Episode Details

You can watch this conversation on YouTube. 

Jay Stringer is a licensed Mental Health Counselor, an ordained minister and the author of "Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness reveals the pathway to healing"

Danielle and Maggie check in with Jay to see how he and his family are doing during COVID:

Jay's family is doing great. It took a couple of weeks to figure it out but they have created new rhythms and figured out a new schedule where he and his wife take turns going into the office. A lot of what Jay does is speaking and teaching, but he hasn't been on a plane  since March 6th which he says is lovely. He has had to pivot his business to seeing clients online. 

Jay is the author of the book Unwanted, a book about healing from sexual brokenness and sexual addictions. Danielle asked about how Jay's sees sexual addictions and sexual brokenness playing out right now under COVID. 

Jay says from a 30,000 ft view, "any time of uncertainty, like the one we're in, is going to naturally increase powerlessness and anxiety." This leads people to lean on unwanted behaviors

Danielle mentioned that in Italy, Porn Hub has made it's premium content free.  Jay read part of an email that was out to other countries under quarantine that said, "Stay home and help flatten the curve. Since COVID-19 continues to impact us all, porn hub has decided to extend free porn hub premium  world wide." It's madness! We are now seeing a 10-25% increase in porn traffic. 

Jay explains that unwanted sexual behavior, like the use of pornography, infidelity, buying sex, hook ups... are  appealing because they offer some relief from what we're experiencing. "When you feel anxious, when you're distressed, you're going to look to another substance, behavior or process to begin to mitigate some of those feelings of discomfort."

Jay says in regards to unwanted sexual behavior (specifically the use of pornography and sex trafficking), we need to step into WHY we are we using another person's body for our own sexual gain in the midst of so much stress and anxiety we're experiencing. Unwanted sexual behavior will always offer that sense of escape. 

Maggie commented that Porn Hub has made it sound like they are providing a great service for people in their time of need, "these are hard times for us all" and they trying to appear caring. 

Jay speculates that as a result of easier access to pornography there will be increased levels of addiction. He believes that Porn Hub knows that and so providing premium content during the pandemic will produce more customers afterwards.  When someone begins to use sexual content in the midst of your own distress you decrease your ability to self sooth. 

Jay mentions Dan Siegel's The Window of Tolerance, which is the ability to regulate yourself. When you are in the "green zone,"  you're not necessarily no longer in distress but you are able to sooth yourself and your anxiety, to understand if I'm angry, to move into emotions rather than outsource them. So what the porn and sex industry is doing, Jay says, is teaching us to not build our window of tolerance, so we outsource the solution to something that has a lot of male gender-based violence to it. 

No matter the age, Jay says when you begin to think that you are entitled to, you deserve, to look at another human body in the midst of your distress because you need an escape, it sets you up for intimate partner violence.  This develops the inability of dealing with distress and creates a pattern of pursuing an orgasm at the expense of someone else's exploitation. "It's really troubling."

Danielle acknowledge