When a Dance is More than a Dance

If you’ve been going through our video course, you already know that mind doesn’t like to change. Even though I’ve been a sexual addiction counselor for 20 years helping guys like you break free of their sexual compulsive behaviors, I’m still a man and I still get occasional urges that could lead to actions I no longer want to take. When I get unwanted urges, I take several steps to “purge the urges.” The first step is look into my history to see what’s going on and “demystify” the urges.

For example, recently my wife and I were sitting comfortably in our living room watching a television show called “Dancing with the Stars” (which is a particular favorite of my lovely bride).

Objectification and Your History

Maybe you’ve seen “Dancing with the Stars” in which attractive women and men, often in skimpy attire, compete in a variety of dance styles. Sometimes these styles include what are, to me, rather graphic dance moves.

So I’m watching the show with my wife and the graphic dancing triggers something from my history and I get a little bit of that chemical jolt that I’m sure you’ve also experienced. When that happens, I try to be objective and understand what’s happening. Why am I objectifying a woman dancing on a national TV show? What is being triggered from my history and how could this bite me the ass? So realizing this stuff is the first step — to notice you’re being triggered and look at your history.

Notice When You’re Living in Reaction

Another example from my recent history involved watching a television series called “Sons of Anarchy.” If you haven’t seen it, the stories detail the lives of an outlaw motorcycle club and the often dubious individuals they deal with in the course of doing questionable business practices. It’s sometimes violent and sexual.

In this particular episode of “Sons of Anarchy,” you could see the naked back of one of the men in the motorcycle club having sex with a woman in the missionary position. Although, similar to watching “Dancing with the Stars,” the sexuality wasn’t totally graphic — no breasts or genitals exposed — I got a triggering reaction which lasted through the night. Something was triggered in my subconscious and I woke up with tremendous urge to sexually relieve myself.

Install Your Essential Nature

In our daily lives, we may encounter many situations in which we get triggered, such as television shows, movies, billboards, magazine ads, and even talking to others. One or more of these situations can trigger us to react due to some event in our histories, such as an experience, a memory, or even something we saw on television.

At Neulia.com and Compulsion Solutions, we teach a technique which involves “Installing Your Essential Nature.” When you do that, your Essential Nature — or True Essence of who you really are — will serve as a “filter” for the potentially triggering data you’re constantly exposed to every day.

Can you first think of your mind as a very advanced computer on which you can install your “Essential Nature” filter? What exactly would be in that filter? We suggest that you install as a filter the basic, most essential nature of YOU — which is love, kindness, and other positives aspects. When you do that, you get to choose whether or not you’ll allow potential triggers to get through your filter. This is the second step.

Remember — What’s Always True

So, if like me, you were triggered by something you saw on television for example, and you wake up in the morning with an urge to masturbate to porn, and you’ve got that filter of your Essential Nature “installed” on the computer of your mind, you can do what I did. You can put your hand on your heart and ask yourself, “What's always true?” This is the third step. Because what’s always true is the Essential Nature of YOU. What’s not always true is that you have to automatically live in reaction to your negative sexual history.

In my case, because I’m a married man and there are more appropriate ways to be sexual, I know it’s not in my best interest to react without filtering to something stimulating I saw on television, or a billboard, or in a magazine ad. In your case, What’s Always True is your Essential Nature and what’s also always true is that you have a choice not to live in reaction to your history, whether that history is a stimulating memory from years ago or something you saw on television last night.

Once you install the filter of the essence of your true nature, the essence of who you truly are, you’ll have an extremely effective tool to help purge the urges that result from the often constant sexual stimulation in your environment. Always remember: What’s always true is that YOU are more than your behavior, your thoughts, your mind. There’s an essential YOU that is powerful enough to make positive decisions to live a more deeply fulfilling sexual life. Remember, YOU are fine. Just be aware of your old negative stories and allow your essential nature to filter and clean them up.