Today's episode is with Rachel Denton, a licensed clinical social worker and former

Phi Theta New Drug team member. In this episode, Rachel shares about the role of shame and pornography

addiction and the importance of practicing self-compassion in lessening

shame. She also helps us understand how to find a therapist, the different therapy modalities,

and how each can be helpful, and what practices can be beneficial outside of therapy.

With that, let's jump into the conversation. We hope you enjoy this episode of Consider Before Consuming.

So for our listeners, we have a super exciting guest today.

Rachel used to be a member of our team at Fight the New Drug.

And now you're doing amazing things.

Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Yeah. So I, LCSW, which is licensed clinical social worker. And I used to work here while I was in graduate school and after I graduated. I worked with Fight for, I was like two, three years, I think. And then I later went on and started a private practice. And so

since then I've been doing that, working with lots of different types of mental health disorders,

but definitely pornography, I would say, is one that I work with quite a bit. So can you explain

how pornography can impact an individual's mental health and well-being?

Yeah. Well, I would say the first way that probably is the most invasive and also a way that we don't talk about a lot, although Fight does a great job of talking about it, is shame. And anything else I would

say after this, I think shame is probably the core of the issue of what's going on, especially when it

comes to the mental health aspects. And part of that is because shame is something that we

really don't talk a lot about. Like, I don't think many kids had shame modeled to them and the way

their parents said, like it looks like you're experiencing shame.

Right.

And so because of that, it's really challenging to identify.

And when their shame, it really impacts the way that people feel about themselves.

...