time that exists between the initial thought of acting out, which we would call a fantasy, and we get preoccupations with fantasies, fantasies being about some kind of sexual acting out at the bottom of the cycle is sexual acting out itself. You know, whether it's simply an act of masturbation or looking at pornography or it's more elaborate than that in terms of having an affair, doing whatever you do.

Dr. Mark Laaser

But the rituals would describe the behavioral preparation that you would go through to get from the thought to the actual action of the sexual act.

Randy Evert

To the faithful and true. I'm Randy Everett, your co-host. And today we'd like to bring for you a legacy presentation of an earlier episode featuring doctor Mark razor. The subject of today's podcast is powerlessness. Part two here now is doctor Mark Lazar in the Faithful and True podcast.

Dr. Mark Laaser

We're moving on with our content nevertheless. Well, and.

Randy Evert

We're speaking on the chapter on powerlessness, which isn't all that easy to say quickly as we wrapped up last week's show. Mark, we were talking about fantasies, and we wanted to include a couple of more points before we move ahead, because today we're going to address lesson three, which is on rituals before we get to rituals. I wanted to point out that in the Faithful and True workbook, you make a key point about fantasies saying making healthy choices about meeting underlying emotional feelings and needs will take the power of sexual fantasy away.

Dr. Mark Laaser

It goes back to our core teaching here that, you know, we have a number of core teachings, and one of the main ones is that every fantasy is a message from your soul about an unmet need or our desire. So if we do understand that fantasies are just an attempt to manage those needs and desires, then that that will help us identify the needs and desires.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Now consequently to that, we just can't leave it at that level of understanding. We have to figure out healthy ways to meet those needs and desires. And my belief has always been for myself and many others that if we find those healthy ways to do that, then the fantasies will go away. We don't need the messenger anymore.

Randy Evert

Well, and what do you recommend in the workbook is to tell at least one person about your most common sexual fantasy. Describe the fantasy briefly and simply. You do not need to go into detail and ask him to pray for you. Describe what you think is your underlying emotional need.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Yeah, and that takes some practice to get to. And it sounds also counterintuitive in our field where we we basically have felt all along, I'm sure that we should just get rid of these thoughts. We should just tell them to go away. And we know today that the more we tell a thought to go away, the stronger it probably gets.

Dr. Mark Laaser

So what this little strategy is suggesting is that one of the ways to take an away power back over something is to share it. You know, don't keep it secret. If fantasy stays secret, they will tend to grow. If we let somebody else know them, then that can take some of the power away or take our power back over them.

Dr. Mark Laaser

So now we're facing into shame, because we've always thought that some of these thoughts are just completely shameful, and to admit them to somebody else will actually take a great deal of courage to do.

Randy Evert

Well, your recommendation here strikes me as another positive point to be made for having an accountability group or partners, accountability partners, people you trust who you know you can share these intimate secrets with, and you'll still be safe.

Dr. Mark Laaser

We should have developed, and that's one of the things we're trying to teach here through this workbook journey, is that we only can work some of this stuff if we have other people who are also working on similar stuff. By the way, that's a clinical term. Randy.

Randy Evert

Look.

Dr. Mark Laaser

That up. I know you're not, you know, educated in the field of psychology particularly, but stuff is a very important word.

Randy Evert

I have completed my high school GED. I'll have you know.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Well, so then maybe you understand stuff.

Randy Evert

It's a proud moment.

Randy Evert

You you recommend the affirmation. And we've been going through these recently because each one of these chapters, you've got a powerful one that really works well for the reader. And on this subject of fantasies, you recommend the affirmation I am worthy of support and affection from others.

Dr. Mark Laaser

That's right. That's a good affirmation to tell yourself to go into maybe a time of sharing some of the stuff. By the way, I want to be clear, because I know that some of the guys listening or some of the wives listening, will be a little frightened by this idea of sharing a fantasy. So what we're talking about here is not getting graphic.

Dr. Mark Laaser

We're not talking about being explicitly detailed about a fantasy. We're talking about what the theme of the fantasy would seem to be in general terms. So, you know, I always fantasize about pictures of naked women. Well, you know, that's general. It doesn't have to get any more descriptive than that. And even in that one, you know, we could we could do some speculation about what are some of the deeper needs of the soul.

Randy Evert

And do you recommend to pray for cleansing from the sexual fantasies that exist in your mind? Ask God to remove the computer like storage of images you have there.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Yeah. And that's that's a very simple prayer and sometimes hard to do. I mean, our, our brains do store and catalog all of these images that we've had that we've seen or conjured up in our own mind. And but I think it's actually a way of rewiring the brain to, you know, get them out there and also, in a way, ask God to help you categorize all these things in your own brain.

Randy Evert

Well, I liked your use your choice of words in that recommendation, because removing the computer like storage of images in many, many cases, that's where it all started, was with their computer that's in those images.

Dr. Mark Laaser

That that is right. Well, it depends on how old we are. I mean, some of us started with magazines and videos and stuff like that. So, you know, if you're over 50, that's for sure how it started. But, you know, some of the younger men, you know, stumbled across pornography on their computers when they were five, six, seven, eight years old.

Randy Evert

Right. Well, if they're able to accomplish that, that task, I think that they're going to find some great healing in their.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Rituals are part of that addiction cycle that we've been covering in this unit, this chapter of the workbook, rituals are something that we've talked about before, but today, let's break rituals down. There really several elements to a ritual. Rituals are that space of time that exists between the initial thought of acting out, which we would call a fantasy, and we get preoccupations with fantasies, fantasies being about some kind of sexual acting out at the bottom of the cycle is sexual acting out itself.

Dr. Mark Laaser

You know, whether it's simply an act of masturbation or looking at pornography or it's, you know, more elaborate than that in terms of having an affair, doing whatever you do. But the rituals would describe the behavioral preparation that you would go through to get from the thought to the actual action of the sexual act.

Randy Evert

Well, here in the workbook, you point out that rituals have several qualities that make them powerful in themselves. And I'll list just a few that you have down here. You've got they're done in secret. They may be dangerous. They may involve a chase quest or pursuit. And the final one, they're done in anticipation of something rewarding, quote unquote.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Well, the reward of the sexual acting out. So there's adrenaline to the anticipation. And that's a narrow chemical that is very powerful in its effect. So anticipation can simply raise adrenaline. And the sexual fantasy itself can elevate the neurochemical dopamine, which is the pleasure chemical in the brain. So between the adrenaline and the dopamine even of the thought, some of the preparation activities can, you know, just be accompanied by all of that neurochemical release in the brain.

Dr. Mark Laaser

And that's why we say the, the, the thoughts and the preparation can be just as powerful almost as the acting out experience itself.

Randy Evert

Well, you point out, as a key point in this lesson that engaging in a ritual will almost always lead to acting out.

Dr. Mark Laaser

That's what we believe that it's like past the point of no return. If you're engaged in the ritual, your your brain has hijacked you, and it's going to find its neurochemical release in the orgasm come hell or high water, that's what's going to happen. So it becomes paramount to understand your rituals so that you can have certain boundaries around ritualistic activities.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Now, one of the ritual activities is that in order to maybe create time and space for yourself, you're going to have to lie to your partner or your family or your friends about what you're doing, where you're going, what you're thinking about. You know, they may say, how are you doing? And you may say, fine, well, that's a lie because you're you're on fire with some kind of guilt, shame or other feeling that you're needing to medicate and you're starting to preoccupy about some sexual fantasy, so you're not being honest about that.

Dr. Mark Laaser

And the lying is part of rituals. Creating time and space for yourself. I need to go to the office to pick up something I forgot. Well, you don't need to go to the office. You didn't forget anything. You're just trying to get out of the house so you can go to some place to buy pornography, or do whatever you're doing, or just go to some restaurant where, you know they have the internet so that you can look up something or communicate with your affair partner.

Dr. Mark Laaser

The rituals are creating time and space, and oftentimes involve lying to the people around us so that you can you can have the opportunity to act up.

Randy Evert

And how do you go about breaking the chain that you normally follow when going through your rituals? How do you how do you break that progression?

Dr. Mark Laaser

Well, when you think about the fact that line is an essential part of it, then part of your new boundary is, I'm not going to lie. So if your spouse ask you how you're doing, well, you may say, I'm not doing that. Well, I'm I'm kind of spun up or I'm kind of in my guilt and shame, or I'm into my anxiety and my brain is feeling that old sensation that it has about needing my medication.

Dr. Mark Laaser

That's that's what's going on for me. So you're telling the truth from that point on in terms of the boundaries. You go where you say you're going to go, you do what you say you're going to do. You basically become a truth teller. Becoming a truth teller is the basic way to break yourself out of any and all rituals.

Randy Evert

Well, I like that. In the workbook, in the margin, you will commonly place very effective scripture passages, and the one that you've got affiliated here comes from Psalm 138. It says, when I called, you answered me. You made me bold and stout hearted.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Bold and stout hearted. Because in order to become a truth teller, you're going to have to be bold and stout hearted. You're going to have to have courage, because your fear will tell you one of your oldest core beliefs, which is, if I tell you the truth about who I am, what I'm thinking, you'll you'll hate me and leave me.

Dr. Mark Laaser

So you're going to have to get past that one. And that is a that is a matter of, of spiritual growth to be able to get past that one.

Randy Evert

Well, and you say to pray and invite God into your decision making process for new rituals.

Dr. Mark Laaser

If you're going to replace old rituals, if you're going to stop something. One of the beliefs of the recovery program is that you need to start something. You need to retrain your brain. Now that we know more about neuroscience, we know that these old rituals, the old lies, the old patterns, the old behaviors create little grooves in your brain, neurochemical pathways.

Dr. Mark Laaser

And we need to retrain that and create new ones. And the best way to do that is to create new rituals. And new rituals would have to do with things like telling the truth. It could be a ritual to ask yourself every day. Am I telling the truth today? New rituals could be getting yourself into studying God's word could be that you're reading a book, you're reading a Bible study book, you're taking a Bible study course.

Dr. Mark Laaser

You could be learning how to pray. It could be like we've talked so often on the show, you're learning how to meditate in a healthy way. All of those kinds of things could be new rituals. Exercise is a healthy ritual. Eating right is a healthy ritual. There's so many different things that if we practice them, those then also get grooved into our brain.

Randy Evert

You use a story in this chapter that is a very effective example of one of the forms of rituals where where a man on the road for business goes to motels, stays in motels, and watch as pornographic pay per view movies in his room. And so then you're recommending that to break that ritual? There's several recommendations that he may try.

Randy Evert

He may call a friend from the motel every night, like you were just mentioning the importance of getting lots of rest, eating right, asking the hotel to disengage, the ability for him to get in room movies, that sort of thing. That seems to be a powerful recommendation, if that's your ritual.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Well, it's based on one of the principles of accountability, Randy, that if I wait till I'm in the middle of a tempting situation, I'm probably already in my ritual. One of the things I remember talking to a man about in one of the early years that I was doing this work, he said, I don't know what happened. I flew to San Diego.

Dr. Mark Laaser

I was no sooner off the plane than I got my rental car and I went to a massage parlor. And so I asked him, when did you first know you were going on this trip? And he said, well, you know, my boss told me about a month ago, when do you think you started fantasizing about massage parlors in San Diego?

Dr. Mark Laaser

Any thought about it for a second? He said, I'm guessing it probably happened right after my boss told me, because what my brain heard was the word opportunity. I'm going to have an opportunity. So I started fantasizing about it. I said, was it in fact true that maybe you looked up online where massage parlors were in San Diego, said, oh, yeah, I had done that.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Did you know the addresses? Yes. Had you called about the rates? Yes. Had you googled the map? You know.

Randy Evert

Stuff like that. He knew exactly where he was headed.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Yeah. And when he first came in to group, it's like, you know, something uncontrollable hit him at the last second when in fact, you know, he had been preparing for this for about 3 to 4 weeks. And that's what a ritual will do. You know, the anticipation there of acting out in San Diego was something that he had been entertaining in his brain for a long time.

Randy Evert

Actually, one of his fantasies.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Is actually one of his fantasies in terms of, you know, there again, you know, maybe it is that some mysterious woman at some mysterious massage parlor will meet some of those needs that I have for female attention and nurture and affirmation or whatever else it is. Never mind that I have to pay for it, you know, I'm so desperately longing for it.

Randy Evert

So when a guy realizes that he's in the midst of his ritual like this guy, once he got his rental car and he's going down the street, he knows the address he's going to. What's your best recommendation for, you know, what's that cold slap in the face that makes him up to you to get off that street?

Dr. Mark Laaser

Well, we call those fire drills. I mean, rituals are the place where we would need to have fire drills. First of all, just to re-emphasize the fact that, you know, if you know you're going to San Diego or wherever else you're going, you need to prepare ahead and your accountability group needs to know where you're going, needs to know your flight times.

Dr. Mark Laaser

You need to call the hotel ahead and say, take the TV out of the room, or take the capability out of the room. You need to have pre-arranged conversations with some of your accountability partners. When you get there, you need to have check ins and all of that kind of preparation stuff. Now, if you do get there and you're in the middle, you're driving and you're heading toward, you know, the massage parlor, wherever else a fire drill would say something on a snap in your brain like a like a fire drill bell that says, you know, make a call, make a text.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Now, part of the practice of accountability is that hopefully you're making calls, sending texts every day. And I've seen it happen hundreds of times where guys who are in the habit of making calls, sending texts. Now, they're also going to be receiving calls and receiving text. And one of the guys the other day said, I was, you know, in the situation we described, I was on the road, I was in a hotel.

Dr. Mark Laaser

I was tempted to turn the TV on, and one of the guys in my accountability group called me, he said. When I was in the ritual, it was like being in a trance. It was like I was on automatic pilot and it just took a warm and friendly voice, even the sound of the phone at that point to kind of wake me up out of the trance.

Randy Evert

Almost like a telephone call waking you from a dream.

Dr. Mark Laaser

That's exactly it. Like an alarm clock awaking you from sleep. So, you know, kind of goes both ways. When we're working at in a program with at least like we've taught here, you know, ten other men in our group, chances of us getting calls, getting texts. And of course, if we've prearranged that, you know, you know, I'm landing at seven.

Dr. Mark Laaser

You know, I'm probably going to be hitting that hotel room about 830 with some of you agree to call me then then, you know, that's that's preparation. But in the meantime, if you trained yourself enough to make phone calls and interrupt yourself, then maybe your own internal alarm goes off and maybe you just have enough strength to press the the speed dial on your phone to dial one of the men in your accountability group.

Randy Evert

I appreciate that you recommend at the end of this chapter to pray for patience and courage.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Well, I think that it's a constant matter of prayer and that others need to be praying for us, and we need to be asking other people to pray for us also.

Randy Evert

It only makes sense, then, that you close this out by saying the following affirmation five times. Find that quiet place. Break away from the from the hectic atmosphere that you're in and say to yourself, I will build healthy rituals into my life.

Dr. Mark Laaser

That is right. That's a commitment. That accountability, which we've harped on a lot here, is about encouragement. So if you're we're kind of approaching on the show the end of the year, whenever you're listening to this, let's say you've downloaded it from the website or whatever, it could be some other time of the year. But as we're recording this, we're going into the new year.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Most of us make commitments about the new year, you know, exercising more, reading the Bible more, losing weight, whatever it is. Do you have people holding you accountable to that, meaning they're going to be calling you, not to nag you to do it, but to encourage you? I mean, I think accountability is just as much about encouragement is about anything else.

Randy Evert

Well, Mark, as you mentioned at the beginning of the show, this is actually our Christmas Day show, this podcast, the show will be available on both iTunes and Faithful and True on Christmas Day. Leave our listeners with a closing thought.

Dr. Mark Laaser

Well, the incarnation is about God's intervention in our own powerlessness. You know, God had obviously seen through the history of his relationship with us that we're not able to get this right on our own. So at that point, he decided to become one of us, become a man and to intervene. And those of you out there that are feeling powerless over your situation, well, the good news of Christmas is that God has a plan.

Dr. Mark Laaser

God has an idea. God sent his only son, and he's the only one that was able to get this perfectly right. So those of you out there making mistakes and screwing up, just remember that. And that we worship a Savior who has done all the work for us. We hope that all of you will continue to listen to our show as we move into the next year, and we've got some, hopefully new and exciting developments about that to announce later.

Dr. Mark Laaser

But in the meantime, work on the discipline and have your accountability group encourage you to spend more time with God on a daily basis. And I think you'll find that that breaks you out of all your unhealthy powerlessness and rituals.

Randy Evert

Thank you for joining us today on the Faithful and True podcast. We hope you've enjoyed this presentation by doctor Mark laser and today's podcast Subject of Powerlessness. We would also like to invite you to visit our website, Faithful and True, where you'll find lots of resources available to you, as well as information and online registration for our three day intensive workshops.

Randy Evert

In the meantime, we hope that this coming week for you will be a week that's filled with many blessings and with great vision.