May 5, 2025 • 45 mins
What is problematic sexual behavior (PSB)? Bill Herring, creator of the PSB Framework, explains the history behind this important concept—and how it can help men outgrowing porn.
Bill Herring (LCSW, CSAT) is a psychotherapist who has influenced the development of sex addiction theory and practice over the past 30 years. In 2019, Bill received the annual "Carnes Award" from the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (SASH) for his overall contributions to the field of problematic sexual behavior.
Read Bill's summary of PSB: https://www.billherring.com/problematic-sexual-behavior-framework-summary
Watch Bill's 11-minute video: https://youtu.be/1NZCr-5dyjM?si=L74h9wulfDff_Map
Learn more and connect with Bill at billherring.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where
we help Christian men outgrowporn.
Why?
So you can change your brain,heal your heart and save your
relationship.
My name is Drew Boa and I'mhere to show you how let's go.
Today, we get to hear from BillHerring, who is a certified sex
(00:22):
addiction therapist andcertified clinical partner
specialist, who won the CarnesAward for his contributions to
advancing our understanding ofsexuality and sex addiction and
problematic sexual behavior,which is what we're talking
about today.
Welcome, Bill.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Thank you, Drew, Glad to be here.
I really appreciate you havingme on Welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Bill.
Thank you, Drew, Glad to behere.
I really appreciate you havingme on In your work as a sex
addiction therapist.
What problems were youbeginning to find with this
concept of sex addiction?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I appreciate that question.
I may give a sequential answerto that because there's more
than one sentence to that one.
Let's start with obviously Ibelieve in sex addiction.
I believe in porn addiction.
Let's start with obviously Ibelieve in sex addiction, I
believe in porn addiction.
I believe in their reality,their legitimate entities,
processes that so many peopleget involved in and literally
(01:13):
cannot control their behavioronce they get into that loop.
So I want to start with anabsolutely solid foundation and
acceptance and support andadvocacy for the phrases sex
addiction and porn addiction.
All right, start with that.
With that said, over the yearsand I've been in private
practice for a long time, about35 years and I became a c-set
(01:38):
certified sex addictiontherapist I think it was back in
2002.
So I've been doing this work fora long period of time and what
I noticed really for a goodwhile back is that some men who
came to see me who were havingjust intense problems with the
consequences of their sexualbehavior you know, having been
discovered by a spouse or havinghad some sort of crisis at
(02:04):
their work or maybe a legalcrisis or just typically going
to be discovery when men come inthey're just devastated and
looking at the consequences oftheir behavior and wanting to
know what to do about it,because they wanted to no longer
engage in that behavior, andtypically outside of therapy.
(02:24):
There was one resource that Iwould recommend almost
consistently, which is one ofthe 12-step groups related to
sex addiction, and, as I knowthat you know, I typically
explain to clients that if youhad an alcohol problem, there's
one 12-step group that I wouldrefer to you, and that's AA, or
if overeating, there's one OA,or gambling, there's one GA.
(02:48):
But in the sexual arena,there's several 12-step
fellowships that I'll highlyrecommend, as you know SA, SAA,
SCA.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
There's probably more and more emerging.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I typically say if it starts with an S and ends with
an A go to that one and I foundthat that was really beneficial.
You know, life transformationalfor so many people and not so
much for others.
And there was obviously thetraditional barriers that some
people can have against thephrase sex addiction or going
(03:22):
into 12-step programs, that youjust kind of have to typically
help people to get by if theyhave some reluctance.
Years ago I wrote an articlecalled 12 Objections to 12-Step
Programs and 12 Responses.
I generally found that ifpeople did not want to go there
were some reasons that wouldcome up a lot.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
One of the reasons why people are reluctant to
identify with some of thoseprograms is because of the
language of saying I am a sexaddict.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
You're absolutely right, and that's where I
started to realize that theparadigm and the language that
we had was not sufficient tohelp everybody who needed help.
Obviously again, as you know,the language and the concept of
sex addiction came basically inthe 1980s as sort of a drag and
(04:16):
drop from alcohol and drugaddiction treatment, with all of
the parallels from sexualbehavior to those it was a
natural fit to just put 12-stepprograms as the primary modality
to help people.
So the first language, the firstwords that got to this field
were sex addiction and were12-step languages.
(04:37):
And so it was almost a giventhat if you came in to have help
with your sexual behavior, youwere going to be referred to a
12-step program, and you'regoing to have to acknowledge
that very phrase that you say,rightly, so many people resist
having.
I am a sex addict, which as youknow it's a difficult, one of
the most difficult five wordsfor some folks to be able to say
(05:00):
, because it means so much,there's so many implications.
Those words cannot be takenlightly.
It is sometimes spouses orpeople may say oh, you're hiding
behind the excuse of addiction.
No, it's not.
It's taking absoluteresponsibility for your life and
your behavior and your choicesand consequences in dealing with
(05:20):
that.
But as you said, those fivewords I am a sex addict often
became a terrible barrierinitially in my treatment with
that.
But as you said, those fivewords I am a sex addict often
became a terrible barrierinitially in my treatment with
clients and I found myself justspending inordinate amount of
time trying to convince a personthat sex addiction is a concept
that he ought to look at forhimself.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
In other words, yes, you are a sex addict.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
No, I'm not, yes, you are.
And of course I boil it down.
It wouldn't be that directly,but just intense reluctance for
some people to use those words.
And secondarily, Drew, I cameto appreciate that there was a
fairly substantial number ofpeople who came to me with those
(06:04):
same dire consequences, but itwas not readily apparent to me
that diminished self-control wasthe primary driver of their
behavior.
They looked that theirconsequences would be the same
as a person who identified as asex addict, but the reasons
behind that might be different.
When I had a client that wouldcome in and he would say he did
(06:28):
not think that addiction was hisprimary driver, I went from
initially thinking, oh, thisman's in denial to thinking he's
kind of got a point.
Maybe there's morecharacterological issues that
are going on.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Maybe he doesn't fit cleanly in that old model.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And then to try to put a square peg in a round hole
, to try to put a person who'smultidimensional and a human
being into a predetermined slot,is when it works it's beautiful
, and when it doesn't work wecan often say, well, the person
was resistant and the personwasn't really committed.
Well, the person was resistantand the person wasn't really
committed.
(07:06):
And you know, sometimes that'sthe case, but sometimes it's
just a lack of fit betweenwhat's really going on inside
that person and the resourcesthat they need to address that.
So at times I would agree witha person.
You know, maybe addiction isnot the primary driver of your
behavior, maybe it's more.
And then we start talking aboutthe different reasons and I'll
come back to that in a littlebit.
You did it because you could.
(07:26):
You did it because you starteddoing it and you got away with
it.
And there's something in yourcharacter that got hooked and
you started repeating the samebehavior because it was
successful for you.
You were feeding a sense ofnarcissism and entitlement and a
very myopic vision and had notreally considered the
(07:47):
consequences of your behavior orengaged in some sort of
self-delusion about what youwere doing or all these more
emotional or cognitive reasons,and I would generally say that
to clients I'm pretty direct.
I don't mean to be judgmental,but I do have judgments and I do
tell clients many times and Iremember that to myself that
having a judgment does not meanI'm judgmental.
(08:09):
It means I have discernmentover what I believe is better
than something else and that'swhat clients pay me to give them
.
So I do give them myrecommendations and my opinions
and then they can do what theywant to with that.
So even people who are comingin for help who are maybe not so
much addicts as much as there'sno really good word to say it
(08:31):
jerks Even those people many ofthem when they go to 12-step
groups, get tremendous benefitfrom it.
Because, as you know, any12-step program is a life
transformational tool thatachieves much more than just the
cessation of that behavior butreally involves a transformation
(08:53):
of the person's characterthrough all the spiritual steps
and those 12 principles that canreally solve any problem.
I'm a firm believer in the 12steps can really solve any
problem.
I'm a firm believer in the 12steps.
And so I say you know, if theessay meeting was actually
called, you know, ja, for youknow jerks anonymous, you know,
yeah, that would fit me.
So it's just, it's the samething.
(09:14):
There's so much overlap betweenfolks who do have a solid
addiction, can engage in all ofthose other behaviors that I
just talked about.
They can have entitlement, theycan have unprocessed
self-reflective abilities, whatI call just a sort of reflective
insufficiency they just didn'treally think enough about it or
moral ambiguity with all of that, because it's built upon
(09:46):
honesty and transparency andhumility and enormous
restitution and continuedself-reflection and healing from
the damage that you've causedand helping to grow in all
levels of your being so that youcan be available to other
people who could not benefitfrom that.
So I would tell folks go to themeetings, don't think so much
about the language, about it.
You know there's the classictake what you need and leave the
(10:07):
rest, and that worked for somepeople, but again, for other
folks it just didn't fit intothat slide, like you said.
So I would have people who werenot getting in my mind the full
help that they needed, becausewhat was getting in the way was
the language, the full help thatthey needed because what was
getting in the way was thelanguage.
(10:30):
A good number of years ago Istarted, you know, cogitating on
all that and talking withcolleagues and say you know, do
you think that all your clientsactually, you know, addiction
fits?
And I would have some clients,some sex addiction therapists,
who didn't even question itAbsolutely, are all sex addicts.
And to me that's an example ofthe old saying said.
I think it was Mark Twain whosaid if you give a boy a hammer
(10:51):
and everything, it looks likeeverything needs to be nailed
and you give a therapist atheory and everything needs to
fit in that theory, because it'sjust the mindset that we have,
and so in the kind of behaviorwe're talking about, lends
itself very well to confirmationbias, and confirmation bias is,
I'm looking for the signs andsymptoms of this paradigm of sex
(11:14):
addiction and oh, look whathe's done many, many times and
look at that behavior and thehiddenness and the consequences
that have caused.
Look at all the shame that he'sgotten.
A lot of typical diagnosticindicators can be right there
for therapists to say well, ofcourse, this is a sex addict,
(11:36):
Don't worry about it, let's moveon.
Now.
I want to talk about what Ithink supports that, which is
the way that so many of the sexaddiction screening tools are
worded on the sex addictioninventories.
Are you a sex addict?
Take these five questions, 10questions, I think.
The SAST sexual addictionscreening test is the long
(11:58):
version, is like 44 questions orsomething like that, and I did
an experiment once and justcreated a scenario of a man who
could answer enough of thequestions that he would meet the
criteria and it would sayyou're probably a sex addict.
And yet those questions couldbe met.
That threshold could be metprimarily if the person endorsed
(12:23):
two types of behaviors One wasshame and the other was secrecy.
Are you ashamed of yourbehavior?
Do you feel like that?
Your behavior causes you tohide yourself to other people?
Do you live a double life?
Do you regret what you've?
done after you've done it.
That can absolutely bereflective of addiction, but
(12:45):
it's clear it can also bereflective of just shame.
And I would use an example of aperson who may have some sort
of a fetish that they weresubject to or that they had,
which from no quote fault oftheir own.
People have fetishes for allkinds of reasons, often rooted
in early experiences and soforth.
But a person who is engaging infetish behavior and this is
(13:10):
just one example who's notliving in an arrangement in
which that works and maybe hashad such a shame about it then
he never even talks about it anda classic example of falls in
love with a person, with a woman, and man, I'll just go ahead
and be heterosexual right now.
Falls in love and says well,this is going to change me, this
(13:32):
is going to save me, this isgoing to stop.
Very sincere, and oftentimesthat works for a long period of
time or a short period of time,and maybe sometimes always.
But those are not the ones whocome to see me.
It's the ones who try that andit does not work.
In examining it, what becomesevident is that this was an
(13:57):
essential part of their sexualnature, their sexual character.
It didn't fit in their moralcode, so they repressed it, but
it was there and because of that, once they started engaging in
it again, they would besecretive about it, they'd feel
terrible about it, they wouldhave great shame about it.
And, presto chango, they're asex addict.
(14:17):
Sometimes yes, but sometimes no.
That's the confirmation bias.
No, that's the confirmationbias.
I did not feel in my own casethat the phrase addiction fully
captured what I consideredsomething to be my core issues
that caused me to engage in mybehavior.
So in a little bit it was apersonal journey of me looking
(14:37):
in the mirror and saying who amI?
What am I?
Who determines what I am?
What language is used?
What are my choices for beingable to determine what you got?
Well, we kind of have one suitof definitions off the rack and
need to fit within that.
So you put those two togetherand just for the way that I work
(14:59):
, I realized there was a need insome way to expand the scope of
how we you know, just beingprofessionals, really just
society can bring in a widerrange of people who are
suffering from sexual behaviors.
Because, as you know, it's waymore than the people that we see
(15:20):
, it's way more than in 12-stepgroups.
Those groups are not foreverybody who needs it.
It's for everybody who findstheir way to it.
It's a tsunami of sexualproblems, especially with the
introduction of the internet,which happened in my generation.
And now there's folks in yourgeneration who are digital
natives and it's all that's beenthere.
And Gary Wilson, who has thetagline evolution, did not
(15:42):
prepare your brain for today's.
Who has the tagline evolutiondid not prepare your brain for
today's pornography deliverysystem, and because of that, we
live in a techno world thatfacilitates and really
turbocharges addiction.
There's a whole lot of peoplewho come to see me and I'm
really clear that if it was 50years ago, they wouldn't one.
(16:03):
There wouldn't be seasats tocome to, but there wouldn't be
that language and there wouldn'tbe as much of a problem,
because sure people can getaddicted to looking at magazines
and other still images and soforth, or maybe going down to
the movie theater in the seedypart of town and so forth.
But it took a lot of work to doall that.
And then the internet came andwe're in a brave new world.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, anonymous, affordable, accessible.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yes, I was trying to think of the name of the person
who coined that phrase, butthat's it.
It's anonymous.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
You don't have to be identified.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
It's right there, it's accessible two clicks away.
I often tell my clients a lotof compulsive behavior is
downstream of impulsive behavior, and what's more impulsive than
the phone, whether you'relooking at sports or doom
scrolling, or there's threeclicks and I'm into a whole
(16:59):
realm?
that did not exist until thiscentury.
And so we live in a society, atechno society, that is creating
addicts, creating addictions,and of course we're in a whole
addictive culture.
It's almost inevitable thatthere would be this tsunami.
I do tell a good many of myclients, especially younger guys
, you didn't stand a chance.
(17:20):
There's just no way the oddswere stacked against you to not
be exposed to pornography duringa very early age.
So often how kids can getaccess.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
As porn has become a bigger problem, we need new
frameworks.
We need new ways of talkingabout this, so more people can
get more help.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's it.
That's it, spot on.
And I'm a little surprised thatthere's not a robust
pornography anonymous movementyet.
And so I have a whole lot ofpeople who are porn addicts and
not sex addicts and I am one ofthe CSATs professionals who do
this work who firmly believethat those are two separate,
related but separate entities,that many sex addicts look at
(18:00):
porn, but porn addicts look atporn.
They're not going out andhaving affairs, they're not
going out and doing all theseother things.
It's strictly porn, and toconflate porn addiction with sex
addiction can get really messy.
I see you nodding your headwith that.
Oh yeah, in many ways I thinksex addiction has a more grave
(18:20):
meaning to it than pornaddiction.
With porn addiction, it's onething okay, there's porn, sex
addiction, oh gosh.
What does that mean?
Is he a pedophile, is he arapist?
Is he a sex addiction?
People just project all oftheir fears into that phrase sex
addiction.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
But porn addiction, okay, porn, I know what that is
yes, and porn is so disembodiedand it's so disconnected from
from other people.
It's a completely differentexperience than a sexual
encounter.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Oh, absolutely Just no comparison between the two.
True sexual intimacy fromwatching porn is like learning
how to play baseball by watchingthe highlights of the World
Series.
You'll see all the dramaticplays and you'll see all the
jaw-dropping catches and tripleplays and all that.
But that's not what the game ofbaseball is about.
(19:12):
I mean sure it gets there, butmost of it is about fielding
grounders and striking out.
And just brought over topornography, people see images
and have this idea of whatsexuality is like and sexual
intimacy is like and get intothe real world and find that
does not fit.
(19:33):
Very often does not fit.
So back all the way around pornaddiction.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
I know that there is.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I think there is a burgeoning PA group, pornography
Anonymous.
Small handful of meetings and,oh gosh, I would love to have
that expanded, but until then wework with what we have.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
And you have created a newer framework called PSB
Problematic Sexual Behavior Sureand everything that I said up
to this point is really settingthe stage for that.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
So I wanted to find a different way to assess people
for these issues without relyingupon labels.
I'll give one more little teeup Professionally.
There has been tremendouscontroversy about the phrase sex
addiction.
You know, is it real, Is it not?
And whole organizations pitthemselves against each other.
(20:30):
I think it's better, butthere's still a lot of sex
therapists who feel that sexaddiction is nothing but a moral
way of pathologizing people whoare engaging in sexual behavior
that doesn't fit into a norm.
They're wrong, but they stillare very powerful with that.
So in dialoguing with peoplewho did not agree with the
(20:50):
concept of sex addiction, Istarted to hear the phrase
problematic sexual behavior as ajudgment-neutral way of just
saying it's a problem.
But there was no agreementabout what that meant.
Everybody had a different ideaabout problematic sexual
behavior, and I'm a former boardmember of the Society for the
(21:10):
Advancement of Sexual Health,sash, which used to be, up until
2004, the National Council onSex Addiction and Compulsivity,
and so, which was before that,just the National Council on Sex
Addiction National Council on.
Sex Addiction.
Well, there's another theorybase that says this is
compulsion, not addiction andman.
(21:31):
To me the difference isminuscule, but just like schisms
can happen with minusculedoctrinal differences or so
forth.
So we added in the compulsivity, slightly different way to put
it.
But then there's otherframeworks as well.
Hypersexuality has a slightlydifferent view to it.
So do we call it the NationalCouncil on Sexual Addiction and
Compulsivity and Hypersexuality?
And how many initials are wegoing to put behind that phrase?
(21:54):
So I was on the board.
It was back in 2004,.
I was a real strong advocate forchanging the organizational
view from the problem to thesolution.
And the solution is sexualhealth.
So that leaves the question ofwhat does sexual health mean,
and can that?
How does that?
It seems to be culturallydifferent.
(22:16):
Some cultures over here it'sthis way, some it's that way.
How do you come up with adefinition of sexual health
that's not culture bound.
Putting that together, I setabout the task of trying to
figure out.
Okay, let me see if I can crackthe code and find a way to
identify the core concepts ofproblematic sexual behavior in
grounded sexual health theorywithout using labels.
(22:39):
Now I'm finally ready to get toit.
I feel like everything was atee up to the problematic sexual
behavior framework or the PSBframework.
Sexual Behavior Framework orthe PSB framework this is a
simple five-question method forhelping a person identify
whether their pattern of sexualbehavior is problematic for them
, and it looks at five differentcategories of how could
(23:05):
something be a problem?
If it's a problem, why is it aproblem?
And so I sussed out thatthere's five different reasons
that behavior is problematic.
Either F and I'll just tickthem off.
A it's breaking commitments.
If you're violating yourpromises and breaking
commitments, that's a problem.
B is values conflicts If you'renot okay with what you're doing
(23:27):
.
If you do have regret and shameand so forth about what you're
doing, that's a problem.
Third is diminishedself-control, and this is where
all the sex addiction and pornaddiction comes in.
If you don't have full abilityto guide your own behavior, it's
a problem.
The fourth is lack ofresponsibility to others.
And this was a tricky one for me, drew, because the word
(23:47):
responsibility first it was justdripping with moral relativism.
I'd say responsible can seemlike a real judgment and I
wanted to get away from that.
And what I found was, inreviewing the history of how the
phrase sexual health hasdeveloped is that just about.
At the start of the centurysome writers started to include
(24:11):
behavior that was notresponsible to others, and what
I found fascinating is a lot ofsex therapists.
They kind of pushed that off tothe side because I think they
felt like, well, here's thatmorality piece again.
But I wanted to take that ideaof responsibility and make it
really clear about what thatmeans, and I came up with three
subsets of that.
(24:31):
Responsible behavior is behaviorthat has full consent of
everybody, that protectseverybody from unwanted negative
consequences and that doesn'texploit anybody.
So everybody's got a consent,nobody can be harmed and nobody
can be exploited.
That is our responsibility toother people, and part of a
(24:53):
component of sexual health is tobe responsible to other people.
And so I took those categories,reviewed them commitment
violations, values, conflicts,lack of control, lack of sexual
responsibility.
Oh, I forgot the fifth one.
The fifth one is kind of acatch-all negative consequences.
Maybe a person is engaging inbehavior that they're not
(25:15):
breaking any commitmentssometimes because they're so
isolated they don't even havecommitments or they're not
breaking their values becausemaybe they're personally, okay
with what they're doing.
Maybe they're not engaging indiminished self-control, they're
just doing it because they liketo do it.
Maybe they're not violatinganybody else's rights, so it's
(25:37):
not irresponsible to them, butthey still have negative
consequences from what they weredoing.
Pick somebody who maybe goes tosee a sex worker and then wants
them getting arrested for thatand they were single and they
were okay with it, and they werewearing condoms, and so the
only category that that wouldcatch would be this fifth
(25:58):
category that I put in negativeconsequences.
Problem is as problem does.
If your behavior is causingproblems, it's problematic.
A equals A.
I attached a question to eachone of these categories, and the
questions are ones that I giveto the folks that I talk with,
and I wanted them to be sosimple that anybody could both
(26:18):
understand them and use them Notjust professionals, but people
in their personal life.
You want to talk to somebodythat you care about, or you want
to self-examine yourselfwithout having to decide is this
sex addiction or is it not?
It's simply asking these fivequestions.
The first is are you keepingyour promises?
There's a whole conversationthat comes with that.
(26:39):
Then we can talk about explicitpromises and implicit promises.
I use pornography as an example.
Maybe the husband's beenlooking at porn and the wife
finds it.
There's a whole crisis withthat, and I'll ask well, had you
ever talked as a couple aboutyour mutual stance on
pornography so often?
No, we never talked about it,but in many marriages people
(27:00):
don't talk about it because it'sjust understood, or maybe the
spouse thinks it's justunderstood, like you don't have
to say to your partner I'm goingto make a commitment not to rob
banks, he would say well, ofcourse, pornography is cheating,
it's off limits.
And the man might say well, youknow, we never talked about
that.
Say, yeah, but it's veryimplicit.
You can't really say well, Ijust thought it was going to be
(27:22):
okay.
You knew you were hiding thebehavior.
That's why she caught you.
Now, if you had said you know,honey, I'm going to go upstairs
and look at porn now, and shesaid I don't want you to.
And you said I appreciate that,I respect that, but I want to
do that and we can disagree andI'm going to go do this myself.
Actually I would considerthat's not problematic sexual
behavior, because if a personengages, does that and says I'm
(27:45):
going to go watch porn and Iknow you don't like it, but it's
important to me, I'm justmaking up a situation Then
they're not breaking acommitment because they're not
making a commitment.
And if they're okay with whatthey're doing, they're okay with
what they're doing and all theothers are not being flagged.
So it's certainly causing Iguess you could say that
category is causing problems.
But the problem is really aboutthe disparity between the
(28:06):
couple.
One person's okay with it, oneperson's not okay with it.
This is a relational issue andwe need to look at it that way
in order to then look at whetherthe behavior is truly
problematic.
So the first question are youkeeping your promises?
Second question is are you okaywith what you're doing?
And a lot of folks will say I'mgoing to get right down to it.
(28:28):
I hate that.
I like this.
I hate that this is what I'mdoing.
It goes against who I want tobe.
And so, again, classic valuesconflict.
And again, as you know, aboutpornography, because dopamine
feeds on novelty and pornographyis all the novelty you could
ever want.
Person starts with just lookingat something and then over time
(28:53):
that template can wind them upin someplace very different from
where they they intended to.
How did I get here?
And so they have tremendousvalues conflicts.
So first question are youkeeping your promises?
Second question are you okaywith what you're doing?
Third question is are you incontrol of yourself?
And of course that can be up tointerpretation, but these are
all jump off questions.
(29:14):
Each one of these primaryquestions.
They're conversational startersand they can lead all sorts of
fine-tuned questions that comeafter that.
But the question of do you feellike that you're in control of
your behavior?
Obviously very important.
Those are the questions inthose sexual addiction screening
tests that I do think are valid.
Do you feel like your sexualurges are stronger than you are.
(29:37):
Are you thinking about sex in away that feels excessive to you
but that you can't stop?
You know classic addiction,compulsive, obsessive sort of
behaviors.
So there's a whole conversationabout that.
The fourth is are you protectingeverybody?
Are you protecting everyone,which I'll explain?
That means do you have fullconsent from all the
(29:58):
stakeholders?
Are you ensuring that you areprotecting whoever you're doing
what you're doing with, and areyou sure that you're not
exploiting people?
And this is where pornographyusage that question, I think,
can be really useful in helpingpeople to look at pornography
use.
Because let's start with thequestion of do you have full
(30:19):
consent for everybody?
Let's talk about who you'rewatching on the screen.
I would say probably mostpeople who are engaged in
filming pornography.
They are aware that that's whatthey're doing and they are
aware that that's what they'republishing.
And they are aware that that'swhat they're doing and they are
aware that that's what they'republishing and they are aware
that people are using that fortheir sexual purposes.
As you know, there is a subsetof I don't know what do you call
it?
Somebody surreptitiouslyrecorded and they don't know
(30:42):
that they're being recorded andof course, it's just flat out
unethical and illegal.
I want to ask the person areyou sure that everybody's
operating from consent thatyou're looking at?
It's the other twosub-questions that can be more
tricky for folks.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
One is.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
You know the question of are you protecting everyone
from negative consequences?
If you're looking atpornography, are you protecting
or contributing to a person'snegative consequences that
you're looking at?
People who do look at porn tendto underestimate the amount of
porn actors or people who areappearing pornographically, who
don't have much option.
(31:18):
They don't have much power,they're economically
disadvantaged, they're comingout of their own history of
sexualized trauma and they'rereplicating that in their life.
Or maybe even more physically,people are having sex without
condoms.
There's no barrier protection.
There's a risk of if you'rewatching somebody who's having
(31:38):
unprotected sex, can you saythat you are not contributing to
or facilitating that personengaging in behavior that's
harmful to them?
And the last question, ofcourse, is exploitation.
Are you sure that you're notsupporting inherent exploitation
of people for the sexualpurposes?
Back to what I said just amoment ago people who are maybe
(32:00):
engaged in pornography to makemoney because they don't have
any other way to make money orthey're coerced.
You know they're trafficked.
They're trafficked.
It's not always clearly evidentwhen somebody's being
trafficked.
Oh, they seem to be into it.
Well, they get inducted intothat system and that's what
they're doing.
But you don't know theirhistory of what comes to them.
(32:21):
So a lot of porn users.
Those are really importantquestions for a person to look
in the mirror and say am Iactually being responsible or am
I contributing to the harm ofother people?
So those are the five questions, and each one of those are
conversation starters.
Here's what you have to say injust a moment.
Here A few highlights, I think,of this approach is that if you
(32:41):
notice there's no labels used,we never have to talk about are
you an addict or you're not.
We're going into descriptions.
After that we can decide whatyou want to call it.
But at first let's justestablish this is problematic
for you, and I do distinguish.
Problematic doesn't always meanpathologic.
Pathology is an illness,problematic is a problem.
Problem is a problem does so.
(33:02):
Not all problems arepathologies.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
But when we call everybody a sex addict, we're
saying they have a pathology andperhaps even an identity.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
So much, so much.
You're spot on with that.
I want people to come to thatdecision about whether addiction
is the best explanatorylanguage, because that's what
addiction is.
It's a theory of explanation.
This is why the person is doingwhat they're doing.
Addiction is a prediction aboutwhat caused that behavior.
Compulsivity is another one.
(33:31):
All the different reasons, sothis avoids all the labels.
It also, if you notice it,doesn't talk at all about the
types or frequencies ofbehaviors.
We're not saying well, are youinvolved in any S&M behavior?
Are you doing any of this?
Or how many times are youmasturbating?
How many hours are you lookingat porn?
Those are very importantquestions, but they're questions
that can be really culturallydistinct, that this very same
(33:56):
behavior can be very problematicfor one person and just very
okay for another person.
Very same behavior, how can itbe as problematic for that
person and okay for that person?
Well, because this person isnot violating any of those five
categories.
This person is, and so thisapproach does away with all of
(34:16):
the cultural limitations.
These five questions work foranybody, whether you are the
most sexually conservativeperson out there or the most
sexually whatever you want tocall it libertarian person.
Those five questions goeverywhere with you.
So non-pathologizing,descriptive rather than labeling
and sort of applies really toeveryone.
Let's see.
Is there any other thing I wantto say about it?
(34:36):
And theory neutral there's notheories about that, it is just
sort of makes it be self-evident.
So, in conclusion, I have had alot of success with this
approach.
It's all on my website and Ihave people who come to me very
regularly and say this islanguage that speaks to me.
This is finally, you know, Ican talk with you.
(34:59):
So I really wanted to startputting the word out there.
So I published an article aboutit in 2017.
And I started doing a littlebit of the workshop circuit and
all that.
I was really surprised when, in2019, I got a notification from
SASH that they were giving methe Carnes Award for that.
I was really surprised when, in2019, I got a notification from
SASH that they were giving methe Carnes Award for that and
maybe other things I'd done inthe past.
I thought it must have beenjust they must have run out of
(35:21):
all the really deserving people,and so now they're down to the
B team and that's just me havinga hard time accepting something
like that.
But it was a tremendous,tremendous honor I started.
One way that I apply it and I'llfinish with this is I run a lot
of men's groups.
I actually have eight men'sgroups going every week and
(35:42):
these are not sex addictiongroups, they're problematic
sexual behavior groups, psvgroups, and within that group
there are people who identify assex addicts, there's people who
identify as porn addicts.
There's people who don't usethose words at all and it
doesn't matter, becauseeverybody's going for the same
goal, which is abide by theircommitments, live within their
values, be in control of theirbehavior, don't have negative
consequences and be responsibleto other folks.
(36:05):
No matter what you call aproblem, everybody's heading
toward that.
What has been so unexpectedlybeneficial about that is that it
took sex and porn addicts awayfrom being the others.
All the sex addicts go to thosemeetings over there and they
just talk with each other andthey're a little bit them.
Bringing them into this groupwith civilians just folks who
(36:26):
are not addicted but still havethe same problem folks who are
not addicted but still have thesame problem brings a parity.
It turns that stigma intostature because they have
tremendous resources that theycan bring to the non-addicted
folks about.
Hey, this is a three-secondrule and the value of connecting
with other folks, and so thenon-addicts get all that benefit
(36:48):
of the sex addicts.
The sex addicts are just on thevery same level with everybody
else and everybody's headingtoward that same goal.
So it was so valuable that afterI put in the first group 13, 14
years ago, I saw the differencebetween men who were in groups
and people who were not ingroups, and his trajectory
seemed so different that I putin another group because I
(37:10):
couldn't get the guys to leave.
I asked for a minimum 12-weekcommitment and then stay as long
as you want, and everybody willsay 12 weeks.
They'll do that and think thatwell, they'll drop off after 12.
I don't think I've ever hadanybody drop off after 12 weeks.
My average length of stay ispushing four years.
When men get together, you know,when men can get together with
(37:30):
other men and reduce thoseintimacy barriers and really
come to trust each other andbring that mutual male support
to each other.
There's just nothing like itand so many men never had the
opportunity to do it.
So many of us are walkingaround as a boy's version of
what a man is supposed to be.
So it's very performative, it'svery exterior and all of that
(37:52):
interior development is just notthere.
These type of groups, these PSBgroups, really help to backfill
that in.
They really are.
They produce men and I'm justhighly grateful that this PSB
framework has been so valuableto so many people that I've
worked with that.
I want to continue to get thisout into the public.
(38:15):
I don't want this.
I'm near the end of my career.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
I don't want this to die when I do?
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I want this PSP framework because it seems to
have value.
I want it to self-generate.
It's almost like open sourcecode.
Therapists and theorists dowhatever you want to with it,
because it is a way that joinsall the different theories
together in a very fundamentallanguage.
And so I keep saying I'm goingto write the book and keep
(38:41):
saying it doesn't make it happen.
And that's why, appearing onpodcasts like this, it's a great
opportunity to let more andmore people know about this
approach and then hopefully ittakes root and can bring again
my ultimate goal bring the mosthelp to the most people possible
and widen the availability forpeople to have the opportunity
(39:05):
to live happy, joyful and freelives.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Thank you for this gift of language so inclusive,
equalizing and empowering.
What are your thoughts on someof the other models, such as
integrity abuse disorder?
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yes, thank you for that, and in my trainings I do
reference them.
I love Omar Mnouala's work andany approach that can help to
widen our understanding andwiden our theory base.
I'm very much in support ofwhat I like about integrity
abuse disorder is that itinherently involves another
person.
It's inherently relational.
If you're violating integrity,well, integrity to who?
(39:45):
And that leads intoresponsibility.
So there's, I think, arelational component to
integrity abuse disorder thatsex addiction doesn't
necessarily capture.
So with that, these fivequestions are just as relevant
for that model as it is for theaddiction model.
I'll say this, drew.
I want to briefly share why Iuse the word framework, psb
(40:09):
framework, because a frameworkis not a theory.
It's more basic than that.
It really is the foundationalmaterial that theories are built
from, and I use the metaphor ofconstruction of a house or any
sort of a building.
It starts with the materials.
You need the bricks, you needthe nails, you need the mortar
and so forth.
Those are the essentialcomponents that are required in
(40:32):
order to build anything.
Now, what can be built from that?
It's all kinds of things.
All sorts of structures arebuilt for their specific
purposes, but they all involvethe same materials.
So with integrity abusedisorder, it still rests upon
these five questions Are youkeeping your promises?
No, that's the violation ofintegrity right there, full stop
(40:55):
.
It's a problem.
Let's deal with that.
Put those five elementstogether in ways that can be
creative, that maybe helpidentify specific subtypes of
behaviors, and can be morespecific, and that's why
(41:19):
integrity abuse disorder was sovaluable to me to see get into
the public and get into theliterature.
Highly supportive.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
What about the language of unwanted sexual
behavior?
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Well, I would put unwanted sexual behavior.
That's the category of valuesconflicts.
If I don't want it, why don't Iwant it?
Because it doesn't fit with whoI want to be.
So now we have a valuesconflict.
One of the interesting parts orconsequences of this PSP
framework is that it isessentially I've used the term
outcome neutral.
(41:53):
It's not just theory neutral,it's outcome neutral, which
means that some examples ofproblematic sexual behavior can
be resolved not just by changingsome sexual aspect of a
person's life, but evennon-sexual aspects of a person's
life.
Here's the two examplesCommitment violations person has
(42:14):
a commitment with someone andtheir sexual behavior is
violating that.
There's one of two options theycan do.
They can change their behavioror they can change their
commitment and if the commitmentchanges, it's no longer
problematic.
Same with values conflicts.
Oftentimes we'll think thatvalues are immutable and
changeable.
That's what I've alwaysbelieved, what I believe now and
(42:38):
I always will believe, and formany people that is the case,
and for other people, values canadapt and evolve over a
lifetime as well.
Does that answer the question?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Absolutely.
It shows how value neutral thisis.
You can plug and play this PSBframework into any personal
perspective on sexuality.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
I'm going to start using that phrase plug and play.
I think that it's excellent,Thank you.
That's exactly right, and it'snot my place to tell a client
which way to go.
There are some doctrinairetherapists one way or the other,
Sex therapists.
They may not communicate itclearly, but some do.
They'll take the stance thatwell, your values are repressive
(43:15):
and you need to break throughwith that and not pathologize
your behavior.
Go in that direction as well asother therapists who would go in
an entirely different direction, of saying you know, the
problem is not your values, yourvalues are intact, it is your
behavior.
For me, it's not my place todetermine one way or the other,
(43:35):
which way a client should go.
I'm going to sit with themBecause again, I can have two
clients, very same behavior, youcan almost just be twins and it
goes to two very differentconclusions based upon those
five characteristics.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Bill, thank you so much for teaching us.
I feel like I just took acourse by interviewing you right
now.
I'm glad it was helpful.
What is your favorite thingabout this model?
Speaker 2 (44:01):
All of what we talked about sort of goes together the
value-neutral piece of it, thesimplicity of it that really
anybody could use, regardless ofeducation, the outcome-neutral,
the theory-neutral, the outcomemutual, the theory mutual, the
university applicable just a lotof aspects to it that I was
very grateful to have sort ofdiscovered in the process.
(44:22):
It was only in the working itthrough that some of these
benefits started to makethemselves available.
So, in some ways, finding a wayto bring language around the
phrase of responsible sexualbehavior, not in a moralistic
way, but in a very clearlydefinable way, so that we can
graft the phrase responsiblesexual behavior as a vital
(44:42):
component of sexual health.
I think that's one of the partsI feel most grateful and
enthusiastic about Because,again, typically in standard
understandings about sexualhealth, that one dimension of
responsibility to others hasalways been put on the back seat
and this puts it in the frontseat along with everyone else.
So I think that's my answerAwesome.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Thank you so much for sharing out of your decades of
wisdom and experience in helpingpeople experience sexual health
.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Drew, it's been a real pleasure.
I'm very much grateful for youreaching out to me and asking me
to have this interview.
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
And if you want to learn more about Bill and
connect with him, you can go toBillHerringcom and the other
links in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Everything that I've talked about here is on my
website, and there is a video onYouTube that breaks this all
down into a short period of time.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Well, I will include the link to that video in the
episode as well.
Thanks again, gentlemen.
Always remember you are God'sbeloved son.
In you he is well-pleased.
Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where
we help Christian men outgrowporn.
Why?
So you can change your brain,heal your heart and save your
relationship.
My name is Drew Boa and I'mhere to show you how let's go.
Today, we get to hear from BillHerring, who is a certified sex
(00:22):
addiction therapist andcertified clinical partner
specialist, who won the CarnesAward for his contributions to
advancing our understanding ofsexuality and sex addiction and
problematic sexual behavior,which is what we're talking
about today.
Welcome, Bill.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Thank you, Drew, Glad to be here.
I really appreciate you havingme on Welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Bill.
Thank you, Drew, Glad to behere.
I really appreciate you havingme on In your work as a sex
addiction therapist.
What problems were youbeginning to find with this
concept of sex addiction?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I appreciate that question.
I may give a sequential answerto that because there's more
than one sentence to that one.
Let's start with obviously Ibelieve in sex addiction.
I believe in porn addiction.
Let's start with obviously Ibelieve in sex addiction, I
believe in porn addiction.
I believe in their reality,their legitimate entities,
processes that so many peopleget involved in and literally
(01:13):
cannot control their behavioronce they get into that loop.
So I want to start with anabsolutely solid foundation and
acceptance and support andadvocacy for the phrases sex
addiction and porn addiction.
All right, start with that.
With that said, over the yearsand I've been in private
practice for a long time, about35 years and I became a c-set
(01:38):
certified sex addictiontherapist I think it was back in
2002.
So I've been doing this work fora long period of time and what
I noticed really for a goodwhile back is that some men who
came to see me who were havingjust intense problems with the
consequences of their sexualbehavior you know, having been
discovered by a spouse or havinghad some sort of crisis at
(02:04):
their work or maybe a legalcrisis or just typically going
to be discovery when men come inthey're just devastated and
looking at the consequences oftheir behavior and wanting to
know what to do about it,because they wanted to no longer
engage in that behavior, andtypically outside of therapy.
(02:24):
There was one resource that Iwould recommend almost
consistently, which is one ofthe 12-step groups related to
sex addiction, and, as I knowthat you know, I typically
explain to clients that if youhad an alcohol problem, there's
one 12-step group that I wouldrefer to you, and that's AA, or
if overeating, there's one OA,or gambling, there's one GA.
(02:48):
But in the sexual arena,there's several 12-step
fellowships that I'll highlyrecommend, as you know SA, SAA,
SCA.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
There's probably more and more emerging.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I typically say if it starts with an S and ends with
an A go to that one and I foundthat that was really beneficial.
You know, life transformationalfor so many people and not so
much for others.
And there was obviously thetraditional barriers that some
people can have against thephrase sex addiction or going
(03:22):
into 12-step programs, that youjust kind of have to typically
help people to get by if theyhave some reluctance.
Years ago I wrote an articlecalled 12 Objections to 12-Step
Programs and 12 Responses.
I generally found that ifpeople did not want to go there
were some reasons that wouldcome up a lot.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
One of the reasons why people are reluctant to
identify with some of thoseprograms is because of the
language of saying I am a sexaddict.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
You're absolutely right, and that's where I
started to realize that theparadigm and the language that
we had was not sufficient tohelp everybody who needed help.
Obviously again, as you know,the language and the concept of
sex addiction came basically inthe 1980s as sort of a drag and
(04:16):
drop from alcohol and drugaddiction treatment, with all of
the parallels from sexualbehavior to those it was a
natural fit to just put 12-stepprograms as the primary modality
to help people.
So the first language, the firstwords that got to this field
were sex addiction and were12-step languages.
(04:37):
And so it was almost a giventhat if you came in to have help
with your sexual behavior, youwere going to be referred to a
12-step program, and you'regoing to have to acknowledge
that very phrase that you say,rightly, so many people resist
having.
I am a sex addict, which as youknow it's a difficult, one of
the most difficult five wordsfor some folks to be able to say
(05:00):
, because it means so much,there's so many implications.
Those words cannot be takenlightly.
It is sometimes spouses orpeople may say oh, you're hiding
behind the excuse of addiction.
No, it's not.
It's taking absoluteresponsibility for your life and
your behavior and your choicesand consequences in dealing with
(05:20):
that.
But as you said, those fivewords I am a sex addict often
became a terrible barrierinitially in my treatment with
that.
But as you said, those fivewords I am a sex addict often
became a terrible barrierinitially in my treatment with
clients and I found myself justspending inordinate amount of
time trying to convince a personthat sex addiction is a concept
that he ought to look at forhimself.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
In other words, yes, you are a sex addict.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
No, I'm not, yes, you are.
And of course I boil it down.
It wouldn't be that directly,but just intense reluctance for
some people to use those words.
And secondarily, Drew, I cameto appreciate that there was a
fairly substantial number ofpeople who came to me with those
(06:04):
same dire consequences, but itwas not readily apparent to me
that diminished self-control wasthe primary driver of their
behavior.
They looked that theirconsequences would be the same
as a person who identified as asex addict, but the reasons
behind that might be different.
When I had a client that wouldcome in and he would say he did
(06:28):
not think that addiction was hisprimary driver, I went from
initially thinking, oh, thisman's in denial to thinking he's
kind of got a point.
Maybe there's morecharacterological issues that
are going on.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Maybe he doesn't fit cleanly in that old model.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And then to try to put a square peg in a round hole
, to try to put a person who'smultidimensional and a human
being into a predetermined slot,is when it works it's beautiful
, and when it doesn't work wecan often say, well, the person
was resistant and the personwasn't really committed.
Well, the person was resistantand the person wasn't really
committed.
(07:06):
And you know, sometimes that'sthe case, but sometimes it's
just a lack of fit betweenwhat's really going on inside
that person and the resourcesthat they need to address that.
So at times I would agree witha person.
You know, maybe addiction isnot the primary driver of your
behavior, maybe it's more.
And then we start talking aboutthe different reasons and I'll
come back to that in a littlebit.
You did it because you could.
(07:26):
You did it because you starteddoing it and you got away with
it.
And there's something in yourcharacter that got hooked and
you started repeating the samebehavior because it was
successful for you.
You were feeding a sense ofnarcissism and entitlement and a
very myopic vision and had notreally considered the
(07:47):
consequences of your behavior orengaged in some sort of
self-delusion about what youwere doing or all these more
emotional or cognitive reasons,and I would generally say that
to clients I'm pretty direct.
I don't mean to be judgmental,but I do have judgments and I do
tell clients many times and Iremember that to myself that
having a judgment does not meanI'm judgmental.
(08:09):
It means I have discernmentover what I believe is better
than something else and that'swhat clients pay me to give them
.
So I do give them myrecommendations and my opinions
and then they can do what theywant to with that.
So even people who are comingin for help who are maybe not so
much addicts as much as there'sno really good word to say it
(08:31):
jerks Even those people many ofthem when they go to 12-step
groups, get tremendous benefitfrom it.
Because, as you know, any12-step program is a life
transformational tool thatachieves much more than just the
cessation of that behavior butreally involves a transformation
(08:53):
of the person's characterthrough all the spiritual steps
and those 12 principles that canreally solve any problem.
I'm a firm believer in the 12steps can really solve any
problem.
I'm a firm believer in the 12steps.
And so I say you know, if theessay meeting was actually
called, you know, ja, for youknow jerks anonymous, you know,
yeah, that would fit me.
So it's just, it's the samething.
(09:14):
There's so much overlap betweenfolks who do have a solid
addiction, can engage in all ofthose other behaviors that I
just talked about.
They can have entitlement, theycan have unprocessed
self-reflective abilities, whatI call just a sort of reflective
insufficiency they just didn'treally think enough about it or
moral ambiguity with all of that, because it's built upon
(09:46):
honesty and transparency andhumility and enormous
restitution and continuedself-reflection and healing from
the damage that you've causedand helping to grow in all
levels of your being so that youcan be available to other
people who could not benefitfrom that.
So I would tell folks go to themeetings, don't think so much
about the language, about it.
You know there's the classictake what you need and leave the
(10:07):
rest, and that worked for somepeople, but again, for other
folks it just didn't fit intothat slide, like you said.
So I would have people who werenot getting in my mind the full
help that they needed, becausewhat was getting in the way was
the language, the full help thatthey needed because what was
getting in the way was thelanguage.
(10:30):
A good number of years ago Istarted, you know, cogitating on
all that and talking withcolleagues and say you know, do
you think that all your clientsactually, you know, addiction
fits?
And I would have some clients,some sex addiction therapists,
who didn't even question itAbsolutely, are all sex addicts.
And to me that's an example ofthe old saying said.
I think it was Mark Twain whosaid if you give a boy a hammer
(10:51):
and everything, it looks likeeverything needs to be nailed
and you give a therapist atheory and everything needs to
fit in that theory, because it'sjust the mindset that we have,
and so in the kind of behaviorwe're talking about, lends
itself very well to confirmationbias, and confirmation bias is,
I'm looking for the signs andsymptoms of this paradigm of sex
(11:14):
addiction and oh, look whathe's done many, many times and
look at that behavior and thehiddenness and the consequences
that have caused.
Look at all the shame that he'sgotten.
A lot of typical diagnosticindicators can be right there
for therapists to say well, ofcourse, this is a sex addict,
(11:36):
Don't worry about it, let's moveon.
Now.
I want to talk about what Ithink supports that, which is
the way that so many of the sexaddiction screening tools are
worded on the sex addictioninventories.
Are you a sex addict?
Take these five questions, 10questions, I think.
The SAST sexual addictionscreening test is the long
(11:58):
version, is like 44 questions orsomething like that, and I did
an experiment once and justcreated a scenario of a man who
could answer enough of thequestions that he would meet the
criteria and it would sayyou're probably a sex addict.
And yet those questions couldbe met.
That threshold could be metprimarily if the person endorsed
(12:23):
two types of behaviors One wasshame and the other was secrecy.
Are you ashamed of yourbehavior?
Do you feel like that?
Your behavior causes you tohide yourself to other people?
Do you live a double life?
Do you regret what you've?
done after you've done it.
That can absolutely bereflective of addiction, but
(12:45):
it's clear it can also bereflective of just shame.
And I would use an example of aperson who may have some sort
of a fetish that they weresubject to or that they had,
which from no quote fault oftheir own.
People have fetishes for allkinds of reasons, often rooted
in early experiences and soforth.
But a person who is engaging infetish behavior and this is
(13:10):
just one example who's notliving in an arrangement in
which that works and maybe hashad such a shame about it then
he never even talks about it anda classic example of falls in
love with a person, with a woman, and man, I'll just go ahead
and be heterosexual right now.
Falls in love and says well,this is going to change me, this
(13:32):
is going to save me, this isgoing to stop.
Very sincere, and oftentimesthat works for a long period of
time or a short period of time,and maybe sometimes always.
But those are not the ones whocome to see me.
It's the ones who try that andit does not work.
In examining it, what becomesevident is that this was an
(13:57):
essential part of their sexualnature, their sexual character.
It didn't fit in their moralcode, so they repressed it, but
it was there and because of that, once they started engaging in
it again, they would besecretive about it, they'd feel
terrible about it, they wouldhave great shame about it.
And, presto chango, they're asex addict.
(14:17):
Sometimes yes, but sometimes no.
That's the confirmation bias.
No, that's the confirmationbias.
I did not feel in my own casethat the phrase addiction fully
captured what I consideredsomething to be my core issues
that caused me to engage in mybehavior.
So in a little bit it was apersonal journey of me looking
(14:37):
in the mirror and saying who amI?
What am I?
Who determines what I am?
What language is used?
What are my choices for beingable to determine what you got?
Well, we kind of have one suitof definitions off the rack and
need to fit within that.
So you put those two togetherand just for the way that I work
(14:59):
, I realized there was a need insome way to expand the scope of
how we you know, just beingprofessionals, really just
society can bring in a widerrange of people who are
suffering from sexual behaviors.
Because, as you know, it's waymore than the people that we see
(15:20):
, it's way more than in 12-stepgroups.
Those groups are not foreverybody who needs it.
It's for everybody who findstheir way to it.
It's a tsunami of sexualproblems, especially with the
introduction of the internet,which happened in my generation.
And now there's folks in yourgeneration who are digital
natives and it's all that's beenthere.
And Gary Wilson, who has thetagline evolution, did not
(15:42):
prepare your brain for today's.
Who has the tagline evolutiondid not prepare your brain for
today's pornography deliverysystem, and because of that, we
live in a techno world thatfacilitates and really
turbocharges addiction.
There's a whole lot of peoplewho come to see me and I'm
really clear that if it was 50years ago, they wouldn't one.
(16:03):
There wouldn't be seasats tocome to, but there wouldn't be
that language and there wouldn'tbe as much of a problem,
because sure people can getaddicted to looking at magazines
and other still images and soforth, or maybe going down to
the movie theater in the seedypart of town and so forth.
But it took a lot of work to doall that.
And then the internet came andwe're in a brave new world.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, anonymous, affordable, accessible.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yes, I was trying to think of the name of the person
who coined that phrase, butthat's it.
It's anonymous.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
You don't have to be identified.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
It's right there, it's accessible two clicks away.
I often tell my clients a lotof compulsive behavior is
downstream of impulsive behavior, and what's more impulsive than
the phone, whether you'relooking at sports or doom
scrolling, or there's threeclicks and I'm into a whole
(16:59):
realm?
that did not exist until thiscentury.
And so we live in a society, atechno society, that is creating
addicts, creating addictions,and of course we're in a whole
addictive culture.
It's almost inevitable thatthere would be this tsunami.
I do tell a good many of myclients, especially younger guys
, you didn't stand a chance.
(17:20):
There's just no way the oddswere stacked against you to not
be exposed to pornography duringa very early age.
So often how kids can getaccess.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
As porn has become a bigger problem, we need new
frameworks.
We need new ways of talkingabout this, so more people can
get more help.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's it.
That's it, spot on.
And I'm a little surprised thatthere's not a robust
pornography anonymous movementyet.
And so I have a whole lot ofpeople who are porn addicts and
not sex addicts and I am one ofthe CSATs professionals who do
this work who firmly believethat those are two separate,
related but separate entities,that many sex addicts look at
(18:00):
porn, but porn addicts look atporn.
They're not going out andhaving affairs, they're not
going out and doing all theseother things.
It's strictly porn, and toconflate porn addiction with sex
addiction can get really messy.
I see you nodding your headwith that.
Oh yeah, in many ways I thinksex addiction has a more grave
(18:20):
meaning to it than pornaddiction.
With porn addiction, it's onething okay, there's porn, sex
addiction, oh gosh.
What does that mean?
Is he a pedophile, is he arapist?
Is he a sex addiction?
People just project all oftheir fears into that phrase sex
addiction.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
But porn addiction, okay, porn, I know what that is
yes, and porn is so disembodiedand it's so disconnected from
from other people.
It's a completely differentexperience than a sexual
encounter.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Oh, absolutely Just no comparison between the two.
True sexual intimacy fromwatching porn is like learning
how to play baseball by watchingthe highlights of the World
Series.
You'll see all the dramaticplays and you'll see all the
jaw-dropping catches and tripleplays and all that.
But that's not what the game ofbaseball is about.
(19:12):
I mean sure it gets there, butmost of it is about fielding
grounders and striking out.
And just brought over topornography, people see images
and have this idea of whatsexuality is like and sexual
intimacy is like and get intothe real world and find that
does not fit.
(19:33):
Very often does not fit.
So back all the way around pornaddiction.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
I know that there is.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I think there is a burgeoning PA group, pornography
Anonymous.
Small handful of meetings and,oh gosh, I would love to have
that expanded, but until then wework with what we have.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
And you have created a newer framework called PSB
Problematic Sexual Behavior Sureand everything that I said up
to this point is really settingthe stage for that.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
So I wanted to find a different way to assess people
for these issues without relyingupon labels.
I'll give one more little teeup Professionally.
There has been tremendouscontroversy about the phrase sex
addiction.
You know, is it real, Is it not?
And whole organizations pitthemselves against each other.
(20:30):
I think it's better, butthere's still a lot of sex
therapists who feel that sexaddiction is nothing but a moral
way of pathologizing people whoare engaging in sexual behavior
that doesn't fit into a norm.
They're wrong, but they stillare very powerful with that.
So in dialoguing with peoplewho did not agree with the
(20:50):
concept of sex addiction, Istarted to hear the phrase
problematic sexual behavior as ajudgment-neutral way of just
saying it's a problem.
But there was no agreementabout what that meant.
Everybody had a different ideaabout problematic sexual
behavior, and I'm a former boardmember of the Society for the
(21:10):
Advancement of Sexual Health,sash, which used to be, up until
2004, the National Council onSex Addiction and Compulsivity,
and so, which was before that,just the National Council on Sex
Addiction National Council on.
Sex Addiction.
Well, there's another theorybase that says this is
compulsion, not addiction andman.
(21:31):
To me the difference isminuscule, but just like schisms
can happen with minusculedoctrinal differences or so
forth.
So we added in the compulsivity, slightly different way to put
it.
But then there's otherframeworks as well.
Hypersexuality has a slightlydifferent view to it.
So do we call it the NationalCouncil on Sexual Addiction and
Compulsivity and Hypersexuality?
And how many initials are wegoing to put behind that phrase?
(21:54):
So I was on the board.
It was back in 2004,.
I was a real strong advocate forchanging the organizational
view from the problem to thesolution.
And the solution is sexualhealth.
So that leaves the question ofwhat does sexual health mean,
and can that?
How does that?
It seems to be culturallydifferent.
(22:16):
Some cultures over here it'sthis way, some it's that way.
How do you come up with adefinition of sexual health
that's not culture bound.
Putting that together, I setabout the task of trying to
figure out.
Okay, let me see if I can crackthe code and find a way to
identify the core concepts ofproblematic sexual behavior in
grounded sexual health theorywithout using labels.
(22:39):
Now I'm finally ready to get toit.
I feel like everything was atee up to the problematic sexual
behavior framework or the PSBframework.
Sexual Behavior Framework orthe PSB framework this is a
simple five-question method forhelping a person identify
whether their pattern of sexualbehavior is problematic for them
, and it looks at five differentcategories of how could
(23:05):
something be a problem?
If it's a problem, why is it aproblem?
And so I sussed out thatthere's five different reasons
that behavior is problematic.
Either F and I'll just tickthem off.
A it's breaking commitments.
If you're violating yourpromises and breaking
commitments, that's a problem.
B is values conflicts If you'renot okay with what you're doing
(23:27):
.
If you do have regret and shameand so forth about what you're
doing, that's a problem.
Third is diminishedself-control, and this is where
all the sex addiction and pornaddiction comes in.
If you don't have full abilityto guide your own behavior, it's
a problem.
The fourth is lack ofresponsibility to others.
And this was a tricky one for me, drew, because the word
(23:47):
responsibility first it was justdripping with moral relativism.
I'd say responsible can seemlike a real judgment and I
wanted to get away from that.
And what I found was, inreviewing the history of how the
phrase sexual health hasdeveloped is that just about.
At the start of the centurysome writers started to include
(24:11):
behavior that was notresponsible to others, and what
I found fascinating is a lot ofsex therapists.
They kind of pushed that off tothe side because I think they
felt like, well, here's thatmorality piece again.
But I wanted to take that ideaof responsibility and make it
really clear about what thatmeans, and I came up with three
subsets of that.
(24:31):
Responsible behavior is behaviorthat has full consent of
everybody, that protectseverybody from unwanted negative
consequences and that doesn'texploit anybody.
So everybody's got a consent,nobody can be harmed and nobody
can be exploited.
That is our responsibility toother people, and part of a
(24:53):
component of sexual health is tobe responsible to other people.
And so I took those categories,reviewed them commitment
violations, values, conflicts,lack of control, lack of sexual
responsibility.
Oh, I forgot the fifth one.
The fifth one is kind of acatch-all negative consequences.
Maybe a person is engaging inbehavior that they're not
(25:15):
breaking any commitmentssometimes because they're so
isolated they don't even havecommitments or they're not
breaking their values becausemaybe they're personally, okay
with what they're doing.
Maybe they're not engaging indiminished self-control, they're
just doing it because they liketo do it.
Maybe they're not violatinganybody else's rights, so it's
(25:37):
not irresponsible to them, butthey still have negative
consequences from what they weredoing.
Pick somebody who maybe goes tosee a sex worker and then wants
them getting arrested for thatand they were single and they
were okay with it, and they werewearing condoms, and so the
only category that that wouldcatch would be this fifth
(25:58):
category that I put in negativeconsequences.
Problem is as problem does.
If your behavior is causingproblems, it's problematic.
A equals A.
I attached a question to eachone of these categories, and the
questions are ones that I giveto the folks that I talk with,
and I wanted them to be sosimple that anybody could both
(26:18):
understand them and use them Notjust professionals, but people
in their personal life.
You want to talk to somebodythat you care about, or you want
to self-examine yourselfwithout having to decide is this
sex addiction or is it not?
It's simply asking these fivequestions.
The first is are you keepingyour promises?
There's a whole conversationthat comes with that.
(26:39):
Then we can talk about explicitpromises and implicit promises.
I use pornography as an example.
Maybe the husband's beenlooking at porn and the wife
finds it.
There's a whole crisis withthat, and I'll ask well, had you
ever talked as a couple aboutyour mutual stance on
pornography so often?
No, we never talked about it,but in many marriages people
(27:00):
don't talk about it because it'sjust understood, or maybe the
spouse thinks it's justunderstood, like you don't have
to say to your partner I'm goingto make a commitment not to rob
banks, he would say well, ofcourse, pornography is cheating,
it's off limits.
And the man might say well, youknow, we never talked about
that.
Say, yeah, but it's veryimplicit.
You can't really say well, Ijust thought it was going to be
(27:22):
okay.
You knew you were hiding thebehavior.
That's why she caught you.
Now, if you had said you know,honey, I'm going to go upstairs
and look at porn now, and shesaid I don't want you to.
And you said I appreciate that,I respect that, but I want to
do that and we can disagree andI'm going to go do this myself.
Actually I would considerthat's not problematic sexual
behavior, because if a personengages, does that and says I'm
(27:45):
going to go watch porn and Iknow you don't like it, but it's
important to me, I'm justmaking up a situation Then
they're not breaking acommitment because they're not
making a commitment.
And if they're okay with whatthey're doing, they're okay with
what they're doing and all theothers are not being flagged.
So it's certainly causing Iguess you could say that
category is causing problems.
But the problem is really aboutthe disparity between the
(28:06):
couple.
One person's okay with it, oneperson's not okay with it.
This is a relational issue andwe need to look at it that way
in order to then look at whetherthe behavior is truly
problematic.
So the first question are youkeeping your promises?
Second question is are you okaywith what you're doing?
And a lot of folks will say I'mgoing to get right down to it.
(28:28):
I hate that.
I like this.
I hate that this is what I'mdoing.
It goes against who I want tobe.
And so, again, classic valuesconflict.
And again, as you know, aboutpornography, because dopamine
feeds on novelty and pornographyis all the novelty you could
ever want.
Person starts with just lookingat something and then over time
(28:53):
that template can wind them upin someplace very different from
where they they intended to.
How did I get here?
And so they have tremendousvalues conflicts.
So first question are youkeeping your promises?
Second question are you okaywith what you're doing?
Third question is are you incontrol of yourself?
And of course that can be up tointerpretation, but these are
all jump off questions.
(29:14):
Each one of these primaryquestions.
They're conversational startersand they can lead all sorts of
fine-tuned questions that comeafter that.
But the question of do you feellike that you're in control of
your behavior?
Obviously very important.
Those are the questions inthose sexual addiction screening
tests that I do think are valid.
Do you feel like your sexualurges are stronger than you are.
(29:37):
Are you thinking about sex in away that feels excessive to you
but that you can't stop?
You know classic addiction,compulsive, obsessive sort of
behaviors.
So there's a whole conversationabout that.
The fourth is are you protectingeverybody?
Are you protecting everyone,which I'll explain?
That means do you have fullconsent from all the
(29:58):
stakeholders?
Are you ensuring that you areprotecting whoever you're doing
what you're doing with, and areyou sure that you're not
exploiting people?
And this is where pornographyusage that question, I think,
can be really useful in helpingpeople to look at pornography
use.
Because let's start with thequestion of do you have full
(30:19):
consent for everybody?
Let's talk about who you'rewatching on the screen.
I would say probably mostpeople who are engaged in
filming pornography.
They are aware that that's whatthey're doing and they are
aware that that's what they'republishing.
And they are aware that that'swhat they're doing and they are
aware that that's what they'republishing and they are aware
that people are using that fortheir sexual purposes.
As you know, there is a subsetof I don't know what do you call
it?
Somebody surreptitiouslyrecorded and they don't know
(30:42):
that they're being recorded andof course, it's just flat out
unethical and illegal.
I want to ask the person areyou sure that everybody's
operating from consent thatyou're looking at?
It's the other twosub-questions that can be more
tricky for folks.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
One is.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
You know the question of are you protecting everyone
from negative consequences?
If you're looking atpornography, are you protecting
or contributing to a person'snegative consequences that
you're looking at?
People who do look at porn tendto underestimate the amount of
porn actors or people who areappearing pornographically, who
don't have much option.
(31:18):
They don't have much power,they're economically
disadvantaged, they're comingout of their own history of
sexualized trauma and they'rereplicating that in their life.
Or maybe even more physically,people are having sex without
condoms.
There's no barrier protection.
There's a risk of if you'rewatching somebody who's having
(31:38):
unprotected sex, can you saythat you are not contributing to
or facilitating that personengaging in behavior that's
harmful to them?
And the last question, ofcourse, is exploitation.
Are you sure that you're notsupporting inherent exploitation
of people for the sexualpurposes?
Back to what I said just amoment ago people who are maybe
(32:00):
engaged in pornography to makemoney because they don't have
any other way to make money orthey're coerced.
You know they're trafficked.
They're trafficked.
It's not always clearly evidentwhen somebody's being
trafficked.
Oh, they seem to be into it.
Well, they get inducted intothat system and that's what
they're doing.
But you don't know theirhistory of what comes to them.
(32:21):
So a lot of porn users.
Those are really importantquestions for a person to look
in the mirror and say am Iactually being responsible or am
I contributing to the harm ofother people?
So those are the five questions, and each one of those are
conversation starters.
Here's what you have to say injust a moment.
Here A few highlights, I think,of this approach is that if you
(32:41):
notice there's no labels used,we never have to talk about are
you an addict or you're not.
We're going into descriptions.
After that we can decide whatyou want to call it.
But at first let's justestablish this is problematic
for you, and I do distinguish.
Problematic doesn't always meanpathologic.
Pathology is an illness,problematic is a problem.
Problem is a problem does so.
(33:02):
Not all problems arepathologies.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
But when we call everybody a sex addict, we're
saying they have a pathology andperhaps even an identity.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
So much, so much.
You're spot on with that.
I want people to come to thatdecision about whether addiction
is the best explanatorylanguage, because that's what
addiction is.
It's a theory of explanation.
This is why the person is doingwhat they're doing.
Addiction is a prediction aboutwhat caused that behavior.
Compulsivity is another one.
(33:31):
All the different reasons, sothis avoids all the labels.
It also, if you notice it,doesn't talk at all about the
types or frequencies ofbehaviors.
We're not saying well, are youinvolved in any S&M behavior?
Are you doing any of this?
Or how many times are youmasturbating?
How many hours are you lookingat porn?
Those are very importantquestions, but they're questions
that can be really culturallydistinct, that this very same
(33:56):
behavior can be very problematicfor one person and just very
okay for another person.
Very same behavior, how can itbe as problematic for that
person and okay for that person?
Well, because this person isnot violating any of those five
categories.
This person is, and so thisapproach does away with all of
(34:16):
the cultural limitations.
These five questions work foranybody, whether you are the
most sexually conservativeperson out there or the most
sexually whatever you want tocall it libertarian person.
Those five questions goeverywhere with you.
So non-pathologizing,descriptive rather than labeling
and sort of applies really toeveryone.
Let's see.
Is there any other thing I wantto say about it?
(34:36):
And theory neutral there's notheories about that, it is just
sort of makes it be self-evident.
So, in conclusion, I have had alot of success with this
approach.
It's all on my website and Ihave people who come to me very
regularly and say this islanguage that speaks to me.
This is finally, you know, Ican talk with you.
(34:59):
So I really wanted to startputting the word out there.
So I published an article aboutit in 2017.
And I started doing a littlebit of the workshop circuit and
all that.
I was really surprised when, in2019, I got a notification from
SASH that they were giving methe Carnes Award for that.
I was really surprised when, in2019, I got a notification from
SASH that they were giving methe Carnes Award for that and
maybe other things I'd done inthe past.
I thought it must have beenjust they must have run out of
(35:21):
all the really deserving people,and so now they're down to the
B team and that's just me havinga hard time accepting something
like that.
But it was a tremendous,tremendous honor I started.
One way that I apply it and I'llfinish with this is I run a lot
of men's groups.
I actually have eight men'sgroups going every week and
(35:42):
these are not sex addictiongroups, they're problematic
sexual behavior groups, psvgroups, and within that group
there are people who identify assex addicts, there's people who
identify as porn addicts.
There's people who don't usethose words at all and it
doesn't matter, becauseeverybody's going for the same
goal, which is abide by theircommitments, live within their
values, be in control of theirbehavior, don't have negative
consequences and be responsibleto other folks.
(36:05):
No matter what you call aproblem, everybody's heading
toward that.
What has been so unexpectedlybeneficial about that is that it
took sex and porn addicts awayfrom being the others.
All the sex addicts go to thosemeetings over there and they
just talk with each other andthey're a little bit them.
Bringing them into this groupwith civilians just folks who
(36:26):
are not addicted but still havethe same problem folks who are
not addicted but still have thesame problem brings a parity.
It turns that stigma intostature because they have
tremendous resources that theycan bring to the non-addicted
folks about.
Hey, this is a three-secondrule and the value of connecting
with other folks, and so thenon-addicts get all that benefit
(36:48):
of the sex addicts.
The sex addicts are just on thevery same level with everybody
else and everybody's headingtoward that same goal.
So it was so valuable that afterI put in the first group 13, 14
years ago, I saw the differencebetween men who were in groups
and people who were not ingroups, and his trajectory
seemed so different that I putin another group because I
(37:10):
couldn't get the guys to leave.
I asked for a minimum 12-weekcommitment and then stay as long
as you want, and everybody willsay 12 weeks.
They'll do that and think thatwell, they'll drop off after 12.
I don't think I've ever hadanybody drop off after 12 weeks.
My average length of stay ispushing four years.
When men get together, you know,when men can get together with
(37:30):
other men and reduce thoseintimacy barriers and really
come to trust each other andbring that mutual male support
to each other.
There's just nothing like itand so many men never had the
opportunity to do it.
So many of us are walkingaround as a boy's version of
what a man is supposed to be.
So it's very performative, it'svery exterior and all of that
(37:52):
interior development is just notthere.
These type of groups, these PSBgroups, really help to backfill
that in.
They really are.
They produce men and I'm justhighly grateful that this PSB
framework has been so valuableto so many people that I've
worked with that.
I want to continue to get thisout into the public.
(38:15):
I don't want this.
I'm near the end of my career.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
I don't want this to die when I do?
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I want this PSP framework because it seems to
have value.
I want it to self-generate.
It's almost like open sourcecode.
Therapists and theorists dowhatever you want to with it,
because it is a way that joinsall the different theories
together in a very fundamentallanguage.
And so I keep saying I'm goingto write the book and keep
(38:41):
saying it doesn't make it happen.
And that's why, appearing onpodcasts like this, it's a great
opportunity to let more andmore people know about this
approach and then hopefully ittakes root and can bring again
my ultimate goal bring the mosthelp to the most people possible
and widen the availability forpeople to have the opportunity
(39:05):
to live happy, joyful and freelives.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Thank you for this gift of language so inclusive,
equalizing and empowering.
What are your thoughts on someof the other models, such as
integrity abuse disorder?
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yes, thank you for that, and in my trainings I do
reference them.
I love Omar Mnouala's work andany approach that can help to
widen our understanding andwiden our theory base.
I'm very much in support ofwhat I like about integrity
abuse disorder is that itinherently involves another
person.
It's inherently relational.
If you're violating integrity,well, integrity to who?
(39:45):
And that leads intoresponsibility.
So there's, I think, arelational component to
integrity abuse disorder thatsex addiction doesn't
necessarily capture.
So with that, these fivequestions are just as relevant
for that model as it is for theaddiction model.
I'll say this, drew.
I want to briefly share why Iuse the word framework, psb
(40:09):
framework, because a frameworkis not a theory.
It's more basic than that.
It really is the foundationalmaterial that theories are built
from, and I use the metaphor ofconstruction of a house or any
sort of a building.
It starts with the materials.
You need the bricks, you needthe nails, you need the mortar
and so forth.
Those are the essentialcomponents that are required in
(40:32):
order to build anything.
Now, what can be built from that?
It's all kinds of things.
All sorts of structures arebuilt for their specific
purposes, but they all involvethe same materials.
So with integrity abusedisorder, it still rests upon
these five questions Are youkeeping your promises?
No, that's the violation ofintegrity right there, full stop
(40:55):
.
It's a problem.
Let's deal with that.
Put those five elementstogether in ways that can be
creative, that maybe helpidentify specific subtypes of
behaviors, and can be morespecific, and that's why
(41:19):
integrity abuse disorder was sovaluable to me to see get into
the public and get into theliterature.
Highly supportive.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
What about the language of unwanted sexual
behavior?
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Well, I would put unwanted sexual behavior.
That's the category of valuesconflicts.
If I don't want it, why don't Iwant it?
Because it doesn't fit with whoI want to be.
So now we have a valuesconflict.
One of the interesting parts orconsequences of this PSP
framework is that it isessentially I've used the term
outcome neutral.
(41:53):
It's not just theory neutral,it's outcome neutral, which
means that some examples ofproblematic sexual behavior can
be resolved not just by changingsome sexual aspect of a
person's life, but evennon-sexual aspects of a person's
life.
Here's the two examplesCommitment violations person has
(42:14):
a commitment with someone andtheir sexual behavior is
violating that.
There's one of two options theycan do.
They can change their behavioror they can change their
commitment and if the commitmentchanges, it's no longer
problematic.
Same with values conflicts.
Oftentimes we'll think thatvalues are immutable and
changeable.
That's what I've alwaysbelieved, what I believe now and
(42:38):
I always will believe, and formany people that is the case,
and for other people, values canadapt and evolve over a
lifetime as well.
Does that answer the question?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Absolutely.
It shows how value neutral thisis.
You can plug and play this PSBframework into any personal
perspective on sexuality.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
I'm going to start using that phrase plug and play.
I think that it's excellent,Thank you.
That's exactly right, and it'snot my place to tell a client
which way to go.
There are some doctrinairetherapists one way or the other,
Sex therapists.
They may not communicate itclearly, but some do.
They'll take the stance thatwell, your values are repressive
(43:15):
and you need to break throughwith that and not pathologize
your behavior.
Go in that direction as well asother therapists who would go in
an entirely different direction, of saying you know, the
problem is not your values, yourvalues are intact, it is your
behavior.
For me, it's not my place todetermine one way or the other,
(43:35):
which way a client should go.
I'm going to sit with themBecause again, I can have two
clients, very same behavior, youcan almost just be twins and it
goes to two very differentconclusions based upon those
five characteristics.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Bill, thank you so much for teaching us.
I feel like I just took acourse by interviewing you right
now.
I'm glad it was helpful.
What is your favorite thingabout this model?
Speaker 2 (44:01):
All of what we talked about sort of goes together the
value-neutral piece of it, thesimplicity of it that really
anybody could use, regardless ofeducation, the outcome-neutral,
the theory-neutral, the outcomemutual, the theory mutual, the
university applicable just a lotof aspects to it that I was
very grateful to have sort ofdiscovered in the process.
(44:22):
It was only in the working itthrough that some of these
benefits started to makethemselves available.
So, in some ways, finding a wayto bring language around the
phrase of responsible sexualbehavior, not in a moralistic
way, but in a very clearlydefinable way, so that we can
graft the phrase responsiblesexual behavior as a vital
(44:42):
component of sexual health.
I think that's one of the partsI feel most grateful and
enthusiastic about Because,again, typically in standard
understandings about sexualhealth, that one dimension of
responsibility to others hasalways been put on the back seat
and this puts it in the frontseat along with everyone else.
So I think that's my answerAwesome.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Thank you so much for sharing out of your decades of
wisdom and experience in helpingpeople experience sexual health
.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Drew, it's been a real pleasure.
I'm very much grateful for youreaching out to me and asking me
to have this interview.
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
And if you want to learn more about Bill and
connect with him, you can go toBillHerringcom and the other
links in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Everything that I've talked about here is on my
website, and there is a video onYouTube that breaks this all
down into a short period of time.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Well, I will include the link to that video in the
episode as well.
Thanks again, gentlemen.
Always remember you are God'sbeloved son.
In you he is well-pleased.
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