Intro (00:00:10):
In today’s episode, we sit down with Mandy, a women’s empowerment and trauma-informed life coach, who shares her deeply personal journey of discovering her partner’s porn addiction, lies and cheating, navigating betrayal trauma and reclaiming her strength. Mandy opens up about the heavy emotional toll, the impact [00:00:30] on her self-worth, and the process of healing after deception, sharing valuable insight for others who may be experiencing betrayal trauma. With that, let’s jump into the conversation. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Consider Before Consuming.

Fight The New Drug (00:00:49):
Well, Mandy, thank you for joining us on Consider Before Consuming today. For our listeners who don’t know, we, this is our second time trying out this conversation because we had a, a bit of a [00:01:00] communication difficulty, so I’m even more excited to get to talk with you because I had to wait for this conversation. Can you start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you’re passionate about?

Mandy (00:01:11):
Yeah, and first of all, thanks so much for your patience when we figure out this communication, like I’m really excited to be here too. So yeah, my name’s Mandy. I am a woman’s empowerment and trauma-informed life coach, and I help women who both do betrayal trauma. Aside from that, I love nature reading, dogs, traveling, [00:01:30] meditation, breath work, personal developments. Yeah, it’s, it’s a little about me on the other side of the spectrum.

Fight The New Drug (00:01:37):
How did you first become involved in conversations about porn addiction and its impacts on relationships?

Mandy (00:01:44):
Yeah, so I got involved in it similar to how I think a lot of people come in, become involved in it. We were impacted by it one way or the other. For me, I wasn’t necessarily consuming it by, but I was impacted by my partner who was experiencing and struggling a [00:02:00] porn addiction.

Fight The New Drug (00:02:01):
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And can you describe what was your relationship like before you discovered your partner struggle with pornography?

Mandy (00:02:10):
I never really know how to answer this question. It’s a little bit tough. If you were to ask me like weeks or months after I had left the relationship and discovered everything I would’ve said, we, you know, we lived together. We were raising a dog together. Like this was very much so the person I was going to marry. We talked about having kids, like he was my absolute best friend. I never [00:02:30] felt this connection with him like I had with someone else. Yeah, it was, it was just a very normal, fun relationship to be honest. But if you were to ask me now, having been out of it for about two years and having been able to heal and really process betrayal trauma and understand what it really is, I’m able to look back now and realize because of this addiction, there was a lot of emotional and psychological abuse going on behind the scenes.

(00:02:55):
A lot of controlling, a lot of manipulation. And that’s a huge reason [00:03:00] why as the women, and I say women, but I know obviously there, this doesn’t just impact men who have gone through porn addiction. But I just speak from my experience being a heterosexual woman who was dating a man. But going back to that, I realize there’s not a lot of like resources and help available for the woman who is healing. And even just porn addiction in general. It’s such a taboo topic that really impacts so many people, but not a lot of people speak about [00:03:30] it ’cause it’s just been so normalized, unfortunately.

Fight The New Drug (00:03:33):
Yeah, I think that’s, that was a great answer to this question because I think for so many people that perspective shift of immediately following an experience like this to where you are several years down the road you’ve gained so much insight, obviously through this experience. And I great. I’m so grateful that you’re here to share that today with our listeners. To walk through that experience a little bit can you tell us what your perception of pornography was at the beginning of your relationship [00:04:00] and whether that was something that the two of you talked about?

Mandy (00:04:04):
I knew he was watching porn in the relationship. I never knew to the extent or how often or what he was consuming. And in the beginning of the relationship, I, I don’t usually, whenever I date someone, I ask them about porn, but not knowing the information that I have now about how it can be addictive and how harmful it can be. So I knew he watched it and I was okay with it. I also, looking back, just wanted to be like the cool chill girlfriend who was like, oh, I don’t care about [00:04:30] that type of stuff. I’m not that type of girl. Fortunately it’s, yeah , but I started to care about it when it started to impact our relationship, and I started to realize it was impacting our sex life. It was impacting the way I felt about myself. It was, we, I started noting this, this like cycle of fighting and arguing and really the sex life is what impacted it the most. So then I started to not be okay with it, [00:05:00] and we had rules set in place. I was like, okay. We had multiple conversations, like, the porn has got to go. It’s, i, I I can’t do this anymore. So it became a progressive issue that just kept getting worse into the relationship.

Fight The New Drug (00:05:12):
Yeah. And h how did those conversations go when you started to bring that up in an ongoing capacity within your relationship? it sounds like in an attempt to set boundaries for yourself and for what would work for you, but how did that go when you navigated that together?

Mandy (00:05:28):
Yeah, the, the [00:05:30] conversations didn’t go well at all. I, again, I also just didn’t have the knowledge to know that an addiction to porn existed. Like that wasn’t in my world. That all I’d never even heard that term. Had I known it was an addiction, I think I would’ve taken a lot more seriously. But the conversations didn’t go well. They were met with a lot of defensiveness, a lot of anger, a lot of deflecting the situation back onto me, blaming me for things. And when [00:06:00] we would have these conversations about porn, the, when I go back to say how it’s impacting our sex life, like we just weren’t having it. I was trying to do anything I could to keep his attention. I like buying sex toys, lingerie, like literally just open to trying anything. I was like, why, why don’t you wanna have sex with me?

(00:06:16):
Isn’t making sense? And so we would get in conversations and I’m like, why are you watching porn, but you don’t wanna have sex with me? And so I just took that as such a direct attack on like, me not being enough, my body not being enough, [00:06:30] me not being attractive enough, something just being inherently wrong with me. And when we would have these arguments, it was very much so like met with defensiveness or being like, oh, this is just what guys do. I think you’re overreacting. I think you’re being a bit insecure. Like, it’s, it’s just a girl behind the screen. That’s the big deal. Like, all guys do this. And it really took a lot of conversations of me just like being in tears, being like, it feels equivalent if you were cheating on me. Like I, if you say these girls don’t mean [00:07:00] anything to you, but you see that it’s hurting me, why can’t you let these girls go? I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. And eventually I thought he understood my perspective when he was like, okay, yes. Like, I’ll stop. It’s completely out. Like, only fans is gone. The counts are gone. Like everything. I just, I just won’t do it. And unfortunately that wasn’t the case, but yeah, the conversations, they, they were never met with healthy conversation.

Fight The New Drug (00:07:28):
Yeah. I’m, I’m so [00:07:30] sorry that you had to experience all of that. I just wanna take a moment to say that because we’re gonna talk about a lot of the things that you had to experience that I know were so difficult and, and I’m grateful you’re willing to share them so others can learn from them. And also, you know, there are people who experience the same thing you experienced. There are people on, on both sides of this who can learn from this. So I just wanna take a moment to thank you. Moving back into this a little bit, how did you first discover that your [00:08:00] partner was struggling, right? It was already something you knew he was consuming. You wanted to be the quote unquote cool girl at first, which so many people experienced and then, you know, tried to be okay with this. Obviously you weren’t but at what point did you really understand what the struggle was? What else did you find besides just not just, but besides the pornography that you knew about and and what was that moment really like for you?

Mandy (00:08:25):
Yeah, so it was a long lead up, to be honest. And [00:08:30] this is something that a lot of women experienced. I just felt like I was going crazy in the relationship. I started gonna therapy. I started feeling like I was the issue in the relationship, and my gut intuition just kept going off. Like, something isn’t right, but my logical mind would be like, Hey, you live together. You’re best friends. Like, you’re around each other’s friends and family. There’s no way he could cheat. There’s no way, like porn could still be an issue. He tells you how much he loves you. And so, but just something my body was like, something is not stating [00:09:00] rights. And eventually over the span of a few weeks, there were just these red flags that kept going off. And I was like, I, I have to go through his phone.

(00:09:11):
And so ultimately I went through his phone and I discovered that he was getting a hotel room with a porn star. They were sending each other nudes, they were sexting, they were talking about like what they’re gonna do to each other. He was saying, you dated these other porn stars, and I basically just found this in entire [00:09:30] life. And I was like, what? Like, I, I never ever thought he was capable of cheating in real life, ever. Like, I, we were so in love and I just thought maybe he just prefers porn over sack. Like that was my, that’s, I thought going into Iowa, students gonna see, oh, he’s watching porn again. This makes sense. But yeah, it was a whole just world of betrayal and lies and deception and the secret life that I didn’t know existed. And [00:10:00] that moment was . It was awful. It’s still .

(00:10:08):
I’ve, I’ve been out of the relationship for on almost two years. Like, I help women go through this, but it’s just like the pain that you, the pain, like the sorrow that you feel for that version of yourself who was just oblivious, who was just [00:10:30] in love, who wanted to believe the best in a person, you just like, wow, I was being taken advantage to. I was being lied to, I was being betrayed. And you know, I understand that it’s an addiction and I never wanna shame people who have an addiction, but there is a thin line where you also have to advocate for a woman who is being emotionally, psychologically abused. And that’s where I come from. But yeah, I [00:11:00] almost ended my life that night. It’s, I wasn’t expecting to cry on this. I’m so sorry. I’m not sorry for crying. I know what I went through is real, but I haven’t cried as much about this in a long time.

Fight The New Drug (00:11:17):
Take your time.

Mandy (00:11:21):
Yeah. The night was, was very, very intense. And actually it turned into a huge fight. I left [00:11:30] our apartment that night to go see better friends. I was ready to take my life. I, yeah, it’s just when, when you discover everything that you saw, it’s, it’s called a real reality collapse. Like everything that you knew to be true in a moment, just shatters like the whole, your sense of safety. This person you relied on this person [00:12:00] who promised you that they were a good man. And something to take into consideration too is when women go through this, a lot of women have experienced some type of betrayal from a man, like one in three women have been sexually assaulted. It’s a lot of women just have safety issues around a man. And so now you’re in this relationship with a man who’s like, I’m a good man.

(00:12:20):
I love you. Like, I would never hurt you. I’ll never betray you. You can trust me. And then you find out he’s actually the source of your pain. It’s, it’s hard because of course you question [00:12:30] who this person is, you question like, what else didn’t I know what else was happening? But one of the hardest aspects is then you question yourself and you’re like, wow. Like what’s my judge of character? I must make really bad decisions around the people I let into my life. I must not know how to trust people. I must not be worthy of love if someone said they loved me, but then they, their actions showed otherwise. It’s, and betrayal trauma is so hard because unlike a trauma [00:13:00] where it’s like it’s like a natural disaster or a violent accident, something where it’s like unexpected by someone or something you didn’t know, the trail trauma hard is hard because it’s so relational.

(00:13:13):
So it impacts the way you show up in relations to your friends, your family, people around you, strangers, like that sense of safety and trust that you have in this world where like the world is a good place, it completely erodes in the snap of a finger. So discovering [00:13:30] is just hard. Like it, there’s, you have shock, you have anger, you have disbelief, you have confusion, you have sadness. You just, like your body just goes numbing disa, associates. ’cause there’s so many conflicting thoughts and feelings going on at the same time, it, your body just goes into a trauma response. It doesn’t know how to handle it. So yeah, I just, I just have so much sympathy and love for any woman who like has flashbacks to the moment of the betrayal or isn’t [00:14:00] proud of how they handled their reaction to betrayal. Just like, no, your body was, your nervous system was probably going to fight, fight, freeze, or fawn. And it was just protecting however it could. So that’s my long-winded story. Thanks for holding space.

Fight The New Drug (00:14:15):
Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that with us. And again, I’m so sorry that you had to experience any of those, those things. And I think it’s, it says so much about the strength that you have and the resilience [00:14:30] that you have, that you are sitting here today and sharing this. And it’s so powerful because I think, you know, betrayal trauma is something that a lot of women have experienced, and I think it’s also something that’s really difficult to describe. And I think you just described so well, and actually so concisely what this betrayal is like for, for so many women who experience this and men. But in your experience as a heterosexual woman, as you’ve said, and there is space to be held, as you’ve said, [00:15:00] for men who are struggling with this addiction. But there’s, but both things exist, right?

(00:15:04):
There is space to hold for this being an addiction that someone needs help for and space to hold. For the past, you that went through this, that you didn’t deserve this and you didn’t cause this. And, and knowing that your world is different than the world that you believed it to be. And so I think that’s something so many people can relate to, but we don’t often hear about it in such dark terms. So thank you for sharing that with us. [00:15:30] You’ve, you’ve shared that you experienced PTSD as a result of this discovery, and can you talk a little bit about what that looked like for you on a daily basis?

Mandy (00:15:40):
Yeah, , the PTSD is the worst part of it. It is, it is so awful. And I had never been through a traumatic experience before. So my perspective of PTSD was very much so, like what you see in movies where someone comes back from war, they hear loud sound and like they panic and freak out all over the place. While that is [00:16:00] a form of PTSD, PTSD and betrayal, trauma often shows up very different. I kind of call it like the silent killer. It just slowly, like, eats away at you. And something that was really difficult for me is, was the intrusive thoughts. So when your body goes through betrayal trauma in that moment, your service, your nervousness essentially takes a snapshot of everything that happened. And this becomes a moment where you have very intrusive thoughts. You have flashbacks, you, [00:16:30] you, like, you and I could be having this conversation right now, but my brain would just be going back to the night that it happened, replaying every moment, re trying to figure out like every missing piece of the puzzle, trying to like hyper fixate on the past in the relationship and figure out like, oh, was he lying then?

(00:16:46):
Was he betrayed then? Did he do it this time, like during this holiday? Like you just become so fixated on trying to like, find the missing piece of the puzzle. And it just, it’s exhausting. And when you’re having these thoughts, your body’s still releasing [00:17:00] the same stress chemicals as in the initial moments. So your body, just the fatigue that you feel all the time is so intense. Also hypervigilance was a huge thing. So I, I’ve talked about like your sense of safety being eroded. I never felt safe, especially around men. Like, I didn’t feel comfortable around my friend’s boyfriends, their husbands long-term partners, like these men who I knew and had spent a lot of time with. But in my mind I was like, if my ex was capable of doing that, and every man must [00:17:30] be capable of doing that, and that’s a very common trauma response.

(00:17:33):
also hypervigilance in the space of, so I moved out of our home, but we still live in the same city. So I, my whole routine of everything had to change. Like I went to grocery, different grocery stores, different gas stations. I took different walking path. I would intentionally drive like 20 minutes outta the way. So I didn’t run into similar areas that we went because those places no longer felt safe. And just memories of our relationship would come back. Something [00:18:00] else that was huge was just disassociation from your body where like, physically I’m present, but mentally I’m not here. My body doesn’t feel safe. And when I initially discovered the portrayal, my thought was it’s because my body, it’s because I wasn’t enough. It’s because I wasn’t attractive enough. It had nothing to do with, he’s struggling with addiction. It had everything to do with something wrong with me.

(00:18:26):
For him to not confess in this with me, something’s wrong with me, for [00:18:30] him to hide and lie about this. It’s, it’s my fault. And so for me, it’s like I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t look at my naked body. Like when I would shower and go to the bathroom, my eyes would be closed. Like I, because I had so much hatred and anger towards my body. And I remember like just after it happened. So something, women who go through betrayal trauma often experience similar symptoms to as if someone has sexually [00:19:00] assaulted you. ’cause it’s such a violation to your body, especially in the Stan instance, if he was accident out in real life or seeking out sex work, you yeah, it’s just a violation of your body. I remember I would, I would just like sit there in the shower and just like, I just like scratch my skin because I want to get outta my skin.

(00:19:19):
Like you just like feel trapped in this. Like, I remember explaining it to my therapist, like, I feel like I am an astronaut with [00:19:30] this space suit on and I’m stuck in this spacesuit and I can’t get out. And I feel like it’s like I’m losing oxygen. I can’t breathe. Like I was having panic attacks every single day. The the nightmares are awful. I would wake up like screaming from nightmares or I just wake up silently. But like my breath was rapid. I just had such visual flashbacks to what happened. Either it was the same event that happened, or dreams being [00:20:00] like warped in different ways where it’s him and we’d be having arguments and I would just wake up and just feel so unsafe. Trying to think of other PTSD triggers. Triggers were extremely hard. I didn’t understand how much triggers were going to impact me moving forward and triggers being like sex scenes in movies, in shows, hearing music, talk about [00:20:30] sex or affairs scrolling on Instagram or social media and seeing women in provocative clothing, walking down the street and seeing someone wear something a little scandalous.

(00:20:41):
’cause again, it’s such a betrayal to your body that you, I like hold my body like this, but you just feel so like, out of control of things. And for me, what my biggest triggers were, which I would’ve never impacted, were literally just like driving by hotels. Because in his text messages he was talking about being hotels. And so [00:21:00] going back to I was saying like in that moment, your nervous system take snapshot of the trauma. And so everything related to that moving forward, your body’s like, those things aren’t safe. So hotels were extremely traumatic for me. When I would drive by them, I would literally have to like direct my eyes to the the road or something and like focus on my breathing. The first time I went to a hotel, I had a horrible panic attack and the receptionist, because I was just picturing him checking into hotels with girls.

(00:21:27):
the word threesome would send me [00:21:30] spiraling because he was talking about doing that in his messages. Yeah, it’s just even like seeing happy couples would make me feel this level of like anger rage to like why do they get to have that? Why is he being faithful and why did I have to get in the situation that I was in? So the PTSD, it, it’s not like you like can’t be around loud noises. Maybe that is something for you, but it’s just like these silent things that no one would know you’re experiencing [00:22:00] a traumatic response if they weren’t in your brain. And so it’s very easy for people to oh, another one was like losing friendships and connections with people. ’cause you no longer feel like you can trust or confine in these people even though they haven’t done anything to you bad previously. And you just feel like you can’t relate to anyone. It’s just such an isolating experience. And if you don’t know anyone who hasn’t gone through it before, it’s, it just makes it that much more intense because you think you’re crazy. You think you’re overreacting. [00:22:30] This porn is so normalized. You’re like, oh, it’s, it’s just what people do. It’s a girl behind the screen like no harm done, no foul done. And yeah, it’s then you gas that yourself and yeah, it just eats you alive.

Fight The New Drug (00:22:48):
It’s such a hard thing because so many people do experience this and as you said, it is so isolating and and it’s not something a lot of people who haven’t gone through it understand [00:23:00] well. And so I’m grateful that you’ve shared this with us so that hopefully others can have empathy for those going through this and better understand the true debilitating impact on a partner. I think it’s so impressive that you are a person who’s sitting here right now today has learned so much about now the harmful effects of pornography and porn addiction and, and the research [00:23:30] behind this. At what point did you start to look more into porn addiction and this research and how did what you learn impact you, especially when you were in kind of this debilitating state already? how were you able to kind of transition and how did this information help?

Mandy (00:23:50):
Mm-hmm . So when I went through it, I didn’t know anyone who’s gone through it before. I very much so felt like, oh, I must be the only girl going through this. But then when [00:24:00] he confessed to having a porn addiction, I was like, huh, an addiction, maybe this does exist. So I did what most betrayed partners do. You go to Google, you go to Reddit forums, you find books, find podcasts, it just, you start to like hyper fixate on, well, if I can understand the addiction, if I can understand the way his brain works, then that’s going to take away the pain that’s going to make sense of it all and I’ll be able to move on with my life. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. But [00:24:30] yeah, I just, I just hyper fixated on so much. And I, the more I dove into it, the less it honestly became about him and what I went through.

(00:24:42):
And the more it became about, oh my gosh, porn is so destructive to society. It hurts everyone on the spectrum. It hurts the partner, it hurts the trade partner, it hurts the young kids who are accessing this at such a young age. It hurts the people in the industry. It hurts [00:25:00] brain development. It like, I was like, then I was just like, oh my gosh, why aren’t more people talking about this is so scary and society is so screwed if we keep going down this path? It impacts relationships so, so heavily. It’s like, and it just ruins the sacred sex that you experience with a person. That’s one of the most beautiful things of being in a relationship. And the way it impacted me by what I learned, it helped [00:25:30] me have a lot more compassion and grace for myself to be okay, I’m not the only one going through this.

(00:25:37):
this happens, this wasn’t my fault. Although that’s, I’d say that’s the hardest self-limiting belief to overcome as a woman is that, okay, this wasn’t my fault. It had nothing to do with me or my body or how I showed up in the relationship. But it also in a way did a lot of damage too because [00:26:00] you, I didn’t have the tools and the knowledge to learn how to fully deal with triggers that or to fully understand what my triggers are. And so by diving into reading books, listening to podcasts, researching, you’re reading and hearing and listening about all these horrible stories that have happened to people, which in many ways also happened to you. So it becomes very triggering. You’re learning about sex and porn, which becomes [00:26:30] a huge trigger for you initially after the betrayal. And you don’t fully realize it because you’re, your body’s in such a disassociated state and fight, fight, freeze, fa just going in and out of it all the time.

(00:26:42):
so it was helpful having like a basic understanding about it, but it’s also causing damage. ’cause I just didn’t have the tools on how to deal with my emotional triggers and what was going inside of me instead of being so fixated. [00:27:00] I’m like, oh, well if I can understand why he did it, if I can understand how this addiction works, if I can understand the chemical reaction in the brain, if I can understand all of that, then I’ll make sense of it and the pain will go away. Which unfortunately it just doesn’t happen like that,

Fight The New Drug (00:27:16):
Right? Because even if logically you can understand every piece of it emotionally, your nervous system still went through that trauma, right? You still experienced that. And so you can’t really logic your way out of, out of [00:27:30] that feeling unfortunately. Even if that information is helpful for your perspective over time or, or has kind of helped shift you to the position you’re in today. And I do think that’s an experience a lot of people have that’s not often spoken about in such a direct way. If you could go back obviously nothing about this experience was ideal, but if, if you could go back, how do you wish your partner would have addressed his addiction with

Mandy (00:27:59):
You? [00:28:00] Yeah. And I do wanna go back to what you just said, how obvious this situation wasn’t ideal. I do just want to let betrayed partners know there is so much hope on the other side of it. As painful as everything was as crappy and as the PTs, like, as horrible as all that was, was all that was in a very weird way. I’m thankful for it because it helped me become the woman I am today. It helped me find meaning in life. It helped me learn how to love myself, how to become empowered, how to make healthier decisions like my entire who [00:28:30] I am to core change. And not that anything was wrong with me or that anything’s wrong with you or that you need to change, but there’s still so much blessing and love and adventure and optimism on the other side of this pain.

(00:28:42):
I don’t want you to think that you’re gonna be in this pain forever. I know I’m sitting here crying about what I went through. However, like the tears change, eventually you start to cry for like that version of you who just didn’t know better and didn’t deserve that. But going back to your original question, how [00:29:00] I would have wanted my partner to change how he told me, well first and foremost, he didn’t tell me until I caught him. And I think that is one of the biggest issues of this addiction is I think it’s one thing if you go to your partner and you confess to them right away or before you even get serious and you’re like, Hey, I just need to let you know I have been struggling with this addiction for a while. It started before I met you. It has nothing to do with you.

(00:29:28):
Here’s everything I’ve been doing to [00:29:30] try to overcome it. Here are the things that I want to continue to do. Here is how like I’ve educated myself on the topic and this is how it could impact you. This is, I just wanna let you know where I am so you can make an decision. So you can decide if this is something you want in your relationship or not. My partner never told me until I caught him getting a hold someone with the porn star. So it’s not just even the porn that becomes an issue. It’s the lies, the deception, the betrayal of the feeling of, oh, you didn’t even respect me enough. [00:30:00] You lied to my face every day when we had conversations about porn, you got defensive, you got angry, you gasped at me by telling me I was insecure and crazy and overreacting when you knew how much this addiction has been causing you pain.

(00:30:15):
And so my advice for any partner who is thinking about, or any person who consumes porn, who’s thinking about telling their partner, please tell ’em just the earlier the better. There’s never going to be that perfect time to tell them. And [00:30:30] I know it probably feels so scary to share this part of you that you feel so shameful and afraid about, but your partner deserves to know this and you can’t put like your emotions above hers. Like you’re in a partnership and you, both of your voices deserve to be heard. And I just wish he would’ve told me. I don’t know how different I would’ve responded because that never happened. But something I experienced myself and with women I speak to is like, at the end of the day, it’s not even the porn [00:31:00] that hurts us the most. Like yeah, the porn part sucks, but like, it’s the lying and the betrayal and the deception that hurts us the most.

(00:31:08):
Like that’s the emotional aspect that’s really hard for us to wrap our minds around. ’cause it isn’t something that makes sense and it never really will make sense and it’s just a violation of who you are as a person. So yeah, I just wish he would’ve told me and he would’ve given me the information upfront so that I could make an informed decision on how this was going [00:31:30] to impact our relationship, how it was going to impact me, how it’s going to impact him, and what were the different tools and resources if I chose to stay. Like what could we use to get through it? And if I chose to leave, what will he offer me? Like emotional support, like what would, what would that journey look like? I, I just think you need to tell your partner and let them make the decision.

(00:31:51):
And yes, of course it can be scary and yes, yes, they may leave, but we do have free will and it’s just when we’re showing up in [00:32:00] a partnership, we just need to be honest and let someone know the baggage that we’re dealing with. And it might be a relief to the woman to discover this, to be, this actually makes sense. This is why I felt like I was going crazy in the relationship. This is why things were adding up. It might be like a light bulb moment for her to be like, oh, okay, I I wasn’t crazy. I I can trust myself. I can trust my gut intuition that was going off.

Fight The New Drug (00:32:21):
That’s very well said because for so many women who are in a similar experience to, you know, where you’ve been even [00:32:30] if it’s someone who didn’t find that their partner was meeting up with the porn star, there are, you know, varying degrees of this deception. And it is, the porn is obviously painful but also it is the level of deception required that kind of, and gaslighting required and manipulation required to hide this. That is what causes that betrayal to such a, a severe degree for so many women. And I also appreciate at the beginning of this that you just took a moment to add that the pain doesn’t last forever. And even though the situation isn’t ideal, there is [00:33:00] hope on the other side. Can we talk a little bit about your healing journey starting with what has helped you in your healing journey?

Mandy (00:33:08):
Mm-hmm . The healing journey is messy. And I’m gonna be straight honest, it sucks. It’s hard. It’s probably the hardest thing you will ever do in your life. It’s, I wish there was just a magic pill you could take that would take away the pain. But unfortunately the only way to get over the pain is to just go through it. Don’t run away from it, just meet it head on. Something I talked about earlier was how one of the [00:33:30] first things you’re going to do when you get betrayed, you’re gonna wanna Google, you’re gonna wanna go on Reddit forums, you’re gonna read books, it’s in a podcast. You’re gonna hyper fixate on the addiction so much. And yes, education is empowerment to an extent, but don’t let that be the focus of your healing journey. My number one recommendation for any betrayed partner is just make your priority nervous system regulation.

(00:33:51):
So our nervous system is what controls our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, and how we react and respond to the world. So when you think about [00:34:00] all the triggers or the overwhelming emotions, the overthinking, the anxiety, the rumination, obsessing and hyper fixating on the relationship, all of that stems from your nervous system. So the way to overcome the anxiety, the overthinking, the rumination, the stress, the feelings of unworthiness is to address your nervous system. And that will, honestly, you can’t rush your healing journey. But that will help you get to where you want to be a lot sooner. And so, [00:34:30] nervousness regulation looks like meditating. Something to be cautious of though is if you have PPSD and when you’re closing your eyes and meditating, if you’re having those flashbacks, just keep your eyes open. It’s, don’t keep putting yourself in the situation of the flashbacks dream breath work.

(00:34:46):
So something that can be really powerful to help calm your nervous system in those moments of fight, flight freeze fawn is your breathing and it sounds kind like woo woo and spiritual, but our breath is actually what controls our nervous [00:35:00] system. So it’s something you can do when you feel stressed, overwhelmed, or anxious, is just breathe in through your nose for count of four seconds and breathe out through your mouth for a count of seven seconds. And just repeat that and set a timer on your phone for a few minutes and just focus on deep breathing and deep exhaling, inhaling, exhaling. And it’ll help calm you down and it’ll help when we are in this moment of fight. Flight f Fun. When I say that, that could look like getting really angry. [00:35:30] It could like trying to run away and avoid the situation. It could like people pleasing.

(00:35:33):
It could look like freezing and being stuck in bed or not being able to make a or just feeling so hopeless. That’s our nervous system communicating to us. So my biggest recommendation is to focus on that. Also focusing on a lot of like getting back in touch with your body is probably one of the, again, one of the most helpful things you can do. So even if that’s just by like putting lotion on your body, starting small and just like literally touching your body or [00:36:00] working out, doing yoga, doing light stretching. Like anything you can do to get yourself back in your body. ’cause you may not even realize how disassociated you feel like in the weeks, months, years to come. When you start to heal, you’re gonna look back and be like, wow, I literally felt like I was a robot in life.

(00:36:18):
Like I just wasn’t in touch with my body. Also working with the professional, working with someone who has been through it can be really helpful. And if you’re going to work with a therapist, make sure they [00:36:30] are one, understand addiction and porn. I have heard a lot of stories from many women who go to a therapist who isn’t specialized in porn or understand the harms of porn and the therapist is essentially gaslights them. Like, oh, you know, it’s just like what guys do. Like, why does that make you feel insecure? Why, you know, they aren’t like validating your pain. And thankfully for me, I, throughout my whole relationship, I was working with a therapist who I didn’t know at the time, was trained in porn addiction. So throughout the relationship [00:37:00] I was talking to her about porn and she was validating me. She’s like, yeah, you don’t need to be okay with that.

(00:37:04):
That’s okay. Like that is a betrayal. So she was really helping me. So working with a therapist to help you make sense of what’s going on can be really helpful. Also journaling as it’s, it sounds like such a small thing, but one it’s free, which is great. But two, it can be really powerful is every morning or every night before you go to bed, just set a timer on your phone for like five to 10 minutes and just journal anything that comes to mind. This is going to help a lot with the [00:37:30] rumination, with the overthinking, with feeling like you’re thinking the same thought, same thoughts over and over and over again. This is gonna help you actually get those thoughts out on pen and paper. And you’re going to discover a lot of patterns that you may have not realized. And when you go back to read on journal entries in the coming days, weeks, months, years, it’s going to be so powerful to see how far you’ve come or to see how far, how long things have been staying the same and you’re not making progress and like what you can do to help.

(00:37:58):
[00:38:00] is I, I feel like I could talk about this for so long ’cause there’s so many helpful things, but I would say nervous system regulation, like prioritize that over reading books, listening to podcasts, going on Google forums prioritize that also support groups, support groups can be so helpful just to know that you’re not the only one going through it. There’s a lot of free support groups, I have one. But it’s, it’s just helpful to know that there’s other women going through it. You’re not alone, you are not crazy, you’re not overacting. And just knowing that someone else [00:38:30] has gone through, maybe the betrayal wasn’t the same, maybe the addiction, the scale of the addiction was different, but just knowing that another woman has responded and feels the same way as you can just be so validating to help remind you that hey, this wasn’t because of how you look, this wasn’t because of your body.

(00:38:48):
This happens to women from all different socioeconomic background races, ethnicities gender orientation, like every, it just happens to anyone. So that can [00:39:00] just be really helpful. But yeah, nervous system and regulation that is like focus on that every single day and you will start to see so much more progress if instead of trying to like intellectualize and understand the pain. In a way I describe it too is going back to how a women like want to understand and make sense of the betrayal by like taking in all this information education is that, imagine I heard this quote once where like imagine you got bit by a poisonous snake and instead of healing the poison that’s in you, you spend your time trying to research why [00:39:30] do snakes by how do I prevent a snake from biting and then going to the snake and being like, Hey, you shouldn’t have done this. Snakes aren’t supposed to bite, but you still have this poison in you. And so that’s how nervous system regulation helps you get this poison out of you so you can move forward. So you can start to think rationally so you can start to feel on like a normal level again. So it’s not such extreme highs and lows. So yeah, nervous system regulation, that that’s the bread and butter focus.

Fight The New Drug (00:39:58):
That’s such good advice because if you can do [00:40:00] that then you, you are able to take those next steps to then learn or to then process in these other ways. But to be able to establish safety within your body again and to know that you can trust yourself is such an important first step. As someone who, who has worked with so many women who’ve navigated this do you have any other kind of hopeful anecdotes that you could share with us of women who’ve, who are in the healing process or who have kind of moved [00:40:30] forward from being in the place that so many find themselves feeling kind of stuck in?

Mandy (00:40:35):
Yes, I, I hear so many amazing, beautiful stories of women who have gone through betrayal trauma, women who were diagnosed with PTSD, who wanted to take their lives, who have experienced like the darkest, deepest depths of emotional pain, but who have had the opportunity and focused on their healing instead of focusing on the partner’s healing to make sense of, [00:41:00] and I say this so lightly depending on where you are in your healing journey. ’cause know this was not your fault. No, you couldn’t have done anything to prevent it. No. Like it’s not your fault and I don’t wanna say you caused it by any means, but a really powerful point of that you’ll reach in your healing journey is being able to look back at the relationship in a new lens and start to connect the dots and being like, oh, you know, like maybe my gut intuition was going off then, but my logical mind was like, oh, he would never do that.

(00:41:28):
He loves you and like your logical mind tried [00:41:30] to override it or being like, oh, you know what, when he did gimme that answer, it didn’t feel right, but I ignored it. So something that’s really powerful is looking back on those situations and like, wait, my gut intuition was going off, I just didn’t have the information and the knowledge that I have now to know what it was. And so just getting back in touch with your woman’s intuition, it gets called women’s intuition for a reason. Like, we’re so strong, it’s so powerful, it’s so brilliance and as crappy [00:42:00] as betrayal trauma is like that’s getting back in touch with your intuition is going to be such a powerful skill that’s going to help you in every aspect of your life. And what’s so difficult about betrayal trauma is like, the way I look at it is like you are shedding layers.

(00:42:14):
You’re going to shed parts of you, you’re going to have to face all of your childhood traumas, even if it isn’t like big, like big T traumas, but just small little traumas where maybe your emotions were suppressed or maybe you were told lies or whatever it may be. [00:42:30] When you go through betrayal trauma, you’re going to be addressing basically everything in life that has ever held you back. And that’s why it’s so painful. If you have been betrayed before, if you have been abandoned before, you’re gonna have to face all of those betrayal and abandonment wounds all over. So it’s a very intense period of your life. But going through that and overcoming it is so beautiful and encouraging and inspiring because you just let go of all this crap that was holding you back in life. You step into your power, [00:43:00] you reclaim your life, you no longer tolerate disrespect.

(00:43:04):
Like I, you learn how to love yourself and be the love of your life. So you’re like, disrespect feels foreign. I’m not gonna put myself in situations that don’t make my body feel good. I’m not going to surround myself around people who don’t make me feel safe. Like every single aspect of your life, your you are in a career, your mental health, your physical health, your wellbeing, your friendships, your family, like, everything will start to positively change, but you’re going [00:43:30] to have to let go of a lot. And that’s why it feels so painful. Like I look back now again, I’ve been almost two years out and it’s, I hate to say it was a gift because I don’t wanna minimize anyone’s pain. No one should have to go through that pain to get to where you are. But there is so much healing and love and empowerment and the people you are going to meet on your healing journey.

(00:43:54):
It’s, I have made incredible friendships who, people who have gone through betrayal, but also people who haven’t [00:44:00] that I just met because I put myself in different situations by like trying new hobbies, new activities new advocacy, things like every, like so many doors will start to open and life does become the safe place again. And you even have more knowledge and you have more personal development to handle what life throws you. And your sense of confidence is going to skyrocket. Like I feel like if life hands me any situation, any trouble, I’m gonna like, [00:44:30] I can overcome it ’cause I overcame betrayal trauma. I know that I can get myself through anything. I got myself through the crappiest poem moment of a life. And I hear that from so many women who are just like, if I got through that I can get through anything.

(00:44:42):
Like give like hand me whatever, whatever cards you want to in life, I would get through it. ’cause your sense of self, your identity, your who you are and who you want to be and like the life that you want to call in, it just becomes amplified. And I, I feel like I ramble on for all this, but like, it, [00:45:00] it gets better. Focus on your healing, focus on yourself love. Don’t focus on your partner’s journey or making sure he’s doing okay while yes, if you want to, that’s fine. Like at the end of the day you have to get this poison out of you to be able to move forward. And that should be your goal, focusing on yourself, your self love, safe friendships. If you have a a safe family, amazing. Just lean into everything that makes you feel good and take out everything that makes you feel bad.

Fight The New Drug (00:45:25):
That was so beautifully said and hopefully so encouraging to anyone who’s finding themselves [00:45:30] right now in that kind of depth of pain to know that it really can be so bright and so beautiful on the other side of that healing journey. So thank you for sharing that with us. Mandy, in your experience with betrayal trauma something we commonly hear about individuals who’ve experienced betrayal trauma is the difficulty in being able to trust again whether it’s the same partner or a different partner in the future. Can you speak about your experience with that?

Mandy (00:45:56):
Going back to when we talk about trauma responses, like how your [00:46:00] body, your symptoms, your b brain body nervous system is going to react because of this trauma that you experience. A huge trauma response is not being able to trust others, whether that be friends, family, future partners, current partners, and more importantly, not being able to trust yourself because you’re like, how did I notice he was hiding this addiction? How did I notice he was hiding this other life that I just wasn’t aware of? So my biggest recommendation is to focus on trusting yourself. You are not [00:46:30] going a be you’re not gonna be able to trust another person if you first can’t even trust yourself. So what that looks like a lot for women who have been betrayed is learning how to trust your gut intuition. So there’s a lot of somatic practices you can do to help you get back in touch with your body.

(00:46:46):
And again, we talked about it before, like you, we go through this state of dissociation where we feel like our body isn’t safe, we’re not aware of the symptoms, the feelings, like what our body feels like to us. And so doing [00:47:00] somatic practices can be really helpful. And one that can look like is if you were just to close your eyes and just ground in, take a few moments of deep breathing and ask yourself when was there a situation where I had a gut instinct and I ignored it? So that would be a situation where your gut instinct feels like, oh, you know, this doesn’t feel safe, this doesn’t feel right. Maybe something they’re saying isn’t adding up, but your logical mind came in and was like, no, it’s fine. You’re overthinking it. You [00:47:30] are overreacting, you’re being crazy. Just that, that basically your logic mind talked you outta it.

(00:47:34):
So visualize that situation, visualize it like so clearly, and try to notice if there are any sensations in your body. This could look like a tightness in your chest. It could look like a queasy feeling in your guts. It could feel like your throat feeling stiff. It could feel like just those are just some, like anything that your body, so that’s called tuning back into your felt sense, which is noticing how our body [00:48:00] communicates to us. And our body will let us know when something feels wrong before our logical mind can even think of it. Then our logical mind comes in, it’s like, oh no, you’re overthinking. That’s not right. So that can be a really powerful exercise. And then after you do the one, do the exercise of like, okay, when was the time my gut intuition went off and I ignored it? Find those sensations in your body and then you can also do it with like multiple other experiences that come to mind too.

(00:48:26):
And maybe you’ll notice like, huh, every time I ignore my gut intuition, [00:48:30] my throat feels stiff or I feel this tightness in my chest. And so that’s how you can know moving forward when you get those feelings again, like when you’re making a decision, just take a second to close your eyes and touch and get back in contact with your body. And then on the other hand, you’ll also do this exercise by closing your eyes, taking a few moments of deep breathing and focusing on when was a time that I had a gut intuition that went off and I listened to it? How did that feel in my body? And again, [00:49:00] visualize the scenario, visualize what you were doing, who you’re with, how it, and then tweet in on how it felt in your body. And so maybe that might look like a lightness in your chest or maybe it might feel like your stomach feeling expansive or maybe it just might feel like a calmer cooling sensation in your body and start to do.

(00:49:19):
And then once you have that, think back to other times of where you listen to your gut intuition. And so going back to how you trust yourself, the way you start to trust yourself is by before you make a decision, [00:49:30] you tune into your body to be like, is my, is my throat feeling tight? Is my chest feeling anxious? Is my stomach feeling like just queasy? Or do I feel light and cool, expansive and calm? That’s how you’re going to know how to start to trust yourself. And when it comes to trusting your partner. So I chose to leave the relationship so I wouldn’t be a great person to advise on that because I didn’t have to go through that. So I can’t speak to that. But when it comes [00:50:00] to trusting future partners know that if there are moments that your gut intuition is going off or if there are those moments where you start to have those feelings of, I feel like I’m going crazy, something isn’t adding up, trust your gut in those decisions.

(00:50:18):
Now that you’ve gone through betrayal trauma and now that you know what’s at stake and what’s at risk, your body is going to pick up on these very subtle cues that you may have not noticed [00:50:30] when you were in your last week relationship with your partner. And they call it women’s intuition because our right and left hemisphere talks to each other very quickly. So we do pick up on very subtle energy shifts we pick up on if someone, like if their eyes look the opposite way or if a response out, our body will sense and feel that. And so when you’re in your next partnership, really pay attention to is this person making you feel safe, calm, respected, or is this person making me feel [00:51:00] skeptical, anxious, paranoid? Your body will tell you, and this is your nervous system telling you how you respond to a person.

(00:51:08):
And when it comes to having conversations about porn with future partners, it’s, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be uncomfortable, especially because a lot of people do consume porn. And that’s tough. And something my therapist advised me on, which I have found to be very helpful also, I publicly speak about [00:51:30] my betrayal and what I’ve been through. So if I were to meet someone, if I were to meet a man, he’d be able to know my story pretty early on. But what my therapist advised me before I even started speaking out, she’s like, you should have the uncomfortable conversations about porn very early on in the relationship and have these conversations before they know your backstory. And what this could look like is say you’re on a second date and you could just say, do you consider porn as cheating? What’s [00:52:00] your relationship like with porn?

(00:52:01):
And you don’t have to say it in like a insulting or a defensive way and just like have open-ended conversation and your body again is going to tell you if something feels right. If you notice that they’re getting defensive or angry or like kind of pushing it off to the side, maybe that person’s not right for you. So it, it is going to take a lot of getting back a lot of moments of you getting back in touch [00:52:30] with your body. And so that’s why I say nervous system regulation is the number one thing you should be working on. ’cause that is what helps you get back in touch with your body and helps you trust yourself. You won’t be able to trust another person if you can’t trust yourself if you’re constantly doubting yourself, second guessing yourself, which is really normal after betrayal trauma. That’s why I wouldn’t advise jumping into another relationship right away. But just focusing on getting back into your body so that, so that you know, this feels good, this feels bad when it feels bad. Tru [00:53:00] trust that.

Fight The New Drug (00:53:01):
Yeah. And something you mentioned earlier about some of those, I think you called them gifts of having to go through this are you know that you you won’t allow yourself to be taken advantage of again, you won’t. You will set clear boundaries. You will. So as long as you can trust yourself, right, then all of these other pieces of you that will become part of you through this healing journey will kind of help guide you to being able to trust others again as well. Before we wrap up today is [00:53:30] there anything else we wanted, you wanted to talk about that we haven’t yet?

Mandy (00:53:34):
I think the last piece of wisdom, I would just like to give any person going through this has been betrayed, and I’ve said it before, but it’s going to be a really crappy moment. You’re going to grieve, you’re going to mourn, you’re gonna cry, you’re going to have anger, you’re going to experience a level of anger and rage that you have never experienced in your life. That’s normal and that’s healthy. All our emotions that we experience [00:54:00] through this are going to be your greatest teachers. Every time you feel anger, every time you feel sadness, this is your body communicating to you and being like, Hey, something isn’t right and we need to change something. I see a lot of women who try to suppress their anger, who try to, because just like in society, we aren’t, we’re told like that showing anger is a bad thing.

(00:54:20):
Express it in healthy ways. It’s going to help so much. It’s gonna look like, like punching pillows, screaming into pillows, like taking a baseball bat [00:54:30] to a mattress. Just like doing healthy ways of expressing your anger. I know that sounds weird. You are going to feel really good after and just allow yourself to feel everything. Don’t compare your healing journey to someone else’s healing journey. If you feel like someone healed, like quicker than you, don’t shame yourself for that. Every situation, every person, every journey, every support system is so different. Just focus on like every day, just focus on like, what can I do today to show [00:55:00] myself self-love? What can I do today to make myself feel good? And it’s normal to have these P ts d like symptoms. And if you’re curious about P ts, I just recommend looking into it more research and like what can help you?

(00:55:14):
It’s also, sorry. EMDR therapy can be really, really helpful for that if you’re having those intrusive thoughts, those intrusive flashbacks. But just understand instead of focusing on like why did he do what he did? How does in this [00:55:30] addiction impact his brain? Focus on like, what are my signs and symptoms and how can I find the tools and the resources to overcome it? Just make your healing your number one priority. And I know it’s so annoying to hear people be like, oh, just love yourself. You’re like, well, how do I do that? ? Just what were things that used to light you up as a child? Like what’s, maybe you loved to paint or drop or dance or ride a bike or play a sport or an instrument, but maybe throughout life you stop doing those things. [00:56:00] Like start finding that inner child and that little inner girl within you who just wants to feel happy and joy again. And that’s a great place to start. Just start by doing those things that made her happy. And I think that’s all. I’m kind of just going on a ramble right now. I just want women to know like, you can heal from this. Yes, it’s crappy. It’s going to suck for a while, but it’s going to get good. Just focus on yourself, focus on your healing. Don’t make his healing your priority. Make your healing your priority.

Fight The New Drug (00:56:29):
Yeah, I think [00:56:30] that’s beautifully said. And going back to anger specifically with regard to betrayal and women, it is something that’s we are not often encouraged to experience anger or express anger. And I had a therapist tell me once that anger is in this situation in particular is the part of you that loves yourself. It’s the part of you that’s defending yourself. It’s the part of you that’s protecting yourself from this happening to ever again and so on. [00:57:00] You know, the path toward loving yourself through this. I think sometimes it feels like anger might not be part of that when actually it’s directly tied to that process. And I think that’s an important thing to remember. And just knowing that, that there is so much light on the other side. I think I wanna thank you Mandy, because I think you’ve done such an incredible job of sharing with so much vulnerability and transparency.

(00:57:24):
Really the depth of pain that these experiences can cause. But also [00:57:30] the, the beautiful level of light you can have on the other side of healing. And I hope that is encouraging to any of our listeners who found themselves in a similar situation or find themselves in a similar situation in the future to know you’re not alone and to know there are resources we have resources available at fight the new drug.org. You can reach out to us. Mandy, are there any additional resources you would like to share before we wrap up today?

Mandy (00:57:57):
Yeah, something I wanna mention back to when you asked me the question [00:58:00] about how did the conversation go when you talked about porn. I know Fight New Drug has that amazing resource call, let’s talk about porn. So I do wanna plug that in. Like if you are a partner listening who wants to talk, whether you’re like, if you’re a betrayed partner and you want to talk to your partner about porn, fight New Drug has an amazing resource called Let’s Talk About Porn. That’s what it’s called, right?

Fight The New Drug (00:58:21):
Thank you. Yes.

Mandy (00:58:21):
Yeah, yeah. Where it’s like a step-by-step conversation guide. I think I’ve sent that to so many women. They’ve said it’s been super helpful if you are like, I don’t know how to bring this up [00:58:30] to him. Like, I, I don’t, I just don’t know what to do. They’ve already thought of that for you and all the answers are there. It’s really helpful.

Fight The New Drug (00:58:36):
Thank you.

Mandy (00:58:37):
In turn. Yeah, of course. In terms of other resources I mentioned before, I have a free support group. It’s a really helpful place to just come and connect with other women. We also do a weekly call on Zoom if you want, like face-to-face time. But just, just to know that you’re not alone and you can also just like chat and at any time you can meet people from around you. You can meet up with people who live nearby you. I also work with women one-on-one if you’re feeling like you’re stuck [00:59:00] in your journey or you just dunno how to move forward. And yeah, that’s about it. ,

Fight The New Drug (00:59:07):
Thank you so much Mandy. I really appreciate you joining us today. For any of our listeners, remember, like, and subscribe if you’re interested in hearing more conversations like we’ve had with Mandy. And please consider before consuming

Promo (00:59:29):
Whether [00:59:30] you’ve been impacted by the harms of porn, want to learn more or wanna educate others. Our resources are here to help. On our resource page, you’ll find free accessible science-based materials to help you understand and navigate the impact of pornography on individuals, relationships, and society. From conversation guides and research articles to videos, recovery tools and more, these resources are designed to empower you. Visit fightthenewdrug.org/resources today to get informed and make a difference.

(01:00:00):
[01:00:00] Hey, fighter, when you join Fighter Club, you’re not just signing up, you’re stepping into a movement that’s changing lives. Your support fuels education empowers individuals to break free from addiction and help spread awareness about Pornography’s Harms. Plus, as a member of Fighter Club, you’ll receive exclusive benefits like 30% off in the fight, the new drugstore, early access to new resources, a fighter club kit. When you join and more, make a real difference in the Movement For Love, join Fighter Club for as little as $10 [01:00:30] a month at ftnd.org/joinfc. That’s F-T-N-D.O-R-G forward slash joinfc. See you in the club.

Outro (01:00:42):
Thanks for joining us on this episode of Consider Before Consuming,. Consider Before Consuming is brought to you by Fight the New Drug. Fight The New Drug is a non-religious and non legislative organization that exists to provide individuals the opportunity to make an informed decision regarding pornography by raising [01:01:00] awareness on its harmful effects, using only science, facts and personal accounts. Check out the episode notes for resources mentioned in this episode. If you find this podcast helpful, consider subscribing and leaving a review.

(01:01:14):
Consider Before Consuming is made possible by listeners like you. If you’d like to support, consider before Consuming, you can make a onetime or recurring donation of any amount at ftnd.org/support. That’s F-T-N-D.O-R-G forward slash support.

(01:01:30):
[01:01:30] Thanks again for listening. We invite you to increase your self-awareness, look both ways, check your blind spots and consider before consuming.