Why Your Past Matters if You Want to Quit Porn | The Neuroscience of Storywork and 7 Ways to Heal Porn Addiction
I often get the question, “What does my past, or my childhood, have to do with my porn addiction? Why do I need to tell my story to get sober from porn?”
At first glance, pornography addiction seems to be a problem with lust, arousal, attraction, perversion…But the more you come to understand the addiction and break free from porn, the clearer it becomes that your porn habit has little to do with sexual pleasure. And it has everything to do with the rest of your life that caused you to find the need to escape through porn. It’s not an excuse, just a reality check.
Some men can point back to traumas they’ve faced: abandonment (physical or emotional), abuse, neglect, enmeshment…Other men tell me things like, “I had a pretty good childhood. My mom and dad were generally good people. So, what excuse do I have for going to porn? It’s not like I was traumatized. My past has nothing to do with it.”
But when I really dive into their stories with them, there were many ways they felt alone, unseen, afraid, or unworthy. And these feelings have carried into their adulthood in ways they couldn’t see before. That was, until they started sharing their story.
Once they did that, they could start transforming old patterns into new ones.
Today, we get into the neuroscience and psychology of storywork, and why it’s so important for porn addiction recovery. I also give you simple ways you can begin doing your own storywork, so you can take this next step on your journey to quit porn.
Before we dive in, a reminder to join the free community (No More Desire Brotherhood), download my free ebook The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings or sign up for my free workshop The 8 Keys to Lose Your Desire for Porn. These resources are your next step to get sober, and you’ll find them at nomoredesire.com/tools.
Using Storywork to Overcome Porn Addiction
Storywork is top of mind for me right now, as men in the No More Desire Academy are working through their own stories during the months of September and October. We are digging into five stories:
—Seed Story
—Survival Story
—Sexual Story
—Shadow Story
—Sobriety Story
I am walking side-by-side with these men as we go through a journey to understand our past, our survival mechanisms, our sexual beliefs, how our addictions and habits have harmed others, and then work to build new identities.
Essentially, we’re asking ourselves:
—What happened?
—Where did that lead me?
—How did that fuel my sexual compulsion?
—What damage have I caused and how can I mend it?
—How do I want to show up from here?
This five-phase storywork process is powerful and transformative. If you’re not a part of the Academy, I invite you to go to learn more about the program and start your 2-week free trial. Men are transforming right now by telling their stories, and you can too.
So, why is it important for you to work through your story to stop watching porn? Let’s break down seven reasons this is the case from a psychological and neurological standpoint, and I’ll also give you basic principles and practices you can use to process your story, whether you’re in the Academy or not.
1. Storywork Helps You Recognize the Unconscious Patterns Behind Porn Addiction
First, storywork can cause unconscious patterns to become conscious.
In the beginning, we developed addictions without knowing that we were doing so. We were stuffing down stress, numbing feelings of powerlessness, getting rid of loneliness, distracting ourselves from feelings of inadequacy…
These patterns began for most of us around age 13, 12, or younger. We didn’t really understand what we were doing at the time. How could we?
Now that our brains have developed further, we are more capable of seeing what’s happening under the surface. We can make unconscious patterns conscious.
If every time I feel lonely I seek out porn or masturbation, I am crippling my ability to become aware of my true feelings, sort through them, cope with them in healthy ways, and seek long-term solutions. The cycle is Unconscious Loneliness → Craving → Relapse → More Loneliness. And it goes on and on.
But when I bring conscious awareness to this pattern, I then begin building the ability to break out of it.
Now, this doesn’t mean I actually will break out of it once I see it. I still need to develop an emotional attachment to a new way of living, like the one I’ve developed to porn. This requires time, strategy, and healing. Which is where the process of storywork comes in, which can give us deep emotional experiences we need to release old wounds.
I recommend you do this with a group or with a guide. But my piece of advice whether you do it on your own or with others, is that you need to feel through your story.
One thing we can easily get wrong is thinking that storywork is a purely cognitive process. That once we are aware of what happened, we can then change. This is not true. Healing is a felt experience. We must take time to feel through our memories, stories, and experiences. We must give ourselves time for silence, introspection, and feeling again what we felt then. We can then come to greater understanding and integrate our past, rather than running from it, ignoring it, or hating it.
2. Storywork Helps You Identify and Process Difficult Emotions
Second, storywork puts emotions into words.
A lot of men I’ve worked with struggle with some level of alexythymia, which is the inability to put emotions into words. When I can’t put my emotions into words, I can’t process through them, understand them, find self-compassion, and then find solutions. How could I? I don’t even know what I’m feeling or why.
This also makes it impossible for me to do these things for the people around me. I cannot do for them what I cannot yet do for myself.
Storywork helps you build the skill of describing what you feel, so you can work through it and eventually release it.
How to Identify the Emotions Underneath Porn Cravings
When you do storywork, or even journaling or meditating through emotion, try to put words to your emotions. Be present and ask what you’re feeling. Emotions can be very complex, but I’ve found it helps to break them down into a few basic categories. This has helped me readily identify emotion without getting overwhelmed, confused, or perfectionistic. These 6 categories are:
—Anger
—Craving
—Fear
—Inadequacy (shame or guilt)
—Sadness
—Longing (which could be for many different reasons)
Of course, there are also positive emotions, but those aren’t often the ones that give us trouble.
When you feel a hard emotion, try and see if you can match it to one of these categories. Longing is a little hard, as it requires further investigation, but hopefully seeing that you feel longing in the first place can help you dig deeper.
3. Storywork Helps You Connect Porn Triggers to Past Experiences
Third, storywork helps connect present triggers with past experiences.
For instance, let’s say my wife is angry or disappointed in me. For some men, this might not be fun, but they can stay present with it and it’s not a huge deal. For others (like myself) it can feel like an overwhelming condemnation of themselves:
“Oh no. I’m failing again. She blames me. How could I be so stupid?”
First of all, storywork can help me recognize that I’m even hearing that message in my head in the first place, rather than simply becoming defensive, telling my wife she’s a nag, or leaving to go relapse with porn.
Additionally, storywork helps you connect this present experience to past pain. You can see how your wife’s disappointment reminds you of how critical your older brother was, or how your mom would always yell at you, or how dad would give you the silent treatment or hurt you when you let him down.
Those formative experiences left us with wounds that we couldn’t work through.
By getting in touch with, writing about, talking about, and feeling through these memories as an adult, I can see them for what they really were, and see that I am no longer a child and do not need to allow similar things to drag me into shutdown, rage, or relapse. I am an adult and I can make a choice now.
4. Storywork Helps Retrain Your Nervous System to Face Pain Without Escaping
Fourth, storywork teaches my nervous system that painful emotions can be experienced without escape.
One of the most common challenges men in addiction will struggle with is the ability to fully allow and move through painful emotions. Many men don’t know how to mindfully welcome hard emotions, give them space to be expressed without taking over, talk through them with maturity, set boundaries, or ask for help. These are skills that weren’t taught or modeled for them.
Perhaps you’ve experienced this as well.
Why Sharing Your Story With Safe People Matters
When I take time to feel through and understand my story—especially when I share it with others—it helps me build the habit of expressing difficult emotions without running.
It’s important to note here that we shouldn’t share our stories with just anyone. Sharing with some people may cause more harm than good.
We want to share with people who will be accepting of our stories, listen, and give us space to feel seen. This doesn’t mean they have to agree with our views, but simply need to be willing to hold space for us and listen. If they can’t do this, they may not be someone we should share with.
This is why groups, coaches, therapists, and trusted friends are needed. Many men in addiction have wives who aren’t in a space emotionally to offer understanding or support to them. They feel betrayed, overwhelmed, and hurt.
So, men in recovery need to bring others in who have bandwidth and can be supportive.
5. Storywork Reveals What Your Porn Addiction Is Really Doing for You
Fifth, telling our stories gives us the chance to see what addiction has actually been doing for us.
The Emotional Needs and Desires Hidden Beneath Porn Use
Underneath every addiction are good desires we are attempting to fulfill, but in destructive ways. While it can be hard to see, addiction often seeks to fulfill desires for…
—Connection
—Nurturing
—Admiration
—Status
—A healthy sense of control
—Comfort
—Imagination
—Letting go
—Adventure
—Healing sexual abuse or sexual shame
None of these are bad things. They are God-given desires. They are simply being twisted into a behavior that isn’t serving us or others, and is making the problem worse.
Once I begin seeing what I’m actually seeking underneath the surface, I can start making choices to fulfill those desires in healthy ways.
I invite you to sit down and ask yourself why you go to porn. What does it do for you? What does it stop you from feeling? What does it cause you to feel? What are the core desires you are actually seeking through the behavior?
6. Storywork Reduces Shame and Builds Self-Compassion in Porn Addiction Recovery
Sixth, storywork strengthens self-compassion and weakens shame and self-contempt.
Understanding Why You First Turned to Porn
Underneath every addiction is some form of the belief “I am bad”. Every man I have ever worked with carries some form of this shame messaging, and this message often originated early in life (even if it evolved more later).
When I dig through my story and find deep understanding and love for the boy inside me, I can stop hating myself and start actually seeing myself. I can see the kid who chose porn or masturbation as a means of trying to feel okay, and I can feel compassion for him. When this happens, I stop fighting cravings and I start perceiving them for what they are: an attempt to solve my pain just like I did when I was a boy.
The addiction does not make me bad. It is simply a signal pointing back to pain that was never processed or solved in ways that healed.
To do your own storywork, sit down and ask yourself:
—”What was going on in my life at the time my addiction to porn began?”
—”What was happening in my family?”
—”What was going on inside me emotionally?”
—”What were my circumstances like?”
This may lead you to some deeper answers of what porn was an original solution to, so you can begin to build some true self-compassion and release the self-contempt born of ignorance to your real story.
7. Storywork Helps You Build a New Identity Beyond Porn Addiction
Seventh, storywork transforms identity.
Sobriety is not founded on quitting porn alone. It is founded on becoming someone who no longer needs it. When I see my story through fresh eyes, share it with others, and rewrite the meaning behind it, I find that I feel less and less like the boy that felt worthless, who escaped into porn, and more and more like the man who believes he deserves something better.
Take time to ask yourself:
—“Who do I see myself as right now?”
—”Why do I see myself this way?”
—”What experiences led me to believe this?”
—”Who instilled these beliefs in me?”
—”Who do I want to become?”
These reflections need to be done in silence and deliberation. Again, give yourself time to feel it.
How to Begin Storywork for Porn Addiction Recovery
Telling our stories can help us heal porn addiction. While there is no magic spell or secret sauce, taking time to sort through, understand, and feel where we’ve come from and where we want to go can begin to free us, leading eventually to a life where we no longer desire porn.
If you want to join other men who are doing this storywork in-depth right now, I invite you to start your 2-week free trial of the No More Desire Academy. You’ll get access to every course I have, with structured lessons and exercises to help you build every skill you need to overcome porn addiction, and you’ll gain access to weekly group coaching meetings where you get to connect with me and other men who are walking this journey alongside you. Click here to learn more about the NMD Academy.
And if you want more personalized help, you can check out 1-on-1 coaching with me. I have limited availability, but depending on when you’re listening to or reading this I may have an open slot. Click here to learn more about 1-on-1 coaching with Jake Kastleman.
And don’t forget to check out my free workshop, free ebook, or become a part of the free online community. You can find all these resources and more at nomoredesire.com/tools.
God bless, and much love.
Recommended Episodes:
Transcript for Episode 164: Why Your Past Matters in Porn Addiction Recovery | The Neuroscience of Storywork, 7 Ways It Helps You Heal, and How to Start Using It Right Now
Jake Kastleman (00:00.182)
Welcome to No More Desire, where we build a mindset and lifestyle for lasting recovery from porn. My name's Jake Castleman and I'm excited to dive in with you. Let's get started, my friend.
Jake Kastleman (00:17.858)
I often get the question: what does my past or my childhood have to do with my porn addiction? Why do I need to tell my story to get sober from porn? At first glance, pornography addiction seems to be a problem with lust, arousal, attraction, perversion. But the more you come to understand the addiction and break free from porn, the clearer it becomes that your porn habit has little to do with sexual pleasure.
And it has everything to do with the rest of your life that caused you to find the need to escape through porn. It's not an excuse, it's just a reality check. Some men can point back to traumas they've faced, like abandonment, abuse, neglect, or enmeshment. Other men tell me things like, I had a pretty good childhood. My mom and dad were generally good people, so what excuse do I have for going to porn? It's not like I was traumatized. My past has nothing to do with it.
But when I really dive into their stories with them, there were many ways they felt alone, unseen, afraid, unworthy. And these feelings have carried into their adulthood in ways that they have not been able to see. That was until they started sharing their story. Once they did this, they could start transforming old patterns into new ones. Today, we get into the neuroscience and psychology of story work.
And why it's so important for porn addiction recovery. I also give you simple ways you can begin doing your own story work so you can take this next step on your journey to quit porn. Before we dive in, a reminder to join the No More Desire Brotherhood, the free community. Download my free ebook, The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings, or sign up for my free workshop, The Eight Keys to Lose Your Desire for Porn. These resources are your next step to get sober.
and you'll find them at nomordesire.com slash tools. All right, let's get started.
Jake Kastleman (02:24.59)
So, first off, as we get started right now, I want to be transparent in saying that it is very late at night right now, far later than I am ever used to staying up. it's almost 11 PM. And for some people that might might not be very late. For me, as a dad with an infant and a toddler, it is. And so if you see bags under my eyes, that's probably due to my normal life with lacking sleep with them.
But also due to staying up this late to record this episode. Next week I have a a professional retreat that I'm going to. And so I I have like all my client appointments that were in five days a week. I'm meeting with all of them in three in three days. And so it's just this incredibly packed week. so I had to do this tonight. This is the only time that I had to finish it before I head into the next week and then to the retreat. So
Any lapses in what I'm saying or things that don't make sense, just I ask for your forgiveness. But I'm excited for this episode and I hope it's gonna be helpful. So story work is really top of mind for me right now as men in the No More Desire Academy are working through their own stories during the months of September and October. We are digging into five different stories, five different stories: seed story, survival story, sexual story, shadow story, sobriety story.
Seed survival sexual shadow sobriety. Okay. And so I am walking side by side with these men. I'm also doing this myself as well, telling these stories in the group as we go through a journey to understand our past, our survival mechanisms, our sexual beliefs, our addictions, the habits that have harmed others, and we work to build new identities. Essentially we're asking ourselves, what happened?
Where did those things lead me? Right. What happened in my life, in my family of origin, in my childhood, in later in life, right? These patterns that I developed. Where did these things lead me? How did I survive? How did that fuel my sexual compulsion excuse me? There it is. Sexual compulsion. What damage have I caused and how can I mend it? A hard question to ask, but a necessary one. And how do I want to show up from here? I have to say that this five s five phrase.
Jake Kastleman (04:41.254)
five this five phase, I'm doing it again. You're gonna get tired of this by the end. This five phase story work process is powerful and transformative. If you're not a part of the academy, I invite you to join us. Go to nomordesire.com/slash academy. You can learn more about the program program. You can do a two-week free trial. Men are transforming right now by telling their stories. It's a really special sacred work. I will say that. We've already had some really
a couple of really sacred experiences as we've just gotten started this past week. it's something that I want everybody to be able to experience. Obviously, not everybody can be there. I can't have that big of a a a group, right? But the academy is expanding, right? And so the more people who come in, I can form no new new groups, more groups in the academy. and we're we're excited. I'm excited about what's happening there. So come join us.
Again, nomoredesire.com slash academy. So why is it important for you to work through your story to stop watching porn? Let's break down seven reasons this is the case from a psychological and a neurological standpoint. And I'll also give you some basic principles and practices that you can use all along the way. So, first, story work can cause unconscious patterns to become conscious. The unconscious made conscious. In the beginning, we developed addictions without knowing that we were doing so.
That was the case for me. I didn't know that I was developing an addiction. I didn't understand what I was doing. I didn't know that I was stuffing down stress. I was numbing feelings of powerlessness or hopelessness in my life. I was getting rid of loneliness. I was distracting myself from feelings of inadequacy. These patterns began for a lot of us around age 13, 12 or younger. It began for me when I was twelve. We didn't really understand what we were doing at the time. Okay. That boy didn't understand. That's that's one of the
Primary ways that I help guys gain compassion is you were perpetrated upon by pornographers when you were 12 years old. You didn't understand what was happening to you. They do. They do understand what they're doing. They know what they're causing you to do, and they know that they're hooking you. They mean to do that so they can make money off of you. And there's a lot of money to be made. So now that our brains have developed further later in life, we're more capable of seeing what's happening under the surface. Now we're stuck in this addiction.
Jake Kastleman (07:03.574)
Now we have a chemical dependency. We can make unconscious patterns conscious, though. If every time I feel lonely, I seek out p*** or masturbation, I am crippling my ability to become aware of my true feelings. I can change that. I can sort through them. I can cope with them in help healthy ways. I can seek long-term solutions. The cycle for you perhaps has been something like unconscious loneliness or unconscious feelings of lack of accomplishment, lack of purpose.
Lack of connection. Maybe there are some stresses in your life that you're not really understanding that are there, things at work. You can't focus. You don't feel motivated. things in your life, a dream that you that you really want to pursue that you haven't been pursuing, that you're stuffing down and you're using, strangely enough, pornography as a procrastination method. Pornography is a practic procrastination technique as far as when it's an addiction, it becomes a way of procrastinating the rest of our lives and actually living our lives.
So, where we experience this unconscious thing, we experience craving, and then we go to relapse, and then this leads to more loneliness or whatever the thing is that we don't want, right? The procrastination then leads back into obviously I'm still dealing with the thing I'm dealing with. And so that leads me back in the cycle, on and on it goes. But when I bring conscious awareness to this pattern, I then begin building the ability to break out of it. Now,
Please understand, this does not mean I actually will break out of it once I see it. It is not that easy. I still need to develop an emotional attachment to a new way of living, like the one I've developed to porn. I've developed an emotional attachment, a relationship to porn. I need to build relationships to other healthy, good things in my life in order to overcome the emotional attachment to porn. This and and the and the chemical attachment, the sexual attachment, right? This requires time. It requires strategy. It requires healing. It often requires a coach.
A group, a therapist, a program, which is where the process of story work comes in, which can give us deep emotional experiences. We need to release old wounds. I recommend you do this with a group or a guide, but my piece of advice, whether you do it on your own or with others, is that you need to feel through your story.
Jake Kastleman (09:20.392)
One thing we can easily get wrong is thinking that story work is a purely cognitive process, that once we are aware of what happened to us, we can then change. That mental awareness does not translate to emotional awareness in my heart. Those are two different things. Healing is a felt experience. We have to feel it. This is one of the primary things I work on with my clients, emotional mindfulness. I help them sort through and feel through painful and difficult emotions, like cravings.
We do this in our one-on-one sessions. We do it in group as well. We must take time to feel through our memories, stories, experiences. We must give ourselves time for silence, introspection, and feeling again what we felt then. In my one-on-one sessions with guys, I will sit in silence with them, sometimes for two minutes almost at a time. I don't know if it's quite that long, but it's a long time. They will sit there while I allow them, I ask them a question and we're digging in, we're meditating, and I'm helping them them.
Dig deep into what's actually going on inside of them and what their mind is actually saying. We need time for that. We don't often take the time for silence, right? We have a whole culture teaching us not to do that. We can then come to greater understandings and integrate our past, integrate our past, the boy inside us that was hurt, the memories that were hard, the messages we took about our identity or about who we are, the things that we've thought about ourselves that.
are not serving us that are causing us to think that we are bad or we are we are deficient or we are inadequate. All these things are operating unconsciously. We need to integrate them so that we can then develop greater integrity. Integrate, we need to integrate our whole selves to develop integrity. Even our shadow parts, we need to integrate them to have integrity, because now I'm not hiding anything. It's all up front. I'm aware of all of it. I'm sharing all of it.
I'm bringing it to groups. I'm telling other men about it. They're sharing theirs with me. We talk about all of it. Rather than running from it, ignoring it, or hating it. None of these things work when it comes to addiction. They all make it worse. They actually feed it. So we have to share and we have to tell our stories. Andrew was dedicated. He was a good father, husband, and a high-level professional at a successful firm. He prided himself on quality work, service, and being there for those he loved.
Jake Kastleman (11:39.736)
But underneath it all, Andrew was carrying a secret. His addiction to porn he'd had for more than thirty years. Andrew had never told anyone about his challenge. He'd kept it hidden, even as he served in significant roles in his church, continuing to appear like he had everything together. The day his wife found out was traumatic. Andrew felt ruined, and his wife felt betrayed. He didn't know what to do and doubted that he could ever overcome the habit he'd carried.
secretly for so many years. He began trying to will his way into recovery. He'd make it a few days or a little longer between relapses, but he could never get rid of it. When we started working together, Andrew told me I'm not a feelings guy. But after a few months he learned that he carried stress, shame, and fear around with him, and he didn't even know it. He also learned that these unconscious emotions were fueling his cravings for porn. I taught him
How to become deeply aware of these emotions, how to relate to them and respond to them in a healthy way, bringing peace to his mind and diminishing his cravings. We also developed daily routines, boundaries, mindfulness exercises, and I gave him relationship guidance and a community to support him. He experienced a total ecosystem for recovery. Andrew is over a year sober today. I'm really happy for him. Here's what he had to say. I had struggled with porn addiction for more than 30 years, working with Jake.
has taught me new habits, real processes that I can work into my daily routine. Jake genuinely cares about my well-being and success. I feel like I'm now able to be more present and that I can deepen my relationships with those I love. I never thought that I'd live a life free of porn. If you are struggling with porn addiction, head to nomordesire.com slash coaching to learn more and create your own success story. All right, back to the show.
Second, story work puts emotions into words. It puts emotions into words. A lot of men I've worked with struggle with some level of alexithymia, very complex word, which is essentially the inability to put emotions into words. When I can't put my emotions into words, I can't process through them. I can't understand them. I can't find self-compassion. I can't find solutions. If I can't do these things, I can't get sober. And how could I?
Jake Kastleman (14:01.954)
Do these things. I don't even know what I'm feeling or why I'm feeling it. So if I don't know that, I can't put them into words, then I can't take the next step. This also makes it impossible for me to do these things for the people around me. Sadly enough, this is a really sad reality, guys, and it's a hard one for me to share. But if I cannot do that for myself, I cannot do it for others. I cannot do for them what I've not yet done for myself. This is true of
Pretty much all things in life, I would say. That's a blanket statement, but I feel fairly comfortable saying it. Story work helps you build the skill of describing what you feel so you can work through it and eventually release it. And this helps you do the same thing for your loved ones and being able to be there for them, provide space, listen to them, ask them questions, help them dig deep, not in a manipulative or controlling way, but in a deeply loving way to be able to be there and be that space of connection for them. You have to be it for yourself to learn how to be it for others.
When you do story work or even journal or meditate through emotion, try to put words to your emotions. This is one of my pieces of advice for you. Be present. Ask what you are feeling. Emotions can be very complex, but I found that it helps to break them down into a few basic categories. I'm gonna do that for you right now. These basic categories has helped have helped me a lot. This is what I teach to my clients. I don't I I these emotion wheels, you may have seen an emotion wheel before with like 80 emotions on it.
I get that. I understand the the use in that. However, I think that we can boil a lot of our painful emotions down to about six categories. This has helped me. It helps my clients to really simplify and identify what painful emotion I'm experiencing. So let me tell you what these six categories are: anger, craving, fear, inadequacy, which means shame or guilt. I've lumped those together. A lot of people in psychology are not gonna like that. But
It's a feeling of inadequacy. Okay. And we can we can actually put those together in a lot of ways, even though they're very distinct and I understand they serve different purposes or they they have different impacts on the psyche. If if I become aware of the feeling of inadequacy, I can start to work through it. I need to work through shame. I need to work through guilt. Both of them are emotions I need to work through. and I do this using the rail method. We can do this using IFS or parts work. We can do this through emotional mindfulness is is the the core of what I teach. So
Jake Kastleman (16:30.088)
inadec okay, so so back to it. Okay, so craving, anger, craving, fear, inadequacy, sadness, or longing. Okay, which could be for many reasons. I could long for many things. Of course, there are also positive emotions, but those don't often give us trouble. That's not we're talking about here. When you feel a hard emotion, try and see if you can match it to one of these categories. Longing is a little hard.
as it requires further investigation. But hopefully seeing that you feel longing in the first place can help you dig deeper. So there are your six categories. When you start to journal about emotion, when you meditate upon emotion, when you talk through emotion, when you discuss with others, these are things again that I teach guys to do on a regular basis each week. So third, story work helps connect present triggers with past experiences. Connect present triggers with past experiences. For instance,
Let's say my wife is angry or disappointed in me. For some men, this might not be fun, but they can stay present with it. It's not a huge deal. But for others, like pretty much all the men I've worked with, like myself, it can feel like an overwhelming, overwhelming condemnation of myself. no, I'm failing again. She's blamed me. How could I be so stupid? Right. This is where the rail method and emotional mindfulness come in, and where I start to practice this in my own life, where I teach guys to practice it. First of all,
Story work can help me recognize that I'm even hearing that message in my head in the first place, rather than simply becoming defensive, telling my wife she's a nag, leaving her or leaving to go relapse with porn. But in addition to really like telling my story of either something that's in my present life or in my past life, story work helps you connect this to connect a present experience to past pain. So
You can see how your wife's disappointment, if you've if you've gone through your story and you've deeply understood where you come from, your family of origin, things that have happened in your past, your survival mechanisms, your sexual story, your shadow story. You can see how your wife's disappointment reminds you of how critical your older brother was. Okay. You'd think, well, that's my wife. She's not my brother. Doesn't matter to the unconscious mind, okay?
Jake Kastleman (18:50.38)
Or how your mom would always yell at you, okay. Our relationship to our wife is a deep reflection of our relationship the relationship to our mother. Unless we've healed that relationship and we've done s significant work on it, our relationship to our wife is going to reflect the pain and the wounds we carry from our mom unless we've healed them. So how, or it could it could even be something with our dad, you know, how my dad gave me the silent treatment or hurt me when I when I I let him down.
By the way, my dad did neither of those things, but if your dad did, those formative experiences left us with wounds that we couldn't work through. By getting in touch with, writing about, talking about, feeling through these memories as an adult, I can see them for what they really were and see that I am no longer a child and do not need to allow similar things to drag me into shutdown, into rage, into relapse. I'm an adult and I can make a choice now. Okay, but again, this is only this is done through a a
Felt experience.
And then when I once I've told my story and I've worked through a lot of things like this, then I can begin to say I'm an adult now and I can leave this past in the past. I've integrated into me. I understand where it's come from. Fourth, story work teaches my nervous system that painful emotions can be experienced without escape. Painful emotion experienced without escape, without relapse, without destructive coping mechanisms.
One of the most common challenges men in addiction will struggle with is the ability to fully allow and move through painful emotion. I could not do that myself. That is why I continuously went to porn and masturbation, video games, food, television, because I couldn't regulate. I didn't know how. Many men don't know how to mindfully welcome hard emotions, to do emotional mindfulness, to sort through them, to give them space to be expressed without without taking over.
Jake Kastleman (20:50.518)
Talk through them with maturity, to set boundaries, to ask for help. These are skills that weren't taught or modeled for them. Perhaps you've experienced that. When I take time to feel through and understand my story, especially when I share it with others, it helps me build the habit of expressing difficult emotion without running. It's important to note here, guys, that we shouldn't share our stories with just anyone.
Maybe not even with the people who are closest to us. Maybe not even with my wife. Sharing with some people may cause more harm than good. We want to share people with people who will be accepting of our stories. Listen. Give us space to feel seen. This doesn't mean they have to agree, the person has to agree with our views, but simply they need to be willing to hold space for us and listen. If they can't do this, they may not be someone that we should share with.
This is why groups, coaches, therapists, trusted friends are needed. Many men in addiction sadly have wives who aren't in a space emotionally to offer understanding or support to them. And of course they can't. They feel betrayed, overwhelmed. They feel hurt. So men, if you are in recovery, you need to bring others in who have bandwidth and can be supportive. Your wife does not need to be your cheerleader. She does not need to be the one to feel bad for you.
Or the one to show you compassion at this stage. Hopefully down the road she can, but you need to find other people and a support network to bring those things in emotionally that you need. She may not be capable emotionally of doing that at this point, or it may ex feel extremely difficult. She needs help, she needs healing, she needs recovery. You need to find support in other places.
Fifth, telling our stories gives us the chance to see what addiction has actually been doing for us. What need has it been trying to meet? Underneath every addiction are good desires we are attempting to fulfill, but in destructive ways, right? While it can be hard to see, addiction often seeks to fulfill desires for things like the following. Some of this is going to be hard, I don't have time to describe it all, but needless to say I'm not the only one talking about this.
Jake Kastleman (23:10.616)
They per pornography and masturbation can seek to fulfill desires for connection, nurturing, admiration, status, a healthy sense of control. I need to feel control and power in my life. I do need to feel that to a healthy degree. Comfort, imagination. Think of fantasizing. What is that? You're using your imagination. Maybe you need more imagination in your life, you need more creativity.
You're trying to s you're trying to seek it through sexual means. It's not working. Letting go, right? Big let go through that orgasm. Big let go through watching porn and everything else in life fades away. Adventure. Okay, think about the rebelliousness of acting out an addiction. No one's gonna know what I'm doing. No one can see me right now. I'm gonna go do this secretively, and it's gonna just be my own secret adventure.
It could also be a very strange way, but a psychologically psychologically it makes sense when we look deeper at it, but a way of healing sexual abuse or sexual shame, or trying to manage or deal with it, or even actually re-experiencing traumas from our youth over and over and over again through the medium of porn. It's a sad cycle in reality to get into, but one that can be healed.
None of these are bad things, okay? None of these desires are bad. They're God given desires. They're good desires. They are simply being twisted into a behavior that isn't serving us or others and is making the problem worse. Once I begin seeing what I'm actually seeking underneath the surface, I can start making choices to fulfill those desires in healthy ways. I invite you to sit down and ask yourself, why you go to porn? What does it do for you? What does it stop for you from feeling? What does it cause you to feel?
What are the core desires you are actually seeking through the behavior?
Jake Kastleman (25:17.004)
Number six, and the final, no, not the final. I have one more after this. Number six is story work strengthens self-compassion and weakens shame and self-contempt. Okay. Story work strengthens self-compassion, weakens shame and self-contempt. Underneath every addiction is some form of the belief I am bad. May sound strange, but when you dig into it, you see it. Every time I use, I have some.
shame message inside me that's playing consciously or unconsciously. And a lot of us who are in pornography addiction, that message is playing deeply and intensely. And we may not even realize it because it's the scope through which we see life. Every man I have ever worked with carries some form of the shame messaging and this message often originates early in his life, even if it evolved more later. When I
Dig through my story and find deep understanding and love for the boy inside me. I can stop hating myself and start actually seeing myself. I can see the kid who chose p*** or masturbation as a means of trying to feel okay, and that it was it was it was his best resource he could find at the time. I can feel compassion for him. When this happens, I stop fighting cravings as much and I start perceiving them for what they are. An attempt to solve my pain.
Just like I did when I was a boy.
The addiction does not make me bad. It is simply a signal pointing back to pain that was never processed or solved in ways that healed. To do your own story work, sit down and ask yourself the following questions. What was going on in my life at the time that my addiction to porn began? What was happening in my family? What was going on inside me emotionally? What were my circumstances like?
Jake Kastleman (27:10.424)
These questions may lead you to some deeper answers for what porn was originally a solution to, so you can begin to build some true self-compassion and release the self-contempt born of ignorance to your real true story, my friend. Seventh, story work transforms identity. Story work is not founded on quitting porn alone. It is founded on becoming someone who no longer needs it.
No longer needs porn, if you can believe it. When I see my story through fresh eyes, when I share it with others, especially, and when I rewrite the meaning behind it, I find that I feel less and less like the boy that I felt that felt worthless, who escaped into p*** and more and more I feel like the man who believes he deserves something better. Take time to ask yourself questions like.
Who do I see myself as right now? Who do I see? Why do I see myself this way? What experiences led me to believe this? Who instilled these beliefs in me? Who do I want to become? These reflections need to be done in silence and deliberation, my friend. Again, give yourself time to feel it. Telling our stories can help us heal p*** addiction while there is no
Magic, spellers, secret, sauce, taking time to sort through, understand, and feel where we're where we've come from and where we want to go can begin to free us, leading eventually to a life where we no longer desire p*** If you want to join other men who are doing this story work in depth right now, I will tell you one more time. I'm going to invite you to start your two-week free trial of the No More Desire Academy. What we are doing there is so, so cool. I love it. You'll get access to every course that I have.
that I've ever created. At least the most updated versions, not all the past ones. I won't bring you to those. The most updated, upgraded versions of the courses, you'll get access to every course with structured lessons and exercises to help you build every skill you need to overcome porn addiction. We work a six unit program that is seven months long, six to seven months depending on story shares and things like that, during this unit especially, and then the other units we go through.
Jake Kastleman (29:32.714)
and you'll gain access to weekly group coaching meetings that I'm talking about, weekly group coaching sessions where you get to connect with me and other men who are walking this journey alongside you. To learn more about the academy, go to nomodesire.com/slash academy. And if you want more personalized help, you can check out one-on-one coaching with me. I have a limited availability right now. It is very limited, but depending on when you're listening to this or reading this,
I may have an open slot. To learn more, go to nomore desire.com slash one on one. It's the numbers one on one. And don't forget to check out my free workshop, free ebook, or become a part of the free online community, the No More Desire Brotherhood. All those free things and far more free things you can find at Nomor Desire.com slash tools. So I hope this episode helps you a great deal.
I hope that it's a blessing to you and a blessing to your family. God bless and much love.
Thanks for listening to No More Desire. It's a genuine blessing for me to do the work that I do, and I wouldn't be able to do it without you, my listeners, so thank you. If you've enjoyed today's episode, do me a favor. Follow this podcast, hit the notification bell, and shoot me a rating. The more people who do this, the more men this podcast will reach. So take a few minutes of your time and hit those buttons. And if you want to take your sobriety to the next level, check out my free workshop, The Eight Keys to Lose Your Desire for Corn.
For my free ebook, The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings. These are specialized pieces of content that will give you practical exercises and applied solutions to overcome porn addiction. And you can find them at NomorDesire.com. As a listener of the No More Desire podcast, you are part of a worldwide movement of men who are breaking free of porn to live more impactful, meaningful, and selfless lives. So keep learning, keep growing, and keep building.
Jake Kastleman (31:40.332)
that recovery mindset and lifestyle. God bless.
Jake Kastleman (31:54.198)
Everything expressed on the No More Desire podcast are the opinions of the host and participants, and is for informational and educational purposes only. This podcast should not be considered mental health therapy or as a substitute thereof. It is strongly recommended that you seek out the clinical guidance of a qualified mental health professional. If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or a desire to harm others,
Please dial nine or go to your nearest emergency room.
Comments