Making Peace & Beyond Podcast

Have you ever wondered how to make sense out of your messy life? Or how to live in peace in the middle of a stressful world? My name is Jamie Norton, and I want to welcome you to the Making Peace and Beyond podcast, where we talk about life struggles and how to live in the peace, joy and freedom that Christ died to give us.

Today I'm really excited and a little bit anxious about the topic we have. I'm sitting here with Spencer Klein, who works with me as a counselor, and Spencer has just become certified in the treatment of sexual addiction, and we're really excited about that because it's such a huge and talked about issue.

And so we're going to wade through some sex stuff today. So Spencer, welcome.

Thank you. Thanks for having Me. And could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you just completed?

Absolutely. So I've been licensed as a counselor in the state of Ohio for about five years now, just working on right now completing up my certification as a sex addiction therapist through an organization called ETAP, which is the International Institute of Trauma and Addiction Professionals. It's kind of the gold standard, if you will, of sex addiction certifications. I'm a little bit biased, admittedly, but it's been a really good program.

Patrick Karnes is kind of at the helm of that particular program, and it's been a really cool experience to get to go through that over this year.

Yeah, when I heard it was Patrick clients, I was really impressed because he was kind of the granddaddy of sexual addiction treatment back in my day. And so he has been around for a long time. And I think it's really wonderful that we can have someone on our staff that is particularly gifted in that. And you are. And from everything I can understand and it's interesting for me to be able to talk about sex, especially in the church and especially at my age, because I grew up in a world that sex really only existed in the back room.

So if you had you had no sex education and you had no real legitimate discussion about sex, it was all in jokes and and back room discoveries and experiential stuff. But I remember, you know, just thinking in my day, there were no genitals. You know, we just we didn't talk about that. Everything was so being able to talk about it in a way, because everybody is a sexual person and everybody sex is God's gift to marriage and we've so corrupted things that I think we do need to bring it to the light.

And so I'm curious as to how you got to that point yourself of really being focused on that.

Sure. So and it's interesting, you talk about your generation sex being only existing in the back room and the nonexistence of genitals. The world that we're in today has gone completely 180.

You're absolutely all.

Genitals and become.

We've got this world where sex is at the forefront of absolutely everything, just everything. And the younger generation today, Gen Z and I think it's Gen eight now, Generation Alpha is the most recent generation they're talking about now. These kids are just inundated with the idea of sex from such a young age, not only sex as an act, but also as a construct, as our sexuality, as our gender identity is our orientation.

So many kids are just being told so much about sex. I mean, the Internet. I mean, we don't need to say anything more besides the Internet, too. Just I mean, it's opened quite a floodgate of of information that is going to a lot of people at a pretty young age. So it's interesting to compare and contrast back room, you know, hush hush taboo education versus the floodgate that I was talking about that we're in right now.

So we've come quite a long and alarming way in a alarmingly short amount of time.

And that's true. I think I think the answer I mean, my world had no screens. We I mean, we had in the movies of my day, people slept in twin beds. That's how hush hush it was. We I mean, it was and I just remember getting into a lot of trouble because it was so hush hush. But I needed to have some education about what sex was and how it worked.

And I remember the first time that someone, you know, tried to feel parts of me that I didn't wasn't allowed to feel myself. You know.

Then I was I was shocked like, what are you doing? You know, because we were so ignorant. We were interested in about menstrual cycles. You know, I thought I was bleeding to death. I mean, there was so much that needed to be done at that point. But then it when screens came out, it just went crazy. And now everything is we've taken a good thing that God gave us for it.

I think I think of sex as God's wedding present. And it's and we've made it a good thing, a wonderful present into a supreme thing. We've idolized sex and and our body, you know, to idolize your body is to analyze the self, you know. And so I think we've we've done this disservice and we've destroyed the beauty and the preciousness of something that that God intended.

And so, you know, to really look at how it's become corrupt. I remember a while back there was a when Promise Keepers was around, there was a survey done at one of the conferences about what is the thing that you men struggle with the most and it was they had work, relationships, pornography, alcohol and drugs. And I think 60% of the men there said it was pornography.

You know, just that whole idea of of sexual imaging and provocation on screen or in magazines in my day.

My first thought when you get to that statistic is really it was that low.

And that's probably true. I mean, now it's like huge.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you speak to a really important point that particularly porn use, but a lot of other sexually acting out has just become so, so heartbreakingly prominent within the church community now. And the worst part about that isn't even that. It's existing. It's the fact that none of these individuals want to talk about it or feel able.

It's I think shame is word of Satan is probably the greatest tool. Satan has to separate us from each other and to make us hide and become separate from God, separate from each other. And sex is one of the biggest attributes or characteristics that he uses to help that to happen. And as we move into some darkness there, we know.

I mean, the truth is written in our hearts and we know when we're doing something wrong. And I was saying the other day that, you know, if you're if you live in a dark room and there's no light in there, you can't see your mess. But when someone brings light into the room, then the mess starts to show up and then there's a lot to clean up.

And then you feel the shame of the mess that you made. And so one of the things that happens very quickly when somebody is into a sexual shaming situation is that the light of love can't get to them. They avoid that like that. So it begins to really interfere with anything that expresses true love and expresses a relationship with God or expresses a relation, a loving relationship with another person.

We sabotage to protect that thing that we're hiding. And and that is a very sad thing. And I think when we're at a community that that smiles sweetly and says, fine, thank you, then people walk around with this burden of I don't know what to do with it. And one of the things I believe is that shame cannot survive in the light.

And one of the things I love about what we're doing in our community is we're making it okay to get help. It's okay to talk about it. It's okay to seek help. It's okay to go see you, to be in your group. It's okay to to to be in the the the support groups that we have that help people to manage their body in one way or another way, whether it's food, alcohol, drugs or sexual acting out.

Yeah, I love the word you use of managing our bodies. That's that's really what we're trying to do here is to to take that's the interesting thing about sexual addiction is because you look at other more substance based addictive tendencies, the obvious solution is if I'm an alcoholic, no more alcohol, plain and simple. If I'm addicted to narcotics, no more narcotics, plain and simple sex.

We I mean, unless we're unless God calls us into a life of monasticism or celibacy, which isn't the reality for a lot of people, especially within Protestantism, we got to face sex at some point or another. It just has to be. So managing our bodies is a really good way to put that. And I like the other word that you brought into the conversation a few minutes ago.

You brought it up pretty quickly, this idea of idolatry. Because what we're looking at here, at least from my viewpoint, is, well, there goes my.

Well.

From my viewpoint as a Christian counselor, what we're really working with here when we talk about sexual addiction, a lot of people want to call it a lust addiction, which is that's okay, that's fine. I wouldn't really describe it in those terms. I would call the root of what we're dealing with here idolatry. And even more so than that, personal self worship, elevating yourself to a position of God.

Because what are we doing when we're sexually acting out, when we are masturbating, or when we're seeking out a sex worker, when we're at the strip club using porn, whatever the case may be, the focus is, what do I do in this moment to fulfill my wildest fantasy and to make me feel the best I've ever felt? Elevating ourself to a position that, frankly, we have no business being in.

It's about glorifying God and building up his community, not our own personal, selfish desires.

And in that light, sex outside of marriage often is what we're doing is as we elevate ourselves, we're depreciating our partner because we've lost the ability. That person now is a commodity for my satisfaction. And when that happens, that eliminates love. I mean, that is that is not a loving thing to do. And it's because it is destructive.

It destroys something in that other person, you know, to use that other person as a vessel for my own satisfaction. And and yet we call it love. We've lost the ability to differentiate between intimacy and gentleman genitalia. Intimacy is about transparency. Intimacy is about seeing each other, being with each other, loving each other in genital. It is just about sex and sometimes the least loving behaviors that we can have with each other.

Our sexual behaviors. It we're both it's like mutual masturbation. I'm using you and you're using me, and then we're going to go home and not see each other anymore. And that is I mentioned to you

Yesterday that we really lost the ability to you know, we need to teach our children the difference between coming together and coming together. And then it is a very, very different experience and having been one that sought love in all the wrong places during my youth and having having really experienced the emptiness of that of that lifestyle, it it's puzzling because you don't understand why, you know, because it's always been elevated as this is something that will get you love.

Yeah. When I first started into the training material for this area of study sex addiction, I wasn't even aware that the experience of the betrayed partner was such a crucial, integral, vital part of this work that I'm learning how to do specifically. And the thing that brought this up in my mind when you mentioned the point about using your your your spouse or your partner as a sexually acting out partner, basically mutual masturbation, that that point you were making, the reverse, I think is also true because if if the betrayed partner and this is why betrayed partners getting the help that they need is I think just as important as the addicted individual getting the help they need. Because if the the betrayed partner goes into that relationship and says, well, I got to I got to have sex with them, I got to sexually, sexually satisfy them, because if they don't if I don't, they're just going to go to look at porn or they're going to go to the strip club, they're going to have an affair, whatever their drug of choice, so to speak, is what you're actually doing in that situation.

You're making yourself and acting out partner with that person. You are becoming the object of their unhealthy fantasy.

Exactly. And and I think that I'm so glad you brought that point up because because the the idea there was many times that I was told that women weren't supposed to enjoy sex. In fact, there's a huge prejudice about that, where people think men have all this sexual stuff, but women don't. All women do. And probably in my practice, what I see is this almost equal when there's a dissatisfaction or unhealthy, dysfunctional sexual relationship in a marriage, very often it's the woman who is is being and he won't have sex with me.

Now, there's multiple reasons for that. What is pornography? Because there's no constant partner that can match all the the little kitty powers of sexual pornography, or it might be latent homosexuality. It might be that somebody has just lost their attractiveness. It might be that somebody's got high blood pressure or is drinking too much because drinking takes away your testosterone.

And so men look, you know, they want to, but they can't too, you know.

But but it's like there's.

There's there's a a a a multiple reasons why, you know, males also become asexual. And so women are really frustrated. But the when I was coming along it was women weren't supposed to enjoy sex and were often told, you're going to have to do this. You know, this is a duty of of marriage. But you aren't you don't have to enjoy it, you know?

I mean, you won't you won't enjoy it, you know, and and and so that was a mindset that a lot of women in my generation went into marriage with is this is just something you have to do, like washing dishes, you know, I mean it is. An explicit verbal communication you received. There was an underlying theme that you picked up on.

It was there were many I did not receive it personally, but there were many. I received it non-verbally. But but there was there were many people around me who who verbally were told that, you know, you're not going to enjoy it, but you have to do it. And, you know, again, if sex is God's wedding present, he intends for both of us to enjoy it. I mean, I think, you know, marriage is your secret garden. You can do what you want in your garden. You know it is. But it there's a huge difference between sex for the orgasm sake and sex for love sake.

Exactly. And that's another major component of what we're trying to do in working guys who are addicted to sex through recovery is we they've become so focused on the orgasm as as the source of personal gratification. Self-medicating is the term that we use. That's when when they're when there is an emotion, that's what we turn to. When we're happy, we masturbate, when we're upset, we masturbate when we're when we're angry, when we're scared, when we're confused, whatever the case is, all these different emotions, that's because we don't know how to deal with these these different, confusing, complex emotions.

So what we're really looking to do is getting these guys out of isolation and out of that behind the closed doors. You know, what happens in the privacy of their own room or whatever, and saying, okay, let's let's truly connect with others, not just sexually, Let's get you in a group of guys with recovery. Let's get you reconnected with with your spouse.

If the spouse is willing to continue the marriage with you, let's get you plugged in. In counseling. I mean, even just the counseling relationship in and of itself here sit in a in a you know, a room, one on one with another individual, sit on their couch and tell them some of your deepest, darkest, most regrettable incidences in your life. And get yourself reconnected with yourself.

Yes.

And then because you're disconnected from your emotional self, you're disconnected from your relational, relational self. And one of the primary symptoms of any addiction is affected and tolerance. I mean, whether it whether it's painful emotions or collaborative emotions, I mean, if you get too high or too low, it triggers that I don't know how to deal with this.

There's an anxiety that comes with that, that takes you to whatever your drug of choice is. If you're drug of choice, masturbatory drug of choice is alcohol. If you'd run across is cleaning your house, you know it. And then if you have a an addictive or compulsive behavior at a certain level of affect, it's going to trigger that.

Yes. And and so learning to modulate your emotions, manage your emotions is is a part of any recovery to manage life on life's terms, to be able to show up, you know, for for life itself which is filled with, you know, wonderful things and painful things. And so learning to to deal with that, talk about that process and so much of what makes life work is the ability to talk about it.

Right?

To put it into words. Words are huge and to be able to put things into words helps us to begin to to be able to manage our life in a whole different way than maybe we ever learned to do it. And so if you grow up in a in a place where you were never taught that you had a right to have your emotions, that you had a right to have your needs or limits, then it's it's a it's a lot of work to go and learn those skills.

I mean, because life skills just are out there, problem solving skills, are they We control, fight, run, you know.

Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up the idea of the compulsive of this behavior because I neglected to bring this idea of upfront. There's some folks, maybe less so being that this is a more explicitly Christian podcast. And so a lot of people are going to have the same ideas about sex and sexuality. But I'm not discounting the fact that someone listening to this could take a more sex positive approach and say, Hey, what's wrong with porn?

What's wrong with masturbation? You know, what's what's wrong with why are these labeled as acting out behaviors? The key here for the sex addicted individual is that compulsively what you're going to really want to do if you're wondering about, you know, how does sex become addictive, you're going to want to go on Google and search the World Health Organization's addiction criteria.

And if you can look at those ten criteria that they have on their website and say, yeah, you know, I can't control it, I know it's bad for me, I want to stop, but I can't. It's damaging my relationships. I do it for longer periods of time than intended over days, weeks, months, etc. That's.

How I do it. In spite of life damaging consequences, I do it to win. It threatens everything I love and I'm preoccupied with it. Yes, you know, I get. So that's what I think about a lot. You know, I think about doing it. I do it. I think about what I what I did. But and then I think about doing it again.

It's just there's a preoccupation with that. And I think I'd like for you to mention just how pornography becomes an imprint in your brain. So that image is going to be there, whether you're looking at it or not, which is what are the bigger dangers Is the image is already imprinted in your brain. So I'd like to hear what what your you've have you think about that?

Yeah, absolutely. There's a huge biological component here and I'm thrilled that you brought that up because the more we're looking at this, this highly stimulating, frankly, unrealistic imagery, the higher our threshold or our tolerance is going to become for the regular everyday things that should cause us pleasure and excitement. We're so used to getting such a high dose of dopamine, just like for any other addiction.

We're looking at more of a process addiction here through the behaviors that we do bring dopamine versus something that we actually put in our body.

Dopamine being that the neurotransmitter that makes you feel good and makes you enjoy things that makes you high. Yeah, there's a really good book called The Dopamine Nation that talks about that is there at a really good way is a really easy read. So it's a good book.

Yeah. And talking about that biological brain imprint that that you mentioned before, there's even been studies that have shown that if a guy or if an individual, I should say if an individual well is used to seeing some kind of object or physical stimuli near the computer or device they use for their pornography behavior, let's just say, for example, that someone had a microphone like this right next to their computer.

And every time that they went to go act out, they their eyes crossed over this microphone sooner rather than later. Just looking at this microphone is going to cause the physiological stimulation and arousal that we see when we start to look at the pornography and acting out type behaviors. Because the imprint, the two things are so interconnected. And so we've got a lot of neuro plasticity, brain biology type stuff going on here because the brain just it's such a beautifully adaptive thing that it's going to male adapt to this stimuli.

And fortunately, we can readapt. I mean, I think we live in a a world right now, especially in the, the world of traditional mental health and which I have some doubts about, but like where we're told that we can't heal, you know, you've been traumatized. You'll never be better. You know, the brain, the neuroplasticity of the brain. And when I again, I mean, I keep going back to when I was young because that was a long time ago.

It covers a lot of ground. But we were told that by the time you were five years old, your brain was formed. You know, I am what I am, and that's all that I am. Like, Papa. But what we know today is that the brain is constantly reformat in itself so that we can heal. You know, one of the things that is interesting to me is that science is proving scripture, and that is scripture says, you know, you'll be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

You, you know, focus on what is good, period. True. And you won't be anxious. You know, you can be a new creation in Christ. I mean, there's so, so much that we have that is now be approved by science because we know that that's true. Your brain can reform that you don't have to live in, in your history.

You don't have to live in your addiction. You don't have to live in your trauma. You know, there is there is healing, but healing requires, number one, being with people who know that it can happen. But also, number two, to be able to put into words, to be able to grieve, to be able to go through that process of of adapting to change and integrate loss and grieving the thing that helped you to survive all these years.

A lot of times, people's compulsive behaviors are actually also things that they did in order to survive really difficult situations. And getting out of that uncomfortable comfort zone takes courage and risk. And and that's why we need to say it's it's a wonderful thing to be able to reach out and talk to somebody who has been there, somebody who has who has who knows how to work with it like you and to really, you know, seek that that healing.

You know, that is so possible. I feel so sad. People ask me sometimes, how in the world do you do everything that you had? You sit there with people's pain all day and I'm like, what a privilege that is. When I was in pain, nobody was out there. I didn't know where to go and to be able to be with people.

What's more painful for me is to go into a grocery store, a church lobby somewhere, and see people walking around all tense and uptight and angry and closed down and avoiding eye contact, you know, and and and just wanting to say, wait a minute, there is a way back. You don't have to live in that.

Yes. And the trauma component that you alluded to is just a huge piece of what we're looking at here when we're talking about the sex addict. I think about the point that you made of the behaviors that we do being adaptive in the moment to deal with the things that the unfortunate, the traumatic, the heartbreaking, the terrible things that we're faced with in our life.

And I think about stories such as parents who were just completely closed down emotionally and unavailable to their kids. And the young boy, five, six, seven years old, didn't really have any idea of concept or understanding of sex. And then all of a sudden he's looking through the JC Penney catalog and gets to the lingerie section and something just lit up inside of his his being.

And he didn't know what it was, but he knew he liked it and he knew he wanted more. I think about stories that you hear of parents who are on the opposite end of the spectrum, almost excessively open sexually, where mom will either walk around naked or in her underwear around the house or dad.

Or although you're nice, attractive as we are the emotional enmeshment that can come into play there. We've got the idea of emotional incest, if you will, kind of coming into play of becoming a surrogate spouse to your parent, not in a sexual way necessarily, but that emotional need. And so a lot of this is where we see this this acting out, this this numbing out behavior, being adaptive in the moment.

It's what the person can figure is the best response that they can possibly find to deal with or medicate with the situations that they're going through at that time.

I think closely associated with that are kids who have been insisted as sexually or sexually abused who tell somebody and they say, they wouldn't do that to you. And so most people will tell one person. And when that person denies it or thinks they're lying, they'll they won't, too. I had a woman come to one of the making piece of Beyond weekend.

She was 83 years old and she said I was sexually abused as a child. And I've never told anybody and just want to talk about it before I die. And I was so sad for her and I was so glad that she did that, you know, because it but to carry that kind of burden by yourself for something that is not even ever your fault, you know, it is never a child's fault when somebody abuses them sexually or physically.

You know, it is always imposed shame. It belongs to someone else. And to be able to give that back is such a gift because you did nothing wrong. There is no guilt and there's no shame in that kind of thing. But one of the things about being sexually abused is that you, you you learn, you don't learn sexual boundaries.

And so whether you become a perpetrator or what you become a constant, promiscuous person is it has to do with not feeling like you have the right to control your body or to set boundaries with your body to say no, you know, and and and to at a certain again, a certain level emotion, the boundaries just go away.

You know, I work with a physician one time who was who went to a lot of strip shows and he fell in love with one of the strippers. And so the result of that was that I got a lot of people who worked in the strip joint were coming to see me.

And they was just.

You know, and and so I got a real education about some of the mentality there. But one of the things that was very common in the in this situation was the power of sexual provocation, you know, and but in the stripper situation, there was so much power that all of them were sexually abused, women who were abused as little girls and had no ability to prevent it or say no.

But in this situation of stripping, they were able to shake everything in your face and and yet the viewers could not reach it. And and there was a lot of strength in that, you know, there were also a lot of single mothers tried to support a child. So it was it I mean, I think there are all kinds of ways that people get into what they do.

But it was interesting to me the just sort of the delight in being able to to say no. Yeah. Yes. It in a real way, because Bruto is going to get you.

You bring up we've talked about this before in no uncertain terms just.

Don't do let rage is a huge we will look at here in this sex addiction world this idea that all this this emotion, this this nasty, ugly stuff that I just don't want to deal with is coming out in my sexually acting out behavior. I don't know what to do with the anger. So whether on a conscious or an unconscious level, you're going to show them you're going to teach them the lesson, you're going to prove to them just how much you damage you can do through your sexually acting out behavior.

Right. I had never heard the term eroticized rage before. You said it. And it is just such a wonderful way of expressing what so many people are involved in. Yes. You know, and and how sad it is because, again, you're taking that amazing, precious gift that God gave us for procreation, for marriage, the his wedding present and just smearing it in anger and rage.

And that is so sad to me. Yes.

And when you were talking about the physician who fell in love with the with the dancer, it brought to mind something that I really want to hit on here, which is kind of it's overlapped with sex addiction. It's not exactly the same thing. But we also talk about love addiction. So less focused on the sexual acting out behaviors and more focused on deep, almost codependent emotional attachments with the people in our lives falling very deeply for someone very, very quickly and going from one relationship to the next to the next to the next.

And we see that a little bit more diagnosis wise in women over men. But we do see it in both. And so that's another important factor for us to take a look at is how are we handle of what are we calling love, how are we handling our love relationships? What is love in a healthy way? Like and how do I express that authentically?

And this can apply for both sex addicts and love addicts. How can I express love in a healthy way to the people around me in my life?

And that's and and I think we've lost so much of that. The whole idea of the fruit of the spirit, a whole lot of Corinthians, you know, the kind patient, you know, building someone up, encouraging rather than tearing down and using. I mean, it's listening, seeing, hearing, you know, being able to hold precious God's precious creation, you know, and being Christ to that person, you know, as much as possible to to hold them in esteem.

And and, you know, that falls completely short in both love addiction, which is about control, you know, because what if I'm addicted to I'm going to be afraid of losing you and I'm going to try to control what I cannot control, and it will start to control me. And so I will just try harder. So I'll become jealous.

I'll become frightened when you have a life outside of me. I just had a situation with someone close to me where someone was totally, you know, self-destructive and other destructive in the thought that that person might leave. Because now that person, I mean, it's like super codependency where everything in you is threatened. If that person is going to walk away, you won't exist because everything is about that person.

And I think that that it is it is again, you mentioned it happens very quickly and it's like, wow, I feel like I've known you forever and I feel like I know you so well and I feel like I die without you. And I feel like we've always been together. And that's because you've had this fantasy in your head about a relationship that would make you okay, that would make you well.

And so you see somebody, you'd take some eyes, body, some poor souls, body and try to shove it into your fantasy of relationship. And then you become totally dependent on that because your well-being is attached to a human being. And when your well-being is attached to a human being, you're in trouble.

Right. And when we're talking about sex and love addiction, it's a compare and contrast. I love the way you put it, talking about being living in the present moment, really listening and caring and feeling and loving what we're talking about here. The compare and contrast is living authentically in the present moment versus living in authentically in my fantasy world.

Because if we've got this sort of addiction going on, love or sex, we are just living 100% of our lives in fantasy world, whether it's thinking about the porn that we looked at, thinking about that most recent sexual experience, thinking about how we're going to get to the next sexual experience, thinking about what we want, what's to really satisfy us, thinking about the relationship we want, and living it authentically because we're living our life in duality.

Especially, especially, especially, especially in the Christian context that I'm fine, thanks. How are you both? Through the church. It's stand up. Sing your worship song, sit down, open your Bible for the one time during the week for 30 minutes while the pastor preaches. Close it in that it sits on your shelf again, and then the rest of the week you're acting out with porn.

What are we doing?

Yeah, I mean, God's not fooled. No, I think he knows.

Know? Like you said, like that doesn't mean that. And I love the fact that modern Christian culture is becoming more open to and accepting of the idea of sex addiction and really bringing that into normalization. The next step is going to be and we're seeing in the process with programs like what we have here at Grace with seven pillars and sexual integrity one on one.

What we need is the education component of the fact that, frankly, unfortunately, this isn't just a boom you're healed type scenario, not discounting miracles. Miracles can and do happen. But if we're looking at it in the biology that God created, there is some pretty significant work to be done. This isn't just a simple pray the porn away type things splash you with holy water and say, you know, we're setting these guys up for failure.

If we exclusively make it a spiritual issue, it is spiritual, absolute, but it's biological, it's emotional, it's psychological, it's trauma, it's attachment, It's all these things combined.

Exactly. And I think, you know, I say God loves the person he made and he made us in his image and he he's the one who gave us sexuality. He's the one who who gave us the need for each other. You know, so much that, you know. So we need to just trust that if I become my authentic self, I am lovable, I am already loved, you know that I am precious and I'm secure.

So I'm really glad that we were able to sit down and talk about this today because it is such a it is such a lack that we have. And and I really, really am grateful to be working with you. And I'm like, it all the stuff that you're doing and say thank you and thank you all for joining us today.

We just are always glad to be here with I'm glad to be here with different people. And if you did like what we did, didn't we Love your comments and check us out on other social media. We are on TikTok and making peace and beyond. We are on Facebook, we're on Instagram and there are other podcasts. But please keep in touch and I hope you'll join us again soon.

God bless you