Addiction, Identity, and the Illusion of Brokenness: Jason Shiers on Childhood Trauma, Secret Shame in Recovery, and What Real Healing Looks Like
- Jake Kastleman
- May 7
- 43 min read
A New Way of Seeing Recovery
In this powerful episode of the No More Desire Podcast, I sat down with Jason Shiers, a psychotherapist and founder of the Infinite Recovery Project. Jason has lived the depths of trauma, addiction, homelessness, and shame — and emerged with a transformational understanding of healing.
His approach to addiction recovery is not one of managing symptoms or staying "sober" through white-knuckling. It’s about something far more revolutionary. He teaches people to become deeply aware of the inner dynamics of mind and body and understand emotion and destructive habits on a root level. Rather than pathologizing their addiction and labeling themselves as "an addict", he helps people see themselves with compassion, leading to long-term healing from addiction.
If you're tired of surface-level recovery models, and you want something that digs down to the deeper foundations so you can break free of porn, this conversation is for you.
Jason’s Story: Trauma, Addiction, and the Search for Peace
"My journey started in very young childhood when my father was killed," Jason shares. "The world came crashing down in a moment. I was just five years old."
Without anyone to help him process the overwhelming loss, Jason adapted as best he could. Food became his first drug.
"I started to balloon in weight. I stole food. I would secretly eat food. And I had no idea why."
By nine years old, Jason was immersed in the psychiatric system, diagnosed with depression, and medicated on antidepressants. It was made clear to him that he had things that were inherently wrong with his mind, and they needed to be "managed" and "fixed".
"There was no mention of grief," Jason reflects, "No mention of loss." In all of the time that he worked with professionals, not once did they explore the traumas and loss at the root of his need to escape.
In his teenage years, Jason found heroin. Homelessness, prisons, psychiatric wards, and complete isolation followed.
"I lived in the same clothes day in, day out. I was sick and tired of being me."
At 23, Jason entered rehab and traditional 12-Step recovery. He clung to the identity given to him: "You’re an addict."
The Hidden Suffering of Traditional Recovery
For 22 years, Jason lived "clean". But true healing remained elusive. "We were sitting in meetings smiling, telling everyone life was wonderful," Jason says. "Yet we were secretly living in shame. We were all 300 pounds, overweight, battling secret addictions."
In recovery communities, Jason noticed an unspoken truth:
Sobriety was celebrated even if deeper suffering remained.
Secret addictions to food, sex, gambling, and shame were present in almost all the leaders he worked with.
Normal human pain was pathologized, and this kept people stuck
"Nobody seems to know what happiness is," Jason realized. "We're just managing dysfunction."
Jason longed for a deeper level of healing. He just didn't know how to find it. He became a psychotherapist, chasing qualifications in a desperate search to fix himself. But no amount of therapy or education could touch the root of his pain.
The Spiritual Awakening That Changed Everything
After decades of seeking, Jason had a profound spiritual realization during an intensive retreat.
"In a moment, everything changed," he shares. "I realized I was not the character of my life story."
Despite having the same body, the same relationships, the same external circumstances, Jason experienced a deep inner peace he'd never known.
"Nothing material had changed. Yet I felt calm, peaceful. It was new to me."
Jason came in touch a deep inner awareness, stepping back from the thoughts and emotions he had identified with his whole life. He realized that he was not these thoughts. He true identity as a spiritual being went beyond this.
He began to gain the ability to observe and accept his emotions. Rather than identifying with them, he found compassion and love for them.
He started to embrace the spiritual truth that there was an aspect of him that had always been whole, untouched by trauma, addiction, or shame. The identity of "broken addict" had been a painful illusion, draped over this deeper identity of who he was as a human being.
"You've spent your whole life thinking there's something wrong with you. And actually, you've got a 100% track record of being okay."
The pain in his life took on new meaning. He began to see his mind with understanding.
He saw that parts of his psyche were trying to cope in the best ways they knew how, and that addictions were not actions done by someone filled with pride who needed to be fixed, but instead adaptations made by parts of his mind doing their best to help. They were not bad or horrible, simply misguided, and as long as they were seen as wrong and in need of fixing, people could not find true self-compassion and long-term healing.
By seeing these parts of the mind from this angle, people could shed new light on who they are, befriending these "addictive" parts of their mind and assisting them in finding a better path.
This understanding sparked the birth of what would become the Infinite Recovery Project.
The Infinite Recovery Model: Key Principles
Jason's Infinite Recovery Model is built on liberating insights:
You are not broken: Addiction recovery is not about seeing what's wrong with you, but seeing more deeply into what's right with you, befriending the "addict" parts of your mind.
Addiction is an intelligent, adaptive response to trauma: You need to understand yourself without judgment so you can heal.
Healing is an inside-out journey, not a process of "fixing" yourself.
Lasting freedom arises when you step into true identity, learning to witness parts of your mind, rather than identifying with them.
Instead of managing addiction symptoms endlessly, true recovery invites you to get in touch with inner identity, the God-given wholeness that resides inside of you and everyone you know. From this place of knowing your true worth, you can begin to step out of illusions of shame and worthlessness.
We can relate these teachings to Eastern faiths and philosophies of mindfulness and presence, which invite us to practice radical acceptance of ourselves, others, and experiences.
We can also relate these teachings to Western faiths, which state that we were made in the "image of God", and that He and His Son have gifted us with their light. We can become attuned to this light, bringing feelings of hope, forgiveness, and wholeness. This capacity is innate to each human being, and we can come in touch with it when we are able to clear mental burdens of self-judgment, shame, and fear.
Absolute vs. Relative Experience: Understanding the Layers of Healing
One of Jason’s unique teachings is the distinction between absolute and relative experience.
Absolute Truth: You are pure awareness. Whole, unbroken, eternal. You are the presence that observes thought and emotion. This is what I would call the eternal aspect of your identity. The God-gifted core of who you are.
Relative Truth: These are your experiences of thought and emotion; the phenomena of physical and mental perception. Your body and nervous system hold conditioned trauma responses based on your life experiences.
"Nothing is happening outside of you. Everything is happening through your perception."
Practicing distinguishing between these truths is crucial for overcoming addiction.
Healing means recognizing your unchanging essence as a spiritual being and compassionately tending to the very human wounds stored in your body. It means becoming a compassionate witness to all emotion and thought.
This does not mean that you do not need to grow, work, and overcome challenges. But instead to become aware that you hold a connection with God that can empower you to meet challenges with strength and presence, even when you feel fear, shame, or grief.
You can practice acceptance and understanding of difficult emotions, rather than judging them. This helps you avoid spiraling into relapse when you experience triggering emotions.
The Role of Somatic Work in True Recovery
"The body is adept at escapism," Jason says. "It’s really good at holding tension."
Trauma is not just mental — it’s somatic. The body carries years of unresolved survival strategies:
Tension in the jaw and shoulders
Tightness in the throat or chest
Digestive issues and chronic pain
Jason uses somatic practices like:
Body scans
Breathwork
Relaxing hidden tensions
Sometimes, a simple act like relaxing the jaw can release years of suppressed emotion.
"Sometimes people relax their jaw and burst out crying. They didn't realize how much they were holding."
Healing the body is essential to freeing the mind. Jason indicates that body and mind are interlocked, not separate as some modern psychological teachings might suggest. This separation of mind and body is becoming less and less popular the more is understood about the connections between mind and body.
Befriending the Parts Within: Internal Family Systems (IFS)
In our conversation, Jason and I discussed the incredible healing power of Internal Family Systems (IFS) work.
IFS teaches that we are made up of "parts," including:
Protectors: "Managers" and "firefighters" trying to keep us safe. These parts attempt to protect us using controlling behaviors like anger or perfectionism, or soothe us using addictive behaviors like watching porn, chronic masturbation, TV, video games, etc.
Exiles: Vulnerable, sensitive parts of us that carry grief, fear, and shame that drive Protectors to act out in order to distract from, suppress, or defend Exiles.
True healing happens not by "fixing" parts, but by building loving relationships with them.
"The hardest thing you'll ever do is meet yourself," Jason says.
As I shared during our conversation, I've found in my own journey that behind every protector part (anger, addiction, perfectionism) are the deeper core emotions of fear, shame, and grief.
Jason agreed, affirming: "Those are the things people are protecting themselves from."
Healing Through Relationships: Connection as the Greatest Catalyst
"Relationships are an essential component of healing," Jason emphasizes.
When approached consciously, relationships:
Reflect back our hidden wounds
Offer safe spaces for vulnerability and repair
Become sacred mirrors for self-discovery
"Every relationship life sends us is a chance to heal," Jason says.
Rather than avoiding connection for fear of being hurt, Jason teaches that we must lean in — with compassion, presence, and curiosity.
When we encounter challenges in relationships, we can practice seeing these struggles as opportunities for growth. We can ask, "What is this teaching me about myself? What do I have yet to heal?"
Final Reflections: True Recovery Is Remembering Who You Are
Addiction is not a personal failure. Depression and anxiety are not character defects. They are intelligent, adaptive responses to overwhelming pain.
Healing is not about controlling symptoms, but stepping out of painful dynamics by compassionately leading your mind. When you stop fighting yourself, and instead come in tune with God's unconditional understanding and compassion, which can be found in deep inner reflection and self-awareness, lasting freedom becomes possible.
Learn More and Take the Next Step
Work with Jake Kastleman: If you're ready to find true freedom from pornography addiction and build a recovery lifestyle rooted in purpose, peace, and power, visit No More Desire.
Learn More About Jason Shiers: Explore the Infinite Recovery Project and Jason's groundbreaking approach to healing at InfiniteRecoveryProject.com
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Episode 95 Transcription: Addiction, Identity, and the Illusion of Brokenness: Jason Shiers on Childhood Trauma, Secret Shame in Recovery, and What Real Healing Looks Like
Jake Kastleman (00:01.325)
Jason, welcome to the show, man. I am very excited about today's episode. Been excited to speak with you and just inspired by all the things that you work with people on. So thanks for coming on.
Jason (00:12.088)
Thank you. Thanks for having me. And I'm always excited to do a podcast, even though I've done so many. It's always great to have a new conversation and see what shows up and share something with the world, you know.
Jake Kastleman (00:24.663)
I wondered if you could start out by telling people you have quite the amazing story with reference to addiction. I wondered so that people can really understand where you're coming from personally, if you can talk a bit about that history of addiction.
Jason (00:42.498)
Yeah, sure. It's so long and there's so many facets of it, you know, like that as I've gone on, seems to get longer, because I remember things, you know, and I've thought about areas of my story where there's kind of, you know, that I'd left out before, things that I've remembered that I'd forgotten when I was young, but I keep it brief, but try and kind of give a good understanding of the journey, you know, because
My journey started in very young childhood when my father was killed. And I think that was like the world came crashing down in a moment, you know, when the police arrived at the door to deliver the news and stuff and I was just five years old. you know, I knew nothing of trauma. I knew nothing of grief. And probably until I was much older, you know.
Because I just lived being me. And I think as a small child, we just roll with the punches. We don't know, but we're still adapting to the trauma. We're still adapting in our life circumstances. It still had a huge and cosmic effect on me, even though I didn't know it. So food was my first drug at, I don't know, five or six years old. Much soon after that, I started to balloon in weight. I stole food. I would secretly eat food. And I had no idea why or anything like that at the time.
You know, kicked out of schools at a very young age, classed as a problem child, taken to doctors and so on and ended up in the psychiatric system. By the time I was probably nine years old and was diagnosed with depression and medicated on antidepressants when I was 10 or soon after around that time. you know, I found drugs, heroin by the time I was 13.
and ended up in my teenage years in prisons, institutions, psychiatric wards, sectioned and kind of diagnosed with a long list of binge eating disorder, substance use disorder, personality disorders, different things. And in the meantime, my family life fell apart. I ended up in a homeless shelter. I had no friends. I wasn't allowed to my family home.
Jason (03:02.828)
because I would steal things, you know, and I was not safe to be in there.
Yeah, I was pretty destructive, know, and disruptive for sure. But I knew no different, you I knew nothing of anything then. I knew nothing of trauma, grief, even in those psychiatric experiences. Nobody, I've got the reports now, I've got them in my drawer somewhere a few years back, maybe 10 years ago, I kind of applied to get my old medical records. And it was really fascinating to read those psychiatric reports of me at 10 years old, because there's no mention of grief, there's no mention of loss or any of those things, you know.
And that's really fascinating that that was overlooked completely, you know, and I was just seen as this depressed kid that they wanted to give antidepressants to. You know, I was kicked out of schools and, you know, crazy things happened. And I was 23, I lived in a homeless shelter. I was a heroin addict. this, you know, I'd committed a lot of crimes for money over time, but like by this point I was...
pretty broken and desperate. I lived in the same clothes day in, day out, slept in them. You know, I was on a script for methadone and I stole joints of beef from supermarkets to get a small bit of money to take drugs. You know, it was, was desperate at the end. And that was by the time I was 23. And that's when I got clean. I went to rehab the first time I went to 12 steps and I was told you're an addict. You can't take drugs or drink ever again. And I was just like, okay, you know, like just, you know, like
We innocently, because these people have got some sort of stature in society, we kind of just innocently take on what they say to us quite often. We're vulnerable, we want to start, we want to change, we're desperate. Because the only reason I went to rehab was I was sick and tired. Sick and tired of my life, sick and tired of going to jail, sick and tired of being homeless, sick and tired of everyone hating me, just sick and tired of being me. So.
Jason (05:01.582)
When I was told you're an addict, can't drink or use every day, I would say, okay, that's it. I'm an addict. I've been told by the doctor, you know, it's kind of like, it must be true because they know more than I do. Fully not understanding the concept, you know, or that it's just an idea. It's just a learned, you know, like something that's learned by these people. And it's not a fact, you know, I never got that. So I went to meetings and I committed myself to that for 22 years. You know, I to meetings.
Um, but what happened was when I put down drugs and alcohol and I picked up food again, because the food had gone by the side when I got into drugs. So I gained, uh, you know, anyway, I was 350 pounds by the time I was 13 weeks clean, you know, it's kind of like, I'd just been shoveling food in my mouth, stealing food. And then I went on to do over my years of.
Recovery, know what I call recovery, clean time, maybe you would call it as better than recovery. You know, I had six, seven cosmetic surgeries because I had a war with my body, you know, that I hated. I couldn't stop eating, but I also hated how fat I was, you know. So a real war, cutting bits of my body off in surgeries, paying, to Eastern European countries because it was cheaper to get cosmetic surgery in a desperate attempt to find happiness and peace, you know.
I became a psychotherapist simply because I was unhappy and I wanted to know more about myself and I thought if I could understand psychotherapy, you know, then I would understand myself. So there was really this constant craving for knowing, seeking, you know, the seeking of peace and happiness through learning. And one qualification was not enough. So I got two and three and four and five, you know, endless and
It was funny because by the end of all of them, I kind of thought, I still feel the same, know, it's kind of, feel like, I still feel like, and what had happened was by this time I was quite a long time in recovery. got a lot of people asking me for help. A lot of people were therapists and counselors in drug treatment centers and they all had secret addictions too, like me, you know? So I thought, wow, you know, who actually knows what happiness is? Cause nobody seems to know what happiness is. We could talk about, about
Jason (07:25.678)
crazy stuff. could talk about secret shameful habits, know, pornography, gambling, sex, relationships, while we were clean. But yet these same people were sitting in meetings saying, my life's great, you know, it's like, my life's wonderful. Now I found recovery. And I've always had this strong...
can I call it? I don't like that. It doesn't sit right with me sitting there smiling, going, everything's wonderful to these people, trying to convince people that this is a great thing. Yet we're all secretly living in shame. We're all kind of 300 pounds in weight, like 100 pounds overweight. We're all eating rubbish. It's kind of like, can't control it. And so what's really going on there? That was my curiosity. What's really going on? And what is the source of happiness and peace and contentment?
Cause that's all everybody wants. Everyone wants to feel happy, at peace and content. And so I just went on this endless seeking adventure. You know, I did the Landmark Forum. I did the Hoffman process. I trained in all these different modalities of therapy while staying clean in recovery, going to meetings.
Jake Kastleman (08:22.861)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (08:41.294)
So I honored the seeking in me. I just didn't know what I was seeking. I did not know what I was longing for. And eventually I came across a spiritual understanding that by this point I was probably 22, 23 years clean in recovery, just going to meetings saying I'm an addict and having resigned, resigned meaning like given up on hope.
that there was ever a chance of finding freedom and that my life was gonna be full of suffering with secret and shameful addictions and an on-off relationship to a 40-year eating disorder and never being happy and content or finding a relationship that actually felt meaningful to me, or never being able to be loved, being unlovable. All those core wounds that we have, I'm not okay, I'm not lovable. It's like things that we secretly...
or that show up in reflection to relationships were haunting me. And I had this spiritual experience where in a moment everything changed, you know, in a moment. And it was really bizarre because I see that my ego and my idea of myself, Jason as the character that had been my life,
and all his qualifications and all his experience in addiction and all the years of going to meetings and understanding addiction showed up for this kind of spiritual, what was called an intensive, but it wasn't very intense, it was quite relaxed. So this character showed up, but the character in me kind of relaxed to be able to hear something different, you and I heard something beyond who I thought I was, you know, I heard like a...
and felt and experienced a place of well-being within me that I'd never experienced before, a sense of calmness, a sense of peace. It was new to me. And I kind of, like over this period, this couple of days, I was thinking, nothing in my life's changed. I've not got more money, I haven't got a new relationship, I haven't lost weight. These were all the real problems of my life. I haven't got more money, I've got new job. How come I feel so good?
Jason (11:00.856)
You know, like what's going on? Why can't I feel so calm? How come nothing matters? All these things that were so important and so difficult, so challenging and constantly on my mind seem to have just vanished, but nothing material has changed, you know? I just had this realization that I was not this character. You know, I was not the character of my life. Those things had happened, but there was something in me that was far beyond that, you know, the more spiritual component to understanding that I'm not, I'm not.
my idea of myself, you know? I have an idea of myself, but that's not who I am. I'm beyond that. And when someone said to me, you know, the truth is, is that you've been okay your whole life and you've just spent your whole life thinking you're not. You know, and I thought, I thought, shit, you know, if that's true, you know, it's kind of like how much I've spent my whole life thinking there's something wrong with me. And actually I've got a hundred percent track record of being okay. And I got here, you know, today and that was.
Jake Kastleman (11:45.379)
Ha
Jason (11:58.594)
That was the moment that I started to, everything that I'd done in psychotherapy and all the trainings kind of fell apart. know, like I thought, God, I can't do that anymore because people are not damaged and broken. They just don't have an understanding of who they are. You know, they've got a relationship with a character in their own mind that they think it's them. They're solely identified with their own thoughts about themselves. And then they go to doctors like I did as a young kid, you know, asking for help. They get pathologized, you know, that they're having trauma response.
Jake Kastleman (12:12.387)
Mmm.
Jason (12:28.43)
activation of the nervous system, overthinking, psychological struggles, you know, and it's like in the doctors pathologizing these things and they're going away thinking they got a diagnosis, which is the cause, you know, but it was only ever a description to start with. It was not a cause. It was just a description of a conceptual description, a categorization of behavior. So I had all these realizations over this space. It was over like two days.
So I thought, God, I can't practice psychotherapy anymore. I don't want to go to meetings anymore because I'm not an addict. It's not true. You know, it's just a story I had about myself and all the fear about relapse that had been installed into me over the years just disappeared. You know, I thought I can just not go out meetings. I'll be fine. You know? So yeah, that was the start of this part of my journey, which was about seven or eight years ago, you know, into creating the Infinite Recovery Project. I didn't know at that time.
Jake Kastleman (13:13.463)
Wow.
Jason (13:25.272)
how I would articulate what I'd seen because it felt very abstract and formless, know, like a deep realization of something that couldn't be put into words so much. was uncertain as to how I could turn that into something because it seemed like this freedom that I'd found, I have to be able to point people to that, you know? It's like, because, you know, if anyone like me had had like a crazy chaotic life of complete...
and utter self-destruction, you know, it's kind of like, and then could find complete freedom in a moment. Has to be something valuable in that for people that are suffering and struggling. You know, if I could find a way to show people what I've seen, you know, it would be super valuable to the world.
Jake Kastleman (14:13.917)
And it's, do you think it's possible to communicate that to someone?
Jason (14:20.846)
That's been my learning process over the years, know. Yes, I definitely can and have shared that with people that have had similar experiences. It's not like, there's so much to it, you know, it's not so simple and straightforward. It's like, I can create the environment for insight, you know, I can be present with somebody, I can...
help them relax from their own thinking mind and kind of question beyond that and look at all these things that I point to. Sometimes I describe myself a bit like a tour guide, know? It's like I'm pointing at something and if you're not looking, you won't see it, you know? It's like, you know, it's a 200 % relationship. You know, I show up 100%, they show up 100 % and they get to see something new about themselves, about life. Sometimes...
They don't show up at 100%, you know, it's just a, you know, it's just the journey for them, you know, and I'm okay, I don't believe I have to fix anybody. I think that's part of the process, you know, like people have to live their life and kind of, and come to a place of realization for themselves, you know, I'm not saying anyone's broken or needs to change. I'm only offering the opportunity for that if people want it, you know.
Jake Kastleman (15:39.331)
That's incredibly powerful. It's, I think one of the things that I contemplate, and maybe this is an unfair question, because maybe it's a hard answer, but would love to hear what you have to say is, who are we or what are we? You had this realization in those two days of, I'm not this brokenness, I'm not this addict, I'm actually not the character who is my ego that I've built over the course of multiple decades.
I'm something far beyond that. In your belief, in your view, what is that exactly?
Jason (16:15.982)
Yeah. You know, I could talk about in the book, the absolute and the relative experience, you know, like the absolute truth of who we are is just pure awareness. You know, we are a physical body having a spiritual experience, know, a human being having a spiritual experience. So the absolute truth is upon investigation, there's loads of book, mean,
Jake Kastleman (16:34.979)
Hmm.
Jason (16:42.766)
If you follow the non-dual understanding, Rupert Spira is kind of like where my teachings in spirituality came from and three principles originally before that. If you've kind of, but I'm not affiliated with any of those things anymore and I like to not to be connected to any particular community because I feel like all of them are forcing people into following something, know, an understanding that is the truth, you know, and no understanding is the truth. They just all point to the truth.
So upon investigation, upon self investigation, there's a realization, if you're honest with yourself, that the only thing that you're experiencing is happening inside of you. It's nothing is happening outside of you. You just project onto an outside world, everything, every struggle, every... Like there's between, the Viktor Frankl quote that says, between stimulus and response, it's kind of like...
He's talking about perception. So the only thing that we can experience is perception. We can't experience anything objective. We can only experience subjective. And everything subjective is experienced through our whole life of conditioning, of filters, of ideas, of creation. All is happening inside of us. And anyone who does that investigation can come to the honest realization there's nothing but pure awareness.
you know, everything's happening inside of me. That's the absolute truth. And then there's the relative experience of being human. So I'm in a body with a nervous system. So I'm a biological organism, you know, that's the truth. And my autonomic nervous system has been conditioned by life, by adversity, by tragedy, by loss, by abuse, by all these things. So the stimulus of
Jake Kastleman (18:14.807)
Hmm.
Jason (18:38.817)
this apparent objective world that exists outside of me triggers a response of the body. And that's where we go into the somatic or what I call the relative, you know, that things will happen outside of me and my body will constrict, will contract, something will happen, you know, open or close. It will respond, react, you know, with tightness, with tension, with a lump in the throat, with tight shoulders, the tension in the jaw, you know, it's like it's happening.
beyond the mind, it's not being created in the mind, it's happening in response to external stimulus. So that's kind of like how I see it, know, the absolute and the relative, the absolute truth of spirituality of who we are and the relative experience of being a human.
Jake Kastleman (22:00.715)
You have a podcast of your own, Jason, which is Misunderstandings of the Mind. What do you think are some of these common, and you've probably touched on them here, but these common psychological misconceptions about, let's just specifically about addiction. What are these common misconceptions in your view?
Jason (22:26.178)
Well, I think like both problem and solution have been created by mankind's infinite creative potential. know, like there's five or 600 talking therapies that tells you something about the potential for creativity. And it also tells you that it's not the solution. There wouldn't be five or 600 if there were the solution. One would have worked, you know, or two or three or five even, or 10 maybe. It's like about 500.
Jake Kastleman (22:45.667)
Mmm.
Jason (22:54.936)
talking therapies. What I wrote about in my book was maybe we're looking in the wrong direction. There's an Einstein quote that says, any fool can make things more complicated. It takes a genius to make things more simple. What if we're not looking in the direction of creating more therapies, in helping to fix the self that we think we are, but just looking in a completely different direction and saying, well, that's not who we are.
How about we look in a completely different way, stop pathologizing, which is all of those models are pathologizing in some way, and look towards the health in people versus the illness in people. Look to what's right in people because addiction is an intelligent adaptive response to trauma. It is a normal human response to adversity.
Depression is a normal human response to suffering, to darkness. It's like all these things are intelligent responses, but nobody looks at them that way. All these traditional methods look at it as a pathology. They turn it into an illness or something that's wrong with people. And then we innocently, as normal human beings, go to these people that we believe have some sort of status or knowledge about something and we get told what's wrong with us.
then we take that away into the world and it further adds, it's like sticking another post-it note of failure onto ourselves when we go to professional. The thing is as well, these psychological solutions cannot bring peace and happiness and contentment for no good reason, because they're still rooted in this idea of a separate me and a separate you, and you're the professional and I'm the client, and I can't really do what you're suggesting, it's not possible. So.
it becomes another post-it note, a failure, you know, in these traditional solutions where people never fully find freedom. And so in a way, you know, they're a bit of a plaster on a bullet hole solution and temporary fixes. might feel a little bit better with a label thinking, God, yeah, I know what's wrong with me now. You know, it's like, I'm like other people. It's not so bad, you know, it's like.
Jason (25:15.064)
but they don't find the solution. They don't point you to peace and happiness, which is all that anyone wants, you know.
Jake Kastleman (25:22.039)
This is, one of the things I feel really passionately about is the pathologizing that's within current modern Western psychology. And then also the medical field of this approach of the body and brain inherently will malfunction, right? And the very cause of that malfunction is the malfunction itself. It's kind of how I seem to see it is, you you have anxiety, your problem is anxiety.
You have depression, your problem is depression. You have an addiction, you have an addicted, a mind that is prone to addiction. And I think it doesn't even, I think that's just a surface level symptom, as you're saying. We really need to get underneath. And I think you're going to the deep, probably the deepest root causes underneath our very identity as a human being is what it sounds like, where we're.
taking that identity from. And it makes me think about IFS. And I don't know if you're familiar with IFS and parts work. I find it to be a sacred work, very, very powerful. And to me, are, and you tell me what you think about this, but you're approaching what we would call the self, right? With a big S, you're getting in touch with that deep inner awareness that is the witness.
to all other parts of who someone is and being able to heal from there. Would you say that's true or how do you see it?
Jason (26:56.31)
Yeah, I think IFS is great and I'm familiar with it and more lately, know, compassionate inquiry and somatic experiencing from Pete Levine and IFS are three approaches that have emerged, you know, in the last, five years or more. I know it's IFS been around longer, but it's not been so famous as it is kind of at the moment, which do have, it's interesting because I think
You could teach IFS to somebody who had no spiritual understanding and they would just formulate it and they wouldn't really be able to help people discover the self if they hadn't discovered it for themselves. You can turn IFS into a full concept. There's the eight C's of self, there's parts, there's protectors, there's firefighters, there's managers and so on. So someone could understand that without having a spiritual experience themselves. It's not that useful, but if somebody really understands the tool.
how to use it. know, it's like then for me, IFS is one of the most valuable kind of approaches and understandings to having a spiritual experience of realizing that the self is like the parts and not who you are. They're what you learned as a way of coping and they're intelligent responses to the level of adversity that you experienced in early life in your developmental years. And they're not, they're not false.
you know, like the pathologizing which would fault them all as depression, anxiety, that what you said before, that's just what I call symptom management or behavioral management, you know, it's like it's nothing to do with healing. But IFS can, you know, be friending and reintegrating for want of better terms, you know, the parts of self, the protectors, the managers, the exiles and so on, you know, is the journey, you know, is becoming more whole, becoming more integrated, bringing all those parts together and...
Jake Kastleman (28:31.437)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jason (28:49.164)
making friends with them yourself. One of my famous things to say is the hardest thing you'll ever do is meet yourself. And in IFS, that's kind of what we do. We meet those parts of ourselves that are vulnerable and shut down and all sorts of different ways of escapism. And it's like we make friends with those parts and we have conversations with parts of ourselves that perhaps have been...
you know, that have been exiled for want of a better word, again, you know, it's kind of like for most of our life. We realized that that anxiety that showed up with that depression, you know, is part of us, you know, it's like, it's part of us longing for something that we've kind of just not been able to connect with. just felt, you know, I always say that the parts, they drive the bus anyway, you know, like they're in control. So we can't just...
Jake Kastleman (29:23.203)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (29:45.25)
by force stop depression or stop anxiety and only by befriending and knowing ourselves can we build relationships and become reintegrated into this spiritual truth of who we are beyond the self created identity that I think I am.
Jake Kastleman (30:02.303)
And it reminds me of a very significant experience in my recovery journey and just my advancement and understanding myself and healing was really when I came to have this relationship with a couple of manager parts of who I am and realized that these manager parts were very big and inflamed and had really just become me in so many ways. Had these other parts that were
playing these background roles in one particular part that was deeply exiled, nurturing part of who I am. And when I came in touch with that part of me, I had this experience of just a deep compassion and a grief. I was crying for like an hour straight, just uncontrolled, hysterically. And it was one of the most...
profound and spiritual and cathartic experiences I'd ever had, really this part of me unlocking. And I often think about, and it's a bit of a kind of deeper topic than I go with my clients sometimes, but just the nature of those parts of me. Are they actual little intelligences that make up who I am? Like what are they exactly?
It's quite incredible when you watch sessions or when I've done parts work meditation practices with people and it's very intuitive for them to have these inner conversations with these parts. What do you believe that is? Bit of a deeper question, but what's the nature of these parts of the conscious experience?
Jason (31:53.281)
Yeah.
Jason (31:59.276)
Yeah, I mean, it is fascinating, isn't it, when you first do IFS, that parts of yourself will speak back to you. You like you can ask a question and get a direct answer. And I think that's kind of like, you think at first, that's a bit strange, you know, it's like, what is that? What is that that's speaking back to me? You know, because you can feel the difference between, I think about something versus a direct response from a part, right? It has a sort of...
a felt sense of being a direct response from a part versus a thought, you know?
Jake Kastleman (32:29.707)
Yeah, it almost sounds like a bit schizophrenic or disassociative kind of thing, right? Yeah.
Jason (32:32.493)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah and and you know I guess I just see them as fragmented parts of the self, know, but parts of us that had to adapt to cope, you know to survive and You know, I don't know exactly physically or what somatically what exactly they are, you know, it's like or anything like that, but I just do know that having
I've done parts work with people myself and plenty of my own that we can have this relationship with. mean, even in the, there was an app called IFS Guide that I used for a while, and you can even do these text message kind of conversations between you and a part. So you're asking a question to a part, and then you're responding yourself, you're typing on the keyboard, but you're coming from the place of the part, and then you start having this text message conversation with parts of yourself, and then you start.
thinking, but oh, this is bizarre. know, it's kind of like, cause nobody's typing, but me. the thing about it is it feels, it feels sincere. You know, it feels like a real relationship with a part of myself. Even this morning, you know, my girlfriend left on a plane this morning and had a beautiful weekend with her. And I felt insecure, you know, and I kind of had a conversation with myself. said,
Jake Kastleman (33:30.989)
Yes.
Jason (33:53.918)
What's going on? You know, it's kind of like what's the insecurity really about you know, and I had this conversation with a part, you know of me that was very insecure and and what came of it was that This part of me trusted her more than it trusted me You know and I was like wow, how did I get to that? You know, it was like such and it's so true, you know because
Jake Kastleman (34:12.419)
Hmm, yeah.
Jason (34:19.924)
She's so soft and gentle and when she's present, you know, it's like there's a part of me that can be very vulnerable, you know, and as a man in the world, I've kind of learned to kind of hide away from that and especially love felt unsafe for me for a long time because my dad was killed. So it seemed like I made this decision that love was unsafe somewhere, you know. So it's very even this morning, having that conversation on my walk with myself, you know, it's very I can like.
Jake Kastleman (34:39.737)
Mm-hmm, makes sense.
Jason (34:48.236)
navigate this backwards and forwards and understanding of myself and then I can share it with her, know, and be vulnerable and say this is what's going on for me, you know, and it gets received and it's, and I get to know that part of myself a little more.
Jake Kastleman (35:02.275)
Yes, and I actually like that you say that as well. One of the things that I've been considering lately, which stems from reading the book, Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, if you're familiar with her, she says that...
She says that true connection, true vulnerability with someone stems from loving them not in spite of their weaknesses, but because of them. And I remember when I read that, it was probably a decade ago and it just confused me. I was like, what does that even mean? How would I love someone because of their weaknesses? And...
As I've done parts work that started to open me up to some of that And I love what you said about this this internal conversation with this part this little insecure part within you of Gain building that relationship building an understanding for that part How do you see? Weakness in people what's kind of your perception of of that and and what are your thoughts of how we can actually connect on a deeper level?
with each other and that plays right into recovery, right? Because this is a very important aspect of it.
Jason (36:27.682)
Yeah, it's something I've learned along the way, know, having compassion for people's reaction. You know, it's kind of like, I don't use the term weakness, but you know, like,
Jake Kastleman (36:40.771)
What term do you use? Reactions or like a...
Jason (36:45.997)
Reactions, yeah, it's kind of like, I would see, I could feel, you know, I'm very sensitive, so I have a sense of straight away if someone's triggered, know, it triggers or reactions I would use. And quite often if someone's triggered, you know, it's kind of like I'll have compassion for them, you know, I'll kind of see. It depends if they're in my relationship circle or if it's just somebody I'm dealing with in a shop, you know, if I'm being very human sometimes, I'm dealing with somebody I don't even know, I might just tell them to...
you know, whatever, it's kind of like, not really think twice about it. But if somebody I'm in relationship with, you know, are meaningful to me, or in my, you know, friendship group or my girlfriend, I've learned to be curious, you know, like what's really going on for them, you know, it's kind of like, and to have compassion for that part, you know, there's obviously some vulnerability, some sadness or some fear going on, you know, in this reaction. And,
Not always, I don't always get it right, but a lot of the time I'm able to really step beyond that and connect with people in those moments. It's an opportunity for connection. If you see somebody, like see them, really see them beyond the reaction, like what's going on for you right now? Instead of just jumping into the reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction, trigger, trigger, trigger, trigger, like from each other, you what's really going on right now?
I call, what are you feeling right now? It's kind of like, then it's kind of like, can be an invitation to something very beautiful connection. And I think that's, somebody told me that once five, six years ago and I thought they were joking. I thought, no way you can do that. If somebody's off with you, you're just off with them. It's just natural. It's kind of like, well, these days I feel like I see people. I see people, the heart of them beyond the...
reactions and it's very easy to sense something that's reactive versus just present moment kind of from a soft place.
Jake Kastleman (38:51.511)
And that's those reactions, you know, I think of again, those protector parts, like you're talking about someone getting angry, for instance, that's that manager, that firefighter that's acted up inside of them. And then you're reacting with your protector, right? Your manager, your firefighter to polarize against them. And we can do this inside of ourselves as well. And what I've found in my own work internally, and then
also in helping people with addiction is you need to be able to get down to the roots of your deeper feelings, right? The anger or addiction cravings or perfectionism or these different protective strategies that we use as they can be termed. These are more the surface level kind of symptoms. then what's deep inside,
Jason (39:44.334)
Yeah.
Jake Kastleman (39:48.685)
to my knowledge and my experience at this point is kind of what you might call like the holy trinity of emotions, which is fear, shame, grief. I think that that's kind of at the base of all of our protective strategies. Has that been your experience or how do you view that dynamic?
Jason (40:13.206)
Yeah, I mean like when it comes to addiction it's really like I don't ask people to stop, you know, I don't that's not my job. I actually help people resource themselves and understand their spiritual nature like and and and can reconnect to their body, you know, to a point where they know themselves and like addictive strategies drop away, you know, they don't need it anymore because they become more
you know, once they're more resourced, once they know themselves, they know who they are, they have a different relationship with their experience, then they just often say at some point, I don't no longer needed that addictive strategy. So I'm not like tackling it in a traditional way from that. And yeah, I mean, quite often underneath everything are those fear, shame and sadness, yeah, grief, yeah, grief for sure. mean like...
Jake Kastleman (41:03.171)
sadness, grief, grief, yeah.
Jason (41:08.578)
those are the things that people are protecting themselves from. And I think the spiritual component of that helps people to see that I'm having an experience. It's kind of like, it's not me. So then the knowing of yourself, the bit where I said the journey of meeting yourself is the most difficult thing, becomes less difficult because you're kind of okay with understanding that when you realize this is not who I am. There's still a challenge in that vulnerability. There's still a challenge to...
the young parts of ourselves feel it's risky to be vulnerable. Will somebody still love me? Will they leave me? Will my friends honor my parts the same way that I do? It still shows up a little bit. But the more we do it, the more we lean into that relationship with self, and then relationship with others as a reflection of our own relationship with self, then it just grows and grows along the way. And I think our...
Relationships change as a result of that work with ourself. The people we want to be with and the people we don't want to be with change. Our whole perspective of ourself and life grows from that, from that understanding.
Jake Kastleman (42:23.139)
It's very true. It's the external world as a reflection of the internal world. I've noticed as my relationships with the parts of who I am, as those change and those heal and become better and I peel away layers, my external relationships, I even find myself running into and interacting with people far more loving and positive and uplifting than I did previously, which is so...
Jason (42:28.59)
Yeah.
Jake Kastleman (42:53.079)
bizarre and amazing to me just the way that works. It's like this is just seems to be happening naturally. It's you're kind of looking around like, I in, am I on the Truman show right now? Am I where, how is this happening? It's incredible. I didn't know if you had any other thoughts about that, but I, you don't, I wanted to actually talk about somatic work. And there's a lot of, think this is,
Jason (43:04.042)
Right. Yeah.
Jake Kastleman (43:21.283)
I shouldn't say it's new, because it's been done for a long time throughout the world, but new, I guess, in a modern Western sense within psychology. Can you talk about the somatic side, you say body-mind or mind-body, when it comes to recovery and pursuing well-being? Talk about this somatic end of things, why it's important.
Jason (43:47.916)
Yeah, I don't know if you've done any of that in IFS, but certainly in my kind of IFS work, there's been a lot of somatic kind of component to it as well. But like, let's talk about why first, why it's important. know, it's like, I think the body mind is adept at escapism. You know, it's really good at holding tension, you know, and it had to, right? The autonomic nervous system is in...
constant activation for some people, or people have experienced a shock trauma, an event, or repeated event, rape, violence, and so on and stuff like that. Or it's just been activated, they were never seen, they didn't have a parent present, nobody was present when they needed somebody. So their body learned to cope with this kind of activation that was happening.
Some people will come in and I'll see and they'll be sitting like this, you know, I think we're just on audio, but like I'm just hunching my back, you know, a little bit. And I look at them and I go, happens if you relax your shoulders? know, what happens if you like let go of the tension in your jaw? We might do like a scan, you know, starting at the head, feel your temples and feel your jaw here at the back, you know, where we hold it and then let your shoulders go, feel yourself supported in the chair. Like a combination of IFS and somatic experiencing.
body scan, you know, and it's kind of like, and you might say, well, where do you, where's your energy directed towards? And they'll say, oh, my throat feels tight. I feel like a lump in my throat, you know? So learning that, one, we've cut off from the body, you know, it's kind of, we've just become like a walking head, you know, for most people that are suffering, they're in their head. I say, how do you feel? They say, angry. And I say, well, how do you know? Like, where do you feel anger? And they're like, I don't know, it's just a thought in my head, you know, it's like no idea of anything below the net.
So reconnecting people to the body and having them release some of that tension that they feel that they're holding, you know, Sometimes people would just relax their jaw and burst out crying, you know, and just go like, wow, how much they held in their jaw or their shoulders. They wasn't even aware of it, you know, until I asked them. I remember a therapist saying to me, I was sitting there and I was doing something with my hands, you know, and she said to me, what's going on with your hands right now? You know, and I just...
Jake Kastleman (45:38.584)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (46:08.234)
automatically stopped and tears just started streaming down my face and I was like, shit, I didn't realize how good the body is at escaping emotion, at escaping feelings and how much I'm held. And then now, when I see people come into my practice with skin conditions, with chronic fatigue, with fibromyalgia, with bad backs, bad necks, eczema, all sorts of different things. It's kind of like...
99 % of it is caused from the internal suffering and autonomic nervous system activation and the body's attempt to offset that internal dis-ease, not disease, but dis-ease, that sense of dis-ease. So that's why it's important to come coming back into the body and then moving forward, becoming grounded and having a relationship with our own body, like knowing.
that we have a tendency to contract, to constrict, to hold, to be tense. It's kind of like that relationship with self that we talked about from IFS, it's part of that relationship with self. The body is part of it because as I said, most people have been a living head. They don't realize why they do what they do. They don't even know about the autonomic nerve system, contraction, constriction, tension, and so on, and the body being part of it. In fact, if you read...
Stephen Porgis, neuroception theory, which neuroception is like perception of the mind, but it's neuroception means interpretation of the body. And he says that 80 % of human experience is basically perceived through the body, through the nervous system. So bottom up versus top down. So starting to connect to the body and understand that a large, I don't know if it's 80%, I don't know if that's measurable, but.
A large percentage of our experience is felt through the body. know, just think about you meet somebody you haven't seen for a while, your body is open. God, it's so good to see you. You your body opens, right? Or it's like somebody you don't like, your body closes off. Let's get away from this person, quick, hide. You know, it's like your body's closed. That's just a basic understanding of your body opening or closing, opening, contracting, you know, it's kind of like.
Jason (48:35.65)
And he's doing this all the time to everyone and everything. So coming back to be grounded, it's called embodied spirituality. It's like it's not just a mind-based understanding, but it's a grounded understanding in the body mind of ourselves, of all of our working experience. It seems half a story, or not even half a story, just to know the mind, and not to understand the somatic part of experiencing.
Jake Kastleman (49:06.21)
In my Christian faith in our scripture, there's a passage that says the body and the spirit are the soul of man. That essentially it's combining the two together and saying these both make up who you are as a soul, which I think is beautiful. I've something that I've been practicing along with this, cause I said I'm
you know, somatic work and this embodiment practices and body awareness, this is something over the last year that I've really been trying to integrate into my own life. I've been practicing just being very present with my emotions. As you were saying, we're very adept at escaping and running from what we're feeling. And I've noticed as I've done this, and this goes right along with parts work and IFS,
you'll notice and I'll point out the parts, but when I experience a trigger, right, for whatever it might be, but in this case, you know, specifically with, I had an experience where I was online and I have a history of pornography addiction, it's 10 plus years. I was online, I looked up, I was building something in Canva, typed in a prompt and an image popped up. It was instantly triggering for me.
And I closed my eyes and I was very present with what I was feeling and experiencing. And I noticed a few different parts. One, I noticed the sexual arousal, which is very normal, very human. And then I noticed right along with that, there was fear is what I felt. And the fear was, this is going to overtake me. This is going to, it's...
it's going to take control of me and make me do something that I don't wanna do. There's the feeling of, you know, I'm a bad person for feeling this, right? So the fear and the shame of that very sensitive kind of part of me, what would be the exile or that part that would take on that role. And then a part of me judging me, like, get your mind off of this. Why are you thinking about that? Like, what's wrong with you? And then the other part, so that's manager, right? And then the other part would be the one saying,
Jake Kastleman (51:27.039)
yeah, this is great. This is exciting. Let's engage with this, right? And that's, I think that firefighter part is just, let's dive in and just go crazy. And, but that was all experienced just by, just by being very present and going internal into my body and into thought. And I didn't need to do anything about it. That was, that's the amazing thing is just simply being.
present with it and aware of it. I've done this as well with, you know, again with my history, I still face daily kind of urges and things from masturbation, right? It's like deeply integrated into me from 13 years old. It was like my coping mechanism, my way of soothing. And I have been practicing just when those things come up, just going inward and even subverting my attention to that.
Jason (52:10.669)
and
Jake Kastleman (52:23.361)
that part of my body, And feeling, just feeling it and saying, okay, there's an intensity there. There's a feeling of a desire, of a longing there. And it's all right for me to feel this. Very powerful. think often we've been taught we need to solve.
Right, like if there's a negative thought that comes up, replace it with a positive one, right? Just bring up a positive thought and redirect your focus. Do you see that as pretty destructive, pretty misguided when we're trying to replace all these, you know, unwanted thoughts or negative thoughts or things like that? Or do you have any other thoughts about kind of what I've just described?
Jason (53:18.734)
Yeah, there's a few things that came up. I think that's just taught in traditional psychology, like reframing and kind of replacing positive with negative. And obviously it may give you temporary solution to some people and perhaps it makes other people feel like a failure because they just can't do it. And really the...
The only way forward is to get to know and befriend and make friends with those parts of ourselves, know, like to understand what's going on here, you know, what's really being felt. And, you know, I always have understood that you can't bully or force a part, you know, it's kind of like you have to make friends with it. It's the only way it will trust you, you know, and that's the journey towards healing. And I think if you can have those, I just want to add that
If you can have those self-led conversations with parts, which I can in some cases, but I can't in others. Some others I need another person, you know, and particularly the very developmental early stuff, I just get dissociation happening. Even sometimes in relationship, you know, I can't have conversation with parts. They won't speak to me. And, you know, I need a mirror. I need another person. So my coping mechanism for that is just to shut down.
autopilot and become like a worker or some, you know, just get into work or something like that until I get an opportunity with someone else where I can explore it. So it's not always possible and there's not something for anyone who's listening. There's not something wrong with you if you can't do that, you know, sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. And if you can, it's great, you know, it's like, and if you can't, it's okay too. Some of us, some of us just need a mirror in another person, you know, to.
reflect something back to us or to be present with. And yeah, it sounds beautiful if you can do that, if you can have that soft, gentle, curious energy towards those parts of you that show up without the kind of criticism and shame and so on that you perhaps picked up before you've learned this understanding of IFS. It's a...
Jason (55:34.528)
It's just all footsteps on the journey towards yourself, you know.
Jake Kastleman (55:39.203)
I love that, it's very powerful. Well, so talk a bit about perhaps anything that we haven't covered in this episode so far, what you think is important for people to understand when it comes to addiction recovery.
Jason (55:58.264)
Yeah, you mentioned relationships earlier and I think they're kind of an essential component of healing, you know? And I think like of all the modalities and things that I've done, you my relationship has been the biggest healing container that's been transformative, perhaps in more depth than anything else, you know? And I think quite often in early recovery we can...
certainly just switch addictions. It's like when I say early recovery, I traditional recovery, we kind of have a tendency to stop taking drugs and pick up something else. And quite often that thing that we pick up, particularly in 12 Steps, it was a very common experience. That other thing that we pick up is usually food, because it's the first readily available thing, and next it's relationships, because that's often readily available with two people with a longing in their heart for love, who's not understanding it.
And without that understanding of self at that time, those relationships can be what we call destructive to each other, you know? But as you go along, you start to understand the value, you know, as you go in my project, an Infinite Recovery project, you know, we're kind of helping to see that a relationship is really just like a clean mirror. You know, one that works for you is a clean mirror, somebody that sees you.
you know, and parts of yourself that you can't see yourself or creates an environment of vulnerability and safety, you know, where we can really explore ourselves with another person in a container that feels safe and where parts of us get seen and get validated and get heard. Perhaps they wouldn't even show up if we were alone and perhaps sometimes wouldn't even show up with a therapist, you know, it's kind of like depending on who we have therapy with.
So there's so much beauty and so much healing potential in relationships, you know, and there's a lot of stories about, you should never get into a relationship in early recovery and so on and so on, you know, but I don't subscribe to that. know, I say, whatever life sends your way, you know, is whatever's meant to be next. And there's always a lesson in it, you know, it's something to be learned about yourself. But...
Jason (58:18.712)
You know, that's the beauty of connection, know, of connection in relationship with somebody, you know. And even, like I even say that when I say relationships can become destructive in early recovery, you know, there's still something to learn about ourself in those experiences, you know. It's not that two people are bad or one of them's bad and one of them's innocent or one's a victim, you know, which is typically the way it's understood. It's really to see that there's something to be learned. I pick somebody
that will highlight the biggest wound in myself. And then I blame them for being that person that I knew they would be, you know, at the start or so on, you know, it's kind of like, or the same as the last partner that I had, you know, they didn't love me or they didn't see me or they didn't value me or they treated me badly, you know, we don't see that we pick that person on purpose. That is life's role is to heal ourselves. Life will keep presenting us with opportunities.
to see ourselves more deeply. And that's what's happening in these relationships that we pick that are, you I use the word destructive just as an explanation of challenging situations. That's it. I don't even like labels at all. But life will continue to give us these lessons, you know, and I don't mean that you pick someone abusive on purpose to learn a lesson, you know, it's kind of like, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is we have these relationships with people who highlight a wound.
within ourself, you know, it's like, and then we get the opportunity to heal that part of ourself if both people can see beyond their coping mechanisms. And quite often they can't in early recovery, and that's why it becomes now what we call destructive. But when we can, when two people are willing to step back and go, hold on a minute, yeah, I'm behaving like this, something's going on for me, then there's a safe space created where two people can reflect and contemplate their own experience and then come together and share about it. And that is...
a beautiful healing opportunity. So I think that relationships are an essential component of our life. We're going to have relationships with friends, romantic relationships, with family and so on. And there's such a big opportunity there when we really understand what's playing out.
Jake Kastleman (01:00:34.371)
That's fantastic. Yeah. Well, thank you, Jason. I appreciate you sharing those things and just a beautiful conversation. think that's gonna help a lot of people. If people wanna find out more about you, your book, the Infinite Recovery Project, where can they go?
Jason (01:00:51.502)
InfiniteRecoveryProject.com is the website that tells you more about everything there. The book will be released soon in the next few weeks, hopefully it's finished. that's probably the best place to look.
Jake Kastleman (01:01:17.475)
Well, thank you so much, Jason. Real privilege to have you on.
Jason (01:01:23.448)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
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