0:00:00 – Speaker 1
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0:01:06 – Speaker 2
Parental guidance is advised. Welcome to nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim every Saturday at 10 am on AM630,. The word nextTalk Radio is brought to you by nextTalk, a non-profit organization keeping kids safe online through cyber parenting and open communication. Find resources, videos and subscribe to our weekly podcast at nextTalk.org. Are you ready for the next?
0:01:30 – Speaker 3
talk Today, we’re continuing our pornography series and we have a special guest in the house today. His name is Charles Coulter. He has been a licensed professional counselor for 14 years here in San Antonio. Before counseling, he was a youth pastor for 15 years and really was able to talk to a lot of young people and see their struggles, and he recently founded the country’s first based online counseling service. It’s web based counselorchatcom. Welcome to the show, Charles.
0:02:03 – Speaker 4
Oh, thank you, it’s good to be here.
0:02:05 – Speaker 2
We’re so glad to have you here to offer a different perspective that we can First hand with people that you meet and you walk through the process of a pornography or addiction, so we’re excited to have you as a part of our series. Thank you.
0:02:18 – Speaker 3
Yes, and I kind of gave you the background of your professional career. Tell us about your personal life.
0:02:23 – Speaker 4
Well, I am the father of three children. They’re not really little anymore. My youngest is 19 and just graduated from high school, and so we’re launching into a new era at the Coulter house.
0:02:38 – Speaker 3
That sounds kind of reliant.
0:02:39 – Speaker 2
The empty nest.
0:02:42 – Speaker 4
Well, that’s what I thought right after graduation and we’re having a graduation party for my youngest son, harrison, and I turned to my wife, serena, and I said so this feels kind of freeing, right, so we don’t have to worry about school in the fall and checking grades and all of that. And she looked at me with a tear in her eyes. She said I told you we should have had two more.
0:03:08 – Speaker 2
I was going to say, and her response was tears. That’s great. And I said honey, I’m gonna go get you something to drink, will adopt dogs, take up a hobby, so anyway, that’s my youngest, harrison’s 19.
0:03:24 – Speaker 4
My middle daughter, morgan, is a hairstylist here in town and so she is 21. And then my oldest is about to be 24. And he’s about to get married. So we’re excited in September. So that’s coming up fast and lots of events happening right from that. So great.
0:03:44 – Speaker 3
Well, we’re glad to have you. We’re so excited to have you here. We want to dive right in because I know, when we talked on the phone you were a wealth of information. You are on the first line of counseling people who struggle with pornography, not only in their marriages, but teenagers. Can you speak into? What are you seeing as far as your caseload? Is it an increase? Is it the ages? Is it changed? What are you seeing as far as in your counseling practice?
0:04:12 – Speaker 4
Well, I do. Most of my counseling practice probably 90% is marriage counseling and I deal with pornography as that relates to men and how that’s affecting their marriage and that the struggle and how they’re trying to walk away from that and just dealing with that addiction. I have more recently started to receive calls from parents who, as you can imagine, are panicked because they found out their child has stumbled into pornography Online. A friend showed it to them. There’s a question that’s asked in class or somebody says something right, and so then they get online to research that and they can get into trouble in a hurry.
0:05:04 – Speaker 2
Well, and especially these young kids. You know I was recently speaking with a pediatrician and he was saying he has an increase of kids that he’s having to send for professional help and counseling because they are so addicted to pornography at such a young age. And I know that’s really important as far as the way the brain works, that they’re stepping into this or being exposed to it before anybody ever imagined they would be, and then something happens that makes it a lifelong struggle if they don’t get help.
0:05:32 – Speaker 4
Right, it starts out as a moral problem, right and a. You know keeping our mind right, renewing our mind daily, you know avoiding sexual sin, those kind of things. It starts out as a moral issue and then Dr Weiss, out of this Conquer series, talks about the fact that it becomes a brain problem right. And it rewires our brain and so helping kids from a young age understand that and helping them protect their minds and helping them just understand right how it’s a you know, negative thing, their natural little boys, right are intrigued.
0:06:22 – Speaker 2
Absolutely Curious they’re curious?
0:06:25 – Speaker 4
They’re not. They’re not devious, they’re not trying to do something wrong, they’re just curious. And the way God wired their brain is they’re intrigued by the woman’s form. And so they start to see these things right On their phone, on their iPad, right, and they can really get into trouble in a hurry without realizing it.
0:06:54 – Speaker 3
Well, in, what’s changed so much is that it used to be more difficult to get you know and now it’s so accessible, which is why the conversation has to start so much earlier, because with a touch of a button it can be shown and then it could be deleted. It could be hidden very easily, so there’s no like magazine hiding under the mattress or anything like that. I mean it’s shifted and so you know. We at nextTalk that’s one of our main core things is that we need to raise awareness at younger ages. How important is it to start the conversation so early, not only just about pornography, but about everything that’s happening in our world?
0:07:31 – Speaker 4
Well, you bring up a good point, right. The technology has changed things so dramatically. So when I was growing up, pornography was available. But you had to walk into a store, right, you had to look at the clerk’s eyes, right, and you would have to ask for one of those magazines, right. And so that was enough accountability and even enough shame, because you didn’t even know who was going to walk in behind you. You’re like I’m not doing that.
That’s right, that’s weird right, and I’m not going to chance that, even if I might want to, as a boy wanted to look at those pictures, I wasn’t going to risk that kind of shame. So now the kids don’t have to risk that shame and there’s no accountability. So then they start doing it in hiding right. They do it and they can delete their history. And most kids I think parents would agree know more about technology and their computer certainly than I do they’re always one step ahead of us always no matter how educated we are about technology, they’re one step ahead.
0:08:46 – Speaker 2
That’s correct and it’s the world they live in. That is their reality. They use it for school, social. Every part of their world is touched by technology, if not drenched in technology. So it makes sense that that would be the language they speak and where they go to find entertainment or anything else. And what they don’t understand, which maybe you can speak into, is if they’re looking at that at a young age, it’s rewiring their brain and it’s creating these triggers. Maybe you can explain a little bit more about that.
0:09:13 – Speaker 4
Well, one of the things that I talk about a lot in my practice, especially as I deal with couples and what’s happening in their relationship. It really goes all the way back to triggers that we pick up, generally between the ages of six and twelve.
0:09:31 – Speaker 2
Ooh, that’s young.
0:09:32 – Speaker 3
And I find that so interesting because between the ages of six and twelve, that’s what we’re seeing, as far as when kids are normally getting phones on the upper end of that spectrum and that’s when parents sometimes like me, I say this in my book.
That’s when I kind of thought I could coast for a little while because I thought we’re not in the teen years yet, I don’t need to talk about anything, and so it kind of caught me off guard and I feel like that’s when the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, because you’re not in that Interesting that the ages of six to twelve create these triggers that can have lifelong effects.
0:10:08 – Speaker 4
The trigger. I relate it to this. Our childhood misperceptions many times cause us to pick up labels, if you will. Right between the ages of six and twelve, I had an older brother who was very successful, and so I would hear my parents talking about him. I didn’t hear them talking about me and so it caused me to pick up this label if you would.
that I essentially kind of hung around my neck and I started to live out of, and that is overlooked, and so once we pick up that label, it’s not an event that happened to us, but it becomes personal to us, right, and so then we see ourselves as overlooked or unappreciated, or you can add a lot of words to that right A sense of failure, lots of those kind of things, and we then live out of those things, those lies right that are contrary to what God tells us about who we are as his child and how we’re to live.
So then, if I start to believe in my heart that I’m overlooked, right then? Well, that’s contrary to what my father God says about me, right, that I’m the apple of his eye, right, that he sees me and he has a plan and a purpose for me and he cares for me, so it’s contrary to that.
0:11:41 – Speaker 2
So if you have a kid in you know between the ages of six and twelve who obviously is picking up on these things, and then they’re exposed to something like pornography or they seek something out, their brain is rewiring. They don’t realize that it becomes an addiction, it becomes a brain issue. One of those labels they may pick up is failure. Or you know I’m, you know I have let my family down, or I’m not doing the right thing, I’m a bad person, right, shame, shame, yes, and at such a young age, because they don’t understand that their brain has been rewired and they have to work backwards and all that goes back to good, open conversation.
0:12:20 – Speaker 3
And what about Charles speaking to you? Know Kim talked about the personal effects and that labeling, but what about the labeling of others because of what you’re seeing online? So, for example, you know the objectification of women. Or if a child sees, you know, homosexual pornography, could it cause them to start questioning their sexuality, because then it causes the confusion? Can you speak into that a little bit?
0:12:46 – Speaker 4
Sure, that’s a good point. For example, a little boy is looking at pornography stumbled into it, right, and then he sees, right, some homosexual pornography, right, and that causes him to get aroused. And so then he starts to be confused, right. Well, I’m looking at boys, right, and then I’m aroused from that, and so does that mean that I’m a homosexual? Maybe that means I’m gay, right. And so they, at a very early age, long before my generation, would try to decide about sexuality. They’re making a decision about who they are sexually even before they even experience sex or think about what they haven’t had. You know, nobody’s really sitting and talking to them. That’s why the open conversation, communication, is so important.
But so they make the, they connect the dots and put on that label in their head right and so they say I looked at this, those are boys. It aroused me, I must be gay as well. And they take on that label, they take on that lie right.
0:14:05 – Speaker 3
So is it important for us, as parents, to speak into our kids. You know, don’t label yourself, don’t box yourself into a category, because you’re seeing all these things are coming at you between the ages of six and 12, and it’s very important for you not to label yourself. You have a lot of life to live. God is not done telling your story yet. I guess that’s an important conversation that we need to speak into our kids don’t label yourself.
0:14:30 – Speaker 4
Right the conversation. To sit down and have the conversation is so important. The thing that I believe impacts their life right is building that relationship, mandy, you and I talked about I told you a story about it I started having daddy dates right. I had daddy dates with my little girl right and with my boys. I had guys night out right so we would go do different things. My youngest son loved to go to IHOP and have all you can eat pancakes, right?
0:15:07 – Speaker 1
and so we would.
0:15:08 – Speaker 4
I would sit and watch him right at seven or eight years old and he could consume a lot of pancakes, which was hilarious, right, and the waiter would keep bringing out pancakes. But then I had that same thing happen with my daughter, and we would go to Chili’s. She would order a pizza. I, as a dad, am trying to figure out what do I say to an eight or nine-year-old little girl, right? Well, mostly I didn’t have to say a lot. I played tic-tac-toe with her, right, we did the puzzles that came at Chili’s, and I, I and my, my actions, right, investing in her, and so then, then she hears what I have to say to her, right? And so then, rather than telling her to be aware of the labels are on guard, which is hard for them to even understand well, what?
0:16:08 – Speaker 2
what does?
0:16:08 – Speaker 4
that mean, yeah, to figure that out. I’m telling her she’s valuable, right, because I spend time with her, right. I’m telling her she’s beautiful because after Chili’s, we would always go over to the store and she’d put on some clothes. And this is what I like, daddy, and right, it’s fabulous. It didn’t mean that I had to buy everything that she put on. It was the experience of her showing, right, what she thought made her pretty and me reinforcing that right.
So it’s so important right for her to hear that, hear that from me. So then when she gets on the bus right to go to school and those stinky boys tell her things about her, she knows in her heart I’m beautiful, I’m valuable, because my daddy says so.
0:17:01 – Speaker 3
And you not only said so, you’ve said it with your actions.
0:17:04 – Speaker 1
Yes.
0:17:05 – Speaker 3
And I love that because you know, so many times as parents and even here at nextTalk, we say you know, it’s really about the honest relationship, the open dialogue between parent and child. But sometimes parents are like I don’t even know where to start. And I love what you’re telling us is just start with little investment of time and you’re showing them, I’m here for you and then when something trigger happens between six and 12, maybe they’ll wanna go on that date because they remember this is the time and space where I have them all to myself and I can talk to them about this. And I love that it’s such a simple, practical way. I mean, even my husband, I know he’ll go off with my daughter and be like, what do I say? And I’m like just Just chill out and have fun, just have fun. Yeah, no, don’t go with a script, don’t go with. I need to cover this, just invest. And I love that story.
0:17:51 – Speaker 4
When they, when we spend time with them and we get comfortable, they get comfortable. They’ll do a lot of the talking.
0:17:59 – Speaker 2
Sure, absolutely. My daughter has a lot more words to say than I ever did, and so hearing her heart and talk about what’s important.
0:18:08 – Speaker 4
and she’s 21 now and she’s still will occasionally call me and say, hey, we haven’t had a daddy date in a while.
0:18:16 – Speaker 2
It’s so cool.
I love that so much If you’re just now tuning in. Welcome to nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim every Saturday at 10 am on AM 630,. The word nextTalk Radio is brought to you by nextTalk, a nonprofit organization keeping kids safe online through cyber parenting and open communication. Find resources, videos and subscribe to our weekly podcast at nextTalk.org. Are you ready for the nextTalk?
Today we’re hanging out with Charles Coulter. He is a licensed therapist here in San Antonio, been in practice for over 14 years, talking about building that relationship and starting at a young age. Recently we celebrated Father’s Day and my youngest is two and she said her favorite memory with her daddy is when we go on dates two Already she’s seeing the benefit of that connection and he even at night he’ll brush her hair after her shower and she’ll just talk and talk and talk at two years old. So the point I want to make here that we’re sharing is it is important to start early to build those special places where your kids can open up, one-on-one and feel like they can tell you anything and to see that they are valuable enough that you will invest time in them. I think that just speaks volumes to them at any age.
0:19:38 – Speaker 4
So that they can talk about anything, including the pornography, and know that, as parents, we’re not going to shame them. We’re going to understand it’s a complicated thing to talk about, it’s confusing for them. So no shame, just. Oh, okay, this happened. Well, let’s talk about it, right? What did you think about it?
0:20:02 – Speaker 2
Do you think part of that process, of building that back and forth in that comfortable conversation is also sharing some of your experiences as a parent with your kid?
0:20:13 – Speaker 4
Oh sure, and how those things affected me and the things I do now and the things that God has taught me right in my chase after purity and helping other men do those same things. And just so she knows right, I’m chasing after those things that God asked me to chase after.
0:20:35 – Speaker 2
Right.
0:20:36 – Speaker 4
And so then I can have honest, helpful conversations with her about her own right pursuit of God.
0:20:45 – Speaker 3
You know we talked a lot about kids in pornography on this show and we only have a few minutes left and I think I want to ask a question about a marriage, pornography and a marriage, because I know that you deal a lot with counseling and marriages. So a husband is struggling with pornography. What should the wife’s response be? You know, because we talked a lot about with parents we’re not going to shame, we’re not going to judge, we’re not going to label. How does that translate as far as a wife walking through with her husband?
0:21:17 – Speaker 4
Well, you know, one of the things that I’ve heard in counseling is for a man to say um, it’s. They come in and even made statements. Like you know, this isn’t hurting anyone, I’m not. That’s their honest understanding. They’re not. I don’t believe that. I think they honestly think that they do not understand, and a woman doesn’t know how to put it into words to say well, this causes me to think well, why am I not enough?
0:21:50 – Speaker 2
Right.
0:21:50 – Speaker 4
Right, and that’s the question that a woman has written on her heart and that is am I lovely? And so she looks to get that answered in a lot of different ways, and one of those ways right is through her husband.
0:22:05 – Speaker 2
Absolutely Right.
0:22:07 – Speaker 4
Because her husband brings her flowers, because her husband tells her she’s beautiful, because her husband pursues after her Right. And so then, if her husband is pursuing after pornography rather than her, because a man will begin to do that right if he’s viewing pornography.
he’ll turn to pornography because it’s easier, because he can become lazy in his pursuit of his wife and conveying to her that she’s lovely, that that’s part of the pursuit, that’s part of what is supposed to be happening in a marriage. So when a man looks at pornography and he chooses that, it causes these significant questions for the wife. And am I not lovely? Do I not do it for you anymore? And what’s wrong with me, all of those questions? Sure so that that’s. That’s one of the things that I deal with With couples and talking about pornography and helping him understand just how damaging it is to his wife.
0:23:14 – Speaker 2
And then I’m sure the other side of that is helping her understand the addictive side of that and then bringing those two together.
0:23:21 – Speaker 3
How the brain had been rewired, and it is an actual addiction.
0:23:25 – Speaker 4
Yeah, and helping the wife understand that the truth of the matter is is that, and at a very basic level, right, pornography? Is A man who is addicted to pornography, right? It’s not about sex, yeah, it’s. It’s actually not about the wife, and is she enough? It’s not about those things.
Those are the lies that Satan wants to speak into her heart but the truth of the matter is is a man is turning to pornography out of his own Deficit?
The question on every man’s heart is do I have what it takes to make it, as a man, right? It’s a confidence issue, right, interesting. And so then, one of the ways a man will seek to get that answered is through a woman, right and in the in the woman on the screen always says yes and always says to him something He’ll, he allows it to say something significant about who, who he is, which, ultimately, is not true, right, that woman on the screen is not saying anything to him, mm-hmm, right, we ultimately, as men, need to be getting that answered Right about. Are we enough? Through our relationship with God, mm-hmm. And so when we do that, then we can then lead our wives Right to turn and get get her questions answered right through God, am I lovely? Well, yes, he knit you together in your mother’s room, right, and so the color of your eyes and your hair, all of that right, comes from that. So Pornography attacks those very significant things on our heart.
0:25:05 – Speaker 3
Well, thank you for joining us today. How if you’re, if people are in San Antonio and they want to contact you for counseling services, how can they contact you?
0:25:14 – Speaker 4
well, they can find me on the internet Charles at the best marriage, calm, okay, I I don’t only do marriage counseling, but a great deal of what I do is is that. So, charles at the best marriage, we also. You can also find right Christian counselors through a news site called Counselor chat comm awesome and it’s a wonderful service, right, so it allows people to get counseling Online.
They don’t have to leave home. Right, wives, it’s a way to convince your husband that you can do counseling. You don’t have to take time off work, when you get home. Mm-hmm we can sit down on our couch and we can talk to a counselor, so and you can find right those counselors on counselor chat comm awesome.
0:26:00 – Speaker 3
Thank you for having us. You know I love what you said about you see a lot in your practice that men will come in and say this is just not hurting anyone, and Part of the thing that we hope to do at nextTalk is raise a generation of boys where they understand that porn is an issue. And the next show coming up we’re gonna talk to you about how do you talk to your three and four year old little boys and little girls about Pornography and the problems and why to avoid it, the why behind, why it’s necessary to avoid it.
0:26:33 – Speaker 2
Starts early. Open conversation and communication. That’s what we talk about all the time here on nextTalk radio. Thanks again for joining us today. Every Saturday at 10 am, join Mandy and I on a m6 30. The word nextTalk radio is brought to you by nextTalk, a nonprofit organization keeping kids safe online through cyber parenting and open communication. Find resources, videos and subscribe to our weekly podcast at nextTalk. Or are you ready for the nextTalk?
Transcribed by https://podium.page
