Therapist Calls Out the Broken Mental Health System | Coaching vs Therapy, Porn, & Dopamine Loops - Sex Afflictions & Porn Addictions with Craig Perra (sex addiction, porn addiction, sexual health)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, everybody, welcome, Welcome, It's Craig Parra.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I am your host.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to Sex Afflictions and Porn Addictions, a podcast
to help you create and sustain healthy sexuality and a
great life. Today I have a very special guest, a
fellow East Coaster, Vin Andfonte, a licensed psychotherapist, a mental
performance coach, former firefighter in New York, which is really

(00:26):
really cool, and host of the awesome podcast The one
Percent Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Thanks for being here, Ben.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Thanks for having me. Creig excited to jump on in
with you. It's like we're doing an awesome podcast swap.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yes, an awesome podcast swap.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Tell everyone a little bit about yourself, a little bit
about your background, and we're building to one of the
things Ben that not surprised me, but I thought interesting.
Here I am talking to a therapist and this is
an early conversation that we had listeners and really have
strong feelings about therapy.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
So we're going to talk about those today. Let's start
with the background and then we'll kind of figure out.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Talk about how you got to to where you are today.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
Yeah, let's do it. Do you want you want me
to start at the childhood or you just want the
professional journey.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
No, you gotta get give a give a little bit
of a little bit of the whole, the salient points.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay, big, big enough pictures, so we really capture your
essence and you will.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yes, we'll give you the abridged keynote. All right, Yeah,
for the listeners, here we go. I'll spare you the
hour and give you five to ten minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
So I want to go.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Into the childhood because I do believe that that is
a big point. When I was younger, I had always
been bullied and always been a bit of the outcast.
I've been the kid that never really fit in, and
it was me having to learn how to live through
and in victimhood. Now, most of you listeners might still
be somewhere in there today. In fact, most people are
highly unaware that they're going through most of their lives

(01:57):
living in survival. And that's exactly what I doing for
most of my life. So as I had been getting
all of this bullying done to me, you might be wondering, well,
what happened to this guy? Well, for me, I was
getting all of the classic movie bullying. I was getting
thrown in trash cans. I got thrown down the steps
and get shoved into lockers. I couldn't get a girlfriend,

(02:18):
I had no friends. Life was a very isolative and
scary experience for me, and so I was always in
therapy or some form of it. I was always seeing
a guidance counselor a school social worker, the mental health workers.
Then i'd see a therapist. I went to a Catholic school,
I was talking to the priests. Nothing and nobody was
ever able to really help me. And it was funny

(02:41):
because I always wanted to help, but I just couldn't
get out of it right. I'd always steeked away to
overcome the panic, overcome the anxiety, overcome the depression, but
nothing worked, and so I would later be diagnosed with depression, anxiety,
and panic disorder. I had a lot of suicidal ideation,
a lot of self harm, and I was always trying
to figure out like like why do people hate me?

Speaker 4 (03:04):
Why does life suck? Why are people so mean?

Speaker 3 (03:07):
I was asking the wrong questions for most of my life.
And one thing that I've learned about the brain is
that any question you ask it will it will always
produce an answer for and so I didn't know this
as a young kid. Maybe some of you still struggle
with this today, but you have to be cognizant of
the questions you ask.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
And funny enough, when.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
I would go to therapy, and they never really asked
me good questions either. They would just ask me, well,
how does it make you feel that you're depressed? I
don't know, man, it makes me feel sad. How does
that make you feel that you're getting bullied? I don't know,
like crap, who wants to get bullied? You start realizing, actually,
and maybe some of you guys have experienced this too.
I would leave the therapy office and I would feel
worse than when I went in. And I don't know

(03:49):
if that was a common experience for you guys, but
for me, it was like a weekly basis. I would
go in, I'd vent about my life. I'd talk about
how crappy everything and everybody was, and I'd leave there
feeling like I hated myself and I hated life more.
And that would lead into deeper depression and deeper ideation
around suicide. And you know, we got to this point
where the therapist was like, I think you should go
on medications. I think it would help you and I'm like,
I don't want to take medication, Like I don't I

(04:12):
you know, I know what that stuff does.

Speaker 4 (04:13):
I don't want to do it. And so it was
always really strong against that.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Now we'll fast forward a little bit, but at around
twenty three years old, I had a pretty pivotal moment
that changed.

Speaker 4 (04:22):
The way I viewed life forever.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
And we could talk more about that later, but I'll
condense the story for time's sake right now. And so,
in that pivotal moment, I started realizing that I had
given my power away for far too long, and I
started figuring out.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
How can I take it back?

Speaker 3 (04:37):
How can I get into what I call self mastery?
And so in figuring out self mastery, I had started
moving the blocks and moving the pieces of what can
I take on responsibility of whether it's my thoughts, my emotions,
my language, my behaviors, my actions, whatever it is, all
of these things, how can I bring it back to me?
And that's when I started going on this journey of

(04:57):
personal improvement, personal development in a deeper level that actually
created lasting change I had been doing. Now, the funny
part of all of this is that I had actually
been working towards becoming a therapist, even in this time
period while I was living as a victim. So from
eighteen to twenty eight, I'd worked in every setting you
can imagine as a therapist, and I found none of
it to be fulfilling. As an inpatient, unit's, outpatients, hospitals, clinics,

(05:19):
homeless shelters, private practice, department of education, I did applied
behable analysis as a traveling home therapist, and nothing felt
right to me, and so I had been trying to
find my fit. I'd been working on myself, and then
that led into this transition of becoming a firefighter because
I wanted an out, and not now in the sense
of like I need to quit this field or this industry.

(05:41):
It was just like I need time to figure out
why I'm not feeling fulfilled by this, and I can
always go back to it. So I joined the ranks
of FDNY, COVID HIT, and then in that time I
also started learning about coaching, which, by the way, as
a therapist, I thought coaching was bullshit because as a coach, like,
how do you get certified? Well, one, there's no standard

(06:03):
certification for coaches, So all of you listeners be cautious
when finding a coach. So no such thing as a
truly accredited, certified like standard in the industry. Right, everybody's like, oh,
you could be a coach if you take this course
or get this or do that. And so as a therapist,
I thought coaching was all bullshit. And then one day
I heard Tony Robbins. I fell in love with what.

Speaker 4 (06:22):
He did and how he did it.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
I really I realized, this guy's actually just the world's
best therapist, but he's got thumb ELTs to him, a
little pizzazz. And that got me interested in coaching. And
so I went and I started getting my certification. I
learned out Tony Robbins, took his training program, got that certification,
and then I started creating this hybrid because I noticed
that there's problems in both coaching and therapy, and that's

(06:46):
where I created this hybrid that actually blends the modalities.
So I started doing a mix of therapy, mentoring and
coaching with people. It really started taking off. It was
received very well by a specific group of people, namely
high performers, entrepreneurs, and organizations. Nine to five people. Regular
people didn't really like it that much, but that's okay.
So I went into this niche that chows me, and

(07:07):
then I was able to resign from the fire department.
I went full time into my business of mental performance coaching,
and now I do that full time. I'm a multifaceted entrepreneur.
I'm a father, and I'm a loving I would like
to consider myself a loving boyfriend and a few other
really cool things. But I think that's that's the abridge version,

(07:28):
right that do well, Craig, Is that too long or
too long?

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (07:30):
No, that's great, Ben, Thank you so much for that.
I did not realize the depth of some of the
pain that you experienced as a kid. You talk to
someone who's like me, you know, you on the outside.
Maybe we got it all together and then and then
you had heard my journey before I heard yours, And
that's a lot. I just was thinking as you were talking,

(07:51):
how easy it is as a kid, Like, haha, you
know in the Garbage Payo, it's a funny joke in
the movie, it's fucking traumatizing me, man, Like it's fucking cruel.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, it's a funny story. Now I actually like telling
that story.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
I think it's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Well, look at all the healing.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
You know, you can look back and laugh and know
that that pain brought you to where you are today,
and you're pretty happy.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Well, I have a lot of gratitude from where I
am today because back when I was younger, I always
love being able to, like, listen, I don't want to
sit here and just drown on about my story because
I feel like that's boring because there's so many cool.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
Things that we could talk about.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
But one of the things is that I always am
grateful to be able to be in a position to
do these things, just because of the fact that my
younger self didn't really think that I'd still be here.
I mean, man, I was consistently thinking about suicide, like
consistently figuring out the exciting ways I might be able
to do it, consistently thinking maybe I will not be

(08:52):
here next week, next month, next year. And so now
it's like I'm a guy in my thirties with a
family and a thriving business and all this great stuff,
and it's like, damn, that's really cool to just have
all of that.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Whether it's whether.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
It's massively successful or not, it's just really cool to
have all of it.

Speaker 4 (09:08):
Because if you talk to me.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
When I was younger, I probably would have told you,
I don't know if I'll be around past like twenty.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Let's talk about therapy, and so both you and I
have done extensive therapy. Now, my experience with therapy maybe
was a little different. I had some really powerful transformative
moments in therapy let me let me, let me say it,

(09:36):
many transformative moments in therapy. But I later learned that
those emotional catharsist moments like aren't evidence of you actually
like it's not enough to be successful, right, But the
model built to that and it was celebrated.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
It was that was the breakthrough.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
The therapist helped me crack through and break down that
wall and and and.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Feel that thing that I couldn't feel.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
So I had, you know, a lot of those moments,
and because of my having a lot of trauma, each
new therapist that I saw would crack their knuckles and
get ready to dig in. Well intentioned, very kind, but
it lacked. It wasn't very practical. I wasn't learning tools.
It was problem centric in the sense that it was

(10:23):
me setting the agenda and talking about only problems and
very very little in the way of solutions.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
So what do you say to or I don't even
know what the right question is.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Man's let's talk about that frustration with traditional therapy.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Kind of give me your perspective. I told you a
little bit about.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
My experience, but anything you can add to that part
of the conversation. So people, and you know what I
listeners is like, listen, you're getting help. Good, let's find
make sure that you're getting the right help. In fact,
this is going to be the subject of my next
podcast VN how to measure success in your therapeutic relationship.
And I'm doing it because seventy percent of my clients

(11:05):
come from therapy. So obviously there's a hole, right, Obviously
we are filling a hole.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
But give us tell me what you think about that.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
I think that most therapists suck, just like I think
most coaches suck. I think that most people are generalists,
and when you're a generalist in something that's as important
as personal development, you're not going to create change. And
I think that most therapists are just supporting a broken
business model, because therapy is a great business model.

Speaker 4 (11:36):
Check it out.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
You tell people you're going to come in for twenty
thirty years. You never solve your problem, you just learn
how to manage it better. And the way you learn
how to manage it better is because we create awareness
around it. And then like, you know why you're doing
these things, and you'll keep doing them, but at least
you'll feel better about why you're doing them. And by
the way, if you're really struggling, you'll also give my

(11:59):
business partner and opportunity to make money off of you
because they'll fill your medication every month. So now it
becomes this great business model.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
Come in, never resolve anything, just vent to me once
a week, and I make money for.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Thirty years until I retire. So is my business partner
who's providing you the medication until he retires. And then
we got this great system set up. And so I
never really like that.

Speaker 4 (12:22):
I found that that's what the standard of the industry
has become.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Though.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
I think, you know, most of these therapists don't really
understand how to create change, and there's also a lot
of emphasis around you know, clients being the expert in themselves.
I don't believe people are the experts in themselves. I
think most people are so wildly unaware of themselves that
they can't be the expert in themselves and part of

(12:47):
being for me to say I'm the expert on you either.
But I'll tell you what, once I start to get
to know you, and if you're truthful of me, I'll
become more of an expert on you than you will.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
Now I can't feed you the.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Answers, but I will be able to guide you and
direct you in the way of having revelations that will
allow you to discover them yourself. And So I think
that this client centric approach where like the person is
the expert is stupid to a degree.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Oh, I see what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
So you're contrasting that that you're contrasting that with you know,
someone who comes into my program, you know they got
they got a workbook. You know what I do is
I do a training and you're saying that the model
where you're the expert, because it was like, I'm connecting
that with me setting the agenda, Like me setting the

(13:39):
agenda is what I want to talk about is what's
important to me.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
It's it's the questions that.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
I have, which like I remember realizing, like what am
I doing setting the agenda? I'm bat shit crazy? Right,
I should not be setting the agenda correct.

Speaker 4 (13:56):
And and here's the other piece of it.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
You're the expert on the current version of yourself. But
the better question that I would have is do you
like the current version of yourself? If if you like,
are you here saying to me, Vin, I love the
current version of myself. I just want to figure out
something that has nothing to do with me. Because if
you were a fan of the version of yourself, one,
we probably wouldn't be doing the work together. And number two,

(14:21):
you would indeed be the expert because you've built that
version of yourself.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
But you're typically coming in because you don't like the
version of yourself.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
You're aware there's something wrong that needs changing, and how
are you going to change?

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Now?

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Don't get me wrong, this is the therapy part that's
really really good. How are you going to change if
you don't have awareness of what needs changing? But that's
really where therapy ends. So now you have the awareness,
what do you do with it? And this is where
coaching and mentoring are extremely important. Mentorship is the sharing
of experiences and information that can help collapse timeframes and
could give people frameworks and guidelines that.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
They could follow.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
Because one you've gotten a result from it or somebody
that you know, and that's how you do mentorship. And
it's also an educational piece. I might give you things
to study, Go tell you read a book, Go check
this out, Go do this thing, Go sign up for this, go,
whatever the case may be. Mentorship is is giving people
new information and new new opportunity to utilize in a
different way. And then coaching is the action part of it.

(15:18):
Coaching is where you put the plans in place, You
give people the tool, the strategy, and you challenge them
to get to that so that they evolve into the
next version of themselves. And so therapy doesn't actually do
all of that stuff. Therapy really hits well on the
awareness piece, especially if it's client centric. If it has
a different modality. Now, if you're blending other things into it,

(15:40):
it might give you those better results too. But your
average this is where I say average average therapist is
a generalist. They're not really focusing on ridging all of
these gaps and doing all of this work with you.
The average therapist is going to sit there and say, so,
what's going on in life? And I feel like crap,
that must be hard for you. Why do you feel like, crap, Well,

(16:00):
I think it's because of this.

Speaker 4 (16:01):
Oh you think it's because of that. Okay, let's dive
in on that.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
If that's exactly what you think it is, because you're
the expert on you, right, So that's where I see
this stuff really just kind of fall to crap most
of the time, because your average therapist doesn't really like
this action oriented problem solving planner who's going to give
you information and educate you and like, that's not what
they do.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
And then you got that feed, the the feed to
the practitioners who prescribe, and so you've got a model
into your point. Right, let's be fair, and you wervin,
I want to echo it. A lot of shitty coaches out.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
There, a lot of.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
I know, I mean, I'm well intentioned, but shitty therapists
right there, there's a lot of people out there who
really really don't know how to help you get from
from point A to a point B. Do you think
that medications are over prescribed today?

Speaker 3 (16:58):
One h medications And here's the other part, right, let
me ask you this. Do medications cure symptoms or do
they mask symptoms?

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah? I'm pretty confident they mask symptoms.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
They mass symptoms. They never care anything. You're like, if
you're taking medication for depression, you're not carrying your depression.
You're masking the feelings of the depression by numbing your
entire nervous system. So you're not even won't you not
only won't feel depressed, you won't feel happy or anything
else either, But but you might feel a little bit

(17:33):
happier because now you're not dealing with the pain of
the depression. So in that regard, yeah, kind of your
happiness goes up, but you're not carrying the depression. You
come off the meds or guess what what you always happens.
Eventually your body gets used them and stops working. And
then you're like, oh, I'm depressed again. I've been on
meds for three months. I don't know why it's coming back,
And it's coming back because now your body has resistance

(17:54):
to the meds and you still haven't fixed the actual problem,
and now you're gonna have to change meds again and
up the dosages and mess with your you know, your
biology and all this other crap. And so no, I'm
not a fan of medication. I don't believe in it
at all. Well, it depends what it is. Right, So, like,
if you're telling me, hey, vin like me, I have
severe seasonal allergies, Like for the entirety of spring, I

(18:18):
sit in my home with air conditioning, I drive in
the car with air conditioning, and I refuse to go outside.

Speaker 4 (18:24):
I take Benadryl.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
I take clariton D every single day until spring's over.
So here's the funny part. I know it doesn't stop
me from having allergies, but it suppresses the allergen symptoms.
And I want suppression of the allergen symptoms so I
could perform at a higher level throughout my day. Right,
So I believe in something like that, Like if you
need something that suppresses to a degree so that you

(18:48):
could perform in a way that is not like, how
do I say this in a way that's not stopping
you from doing some deeper work, Like I don't need
to change and become a new person to overcome allegy. Jeez,
I just I'll never overcome allergies. So I need clarit
in deed so that I need to figure out how
to muscle through the symptoms.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Right.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
But if you're telling me I'm depressed, depression comes from
this awareness. There's a if you guys look into this
research on it, they found that depression came about now ancestors.
They were doing this research on analytical rumination hypothesis, and
they found that depression came about because of the fact
that people when they're struggling with persistent depression, it actually

(19:27):
means that there's a deeper interpersonal issue in their lives
that they have yet to find a solution and resolution to.
So depression is actually helpful because it's trying to draw
you inwards to sit with yourself, to focus on yourself
and go through the problem and come to a resolution
with it. That's actually the goal of depression. Depression is
meant to help you so in that you would become

(19:48):
a better person. On the other side of it, your
identity would shift in your life would be better. So
if you're taking a medication to avoid doing that, I'm
not a fan of it. And that's that's how I
feel about, you know, all medications.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, No, I like that that your example applied to
all medications, because sometimes I think there's some bias. You know,
certain people have biased with psychmeds, and I know I
believe that my mood stabilizer was really important for me
at my low point when the you know, when I
went beyond suicidal ideations, and I remember anxiety medication being

(20:26):
really helpful when I could barely function and was enabled
to leave the house you know, without it, but dangerous,
right because you can get dependent on it.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
I was. I was lucky that, you know, I for.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Some reason, I've abused every drug you know that has
ever been put in front of me, but I did
not abuse you know, those medications, and they were helpful
for a period of time. But too many prime just
like you talked about the generalists, too many primary care
physicians prescribing medication without having any idea of what, oh yeah,

(21:02):
what's really happening for the person, And that is I
think causing some pretty significant problems today because the people
really aren't getting the right help.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
I would also say, too, like the example that you're
bringing up, and there's nuances to everything, right, the example
that you're bringing up. I've worked with clients who have
been on medication, some of which I've told had to
stay on their medication, or one of which that I
had said, hey, I think a medication would help you.
Because there are certain people that are at certain points.

(21:32):
And mind you, again, I'm talking about very specific scenarios.
This is like the outlier. I don't believe most people
need a medication. I think it's bullshit for most people.
But you have that deep outlier of like somebody so
bad mentally that you actually can't help do the work
with them because they literally cannot receive it. And that's
where a medication might help. But the caveat being the

(21:54):
way you did it a short period of time. Get
the medication to stabilize you at the point that you're
stable enough to receive information and not spiral every second
of the day. That's where you start doing the actual
inner work. And while you're doing that work, now you
could start looking at how do you start shifting the
dosages as you're gaining more control over your mind, your.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Body, and your spirit. Then you could start going into.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
That lower dosage lower dosage gone, But that will obviously
be dependent on those very very severe cases, which, again,
being realistic, is not ninety nine percent of people.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Right right, right right.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
What do you find is the biggest challenge that your
clients come to you for and what's the best advice
that you give them?

Speaker 3 (22:42):
So My clients are high performing individuals that need to
be performing optimally for whatever it is they're doing, because
they're usually entrepreneurs, they own businesses. Occasionally I get hit
up by a organization that wants me to enhance a
very specific person within it. So it's it's always somebody
that's at a very high level, and I'm usually brought

(23:04):
in for the interpersonal issues. People aren't bringing me in
because they want me to scale their company to like
a nine figure organization. They're bringing me in because of
the fact that they're stuck on something, whether it's a
leadership issue, whether it's communication, whether it's anger, whether it's
a form of depression, whether it's the imposter syndrome, the anxiety.
I always tell people, as long as it's some form

(23:24):
of a deeper interpersonal issue, I can usually resolve it
with them. And so that's the biggest core focus of
what I do with people.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
That's cool, that's cool.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
How long you've been doing this vent with everything kind
of going on in your life and the firefighting.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
And yeah, I mean everything combined. I started working at
eighteen years old as a mental health worker in a hospital.
I was co facilitating and helping lead group therapy sessions
at eighteen alongside you know, obviously the therapists and the psychologists,
but they would let me be a part of it,
mostly because I was going for a bachelor's in psychology

(24:04):
and so they already knew, like I was training in
psych and you know, they were giving me opportunity to
give input and kind of get that great experience. So
from eighteen until now has been I'll be thirty four
this year, so what are we coming up on is
the fifteen sixteen years something like thatre.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
Wow, very cool, very cool. You obviously like doing this better.
So what skills do you pull from therapy? You mentioned
one earlier Van, Where is that you know important? You
know those skills that you have because I certainly learned
a lot from my therapist.

Speaker 4 (24:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
I think when you're looking at therapy, the best use
case for it is creating that deeper awareness with people.
So if we're sitting there in a therapeutic capacity, the
bigger questions are like, what is your view of life?

Speaker 4 (25:00):
I want to know how you've written the narrative of
your world.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
I want to understand why do you believe yourself to
be the way you are? Why do you believe the
world to be the way you believe it to be,
and what do you believe about the way you are
and your place in the world based on the way
the world is and how you operate in it. So
I kind of take the two and then I mix
it all together because I've learned a few truths.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
One truth is that we don't see the world as
it is.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
We see it as we are, so your external world
is a deeper reflection of what you see internally. And
then the other part is is that we interact with
the way we believe the world to be based on
how we believe we're supposed to.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
Fit in that.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
So that's why I kind of hit on those two
points and then mash it up together, because you'll see
that we've created these subconscious set of rules for everything.
So you might say, vin, I don't feel like I
experienced love, and I'll say, well, Craig, that's interesting. You
have a wife, you have two kids, you have a

(26:05):
great group of friends, you have a thriving business with
employees who who are devoted to you. Why don't you
feel like you have love in your life?

Speaker 4 (26:12):
Well?

Speaker 3 (26:12):
And then you'll say something like, well, I just I
don't know, man, I mean just I don't feel like
I get it.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
I don't feel like my wife gives it to me,
my kids like And then and then we start understanding, well,
that's a personal problem, right, because it doesn't mean that
the people around you aren't giving you love. It might
mean that your framework or your rules for what love
looks like is incorrect, or not even that it's incorrect,
it's just you've built it to be something that maybe
is unachievable. So we dive a little deeper and say, so,
what's the framework, Like, how would you know if you're

(26:39):
feeling love? And it's like, well, you know, my wife
would show me. Great, let's just jump on her. What
would it look like for your wife to show you love? Well,
you know she would. She would tell me she loves me. Okay,
so she never tells you she loves me. Oh no, no,
she tells me.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
All right.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Well, if she does tell you, but you're saying she doesn't,
then the question is it a frequency or a time thing?

Speaker 4 (26:58):
Like how many times do you need to hear that
she loves you?

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Well, you know I would love her to text me
three times a day, just check in say I love you.
Once I get home from work, I want to kiss
to say I love you. Once I leave for work,
I want to kiss saying I love you. I want
to kiss and say I love you right before bed.
And so now all of a sudden you start understanding, Wow,
this guy's framework to receive love is high. He needs
three to four touch points throughout the day. He needs

(27:20):
I love you in the morning, I love you at night,
I love you before work. This guy needs to hear
I love you like ten times just to feel love,
and he needs to hear that every single day where
he's going to feel unloved. This guy is building and
reinforcing the framework that he has no love in his
life because of the fact that this is his belief
of how he's supposed to receive it, how he operates

(27:42):
in this.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
World, and what it would mean.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
And now you work off of that framework to see
is this an expectation that we could shift or is
this a reality that we can't break from? Right, And
so there's so many different nuances or directions you could
go with that, But that's kind of a little bit
of the ideology.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, No, I like that, because if his cup is
never full inside. He can't get it phil outside, right,
no matter how much love he got from his wife, kids,
his dogs, as friends, as coworkers or the employees, h.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
He can't, you know.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
I like the old expression you can't give what you
don't have, And if you don't love yourself, it's hard
to give it and it's hard to receive it.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Yeah, it's And then it's the perpetuation, right, it's the
what do we believe about ourselves and what do we
believe about our role within the world based on what
we believe of the world.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
Well, I believe that nobody gives me love.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
I believe about myself that no matter what I do,
I won't get the love. So then I believe the
way I'm supposed to interact with the life is not
in a very loving way because I'm not ever going.

Speaker 4 (28:47):
To get it.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
And all of that stems from the fact that he
has an unrealistic frame of what it means to receive love.
And so that's what I believe kind of that therapeutic
work is, and it's about kind of looking at the
frames that people live in, the narratives they built, and
the perspectives they hold. But I believe that's the extent
of the therapeutic work, right, because then I believe you
get into the other modalities once you step into that

(29:11):
next level of like, so, how do you get out of.

Speaker 4 (29:13):
All that crow?

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Right?

Speaker 2 (29:13):
What do you do about it? Right?

Speaker 4 (29:15):
Exactly?

Speaker 2 (29:17):
So let's shift gears a little bit.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Vin Is, tell me about your client's relationship with technology,
because it's not it's not often I talk to someone
who's like, all their clients aren't drowning in it. So
if my client senior executive has a problem with pornography
or you know, any kind of secret sex life that
he's keeping from his wife, he has a there's always

(29:42):
a broader relationship with technology problem.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
So it's part and parcel.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
How often are you seeing, you know, problems as people
come to you and you know they're talking about this,
they're talking about that, and you realize, like, wait a minute,
Like you are addicted to social media, that dopamine reinforcement
loop is you know, sucking the life out of you?

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Is that common? Getting worse or pretty steady? What's your experience.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
I think it's steady to getting worse, if that makes sense, right, Like,
it's steady in the sense that I think people have
always had problems with dopamine and always have problems, especially
when they have high stress, high pressure situations. I think
it's getting worse though, because in the sense that people
have more ways to distract themselves. You know, it's like, oh,

(30:31):
if you don't watch porn on one site, you could
go on another site. If you don't want to play
this video game, you could play that video game if
you don't like, you know, if you're home and you
want to play Xbox, you could do that. And then
if you want to get on the go and you
want to play video games, you could grab your phone.
If you want to, you know, go to a friend's house,
you could go on their internet. Like there's so much
access that there's really never never stop. Right, Like we

(30:54):
see things getting worse and worse because of that, Like
even the ways that you could do it in a
in a less what's that word, in a less conspicuous way, right, So,
like you when we were younger and cell phones still
weren't really a thing, and there wasn't any widespread internet,
what did you want to do? What did you have
to do if you were struggling with like a porn addiction,

(31:15):
at work. Well, you'd have to what during your lunch break,
grab a magazine, go into the bathroom, or like go
find a quick prostitute that you could hang out with
for forty five minutes. Like it would be a lot
harder to get that fix nowadays. I mean, dude, I'll
never forget. I'm not going to disclose where this was,
but there was one day I was working at one
of my many jobs, So don't even try to figure

(31:36):
it out. But one day I was working at one
of my many jobs and there was a guy and
he was laying down. He was on a couch. He
was just chilling. He was like he had nothing to do.
And I walked by and I literally see him watching
porn on his phone. Like literally, it was just he
was laying We had a couch in this in this
office space, and he was laying like this casually propped up,

(31:58):
just watching porn in life like the middle slash later
part of the day.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
And he didn't get startled when you walk by. It
was just like, hey, this is what we do.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Huh.

Speaker 4 (32:08):
I don't even notice. I don't even know if he
noticed I was walking. I don't really have a heavy step.
I'm not walking in thundering around, right, and you know,
I kind of move I don't know, maybe quietly.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
And so I just walked in, and maybe too because
there was other noises, like there was some TVs. There
was two TVs in the area and they were on.
And I don't even know if he noticed. He didn't turn,
he didn't look at me, he didn't say anything when
I walked in the room. He was just freaking laying
there watching porn. And I mean, it's just it's one
of those things like you weren't ever able to really
do that at any point until we got to this point, right.

(32:42):
So I think that people's addictions are worsened in this day.
I think they are getting worse. Like even gambling. You
don't even got to go to the casino anymore. You
can gamble online. You could gamble from your phone, you
could gamble from the computer.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Like man, those super Bowl ads and the football ads,
like all the ads I see now.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Trying to enjoy a little sport. I get sick and
I get angry.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
I got to do my mindfulness then when I see
another gambling ad, because I know what it's doing to people.
I know most of these people can't afford it, and
they're so creative. They're like the thirst traps on Instagram.
They are so thoughtfully done, well done, capture the eye.
You know, it's brilliant, and we're quite frankly to your point,

(33:25):
we're not wired for it.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
And it's tough too, because there's a level. You know,
the term victim blaming has become really big and like you.

Speaker 4 (33:33):
Know, sexual assault cases.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
And things like that, of like you know, oh, it's
the woman's fault, Well that's victim blaming, right, And I
would mostly agree with that. I don't think usually in
sexual assault cases it's usually not.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
You know, the woman's fault.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
And so when you look at something like the term
victim blaming, I also look at today's society as maybe
we're not we're still doing victim blaming, but in multiple ways.
It's like somebody asked me one time, oh, what do
you think of OnlyFans? I'm like, that's that's a terrible thing.
I think it needs to be dismantled. I think it's
absolutely horrible. I think same thing for the porn industry,
same thing for gambling, Like all of these people are

(34:09):
contributing to people's problems now This is where we'll say, well,
why don't they just not watch porn, and why don't
they just not drink, and why don't they just not gamble?
And then it's not that simple because people have things
going on in their lives, like people have problems, people
have traumas, and then you're sticking it in their face.
It's like, hey, you're depressed, Well, maybe you're depressed because

(34:29):
you're lacking money. Cool, Hey, gamble your whole life savings
away because if you actually don't lose, you'll win and
then your money problems are gone. Hey, you're struggling to
find a hot girl that i'll talk to you, Well,
guess what you got this model that's done extensive work
on herself. She looks like a Greek goddess and if
you just pay her twenty bucks, she'll say hi to you.
And so it also takes away from people being able

(34:53):
to get out of these vices because they're so bombarded
with it. And like, I think there should be obviously
that level of accountability on the person that is, you know,
committing the action, like do better work on the mindfulness,
like fix yourself. Yet it's also really tough for struggling
people who have so much pain that you're putting solutions
right in their face. It's like, oh, you're depressed, here,

(35:14):
drink this. Oh my god, you're lonely watched this girl.
Oh my god, you're struggling financially, get get win big
million dollar jackpopts Like what could you do with that?

Speaker 4 (35:24):
So I think so sorry?

Speaker 2 (35:26):
And you look better?

Speaker 1 (35:27):
Right Vin, you're seeing this that you're seeing the pressure
on men's beauty coming into the man space. And I'm
not knocking anybody who does anything to make themselves look.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Better, feel better, whatever you do.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
But you're absolutely right the messaging and the capitalist consumer
based society. We are consumers and they are gonna sell
us anything that we can consume, independent if it's.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Good for us or not.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Right, you know, how do you compete with a multi
billion dollar company with unlimited ad budgets and et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera, and access to every device. And
by the way, if you look anyway, I've going down
the porn funding rabbit hole. But you're talking major financial
institutions are behind that multi billion dollar industry.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
You're gonna dig a little bit.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
They don't put the sign on the you know, on
the mind geek building or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
But I like that point.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
You're right because it is a capacity issue and that
God's honest truth is that people don't have capacity. The
forces are against him. You know, things are harder for
your average Joe now than you know. I've been blessed
with some gifts and I you know, thank God for
those gifts, and but not everybody has them, man, and
they're losing themselves in this ship.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
Yeah, it's very easy.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
And this is why men turn devices because men, we
need dopamine to survive. We one hundred percent do. And
so if you can't get it, because you can't find
a wife and you keep getting rejected on the dating apps,
because you know, whatever the case may be, you're gonna
go to OnlyFans.

Speaker 4 (36:58):
You're gonna watch porn.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
If you struggle to find achievement in your current life
of like, maybe it's physical, maybe it's mental, emotional, maybe
it's job wise, you're going to turn to video games
because video games flashed achievements. Every time you do something.
There's just a million different ways to get the same
needs met. And that's what's so unfortunate, is that's perpetuated
and pushed on people that are that are vulnerable. I'll
say it, they're very vulnerable.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
Vulnerable.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yeah, yeah, I know that's a great point. Now, Vin,
you and I both have a hard stop coming up. Yeah,
what there are questions that you asked me at the
end of my podcast that I thought were really, really,
really good. So one, I want to make sure you
let people know where to find you, but I would
love it if you could answer those own questions that

(37:43):
you have for me for my audience.

Speaker 4 (37:45):
Sure, well should we should? We tell the audience what
they are.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah, let's do it all right.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
So on my podcast, our podcast is called the one
percent Podcast because we don't we don't see it as
us being billionaires, but we see it as the fact
that there is a one percent version of everything in
this world. You could be a one percent pull up champion,
a one percent cake maker, or one percent father. It's
just a way of being somebody that is striving to

(38:12):
outdo the rest of the world in a specific category.
And so the question that we usually ask our guests
is what is your version of a one percent life?
And for me, my version of a one percent life
is I want to impact a billion lives positively, and
I want to change the way that the world sees
and receives mental health and mental performance. As you guys
have probably heard on today's podcast, if you're still here

(38:34):
and agree with me or not, I don't believe that
the current system is working. I believe we need something better.
And that's why a big part of my mission is
being that solution, is being the person that learns what
are the things that are really effective, how can I
bring it out to the world, How can I help
people get better results quicker? And how can I create
something that is so much bigger than me that it

(38:55):
can create a lasting and sustainable change in society. And
so I want to figure this piece out. I've been
working on this. This is my mission. This is what
I'll spend the rest of my life working on until
the day I die, and I'm very in it. I'm
actually in the process right now of building a coaching
organization that will enlist superior coaches that will have different

(39:18):
tiers of support, and I'm really excited about this has
been very under wraps. Is actually the first time I've
told anybody about this, So your listeners are getting a
sneak peak of what I got going on. But I
don't want to just be a one percent change maker.
I want to create a one percent system that supports
change going into the future, way past my life, lifetime

(39:40):
and livelihood, legacy, legacy.

Speaker 4 (39:43):
And you know.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
Part of that, Craig, and maybe some of your members
can resonate with this. Part of that is because I
have a beautiful daughter.

Speaker 4 (39:50):
And here's another announcement, I have another kid on the way.
I just found it.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
A congratulations brother, thank you man, I appreciate it. And
so I wanted to impact a billion lives. At first
because of the fact that I know what it's like
to suffer, and I think a lot of people are suffering,
and I want to create a way to alleviate that
for many people.

Speaker 4 (40:13):
But then the other side of it.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
Was, now I have this child, and man, when you
have a kid, you think about everything for them, or
at least you should, I think, if you're a great parent.
And so I started thinking, man, this world is it's
getting a little scarier, it's getting a little more complex,
it's getting a little more difficult. I need to figure
out a way that I can impact a billion lives.

(40:35):
Because if I can impact that many people, all of
a sudden, my daughter can have a better opportunity to
live on this planet too, And so I want to
create change for those two main reasons.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Now, I love it. I love it. That's awesome, Finn.
Was there another question? It was? So.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
The other question that I ask everybody is what is
the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Speaker 4 (40:56):
Yeah, so I have two parts of that.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
One is a piece of advice I've received and I
would love to share that, and then the other is
a piece of advice that I read that changed my life.
So I'm a big fan of Stoicism and the Roman Empire,
two really great things. And Marcus Aurelius was obviously and
arguably the greatest Roman emperor and the greatest practicing Stoic.
And the greatest quote that I ever read was actually

(41:22):
from a teaching that he had, and he said, be
tolerant of others and strict with yourself. That massively changed
my life, because as I came out of victimhood, I
had extremely high expectations. I want the opposite direction of
like extreme ownership. Everything's my fault and if your life sucks,
everything is your fault. And I still believe that to
this day, but I was very aggressive in the way

(41:42):
I would do it. I wouldn't tolerate anybody who wasn't
willing to be that way. And so, as you might imagine,
that created a lot of friction and relationships and love
life and friendships. And once I learned how to temper myself,
I started having a better life. So one piece of
advice for everybody is be tolerant of others and with yourself.
And then the piece of advice that I received from

(42:02):
my mentor that was life changing is he told me
that relationships are rocket ships.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
And that was.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
Something that changed the way I looked at providing value
to this world. Changed the way I started networking, changed
the way I intentionally built my circle of friends and
people i'm surrounded by, because what I learned is not
only our relationships rocket ships, but they'll get you everywhere
you want to go.

Speaker 4 (42:26):
And so build your.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
Relationships, be genuine in those efforts, and always provide more value.
Think of this is something I had to consider. Think
of relationships as a bank account. You have to ask
yourself are you constantly withdrawing or are you always depositing?
Because if you're always withdrawing, you have a negative balance,
you're less likely to have good, fulfilling relationships and you
are less likely to get support from those people. If

(42:48):
you're always making deposits, your balance is healthy. You're gaining
interest on that balance, and that interest is referrals, being
top of mind, friendships, genuine support. It's everything you could
be hoping for.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Well, and there was a recent study that confirmed almost
one hundred years of happiness research. The primary predictor of
happiness is the quality of your relationship.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
So thank you for that. Vin. How do people find
you on the web in your podcast? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (43:16):
Man, so you find my podcast If you're having trouble
with SEO, it is the one Percent Podcast. But if
you're not seeing it, you have to find the one
Percent Podcast with Vin and Sheen. We interview entrepreneurs, high performers, founders,
people in finance, amazing individuals like Craig here.

Speaker 4 (43:32):
So check it out.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
If you're interested in finding some good stuff, you go
to my website www. Dot Vincentinfante dot life. I have
a bunch of free resources and offer free sessions for people.

Speaker 4 (43:43):
And check out the socials.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
You know.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
I'm on vin Infante everywhere, LinkedIn Instagram, TikTok. I don't
really use TikToker anything like that that much, but yeah, I'm.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
Always around man. You could just google me. I got
plenty of stuff.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Awesome, awesome, Well, thank you so much, Vin for being here.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
I had a great time.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
I look forward to doing and again I always learn
something when I'm in your presence and really grateful.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Thank you everybody for listening.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
I'm going to put all of Vin's contact information in
the description, so please click follow, like, subscribe. Thank you
for watching or listening. Your sexual energy is powerful and
with great power comes great responsibility. Thank you for listening
to sex afflictions and porn addictions. See in the next episode.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Hi everybody, Sia all right,

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Therapist Calls Out the Broken Mental Health System | Coaching vs Therapy, Porn, & Dopamine Loops

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Therapist Calls Out the Broken Mental Health System | Coaching vs Therapy, Porn, & Dopamine Loops