Speaker 1: 0:31

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go. Today, we are talking about porn and Inside Out 2. We are talking about porn and Inside Out 2. Inside Out 2, the Disney Pixar film, is actually the highest grossing animated film of all time. It has broken so many box office records, and for good reason. It's a great film. Inside Out 1 was also wonderful and in this episode, we are going to talk about what we can learn from these films, specifically for sexual recovery and finding freedom and healing from porn. Spoiler alert I am going to share details from the plots of these movies so that you can understand what I'm talking about, and if you do not want to hear those spoiler details, then this is not the episode for you.

Speaker 1: 1:35

First, let's go back to Inside Out, the original movie from 2015. Inside Out tells the story of an 11-year-old girl named Riley, or, more accurately, it tells the story of Riley's emotions while she is going through a crisis when her family moves from Minnesota to California and at some point, she begins to see her sadness as a bad thing. She thinks I can't be sad, I can't allow myself to be sad or show my parents that I'm sad, and so she exiles her sadness, she banishes sadness and at one point almost runs away from home. In the end she allows herself to be sad and that saves the day. Through Inside Out we see the healing power of sadness and as the emotion of joy expresses in Inside Out 2, I think a great summary of the big lesson we can take from the original Inside Out film is every emotion is good. For Riley, there's no such thing as a negative emotion or a bad emotion. Certainly, some emotions are less pleasant than others, but they all have a role to play. A huge reason why Inside Out resonates so much is because it draws heavily on internal family systems, also known as IFS. We have done a number of episodes on internal family systems which I am going to put in the show notes for this episode. Basically, ifs is a theory about who we are as people, how our brains work and what's going on inside of us. Inside Out does a great job of showing how that works and Inside Out 2 takes it to the next level.

Speaker 1: 3:22

In Inside Out 2, riley goes through puberty, and puberty brings some new emotions Envy, embarrassment, and we which we might call boredom and anxiety, embarrassment and we which we might call boredom and anxiety. Now these emotions and these different parts of us can take control, and that's what happens to Riley in Inside Out 2. The emotion of anxiety takes over For many of us when we went through puberty, sexual arousal took control and became our solution for how to deal with the stress of life. In fact, arousal and anxiety often work together. Anxiety is feeling so stressed out and sexual arousal can help to relieve that stress. So you can see how anxiety and arousal can get stuck in this cycle of repression and release, like they're fighting a war against each other. And many of you have experienced this, going back and forth between binging on porn and then purging from porn, feeling sexually aroused and giving into that and then trying to control it, trying to manage it. When sexual arousal takes over the control panel of your brain, just like anxiety took over the control panel of Riley's brain your emotions are nowhere to be found. You're not thinking about how you're feeling, you're not aware of how you're feeling and in Inside Out 2, we see that happen as joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust are all thrown out of the control room and they are banished to a place called the vault.

Speaker 1: 5:10

The vault is a secret place in Riley's brain where she hides things, things that she doesn't want to admit to herself and to other people. And in this case, her feelings are being thrown into the vault. So she doesn't want to admit how she's really feeling because it's not safe in the context of the film. She doesn't feel safe to be real about how she feels, so these feelings go into the vault and they meet a few other characters there who are quite funny. One of them is the big dark secret and spoiler alert. In the film we discover that her big dark secret is that she once burned a hole in the carpet. However, for many of us, porn is the big dark secret within the vault that we hide. It may be the fact that you have a struggle with porn, or it may be the specific type of porn that you've struggled with. That is your big dark secret.

Speaker 1: 6:13

And in order to save Riley from being controlled by anxiety, her emotions have to find a way to break free from the vault, and I think, in the same way, for us to find a way to break free from the control of sexual arousal. We need to let our emotions go free and be seen and known and loved. In the crisis moment of the film, riley is having an anxiety attack. When her true thoughts and feelings are released, she finally regains access to them. All parts of her embrace, anxiety, lets go of control, she can finally calm down, she can breathe and she integrates all of the things about her that Joy thought was bad or that anxiety said no, you can't be here. They're all welcomed back into parts of who she is. And as Riley finally feels free to be honest and authentic and vulnerable, her sense of self returns.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Earlier on in the film, we were introduced to this idea that Riley has a sense of self that comes from beliefs like I'm a good person or I'm not good enough, and this is one of my favorite insights from the film, one of my favorite insights from Internal Family Systems. We cannot live well without a secure sense of self. Whenever any single emotion takes control, it cannot lead well. Anxiety and anger and sexual arousal are all self-defeating if they're in charge. We need our core self to be leading the way in order to be healthy and whole and free from porn. So trying to suppress an emotion is self-defeating, and also allowing an emotion to take control is self-defeating. And I think that is so, so true for our sexuality as well. Trying to suppress your sexual arousal is self-defeating, and allowing your sexual arousal to take control is self-defeating. The only way to not be self-defeating is to be self-led. Being led by your core self, or what Christians would call your spirit-led self, or your identity in Christ, is the key to lasting freedom and healing. Having space for your emotions, having space for your sexual arousal and yet not letting that control you. When you can welcome your true thoughts and feelings, feel safe enough to be vulnerable with other people, all the different emotions and voices in your head can relax and calm down and experience connection.

Speaker 1: 9:17

So here are my takeaways for outgrowing porn from Inside Out 2. Number one Puberty is a major crisis. It is a test of survival Emotionally, sexually, socially and we need to have compassion on ourselves for the patterns that we picked up during that crucial stage of sexual development. Number two the sexual secrets and suppressed emotions that we hide within us, like in Riley's vault, need to find a safe place to come out, to be told, to be known, to be loved and accepted. That is essential.

Speaker 1: 10:04

And number three, breaking free from self-destructive, self-defeating patterns like watching porn is really only possible through your core self, through your identity in Christ, through getting in touch with who you truly are and according to internal family systems. Your core self is comprised of courage, curiosity, compassion, connection, confidence, calm, clarity, creativity. So many easy words, calm clarity, creativity so many easy words. When you are able to access those qualities through connecting with God, yourself and other people, healing is the result and it becomes so much easier to be free from porn. Hope you get a chance to watch Inside Out and Inside Out 2. And if you have thoughts on this, please share them in the husband material community. Always remember my friend, you are God's beloved son. That's your core self and in you he is well pleased.