Compulsive Behaviors, High-Risk Sex and Self-Compassion

August

Mollie’s parents divorced when she was six-years-old. She said it was a pretty gnarly divorce and there was a lot of publicity around it, given that both of her parents were actors—her dad a theater performer, her mom well known in TV. That all left her feeling lonely at both houses, while each parent endured their own emotional turbulence. Some of the most heart-warming memories she has from childhood happened soon after. 

Mollie

When my mom got remarried for a short, five-year period there, the experience of just having more people around the table, just having this larger family, it was almost as though, as I look back on it, it wouldn’t have mattered who those people were. But the idea that suddenly those empty places at the table were filled, and there was more love and more community—that whole memory is really rich to me.

August

Mollie also experienced dark times, as so many of us have, which she wrote about in a recent Medium feature called, Things I Learned Getting Punched in the Face and Why it Took me so Long to Stop. At the start of the essay, she brings us back to her boxing days. She said that great athletes talk about this clarity and quiet they feel before events as they visualize how their muscles are going to work and their performance. Meanwhile, Mollie was visualizing faking a seizure. 

Mollie

Not my classiest moment, I have to admit. 

August

In the essay, she wrote, “I wasn’t a bad boxer. My timing was sharp, I was strong for my weight class, and my amateur record was three and one. But I always knew that my drive to fight was rooted not in passion, but in pathology.”

Mollie

I liked the idea of boxing and certainly all my siblings are really great in their own martial arts sports and so I always had an idea it would be fun if I could actually do this. And I didn’t get into boxing until I was much older. But it was almost as though I was…I was just drawn into it. But it had so much more to do with the idea of who I thought boxing made me, what it made my body into, and what I thought that implied about me. All the implications around it felt like what I was chasing, more than the sport itself. 

This is kind of embarrassing to talk about but it was lovely to be out in the world and be acknowledged like, you know, co-workers who would tease me about it. And truthfully, there’s a part of me that totally loved that. I loved being recognized for it. And I liked the idea of like, Oh, I want to be one of those badass chicks that isn’t afraid to get hurt and isn’t afraid to work hard and isn’t afraid to sweat. But when it actually came to doing it, it was really fucking painful. But I kept going because there was so much history growing up that enforced that this was going to be…I don’t know…that this identity could solve something for me.

August

One thing that really spoke to me about Mollie’s story was the messaging she absorbed about femininity,  which not many people associate with boxing. Society teaches us that women and femmes are meeker and weaker. Slight and polite. Yet Mollie still felt similarly pressured to fit this mold. Some of this came from growing up in Los Angeles and with film industry parents, but she also received very overt messaging from her father around what she needed to look like to have value. 

Mollie

What was so confusing about it is that it wasn’t as simple as women need to be skinny, because there was this extra layer of the kind of psychological implication of it, too, that women who were too vigilant about their looks were unattractive, too. You had to try hard but not too hard because that looked desperate. So, there’s this attempt to find this middle ground of Okay, how do I be in shape and attractive and care about my looks? Because clearly this is extremely important to my value. But how do I also look like I’m not actually caring about this? My whole foray, and my relationship to working out and athleticism was like, Oh, this was the acceptable middle ground. 

Essentially, I could care about how I looked, I could sculpt my body, but it wouldn’t be necessarily about vanity or needing to be glamorous or sexy because those messages are not to be valued. Those discredited women, the desire to be attractive and sensual or draw attention to themselves. The word my dad used all the time was bimbo.

August

Women who wore makeup or short dresses or tried to get attention for their attractiveness were less valuable, she learned. Those women were “bimbos.” The word Webster defines similarly as “an attractive, but unintelligent or frivolous, young woman.” (And no, there is no equivalent for men.)

Mollie

But it was okay to be “naturally attractive.” Or, in my case, be in the gym like a maniac and pursue this athleticism. That form of vanity was somehow appropriate.

August

Mollie said she started boxing relatively late in the game, around age 28. By that time, she was several years into recovery from a brutal eating disorder. She had done a tremendous amount of deep digging and self-work and had a solid understanding of the pathological values that had been instilled in her growing up. She had also pursued her master’s in clinical psychology with a specialization in eating disorders and addiction. Even so, she couldn’t clearly name these concepts, she said, until after her boxing experiences. 

Mollie

And it was really in seeing them in fucking skywriting, which is what the boxing experience was that brought them out of the woodwork. I’d always been someone who dressed pretty casually and kind of tried to hide my body and yet at the same time had a part of myself that really wanted to show off my body, but I was also really ashamed of that part of myself because that was the bimbo part that I couldn’t let anyone see. So I was aware that there were a lot of internal conflicts around my femininity, my sexuality, my sensuality and body image, but I couldn’t have named them as clearly until I saw how hard I was willing to literally fight to maintain some sort of balance or to establish some sort of identity that I thought would allow me to be at peace with all of them.

August

Finally, Mollie reached a turning point, when these realizations about what she was really fighting, or perhaps trying to prove, in the ring met seeing that she was pushing herself far too hard. While she has a history of compulsive exercise, something she said she still has to occasionally check in about with her husband or friends, boxing brought this behavior to a whole new level. Rather than just spending too long in the gym most days or refusing to take breaks, which are destructive in their own right, Mollie’s body was literally breaking down. 

Mollie

That sort of realization of Oh, am I willing to pay the cost of multiple regular concussions and still not be able to stop? And I had enough people around me saying this is pretty violent. It’s not like I was 22 and was going to have a career in this thing. This was totally of my own volition and I was competing as an amateur. There was nothing depending on it except for my identity. So I guess the turning point would be that it was breaking me down and I was still terrified to stop.

August

To me, that sounded so much like the battle of anyone who is grappling with a condition that causes strong compulsions that start out seemingly really positive. The kind you get praised for: “Wow, look at that discipline!” When real discipline in such cases, the hardest and most important form, anyway, would be stopping to take care of yourself or to seek help. When I shared that with Mollie, she said:

Mollie

I didn’t have discipline. Discipline had me. I think the more heroic move would be, Guys, this hurts. I don’t want to do this anymore. Like that would have been the most authentic communication, not that I would have been above faking a seizure, I think, if I got terrified enough. But the heroic move is in that case, stopping, and part of struggling to achieve and maintain this identity of Yeah, I’m going to be a badass bitch, and I’m going to have muscles and I’m going to fight with the guys, and I’m going to be credible and I’m not going to be a bimbo. But maintaining that meant continuing the upkeep of discipline, and I didn’t have the choice to not be disciplined. 

August

Many of the clients Mollie works with are dealing with their own self-destructive behaviors. She sees high-functioning folks who are struggling with the kind of shame she knows well. These behaviors start out as a means of coping with deeper problems, until the behaviors themselves become a problem. 

It sounds like that’s what’s happened in the case of this week’s listener question, from JJ, who wrote this:

I have never told anyone this, so please bear with me….. I’m a cis guy in my mid 20s in a “committed” relationship with a woman I love. I used quotation marks because I do feel completely emotionally committed to her. I am also very ashamed to say that I have been paying a cam girl to get me off without her knowing it. I am sober, gave up drugs and alcohol five years ago. Not trying to make excuses, it just feels like I replaced that with obsession that is now about having “real” sex with others on the DL. Now with COVID happening, I am scared that I will step over a line and get us both sick. 

When we were took a break last year I did have sex without protection and it was escalating until we got back together. Never told her I did that, but did get tested and all. For a little while I thought I could be done with that, like our relationship coming back together gave me strength or whatnot. 

Whacking off used to get me by, but not any morel. I am afraid that if I tell her I need help, she will find out what I have done and leave me… I feel like the pandemic is making my urges worse…can’t even get work done lately. Anyway, thanks for reading. I would appreciate guidance. Feel free to call me an a-hole. JJ

JJ, thank you so much for this question and for your courage and for your trust. I do not think you’re in a-hole and I have so much compassion for what you’re experiencing. Here is what Dr. Megan Fleming of greatlifegreatsex.com had to say:

Dr. Megan 

JJ, I can just feel your distress and conflict. First of all, I would never call anyone an a-hole. And I’m so sorry and have so much compassion that you’re feeling like a loser. But what I do know is you’re basically struggling with an out of control sexual behavior. And in many ways it’s not dissimilar to when your experience with both drugs and alcohol felt out of control to you: the obsessive thinking, the cravings, all the behaviors that were driving your use at the time. Often whenever we have sort of a dysregulated behavior, it’s an attempt to sort of resolve a psychological issue with deeper roots. 

 So the first thing I’m going to say is, absolutely you need to seek treatment with a qualified therapist from AASECT, the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists. By state they will tell you who is qualified, who has training as a sex therapist but also in particular, look for somebody who works with out of control sexual behavior.

And I say congratulations. Five years of sobriety is no small thing. You’ve already done something incredibly hard. So I absolutely have hope that you’re going to be able to do this work. The distress is there. You’re realizing because you are committed and want to see a future with your current girlfriend, in order for that to happen it’s about getting therapy and treatment for yourself now.

 One of the things you mentioned was sometimes sex is dangerous. . . And certainly the stress of quarantine makes almost any challenging behavior that much harder because stress sort of hijacks our nervous system. I imagine your reaching out to these cam girls is your version of using. It’s sort of to feel or not feel certain things or it’s sensation seeking. And so working with a therapist who can help you with out of control sexual behaviors is the most important first step. You can then work on the relationship and finding what is the right time and in what way to bring your girlfriend in. 

Because ultimately, it’s about building trust. Ideally, it’s how you as a couple can explore sexual practices and behaviors that you do find exciting, and maybe a little bit dangerous, but it’s all within the context of consent and your shared turn on so as always, we’d love to hear how it goes.

August

I love what Dr. Megan said about recognizing that this is an issue that you really, really need professional support around and through. That is the first step and that person, that treatment, will help you figure out how to talk to your partner about this. You can always talk to your partner about feeling the need for therapy. I think that’s a really healthy thing for all of us. And you don’t need to get into the details until you have a really good system in place. 

 I asked Mollie to share what she might say to someone who is in such a place dealing with self-destructive behaviors, whether they’re sex-related or not.

Mollie

One of the biggest steps that I like to lead with is understanding that this is going to take courage. I think there’s a lot of talk in the treatment community, in the recovery community, about you have to be willing. And yes, willingness is a part of this. But the other side of that coin is the courage to actually sit with the feelings, which our brains tell us is fucking dangerous. And that’s based on trauma and history and how we develop as little kids and the messages we get from our parents. But when we’re actually in that experience of feeling the loneliness, that’s going to drive us to make the call to have super unsafe sex. Choosing to feel the feelings requires an enormous amount of courage. And I think that’s important for people to understand. It’s asking them to choose a neural pathway and make a new neural pathway in the brain that’s like off-roading. 

You know if the high-risk sex is the path in tall grass that you’ve walked repeatedly, it’s going to get worn down, and it’s going to be easy to walk and your brain is going to take the path of least resistance. So to choose to offer it off that path and actually be with the feeling instead? That’s fucking courageous. That’s a big ask. And it’s an ask that, in the moment for the person who’s suffering, feels like it’s life or death. 

So, I always want to start by explaining how much courage it really takes to make the other choice than the compulsive behavior, because you’re really asking yourself to override your brain in a significant, dangerous way or a way that feels dangerous.

August

One thing that can make allowing for difficult feelings tricky is what I think of as positivity porn. These ideas that we can and should “just choose to be happy” or believe that “thoughts create reality, so just don’t think about anything negative and voi-la! Blissful euphoria.” I so appreciate that Mollie’s messages, in her essays, on Instagram and undoubtedly with her coaching clients, provide helpful alternatives to the “choose how you feel today” notions—which she realizes work for some people and in some cases. But especially for anyone struggling with mental health issues or compulsive behaviors, or if you’re dealing with negative thoughts that are actual guidance that we need.

Mollie

Oh, that makes me bananas. Look, I understand that for some people that works very well, and I know it kind of makes me an asshole to label that as Pollyanna or overly saccharin and write it off. But what I think can be really dangerous about it is that it’s dismissive to those for whom that’s not their experience. It’s dismissive to those who were like, No, no, I wake up and I’m a fucking hostage to my depression. In the example of your listener, I can’t stop having high-risk sex and I know I’m endangering myself and I don’t have any choice about that. 

So to hear “just choose happiness,” well, lady, if it was that simple, I assure you that we would have done it by now. So it tends to kind of invalidate the nuances of the human experience and suffering and all that. That’s not to say that I’m not for reframing as a technique for working with a lot of those dark feelings. But damn, it ain’t so simple as “let’s just manifest some happiness and get on with it.”

August

Mollie remains committed to embracing and working through negative thoughts in her own life, too. When we spoke she was seven months pregnant, and those months, she said, had been an experience, to say the least. 

Mollie

When I came to this point in my life where it was time to have a baby, I knew that my recovery would be challenging, that I was going to have a ton of noise about my body. And I certainly did earlier on. At this point, it’s more like, there’s not much I can control. It’s more an issue of acceptance that this is what my body is doing right now. 

But I certainly started off with this idea of I’m not going to allow myself to be worried about trivial things like the nursery or the baby clothes. I’m just going to do this practically. I’m going to learn how to be a great co-parent with my husband, and I was trying to prioritize those elements and kind of judged myself. Shocking, right? That I would fall into self-judgment for possibly caring about baby clothes and cute maternal things. I so wanted to maintain my identity independent from pregnancy. And yet in this process, they’re so inextricably linked that I ultimately had to surrender a lot. Everything from having the identity of someone who was a really fast-paced mover in the world and now I’ve had to slow down significantly. 

To just exercise is obviously very different now. In fact, before I was really showing, when I just had a very little baby bump, I would be in the gym, and I would have to take more frequent breaks because your body is doing all sorts of insane things and needs to rest more frequently. But because I didn’t look pregnant, I had noise that the other people in the gym were going to be judging me. And, of course, I’m very clear that no one actually gave a fuck about what my workout routine was. But a couple times I caught myself over-exaggerating my bump just to make sure that they knew that I was pregnant and not lazy here.

So I got to see elements of that come up. Things like that come up where I have to have a sense of humor. You know, your grandiosity is on display here, Mollie, or your ego’s running this. This has been a process of surrender that I anticipated I would be totally game for and now at 37 weeks, I’m really fucking ready for it to be done.

August

I really relate to Mollie’s sort of rebellion of certain norms or expectations. For her, they’ve carried over to social media as well. And as with her earlier thoughts about pregnancy, not wanting to get too into baby clothes and the like, her resistance early on has changed over time, partly due to the pandemic. 

Mollie

Me avoiding Instagram for years was part of my I’m gonna do this differently. I’m not gonna be like other people. And then, of course, the virus hit and the joke among my friends is like the virus broke Mollie and now she’s on Instagram. Even that was part of my I’m going to be different, but not from a freed-up place, necessarily, but more from I’m afraid I’m actually just as average as everybody else and wanting to avoid it. Let’s just go public with the pathology. And then like having to take a look at, Oh, there’s actually a ton of fear underneath that. And for me that fear was always about I’m going to be average, I’m going to be overlooked. And these aren’t conscious fears that are running the show. 

August

Nor have they panned out to be predictive, in my opinion. As I mentioned, I love how authentic Mollie’s messages are on Instagram. I told her about a few posts that really spoke to me. The first one reads, “Compassion is the new discipline.” Below it, she wrote: “Rather than being disciplined about our own discipline, what would it look like if compassion WAS the new discipline?” 

Mollie

I’m so grateful that that was moving for you. It’s still something that I have to remind myself of, again, because we beat ourselves up, instinctively. We know how to do that as a culture. We’re really skilled at doing that. And the truth is, if self-abuse was really an effective technique for transformation, it would have worked by now. So, what would actually happen if we leaned into compassion as the discipline that we reached for when we missed our own mark and just tried to stay curious about what that would look like and how often many of us are terrified to do that?

August

Another one of Mollie’s posts reads: “You are the cavalry you’ve been waiting for.” I just love that idea. And as it turns out, this is another deeply personal one for Molly.

Mollie

God, I think of all the desperate attempts that I made to get rescue or initiate rescue or solve the problem of myself. I spent many years doing them whether it was me looking for rescue at the bottom of a jar of peanut butter or awaiting the cavalry in the relationship that I was in or even in the way that I compulsively chased down different kinds of therapy and healers and this modality and that modality and doing everything I could to solve the problem of myself. 

That idea that we’re some broken thing that needs to be amputated or fixed or adjusted, I think, is part of the problem. The magic of humanity is that we can change our relationship to these parts of ourselves. This is not—I know this is a little bit vague here—it’s not about amputating these parts. It’s about including them. And we are the only ones who can do that, not be like therapists with 55 licenses, not that fucking shaman. Not that those aren’t helpful resources, but it’s ultimately our relationship to these things. 

August

That, said Mollie, is what can make or break the human process. Given all she has experienced herself and the support she provides for others around these challenges, I asked her what she would say to someone who’s really struggling to have self-compassion.

Mollie

What I end up hearing most often is people feeling that they don’t deserve it. And people worry that if they give themselves too much compassion or any compassion that it becomes this slippery slope into laziness or just permission and then they’ll never change. I think the principle of compassion is that we just say yes to wherever we are right now. And that doesn’t mean that we’re permanently in this state but that it has to start with us in acceptance and love for ourselves in the complete brokenness that we may be in that moment, and just like off-roading from that tallgrass path, giving ourselves compassion is actually a courageous act, especially if we feel we don’t deserve it. Because we’re afraid it’s going to come with more dangerous shit. We haven’t tried it is the truth for most of us. Until we do. That compassion itself is, I think, an act of courage, especially if we’re in those really dark pits of despair.

It’s kind of a grim ending. Forgive me.

August

I actually thought that was a pretty beautiful ending. To learn much more about Mollie Birney, find links to her website, the article we talked about and the Instagram account she finally has at the links down in the show notes. 

This episode was narrated and produced by me, August McLaughlin, with audio management by Makenzie Mizell, engineer and the founder and organizer of Period. Learn more about this collective of femme and non-binary podcasters at periodnetwork.com. Thanks so much for listening and have a beautiful GB embracing week.