My Real Rock Bottom—Years After I Got Sober | And How Obsession with Perfection Nearly Ruined My Recovery

Have you been told that you need to reach rock bottom before you can get sober? Are you waiting for that day to finally quit porn?

You may ask yourself, “How much pain am I going to need to face before I change this?”

A lot of people talk about this magic “rock bottom.” But what if I told you that it won’t come?

What if I told you that it’s not a moment that happens to you—but a moment you choose?

As I say this, I realize the cliche, and that a simple choice to get sober does not yield results. It’s more complicated than this, but my hope is that my story will give you a path forward. 

I hit many rock bottoms. And it wasn’t until I decided the last one was enough. 

When that day came, I had a choice. I could blame the world, blame God, blame my wife, blame my circumstances—in other words, do what I had done my entire life.

I had dug myself into a hole so deep that I hit solid bedrock and I could go no further. I reached a foundational low, where my illusions of control and denial broke.

Up to that point, I’d lived by a lot of filters and delusions—ones that I’d allowed to continue despite every sign that I was headed in the wrong direction.

But even with as much pain as I was in, I still had a choice. I’d hit bedrock, sure, but was that going to stop me from pulling out a hammer and chisel and continuing to cut away at that rock? Or even pull out a jackhammer? After all, I had a lifetime of habits backing me up, and plenty of excuses. 

I could continue trying to control and deny my way through life. I could keep blaming and refusing to look at myself. I could keep using the same solutions that had not yielded the fruit I’d expected. I could keep hiding my fears, my shame, and my grief from myself.

Or… I could decide I was done digging.

I could admit that I did not have the answers. I could open my eyes to see how I’d lived my life up to that point, and to recognize that it had not worked. I could accept that my very best efforts had landed me in a black pit, on a cold rock, all by myself.

And then, I could stop digging.

And once I decided to stop digging, the only remaining direction was up.

The Story I’ve Never Shared Before

Welcome to Episode 100 of the No More Desire Podcast, my friend. I’m going to share a story with you that I’ve never shared on this podcast before: My Real Rock Bottom.

It’s not your traditional rock bottom story. But it’s one that I have great hope you will relate to, and that it will give you insights into your own psyche and life to help and inspire you on your journey to freedom from porn.

Not Your Traditional Rock Bottom Story

Most rock bottom stories you hear involve someone binging on porn, having a traumatic experience, cheating on their wife, getting caught.

I could share experiences with you of getting caught watching porn, nights of misery after porn relapses, feeling the death of my confidence around women because I was so hooked, sleeping with girls who weren’t good for me, dashed opportunities because of my addictions.

I could tell you about regrets—things that I’ve had to accept are a part of my past and there’s no going back. People I hurt that I can’t take the pain of. Or people I was never there for, because I chose pleasure instead.

These things are what they are. I’ve come to accept them. And God’s grace has helped me do that. 

But my true rock bottom happened unexpectedly years later. 

The Unexpected Rock Bottom

When I hit this rock bottom, I was years into marriage. I also had several years of being clean of porn under my belt already.

I still struggled with masturbation, and it was something I had essentially come to accept I would always struggle with. I had moved on from my worries about it and just said it was normal.

At this time in my life, I was very grateful that I had been sober from porn for so many years. Much had improved for me and I was lucky to be one of the few who’d actually managed to get sober before I got married. I know now how unusual that is.

Because I had had years of success getting sober from porn, I had started helping others too. I built my first business—Become a Good Man— an online course business to help people overcome pornography addiction.

This business was my first, and it didn’t go quite like I’d planned. Selling online courses was a lot harder than I anticipated (duh), and many naive dreams I’d had that I could become an overnight success were dashed when I launched my first online Masterclass.

The Pain of Failure

I had spent a fair amount of money on advertising, and hundreds of hours on course material and content marketing. When my first Masterclass launched, 14 out of the 730 people who signed up actually attended. I was crestfallen.

Come to find out later, this rate is actually pretty normal for a first attempt. I just didn’t know any better, and because I dealt with a lot of self-doubt and fears at that time, I allowed the experience to overwhelm me with shame and decided I was an absolute failure. I then proceeded to wallow in that shame for a few months.

This wallowing was terrifying and frustrating for my wife, who’d done her best to support me up to that point—even though I was so new and immature when it came to running a business, and even she, having never run a business, could clearly see that.

Now, years later, I can honestly say that the poor turnout of my first business is the best thing that ever happened to me. It humbled me and led to massive personal growth and eventual success in my future business: No More Desire.

The Foundation I Was Living On

The failure of my first business was part of the circumstances surrounding my “Real Rock Bottom”. To understand what led to this rock bottom, you have to first understand my mental state at that time.

To stop porn addiction, I had essentially made myself very busy. I filled every minute that I had. My routines were my god. I had daily prayer and scripture study, weightlifting, I scheduled time to see family and friends, I was very strict about my work schedule.

Anything that would throw off these routines would upset me and felt very overwhelming. And while I couldn’t see it at the time, I did all this to keep up with the perfectionistic expectations that I had.

I was a workhorse, and my extreme ability to perfect my behavior, as well as hold a death grip on my thoughts—always staying positive, replacing cravings, getting rid of every negative thought I had—enabled me to stay sober for years.

Scrupulosity and Spiritual Delusion

I had this dogged determination to never allow fear, shame, or sadness in. I thought that whatever emotion I gave my attention to would reverberate through my life; that “negative” emotions would lead to negative outcomes. I was very superstitious about ensuring my thoughts were continuously positive.

This attitude sustained me for a while, but it eventually drained me out. I was angry underneath the surface pretty much all the time and I didn’t know why. 

I also had this belief that I could access any answer I needed through God’s Spirit. I believed that whatever I should do would be revealed to me, and I could simply glide through life while God made me aware of each action I should take to be successful. 

I unconsciously used this as an excuse not to study things out or use my own intelligence to dream, plan, and be deliberate in my pursuits. I gave up portions of my agency in favor of letting “God” own my agency instead. 

I also experienced mild versions of what I now understand to be delusions of reference and control. I believed that small and insignificant occurrences had deep spiritual significance, that they were signs to me of decisions I should make or what was going to happen in the future. I also believed that the Spirit of God could work through me and speak through me. This caused me to be certain that things I wrote or said were divinely inspired. This kept me from being logical or thinking critically, seeking outside wisdom, or accepting criticism or feedback from others. 

These beliefs are actually very common in varying degrees in Christian faith and religion. I just didn’t understand how dangerous they were and how deep I really was. I couldn’t see it. 

I thought that God was telling me how to eat, how to exercise, what to say in conversations, what decisions to make throughout the day, how to complete projects the best way, and how to be successful in my business—down to the finest detail. 

All the while I carried deep feelings of fear, shame, and insecurity. These delusions of reference and control were my mind’s way of coping, by seeking certainty, security, and the assurance that small things that happened in my life carried more meaning than they did, so I could feel better about myself. 

This left little room for the necessity of my own process of discovery, learning, growth, failure, and progress to become the man I wanted to be. It inhibited my ability to tolerate and regulate painful emotion, something life inevitably includes and which carries great lessons when I’m willing to be truly present with it. 

I traded this very clear reality—that life is what I make it, that it requires struggle and pain for progress, and that it is filled with uncertainty—for a perspective that made me feel more comfortable. One that had little risk, with a God who coddled rather than refined. 

I prayed all day every day for God to tell me what to do (“Should I do this?” “Should I do that?”). This constant pressure to do everything perfectly—believing I had to do it just the way God wanted—was suffocating for me. I couldn’t breathe, and the whole time I called it faith. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had a death grip on life, with this constant belief that everything was meant to be—and if I didn’t do it just right, then I would miss my shot and not meet my destiny.

I thought faith was leading my life, when in reality, fear had me by the jugular all of the time, threatening to end me if I didn’t do everything just right every moment.

And, for those who don’t know, this is an obsessive-compulsive disorder called scrupulosity, which my wife tried to tell me I had, but I was so lost in it that I could not see reality. This was very painful for her to be a part of, feeling powerless to stop it. 

It was a miserably small and restrictive way to live. I could never accomplish anything I dreamt of, as this way of thinking allowed for very little risk. And it also allowed for no ability to be present with my painful emotions. This meant I couldn’t grow much and couldn’t connect deeply. 

I was obsessed with staying “in tune” with God all of the time, so that He could give me all the answers, rather than simply aiming to live a good life and serve other people and pray that God would assist me in these aims.

I was not an agent in my story. Instead, I was a slave to “God”—but in reality, to my own delusion and rules I’d placed on myself unconsciously.

Eventually, IFS and Parts Work gave me a profound understanding of the psychological dynamics of these struggles, but I would not learn about it until years later. 

The Trap of Spiritualizing Fear

At the same time, I had these unconscious beliefs that I could never be successful in the ways that I wanted to be. I didn’t believe in myself or my abilities. I believed that God would tell me what to do, and if I didn’t “feel right” about something, then it must not be meant for me.

The trouble with that is that every single thing that is most worth doing is extremely uncomfortable at first, and initial feelings of fear, shame, or anger are terrible indicators for what to do or not to do. 

The things that are most worth pursuing are often those that we feel the most resistant towards—and I was totally unwilling to face my feelings of fear and insecurity long enough to get the truth from under the surface and figure out what I was made of. Instead, I thought that uncomfortable feelings meant God was telling me that something “wasn’t meant for me”, and when I felt positive about something I thought it was spiritual inspiration and a green light.

This was an extremely dangerous place to stand in, as initial emotions and thoughts are misleading or unrealistic more often than they are accurate. Only by taking time to be present with them, and digging underneath them to the root can you find truth. That truth often looks very different from what the original thoughts and emotions indicate. 

Where religion unfortunately failed to teach me this, psychology succeeded. I don’t see this as a failing of religion, but a deep flaw in the way I interpreted and applied religious principles. 

I needed to take time to go inward and get real about my emotions, and until I did that, I would spend my life both running and living small. 

A Delusional Decision

Now, let’s return to my rock bottom moment that happened during the dissolution of my first business. 

I felt that God was telling me to quit my corporate job and build my first company, Become A Good Man.

I had been praying for months to quit my job, ultimately because I didn’t like it, and so I used the excuse of divine revelation to escape that discomfort. I didn’t know this at the time, of course, because I didn’t take the time to be present with my fears and feelings of inadequacy. 

To whatever degree God was actually involved, I don’t know. But I believe this move was driven by my own wishful thinking, and I was using God as an excuse to offload my accountability.

After I quit my job, I spent the next four or five months in tiny nuances and details of the business. I did some things right, but I had no strategy—because I had this belief that since I was trying to serve people and working for a good cause, God would bless me with success. I believed it didn’t matter what my strategy was. He would ensure that it would work out for me.

I was dead wrong. And these beliefs blew up in my face.

Laying in the Darkness

I distinctly remember the moment where I was in the hospital. My wife was lying asleep 24 hours or so after giving birth to our first son. 

I was exhausted. I was miserable. I had a dark cloud that followed me everywhere I went, and I had developed this massive sense of self-doubt. Or, I should say, the self-doubt had always been there—it had just finally revealed itself, because I’d been brought low enough to get level with it.

The business I’d dreamed of for my entire life hadn’t panned out. I had quit the good job I had months earlier and drained through most of our savings, spending money unnecessarily on all sorts of fancy software and services that had yielded nothing for me because I didn’t know how to use them. I now had a new child to take care of and no plan. 

I had been working 10–14 hours a day, six days a week. I had neglected my wife and our relationship in favor of this boyhood dream. I had become obsessive and hyper-focused, and now I was sitting in the ashes of a business that I never had any business pursuing. 

And it was in that moment that I realized: I was still an addict.

Addicted to Control

Nothing had changed.

I may have been sober from porn for years, but I was still addicted.

I was a workaholic. I was addicted to this dream of building a business, and I had sacrificed the financial and emotional security of my family to pursue it. 

I had all sorts of justifications and cultural messages of “follow your dreams” to back me up, but those were sounding pretty hollow just about now. It wasn’t until later that I learned a business’s primary purpose was to support my family, not the other way around.   

I was also addicted to nutrition and exercise. I was obsessed with eating perfectly—only the most organic, clean foods. I was eating 12 servings of vegetables a day. My standards were impossibly high, and they caused great strain on my wife who was trying to keep up with my demands. 

I also realized I was addicted to the manifesting meditations I was doing for 30+ minutes a day. I had abandoned traditional prayer in favor of something more unique, so I could feel special about myself. I wasn’t pouring out my heart to God—but instead hiding behind fancy techniques.

Lastly, I was addicted to offloading my accountability and agency to “God.” I blamed Him for what happened in my life and believed that when hard things happened, it was just God’s will. I was addicted to avoiding my hard emotions and finding the easy way out. 

When My Plan Didn’t Work

I thought God would give me all the answers I needed, so I didn’t need to plan or go through the learning necessary to get good at things. I thought He could just spiritually gift it to me.

This kept me feeling safe and secure, so I didn’t need to face my feelings of fear or inadequacy. But it also led to a failed business, and a failing relationship. 

I was isolating myself constantly. I wasn’t being real with the people around me. I was all screwed up inside and pretending to have it all together—even to myself. I had fooled myself into thinking I had all the answers.

But all of that fell apart when my plan didn’t work.

The business I’d dreamt up didn’t work.

This thing I called “the Spirit” telling me how to do everything—down to the last sentence on a blog article, or believing that saying something just right on a podcast episode would take me “viral”—it hadn’t worked.

The Turning Point

For a couple of months, I had thought, “God, why did you abandon me? Why did this not work out the way it was ‘supposed to’?”

I felt like God didn’t love me. Like He didn’t care. I thought maybe my faith was wrong. Maybe my religion was wrong. Maybe all of this was a hoax.

But it began to dawn on me... Perhaps it wasn’t the religion or the faith itself. Perhaps it was me.

Perhaps this thing that I had thought was the Spirit dictating all of my decisions wasn’t the Spirit at all. Perhaps it was in my own head.

This left me confused and angry for a while. I didn’t know what my relationship to God was anymore. I had thought of God as a crystal ball that could give me anything I wanted. And He hadn’t delivered.

So maybe it was time to abandon that relationship—in favor of a better one.

Starting Over

So, I abandoned my business. I shut everything down. I got rid of all of my fancy software. I went back to corporate work in marketing.

I thought, If this business has caused me and my family so much pain—if it tore me away from my wife, if it fed into these delusions I had—how could it possibly be good?

So I was determined to destroy it so it couldn’t do any more harm.

But the one thing I kept… was my podcast.

For whatever reason, I felt a very distinct warning not to get rid of it. So I didn’t. I kept it up on the side here and there while I worked in the corporate space. 

Slowly Rebuilding

I realized that the way I had done things had not worked. So, I gave up my fancy meditation techniques in favor of heartfelt prayer.

I dove with more sincerity into my faith.

I started attending 12-step group so I could get support. I began going to therapy and couples therapy. I started asking people for help.

Steps 4, 5, 8, and 9 of the 12-step program transformed my life, because for the first time ever I got totally and completely honest with myself about all of my pain, flaws, mistakes, fears, and feelings of inadequacy. I admitted the mistakes I’d made and how I’d hurt people, regardless of the circumstances. I stopped blaming others and started looking at myself without filters. I had done these steps in the past, but this time was different. I took it very seriously and dove deep.

Facing the Truth About Myself

I realized many things, but one of them was this: I had spent my whole life with the assumption that I was both a kind person and a smart person. These were unconscious beliefs that I took for granted.

As I developed an inventory of my life and made amends with others, I came to realize that there were so many times I had not been kind nor smart. I had been selfish and foolish.

Now, that might sound terribly negative. But, for me, it wasn’t.

It was a time of self-reflection and awareness. I became aware that I had acted out of accordance with my values. And now that I knew that, I could change.

A New Way to Heal

Because I realized I had been wrong on a fundamental level—and all of my best efforts had failed—I became open to help.

As I did, I learned about IFS and Parts Work. This approach gave me a completely new way of seeing my mind.

It gave me tools to deeply understand the spiritual delusions and compulsions I had dealt with for many years, and it helped me see the shields I had hid behind since I was a small child. 

I realized it was not “the Spirit” that had been talking to me, but a perfectionistic part of my mind that was constantly trying to lead the show in an effort to keep me safe and perfect.

I was able to build a healthier relationship with this part of me—seeing its behaviors for what they were, and learning to lead it rather than be controlled by it.

A New Relationship with God

I developed a new relationship with God—one that gave me agency and autonomy, and helped me rely on God from a place of love, respect, and ownership over my life, rather than obsession, compulsion, and blaming Him for my outcomes.

Because I was able to take a step back from all of my beliefs, I saw that my strategy for my first business was a bad one. 

It wasn’t just that I had bad luck. I had actually sabotaged myself into failure. I had not taken expert advice, been willing to ask for help, nor been willing to follow best practices. I had decided that my way was better. 

This time around, I followed best practices and humbled myself enough to seek out advice instead of “doing it God’s way” (which was really just the way my own perfectionism, personal comfort, and limiting beliefs dictated).

My business grew and became successful because I took ownership over the failures of my first business, learned from them, and followed what others had done to be successful—while keeping my authenticity.

Redemption and Ongoing Growth

My relationship with my wife began to heal because I took ownership over my actions and my divine role as a husband and father. I also began putting my family first, placing the business in its proper place as a means of supporting them, rather than as an end in itself. 

Getting these priorities straight motivated me to take the business seriously, as I had people counting on me. It was important I approach it in a smart, strategic way for them. Previously, I’d done things the way I wanted for my own enjoyment.

That failed. 

I began to build a better relationship with myself using practices from IFS, and that internal relationship began to reflect externally in my relationships with family members.

I continue to learn and grow every day and I aim to stay open.

I am discovering new pain and challenges daily—and realizing that’s all a part of life.

I am learning to face these pains head-on so I can grow from them, rather than trying to run from them.

There are things I thought would never change for me—like my inability to sit still, how I felt sensitive all the time, my 24/7 cravings for masturbation, or the level of anger I dealt with. These have changed and are continuing to change, one layer at a time.

All of this started because I chose to stop digging and start climbing. And I believe that anyone can make this switch at any time. I pray the same miracles for you.

God bless and much love, my friend.

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Full Transcription of Podcast Episode 100: My Real Rock Bottom—Years After I Got Sober | And How Obsession with Perfection Nearly Ruined My Recovery

Have you ever been told that you need to reach rock bottom before you can get sober? Are you waiting for that day to finally quit porn? You may ask yourself, how much pain am I going to need to face before I change this? A lot of people talk about this magic rock bottom, but what if I told you that it won't come? What if I told you that it's not a moment that happens to you, but a moment that you choose? And as I say this, I realize the cliche and that a simple choice to get sober does not yield results in and of itself. It's more complicated than this, but my hope is that my story that I share with you today will give you a path forward. I hit many rock bottoms, and it wasn't until I decided the last one was enough that I changed.

When that day came, I had a choice. I could blame the world, blame God, blame my wife, blame my circumstances. In other words, do what I had done my entire life.

I had dug myself into a hole so deep that I hit solid bedrock and felt I could go no further. I reached a foundational low where my illusions of control and denial broke, but even with as much pain as I was in, I still had a choice. I'd hit bedrock, sure, but that wasn't necessarily going to stop me from pulling out a hammer and a chisel and continuing to cut my way through the rock or even to pull out a jackhammer and keep going.

I could continue trying to control and deny my way through life. I could keep blaming and refusing to look at myself. I could keep using the same solutions that had not yielded the fruit I'd expected.

I could keep hiding my fears, my shame, and my grief from myself, or I could decide I was going to stop digging. I could admit that I did not have the answers. I could open my eyes to see how I'd lived my life up to that point, and I could recognize that it had not worked.

I could accept that my very best efforts had landed me in a black pit on a cold rock all by myself, and then I could stop digging. And once I decided to stop digging, the only remaining direction was up. Welcome to episode 100 of the No More Desire podcast, my friend.

I'm going to share a story with you that I've never shared on this podcast before. My real rock bottom. It's one that I have great hope you will relate to on many levels and that it will give you insights into your own psyche and life to help and inspire you on your journey to freedom.

Just a reminder before we dive in to follow this podcast, hit that notification bell and rate the podcast so that others who are looking for it can find it. And if you're looking to dig further into this material and get more help, head to my website nomoredesire.com and check out my free workshop and my free ebook. They're there for you.

Now let's dive in. So most rock bottom stories you hear involve someone binging on porn, having a traumatic experience, cheating on their wife and getting caught. I could share experiences with you of getting caught watching porn, the nights of misery after porn relapses, the feelings of the death of my confidence around women because I was so hooked, sleeping with girls who weren't good for me, dashed opportunities because of my addictions.

I could also tell you about regrets. Things that I've had to come to accept are a part of my past and there's no going back. People I hurt that I can't take the pain of or people that I was never there for because I chose pleasure instead.

These things are what they are. We've all got them and I've come to accept them for myself, as have many of my friends and people I've worked with in the recovery field. God's grace has helped me do that.

But my true rock bottom happened unexpectedly years later after many of these things. When I hit this rock bottom, I was years into marriage. I also had several years of being clean of porn under my belt already.

I still struggled with masturbation and it was something I had essentially come to accept that I would always struggle with. I had moved on from my worries about it and just said that it was normal. It's just the way that it was.

At this time in my life, I was very grateful that I had been sober from porn for so many years. Much had improved for me and I was lucky to be one of the few who'd actually managed to get sober before I got married. I know how unusual that is now and how much of a blessing and a privilege that was for me.

Because I had had years of success getting sober from porn though, I had started helping others too. I built my first business, Become A Good Man, an online course business to help people overcome pornography addiction. And this business, as it was my first, it didn't go quite like I'd planned, as happens to many people when they build their first business.

Selling online courses was a lot harder than I anticipated. Duh, of course it is. Many naive dreams I had that I could become an overnight success were dashed when I launched my first online masterclass.

And I remember how I really had this belief that I was just going to hit this trend of success and take off. And that was just, well, that blew up in my face. And I'm going to talk about some of that today.

Again, something I've never shared on this podcast. So I want to talk a bit about this kind of pain of failure. I'd spent a fair amount of money on advertising.

I'd spent hundreds of hours on course material and content marketing. And when my first masterclass launched, I had had over 700 people sign up for it that had registered to attend. And only 14 out of over 700 people actually attended.

And I was crestfallen at that time. Come to find out later from people who are more experienced than me in business and entrepreneurship that this was actually pretty normal for a first attempt. I just didn't know any better because I dealt with a lot of self-doubt and fears at the time.

I allowed the experience to really overwhelm me with shame. And I'm going to talk a lot more about that. I decided that I was an absolute failure because of it.

And then I really proceeded to frankly wallow in my shame for a few months. It was really unfortunate. And unfortunate for those around me, especially, this wallowing was terrifying and frustrating for my wife, who'd done her best to support me up to that point, even though I was so new and immature when it came to running a business.

And even she, having never run a business before herself, she could clearly see that. It was worrying for her. It was a great worry to her.

So now, years later, I can honestly say that the poor turnout of my first business is the best thing, though, that ever happened to me. It humbled me and led to massive personal growth, a lot of which we'll talk about, and it revealed some deep flaws that I had and really brought me face to face with them. And it eventually led to future success in business.

And that's often how it goes for people who are entrepreneurs. And those who are listening to this who are entrepreneurs can understand that. You probably have a first business experience that didn't go well and become a good man was mine.

Again, I had a lot of things that I did well that I'm proud of, but just we'll dig into more of the details. So the failure of my first business was part of the circumstances that were surrounding this real rock bottom and really to understand what led to this rock bottom that I'm talking about, this real rock bottom or this, you could call it my second rock bottom. There's one I had much earlier in my life, but to understand what was going on at the time and what led to this failure of the business and these other things going on, you have to first understand my mental state at that time, something I did not understand at all.

To stop my pornography addiction, which I had been sober of for several years at this point, I had essentially made myself very busy. And I see a lot of people do this actually during their first few years of recovery, especially. I filled every minute that I had.

My routines were my God. Okay. I had daily prayer and scripture study, weightlifting.

I scheduled time to see family and friends. I was very strict about my work schedule. I was just this following this formula, you know, integrating everything that I possibly could for recovery and anything that would throw off these routines would upset me and be felt very overwhelming.

And while I couldn't see it at the time, I did all this to keep up with the perfectionistic expectations that I had. This is not to say that I don't have plenty of routines. Now you've heard me talk about them before on the podcast.

Those are important to me. And I still keep my routines, but my approach to them and my, my beliefs around them, my, my feelings around them is very different. I was a, I was a workhorse back then.

And my extreme ability to perfect my behavior as well as hold a death grip on my thoughts and emotions, always staying positive, always replacing cravings, always getting rid of every negative thought that I had. That's what enabled me to stay sober for years. And I say that in a bit of an extreme black and white way.

There were some things I was doing right, but there were many things going on under the surface that were causing me so much pain. And of course, in my life now, you know, after 10 years of sobriety, there's always things I'm still learning, right? I'm not by any means perfect. I'm still learning about those barriers or those burdens that I carry.

So I had, I had really this, this dogged determination at this time to never allow fear, shame, or sadness in. I thought that whatever emotion I gave my attention to would reverberate throughout my life. It would like create my reality.

There's this law of attraction or this manifesting kind of secular belief that I had going on in my head all the time. I believed that negative emotions would lead to negative outcomes. I was very superstitious about ensuring my thoughts were continuously positive or continuously directed, not giving too much time to negative emotions like shame.

I believe shame was so bad, right? I could never feel it, which is if you read the literature and you get deep into it, it's much more nuanced than that. That's not how it works. This attitude sustained me for a while, but it eventually, eventually it drained me out after years.

I was, and I was angry underneath the surface pretty much all the time. I was bitter frequently. I was blaming frequently.

I felt overwhelmed frequently, and I didn't know why. I was like, I'm doing everything right. Why am I feeling like this? I also had this belief that I could access any answer that I needed through God's spirit, like any answer for life.

I believe that whatever I should do would be revealed to me and I could simply glide through life while God made me aware of each action I should take to be successful. And when things were hard, I was like, why is this happening? What am I doing wrong? I'm not aligning myself with God's will well enough. I unconsciously used this though, as an excuse not to study things out or use my own intelligence to dream, to plan, to be deliberate in my pursuits.

I gave up portions of my agency in favor of letting God quote unquote, own my agency for me instead. And I really didn't understand this. At this time, in addition to kind of these beliefs I had that were these undertones to my life in everything I did, I also experienced mild versions of what I now understand to be delusions of reference and control.

I believed that small and insignificant occurrences in my life had deep spiritual significance. That they were signs to me of decisions I should make or what was going to happen in the future. I was like predicting the future.

I also believed that the spirit of God could work through me and speak through me. And this caused me to be certain that things I wrote or things that I said were divinely inspired. This might sound crazy to some people, but for other people with different spiritual backgrounds, this is actually pretty common.

I just got fairly extreme with it. This kept me from being logical or thinking critically or seeking outside wisdom or accepting criticism or feedback from others because I believed like I was in the right. And again, these beliefs are actually very common in varying degrees in Christian faith and religion, especially my own faith, the LDS faith.

I just didn't know how to understand how dangerous they were and how deep I really was. I couldn't see that. And again, that's not the fault of my faith.

It's really my interpretation I had of it. I thought that God was telling me how to eat, how to exercise, what to say in conversations, what decisions to make throughout the day, how to complete projects the best way, how to be successful in my business, down to the finest detail. And all the while I carried these deep feelings of fear and shame and insecurity, these delusions of reference and control.

These were my mind's way of coping by seeking certainty and predictability, by seeking security and the assurance that small things that happened in my life carried more meaning than they did so that I could feel better about myself. And here's the thing, this unfortunately left little room for the necessity of my own process of discovery, growth, learning, failure, which happens consistently in life, my own progress to become the man I wanted to be. These beliefs inhibited my ability to tolerate and regulate painful emotion, which was inevitable.

Life inevitably includes pain, and I believed if I just lived well enough, I could reach a place where I wasn't feeling pain. And that wasn't healthy, okay? Life inevitably includes painful emotion. Notice I don't say negative or bad emotion, because we often put that slap that label on it.

I say painful emotion, because painful emotion carries great lessons when I'm willing to be truly present with it. I traded this very clear reality that life is what I make it, that I had agency, that it requires struggle and pain for progress, and that it is filled with uncertainty. I traded those realities for a perspective that made me more comfortable, one that had little risk with a God who coddled rather than refined me.

And again, I had no idea this was going on. This was all unconscious. I prayed all day every day for God to tell me what to do.

Should I do this? Should I do that? This constant pressure to do everything perfectly, believing that I had to do it just the way God wanted, that was suffocating for me. It's the way I lived my life for years. I couldn't breathe.

And the whole time I called it faith. I believe there are many people living this way who don't know that they are to varying degrees. And I've watched it.

I've seen it since I went through this and have been blessed enough with some insights, which I want to share. So I didn't realize it at the time, but I had this death grip on life with this constant belief that everything was meant to be. And if I didn't do it just right, I'd miss my shot and I would not meet my destiny.

Terrifyingly perfectionistic way to live. I thought faith was leading my life when in reality, fear had me by the jugular all the time. It was threatening to end me if I didn't do everything just right every moment.

And for those who don't know, this is an obsessive, what I've just described, everything I've just described fits into a diagnosed label. It's an obsessive compulsive disorder called scrupulosity. My wife actually tried to tell me for years that I had it, but I was lost in it.

I could not see it. And this was very painful for her to be a part of. She felt powerless to stop it.

It was a miserably small and restrictive way to live. I want to make that clear. I could never accomplish anything I dreamt of as this way of thinking allowed for very little risk.

And it also allowed for no ability to be present with my painful emotions. This meant I couldn't grow much and couldn't connect with other people deeply because I can only connect with other people as deeply as I am willing to go with my own emotion, especially painful emotion. I was obsessed with staying in tune with God all of the time so that he could give me all the answers rather than simply aiming to live a good life and serve other people and pray that God would assist me in those aims.

I'm an agent. I pray that God assist me in doing good in the world. Okay.

I was not an agent. Instead, I was a slave to God, quote unquote. In reality, I was a slave to my own delusions and rules that I'd placed on myself unconsciously.

And eventually down the road, IFS and Partsworth gave me a profound understanding of the psychological dynamics of these struggles. But I would not learn about that until many years later when I was deep in the thick of the scrupulosity. So at the same time, I had these unconscious beliefs that I was completely out of tune with that I could never be successful in the ways that I wanted to be in life, whether personally or professionally.

I didn't believe in myself or in my abilities. I believed that God would tell me what to do. And if I didn't feel right about something, then it must not be meant for me.

This was all under the surface. I'd recognize it sometimes, I'd kind of come in touch with it, but I kind of ignore it for the most part. The trouble with this, this lack of belief and then this inability to meet this belief that if I feel right about something, it's meant for me, or if I don't feel right about it, it's not meant for me.

The trouble with this is that every single thing that is most worth doing is extremely uncomfortable at first. And initial feelings of fear or shame or anger, they're terrible indicators for what to do or what not to do. The things that are most worth pursuing are often those that we feel the most resistant towards.

And I was totally unwilling to face my feelings of fear and insecurity long enough to get the truth from under the surface and figure out what I was made of. Instead, I thought that uncomfortable feelings meant God was telling me that something wasn't meant for me. And when I felt positive about something, I thought it was spiritual inspiration and a green light to go.

Those positive feelings don't often last long with a lot of things. That's more like the newness, it's pink clouding, right? Versus this feeling of novelty and excitement about something starting. Hey my friend, if you've been struggling to quit porn, I'm here to tell you that you're not a bad person.

You're not a bad husband, you're not a bad father, and you're not damaged beyond repair. I'm also here to tell you that you can overcome this addiction for good. It's not about simply fighting cravings, staying busy, or attending support groups.

You can't expect yourself to just be more disciplined and get over it.

Here's a secret. Your addiction is a symptom and by building a recovery mindset and lifestyle, you can actually get rid of your cravings for porn. And I'm helping men across the world from the US to the Middle East do that right now.

In my intensive one-on-one recovery coaching program, I'll teach you step-by-step methods to successfully process your thoughts and emotions so they don't evolve into cravings. These methods are evidence-based and founded in psychological approaches like parts work and CBT. We'll also work on lifestyle changes that utilize principles from neuroscience, religion, philosophy, and even nutrition, and I'll help you improve your relationships by learning how to engage with your spouse from a place of acceptance, compassion, and courage.

If you want to become part of a worldwide movement of men who are developing this recovery mindset and lifestyle, head to nomoredesire.com and set up a free consultation. I'll see you in the program, my friend. This was an extremely dangerous place for me to stand in.

As initial emotions and thoughts, they're often misleading. I'd say more often than not, they are misleading and unrealistic, more often than they're accurate. That's what I've come to understand for me, only by taking time to be present with those initial emotions and digging underneath them to the root can you actually find truth.

And that truth often looks very different from what the original thoughts and emotions indicate. And where religion unfortunately failed to teach me this, psychology succeeded in teaching it to me. But I don't see this as a failing of religion, but a deep flaw in the way that I interpreted and applied religious principles.

I needed to take time to go inward and get real about my emotions. And until I did that, I would spend my life running from them and living small, because I was allowing myself my choices to be dictated by these parts of my mind that were perfectionistic. Now, let's return to my rock bottom moment that happened during the dissolution of my first business when it didn't go well.

I felt that God was telling me to quit my corporate job and build my first company, become a good man. I had been praying for months to quit my job. So this is before this masterclass that I ran that I was telling you about.

So we're going a little bit back in time. I felt that God was telling me to quit my corporate job in marketing and build my first company, become a good man. So I had been praying for months to quit my job, by the way, ultimately because I didn't like it.

I wanted to go off and do my own thing. So I ultimately, from what I understand about it now, I used the excuse of divine revelation to escape that discomfort. I did not know this at the time.

This was subconscious. It was really unconscious for me. I had a lot of blocks, a lot of walls.

I was not willing to look at my fears and my feelings of inadequacy that I have. I didn't get present with those, unfortunately. And so I quit my job.

To whatever degree God was actually involved in that, I don't know. But I believe this move was driven by my own wishful thinking. And I was using God as an excuse to offload my accountability.

A lot of people do this. After I quit my job, I spent the next four or five months in tiny nuances and details of the business. I'd kind of, I'd been building some material and other things and some plans for the content on the side.

Previous to this, while I was working my corporate job, I did some things right. Some of my content was really quite good in a lot of ways. But I had no strategy to my business.

And because I had this belief that since I was trying to serve people and working for a good cause, that God would bless me with success. Right? I said, I'm trying to do a good thing. So of course God's going to bless me.

He's going to bless me because I'm righteous. I believed it didn't matter what my strategy was with my business, but more so that my intentions were good. And that because I had a dream and I had my heart in it, I was passionate.

He would ensure that it would work out for me. And I was dead wrong. It was an immature belief and it blew up in my face.

So I distinctly remember the moment, this rock bottom moment, where I was in the hospital. My wife was lying asleep 24 hours or so after giving birth to our first son. So I wasn't there for me.

We were there because she had given birth. And this was a time that I should have been filled with joy and happiness. A new human being had entered the world.

My wonderful son, who's beautiful and he's a miracle. But at this time I was exhausted. I was miserable.

I had a dark cloud that followed me everywhere that I went. This was a while after my masterclass didn't go well. Okay? And I had developed this massive sense of self-doubt.

Or I should say that I didn't develop it. It had really always been there. It's just that it had finally revealed itself because I'd been brought low enough to get level with it.

The business that I dreamed of for my entire life had not panned out like I'd hoped. I was not an instant success. I had quit the good job that I had months earlier because it made me uncomfortable.

And I drained through most of our savings. I spent money unnecessarily on all sorts of fancy software and services that had yielded nothing for me, ultimately, in any real successful sense, because I didn't know how to use them. And I now had a new child to take care of and no plan.

And I was making $0 per hour, $0 per day. I had been working 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. I had neglected my wife and our relationship in favor of this boyhood dream that I was trying to fulfill.

And I had become obsessive and hyper-focused. And now I was sitting in the ashes of a business that I never had any business pursuing. Again, I'm glad this happened to me, but it was a dark, dark moment.

And it was in this moment that I made this realization. I came to this place that I was still an addict. And this was amazing to me.

I was still an addict. Nothing had changed. I may have been sober from porn for years, but I was still addicted.

And it hit me. I was a workaholic. I was addicted to this dream of building a business for me.

I had this whole big dream of how I was going to change the world and become famous and do all these amazing things. And I had sacrificed the financial and emotional security of my family to do it. I had all sorts of justifications and cultural messages of follow your dreams to back me up on that.

But those were sounding pretty hollow just about then. It wasn't until later that I learned a business's primary purpose was to support my family, not the other way around. I believed my family was there to support my business, and that was completely backwards.

And I failed in that pursuit, I believe, in part and in a deep sense, because my priorities were so backwards. I was also addicted to nutrition and exercise. So as a workaholic, I'm addicted to this dream.

I was obsessed with eating perfectly. Only the most organic, clean foods. I was eating like 12 servings of vegetables a day.

My standards were impossibly high. And they caused great strain on my wife, who was trying really hard to keep up with my demands. And I did not see it that way.

I also realized I was addicted to the manifesting meditations I was doing for 30 plus minutes a day. I had abandoned traditional prayer in favor of something more unique, so I could feel more special about myself. I wasn't pouring out my heart to God, but instead hiding behind fancy techniques.

Lastly, I was addicted to offloading my accountability and agency to God. I blamed him for what happened in my life and believed that when hard things happened, it was just God's will. And I was addicted to avoiding my hard emotions and finding the easy way out.

And all this really revealed itself over the course of a couple of months. But for sake of story, I'm sharing this rock bottom moment when it dawned on me. I was still an addict.

And that's really what started in my business. My next business, No More Desire, this approach of building a recovery mindset and lifestyle and getting to the roots of addiction and uprooting them. Because I had spent years free of pornography, but I was still an addict.

And so it was very important to me when I did decide to pursue it again, that others did not experience the same thing. So sorry for that tangent, back to the story. I thought God would give me all the answers that I needed.

So I didn't need to plan or go through the learning necessary to get good at things. I thought that he could just spiritually gift it to me. And this kept me feeling safe and secure.

I started to realize these things about myself. I realized it kept me feeling safe and secure so that I didn't need to face my feelings of fear or inadequacy. But it also led to a failed business and my failing relationship.

I was isolating myself constantly. I wasn't being real with the people around me. I was all screwed up inside.

I wasn't asking for help. I was pretending to have it all together, even to myself. I had fooled myself into thinking that I had all the answers.

But all that fell apart when my plan for becoming a good man did not work out. The business that I dreamt of didn't work. And so I realized that this thing that I called the spirit, telling me how to do everything, down to the last sentence on a blog article, or believing that saying something just right on a podcast episode would take me viral, it hadn't worked.

That spirit I'd been following was false. And for a couple of months, I thought, God, why did you abandon me? Why did this not work out the way that it was supposed to? I was trying to do something good. You left me alone.

I didn't succeed. I should have. What are your promises not real? There's inherent fallacies in that.

But I felt that God didn't love me, like he didn't care. I thought maybe my faith was wrong. Maybe my religion was wrong.

Maybe all of it was a hoax and I nearly left my faith. I was this close. But it began to dawn on me.

Perhaps it wasn't the religion, the faith itself, but perhaps it was me. Perhaps this thing that I had thought was the spirit dictating all of my decisions wasn't the spirit at all. Perhaps it was in my own head.

It was my psychology. This left me confused and angry for quite a while. I didn't know what my relationship to God was anymore.

I had thought of God as a crystal ball for many years that could give me anything I wanted and he hadn't delivered. So maybe it was time to abandon that relationship. And maybe I had viewed that relationship in a very twisted way.

Maybe it was time to find a different one and I didn't know what that looked like for a while. It took a while to build that. So as all this happened and I made these realizations, I abandoned my business, become a good man.

I shut everything down. I got rid of all of my fancy software. I went back to corporate work and marketing and we went through some very challenging financial times where we couldn't afford food.

I thought in all of this, if this business has caused me and my family so much pain, if it tore me away from my wife, if it fed into these delusions that I've had, how could it possibly be good? I saw it as a cancer, as a sickness and I was determined to destroy it so that it couldn't do any more harm to me or to my family. But the one thing that I kept was my podcast. For whatever reason, I felt a very distinct warning.

At that time not to get rid of it, I remember I sat in front of the computer for like two straight hours. I had my hand over that button to cancel my subscription to Buzzsprout and get rid of the... Because also we didn't have money, right? I was gonna get rid of that subscription and I felt very distinctly, do not do this. Everything but a voice came in my head, it said, do not do this.

So I said, okay, and I kept it on the side here and there while I worked in the corporate space again. I realized that the way I had done things had not worked. And this took me several months to start to understand as I started to rebuild my life, my foundation had been swept out from under me.

I gave up my fancy meditation techniques in favor of heartfelt prayer. I dove with more sincerity into my faith. I started attending 12-step group so I could get support, finally humbled myself enough to say I needed help.

I began going to therapy and to couples therapy. I started asking people for their advice. Steps four, five, eight, and nine of the 12-step program transformed my life because for the first time ever, I got totally and completely honest with myself about all of my pain, my flaws, my mistakes, my fears, my feelings of inadequacy, I got real about it.

I admitted the mistakes I'd made, how I'd hurt people regardless of the circumstances. I stopped blaming others and started looking at myself without filters, even if they had done things that had hurt me, I looked at me and said, what about me? What did I do? How did I respond to that? Have I made myself a victim to this? How can I change? I had done these steps in the past in another form of 12-step, but this was different. I took it seriously and I dove deep because I was open.

I had a broken heart, as God puts it in scripture. I realized many things, but one of them was this, I had spent my whole life with the assumption that I was both a kind person and a smart person. These were unconscious beliefs that I took for granted.

And as I moved through that inventory of my life, I, and I made amends to other people, I came to realize that there were so many times in my life that I had not been kind and I had not been smart. I had been selfish and foolish. Now that might sound terribly negative to a lot of people, but for me, it really wasn't.

It was a time of self-reflection and awareness. I did get into a shame space for a while. Then I came out with this awareness of how I'd acted out, out of accordance with my values.

And now that I knew that, I could change. I could actually move up and I could start climbing. Because I realized I had been wrong on a fundamental level and all my best efforts had failed, I became open to help.

As I did, I learned about IFS and parts work. This approach gave me a completely new way of seeing my mind. It gave me tools to deeply understand those spiritual delusions I was talking about, the compulsions that I dealt with, the perfectionism that I dealt with my whole life, the anxiety that was constantly leading my way in life.

And it helped me see the shields that I had hid behind since I was a small child. I realized it was not the spirit that had been talking to me, but actually a perfectionistic part of my mind that was constantly trying to lead the show in an effort to try to keep me safe and perfect. And I was able to build a healthier relationship with that part of me, seeing its behaviors for what they were, becoming aware of them and learning to lead my own mind rather than being controlled by these parts.

I developed a new relationship with God, one that gave me agency and autonomy and helped me rely on God from a place of love, of respect and of ownership over my life rather than obsession, compulsion and blaming Him for my outcomes. I started to pray for the wellbeing and blessing of other people and for their outcomes. And I just asked God for that.

And I started to pray and focus on gratitude rather than all of the obsessive things that I'd focused on before that in prayer. Because I was able to take a step back from all of my beliefs, I saw that my strategy for my first business was a bad one. It wasn't just that I had bad luck.

I had actually sabotaged myself into failure. I had not taken expert advice. I had not been willing to ask for help nor been willing to follow best practices.

I had decided that my way was better. This time around, instead, because my way did not work out, I followed best practices. I humbled myself enough to seek out advice instead of doing it my way.

My business grew and became successful because I took ownership over the failures of my first business. I learned from them and I followed what others had done to be successful while keeping my authenticity. My relationship with my wife began to heal because I took ownership over my actions and my divine role as a husband and father.

I also began putting my family first and placing the business in its proper place as a means of supporting them rather than as an end in itself. Getting these priorities straight motivated me to take the business seriously and I could still help a lot of people through it and I love that. But it is there primarily to serve my children and my wife.

I had people counting on me. It was important that I approach it in a smart and strategic way for them. Previously, I had done things the way I wanted for my own enjoyment and that failed.

I began to build a better relationship with myself as well using practices from IFS and parts work and those internal relationships began to reflect externally in my relationships with my family members. I continue to learn and grow every day and I aim to stay open. I am discovering new pain and challenges daily, of course and realizing that that's all a part of life.

I'm learning to face these pains head-on so that I can grow from them rather than trying to run from them. There are things that I thought would never change for me like my inability to sit still, how I felt sensitive all the time, the 24-7 cravings for masturbation I went through or the level of anger that I dealt with. And I can say that these things have changed and many of them are continuing to change one layer at a time.

All of this started because I chose to stop digging and start climbing and I believe that anyone can make this switch at any time. And I pray the same miracles for you, my friend. God bless and much love.

I hope that this story today has inspired you and helped 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. If you want to take your sobriety to the next level, check out my free workshop, The 8 Keys to Lose Your Desire for Porn or 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 that recovery mindset and lifestyle.

God bless. 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're experiencing thoughts of suicide, self-harm or desire to harm others, please dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.