Ep.30: Satanism and the Mind - Unraveling Cognitive Dissonance

# Satanists Nextdoor
# Ep.30: Satanism and the Mind - Unraveling Cognitive Dissonance

[Lilin Lavin]
Welcome, dear listeners, to Satanist Next Door. We're your hosts, Lilin Lavin and Tommy Lavin. Whether you're an open-minded curious onlooker or a fellow Satanist seeking camaraderie, our goal is to share our personal experiences and delve into the intricate tapestry of Satanism in our daily lives, occasionally inviting other guests to share their unique perspectives, leaving no pentagram unturned.

We'll explore how our beliefs shape our views on society, dive into struggles and triumphs we've encountered, and reveal the humanity that unites us all. So grab your favorite chalice and join us on this captivating journey. Satanist Next Door is ready to peel back the curtain and offer you a glimpse into our world, one captivating episode at a time.

[Tommy Lavin]
Hello and welcome to another episode of Satanist Next Door. Today we have Tim Baxter with podcast Satan's Therapist. How are you doing today, Tim?

[Tim Baxter]
Oh man, I'm doing good. I'm really excited to be on your show. Y'all's show is probably, as a new Satanist, y'all's show is one of the shows that I definitely have come to learn more about Satanism through.

So it's pretty awesome.

[Tommy Lavin]
Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you very much.

It's always great to have other podcasters on and just to have guests. It kind of breaks things up a little bit.

[Lilin Lavin]
So it's not just me and Lillian always talking. Well, yeah, and it was cool because you had pointed me to your podcast and I actually really liked it. And the second episode may have been more of my favorite because I love, you know, the passionate about the kids issues.

So when people aren't treating children properly or things like that, and the way that you covered it, I just really appreciated what you did.

[Tim Baxter]
Well, and that's kind of the way that I try to teach. So my main job is I work with kids and families with behavioral issues and things like that. And so when I'm teaching and when, well not teaching, but whenever I'm doing therapy, obviously part of that also involves psychoeducation.

So what I try to do is teach with the psychoeducation. I try to teach parents about bodily autonomy. So like there are way other, there are way better methods of discipline than spanking your children.

And for me, if you take someone's will away from them and I'm not talking about not having rules, but what I'm saying is if you grab their body, if you hit them, things like that, we're supposed to teach our kids not to be violent. And if we're modeling that behavior, then we're not teaching them not to be violent. We're teaching them that when they're pissed off, they need to be violent.

[Tommy Lavin]
Violence produces violence.

[Tim Baxter]
I mean, so I think part of your job as a parent is modeling behaviors that you have behavioral expectations. And so if we're to model behavioral expectations, we need to be, I mean, if we're going to have expectations, we need to model those expectations. And unfortunately a lot of parents don't do that.

And I know a lot of parents that know, have this information, but they have a hard time with this information, which also causes what we're going to be talking about today, which is cognitive dissonance, right? So you know, you know, these different things that you need to do, and you believe that this is the right way to parent, but sometimes your past way of parenting gets in the way and you have a conflict in you, which can cause a lot of cognitive dissonance.

[Lilin Lavin]
Perfect. So, I mean, you went into that perfectly. We were going to have a conversation today about cognitive dissonance.

So I think that's a good segue. And would you say that maybe cognitive dissonance could be when parents have a belief like biblical belief that it's okay to cause harm to your child, and yet they know through evidence-based information that it actually causes harm to your child? Would you say that's a type of cognitive dissonance?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

[Tim Baxter]
So we know, as much as I like to dog on Christians sometimes and say that there's no Christians that are super educated, things like that, that's bullshit. If there's totally Christians that are highly educated, there's actually Christians I respect. However, yep, there are a lot of Christians that are both educated with science and still hold deep into these dogmatic practices from the Bible.

And like they have that whole spool the rod, spool the child, spare the rod, spool the child or some shit like that. And the problem with that is, is that we know the facts. We know that if we're spanking our children, things like that, it creates adverse childhood trauma.

And when I say trauma, I mean small T trauma in those cases often. I'm not saying that it's never over traumatizing, but because there are parents that when they're spanking their kids, they are super angry and they don't stop. But I'm a child, a Gen Xer, right?

I got squats. I never felt traumatized, right? But it did create in me a sense that if I can't handle things with just my words, then violence is the only answer.

And that's a problem, right? And so as a Christian and as a parent, a lot of these people know what's right on the scientific side and believe what their version of right is according to the Bible. And unfortunately, those aren't the same.

And so a lot of times those same parents will struggle with, well, the Bible says this, but man, I don't want to hurt my kid.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
And that's a good, go ahead.

[Lilin Lavin]
I was going to say, and I don't think, and to be clear, I don't think it's limited to Christian individuals. This is obviously something that is bigger, a problem that you look at the statistics and we realize that abuse is something that's much bigger than the religious aspect. But you know, exactly as you're saying.

[Tim Baxter]
Absolutely.

[Lilin Lavin]
You know, it's not limited.

[Tim Baxter]
I know, I have, so I honestly, I, a lot of times I work with people who are involved in DHHS cases, like human service cases, and oftentimes, and they're not all Christian, right? I've seen parents, I know of parents that are atheists that still use some of the same, still have some of the same behavior as far as spanking kids, doing these things to kids. And a lot of that is because they were taught by their parents that a lot of times when we parent, we learn from watching our parents, right?

And it's unfortunate, but that's just kind of how we learn. And so they got, have this information growing up that this is how you parent, but they know that this, that this is not actually beneficial and helpful for the child. And they still struggle with this because this is all the information that they knew growing up.

And so all of all, anytime you have something like that, it's going to, what cognitive dissonance actually is, is that uncomfortable feeling, right? That uncomfortability when you have two ways of seeing things, and those two ways are at war within your mind. What is that war can be things like that.

It can be opposing beliefs. It can be opposing ideas. And even knowing that you acted outside of your own character can cause cognitive dissonance.

And that's because what you're thinking and what you're doing are not congruent. There's an incongruence to it.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right. So how do you help people recognize when they're struggling with this thing, what it is, how to name it, how to face it?

[Tim Baxter]
Well, for me, whenever I'm talking about talking to a client about cognitive dissonance, it's really, oftentimes, I'll be real honest, oftentimes, you never get rid of your every ounce of cognitive dissonance. I mean, oftentimes, you just don't. The goal is to get you to a place of cognitive consonance, which is when you're not at war with yourself and with your mind, right?

It's when your thoughts and or when your beliefs and your behaviors line up, you have this balance, this kind of harmony between the two. And oftentimes, some people never get to that level to where everything is lined up, because honestly, we have so many different beliefs. Oftentimes, you're going to have incongruence on one or another of your beliefs.

And I would say, honestly, it affects most people at some point or another. So whenever I'm talking to them, I really generally look at and I really get them to kind of monitor what their thought process is. Right.

First thing to first thing we got to do to change the dissonance is to understand and monitor how we're thinking.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
Right. So I mean, I know I did an episode on cognitive distortions, which in which my mom just called stinking thinking, right? My grandma called it stinking thinking.

You know, it's like your your thinking's fucked up, boy, you need to change it. Right. Right.

So same thing, you know, recognizing that they're that all or nothing is not an appropriate way to think because it limits your idea. It limits your ability to be flexible. So when you suffer from cognitive dissonance, it's because you're having a difficult time being flexible.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
And so if we can get you to a place where you're not using all or nothing thinking and not discounting the positive and not jumping to conclusions, there's so many different distorted thought processes. But if we can get you to be monitoring those and to dispute those as they come, once you get to a level where you can dispute those as you come and start reframing things to a more logical presenting idea, then at that point you can start limiting some of that dissonance. Now, again, don't know that you're ever going to get rid of all of it because there's still stuff that I struggle with from my upbringing in the Christian church that I still believe.

So there's still stuff I still believe, but yet I'm a Satanist. And so those two ideas themselves, the only reason that I am no longer having as much cognitive dissonance as as I was when I first started this journey is because I recognize that that mythical character of Jesus that that I fell in love with, he's probably pretty satanic himself as far as what he did. Right.

So I start recognizing that some of the stuff that he did in his or some of the things that it says that he did, I line that up with the seven tenants. And when I look at the things he did and I see the seven tenants, I absolutely see the seven tenants within him. So it causes me to recognize that, honestly, when I view the character of Jesus, I view him as a satanic character, not as the holy roller that Jesus do.

Right.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, that's a really interesting take when we were talking about this before the episode. And I can, you know, for for people saying, well, how does cognitive dissidence, you know, play into Satanism, as you said, you know, it is all about sort of recognizing that war within your mind and going away from all or nothing thinking. And so there's a lot of Satanism in the way that you described cognitive dissidence and, you know, excuse me, how how you work to move through that and move past it as much as you can, like you said, nobody will ever probably get 100% there.

[Tim Baxter]
What I think the first tenant, right, I think the first tenant is is vital in in, in being able to cope with the dissonance. See, that's the thing. Sometimes it's not removing the dissonance.

Sometimes it's just it's just coping with it, like any other mental health issue. So some of the ways that you cope with it, the first tenant is really, really key in that it says, as we know, the first tenant says, show compassion to all living creatures within reason. And so we look at that as showing compassion to every other living creature on the planet, except ourselves.

Right, right. The problem is, is that once we start showing compassion to ourselves, and we all know that Satanism is definitely a self centered, and I don't mean that in the negative context, but it is definitely a self centered, self empowering religion. And so when we start focusing that compassion on ourself, also, then we're able to cope with the cognitive dissonance and the feel those uncomfortable feelings when you have two waves warring inside of you.

If you show yourself compassion, it doesn't feel as bad.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And selfishness, you know, isn't necessarily a bad thing. You know, we have had those conversations a lot with people where, you know, the selfishness has always been framed as negative.

And it's not, it doesn't have to be negative, you know, focusing on yourself is, you know, one of the first paths to getting better over anything, whether it's an addiction or something like that, you have to, you have to focus on yourself first.

[Lilin Lavin]
And even when it comes to giving to others, yeah, you have to have something to give to others. If you've taken it all from yourself, there's really something to give, right?

[Tim Baxter]
Well, I mean, I use this saying all the time, and I heard it originally heard it from my grandma. Again, I'm from the South. Grandma all taught me almost everything.

Okay. So, but this, this thing is you can't give somebody a drink out of an empty, empty cup kid. And so we have to replenish our cups to be able to give anybody a drink.

I tell people all the time, you hear people all the time talking about, um, I love this person. I love this person. And my next question is, do you love you?

And they're like, um, I don't know, then do you really love that person? Or, or, or are you infatuated with that person? Because here's my thing.

I don't know that you can truly give somebody love until you really love yourself. Because you have to know how to give love. And if you don't know how to give love to yourself, then how do you know how to give love to anyone else?

[Lilin Lavin]
That's, that's a great point. I think I struggled with that a long time ago, when I had a really great therapist that I worked with, and they challenged me with that. And it actually bothered me because I thought, well, I could give love to other people, but I have a really hard time giving love to myself.

So how do I not love them? And they said, well, how could you really know what it is that you're giving other people if you don't even know what it's supposed to feel like? And that was a really good thing to challenge myself with, because you just don't think of it that way.

[Tim Baxter]
Well, there has to be a balance and a harmony. I really love the whole yin yang. And honestly, I love the Baphomet, because the what it signifies is a balance, right?

And, and what I loved about the yin yang was like, in every bit of good, there's, there's got there's got to be some bad and every bit of bad, there's going to be some good, because everything has to have balance. And so if I'm giving all my love to somebody else, and I haven't replenished my cup, then eventually, that love for somebody else is going to dry up. It's just it just is.

Now, I say that, and I don't mean that you stop loving a person, I mean, that you, you stop having the ability to show that love as much. Because, because like, I love my kid with everything that I got, man, I love my all my my three stepkids that with everything I got, my grandkids with everything I got my wife with everything I got. But if I don't have enough love in me, then it's really hard for me to show love to them, which is another thing that can cause me cognitive dissonance is, is I feel like that whole belief of needing to have needing to love myself in order to love others goes completely against some of the other values that I was taught in the aspect of you need to be self sacrificing, you need to be self sacrificing that came from my upbringing is you need to sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. And so if you keep sacrificing all the time, then you run out, you're not a I mean, you run out and so constantly fighting to give myself all the self love that I can, you know, that was always that's always been really a struggle with me, because I didn't want to feel selfish, because I was always anybody that was brought up in the Christian church.

Typically, they teach you not to be selfish, right? Now, this is what they teach you, right? That's what that's not.

That's what they teach.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, look at Joel Osteen. There's there's no selfishness in a couple million dollar mansions. I'm just saying.

Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
And he wouldn't let homeless people like during the hurricanes. He didn't know some of the hurricanes down there. He wouldn't open it up.

And that pissed me off more than anything. Yeah, I was so pissed.

[Lilin Lavin]
Oh, yeah. And it's a very large, it is a very ridiculously large building. So there were places for people to be.

So that was very, that was upsetting beyond belief. But no, what you're saying with the self sacrifice, though, I think that there is an element to it that sure, it's okay to give for people, but there has to be boundaries in place. And you have to know what your limits are with giving.

But I think from the Christian perspective, and not all Christians, again, this is ideologically that that's varied. So the way people interpret things changes from from group to group. So it's not everyone.

But um, you know, there are this prevailing sacrifice, sacrifice, I think it leads to a lot of resentment, because I think you're taught to give and give and give. And you don't always necessarily know how to ask for what you need. Absolutely.

[Tim Baxter]
Yeah. Well, and the funny part is, is that there's scripture that says, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find. But when all we do is give, and we forget to ask, you know, that can be a problem.

And again, like you said, not all Christians are the same. And that's another place where we talk about all or nothing thinking when I talk about all or nothing thinking, it happens on the other side, too, right. So when I came to become an atheist, I've heard some of the most horrible things from atheists about Christians.

And I got to tell you, my mom and my sister are hardcore Christians. And, you know, I love them. They're those, that's my family.

And, you know, they're not perfect. But one thing that they try to do is they try to make a man, right? My son, his my son is, is gay, and his boyfriend, well, my son's bi, and his boyfriend is transgender.

And my sister made a, my son made a comment to my sister, because my sister has seen them kiss, and it's never really bothered her. And my sister said, and my son said, you know, I know your beliefs. And this is it never bothers you that I'm kissing Jason.

And my sister, because she's not educated on transgender, like gender identity and things like that, because she's really not, you know, and because of that, and because she has certain beliefs, she was like, Well, I just see Jason as a woman as a woman. And so it's never bothered me. And, and she made that statement.

And then about two weeks later, she called my son and Jason is like, I gotta apologize. Like, like, my beliefs, honestly, have no place in how I treat you. And that was not the right thing for me to say.

And I apologize.

[Lilin Lavin]
I respect that so much.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I can definitely respect, you know, Christians that can admit, you know, if they went too far or Christian where you can just, I say this online all the time. I'm, I so miss being able to just worry about having a discussion with Christians over the difference of our belief versus this, this crazy ideology, theocracy, stuff that it's become so much about cognitive. Yeah, you know, it goes both ways.

[Tim Baxter]
It goes both ways, too, man. I mean, go ahead. I'm sorry.

I know you're good at interrupting.

[Tommy Lavin]
No, no, you're good. Yeah, interrupt whenever. And it was just that it's like, you know, and I, I try some a lot of times when I'm talking, because I'll say the word Christian, but there's times that I'll slip in there.

Not all Christians, you know, I try and make that so anybody that's following me, maybe if that's the only tweet they saw, and I just said Christian, they might be like, well, you shouldn't put us all in together. But I try and make enough clarifying statements in there that I'm not talking about every single Christian under the sun. When I say this, I'm talking about, you know, the extremists, the radicals, the, the, you know, the ones that are, are literally out to, you know, kill us at times, you know, if nothing else to put in laws to restrict us and

[Tim Baxter]
things like that, you know, so absolutely one also to recognize one thing that one thing also is in this helps me with cognitive dissonance a little bit and helps me with anything right is, is recognizing whenever I'm talking to someone, recognizing that validation doesn't mean agreement. Okay. I can validate, I can validate you feel a certain way all day long, maybe because I'm a therapist and that's kind of my job and I have to be able to do that.

But validation doesn't mean that I agree with you a hundred percent. Right. So we have this thing right now going on and, and and Lucy and had, had a lot of people just bad mouthing him and getting angry at him with MTSD and our tenant, our fourth tenant set, it talks about, you know, not encroaching on freedom, even the freedom to offend.

And, and so when you believe that, if you actually believe that, and you have these actions where you're trying to encroach on somebody and force them to speak and force a speech from them, then you're not a man. There's got to be some cognitive dissonance with that. Like, like, like, like, look, I'm, I'm a staunch trans ally.

Like I will always be a trans ally. People I love are trans and I will always stand up for their rights. I will always also stand up for the rights of people who are not allies to fucking speak their mind.

Right. Because I don't believe in forced speech, like, and that's one plan. Like the tenants are something that I have come to value greatly.

And the tenants are not all there. Look, it's easier for me to approach life with the, with the tenants, to be honest. I mean, I can't say that it's that it's always easy, but it's been really, really helpful in my approach to life.

And so I used to be that guy who would, who would say, tell, say, we need to cancel everybody. We need to cancel everybody. And, and that just promoted more spirit of more of a bitterness in me than anything.

And now I'm just like, look, I don't want to cancel Christianity. I just want, don't want them canceling me. Right.

Right. I don't want to cancel people who, who disagree with gender ideology. I just don't want them to cancel transgender people.

Right. Believe and say what you want, because I believe that that is important. But once you start in trying to force your beliefs on me, that's, that's a whole different level.

Right.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
And what I see, unfortunately, is I see it happening within within gender ideology. I see it happening within Christianity. I see it happening pretty much everywhere, including even in my own self sometimes, because I still find myself wanting to say, you know, I don't cancel that.

Like I hate Trump and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and want to say all kinds of nasty stuff. And, and, you know, but here's the thing. I don't want any harm to come to come to him anymore.

I just want justice to be done.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right. Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
Those are different things.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. Those are two different things.

[Lilin Lavin]
Completely different things. It's difficult, I think. And I know for me, I've definitely struggled with it when you know, things are actively harming or causing harm to someone to say, well, I'm okay with that existing, it becomes difficult to find kind of a happy place with that where they deserve to exist versus they're harming other people's existence.

So that gets very difficult for for myself. I know. When you think about things like people that struggle with pedophilia, that's a thing that if you're an active pedophile, I really can't feel bad for you.

But if you're someone that has never caused harm to someone, I understand that you're struggling with something that you can't necessarily control. And you deserve help. That doesn't mean I want you at my house, but you deserve help.

[Tim Baxter]
Yeah. So I'm a so I'm a survivor of sexual or of sexual molestation when I was a kid. And the first two years I was a therapist, I had to work with sex offenders.

Hardest thing ever in my entire fucking life. And that's really where I developed that saying that I can validate you without agreeing with you.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
And that's kind of the thing is like, we've gotten away from that. Like, I validate the fact that some of these people who stand against transgender folks really, really believe it in their heart of hearts that what transgender folks are doing is sin and it's wrong. I don't agree with it, but I validate that that's how they feel.

I struggle because they're not very science minded, but, you know, it is what it is.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
And then when they cross the line and validate, I can validate that that's how they feel, but I don't agree with it.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
And if they cross a line, then at that point, then they're doing something that is taking action against someone. And that is a problem.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
That's what I was going to say is that point we get it. We're in a different spot.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. They're they're feel they're free to feel how they want. But feelings become when they decide to act on that or create laws or restrict what other people can do with their own bodies.

That is when it crosses a line and it's like, no, that you you have now taken your beliefs and you're pushing them on other people. So free to your beliefs. I won't.

I don't agree with them. I don't like them. I can validate that you can have them, but that's as much as you can do with them is you can have them in, you know.

[Tim Baxter]
Well, and that's all they get from me. Right. I'm not going to say I'm not going to.

So I know here in New Brunswick, they were doing the government just called into action to to review policy 713, which was basically a policy put in place for the schools to be able to have to have, you know, gender neutral bathrooms and like for the kids to be able to be called by their by their chosen name and their chosen pronouns. And, you know, that was even and as long as it was not official, like not on official documents, the teachers were allowed to do that without gaining permission from the parents. And there was a big uproar about parental rights, which is the dumbest shit I've ever seen.

But they were saying that. And while as a parent, there is a lot of information that I definitely think that I need to know, like if there's something that is going to cause actual harm to my child, I need to know this. If my if you catch my my son smoking crack, you probably should tell me.

I'm sorry. Yeah, you should probably tell me.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
But if they want to go by if they want to go by Jake instead of Allison, like that's really not I mean, that's not my call. And let's be realistic. All through high school, I went by fro man.

I had a very large red fro that resembled Ronald McDonald. And I wanted to go by that because that was my nickname. And people don't seem to have problems with nicknames, but they have problems with kids wanting to have their social wanting to have their chosen name at school and all around.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
And so so in that aspect, I went out and I protest. Now, again, when I protest, I don't wear TST affiliated stuff. I don't wear any of that stuff.

Generally, I wear Marvel related T shirts and stuff like that. But, you know, I don't wear anything that's going to recognize me as a Satanist for a specific cause. Like we talked about they were talking about it actually in Temple Tuesday service last night.

And they were talking about, you know, that sometimes me reaching out and talking about being a Satanist or or advertising the satanic temple actually can harm.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. We've talked about that quite a few times on here, too, that, you know, if you go to a certain cause, identifying yourself as a Satanist takes the attention away from that cause and then puts it on to to you or, you know, and and can inject negative attention as well where it's not needed. So, yeah, we we bring that up a lot.

[Tim Baxter]
Here's here's the thing. You know, we don't want to be somebody's savior. We want to empower them.

So my voice doesn't matter near as much as me making sure that their voices are heard.

[Lilin Lavin]
Exactly.

[Tim Baxter]
And and I think that people we they call it white savior. They call it being a white savior. Right.

And I I think for me, I want BIPOC voices to be heard. I want gay and trans and LGBTQ voices to be heard. And I don't have to I honestly don't have to make my voice heard on this on this stuff as long as I give get them to make sure that they have the opportunity for their voice to be heard, because I want to empower them.

I don't want to save them. They don't need me to.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I can I can definitely agree with that.

[Lilin Lavin]
That's a very important distinction between, you know, giving someone a platform and letting them speak versus speaking for them.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I think sometimes that gets lost, too, even even with inside of the satanic or atheist or any other community that's that's trying to help. But by trying to help, they're injecting themselves where they should be, like you said, giving them the voice.

[Tim Baxter]
Well, and what what brought me to that, honestly, again, was cognitive dissonance, man. I felt it I used to do that. I used to try to be like, oh, and try to make my voice heard.

And and it just didn't feel right. And I always wanted them to be empowered, but I was acting like I wanted to save them. And that just never felt right to me.

And it still does not feel right to me. And so now and so learning that and figuring out that uncomfortable feeling that I was having at that point, I absolutely had to make changes and say, you know what, I'm not going to be the voice that is heard on this subject. I am going to do my damnedest to make sure somebody else's voice is heard.

And so, you know, it's like I put out a call yesterday or I mean, not a call, but a message today to all of my to any of my followers that are that are satanist or any part of any marginalized group. And I was like, hey, you know, I'd really like to do a show where you guys can tell me your struggles with with finding medical care and finding mental health care because you're satanist, because you're gay, because you're transgender, because you're a sex worker, you know, because these folks face minority stressors that we don't have to face. Right.

And so I really want their voices to be heard. It's like I will go protest all day long with with sex worker right. But I'm not speaking.

I want them to hear it. I want them to speak.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
You know, and I want them to be able to help people to stop conflating voluntary sex work with human trafficking, because that's the same as sex and rape. Right. So I want them to understand that human trafficking is rape.

Voluntary sex work is sex, consensual sex. Yes. And that's the two differences.

But unless you hear their voices talking about that, then people aren't going to hear you.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And that's a really difficult one. I've definitely had a hard time tackling because that's something I personally am aware of having been involved as a kid in sex trafficking and trying to explain to people it's not the same as pornography.

Legal pornography is a very different thing. People abusing a pornographic platform to put that stuff out there is not the same as legal, voluntary, consensual pornography.

[Tim Baxter]
And there are a lot of companies out there. Honestly, there is a crap ton of companies that make ethical porn. Kristin Termino is did a lot of work with with ethical, with ethical porn creation.

And so there is our companies out there that do try to make sure that the porn they produce is ethical.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
Which really just means, like, honestly, not treating your people like shit and slaves. Right. And and treating them well.

And you and also, obviously, you're not trafficking them because, honestly, it's got to be consensual. And, you know, I think a lot of that comes back to, you know, we so when people talk that our our country is a Christian country, our government is not a Christian government. No way in hell.

But our culture, but our culture here is most definitely more Christian than anything else. And unfortunately for that, that also causes religious stigma and real and in all kinds of different things. And it's simply because they're uncomfortable with seeing things that go against their beliefs.

And they're they're very uncomfortable with that. And they feel like I mean, and they and they want to do something about that. But yet they also know that it's not always it's not up to them, but it's really hard for them not to want to do something.

And unfortunately, what that stigma create shame. And I'll say I've said it before and I'll say it again. I have no problem with being feeling guilty about stupid shit that I do, but I don't want to feel like I'm a piece of shit because I do it.

There's a huge difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is feeling bad for something you've shame is feeling bad about who you are as a person. And nobody should have that.

[Lilin Lavin]
Agreed. Yeah. And I think it's really important to just understand that just because some things can be associated with a negative thing doesn't mean everything within that umbrella is a negative thing.

[Tim Baxter]
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, and that's not to say like, like, the sex industry is is full of trafficking, absolutely full of traffic.

But I'll tell you what, the people you want as allies in that in the battle against sex trafficking are the sex workers.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yep. Yep. They're the people in the industry.

[Tim Baxter]
If you get those people, the people in the industry on your side, they know that trafficking is wrong. They know that these things are harmful to others. They are more than willing to help if you stop judging their occupation.

[Lilin Lavin]
Oh, absolutely. And it would actually empower society a whole lot more because then you're opening up the ability for them to have appropriate health care for them to actually have legal regular paychecks for them to have protections to have vacations to have all the same things that every other employee is afforded if they're afforded because let's be honest, not everyone's getting that anymore. And but for for people to have the things that they should the protections that they should debt prevents them from becoming victims and part of a an adult sex trafficking thing because people always associate with kids.

It's not just kids. It's not just girls. It's adult men and women that are also being involved in sex trafficking.

So it's just a much bigger thing than people are giving it awareness of and credit for. And if you empower the people that are doing it ethically, and they're doing it the right way and give them an avenue to actually do that correctly, within legal means, you're going to have much less illegal sex trafficking issues going on and things that are causing the

[Tim Baxter]
And with that is going to cause people who have that have this, this written ingrained religious experience that that it's wrong, it's going to cause them to have some dissonance to fix to fix the situation.

And what you have to do with that dissonance is recognize that first of all, sex is the most natural biological process we could ever have. And unfortunately, unfortunately, in a capitalistic society, consumerism is too. And so you're not going to stop consumerism.

And you're not going to stop sex. And let's be real about it. The reason they call prostitution, the oldest religion in the world, I mean, not oldest religion, but the oldest profession in the world is because you're not going to stop it.

Yeah, yeah. So in other and be real, man, like I, there's people there's sometimes I don't want it to stop. Let's talk about let's talk about men who are disabled, who can't get get those needs met any other way.

If they have voluntary sex workers, they can go to Oh, yeah, you're fulfilling a human need that is necessary. You have so many people saying that sex is not necessary. The people that say that I worry for them, because I don't think they're getting upset.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, you're probably right. But they're, like you said, that's a really great point. There are a lot of people that deal with disabilities that are, you know, men, women, and individuals on different spectrums of sexual identity, and they still have the same needs everyone else does, but they don't always have easy access to partnerships.

And there's even the validation that cuddle therapy that leads into other types of touching and sensual therapy, these things shouldn't be demonized, but they're demonized and lumped into the same category.

[Tim Baxter]
Well, so I'm going through a program for my sex therapy stuff through sexual health alliance, which is actually out of Austin, Texas. And, and then they have also have offices in Colorado and things like that. And one of the things that I'm at there, and there are several people there that are that are sex educators or sex coaches that also practice the cuddling, I'm going to tell you, like, I like getting a massage at least, you know, once or at least once every two months, if I can, because that is necessary, human, human touch is necessary, right?

And that doesn't, that doesn't mean I have to go somewhere and get a massage. And that could mean, hey, honey, can you rub my back, things like that. And, and I do the same thing with my wife and rub her back, because it's necessary.

It is not something human touch is necessary. It's not something that is not necessary. It's, it's not something that is just a luxury that we should that people should have human touch is necessary.

Now, there are people that that don't like to be touched, that's fine. That's, and so that also talks about the consent aspect of things. So if they don't like to be touched, don't touch them.

[Tommy Lavin]
Exactly.

[Tim Baxter]
But, but that connection, they also find different ways to to get that connection also, because those types of connections are absolutely necessary. And sometimes we just have to figure out how to get those types of connections by doing it a different way.

[Lilin Lavin]
The human to human connection, even just intellectually appeasing one another through like, speaking is a very important thing.

[Tim Baxter]
So yeah, it's like, it's like I was polyamorous for quite a while with my wife. Now, we are completely monogamous. And I was explaining to a friend of mine, I still consider myself polyamorous, because I consider my friendships, my deep, deep, deep friendships to be just like my partner.

And the only difference is, is I'm not having sex with them. So that's okay, too, because there are plenty of polyamorous that people that are asexual. So like, so like, I'm able to live that monogamous lifestyle with my wife, because I also have deep, deep friendship.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
And that's probably not if I didn't have those deep friendships, I don't know that I could live a monogamous life again. Yeah, right. I don't know that I could do that.

But that's you have those deep friendship.

[Lilin Lavin]
That's where you have that cognitive dissonance comes up again, where we're taught relationships are one specific kind of thing. And it's a much broader array of arrangements depending on what's good and comfortable for you. And that's consented upon by all parties involved.

[Tim Baxter]
Absolutely.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And that's the important part of it is that, you know, all parties involved are consenting in whatever, you know, however the relationship is, is, is laid out.

[Tim Baxter]
Right. And that's the thing though, too, is that it's not polyamorous if it's not consensual.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, exactly.

[Tim Baxter]
That's plain and simple, right? Like, like you can sit there and tell me all day while I'm polyamorous, does your wife know? Fucking polyamorous.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And people that there are a lot of people that don't understand that even in the, the, the poly world, or even in the swingers world, you can still cheat, you know, there's rules, there's boundaries, there's all those sorts, there's agreements that are made.

And if you break those agreements, you're cheating, you know? So, yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
And let's be real. Let's be real. If you, if you believe in the principle of polyamory and you cheat, there's absolutely going to be some cognitive dissonance.

Right. If you believe in the tenants, right. When you break any of those tenants, which come on, we're all fallible.

So yep, you know, we're probably going to break them. You're going to feel some cognitive dissonance with that. Like you're just going to.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
And, and that's okay. Because cognitive dissonance doesn't have to be a negative, right? It can be a learning experience.

And it absolutely should be.

[Lilin Lavin]
I think that's another area where people have very black and white thinking, where you make a mistake, you're a failure, and it goes into the spiral of negative thinking where instead of reframing it and saying, well, I made a mistake, what can I do with this? How do I learn from this? How do I change from this experience?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I've always taught, I've always approached, whether it's my employees that, that report to me, my children, anything like that, mistakes are learning opportunities. A mistake isn't necessarily a bad thing.

A mistake can be a good thing. If you take that mistake and you learn from it in the future, and sometimes it takes multiple mistakes to learn, you know, it becomes a bad thing when you ignore that. And you just keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again.

And you just don't care that you're making that mistake.

[Tim Baxter]
So everybody. So people, some people want to believe that successful people are people who have been, who have never made mistakes. And I know, I know too well that that is absolutely false.

And again, that creates, whenever I hear things like that, it creates some really, really hardcore dissonance because I'm not, I'm not comfortable with saying people who make mistakes aren't successful. And I'm not saying comfortable saying that people who never make mistakes are successful. Okay.

Because I feel like this is where I look at it. Okay. Is that in order to be successful, you have to grow in order to grow.

You have to make mistakes. That's the thing. You have to make mistakes in order to learn because if you don't make mistakes or you don't learn from other people's mistakes, if you don't learn from mistakes, you're not learning it.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's not about falling.

It's about getting, picking yourself back up and, and learning from that. And like you said, I mean, I've seen, yeah, there are a lot of people that are, that are scared of making mistakes. They're scared of failure.

They're they, and, and sometimes they get stuck in this, you know, you know, something goes wrong and they get stuck in that I failed mode. And, but that doesn't have to be, you know, you can learn from failure. Failure is a great learning tool.

And you can take that and make something positive out of it. Like you said, most success, I will say every successful person I've met has failed and failed pretty big at times. It was, what did they do with that?

How did they learn from it? And what did they do afterwards?

[Tim Baxter]
Yeah. One of the things too, is recognizing that success or that failures can lead to change. And that's another thing people are deeply afraid of.

And, and that's, and that causes a lot of uncomfortable feelings is that I've done this my whole life and now I'm going to, now I'm changing to do this. And this is not a comfortable ride, but you have to change. We have to adapt.

You can't become resilient without adversity. And I'll even, I'll break that down with our kids too, is that our kids nowadays, when we, when we, when they don't, when we don't give them consequences for their actions, when we don't challenge them to do better, when we don't do these things, then they have, they, it is really difficult for them to learn how to be resilient against adversity. So, so for me, I was in church most of my life, honestly.

And I was a, and I, and I'm bisexual. I've been bisexual all my life, but I tried to hide it and hide it and hide it. And I didn't grow.

And I, and I let so much stuff just build up and build up. But when I decided to make the change and say, look, I'm bisexual, you can accept me or not. It wasn't comfortable, but I grew as a person.

And again, if we look at the new information that we get that causes the cognitive dissonance, and we recognize that we need change and adversity in order to grow and to become resilient, we can welcome it. But until you allow yourself to accept that we need change and adversity in order to grow, you're going to push, try to push away what makes you feel uncomfortable. And the only way, in my opinion, to reach cognitive consonance is to learn how to accept change and adversity for what it is.

And that is a way to build resilience.

[Lilin Lavin]
Absolutely. So what are ways that you feel people can start to apply that to their own lives? Maybe some small, simple things.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I'd say in the next five, you know, five, 10 minutes as, as we wrap up, because I think that was a, you know, kind of where you ended that there was kind of a good place to go into what Leland said is, you know, what, what are some things that we can apply or whatnot?

[Tim Baxter]
Okay. So here's a good one, right? Eat one less candy bar a day.

If you have a temper and you feel like you need to yell instead of yelling at somebody, you can still yell, go yell in a pillow. If you are used to being monogamous and your partner wants to be polyamorous, learn to have the hard discussion because without the hard discussion, you can't change and you can't accept the adversity in the first place without having those discussions.

[Lilin Lavin]
Absolutely.

[Tim Baxter]
When you have mental health battles, accept that you have to accept the fact that you're, you're going to have some struggles and you're going to have some good stuff, but the more that you do to accept yourself as a person, the more resilient you can become. So if I had to say, what are some things that will help you? It's simply tenant one, show yourself compassion as well as showing everyone else.

I'm at all other creatures, compassion within reason. And with rhythm within reason, that means don't allow other people to harm you. But if they're not actually harming you understand, try to understand where they're coming.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I think a lot of people, uh, I, I see it in some of the different positions that, you know, they leave off the within reason and, and, you know, and, and that can be harmful when it's in itself to the within reason is there for a reason, you know?

[Tim Baxter]
So absolutely.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
I mean, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to be compassionate to somebody who's broken to my home and is coming after my family, zero compassion.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
You know, I'm not going to be compassionate to somebody who is yelling out to my kid, calling him a fag and stuff like that. And I'm right there. Look, I have a bad temper.

I'm not going to be showing that person very much compassion, right?

[Lilin Lavin]
Yep.

[Tim Baxter]
So, you know, within reason means you need to know what your boundaries are because your boundaries are for you and what you can take and what you will take. And that also shows you compassion is knowing your boundaries and saying, okay, I'm not going to allow you to talk to me like that. So I'm going to walk away or I'm not going to allow you to talk to me like that.

And you're getting in my face and I ain't going to watch a lot of you in my face. So since you want to be in my face, I'm going to make sure you get the fuck out my face. Right.

So I mean, compassion within reason, right? If you're calling me names and I'm like, Hey, Hey, that's not necessary. And you're like, all right, all right.

I'm going to back off. Right. Okay.

Dude, you've called me names. Cool. In fact, honestly, if people call me names and talk shit to me, I don't even care.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
Because I have really thick skin. I got a damn crooked. I have had my whole life because I have a, because I have something called the Wayne syndrome.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right.

[Tim Baxter]
And so my, the muscles in one of my eyes don't, they don't work right. I'm used to adversity. I have really thick skin and you can talk all kinds of shit to me.

However, talk shit to my wife, talk shit to my kids. Well, that compassion thing kind of flies out the damn window.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right. Yeah. I can definitely relate to that.

I really, I give two fucks what people think or say about me. Most of the time, you know, I use the mute on, on Twitter all the time and people are like, but they're still saying stuff about you. I'm like, I don't care.

They're wasting their own time.

[Lilin Lavin]
It's kind of like when I see you out the door because you're being an ass and I don't care what you do when you leave my house.

[Tommy Lavin]
But like you said, somebody does something to, to my wife or children. There's a whole other side of me that most people don't see and don't want to see.

[Tim Baxter]
And that somebody can be anybody, right? Like, like if, if my sister wouldn't have apologized to my son's boyfriend, it would have been a whole different story. If, if if I heard, I heard some of your, some of your podcasts where when you were discussing when your parents and parents said, told your kids that they were going to be, that you guys were going to go to hell or whatnot.

And I would probably have very little compassion for them at that point. Right? Like, I'd be like, look, you're my parents and I'm probably not going to beat the hell out of you today, but you're probably not going to get to see, you're probably not going to get to see your grandkids as much as you would have had you not said this because there has to be consequences.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, definitely. And, and we have, I mean, there's been many incidences that has, has just kind of caused that whole, well, you know, you did this to you, we didn't do this to you. You did this to yourself.

Those are consequences because you couldn't change your behavior, you know, regardless of whether it was some sort of religious remark or saying something negative about our oldest daughter, who's gay and her girlfriend, or, or, you know, just a slew of things. Then it's like, well, the reason why your grandkids aren't in your life is because of you. And that's actually a choice that they made.

Not that we made that they made. I supported them because I don't believe in forcing children to have a relationship with somebody that they don't want to have a relationship with. Screw the whole blood is thicker than water family sort of shit.

Now, if there's an abusive family member, they don't get a free pass because they're related to you.

[Tim Baxter]
But it makes it so much, so much more. It makes you so much more happy when, um, but they don't treat people in a negative way based on their beliefs. And it helps you to recognize that, look, you don't have to agree with gender ideology or anything else.

You don't have to agree with homosexuality. You don't have to agree with anything as long as, but if you treat people with respect, regardless, I can still respect you.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, absolutely.

[Tim Baxter]
So, um, one day I'll have to come on and talk about, uh, vicarious trauma at some point, because I am a huge, I'm a huge believer that telling kids, uh, about hell in the first place until they're of a certain age. Right. Like I really think that that traumatizes kids because they don't always know the difference between reality and fantasy.

Right. Like a lot of kids still believe in, in a St. Nick. Okay.

Like, so, you know, I really don't think you should be saying things to kids until they're of an age that they can discern them a little bit better. Yeah. And I really do believe that that causes vicarious trauma, which is one of the three forms of Trump.

Well, people don't, people don't hear about that trauma much. Cause most therapists don't sit there and talk about that trauma.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right. Yeah. That that's definitely, we can, we can have you back on.

And, and I think we can probably trade some pretty good stories about, oh, for sure about that. And, and, you know, talk about the negative consequences of it. You know, I can honestly have you guys go ahead.

[Tim Baxter]
I'd love to have you guys on the show at some point and maybe talk about any negative experiences you guys have had with with mental healthcare or with healthcare or any of that stuff be based on any aspect of your life that is somewhat marginalized, man. So like, if you guys ever, if you guys have those experiences, I would love to have you on to talk about.

[Lilin Lavin]
Absolutely. Yeah. I'd be thrilled to do it.

I mean, it's been a lot of fun. I could keep talking to you for another hour. So I'd say I would definitely have to do it again, but Tim, I definitely suggest people to go check out Tim's podcast, Satan's Therapist.

It's a lot of fun, a lot of good topics going on there. So thank you so much.

[Tim Baxter]
I can also guys, if you guys love sex, if you guys love sex, right? Check out love, sex, and Satanists. It's two sex therapists, me and my friend, Alyssa, who is part of TST Maine.

Nice. And we're both Satanists and both sex therapists. So we're talking about going to be talking about sex therapy from a satanic therapist lens.

[Tommy Lavin]
Ooh, spicy. That should be fun. Might be.

All right. That might also be a good one to jump on to. No pun intended.

[Tim Baxter]
Again, like, you know, we're going to be covering so many topics right now. We're we've only done one show and that was just an introduction show and talking about who we are, what what brought us to sex therapy and what brought us to Satanism and things like that. And so it's a really good introduction to the show.

And then we have tons of other topics that we're going to talk about. I know at some point we're going to take the six sexual health principles and we're going to talk about them in conjunction with with the seven tenants of the TST and also with the nine satanic statements and also with the 10 commandments. We're going to like bring it all together and kind of just throw some stuff out and have some fun with it.

Awesome.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Tim Baxter]
One of our first going to be our next episode.

[Tommy Lavin]
Cool. Yeah. One of our first episodes I'd say in the first five was about sex and being a Satanist and relationships and marriage and all of the and all the stigmas out there and all of that.

So, yeah, we'd love to. Yeah, well, we'll definitely keep that in mind. So, well, thank you, Tim.

It is it has been a pleasure. Really enjoyed this. And we'll need to have you on again.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. Thank you for explaining cognitive dissonance so that people can hopefully understand it and apply ways to address it. Awesome.

[Tim Baxter]
Thank you guys so much, man. I am I'm literally going to be bouncing off when I get out of here. Like, like, literally, you guys are one of my satanic podcast, I guess.

I guess icons, I guess. So I appreciate you guys having me on. It has been a real pleasure and an honor to be on your show.

And Hail Satan.

[Tommy Lavin]
Hail Satan.