Don’t Talk to Police Until You Do This | “I Want a Lawyer” Explained (Attorney Interview)

In this episode of Man in Progress: Forging Manhood, criminal defense attorney Saul Bienenfeld breaks down what to do when police want to question you, what to say when you get pulled over, and the biggest mistake honest men make in the moment: talking too much.

We cover the exact phrases that shut down questioning, what information you actually have to provide, and why “being honest” is not the same thing as volunteering details that can be used against you.

Then we go deeper. Saul explains the pattern he sees over and over in his practice, how smart men slowly self-destruct through secrecy, escalation, and isolation, and why accountability is the only real off-ramp before shame turns public.

Key topics in this conversation:

• What to say when asked “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
• “I want a lawyer” and how to stop police questioning
• Right to remain silent, oversharing, and common interrogation tactics
• Body cameras, recording stops, and what you must provide in a traffic stop
• The secrecy spiral: lust, escalation, and crossing legal boundaries
• Values, discipline, and accountability for men, husbands, and fathers

Guest: Saul Bienenfeld, Criminal Defense Attorney (NY + FL)

Not legal advice. This is education and discussion. If you need legal help, talk to a licensed attorney in your state.

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Disclaimer, I am not a therapist, and this is not replacement for therapy. 

Transcript

Framing Manhood And Values

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Man in Progress, Forging Manhood. I'm Travis Murray, Values Coach, and your guide to building a life driven by real values. Each week we explore what it means to be a man today. Talk about and to thinkers and doers who've been through it, and give you steps to show up better for yourself and those you love. If you're ready to forge your own path, you're in the right place. Let's get to it. Welcome back to Man in Progress, Forging Manhood. I'm your host, Travis Murray. Today, we have a special guest. Saul, go ahead and introduce yourself.

Saul’s Background And Justice Lens

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Thank you so much, Travis. It's great to be here. Uh, my name is Saul Bienenfeld. I am a criminal defense attorney based in New York. I'm admitted both in New York and Florida with over 30 years of experience. Um, and I focus primarily on sex crimes. I'm glad to be a guest on your show. I would love to speak about, you know, how to prevent people from getting arrested and not because they've done anything wrong, it's because they've stopped themselves from doing anything wrong. And that should be our focus uh as men and as a society, and we should really focus on that. And I think, you know, we could talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah. So you spent over three decades watching what happens when a man's name is on the line. Before we get into the strategy, I want to talk about the pressure. Like what pressure does this reveal in a man?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Aaron Powell You know, it's a tremendous amount of pressure. Most men who sit across from me never believed they would need a criminal defense attorney. They're not reckless teenagers, they're not cartoon villains. They're intelligent, they're capable, they're usually successful men, husbands, fathers, professionals, pastors, rabbis, and yet they find themselves in a room with their freedom on the line, whispering the same sentence over and over again. I I never thought it would be to get this far. I just never thought, you know, what's going on. And what I've learned over the years is that handling these cases is that collapse is never spontaneous. It's an incremental, it's private, it's justified sometimes to themselves, and it grows and it explodes. That's what we need to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yeah. And like you said, you started as a prosecutor. What did you believe about

Pressure When Freedom Is At Stake

SPEAKER_01 2:02

defendants back then that you don't believe now?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Well, when I first graduated law school, I went straight to the DA's office. I knew that I wanted to try cases right away. So uh the best place to go is either the DA's office or legal aid society, and you'll get a trial right away after law school. But in terms of what I believed about defendants, you know, I I didn't I didn't have this aspect of I have to win or I have to, you know, I I I have to prove everyone guilty. It was more of to serve justice. Waking up in the morning and knowing that you're serving justice as a prosecutor is a great feeling. It wasn't what what what name is going to be on the press release. Unfortunately, I think after 30 years, the it has changed, and I don't see the pursuit of justice so much in the prosecutor's office as much as I need to get that conviction and I need to tell the public about it. But when I was in the DA's office, my thoughts of a defendant were if you did something bad and I could legally prove it, I will. Let the judge handle the sentencing. So that's why that's where it always has been. It was about doing justice.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

That's perfect. And in that sense, what changed you from being the prosecutor to the defense attorney?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Well, uh, you know, I it's interesting you say asked that question.

From Prosecutor To Defense Advocate

SPEAKER_00 3:18

I I remember as uh as a high school student, um, I was walking uh through the subway system and I had what's called a subway pass, so I could go through the exit, and I was talking to a friend who didn't have a subway pass. We both went through it, and of course he got stopped, and he's getting arrested. And I was like, you can't arrest him. Like, we didn't do anything wrong. We were just having a conversation. You know, he he has the token. He has the subway token, he has the money to pay for it. And the police officer wouldn't hear a word of it. And I said, Wow, I gotta do something about this. I need to help these people who just can't help themselves and who make mistakes, quite frankly. And that was a just a genuine mistake that somebody made. And yet he ended up with uh with a juvenile record for not paying uh, I think it was like a dollar fifty back then, a subway fare. And I knew right right then and there in high school I said, oh, I gotta continue along this path and somehow help these people who can't have them help themselves, who don't have a voice. I want to be their voice, and I want to see that justice does get done for them as well. And if they make a mistake, it's a mistake. It could be corrected. Doesn't have to be punished all the time. And if it does need to be punished, the punishment has to meet the crime. It can't be the worst punishment in the world, and it can't be a light punishment either. You know, it has to be something that satisfies the ends of justice.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, that's that's commendable. And I I respect you for making that switch and helping those who actually need the help.

Biggest Mistake: Talking Without Counsel

SPEAKER_01 4:38

You know, my audiences of men, fathers, husbands, who value honesty. They teach their kids to tell the truth. So when they're stopped by police, their instinct is to like explain and over talk. What's the biggest mistake an honest man can make in that moment?

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Not calling a lawyer and thinking that you could do this on your own, because you can't do it on your own. I see this all the time. People think that they're smarter than the police, people think that they can handle it, people think that they know better than the police. It's not true. You need a professional who does this on a daily basis to talk to the police officers, to talk to the FBI agents, to talk to Homeland Security officers. And the reason is very simply. No one randomly picked your name out of a phone book. No one decided, today I'm going to go over to John Smith and talk to him about a crime. They've had your name for a while. They may even have a profile of who you should be and what you should look like. All right. And they have an agenda. So when they come and knock on your door and they want to talk to you, or they show up at your workplace and they want to have a word with you, or they ask you to step outside and talk to you. That should be a signal to say, I need a lawyer. I need to call a lawyer. I need somebody who could handle this. I can't handle this on my own. Unfortunately, a lot of my clients thought they could handle it on their own and said things that are very incriminating, even when they're not guilty. People just tend to talk and they over talk. The one or two clients who actually listened to my advice and said, I want a lawyer, weren't questioned and in the end, weren't even arrested.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

That's a that's a big move right there. And I know that a lot of people can get it wrong, right? They they think that there's a difference between being honest and talking versus volunteering information that doesn't need to be volunteered. In your experience, when they do this type of thing and they begin to do so, what's the best course of action that they can think in that moment that might get them to stop talking?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Oversharing is a big problem. People talk about things that they should not be speaking about, and everything you're saying when they say could be used against you, it is being used against you. And sometimes you don't even realize the smallest thing that you're saying is going to be used against you. Whether it's a lie, whether it's a mistruth, whether it's something, an exaggeration, the best thing to do is to say, I need a lawyer. And as soon as you tell the police officer I want a lawyer, they have to stop questioning you. At least that's the law in America.

Oversharing And Asserting Right To Lawyer

SPEAKER_00 7:08

As soon as you ask for a right to counsel, they have to stop questioning you. So if you could just pull yourself to say, pause, I want a lawyer. I don't want to answer your questions anymore. Even if you started, you could still stop. So just say those magic words, I want a lawyer, or you could say my lawyer's name is, why don't you call him? I want to talk to him. That will stop the questioning and that will save a lot of problems later on.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

That's fair. And honestly, I try to live by that as well. Even if I get pulled over for a speeding ticket, you know, and they they ask you that simple question of, do you know how fast you were going? I always say, you know, I I think you do. So, you know, how fast was I going? And and they'll give me the information. They'll say, hey, you were going such and such. I mean, to be fair, I haven't been pulled over in 18 years, but I mean, that's that's good for me. Now, in that sense, why do good men fuck themselves into trouble?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Well, I can't explain the why. I can explain the how. People think that, again, they think that if they have nothing to hide, they might as well talk to the police. But the police are speaking to you with an agenda, okay? And they want to catch you and they want to become your friends, and they speak to you in such a way that they think that, oh, we could just have a casual conversation. But they're looking for clues and they're looking for cues in terms of your body language, in terms of your eye movement, in terms of your hand placement, and they're making an assessment whether you're telling them the truth or not. They're then listening for certain things that you might or may not say about certain events. They might bring up a name and they want to see how you react to that name. Do you really not know that person? Do you know that person, but you're hiding it from them? What do you know about that person? They're gonna, in the police officer's mind, they might think that you know the person very well, and you could say, oh, we're only casual acquaintances. Well, then they think you're lying. Why would you lie to me about that? What else involvement do you have with this person? Because you just lied that you're a casual acquaintance. To the person's own mind, it's like, yeah, I'm a casual acquaintance. I might have breakfast with him every single day and speak to him for an hour every single day, but we're still casual acquaintances. But to the police officer, you're a liar. So that's why you need uh an attorney to

Why Good Men Self‑Incriminate

SPEAKER_00 9:22

step in between the two and to have a smooth conversation and not have an interpreted in such a way that either you're a liar or you're not a liar. And that's the problem, is that the police officer comes with an agenda. Your name wasn't picked out of the phone book. You didn't just win the lottery of who to talk to the police today, and you need to know how to answer these questions. And the worst thing to do is to think that you could do this on your own because you can't.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

And that's that's a powerful statement right there. You really can't. There are too many YouTube videos where you see the guy or the girl and they're they're trying to outsmart the officer. But you said it yourself. They are looking for cues, not just audio cues of what you're saying. They're looking for that visual cue. Are you nervous? Are you darting your eyes around? Are you moving your hands, fidgeting? Are you reaching for something that they don't like? There's a lot in that. I want to reiterate as far as values go, that yes, you can have the value of honesty and you can be honest. Be honest with somebody who represents your best interest. Be honest with your attorney, be honest with your lawyer. Let them help you figure out and go through the system. Be disciplined, have the value of discipline so that you don't get yourself in trouble. So you don't say something accidentally thinking that it's innocent and it ended up being a crime you didn't realize was a crime. And so on that note, that's that's what you guys need to take from this is have the value of honesty. Keep that, be honest with the person who's going to help you. And even if the officer says, be honest with me, I'm trying to help you, they're not. They're trying to get you to open up to something that might indict you. So, in that sense, be disciplined

Be Honest With Your Attorney

SPEAKER_01 11:10

enough to be quiet in that situation. Because honestly, there's a lot of damage that can be done. And Saul, how much damage is done socially before a courtroom ever speaks to those men in that high profile situation, especially when being accused of, say, a sex crime.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, that's

Social Media’s Trial Before Trial

SPEAKER_00 11:31

that's one of the worst parts of this job is that because there's uh there's Instagram, there's X, there's TikTok, there's all these other social medias out there, Facebook, etc., that sometimes someone gets arrested. This information gets posted on a on a on one of these uh social media sites. It gets then twisted around somehow that all of a sudden now you're guilty of the crime, and let's say it's a sex crime. Now it's shame in front of your family. Your boss calls you in and says, You can't work here anymore because you're accused of this. Your synagogue, your church says, We don't want you coming here anymore. Your kids don't have any more friends coming over to their house. And by the way, we don't want your kid coming to our house because you might drop them off, and we don't want you anywhere near our house. Your whole life changes because of the social media aspect of it, and you haven't the the the ink isn't even wet on the complaint. You know? It's a you have you haven't even been indicted yet. You've just been arrested, and it's a terrible, terrible situation that right away you're painted with a guilty brush. And it's a very difficult thing for me to fight and recover from. But I do my best for my clients to explain to them, like, okay, this will pass, and it's it's a horrible moment. And yes, you're guilty in the eyes of social media, but let's make sure you're not guilty in the eyes of a judge and a jury, and we'll try to regain some of that um some of that power back. Although the internet is forever and the internet never forgets, it's very difficult. So my biggest challenge these days is what is posted on these groups on Facebook, on Instagram, that deal with these cases and the shame that it comes about with it, even for people who are innocent. And I've seen I've seen examples of it where somebody's uh accused of, let's say, touching a child. Horrendous crime goes to trial, wins, but there's no post to say, oh, I'm taking down all those other posts because he won the trial. Sometimes it's ignored, or sometimes they say, oh, he just won on a technicality. He won. The bottom line is he won. He's found not guilty. Why do you still have a post up that says he was arrested? It's a terrible, terrible problem that uh that people face.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah, what what happened to the saying, you know, innocent until proven guilty? What happened to that?

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Yeah, it's except on social media.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Yeah, yeah, except for in the eyes of the beholder. In that sense, how does a man or person mentally survive being publicly accused of a crime

Surviving Public Accusation Mentally

SPEAKER_01 13:59

that, you know, maybe they didn't commit or even was found innocent of?

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Great question. I I say that 50% of my work has to do with legal work, and the other 50% is social work. Uh, I'm not a social worker, I'm not a licensed social worker. But I deal with people and I deal with crimes and I deal with criminals sometimes, and I deal with accusations, and I deal with accused and accusers. And I also have to deal with the spouses, with the family, with the bosses, with the rabbis, with the priests. And I have to explain to them that, you know, this will pass. We will get through this, okay? This is not the worst thing in the world. You will survive and you will come out a better, stronger person for it. I know you don't believe me now, but it will happen. Sometimes I have past clients who have volunteered, quite frankly, to speak to current clients to show them you can get through this. There's life at the end of the tunnel, okay? People survive it, and people survive it stronger most of the time, because the resilience that you have to have to go through a horrible accusation is so powerful that when you survive it, you come out better for it. I sometimes ask one or two clients, I said, by the way, if you had to redo this all over again, would you change anything? And some have told me, no, I wouldn't change a thing. This has taught me a tremendous lesson. I feel so much better now than I did when I was living, you know, in the secrecy and in the hiding.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yeah, and that pain of being accused is is something that I think most men have have felt, maybe not accused of a specific crime per se, but in the sense of just being accused by spouses for not doing something or accused by friends or by bosses or whatever. And dealing with that comes that that mental side of it. I remember when I was 19 years old, I was working for a cell phone company, and late night a lady came in. The next morning, I find out that I've been harassing her. Lucky for me, we recorded audio and video, and so my boss looked it over and went, When? And so I got lucky in that sense. Most most people don't get lucky. They don't have the audio and video recording,

Recording Stops And What To Answer

SPEAKER_01 16:07

they don't have the cameras pointed at them. Even in today's technology age, where we're sitting here with cell phones in hand, people should record. I see a lot of YouTube videos where, you know, people are being pulled over by the police, they pull their phone out and they immediately hit record. Right. Would you advise to do something like that? Plus, on the on the flip side to that two-part question, when they're asking you questions, what questions should you answer and what questions should you refrain from answering? Great questions.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

So, in terms of recording, I think by now in all 50 states, people, the police officers have what's called uh body worn cameras. I think it's okay to ask the police officer, is your camera on? And it should be on. And then you don't have to pull out your phone and record them because they're recording everything themselves. So you you're gonna have a um uh a recording, a video recording, at least from the police officer's aspect of it. If there's something about the police officer that is, you know, off and you want to record the police officer, you're allowed to. It's not it's not really respectful in my opinion, since the police officer does have the camera on, but you're allowed to. And in terms of the second question, in terms of what you should answer, very simple. It's called pedigree information. Pedigree information is your name, your address, your date of birth, your phone number, maybe your social security number if it's important, and that's it. Everything else, I need an attorney. I don't want to speak to you unless I have my attorney here. If you stopped in a car stop, so you need a license to drive a car in every all 50 states, you have to show the license. The car has to be insured. You have to show the proof of insurance. Those are important paperwork that you must give the police officer. But that question of do you know how fast you were going? That shouldn't be answered. What difference does it make what I think how fast I'm going? You're gonna either accuse me or not accuse me. Why should I help you out on your case? Or the best is do you know why I pulled you over? You know, you can always don't give a wise guy answer, you know. Just say, officer, if you want my license and registration, here it is. I'll be happy to present it to you, but I don't want to engage in conversation. And you have a right to do that.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Do you think that's the kindest way to operate in that in that sense when

Respectful Silence During Traffic Stops

SPEAKER_01 18:18

an officer asks you why they stopped you, and you can just kindly say, Here's my my license, my insurance, and registration. From here, from this point forward, I would like to remain silent or something of that nature.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

And and be and and with all due respect, just be very respectful about the whole thing. You know, cooperate with whatever they're asking, be respectful, but you don't have to answer any incriminating questions, including that one question of, do you know why I pulled you over?

SPEAKER_01 18:44

You know, I saw a video, it was kind of intriguing to me because the gentleman in the video pressed his information up to the glass of the window. Are you supposed to turn that information over to them, or do they just have to physically see it?

SPEAKER_00 18:58

So I I I've seen those videos also, and I'm always questioning like, what are these guys doing? Trying to start something. Yeah, I mean, or they put it in a plastic bag and they like just push it right out the window and like drop it through a string, you know. Go ahead, you know, you could take it. Um I I think that's disrespectful. The officer's there doing a job. He's doing a very good job of it. He did pull you over. You have the right to not speak to him, and the officer knows that. He it's part of his training. But you don't have the right to be disrespectful to him. If he asks you for his for your license, take your license out and hand it to him. If he has your registration, hand it to him. You know, let him go back to his car, let him scan it, let him make sure it's a real driver's license. You should have nothing to fear if you have a real driver's license, and don't answer any other questions. If you get the ticket, you could call an attorney and they could deal with the ticket. But you could only get yourself in trouble if you watch all those videos of people being pulled over. They get themselves in trouble by talking to the officer. You know, there was, I don't like the way you're speaking. You maybe you're slurring your speech. You know, I'm starting to just smell alcohol in your breath. All that stuff is because they're talking. Stop talking. Just give over licenses and registration and wait for the consequences.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

And that that's so true. Just just get it over with, be done with it, be respectful. Don't try to, don't try to outsmart, don't try to outmaneuver the cop. Just get it over with. And then in that same sense, I've I've been in situations where my stepfather was was traveling a little excessive in speed. He got pulled over. We were in a hurry because a friend of ours was, well, a friend of his was having issues and and he was in in danger, if you will. That's the way he made it sound on the phone. Well, the the officer pulled us over, and my my stepdad, I think, was very smart about this situation. He grabbed everything he needed, handed it to the cop, and said, Can you please hurry and rent me a ticket? I'll drive slower. But my friend's in need, can you can you please hurry? And the officer did. He went back, ran him for warrants and stuff like that. Nothing came up, gave him the ticket and said, Here you go. And then also offered advice that said, Hey, if there was danger, immediate danger, bring that information to court and they will wipe the ticket away.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Right. That was that very respectful, great interaction with the police officers, and hopefully a very good result. Because I when the judge does hear these things, they're like, I totally understand it. And they could either dismiss the charges or have a zero fine.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

All

The Slide From Pixels To People

SPEAKER_01 21:21

right. So on that note, um, I'm gonna give the rest of the time over to you to just kind of talk about what you know what what you want to talk about for this for this episode and just kind of give some advice or you know, give some ideal values that might bring my listeners some more value, and I'll just turn the time over to you.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Great. I really appreciate that. In my practice, I see people sometimes at their lowest and they didn't mean to be there. They really didn't mean to be there. You know, there's actually a pattern that I see of how smart men, you know, self destruct. And the pattern always begins with something that feels very small. It begins with curiosity, it begins. With downtime, it begins with scrolling on the internet and lust. Lust itself is not some foreign invader. It's part of being human, quite frankly. And the problem is not that men feel desire. The problem is what happens when the desire is fed in isolation, without friction, let's say, without accountability, without values anchoring the behaviors. You know, modern life has somehow removed all this friction. There's no barrier between impulse and access anymore. There's no drive across town to meet somebody. There's no awkward interactions. There's no saying hello to somebody at a bar. There's no public threshold. It's just a screen. It's just a phone or a computer and a moment of boredom. And this could destroy lives. You know, the brain quickly adapts, and what once stimulates, what becomes normal and what once was thrilling all of a sudden becomes routine and it needs more and it needs more. And you have to feed it some more. So when a man starts consuming, or a woman starts consuming explicit material over time, that same material no longer produces the same effect, right? Because the brain becomes normal, normalizing it. This is not morality, this is neurobiology, quite frankly. The tolerance builds up. So the sessions get longer and the categories start to shift. And what began as brief curiosity becomes compulsive habit, compulsive behavior. And uh all of a sudden, you know, minutes turn into hours and hours turns into days, and the biggest problem is the secrecy. You know, when secrecy starts replacing transparency, we have problems. Secrecy is the biggest telltale sign of a problem starting. If you're living in secrecy, if you're hiding things, if you're hiding things from your spouse, if you're hiding things from your family, you're hiding things from your boss, if you're hiding things from yourself, quite frankly, that's the time to start seeking help. It's a very, it's a it's a danger zone. And smart men are particularly vulnerable to it because they're excellent at rationalizing their behavior. Intelligence does not prevent compulsion. It actually enables it because you have more excuses. You know, I could handle this, or it's just online, or it's not hurting anyone, or I deserve an outlet. I'm very important. I deserve this. And these statements are whispered internally, and it's because there's no immediate consequences, but the behavior builds and builds and builds to one day you might end up in handcuffs. And nobody wants that. So the escalation is gradual. And what it looks like is it looks like I say you move from pixels to people, right? It looks it moves from looking at certain images to messaging people, and then it goes from messaging to conversations, and then it goes from conversations to perhaps

Secrecy, Tolerance, And Escalation

SPEAKER_00 24:46

an emotional investment, and then from the emotional investment to very riskier interactions. And each step feels only slightly different than the last step, right? So the brain starts to normalize everything, and then one day the shift crosses a legal boundary, and you don't even recognize yourself when you're doing this. And you end up, you know, meeting somebody in a park who's 16 years old. And you say to yourself, well, if they were on that social media site, they had to be verified by somebody that they're over 18, and that's not what's happening. Sometimes you might even know that they're under six, under 18 years old, and you still doesn't matter to you because you built up such tolerance that you can't stop yourself at this point. And the message I really want to give to everyone is like, see the telltale signs. The more that more secrecy that's building in you, that's more of a sign that you need to get help, that you need to go ahead and speak to a therapist, speak to a priest, speak to a rabbi, speak to a friend, get help. There's a lot of help out there for this because you don't want to end up in handcuffs or worse, dead. You know, a lot of this stuff, people people can't handle it and they just kill themselves. And that's a very, very sad situation. You know, I don't want a situation where one day you're sitting across from me and you're saying to yourself, gee, I wonder how this happened to me. You know, I could explain how it happened to you today before it happens, and you could stop it. You don't want that knock on the door saying, you know, step outside, put your hands behind your back. You know, after arrest, you know, it's it's it's the worst shame, the worst guilt. You already feel like you did something wrong. Sometimes you feel you are wrong, that you're you're a wrong person. You know right? The shame is isolating. Friends start to pull back, community distances themselves from you, your entire identity collapses, you know, your self-worth goes to pot, all because the secrecy, because you didn't stop it. And and this is why values matter, and you have to have your values and you have to examine your value system. You know, a value system is not just a decorative accessory, you know, it's there for a reason. It's part of your operating systems. You need you need to understand that your values are your values, and when it's being tested, you need help and go get that help because modern culture doesn't help men. Quite frankly, modern culture normalizes

Accountability Over Shame

SPEAKER_00 27:05

these indulgences, and that's really wrong. It it monetizes lust, it markets a constant stimulation. That's how they make money. And uh and and and this this vicious cycle of shame and this combination is so combustible that's this unlimited access that there is out there. So men don't need more shame, they need accountability and they need to be accountable to somebody, and that's how you can prevent collapse by being accountable. And and I hope that people listening can understand that if they see these telltale signs in themselves, if their secrecy is increasing, if their shame is increasing, stop for a second. There's a reason this is happening. You don't want it to escalate to the point where you're gonna get arrested. You don't want it to escalate to a point where you're saying to yourself, How can I possibly have done this? This makes no sense. I'm not this type of person. Get the help. Go speak to a therapist, go speak to a pastor, go speak to a rabbi, get some help. All right, speak to somebody, even speak to a friend who might have had the similar problem. They might put turn you onto a self-help group. All right. Go on the internet. You could find the solutions, okay? You might need a you might need a 12-step program, you might need full-time therapy, you might need a rehab facility. It's out there to help you, but get to help before it's too late because you don't want to be in my office telling me I don't know how I got to this point.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Saul, thank

Tools, Therapy, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 28:31

you for that. I I want to reiterate that I actually have a YouTube video coming out about lust and desire and how you can use the DMN, the default mode network inside of your own head, adjusted with your own values to help you prevent yourself from stepping into that. And and also the shame that you feel expressing that to a therapist, telling that secret to somebody is far less significant than the shame you will feel in a public eye, being arrested, being on court trial, whatever it might be. So get that out there, get the help you need. If you're if you're seeing those telltale signs, that secrecy, you know, talk to a friend, talk to a therapist, do the work in my podcast to build your values so that when you come to that choice, you make the right one. Excellent. And I'll I'll leave you all with this. You are not behind, you are not broken. You are a man in progress. Keep forging. Fantastic.