Does your story repeat itself?

The first response always given when something terrible happens to someone is: Why? Why me? Why now? Why not him or her? Why on earth? Why, why, why? Once the emotions have simmered, the follow-up question to the first usually starts with: How? How will I move forward? How do I overcome this? How do I get out of this jar of pickles? How can this get any better? How, how, how? The problem with the latter set of questions is that you haven’t first understood and addressed why. Only then will you be able to answer how. Ask any entrepreneur to name the main ingredient to their success, and they’ll unequivocally echo the word ‘why.’ It’s the one word that propelled them on their trajectory. Why book a cab using Uber? Why type on a MacBook? Why slip past the McDonald’s drive-thru on your way home? Why listen to music streaming apps? All these questions started with ‘why’ before anyone figured out how such a dream could become a reality. It’s impossible to count how many times I’ve asked ‘why’ without ever investigating all the avenues of my unwanted behaviour. Instead, I’ve impatiently jumped straight to ‘how.’ I would eat up all the tangible and practical solutions I could find with the promise of finding everlasting freedom. I’d sign up for courses, online tutorials, virtual accountability partners, apps, retreats, bots, and software programs in the hope of finally ‘kicking it.’ Initially, the signs of progress were promising, but this would only ever last a few weeks, possibly a month if I was lucky. The recovery programs all had their merit; however, when put into practice in isolation, they were nothing more than temporary obstacles. Sanctions of the senses are a diversion, not a solution. ‘How’ and ‘why’ must work together harmoniously to address the heart of the issue.

In the advertising industry, it’s impossible to produce brilliant creative work for brands without a sound strategy. A strategist’s role requires the ability to delve deep inside the brand, mining and panning as much useful information as possible until they unearth any nuggets. These nuggets are invaluable to the creative process and are delivered in the form of a brief to be interpreted by a creative team. Without them, a brand has very little to say. Usually when this happens, the advertising resorts to shouting at you in starbursts, flashing and slashing prices. Beating you over the head is anything but memorable. It’s annoying wallpaper. The nuggets are commonly referred to as ‘insights,’ from which a brand proposition is written. A proposition or value statement is what sets any brand apart. It’s giving consumers a reason to believe why they should choose you over anyone else. Knowing these insights helps the creatives brainstorm clever ways to bring a campaign to life. They’ll often demonstrate how your life will become even richer if you had (insert brand name here).
A couple of years back there was a successful campaign I loved out of Australia called ‘Melanoma Likes Me.’ The advertising agency created a simple campaign using a unique algorithm that found and responded to popular hashtags on Instagram relating to all things Aussie summer and that geolocated images with a like and response from @_melanoma. This was a clever brand response that didn’t require a big-budget commercial. It only ever appeared on Instagram.
Allow me to take a step back and walk you through the process. Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world, two to three times the rates in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. What’s even more eye-opening is that general practitioners have over one million patient consultations per year for skin cancer alone.1 What we know is that Aussies worldwide are renowned for being avid sun worshippers. The sun, beach, and surfing go hand in hand — “They just can’t get a bloody ‘nuff of it, mate.” These fun-in-the-sun adventure snaps are usually punctuated with #sunsoutgunsout #summer #bondi #beach-day, or whatever hashtag leaves you feeling jealous and suffering a severe amount of #fomo. Once the strategists find these insights, they can then align them with the brand’s proposition — something like ‘Whenever you’re in the sun, so is melanoma.’ The creative solution almost wrote itself. Every time someone shared their snaps, they got a like from a new friend, @_melanoma, and also sometimes a cheeky reply to their posts, like: ‘Perfect weather for me too! #killerweath-er.’ When people clicked on the handle, it would open an in-app experience providing useful information and tips on how to check for melanomas. This campaign is smart because it first understands the consumer behaviour and then talks directly to the environment in which they are engaging, in this case, Instagram. Without a great insight, a typical and boring campaign would’ve been created instead. The insight (WHY) paved a way forward for a solution (HOW).

If you’ve ever visited a clinical psychologist or counsellor, you’ll automatically begin by addressing your current matters, but a psychologist will always start by pulling you back to your childhood. It can feel invasive at times, but the past, not the present, is where the answers lie. Restoration doesn’t begin where you currently are; it starts with unravelling your past so you can rebuild your future.
I’ve always believed my addiction had nothing to do with my childhood. Well, of course, it did in an autobiographical sense, because, like most adolescents, I was introduced to nudity, porn, and all things alluring at that time. My response to this unwanted sexual behaviour was often child-like and automated — never something I gave much thought to. My story didn’t feel any different from that of my peers. To my limited understanding, I believed we all shared a common biological response that followed a predetermined script. You become curious about your body. A friend introduces you to nudity. And you begin to experience chemical reactions inside of you that are completely foreign. This exploration carries on through your late teens. The more you discover, the more curious you become, and this continually perks your interest. Formats change with technological advancement, and you become even more incapable of dealing with sensory overload. All the while, in the back of your mind, you’re convinced these boyish habits of yours will inevitably disappear once you’re in a healthy, committed sexual relationship. And then one day you arrive at the end of the script only to realise your story is open for adaptation. So you add a monologue to the script, assuring yourself that it’s all natural and that your body is reacting how it’s biologically intended to. But you realise something’s missing, so you decide to throw in more money and special effects to keep the new scenes entertaining. You feel like Michael Bay, and before you know it you’ve lost the plot.
For a long time, it never dawned on me that my past is a roadmap to my addiction. And the reason I never gave it much thought was because I never felt like I had suffered any trauma. In my script, there was no Shakespearean tragedy or drama. I was never sexually abused, my parents didn’t divorce, I didn’t grow up poor, there was no weird, dodgy uncle. I had more love from my parents than any child could ever hope for. Christian values weren’t foreign to me; they were the bricks of our home life, assembled on a foundation that was God-centred. When there’s trauma, the dots are easier to connect, and the diagnosis is precise. My situation was murky and required a hard look. Without going into the specifics, my childhood was peppered with road signs. There was rife adultery in our church and serial infidelity from the pastor; guilt and shame were common themes, and premarital sex was the target of fire and brimstone so often preached from the pulpit. 1. Sex equalled fear. At home, sex wasn’t an open, insightful, educational conversation. It was awkward, mostly consisting of my mother hammering in the mantra of abstaining every thought and desire till marriage. Any curious exploration before marriage is a sin. So get on your bike, ride around the block, and pray and pedal till you exhaust yourself (true story). 2. Sex equalled anxiety. You can start to see unhealthy cracks and two pervasive themes. Couple them with confidence issues and unhealthy friendships at school, and my present state of mind offers a clearer explanation as to why.
I don’t believe I am a victim of unwanted sexual behaviour, but when I look back on my past, the hovering effects played a role in my vulnerability to unhealthy sexual curiosity. Jay Stringer, a mental health counsellor, believes our sexual fantasies and behaviour are not as random as we’re led to believe. In an enlightening article called ‘What Your Sexual Fantasies (Might) Say About You,’ he addresses quantifiable findings conducted from research with over 3,600 men and women on critical drivers of unwanted sexual behaviour: pornography, affairs, paid-for sex, etcetera.

What I can tell you is that sexual struggles are not random or capricious. They develop in the formative emotional and sexual soil of your childhood and flourish in the unaddressed dynamics of your present life. My research found that the type of pornography and sexual behavior you pursue can be predicted by the major themes and significant relationships that have marked your life.
One of the most common sexual fantasies for men had to do with the desire for power over women. Other popular fantasies for men included: a desire for women to have power over them, a diverse choice in sexual partners, sex that was aggressive or violent, an affair, and buying sex. Men who wanted power over women tended to pursue pornography where women were younger, had a smaller body type, and had a particular race or appearance that suggested (to them) subservience. What predicted this type of sexual fantasy in men? There are three key drivers: (1) His level of shame (2) His sense of futility (3) Growing up with a strict father. Men with the highest levels of shame were those that wanted the most power over women. The writing on the wall is that men find power over women arousing precisely because it gives them an arena to find dominance amidst a life filled with shame and futility.
While some men found having power over women arousing, others in my research tended to want the woman in pornography to have the power. These men often fantasised about older women, attractive mother figures, or women in positions of authority who would pursue them. What were the key predictors for this type of sexual fantasy? (1) A man’s depression (2) A history of sexual abuse (3) A father who confided in his son about his personal life and marriage difficulties. Once you dive deeper into the ‘why’ of your sexual fantasies, you quickly enter the stories that await your engagement.*

Stringer’s research reassured me that sexual fantasies are not the result of repugnant behaviour but in fact are a biographical wayfinder inviting us to a journey of understanding, healing, and transformation. Recounting and reliving my past wasn’t something that happened on a quiet Sunday afternoon. It took months of deep personal reflection to locate and isolate my common themes and traumas. I often struggled to remember things. I would write what I could recall, and then, just like a true detective who’d link the evidence to a location with a red thread on a corkboard, I’d draw a line from a sentence and connect it to familiar behavioural patterns or fantasies. It wasn’t always immediately obvious, but I would write key observations down anyway and then try to unpack it a few days later. Sometimes something seemingly subtle or trivial was often overlooked, and later I would find the elusive missing piece in the puzzle and finally begin to see something taking shape. Talking through these observations with a counsellor, close friend, or partner also helped to slowly massage some of the guilt and shame away. On date nights with my wife, it helped to talk through things with her about what I had done or noticed in my childhood. Just verbalising my thoughts allowed me to process and decode a lot of the information floating around inside my brain. Understanding that my past manifested a lot of unwanted behaviour in the present made it easier to constructively address any recurring patterns instead of repressively ignoring them. The more questions you begin to ask, whether scientific, spiritual, biological, behavioural, or biographical, the more you’ll open your mind to knowledge and understanding as to why. And this will make the road to how less narrow to tread.