Welcome to The Covenant Eyes Podcast. Karen Potter, your host and I am so excited to be with you today. We've got a longtime friend joining us, Doctor Doug Weiss, who is a psychologist, and he's the founder of Heart to Heart Counseling Centers, where he specializes in treating sexual addicts and their spouses. He also provides top in class intensives for people all across the globe. He's authored more than 40 books and has 30 therapeutic DVDs for men, women, and marriages. He's been an expert on shows such as Oprah. Doctor Phil, Good Morning America, and he's joining The Covenant Eyes Podcast today. We are so excited to have him. He also has a great show on Daystar that we would encourage you to check out. It's called Healing Time Ministries. In addition, when he has free time, which I can't believe he does, he is the president of the American Association for Sex Addiction Therapy and he also is a certified Sexual recovery therapist and Partners Recovery therapist as well. The list goes on and on. We are so excited to have Doctor Doug Weiss joining the program today. Stay tuned for this amazing episode. Well, our guest today is a longtime friend of Covenant Eyes, somebody that we know well and I'm sure our listeners know well. But, Doctor Doug Weiss, welcome to Covenant Eyes Podcast. Oh, it's so good to be back again. And thank you. I'm Karen, I love you guys. I love what you're doing. For everyone who has your service. So, you know, even my kids had covenant eyes on their phones growing up. Okay, so I'm a fan. Love that. Appreciate that. You guys. Way our kids growing up that way is so healthy and so good. Well, Doctor Weiss, I mean, for a few of our listeners who might not know who you are, can you just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about, who you are and what you're up to right now? Sure. Well, let me tell you the testimony that I have, which is, you know, I was conceived in adultery. You know, I was, sexually abused. I was a full blown, porn sex addict during my adolescence and then had a radical experience at 19 years old. Alcohol and drugs left with sex addiction. Stayed all the way through Bible school and then went to seminary. I started to get free. And I've been free now and verifiably free. When I say free, I mean, and, me and my staff at heart, our counseling center, we take a polygraph every year, year and a half. So every counselor in my organization is actually verifiably clean. Not just saying they're clean. So I'll be 40 years clean this summer. Okay. So you can get in free. So then after that, I went to seminary. What? My first book we've been on all the way back to Phil Donahue, Oprah, Doctor Phil, Good America had a movie and a documentary made about our practice. And, you know, it's been a it's been a world. We've written many books, some about recovery. One of the things partner betrayal trauma, which is something that I, I founded as well, the research of what happens to a wife is incredible. Hopefully we get into that at some point. But, you know, we have a counseling center heart to our counseling center in Colorado Springs. And I'm also, the founder of Healing Time Ministries, which is, a television ministry getting these messages of healing out on Daystar Television around the world. So it's been an adventure. But for those who don't know me, you know, there it is. We love you. And, we talk about freedom all the time. We love that. And your work has spanned across several decades, and you have helped so many people. And in that time, you've been working with couples, you know, and I'd like to talk a little bit about how pornography has affected those couples that you've worked with and how it affects marriages and what you've seen in your practice. Well, let me put it in context. For the last over 30 years, I've been doing five day intensives in my office where couples fly in and we get into the nitty gritty of their lives and I'm talking about about 5000 people I've seen over my career. And these women are devastated. The trust is broken in the relationship. They feel unsafe. They feel compared to, they feel confused. Oftentimes they feel like it's been a bait and switch for them because they're usually really good men. They were sold to be really good men, and they didn't tell them they had a secret life. And then ten, 15, 20 years later, they find out about the secret life via pornography or inappropriate relationships. And, you know, Karen, when a woman hears this because in her office, people do polygraphs, right? They have the reaction. Anything from curling up in a ball and screaming like a wild animal, to staring off in space and being so overwhelmed they can't even process that their world is this. It's trauma in the biggest definition of that word, the PTSD symptoms that a woman has. If you take the PTSD symptoms and you go through all that criteria, most of them will have about 80% of them will have those criteria, and most of them will last up to a year. This woman is hit by a 18 Wheeler. Okay. You can't see the scars. She's bleeding all over and she still has to pick up her kids at school, maybe has a job, still goes to church, and you know, and worships Jesus and does what she does with her life, but she's bleeding. And, to see these women in the courage that they have to even try to rebuild their marriage and they do. I mean, over 90% of the women I've worked with have rebuilt their marriages with the husbands, of course, doing the work of healing and recovery, which includes covenant eyes. We if you're not on covenant as a client of mine, I'm going to probably ask you some serious questions as to why. Because you need to close the door on those things that hurt your family. It's not just about you as a man. It hurts your family because as a dad, you're spiritually, emotionally, morally immature. Okay, you're about 14 years old raising children. You need to be an adult to raise children and so we definitely incorporate covenant eyes into helping people heal not just their person, but also their marriage, because then she can track it and she knows what's going on. And it's very helpful for her to know that who, you know, maybe, maybe were clean for a while. That's excellent, Doctor Doug. You know, during that betrayal time that happens, you know, there is, lack of trust. There's trust broken even. You talked about trust with your staff and how you maintain that in the marriage relationship. When you're talking with all these folks, how do you help them begin to rebuild that trust? And how long does that typically take? Well, that's a really good question, Rob, because it's unique to every person. But generally speaking, there's two principles here. The one is called believe behavior. So if he's going to a group, he's making phone calls. He's working through the workbooks that really, the final freedom, one on one freedom. All that is a path. It's just like therapy in a box, okay? If he's doing the work, that's one thing that you can believe what he's proactively doing. Because what I know is people do what they want to do and they love what they protect. Right. And so the second thing is we do do polygraphs. We verify at the beginning what the story is, and then quarterly for the first year and then six months and what that does. I know it sounds a little radical, right, but it's actually in numbers chapter five. Okay. So we we want the wife to be able to trust her husband and for him to get a year of healing so he's mature enough to actually make good decisions. And it works. It works because we can tell the lady, listen, you don't have to divorce, okay? You can give him three months at a time and see if he can earn your trust back and usually doesn't even take a year. She starts trusting him. They start building relationships. The relationship becomes better than ever because in the counseling center we have a triune approach. We want to heal him, heal her, and heal the marriage and all three can happen simultaneously, as opposed to like sending them off to someplace for a year. He can get better, she can get better, and they can get better. And we see it happen every week. So, you know, I'm looking through my head in the Rolodex of thousands of people who like when they came in Monday, they were bludgeoned. They didn't fight it. They were hopeful. And they send me the email later that our marriage is great. We're loving our family. Thank you, Doctor Wise, you know, and all that kind of stuff. And so, it's exciting to see people heal, but it's it's possible. So trust can be rebuilt. But he has to do his work and she has to do her work because he could be, you know, Boy Scout clean. But if she doesn't let down her heart and open it back up, you know, that's her part. And it takes a little while for that to happen. Once you've been shot by the person who said they would, you know, protect you. So, you know, you do a lot of counseling and I know that you've worked with so many couples and the one of the, one of the things that I think is most striking when we're talking to people going through pornography addiction in their marriages, is that the view of how damaging pornography is differs between the spouses? So sometimes the man cannot, necessarily correlate that his pornography use is impacting the wife, is substantially as it is, and the wife sees it as detrimental to the marriage. Do you see that differently, like that differing view of pornography and how it impacts the marriage from the from Amanda's is a woman. You're asking a really pointed question, Karen. So let me parse it a little bit for you. First, the difference isn't always because the difference about the view pornography first. As far as him not being able to understand her trauma, that is legit. And we have two products. One's called helping her heal, in which I really help the man understand what he has done to his wife. And literally I've had guys come back in my office and go, oh my gosh, I cannot believe what I've done. The second product is the partner of Betrayal Trauma video or book, where the statistics alone, page after page after page after page after page of before trauma. She was this after trauma. Like before trauma 26% were depressed. After 88% were depressed. Clinically depressed. That's the result of pornography, okay. And that's the result that he had on his wife. Okay. The the reason there's a disparity is because of his immaturity, addictions of any type, alcohol, drug, sex, food, work, anything. Rob you of three areas of maturity spiritual maturity, moral maturity, which is how you make decisions, and emotional maturity. So he's responding like if you found pot in your 13 year old bedroom and he's going to say, why are you in my bedroom? Instead of, let's talk about the pot, right? And so in the same way, early in recovery, the man is still immature. And you got to understand, the pornography has raised him probably from 8 to 12 years old till now. And it's been his booboo, mommy. His binky. Okay. And so he doesn't want to necessarily, you know. Well, Binky can't be bad right now. Think he's really bad. And it's destructive not only to her but to him neurologically, psychologically, physiologically and in the area of intimacy it can rob him of so much because these are the areas I see guys develop. Here's Rob, you like this. You're a guy and no offense care. But none taken. Here's one of the things I see with guys, okay? If they are entrepreneurs, business owners, or self-employed in a lot of my clients are those they will literally double or more than double their income in a 12 month period. If they stop doing pornography in 12 months, they double or more than double their income. That is a numerical way of saying there's a lot of change that happens. The self-esteem improves. You know, they can trust their judgment again, and they can be creative again, because right now all their creativity is going to how to get the secret, man. It's a secret. Do all that. Well, that's one way of looking at it. Imagine that same way spiritually doubling, emotionally doubling. Right. And that's what happens when we get off that drug. We become what we're supposed to be instead of what the drug has made us to be, which is full of secrets and shame and anxiety. And if you really knew me, you wouldn't love me. And one of the great things is, you know, when a woman does find out, at least it ends the secret for him. It's awful for her, but it ends a secret for him. I used to call that my first article I wrote in my whole career was called The Clouds and Thunder. When he tells you everything, he's on a pink cloud. He feels great and she's in the storm, right? Because she didn't know. But there's that's why the discrepancies there. So it's a little bit more complicated than their view of pornography. You know, for her, it wasn't her best friend growing up. It wasn't where she went to after she was rejected by, boyfriend or girlfriend. It wasn't the place where she went when dad was yelling and screaming at mom. It wasn't a place to help her develop. It was for him. A place where he leaned on to get through life. So was his friend, even though it was hurting him. You see the emotional difference. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense in your counseling with men too. As you're working on addressing the pornography addiction. You talk about all these side effects of, you know, increased work performance and success in other areas because now you're focused on positive behaviors in those spaces instead of hiding the secret. Do you also incorporate like health and wellness and taking care of one's body, mind and soul into your practice? Because I think that's an important piece to it, is it not? Absolutely. Because the neurological imbalance that the addiction causes, it's really helpful to have the other creative outlets or physical outlets. But Karen, as a woman, you want to know about the impact. One of the impacts on a woman is a neurological impact. And that's not something that counseling can heal. We have in my office at Hard Heart, we have, neuromodulation treatment, which you listen to these sounds and it's it's a long story to explain the technology. About $50 million went into the technology. But literally by Wednesday, I can see the woman's eyes change. Okay. Because when when you get hit by a truck, I mean literally get hit by an 18 Wheeler, okay? You're different and they are stuck in there frozen are they're in fight or they're in flight. None of those options are helpful for a brain. And the brain will stay there like or like stay there until it gets the freedom to be able to heal itself. And that is another part of the demonstrate able progress we see. Because a woman goes in, she gets her scores, how her brain is on Monday, and they're usually pretty bad. And by Friday they're like totally in a different place. Her brain is more centered and able to be neuro plastic again, which it wasn't capable of doing on Monday because of what he did to her in the trauma. That's another way that we can measure that trauma is real for these ladies. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah absolutely. That weight that burden lifted is is I mean it's amazing. It's huge. But Doctor Doug we talk with so many couples here at Covenant Eyes men women and couples together in there is always a reluctance to dive into counseling. And I don't know if that's coming from the church or if that's just a normal reaction from from people. But tell us a little bit why why counseling and support groups are so important in this process of healing. Well, let me tell you a funny story, Rob. And then I'll answer your question why support groups are important. So when I was in Bible school, I got radically saved, right? So when I went to Bible school in the first quarter, you got to take a psychology course. Well, I went up to the dean of students who became president later, and I said, listen, I'm not taking that psychology course. That's of the devil. Okay? So God said, tumors. He makes me a psychologist. Okay, okay. But we integrate the biblical stuff. We're not on the psychology side. We're we're integrating biblical truths. Okay. Now, why is it important to have support? Because if you could be that by yourself, you would have. You can't. Okay. We use the 12 steps of the we. Part of that is having community. We heal in community. And there's something powerful about having other people have the same addiction issue, no matter what the addiction, to be able to speak into your life and to call you on the stuff that you need to be called on in a loving way, and to call you up and to move you forward and to inspire you. Because we have groups, in our office, we have many groups where we offer about 50 or 60 phone groups. So anyone who's listening to us can get in a phone group for either the part of a trauma, intimacy, anorexia, which is another monster, and then our sexual addiction. And so we've got lots of groups going about 5060 a week. And in there it is so sacred. That's all I can say, is they open up their hearts and they see this. What's going on with me? This is how I struggled. This was my victory this week. And they encourage one another. They pray with one another. They strengthen one another. They rebuke one another. And that's the kind of community we need to heal and get stronger. Now, I've been doing this for 40 years, and I've seen thousands of men grow up in those groups and become really strong men in their churches and their community and their families and the women heal and they become incredible. They, the women say, I'm I'm the way I used to be, okay? I used to be happy. I used to have energy. I used to, I used to be excited about living and I lost that. And in the group, they begin to heal and over time they go, I feel like me again. That's the most common response. And I go, yay! Okay, after the work, you get to feel like you again and then you can take it from there. So the group is miraculous is no no short way of doing it. Some healings are process. They're not instantaneous and just confessing it to your wife. You're not healed. Okay. You just started and the same with the wife. You need to start the process of healing because the couples that have the best success are the ones where he does his support group, she does her support group, and they do the marriage recovery exercises together. And that combination over 40 years has been the synergistic ness that makes couples heal quicker and get back to their lives. Okay. And that is rather insightful because groups is how it happens. You know, anywhere I want to improve in life, I get people that are better than me, around me, and that's no truer than in this particular area. Such good advice. Oh my gosh. I mean, we do that in all the other areas of our life, and I don't know why we don't consider that when we're addressing pornography addiction. If we want to get stronger and healthier in the gym, we get a coach. We join a gym with a group of people. You know, same thing applies in business. You find mentors that are wiser or have been down the road. You get coaches. It's just amazing to me that we don't apply those same principles in this area, but it's because it's hard, right? It's hard work and it's not always something that's easy to talk about. So in your. Work at work, but it's yeah, it's way harder to stay thick. It is the women, the women who don't get in the group can take 3 to 5 years to get what a woman gets in six months in group. Wow. Okay. A man without a group may never heal, which means his wife is going to go through the same cycle again and again. Now that's hard. Sitting in a group of people who love you, that's uncomfortable. Karen, but it's not as hard as having the same nightmare. Repeat again and again. You don't want your husband to come and say, honey, we need to talk every three years. So true. Do you want a permanent solution where this is not going to happen to me again? Well, if he's not in a group, it's going to happen to you again. It might be a while, but unless he finds out why and how he got this way, he can't unravel that for himself. So when life gets painful again, he's going to go back to Binky. Yeah. And that's what you want to stop him? Yeah. I absolutely, absolutely switch gears a little bit. You know, in our culture today, young people just are seem to be drowning in this culture of sexuality. And so many are getting trapped in pornography at such a young age. Can talk to us a little bit about, really what's happening to these young people as they go through this and just in terms of their viewer relationships and sexuality and all those things that they're going to now carry into adulthood. It really is a good question. And I would say the first thing to parents is get covenant eyes, just get it. Get it on your phone. So you be a good example, get it on their phone and get it on your TV. Get on your computers and get it. That's what I tell my clients. So I'm that's up to now. I'm not just promoting you because you're here. If you were in my office, that's what I would tell them do. Okay. But they're being seduced not by just the sexuality. They're being seduced by technology. There's research that shows that adolescent depression scores have grown over 100% since the phone. IPhone has been introduced into society around the world. It's not America. This research has been done around the world. Depression has gone through the ceiling, anxiety has gone through the ceiling, and they're having the hugest amount of mental health issues ever known to the world as adolescents. Okay, they're taking pills that we couldn't even imagine growing up. Like you and I are probably close to the same age where we are a little more gray than me, but, we didn't we didn't. We didn't have a depression down. Okay? We had a bad day. You get up and you go to school and do the same thing. Yeah, but now, because the dopamine and serotonin, the how they're being raised with the pushing of buttons and scrolling is depleting them and making them feel they've accomplished them. So they're being seduced by technology. Now, combine that with the power of the human brain, sexual release, which is the highest level of endogenous opiates, which hits the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which for adolescence is not fully developed. And so they're developing with an object relationship sexuality, and they're gluing to it with the highest chemical word their body has. And they become addicted, physiologically addicted, and it can cause them trouble. I remember there was a huge magazine article about how young men can no longer perform in the sexual arena because of this attachment to the other world. So they're being seduced by technology in general. So I would say parents have a media budget on technology until they get out of high school. Okay. Just you need to monitor that and you need to monitor your own. Okay. Have blockers for sure. Have the good conversations. Need to have we have a great DVD called born for War. We have another one called Princess Take Longer than Fox, and we're coming out with a new one, Karen, how to find Mr. Right. It comes out in a few weeks. It is amazing because I actually tell young women and women who are divorced and women who are widowed, you need to ask these hard questions early on, okay? And women can kind of tell when men lie. But if if you don't ask the questions, you're part of the whole thing of don't ask, don't tell and then wonder why you got the goods, you got. Women need to be smarter today than ever, because the addiction and the amount of men that have it is tremendous. And so there are things that they can do, but they need to be smart. The neurological attack on our kids brains is the first in world history to actually change the adolescent brain. So by the time it gets to adulthood, it's already so addicted to technology, which makes it vulnerable to other addictions because they don't learn how to manage real relationships. Which to your point, and they don't know how to manage their internal environment, their emotions, so they're unregulated and unable to attach. And we are allowing this to happen to our kids, and it needs to be taken responsibly. Instead of just handing a three year old, you know, the phone and say, watch this while I eat my my food. Wait, how many you guys? I mean, you've been to a restaurant in the last month. Yeah. And all four of them are on their cell. Phone, you know, it's. Yeah. Right. And, and we wonder why our kids don't know how to have relationships. So we can do better I think as parents and as a church to encourage, the reduction of technological stimulation. Absolutely. Well, kind of taking a pivot, I want to talk a little bit more about Healing Time Ministries. You know, what inspired you to start Healing Time Ministries? And just talk to us a little bit about what, what that's all about for our listeners that may not be familiar with that. Sure. Healing Time Ministries airs on Daystar, and Daystar is largest Christian television network in the world. Okay, they go to day Starcom and, Healing Times is about talking about issues in the church that don't get talked about, like what we're doing right now. You haven't heard a sermon on, but I just did a show actually, today. I taped it on the partner of Betrayal Trauma, citing the statistics of trauma and how important it is for the church to get involved with these women so they can get help. I deal with addictions. I've had several shows on lust for you live living on clean on sexual addiction. And so we're and we're handling topics like, the worthy topic where many women feel worthless than many shows on marriage and how to cultivate incredibly good marriages. So we are tackling the things where the church, the church, is less trained or less willing to go into those waters. Okay, I've been doing those waters for 40 years. I'm like that river God, I've been down here. I know where the rocks are, so just stay in the boat with me. But one of the things healing time is really, I would say excellent. That is, we are calling people in every church, every viewer on, on the television around the world. This goes to every nation in the world, okay. And we're encouraging them to start groups where they are in their church for these issues, and we give them the materials and they can start those groups in their churches. We have groups all over the world doing all kinds of healing, because I honestly believe the church needs to heal before Jesus comes back. It doesn't look like a white, impure church to me right now. We look kind of gray at that. Okay. Yeah. When when 50% of the men are struggling with sexual addiction and a good portion of the pastoral leadership are struggling with sexual addiction, we don't look like the pure bride, but we can be if every church gets involved in the kind of hospital ministry of of of dealing with the real issues of people, why not? They're there and they want to be healed. I don't I don't meet believers say, well, maybe occasionally, but very rarely does someone want to stay stuck. They want to be free. They want to be healthy. They want to have good marriages. They want to have good parenting skills. We do the parent practical issues, which, you know, if you got a a prodigal, you're a good Christian family, but you got a prodigal helping parents walk through those issues, how to parent the child that challenges you and the other one. Right. So we deal with all these kind of topics because it's a place where I think healing time is about equipping the local believer to do local ministry, to see local change in healing. And if we can do that around the world, we can help the church. So that's what healing time is about. And they can go to healing time. Ministries.com, if they were interested in, you know, tracking with any of that or starting a group, that's what we're all about. And, we, I think, covenant eyes just you're on that page. I think because we want people to get point walkers. You know, we are an advocate of that. And I just want to say, if you're watching this and you don't have covenant eyes, get it? And if you haven't told you people in social media, this is Doctor Doug Wise and the president of the American Association for Sex Addiction Therapy. I've written many books and I'm telling you, get covenant eyes, put it on your Facebook and say, did you get covenant eyes and give them a link, okay. So that they can protect their families. And that's a shout up not coming from you asking me, but for probably over 25 years partnering with you and Ron and knowing how many people you have saved from going down this road, I would like to see that to become everywhere. So that's my personal endorsement of Covenant Eyes unasked for, unpaid, for unsolicited. That is so kind of you. Thank you. No thank you. But thank you. That was awesome and so kind. And, you know, back to your ministry. I mean, my gosh, like, this is amazing. We need more of that because the church really needs to be the place where people go to find answers, because if they don't get the help and support they need in the church, they're going to go online and they're going to look to the world. And frankly, the world does not have the right answers. So I'm just so grateful for your ministry. Thank you for your work, Doctor Doug. Well you're welcome. Thank you very much. Yeah, absolutely. It's way past time overdue that churches lean into, dealing with the messy things in church. It's, it's needed some. Things. And so we need human ministry. We need that. And it comes from a biblical, biblical point of view. And I got an MDiv as well as marriage, a family counseling and teaching psychology. I mean, have preached all over the world. This is the Word of God integrated into a way that you can actually do it in the process of healing. Yeah. And that's what's really, really helpful to people. Well, that's exact well, Doctor Doug, you mentioned the, the healing time, but what other ways can people get in touch with your resources or your counseling? And they can they can go to Doctor Doug weiss.com. And there they'll find all if they want to do an intensive that they want phone counseling. You know if they need help with materials they're all there. My office is great (719) 278-3708. All of my staff are very competent in helping people find out what they need, where they are. Maybe they just need some information to start. Or maybe they're on the phone crying for half hour and they need to talk to a counselor that day or a coach and or maybe they're like, you know what? This is serious. We're doing boot camp. We're coming for five days. We're going to do everything we can do because we need to save our marriage, because we have we have young kids, we have young family, and we want them to be raised by a mother and a father that not only love each other, but have the tools to be able to stay together for the rest of their life. And that's what we do. Every week we see more miracles. It's fun actually, when you see them come in the way they are and see them leave, they're all happy and love each other. And, you know, it's fun. That's incredible work. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. And thank you for sharing all the ways to connect with your ministry, your staff. You're so accessible for someone that's got so much going on. You just really put yourself out there and thank you for doing that. Well, I've got three things to say for the man who's addicted. I've been free for over 40 years. They've helped thousands of men get free. You can be. You want to get help, get support and take responsibility to heal yourself, to heal your family. So the woman who's been betrayed, your trauma was legit. You did not cause it. You did not cause it, and you can't cure it. But you do need to heal from the trauma that you have been impacted by. That's your responsibility. And you can. I've seen thousands do that to the marriages that are being impacted by this. You can heal. There's lots. We have the intimacy a hundred day good book. There's lots of marriage books we have. There's things you can do to heal your marriage so that as you both move forward, you can have really a better marriage than ever. I can tell you, many thousands of people have either called me or text me or email me, say Doctor Weiss. I didn't believe our marriage could be better after this, but it's actually better. And here's a picture of our new baby and all this kind of stuff. So there's hope. That's the one word I would give to anyone listening. There's hope and you deserve to have it, but you might have to work to get it. Praise God, thank you for that message of hope to our listeners and listeners. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Covenant Eyes Podcast. I know you have surely been blessed by that, and I encourage you to check out all of Doctor Doug's resources and also his show on Daystar. It is quite amazing. You're going to learn a lot. He is a wise man who's been doing this for quite a while and has a lot to teach and offer. So thank you, Doctor Doug Weiss, for joining us on The Covenant Eyes Podcast. We appreciate it. Thank you for having care and you be blessed.