The Unconscious Mind Behind Porn Addiction: Shame, Generational Trauma, Mother & Father Wounds, and Healing at the Root (with Michael H. Hallett)
- Jake Kastleman
- 3 days ago
- 50 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
What if porn addiction isn’t actually about sex?
That question alone unsettles most men.
Because if it’s not about sex, then what is it about?
Most men who struggle with pornography addiction assume the problem is lust, lack of discipline, or some kind of moral failure. They assume they need more willpower, more accountability, tighter structure, stricter boundaries. And while those tools absolutely have a place, many men discover something unsettling after years of effort:
They can stop the behavior… but they don’t feel whole.
They can maintain sobriety… but they still feel tense.
They can “white-knuckle” their way through urges… but they don’t feel free.
That’s because porn addiction is often not the root problem. It’s a surface-level symptom of something happening deeper in the unconscious mind.
If we want real porn addiction recovery — the kind that restores connection, integrity, and internal peace — we have to go beneath the behavior and examine what the nervous system has been trying to regulate all along.
Porn Addiction as a Signal from the Unconscious Mind
One of the most powerful ideas from my conversation with Michael Hallett was this: addiction is often a signal.
Not an excuse. Not a justification. But a signal.
When Michael examined his own compulsive porn use, he noticed something interesting: the vast majority of images had no effect on him. Only a small percentage “hooked” him. That observation shifted everything. It suggested that his arousal patterns were not random. They were patterned. They were meaningful.
From a neuroscience perspective, this makes sense. The limbic system — the emotional brain — encodes associations between emotional pain and perceived relief. Over time, certain stimuli become linked to specific unmet needs. The brain isn’t chasing pixels. It’s chasing regulation.
So the question shifts from “Why am I so weak?” to “What is my unconscious mind trying to regulate or communicate?”
That shift alone moves a man from shame to curiosity. And curiosity is the beginning of leadership.
Shame and Addiction: The Invisible Driver
If there is one force that silently fuels compulsive porn use more than most men realize, it is shame.
Not just shame after relapse — but shame around identity.
Many men grow up absorbing subtle messages that their sexual feelings are dangerous, dirty, or morally suspect. Even in faith communities that value sexuality within marriage, the messaging can become distorted: sex is bad, so suppress it — until one day it’s suddenly good. The nervous system does not easily flip that switch.
Psychology distinguishes between guilt and shame in an important way. Guilt says, “I did something wrong.” Shame says, “I am something wrong.”
Shame embeds itself not just in thought patterns, but in the body. Trauma research shows that chronic shame dysregulates the nervous system. It creates internal tension, hypervigilance, and emotional constriction. Porn temporarily relieves that tension. It offers a momentary escape from the self.
But here is the cruel irony: shame drives the behavior, and the behavior reinforces the shame.
This is why men often relapse, not because they lack discipline, but because they are attempting to soothe shame with the very thing that reinforces it.
You cannot out-discipline a shame identity. You must heal it.
Generational Trauma and the Patterns You Didn’t Choose
As our conversation unfolded, we moved into territory that many men have never seriously considered: generational trauma.
Trauma does not begin and end with you. It moves through families in subtle ways. Not just genetically, though epigenetics increasingly supports the idea that stress patterns can influence gene expression — but relationally, emotionally, culturally.
Michael shared how releasing his own shame opened the door to grief that did not originally belong to him. Grief, his father had carried silently. Grief that had never been processed.
Many men today are battling pornography addiction while carrying emotional burdens that were never consciously chosen. Family systems where sex was taboo. Households where emotion was suppressed. Fathers who coped with stress through work, anger, or withdrawal. Mothers who were overwhelmed, anxious, or emotionally unavailable because of their own unhealed wounds.
When you examine your struggle with porn addiction through this lens, a different picture emerges. You begin asking:
What was unspoken in my family?
What emotions were unsafe?
How did the adults around me regulate pain?
These questions are not about blaming your parents. They are about recognizing patterns. Because patterns can be inherited — and they can also be interrupted.
Healing generational trauma is not mystical. It is the deliberate act of bringing awareness to what was once unconscious and choosing a different response.
The Mother Wound: Nurturing, Safety, and Emotional Regulation
One of the most compelling frameworks we discussed was the concept of the “mother wound.” Developmentally, early childhood is about attachment, nurture, and emotional safety. If that nurturing environment is fractured — even subtly — the nervous system adapts.
The body learns to self-soothe prematurely.
Or it learns that its needs are excessive.
Or it learns that comfort is conditional.
Porn can become a counterfeit form of nurture. It soothes. It distracts. It simulates intimacy without vulnerability. It offers relief without relational risk.
From a neurobiological standpoint, pornography floods the brain with dopamine and temporarily suppresses stress signals. For a man who never learned safe emotional regulation, that relief can feel profound.
But relief is not the same as healing.
Healing the mother wound requires building genuine nurturing into your life.
That means learning to sit with your emotions rather than suppress them. It means engaging in embodied practices — breathing, movement, sunlight, connection — that regulate your nervous system without overstimulating it. It means replacing anesthetic relief with authentic restoration.
When real nurture increases, compulsive intensity often decreases.
The Father Wound: Boundaries, Identity, and Masculine Integration
If the mother wound concerns nurture, the father wound concerns identity and boundaries.
In early adolescence, boys develop their sense of agency — how to negotiate the world, how to assert themselves, how to withstand pressure. When this developmental window is disrupted through emotional absence, volatility, or lack of guidance, men can grow up without stable internal boundaries.
Some collapse into people-pleasing and avoidance. Others overcompensate with aggression or dominance. Both patterns stem from insecurity in identity.
Porn can become a private arena of control. A place where a man feels powerful without risk. Desired without vulnerability. In command without confrontation.
But that kind of power is fragile.
Healing the father wound involves rebuilding boundaries in the real world. It involves telling the truth when it’s uncomfortable. Saying no when necessary.
Accepting responsibility for emotional triggers instead of blaming external circumstances.
Healthy masculinity is not suppression. It is grounded strength paired with emotional awareness.
Symptom Management vs. Root-Cause Healing
This is where the conversation becomes decisive.
There is a difference between managing symptoms and resolving root causes.
Symptom management asks: “How do I stop watching porn?”
Root-cause healing asks: “Why does my nervous system believe it needs this?”
Symptom management can create sobriety. Root-cause healing creates integration.
If you have experienced seasons of sobriety that still felt tense, rigid, or joyless, you may have experienced the limits of symptom management. Without addressing shame, trauma, emotional regulation, and identity wounds, the underlying tension remains.
Eventually, the system demands relief again.
Root-cause healing requires courage. It requires turning toward discomfort rather than fleeing from it. It requires examining childhood conditioning, inherited narratives, and stored grief.
But this is where lasting change happens.
Responsibility Without Self-Condemnation
One of the most important shifts in recovery is learning to take responsibility without collapsing into shame.
Responsibility does not mean blame. It means ownership.
When you feel triggered — stressed, rejected, overwhelmed — you can either externalize that discomfort or turn inward and examine it. The immature impulse is to blame circumstances or other people. The mature response is to ask:
What part of me is being activated?
What wound is being touched?
What emotion am I avoiding?
In Internal Family Systems language, the compulsive part often functions as a firefighter — rushing in to extinguish distress quickly. When you meet that part with curiosity instead of hatred, you move from internal warfare to leadership.
You do not excuse the behavior.
But you do understand the function.
And when you understand the function, you can replace it.
Masculine and Feminine Imbalance: Doing and Being
We also discussed a broader cultural imbalance. Modern society heavily rewards doing — productivity, achievement, external validation. But human nervous systems require rest, presence, reflection, and connection.
When being is underdeveloped, the body seeks intensity.
Porn offers intensity.
It offers stimulation when life feels flat. It offers relief when pressure builds. It offers fantasy when the connection feels distant.
But it does not cultivate wholeness.
Healthy masculinity integrates doing and being. It combines strength with softness. Discipline with self-awareness. Responsibility with compassion.
When those elements come into balance, addiction loses its grip.
Healing Porn Addiction at the Root
If you have tried willpower and structure and still feel stuck, here is the real question:
Are you willing to look deeper?
Healing porn addiction at the root requires:
Emotional literacy. Nervous system regulation. Honest reflection on family patterns. Confronting shame. Strengthening boundaries. Seeking trauma-informed support if necessary.
It is not a quick fix.
But it is real.
The unconscious mind is not your enemy. It has often been trying — imperfectly — to protect you. When you decode the signal rather than demonize it, you begin to reclaim authority over your internal world.
And when that happens, you are no longer merely managing urges.
You are becoming integrated.
That is what real freedom feels like.
Not suppression.
Not fear.
But strength is rooted in understanding.
And that is the work.
Interested in learning more about Michael H. Hallett's work? You can find out more at: https://www.michaelhhallett.com/
Join the free No More Desire Brotherhood and access the February Challenge inside the community. You’ll get a free PDF with daily body-gratitude meditations, the Story Over Skin tool, and an optional 10% discount for the full Reclaim Sexual Joy course. Sign up for the February Challenge here!
Additional Free Resources:
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Full Transcription of Episode 134: The Unconscious Mind Behind Porn Addiction: Shame, Generational Trauma, and Healing at the Root
Jake Kastleman (00:01.238)
Michael, welcome, man. We're gonna dive right in. Looking back now, what experiences in your life most shaped the way that you understand shame, trauma, and addiction, because you have this fascinating view on this. We're gonna get into father wounds and mother wounds and this generational trauma and so many beautiful topics that fill me with excitement. I'm honestly, I'm personally very excited to get into this myself and to see and...
and understand this topic better. So tell me what experiences in your life have shaped this view that you have.
Michael H Hallett (00:37.035)
So the first one I can go back to was actually my first experience of porn, which happened when I was 10 years old. And that was actually, it was a soft core comic. I was living in the Italian part of Switzerland at the time, and the Italians used to produce these soft core. And this was actually like a Nazi soft core thing. it was actually like a crucifixion image.
Jake Kastleman (00:49.87)
Okay, yeah.
Jake Kastleman (01:00.206)
Mmm.
Jake Kastleman (01:04.903)
wow, that must have messed with your mind, goodness sakes.
Michael H Hallett (01:05.131)
So it was Nazism, sex, crucifixion, torture, all rolled into one. And I actually shut out the memory for probably about 30, 40 years before I actually recovered the memory of seeing that. So that was the first thing that I can point to. The second thing is that when I was an adolescent, a teen, I wasn't that interested in playing games. I was interested in inventing them.
Jake Kastleman (01:14.464)
wow.
Michael H Hallett (01:36.596)
And so I used to create games. was like I wanted to know how it worked. I wanted to know what was going on behind the scenes in an environment rather than just playing the game without questioning it. And from there, I ended up working in a canning factory. And this is the biggest canning factory in the southern hemisphere. This was in New Zealand.
Jake Kastleman (01:52.942)
Yes.
Michael H Hallett (02:04.081)
And it's now H.J. Hines Factory. So we're talking big factories. Then there I ended up designing factory software when there wasn't any. And if you go into a factory like a food factory, and it is absolute chaos of stuff flying in there, all of the components and the people and the machines and electricity and water. it's just to think to say, are we going to, how do we figure out what's going on here and how much all of this costs?
just completely messes with your head. So my brain has this ability to look at these, look at things in this way. And I ended up as an IT consultant in America in the 1990s. working for an American firm out of Boston, fantastic place. I really enjoyed my time in America. And I ended up addicted to porn at the same time. And so without even thinking about it,
I took those skills that were partly my native way of thinking and partly what I'd learned as a process analyst and I applied them to my porn. And I came up with answers that were completely different from what everybody else in the therapy world was doing.
Jake Kastleman (03:24.365)
And I think that's what's it's so useful we all have these different perspectives these different gifts that we bring to the table and the way that you see addiction and what you have to offer to men is unique from what I would or what somebody else would and so it's we all have our different gifts and that's It's awesome. So that is something I'm excited to hear more about. So tell me tell me more about this unique approach because you talk about
porn language, right? And you talk about a few other topics. So let's dive into that a bit and some of the discoveries that you began to make years ago about your addiction.
Michael H Hallett (04:04.395)
Yeah, so this is a long time ago. This is going back about a quarter of a century now. And so I remember I used to have these binges. And this was, again, before video. video existed, but it was super grainy. So it used to be all of these thumbnail sites where you'd click on an image, and then you'd get a series of photos. So I used to come in, and I'd be.
Jake Kastleman (04:08.363)
Right.
Michael H Hallett (04:30.557)
And you'd see an image that you liked. So you'd say, open that tab. And then you see another one and open that tab. And you're jumping from one thing, going from the dopamine hit to dopamine hit, jumping from these. And eventually, I'd just do that literally till the PC, till you'd open so many tabs that the computer crashed. And then it was like, whoa, that wasn't good. But what I would have.
Jake Kastleman (04:38.743)
Hunt.
Yes.
Jake Kastleman (04:50.305)
Right. Yes. Which is analogous to what was happening to your dopaminergic system. This crashing and shutting down, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michael H Hallett (04:58.923)
Yeah, yes, exactly. But what I came to realize as I started thinking about what I was doing was that 95 % or so of the images had no impact whatsoever. And it didn't matter what was in them. It didn't matter how sexy they were. It didn't matter what was going on, who was in it, how good looking they were. None of that mattered. And so then I started saying, what is the
What are these images that I'm attracted to? What's the common denominator?
Jake Kastleman (05:34.593)
Yeah. And you began to witness that for yourself. I wonder if you might be vulnerable enough to tell us what was one of the common denominators or a few of them.
Michael H Hallett (05:45.739)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I'm actually quite very lucky with the first set of images that I was looking at, because actually it was the faces. The first set of porn images that really grabbed me, it was actually women that were immersed in sexual enjoyment. But it had to be completely natural. If there was anything forced about it,
Jake Kastleman (05:56.759)
Right.
Jake Kastleman (06:07.777)
right and and and for
Michael H Hallett (06:15.754)
It's like, didn't do it.
Jake Kastleman (06:17.901)
Yeah, and for those who don't know about this, you know what Michael is talking about is by beginning to witness that, it gives you a trailhead, right, to follow down, to actually understand the deeper symbolic meaning behind what you're seeking through the porn, right? What your unconscious is seeking through the porn. It's not, I love to see that because it's arousing. Yes, it is arousing, but that's not the point. That's just very surface level, right?
Michael H Hallett (06:46.824)
Yeah, and from there, from those images, I understood that I was deeply ashamed of myself as a sexual being. And that opened the doorway to realizing that shame was a big player here.
Jake Kastleman (06:55.991)
Hmm
Jake Kastleman (07:03.413)
Yes, because that, I mean, it makes me reflect on my life. I don't know what your background is, Michael, but for me, come from a very conservative Christian background, right? And I grew up, actually, one of my colleagues, Drew Boas, it best. And this message is changing. I think we're getting wise to it now in this generation, more and more people are. But the message in purity culture is sex is dirty, so save it for someone you love.
which is the most paradoxical implicit message. No one ever says it that way, but that's a way of summarizing some of what that message is. And so I inherently understood from a very young age, sex is bad and I shouldn't do it. And then one day, I mean, I didn't even know what sex was until I was 12 and it's embarrassing for my dad. He was dealing with, well,
Michael H Hallett (07:38.792)
Yeah, absolutely.
Jake Kastleman (07:59.48)
this is public knowledge, he was dealing with his own pornography addiction. So he felt totally unable to even approach anything to do with sexuality. And I understand that. it, unfortunately he revealed it to me much, much too late, right? But when I, when I learned about it, it was just, okay, well, I understand that me being attracted to women, unfortunately, kind of the message I got through culture was me being attracted to girls, that's an evil feeling. It's lust.
And it's this sexual desire that I should not feel and I should ignore it or trying to willpower my way through it, get away from it. And so that just meant that when I went to porn when I was 13, it was very secretive and it was loaded with shame. Cause that's how I related to my sexuality. And so when I began going through puberty, it was...
I don't really understand what's happening to me, but I do know that this stuff is bad. That's what I do know. So I should keep this secret and it's a horrible thing I'm feeling. so heavy laden with shame. And I didn't understand until many years later that the shame is one of the biggest things that was drawing me back to it again and again and again. And there are much deeper, there's a much deeper meaning behind that and how our unconscious mind is actually trying to bring us to healing. I think you would, you would say.
Michael H Hallett (09:23.754)
Yeah, and what I came to understand was that the porn was my wounded sexuality communicating with me using the most intelligent language at its disposal. And I'd just like to give you an example of that from a very dear friend who I've permission to share the story. And so this is in kind of a stardate. He phoned me up for help with porn. And eventually, we became very, very close friends.
Jake Kastleman (09:23.851)
Right, and I agree.
Jake Kastleman (09:34.748)
Mm-hmm. I love that.
Jake Kastleman (09:43.17)
Yes.
Michael H Hallett (09:52.005)
And so he phoned me one day and he was saying he was addicted to, and he was about my age, he was addicted to images of older men having sex with younger women. And he said he couldn't stop looking at them, was just compulsively pulled to look at them. He felt awful and he'd go to a supermarket and see young women and feel resentful that he couldn't have sex with them and he'd feel awful because he didn't want to.
Jake Kastleman (10:04.909)
Mm.
Michael H Hallett (10:20.04)
feel that way, and all of this was going on. And I said, well, why are you looking at these images? And he said, well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? I wish I was the older guy in these pictures. And then I said to him, and these images, who do you empathize with?
Jake Kastleman (10:32.737)
Right? Right?
Michael H Hallett (10:39.334)
And there was this pin-dropping silence, and he said, the women.
And in that moment, he understood what those images were communicating to him. And again, went back to when he was a teenager. He grew up in a household with a German mother who had Germanic cultures, very, very anti-sex, very loaded with sexual shame. All the Protestant countries are. And his father was disabled. And his
mother didn't want to have to deal with a young male becoming sexually active because that triggered her shame. So she insisted instead of giving him time to go out and meet girls and learn to socialize, she insisted that he looked after his father.
Jake Kastleman (11:24.749)
you
Jake Kastleman (11:35.764)
Right.
Michael H Hallett (11:36.252)
And so she effectively hijacked his puberty to avoid her own shame. so he understood all of that in a fraction of the time that it took me to describe her. And within a few days, two things changed. One, he lost complete interest in looking at those images. And two, his relationship with his mother improved because he understood that she was just a young.
Jake Kastleman (11:44.385)
Yes.
Michael H Hallett (12:06.073)
know, trying to do the best deal with a situation that was difficult for her in the best that she was able to given her emotional literacy.
Jake Kastleman (12:16.493)
It's amazing. There's so much depth and beauty in this healing there that happens. you say addiction is a signal rather than a problem. I'll say addiction is a surface level symptom. So same kind of thing. It's pointing to something much deeper that's going on. you, mean, again, the unconscious mind is pointing us to, hey,
There's something you gotta pay attention to here. I'm trying to communicate with you that you're carrying these burdens and I want you be able to be healed from them. Where we just demonize what's happening so quickly, right? You're looking at porn, you're perverted, you're messed up, you're screwed up, right? Why do I have this problem? Why can't I stop looking? Meanwhile, underneath, there's this force for goodness that is trying to emerge. It's just complex.
Michael H Hallett (13:09.821)
Yeah, absolutely.
Jake Kastleman (13:13.387)
Right, until we understand it. Once he understood what was happening, now his mind is freed, that kind of switch is flipping in his mind. It doesn't work that way for everybody, but people can have these eye-opening moments, right, where then, my gosh, I get it. Now I have compassion for myself. Now I have compassion for my mom, compassion for my dad. Now I feel this sense of what I would call coherence or integration or...
a wholeness, right? That is then occurring in me. Things are coming together. And that compassion is what is needed, which is the opposite of what we often think. We think we need to force our way into healing or stop what you're doing or just be judged forcefully enough until we discontinue and it's the opposite. It's what we need. So.
Michael H Hallett (14:06.013)
Yeah, absolutely. And this brings me to what is really a critical piece of understanding about not just porn therapy, but any kind of therapy, or any kind of problem solving, which is there's two ways you can go. And one way is symptom management, and the other is root cause resolution. And our society, by default, we tend to go for symptom management because it's the quick and easy win.
And that's where, here in Britain, we'd call that sweeping it under the carpet. And you just want to make the problem go away. And with root cause resolution is what it says on the label, you're going to dig down and get to the bottom of the problem. you're going after the cause rather than going after the symptom. And for me, it's a matter of understanding
Jake Kastleman (14:58.189)
Mm-hmm.
Michael H Hallett (15:01.021)
whether people are ready for that because the symptom management is very alluring. think if I can just stop looking at this thing, I'm done with it. And really, you're not. Yeah. Yeah. The problem with the, well, it's also the beauty of the root cause resolution is that you discover there's a whole bunch of other stuff underneath the hood that's not good.
Jake Kastleman (15:11.671)
Right, then I can get back to the rest of my life, right? Right.
Jake Kastleman (15:26.465)
Yes, yeah, exactly. so in this vein, what do you think that most addiction recovery approaches out there are getting wrong? And you've kind of said it already, but not because they're bad, but because they're incomplete. What I would refer to as what you were saying is it's a broken recovery.
Michael H Hallett (15:48.924)
Yeah, I say I used to have quite a polarized view that they were all rubbish and that's not how I see it now. You've got to be ready for the deep work because it's tough. It's going to bring up things about your family. You're to learn things about yourself and your family and society that you'd perhaps rather not have learned. You'll get wild as if you can just stop looking at it.
Jake Kastleman (15:55.531)
Right. But yeah.
Jake Kastleman (16:12.503)
Yeah.
Michael H Hallett (16:16.969)
And I think some of this also depends on where you are in your life. And as you kind of pass the midpoint of your life, you enter into more into reflection. And generally the people I see who are going for the root cause resolution, tend to be there maybe in their 50s or older, and they've reached a stage where just brushing it under the carpet is no longer good.
Jake Kastleman (16:29.111)
Yes.
Michael H Hallett (16:46.761)
working with the symptom management, you know, it may be okay for a while when you're younger and then maybe later on it's time to go deeper. So I see it now more as a complimentary, as a beginning step rather than something that I used to think was just completely worthless.
Jake Kastleman (17:07.179)
Yes. And one of the things that was brought to mind for me, Michael, and what you're talking about is, you know, I will refer to it as as broken recovery. my story, you know, and I showed this in kind of my episode 100, I did this whole rock bottom episode on my real rock bottom, because often people think, okay, you hit your rock bottom, then you get sober, and then you stay sober, and then your whole life's better.
For me, not that way. And I think we all go through stages and we have different layers we break through and higher heights we rise to and that's happening our whole life. But what I, and by the way, if you experienced my, if you're hearing my son crying in the background, I think the listeners won't hear that because we'll edit this afterwards and clear that out. But anyway, I was going to say that I was seven years into sobriety before I had a,
major realization that for the last seven years I had been sober from porn. had been doing so from a place that was broken, that was incomplete because I was all about structure and plans and all about boundaries and daily recovery rhythms, right, for spirit, and body, which by the way, all these things are good, but I was missing
Michael H Hallett (18:15.581)
Yes.
Jake Kastleman (18:32.439)
what is the core of what I do now and what I teach people, which is self-awareness. You have to learn what is going on in the unconscious mind and get deeply in touch with emotion and learn how to regulate emotion, learn how to understand emotion. What am I carrying? What are the burdens that are behind my behavior? What's the perfectionistic kinds of things I'm dealing with? The rigidity, these unfair expectations I have myself, these...
Messages of shame and self-worth that I carry around this fear that I'm dealing with unconsciously that I'm totally refusing to even Look at or get in touch with right this grief. I carry around all of these things This is what recovery is about and I spent I spent seven years Just be positive just be structured just be on point just be productive stay busy Don't stop right because if I stop
then that part of my mind that talks about using porn or masturbating, it's gonna go and I can't do it. I can't go there. what, one of the major impacts from that, I couldn't connect with the people around me very well because I was so, it was tense all the time, always tense, right? Just trying to be on point. And so now it's a much more balanced recovery as I was called, more whole, right? That includes both doing and being. I need both sides.
have to have both. And neither is more more valuable than the other when it comes to recovery and when it comes to happiness, you know. And that reminds me of your mother and father wounds that you talk about because I would say doing is masculine being is feminine, we have to bring these together in our lives. So you have to talk about inherited or generational trauma. And if I'm skipping over something you want to say, just tell me. But
How does trauma get passed down? How does it show up later as things like addiction? And can we talk about kind of these mother and father wounds that are integrated in this generational trauma and some of this framework?
Michael H Hallett (20:39.748)
So what happened with me is I'd identified that I had this issue with shame as a result of the porn. And so I started, at first, like all of us, I think, well, it's only me. I'm the only person who's got this. Nobody else has got any shame. I'm the only person in the world who's ever lived with, who's got all of this shame. And so then I started identifying how it showed up in my life.
Jake Kastleman (21:00.951)
Yes.
Michael H Hallett (21:07.836)
And I started seeing tiny, there are tiny little things. You look at people's social media avatars. You can decode how much shame somebody's got just by looking. And all these people that put up the avatars of their dog or a picture of them standing in front of the Great Pyramid or where you can't see them. The way people hug and they keep their backside in the next room away from the other person's body because they're afraid of touching bodies. There are all of these signals.
And I started seeing these signals all through society. And I realized then that this shame is everywhere and it affects everything. It affects all of our social structures, our social interactions. And I just could see we were living in this environment, this civilization that's literally dripping in shame. And I started just doing meditations and
Jake Kastleman (22:00.779)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Michael H Hallett (22:06.413)
working, just working to access that shame and release it within myself. I had no idea where I was going with it. But I knew I had to go there, so I went there. And at the same time, by this time, I'd ended up moving back to Britain where I'd originally been from. And I started, I don't know what drove what, but I started.
looking into family history. And I was sort of back where my family had come from. But what started happening was by releasing the shame, I started releasing a trauma that was in the family. And the first one I released was around my father's mother. And this comes back to the grief that you were talking about before. My father's mother had died.
in 1926 when he was only four years old. that was shortly after the First World War. There was a society where everybody had suffered and you weren't allowed to show emotion anyway. And as a four-year-old, he just wouldn't have known how to deal with the situation. And so I ordered a copy of her death certificate so I could at least find out why she died.
Jake Kastleman (23:22.903)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Kastleman (23:30.221)
And by the way, when we can't deal with something like that, our body just stores it, is what I teach people. Is that similar to what you Yeah. Right. Right.
Michael H Hallett (23:35.598)
It stores it and then it gets passed on. And so I remember this, I'll get to the mechanics of it, but this certificate arrived in the mail and I can remember, I can replay the memory of it, hearing the mail arriving and picking it up and opening the envelope. And next thing I was lying on the floor howling with pain. And there was a part of me that was standing up here beside me looking down and that part of me
knew that that was not my pain. I knew instantly that was my father's pain and that he had carried it all of his life and he had passed it on to me. At that time I didn't even know the word trauma, let alone generational trauma. It was a few years later I had a colleague who was dealing with some family trauma and from her I kind of learned the language and this was actually a thing. And what I now understand is that by removing the shame,
I literally lifted the lid off my own unconscious. And as I did that, all of these pieces that were broken, like this grief for my, you my father's grief for his mother surfaced. And over time, there were a variety of pieces of grief from, there were problems on both sides of my family, breakdowns and abandonment, disappearance, and all of these.
things started coming to the surface. One of the pieces which relates to the porn is that my grandmother had an affair. My other grandmother had an affair and got kicked out of the family. And that caused, just on my mother's side, that caused massive shame for her and anything to do with sexuality. And so when I was growing up, it wasn't so much that sex was bad, but that it was completely absent.
Jake Kastleman (25:24.308)
Mm-hmm.
Michael H Hallett (25:33.497)
It was so bad that it was nowhere to be seen.
Jake Kastleman (25:33.889)
Right?
Jake Kastleman (25:38.037)
Right. Don't even acknowledge it. Well, yeah.
Michael H Hallett (25:39.783)
Yeah, don't even go there. Yeah. But also, of the information on my grandparents, that was all just completely eliminated. My grandfather was actually quite famous. He was a pilot before the First World War, and he was a decorated combat pilot in the First World War. And all of that was just completely hidden.
Jake Kastleman (25:50.487)
Mom.
Michael H Hallett (26:06.044)
because if you went to the grandfather, that brought up the memory of the grandmother, which triggered the shame and the pain that hadn't been dealt with.
Jake Kastleman (26:15.329)
Yes. And I think, you know, where my mind goes on this and I'd love to hear your thoughts and what you've discovered, what you've researched, et cetera. I've got two different places. So I've read enough literature on us passing traumas down. We do. It's genetic or epigenetic, right? So we actually do pass it down to our lineage, our children, unless we process and work through it, then it's passed down.
Now that's fascinating that we can bring that down to a scientific or biological kind of basis, right? But also if you go to scripture, if you go to the Bible, Christ talks about it. He actually says, you will pass down curses or blessings to the third and fourth generation. And often in the past, I've looked at that as like, geez, you know, Christ, like that's rough. What a jerk. Why would you say that? That's not fair.
And I believe he was simply sharing a truth that this is how it works. Like this is how, and we call it genetics. could write, they would use other terms at that time, right? We just have modern terms for these things, but you pass it down. So if you want that to change, you must find forgiveness. You must find inside yourself the ability to forgive means to give away. So I have to be able to come in touch with the truth, to confess what's actually happened.
in my family, this trauma that's being carried and to forgive or give it up, give it away. Right. And now I can repent, which would be to change. I can change, right. My life can change. So broken down into those terms, it's not this, you know, esoteric, strange odd. It's there's actually very concrete ways that these work. Just, I believe that that was shared, shared anciently in these ways because they understood things very much from the spiritual perspective. Now.
I think we're able to integrate both the spiritual and more the psychological and the scientific together, which is really cool.
Michael H Hallett (28:19.899)
Yeah, so my spiritual upbringing was just as messed up as all of the other aspects of my upbringing. I can assure you of that. But actually, as a result of my journey, I actually ended up coming to Christ a few years ago, about seven years ago. And that was really difficult and really painful.
Jake Kastleman (28:28.178)
Mm, okay. I'm sorry.
Jake Kastleman (28:42.103)
Good for you, man. That's awesome.
Michael H Hallett (28:48.583)
But I absolutely love the confluence of trauma and the Bible. I absolutely love talking about that because there's no question in my mind. Not only did the ancients understand that trauma was passed down, but once you start clearing trauma, some of, as you say, some of these weird things that are particularly in the gospels, when you look at them from a trauma-informed perspective, there's no question in my mind.
Jake Kastleman (28:48.877)
Mmm.
Michael H Hallett (29:17.947)
that Christ is saying, you have got trauma and this is what you need to heal. And there's even instances where they're casting the demons, where people are falling over on the ground. And that's exactly the experience that I had when this trauma left me. that for me, that's my interpretation of what they're saying is you've literally broken into a trauma and it's knocked you off your feet.
Jake Kastleman (29:45.324)
out.
Michael H Hallett (29:45.967)
I've had that experience more than once.
Jake Kastleman (29:48.984)
Yes, and I think there's a spiritual side to that that we can't see, but I think there's also a verifiable, know, neurological, biological side that we can see. And especially with books like The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Van der Kolk, you know, he outlines how, and many other people have outlined as well, how the body and mind are linked up. They're one. We've spent all this time since Descartes, you know, in the 1600s that separated mind from body, you know, and he said these are separate.
things and the body is a machine and the mind is not, you know, these are two separate things. They're not separate. They're integrated. They're one emotion, my biology, my neurology, the nervous system is linked. It links up my entire body, right? To my brain, to my heart, to my gut and emotion and memory is processed and stored throughout my whole body. So it's all integrated. It's all connected. And
when we start to understand that and to view it differently, think it's not, it becomes less mysterious and weird. We start to understand, to be frank, something like an exorcism, right? Where someone's body contorts and they go crazy and they're right because they're actually, their body, their psyche and their nervous system is releasing all this emotion, releasing all this pain and what these burdens that they've carried.
And so it's extremely traumatic and their body contorts because it's all linked up. Now, the spiritual aspect to that I also believe in, right? Demons and angels and all these things. these are not opposed. I think they are all working together as one, is what I believe. Yeah.
Michael H Hallett (31:23.205)
Yeah.
Michael H Hallett (31:32.42)
No, not at all. Yeah, so the way I look at it, I say, is that every trauma has got a mental, emotional, and physical component to it. It's got a, the three layers are there, they're always there, they're all connected. The mental one is the easiest one to get to. So you can see that there's an issue, but you can't do anything about it.
Jake Kastleman (31:46.605)
Hmm.
Jake Kastleman (31:58.168)
Yes, you understand something conceptually.
Michael H Hallett (31:59.175)
And very often it will take quite some time to progress from the mental understanding of an issue to gaining what I think of as getting access to the code. As a one-time software developer, it's when you go from having read access to having write access. And that's when you get the emotional access, when you can actually get inside the feeling. And then after that, then once you release that, then the
Jake Kastleman (32:17.645)
I like that.
Michael H Hallett (32:29.124)
the body release follows along in its own time later on. And I've had experiences where a trauma has released and I've discovered that I've had muscles that are extremely tense, just really intense like a calf muscle or something. And I know that that muscle has been intensely stressed all my life.
Jake Kastleman (32:46.423)
Right. Yes. Yep.
Michael H Hallett (32:56.498)
But it's been numbed out by the trauma because the trauma numbs, it fogs your brain, it numbs you emotionally and it numbs you physically. Yes, yes, that's all part of the homeostasis to keep you functioning as well as you can given the circumstances that you're in.
Jake Kastleman (33:04.087)
which is a protective mechanism, right?
Jake Kastleman (33:15.053)
And when we, when we take it from, know, an IFS or parts work perspective, we have these managers or firefighters, right? These protective kinds of parts. So they act physically in the body, they act mentally or emotionally in the mind and the nervous system. And so they're doing their very best to protect us and to help us at least survive, but also to be happy. And unfortunately their strategies don't work. often cause the problem that they're seeking to fix.
Michael H Hallett (33:37.146)
Yes.
Jake Kastleman (33:44.171)
But nonetheless, the intent is to protect us and to help us. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Michael H Hallett (33:48.549)
Yeah, their strategies are designed to deal with a problem in the moment. this is where, I mean, basically, trauma is fight or flight gone wrong. So they work perfectly well. If you have a problem and you can solve it quickly with fight or flight, then those mechanisms work well. When those mechanisms fail, and this is where inherited trauma comes in, for instance, if you're in a concentration camp in World War II, and
Jake Kastleman (33:52.897)
Mmm.
Jake Kastleman (33:57.292)
Right. Right.
Michael H Hallett (34:16.96)
You can't, you know, you fight or flight are not available to you.
Jake Kastleman (34:21.227)
Right, you can't go anywhere, you're trapped. You have no power.
Michael H Hallett (34:23.242)
But yeah, you can't go anywhere. but your body keeps producing the chemicals to activate your fight or flight. So you end up with a screwed up imbalance. And so instead of fight or flight, you go into freeze and fawn.
Jake Kastleman (34:41.581)
Right. Right.
Michael H Hallett (34:43.726)
which are basically buying time.
Jake Kastleman (34:49.099)
Yes, that actually brings us to the next topic, which is related to all this, are these, these mother wounds, right? I wanted to really touch on these. We'll talk about father wounds as well, but these early wounds around nurturing and safety, specifically mother wounds, shape shame, they shape people pleasing, which I see constantly. That's something I've, I,
did especially in my life and have done my whole life still working on that, right? But this is a mother wound is how you teach it. So I'd love to hear more about how these wounds shape and kind of these patterns that we get into when it comes to mother wounds.
Michael H Hallett (35:34.566)
Yeah, so for me there was a very clear progression. I started dealing with the porn, then I moved on to the shame, and then I started having these inherited traumas started flying off around grief and so on. And then I found myself getting down to understand that because of everything that had happened to my parents.
and the brokenness that they had experienced. Although they cared for me physically, they had been unable to care for me emotionally.
Jake Kastleman (36:11.799)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Michael H Hallett (36:12.952)
And so the mother wound, and this is very interesting because I went and researched this. And for me, this actually goes back to the fall. When we look at the fall of Adam and Eve, because if you actually go and look at the data, all of the scientific and academic data, the fall happened.
Jake Kastleman (36:23.501)
The fall of Adam and Eve, is that? Yeah, yeah.
Jake Kastleman (36:37.495)
Fascinating. Yeah, I wanna know more about that.
Michael H Hallett (36:39.586)
If you go back to, if you go and look at the Sahara in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, they weren't deserts. They were grasslands. And there was a major, there was a climate change event that happened that affected global rainfall. And the result of that was this huge area right across the whole of the Sahara through the Middle East, through Arabia into
Jake Kastleman (36:46.539)
Right.
Michael H Hallett (37:08.926)
Central Asia suffered a massive loss of rainfall and there were hunter-gatherer communities living all through there and over the course of a couple of millennia or longer even, all of that dried up. And so all of these people who'd been living there and feeding off that land, suddenly their food and water sources evaporated. And out of that came the first violent societies.
Jake Kastleman (37:24.845)
Mmm.
Michael H Hallett (37:39.084)
And all of that. what happened was that these people experienced long-term famine. And the effect of famine has been documented scientifically even in more recent times. it causes an indifference to anything other than feeding oneself.
Basically, it breaks down community, it breaks down communication, and eventually even the mothers lose interest in their children.
And as that happens, then the child doesn't receive the emotional nurturing that it needs. And then it grows up into an adult that doesn't have the right emotional patterning. And then it just carries on. so this has been going on. And if you look at the history of civilization, can study this. The guy who wrote about this is a geographer called James D'Amio.
Jake Kastleman (38:36.333)
Mm.
Michael H Hallett (38:47.115)
He passed away quite recently. He wrote a book called Saharaja and he's documented the whole of the rise of all of our social problems basically came out of this. there's even though I think the fall can be interpreted in other ways, in more spiritual ways and in terms of initiation. I think in many, many ways, I think there's a bunch of things going on in there, but also it did happen.
And that's where humanity's anti-feminine slant came in. Because what happens with famine is that feelings become so painful that you push back against the whole feminine side of being human. Yeah, massive can of worms. say, I'm writing about that at the moment. Yeah, it is.
Jake Kastleman (39:31.543)
You suppress them, yeah.
Jake Kastleman (39:36.581)
I love that. It's amazing.
That's awesome. Is this a book? Well, I won't put you on the spot, but in the next few years, you're publishing this book potentially or what is that kind of
Michael H Hallett (39:48.806)
Yes, yes, hopefully. There is so much information to try and organize. It is an absolute beast of a thing. But I'll keep you know, I'll hit you up as a beta reader. I promise you that. Yeah, but but but well, you we can, you know, we can say that that's conjecture, if you like, but what you can see in society very clearly is lack of healthy nurturing. And you can see it more and more.
Jake Kastleman (39:57.261)
yeah, I can only imagine.
Yes, please. Yes. love that.
Michael H Hallett (40:18.533)
happening. you can see it. So for instance, here in Britain, there's a debate about whether primary schools should be doing teeth cleaning, cleaning children's teeth as a compulsory activity. Why is that happening? Because there are more and more kids coming in whose parents have been unable to teach them to clean their teeth. They've got children coming into primary school wearing nappies.
Jake Kastleman (40:30.189)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Kastleman (40:39.821)
Hmm.
Jake Kastleman (40:45.741)
Wearing that, what is that? What is a nappy? I actually don't know. diapers, okay, yes. And they're coming into kindergarten. They're,
Michael H Hallett (40:47.461)
Diapas, sorry. me, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they're five, you know, they're five years old and they're still in diapas because the parents haven't been able to. And so this is where it's actually we're seeing the failure of physical nurturing, let alone the emotional nurturing.
Jake Kastleman (41:02.187)
Yes.
Jake Kastleman (41:05.887)
And you see that there's so much to that, but tell me more about what you see that as a result of that's going on societally or in the home, you know, in people's lives, that's leading to this lack of nurturing, both emotionally and now physically, because I do know what you're talking about. I mean, I see this.
Michael H Hallett (41:26.021)
What I'm seeing is that there's a split happening in humanity between the people who are kind of waking up and saying, there's some stuff I need to deal with here. And then there's some other people who are saying, I just want to anesthetize myself.
Jake Kastleman (41:44.545)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes.
Michael H Hallett (41:46.553)
I just want entertainment. don't, yeah. So I, you know, I see some people who are, I see people who are getting healthier. I see people who are, people, turning to organic food. They're putting more attention into their children. They're improving their work-life balance. They're doing a bunch of, they're unplugging from.
Jake Kastleman (41:49.121)
Right? Right. And I think.
Michael H Hallett (42:15.672)
Netflix, know, they're doing a whole, there's a whole raft of things that are saying, whoa, let's focus on, on healthy nurturing here. And that's, and that's both external and, and internal. And then I'm seeing there are a lot of people who just, they just want the next shiny thing because this is too painful to deal with. And you can, you can see, I don't know if you see it, but
Jake Kastleman (42:26.433)
Yes.
Jake Kastleman (42:31.735)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Kastleman (42:37.804)
Yeah.
Michael H Hallett (42:43.575)
Almost every time I go out now into the world, I encounter something weird, whether it's wild driving or somebody shouting in a shop or just, know, 10 years ago this wasn't happening. It was rare. And now it's going on, you every time you go out, there's weird stuff, people behaving weirdly.
Jake Kastleman (42:59.842)
Right.
Jake Kastleman (43:09.101)
One of the things that I reflect on when you say this, Michael, and one of the things that has been particularly prominent in my life over the last, I mean, especially the last six months, but it's been going on for years, this shift I've been making, which is when it comes to technology, TV use, smartphone use, video games, entertainment, right? We are so entertainment saturated. And what I see again and again is this entertainment saturation.
And the pursue, pursue of pornography, right, which is another form of its, you know, anesthesia, right through this sexual outlet, much as television is an anesthesia and our smartphones are and all this. What I witness in men, because I work with nine parts and they can split into extreme masculine or extreme feminine roles in a person's unconscious emotional mind, as I call it. Cause just like you said, there's a difference between the mental and the emotional. are two different things.
And the emotional is very complex. But what I see is a continuous pattern, one that I lived in my life, was I was pursuing, and this sounds, I was pursuing the feminine in me, because we all carry masculine and feminine. I was pursuing the feminine in me through anesthesia, through seeking nurturing and peace through TV, video games, porn.
smartphone use, YouTube, all that stuff. And that was taking up all my bandwidth and my relationship to these parts of me that are really, really good. Essentially fabricating my connection with those parts, a broken or fabricated kind of way of expressing those gifts and those needs that I have inside and never satisfying the underlying desires.
because when I have guys start to move away from what I call them base pleasures, which are high kind of pleasure and very low activity to no effort at all, right? It's just feed me, right? It's consumptive. When guys get away from that, and as I've gotten away from it, there's more balance in my system. There's more of an ability to feel connected to the people around me.
Jake Kastleman (45:29.527)
There's more of an ability to find peace and joy and fun and all these things that I think we are seeking peace. are seeking fun. are seeking excitement through pornography. Those are some of the things that we seek and they're not being satisfied. It's very, it's a very broken form. but when we get away from those things now, these didn't used to be available, right? These did not used to be available. So I think we're in a more extreme scenario now than we ever have been where
Michael H Hallett (45:58.04)
Yeah, absolutely.
Jake Kastleman (45:58.658)
people's personalities, the unconscious parts of them are just so out of balance. Their needs are not being met in this feminine or nurturing or peacemaking these areas. They were pursuing them through technology and it's ruining us. So then it just drives the addiction.
Michael H Hallett (46:14.585)
Yeah. And this is what brought me down to the mother wound is for me, I identified that as that's the point that broke and that's the single point of failure. That's the point that sparked all of the other problems and saying this is what you get if you go for the root cause resolution on porn. That's this is where it leads you to see that there's a whole bunch of other things that we talked about, you know, the
Jake Kastleman (46:26.465)
Mm, mm, right.
Michael H Hallett (46:43.396)
the shame, the lack of boundaries, the people pleasing, abandonment, all of these different things, they all start back at the mother wound. And for me, most porn consumption, the message behind it is that you had a problem with nurturing. It's very little that is actually to do about, there's a problem with your sex life. It's actually a problem.
with your nurturing. And that's because sexual energy is at its core is life energy. It's the energy that creates and animates life. And so it's actually saying there was a constriction on your life energy. And because we don't understand that the message is about life energy, we interpret it as being about sex. And we think, well, if I can just keep gulping at these pictures, or maybe if I could have some of these experiences that I'm looking at, then
Jake Kastleman (47:14.349)
Thanks
Michael H Hallett (47:40.184)
that will solve everything and that's not the problem. But for me, the fact that porn issues are actually nurturing issues or life energy issues kind of takes a lot of the heat out of it. It's not about being a pervert. This is about straightening out your fundamental connection with life itself.
Jake Kastleman (47:43.489)
I'll finally get these needs met, right?
Jake Kastleman (47:56.395)
Right? No.
Jake Kastleman (48:02.955)
Mm, so good. It's so good. I love that. I wanna move to father wounds, Michael. How do unprocessed wounds around masculinity and identity kind of feed this compulsive sexual behavior?
Michael H Hallett (48:21.636)
Okay, so just want to step back a little bit and look at the relationship between mother wounds and father wounds. And we actually have these development cycles. think there's a guy called Timothy Leary wrote about them. So we have a mother-child development cycle, which goes from conception, I guess, up to about six and a half to seven. And that's when we learn all of the feminine aspects about community, communication.
all of those things that that mother-child relationship creates. And then when we get from seven to 14, there's another process which comes in, which is the father-child process. And that's where we learn about boundaries and how to negotiate with the world. And I had some friends around just before Christmas and there was one of our friends, she had a son who was just coming up to seven and she was saying, I'm really worried about him because he seems...
absent and distracted and he's not really engaging. And there was a lady there who was a primary school teacher and she said, don't worry, when he gets to seven, he will click in. Her phrase was click in. And I'm hearing that, I'm going, aha, that's the father-child development circuit. And then when you're from 14, from or 13, because this is drug, then through your teens is the third circuit, which is puberty.
Jake Kastleman (49:30.903)
Wow.
Jake Kastleman (49:36.065)
Right, right. And it's the feminine masculine aspects of our personality, right?
Michael H Hallett (49:51.106)
And that's the integration of the other two circuits. Yeah. OK. So there's a rule here. And again, this comes back to why I'd bang on about the mother wound a lot, is that the subsequent circuits can only develop as well as the previous circuits. So when there's a problem with the mother wound, there's automatically going to be a problem with the father.
Jake Kastleman (49:56.462)
love that. I love that, yeah.
Jake Kastleman (50:12.941)
Okay, yeah.
Michael H Hallett (50:20.671)
even if the father is present and is doing some good stuff. And I recently, as I realized, literally this was last week, that my father became a traveling salesman when I was... And the time that he spent there, so he would have been absent pretty much all through the week, was the exact span from seven to 13.
Jake Kastleman (50:44.365)
Right. Right.
Jake Kastleman (50:50.173)
no...
Michael H Hallett (50:50.871)
So he was not only emotionally absent, but he was physically absent as well for the exact precise span of what should have been my father-child development circuit. So the father to say the boundaries, what I mean by boundaries, these are emotional boundaries where you know where you stop and others begin. And what happens with clear bound, there are two issues with boundaries. One is that other people push onto you.
Jake Kastleman (50:54.913)
physically absent.
Jake Kastleman (51:03.339)
Right.
Jake Kastleman (51:13.11)
Mmm.
Michael H Hallett (51:21.821)
And they come in and you feel you don't have the ability to withstand them emotionally and you have to get away from them.
Jake Kastleman (51:27.373)
Either you need to get away or you need to fawn, right? You need to give in.
Michael H Hallett (51:31.683)
Yeah, yeah, you either you have to fall and you have to get away. Yes. And the other the other problem is you're the person who's pushing. You're the one who's pushing on to other banks. And you look at most successful business leaders and most successful leaders in our society are very pushy. And they've got that overextended boundary. And they just they have this big energy and they just walk into a room and flatten everybody.
Jake Kastleman (51:41.901)
Fighting. Control.
Jake Kastleman (51:55.693)
Mm.
Jake Kastleman (52:01.452)
Right.
Michael H Hallett (52:02.147)
And you can, if you look at the big figures on the media, global media stage, the people who are getting the attention, most of them have got that big energy. It's difficult to be around.
Jake Kastleman (52:16.109)
And I hesitate in bringing this up, but I do because I'm really curious to know more about your view on this, your research, your contemplation. You said that it was around 6,000 years ago or so when we experienced this Sahara changing from grass. Was it 6,000 years ago? Change from grasslands into, it was over a couple thousand years. I guess this is occurring with climate change, right? Right, right. So then.
Michael H Hallett (52:36.001)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're talking big spans.
Jake Kastleman (52:44.289)
we moved in this kind of anti-feminine way of culture, right? Tell me what you, we're talking about some of this, but tell me what you think that has led to or some of these patterns that are very just integrated into our culture and how we live and all that. I'd love to.
Michael H Hallett (52:48.14)
Yes. Yes.
Michael H Hallett (53:03.907)
The critical thing is that instead of being connected, properly connected inside ourselves and deriving our sense of value from within ourselves because we've been nurtured properly, it externalizes our value system. And so we have a society where our value is based on our wealth, our status, our fame. If I want love, I...
It creates codependent relationships because I'm dependent on somebody else filling in the hole that's missing inside me. So it actually creates a society that's inside out. And this is where all of the self-worth problems are coming from, because people don't have an innate self-worth, and they're trying to get it through likes on Instagram.
Jake Kastleman (53:54.616)
And that's very, I mean, I'm curious how you see it, but I often mention this is it's results oriented. So I work with many of the men I work with, they're deeply results oriented, deeply, you know, doing and productivity and achieving. And they're so heavy on that end that then the feminine end, which is about being and just enjoying an expression and creativity just for the sake of enjoying, that's all been crushed. And so it's showing up.
Michael H Hallett (54:02.591)
It yes, it six, it.
Michael H Hallett (54:19.268)
of being, yes. Yes.
Jake Kastleman (54:23.169)
destructively through addictions, right? Is how I, right. Right, yes. Yeah, and so that is what you're describing is so inherent to just how we, this is how we view the world, right? This is how things work and it's deeply broken. It's only half of the, I wouldn't even say it's appropriate to say it's half because you're getting this extreme masculine end, but then the other,
Michael H Hallett (54:25.665)
Yeah, it's an imbalance of doing and being.
Jake Kastleman (54:52.951)
half is also showing up in a really, in really destructive ways. Cause it, I see it as it's trying to make itself known through things like addiction.
Michael H Hallett (55:00.989)
Yeah, so the thing that we call over here in Britain, we call that the woke. To me, that's a mother wound manifestation. So what I'm seeing on the political spectrum is people who are drawn to the, I say we've got a long way from porn, for me, they are father wound dominant and they are drawn to those qualities of the
Jake Kastleman (55:08.381)
yeah, right, right.
Yes, I see that.
Jake Kastleman (55:22.987)
Right? We'll take it. We'll come back. Don't worry.
Michael H Hallett (55:29.923)
the father who's the absent father who turns up with the gold hoard and everything's fine. Basically it's Father Christmas who are drawn. If I can just get to drill in this pristine rainforest, I can extract money out of it and everything will be fine. Can't see a problem with that.
Jake Kastleman (55:50.092)
Yes. And it's that, and to bring it back to the porn, it's that fundamental imbalance in how I value myself, right? All the shame I feel, you I am my accomplishments, I am what I do, you know, I need to prove my worth versus what a very healthy mother provides to a child is, I love you no matter what you do. And the father provides,
Michael H Hallett (55:59.639)
Yes.
Michael H Hallett (56:13.228)
Yes.
Jake Kastleman (56:18.155)
You also need boundaries and you also need to make something of yourself.
Michael H Hallett (56:19.351)
Yeah, exactly. So there's imbalance on the right and then there's imbalance on the left as well. Which is, for me, it's a manifestation of the mother wound and they're unconsciously aware that their nurturing wasn't sufficient. So they're projecting that onto everybody else saying, you're not allowed to say that. You know, go to the naughty step if you say that, you can't do that. They're all shouting at the unbalanced masculine people saying, you're a naughty boy.
Jake Kastleman (56:25.045)
Right.
Jake Kastleman (56:34.445)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Kastleman (56:43.243)
Yes, yes, yes.
Jake Kastleman (56:49.163)
Right.
Michael H Hallett (56:49.224)
They're trying to impose the nurture, what should have been proper nurturing from the inside. They're trying to impose this behavior from the outside because it triggers their mother wounds.
Jake Kastleman (57:02.655)
Mm-hmm. And I think this is collective, it's, you know, massive, societal and global, but then it's also internal, right? And that's all kind of a mirror of one another. Mm-hmm. So, wow, very good. Is there anything else that you wanted to share on any of that before we switch gears a little bit?
Michael H Hallett (57:11.402)
Yep, micro macro. Yeah.
Michael H Hallett (57:23.714)
No, think that's we've I think we've probably covered. There is a lot more we could. Yeah, it feels like we've glossed over it. I mean, mean, basically my my what I uncovered through my own journey is that there's just just this this constellation of of damaged masculine and feminine behaviors that were being masked by the porn, but also the porn was signaling it at the same time.
Jake Kastleman (57:28.301)
There's much more you could cover, I know. If we could talk forever, yes.
Jake Kastleman (57:52.789)
Right. Yeah.
Michael H Hallett (57:54.302)
And as I say, it's been an extraordinary journey going into the depth of it. And just when you think it couldn't get any worse, it does. But if we want to create a healthy, sustainable, balanced society, this is where the road goes.
Jake Kastleman (58:11.531)
And I see more and more people doing this. I think that truth is coming forward like you're saying. So I have a great deal of hope for where we're headed. It's good.
Michael H Hallett (58:19.607)
Yeah, it's tough, there are more more people coming forward. There are more people becoming literate. There is more support. There is more information. And as we do that, the road goes from being this little track in the wilderness, and it starts to become more established and easier to follow for those who come.
Jake Kastleman (58:41.175)
Mm-hmm.
Yes, one of the things that you talk about on your site and in your coaching, et cetera, Michael, is this challenge that we have when it comes to shame with taking accountability and taking responsibility for things. How do you understand responsibility in a way that actually supports healing rather than drive shame? And what is the shift that we need to make in order to get sober?
Michael H Hallett (59:09.122)
So this comes back to what I was talking about before about our value system being turned inside out. so our responsibility, what we have is a system where we've externalized responsibility outside ourselves. Even though we take responsibility in a job situation or something like that, emotionally, we don't take responsibility. So any time.
somebody says something or does something that annoys me, I say you shouldn't have done that. That was your fault and I blame you. And instead when you have healthy nurturing and healthy self-worth, you also accept that if somebody says something that's hurtful, first of all that's your responsibility. That's actually, they're giving you a gift. They're showing you a part of you that needs re-parenting.
So can you accept it as a gift and say thank you for that gift? And what happens when you do that is that people stop doing that thing that bothered you, people just stop doing it because there's no mirror for it left.
Jake Kastleman (01:00:07.831)
So true.
Jake Kastleman (01:00:11.595)
Yes, and that's not easy.
Jake Kastleman (01:00:21.771)
Right, that makes sense. Yeah. And I, I.
Michael H Hallett (01:00:24.616)
Yeah, so it's not about blame. It's not about, you look at the, and saying this is where the, say, the woke side of it is very good. It's saying to the unruly masculine, saying, you you've annoyed me, you shouldn't be doing that. And they say there's a lack of saying, actually, I'm, this, my emotional trigger is showing me my own woundedness. So it's about recognizing that.
Jake Kastleman (01:00:41.879)
Right, right.
Jake Kastleman (01:00:52.301)
Great.
Michael H Hallett (01:00:54.514)
and taking responsibility for it, which means feeling into the wound. It's not about blaming anybody, it's just recognizing, if I'm triggered here, that means I've got something that I need to take care of and own.
Jake Kastleman (01:01:10.359)
And it's back to those mother wounds and the extreme feminine, I think, where, you know, when I'm unwilling to take responsibility, because that's a very, I mean, I don't know how you see it, it's probably in different ways to see it, but to take responsibility, to take ownership is this, is kind of a masculine trait, maybe, and anybody can do that. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. this blaming, you know, I take it back to the firefighter mechanism in IFS.
Michael H Hallett (01:01:14.764)
Yes.
Jake Kastleman (01:01:38.402)
where when I blame someone, I offset responsibility. It's not my fault, like you're saying. It's this person I point to in outside circumstance or a person. Why? Because a part of my emotional mind, my unconscious, is trying to protect me from suffering. It's like, you don't have to feel this, just blame them and then you're okay. And that's almost like that extreme feminine of just, shh, no, you're fine. It's kind of the coddling, like I'll comfort you and keep you safe from any feeling.
that you have any responsibility for this. It's the enabling mechanism.
Michael H Hallett (01:02:10.082)
But what the firefighter piece is doing is symptom management.
Jake Kastleman (01:02:16.437)
Right, it's the reaction to the fear, shame or grief, right?
Michael H Hallett (01:02:18.76)
Yeah, yeah, it's saying if I can just get people to stop doing this, then I won't be triggered. And that's great. But actually, you haven't dealt with the trigger. You're carrying the trigger. You're carrying the negative effects of the trigger, whatever that is.
Jake Kastleman (01:02:26.305)
Right. Right.
Jake Kastleman (01:02:34.891)
Yeah, and a good way I've heard is a mother sees their children, her children in relation to the world. It's how does it say it exactly? It's like a mother is trying to essentially putting their children as the center point in the world around them. Whereas a father is seeing their child in relation to the world. So the father prepares the children to go out in the world, be responsible, know, take accountability, make something of themselves, get results. Whereas the
The mother is trying to prepare the child to feel the self-worth and like, I'm good enough and I'm loved as they go out in the world. I don't know if that's making sense.
Michael H Hallett (01:03:13.899)
Yeah, when the two of them work properly, you end up with the boundaries, with the healthy boundaries. And when you've got the healthy boundaries, first of all, you're not going to press onto somebody else because you have no need to. There isn't something wounded in you that's making you wanting to wound them.
Jake Kastleman (01:03:28.267)
Right, right. And this is all.
Jake Kastleman (01:03:34.399)
Mm-hmm. It's all very integrated into recovery and what it takes in this balance we need in the mind.
Michael H Hallett (01:03:39.369)
Yeah, yeah, so we say it's an imbalance of everything comes back to this imbalance of the masculine and the feminine. And then the coping mechanism, and then we develop coping mechanisms to deal with it, and we look for compensation.
Jake Kastleman (01:03:49.185)
Yes. Yeah.
Jake Kastleman (01:03:58.062)
Okay, tell me more about that compensation.
Michael H Hallett (01:04:01.793)
So porn is both coping mechanism and very often they're two in one. So I'm dealing with, I'm feeling whatever it is I'm feeling. I go to the porn because it suits me. I feel I get a reward for it.
Jake Kastleman (01:04:08.076)
Okay.
Jake Kastleman (01:04:18.477)
Yes, and that's often the unconscious thoughts when I help guys bring them out is I deserve this, I've had a long day, I've been so busy, I have so much going on, you know, this is my relief at the end of all the stress. That's what that, when they become self-aware of that part of their mind, then they can step outside it. But until then, it just rules them from the unconscious.
Michael H Hallett (01:04:28.352)
Yeah.
Michael H Hallett (01:04:34.144)
Yep.
Michael H Hallett (01:04:39.809)
Yeah, it's the guys getting together for a beer, it's the women going on the shopping trip, all of those things. None of those things are inherently unhealthy. But when they're done as a compensation mechanism, there's something behind it that's just going,
Jake Kastleman (01:04:55.202)
balance.
Michael H Hallett (01:05:00.767)
which means you don't have control over it. Because there's a compulsive aspect, there's a part of you that's being anesthetized by the behavior, and you can't stop yourself from going, I just want to put.
Jake Kastleman (01:05:03.863)
Right, right.
Jake Kastleman (01:05:15.661)
Yes, so powerful, Michael, we could talk for hours. I want to close up with a couple of things. if someone, for someone who's, you know, they've tried willpower, abstinence, the kind of self-control, they feel stuck, what's a different move that you suggest they start to take? Maybe even something simple they can begin doing based on what we've talked about, which is a very complex topic, obviously.
Michael H Hallett (01:05:19.391)
we could.
Michael H Hallett (01:05:44.289)
So I spoke earlier about the difference between the symptom management and root cause resolution. And really, it's a great divide. It's the Grand Canyon in between the two. And as they say, there's an old saying that you can't cross a chasm in two small steps. So the question that I would say, if you've tried all of these things and they haven't worked,
Jake Kastleman (01:06:05.057)
Yeah, takes time.
Michael H Hallett (01:06:13.568)
Are you ready to turn towards the issue and take a deeper look? And because that is what I do. I'm not good at the symptom management. I'm the wrong person to talk to for that. So if you're still just trying to manage the symptoms, I would say talk to Jake, and he can point you in the direction of some other things because that's not what I do.
Jake Kastleman (01:06:26.669)
All right, yes.
Jake Kastleman (01:06:37.793)
Yeah, yes. Yeah, and no, I for myself, the emotional regulation, working with the unconscious mind, getting in touch with, you know, these deeper mechanisms, that's what brings the healing. We have to bring balance to the mind, to the nervous system, to the body. Otherwise, yeah, you could get sober, but are you going to be happy? I mean, that was one of the things I knew from seven years of sobriety, the broken way.
Michael H Hallett (01:07:02.921)
Yeah, yes, the equivalent of the dry drunk.
Jake Kastleman (01:07:07.403)
Right, exactly, yes. so, Michael, if people do want to get in touch with you and they want to go deep and they want to do this work, where should they go?
Michael H Hallett (01:07:19.169)
Very welcome. If you come over onto my website, michaelhallett.com. I'm not sure if we can put a link on here, if we can add that on. You'll find some information on the areas that I cover, which is basically what I've been talking about on this episode. And there's a link to a Zoom scheduler there. You can book in and book an appointment. I've also got some courses.
Jake Kastleman (01:07:28.097)
Yep, I'll put a link in the show notes for you.
Jake Kastleman (01:07:39.116)
Yes.
Michael H Hallett (01:07:47.787)
and free resources as well for anybody who wants to take a look around. I'd say, please get in touch, drop me a message, and I'd be delighted to hear from you. And thank you, Jake. As I said before, it's a pleasure and a privilege being on the show with you.
Jake Kastleman (01:08:04.607)
Absolutely. Well, with you as well, Michael, it's been very enjoyable for me personally and very fascinating and wonderful to talk with somebody else as you said before our before we started the episode, you know, with someone who kind of gets that the deeper end and wants to move past the symptom management and go into the into the causes and work with all this stuff. It's been very informative and I think very, very helpful for people. So thank you.
Michael H Hallett (01:08:33.227)
Great, I'm very pleased to hear it.
Jake Kastleman (01:08:34.254)
Thank you.