Speaker 1: 0:01

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. Hey man, thank you for listening to my interview with Jake Castleman. He tells his personal story of freedom from porn, as well as giving some really essential advice for how to stop watching porn while traveling. Going on trips for work, for family or just for yourself can be a huge trigger to watch porn, especially if you don't have a safety plan and if you have a lot of unmet expectations and unmet needs that are coming up. In this episode, you are going to learn why preventing relapse on vacations is so important. You'll hear about some of the most common triggers and how to create a strong structure while also giving yourself grace and space to just be present. Enjoy the episode. Today, we get to hang out with Jake Castleman, who is a porn addiction recovery coach and the founder of nomoredesirecom. Welcome, jake.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Hey, thanks Drew. It's awesome to be here, man. Truly I've been inspired by the things you're doing and just excited.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Thanks. I've really enjoyed getting to know you so far and I'm excited for everyone to hear more of who you are. Jake, what is your story of freedom?

Speaker 2: 1:24

from porn. For me this is and this is the case for a lot of people. It's a very personal endeavor for me, right? I suffered with pornography addiction myself for about 10 years and, interestingly enough, I grew up in a family where my father was going around the world teaching about porn addiction and the brain science of porn addiction. Meanwhile his own son was struggling with it and I think as a kid, you know, growing up I was hearing those messages about, you know, porn. Porn is bad, porn hurts your brain, porn leads to bad things. I heard a lot about porn addiction but as a kid I just had no way of contextualizing that or conceptually understanding what addiction was, what it meant, what it would lead to. I think I thought, oh, I'll really want it a lot. That's how I processed it as a kid. Oh, I'll really want that thing. That doesn't sound so bad. I want food a lot. I like cookies. Like I want food a lot, you know, I like cookies.

Speaker 2: 2:24

And when I started to experience addiction for myself and really my addictions as a kid were food and video games, that's where it started at a really young age. And then, when I was 13, I developed a pornography addiction when I had a sleepover with one of my buddies and, to be transparent, right, we talk about this stuff, we can be real about it. I, we watched porn together, right, and then that night, after he went to sleep, I just had this overwhelming urge to go watch on my own and, you know, go masturbate right, finish myself up. And when I went and did that, I was just like man, like I can't even go this one night without doing this whole ritual, this whole thing, and I couldn't understand that. At the time, again, I had learned about some of the brain science, but it took me a few years, when I was 17, to start to really feel like I want to get over this, I want to get out of this. Previous to that, it was kind of like that. Just, my mind was darkened to the whole thing. It's like, yeah, I have this problem. It's going on in the background, it's something I'm doing regularly, but not telling anybody about it, I'm not really thinking about it, I'm just kind of letting it go on and on.

Speaker 2: 3:38

So when I was 17, I had a spiritual experience. It was a special one for me. I just I felt God in my life and that was thanks to my dad who was having a conversation with me that at the time I think he made, he probably thought it made no difference. It made a big difference because it opened up my eyes and I just felt good. I was like, okay, whatever this feeling is right now which I should have known what it was, because I grew up in the gospel, but I was very, I was very, pretty pretty dark at that time. I was like this feels good, so I want to feel more of this. I just started praying, started reading scripture and I started feeling better and that started to open up my mind and getting some of that presence and that light and that peace that starts to set up that dichotomy between what I was doing I was involved in a lot of substance addiction as well and hanging out with friends that weren't good for me, we weren't good for each other and I was like this stuff isn't matching up with these good feelings.

Speaker 2: 4:36

I'm having this good stuff that I'm feeling. It took me about five years of constant work and that's one of the things I want people to know. Like this stuff takes time, like I had the desire, I had the motivation, I wanted to stop. It took me five years to finally come out of a lot of those habits of partying and porn and all these struggles I was having. I had to understand my mind. I had to understand the perfectionism I dealt with, the anxiety and social anxiety I was carrying. I was feeling depressed all the time, all my habits of watching YouTube for hours a day and playing video games for hours a day and all the junk food I was eating all the time, and I was realizing that all this stuff was playing in together, this self-judgment I felt and this harshness on myself and negativity I was carrying. And so I had to start to work through those things, mentally and psychologically and spiritually, and changes to my diet and exercise, et cetera, all these different avenues, to the point where, finally, I had made enough progress.

Speaker 2: 5:38

That kind of how I see it and how I explain it is you lose the need for the addiction I was trying to fulfill, a need. All this stuff I was carrying, all this sadness and pain and hurt, fear, perfectionism I was carrying. So I was like, okay, I'm beginning to lose this need and we talk about my business, no More Desire. That's what that means for me is building a recovery mindset and a recovery lifestyle, and that's what that means for me is building a recovery mindset and a recovery lifestyle, and that's for people. It's not about stopping just the behavior, like you want to be able to do that because that's going to change your life, but all the things that are backing that change your mindset, change your lifestyle. Work on these inner mechanisms that are going on inside of your brain and then eventually you can. You can lose the desire for porn, and I've seen that for myself, I've seen it for other people. You truly can do that. It's not, it's not impossible.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Can you say more about what that means to have no more desire for porn in the sense of not needing it, versus maybe what some people might think of, as I'm never going to be tempted again or not attracted to it anymore?

Speaker 2: 6:46

Yes, I love that you ask that. You know the right questions to ask, drew, because there is a massive distinction between sexual arousal and desiring sex and feeling physical attraction, which are all very normal, very healthy things, that we should actually build A relationship of those aspects of our mind that's positive and see that as a positive thing it's the way my mind's supposed to work Versus porn, this desire for porn, which is a desire for an escape. I want to get away from my problems. I want to get away from my hurt. I'm using this as a mechanism to take care of, eventually, what you start to understand, which is fear, shame, grief is best, I've come to understand it those that try out of emotions that I'm carrying underneath the surface.

Speaker 2: 7:33

I'm trying to get away from all those feelings of I'm not enough and I'm afraid of things that are going to happen. I'm afraid I'm alone. Right, that's an escape. Right, so I can actually build other healthy mechanisms in my life to be able to process through those emotions, deal with those things in a healthy way and unburden a lot of that. We were talking about IFS and parts work before this, unburdening all the stuff that I'm carrying over time. I can peel back those layers. That's what I mean by losing desire. Now I've taken away the mechanisms or removed those root causes of needing to escape using porn.

Speaker 1: 8:12

Yeah, so I can be present and feel what I'm feeling, yes, and actually experience the full range of emotions instead of numbing and deadening them Actually.

Speaker 2: 8:27

I love that you say that. So something that I've been working on in my life is embodiment, emotional embodiment really getting present with and feeling emotions inside of you. I think we're both taught to and we build habits of. I don't want to feel fear, I don't want to feel sadness, I don't want to feel anger, I don't want to feel any of those bad emotions. It's very easy to think of them as bad emotions, and the more that I do parts work, the more that I engage with embodiment of emotion, the more I actually realize they're all important emotions and they're actually all part of healing as well. Amen, yeah, when fear comes up, that's a signal to me Ah, here's something to pay attention to. What is this that I'm experiencing? And if I can, instead of turning my attention away, turn my attention toward it and focus in on it. It's the exact opposite of what part of me says I should do. It's like don't pay attention to that. That's where healing can occur.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Yeah, so good. Which makes us most susceptible to relapse and going back to porn is when we get triggered by all of the feelings of traveling on a trip on a vacation, maybe for work, or even on like a couple's trip. Traveling triggers us and it brings up a lot of those things we don't want to feel. Why is this topic of preventing relapse on trips so important?

Speaker 2: 10:14

When I relate back to my own experience, I had this conception of trips or vacations as a place where, you know, all my problems go away. I get relax. Business trips not so much. That's like more stress, this whole different thing.

Speaker 2: 10:28

Let's talk about vacations first, where I'm hanging out, I'm chilling, everything's great, I get to let go of all my routines and, just, you know, let go of all the structure in my life and all the pressures. That's the perfect place for me to be sober and and I did not find that myself and I do not find that with clients Often it's the perfect place for relapse. Or, if not, on the trip itself, coming off of the trip is the perfect time for relapse, unless we structure our lives and build certain habits and boundaries that we can follow in order to stay sober both during the trip and after the trip. I think that there's a misconception, which I was talking about, in that a vacation or a trip is a time to just let everything go and just go crazy. And I'm going to, you know, eat as much junk food as I possibly want. I deserve to just indulge. I can watch, you know, five hours of Netflix or play hours of video games every day.

Speaker 1: 11:36

That sounds like your life as a teenager, yeah. And my life as a teenager in many ways.

Speaker 2: 11:44

That was my life as a teenager. A hundred percent, yes, and I think it's funny you bring that up because I believe that there is a time that comes in your life as men I'll put it in the masculine sense where you have to decide to put away those things of being a child, right? Yes, as a kid I could go out on a vacation and just have this structure of this, like I'm just going to throw all caution to the wind and go crazy, but I don't know that that's necessarily a great practice as a kid in general, just to go insane. I think there should be some structure and boundaries and things, but that's more on the parents to do that. As we grow up, we need to implement that structure for ourselves and we need to have some semblance of balance on vacations or on trips.

Speaker 2: 12:34

Same thing with business trips, but business trips is more like there is a lot of pressure or stress. There certainly can be a lot of connections, networking, presentations, all these things that are on your plate. So how to manage that stress and find times of, like you were saying, presence, peace, getting in touch with my emotions, journaling right, we can talk about all sorts of things we can practically do. But we can't just go out without a plan and expect everything to work out.

Speaker 1: 13:03

So one of the biggest takeaways I want you guys to get from this episode is the need for a safety plan. We're going to talk about the elements of a good safety plan. When you're traveling, Jake. What are some of the most common triggers that come up when we're traveling?

Speaker 2: 13:19

I think that one of them is a poor sleeping schedule. On vacation, we can stay up until two in the morning and wake up at 10 am, right? Maybe if you have kids, it's not quite the case, but it's not going to look so good. Maybe we do stay up really late and then wake up really early with our kids. So when I'm not sleeping well, then my neurotransmitters and hormones are all out of whack. My immune system is hurting, I'm feeling imbalanced, I'm feeling out of you know my mood's off, I'm impatient, I'm more prone to anger and I'm certainly more prone to cravings in general. Right, and in this case, if you struggle with pornography addiction, your brain is going to point where To porn. Right, this is how I escape, this is how I feel better, right?

Speaker 1: 14:11

And even if you don't intentionally stay up late, jet lag will still mess up your sleep.

Speaker 2: 14:18

Yes, totally yeah. So it's important to keep an eye out for that and in some ways, there isn't anything we can do about the, you know, lacking some sleep or things like that, different stuff that happens out of necessity ways we got to show up for our family or ways we got to show up within business, or the jet lag, et cetera. This is going to happen and so there are things we can do with our mindset to watch for the stress, be present with the stress, to give ourselves grace right, to give ourselves grace right and also the messages we can take on that are often behind the anger of poor sleep, which is I don't feel capable, I don't feel like I can be here, do all the things I've got to do, I'm tired, this isn't going to work out. How do I accomplish everything I need to, or how do I be here for my family, and then we'll be filled with feelings of inadequacy and feelings of fear, and then that's pumping up all the anger. Right, I'm feeling just, I want to control things and I want to make the pain stop right. So, being able to work with a lot of that and be present with that emotion, one of the biggest things that I bring up is having a schedule when you're on vacation. Okay, vacation's very unstructured, so a lot of people think, well, I'll just be present in the moment, just do whatever I want, both for myself and, I think, for many of the men that I work with. We have these intense minds, they're we're very driven, we've got this like passion and this fire inside right, and so we have to give that a direction. I need to set up some structure, and so for me, the daily routines are so powerful.

Speaker 2: 15:48

When you get out on vacation, have things that you're doing for your spiritual well-being, for your mental well-being, right. Some journaling, right Prayer, studying of spiritual words or scripture, inspirational words, whatever matches up with your beliefs. Taking some time for physical exercise you can't just sit there all day and watch TV and expect to feel good. You're going to feel like crap and then you're going to want to escape more because you don't feel good. Got to get some exercise in. So, having those daily routines for my physical, spiritual, mental well-being, and then, of course, I'd add in relational well-being, make sure you're showing up and having some quality connections with family. If you're on vacation, that's probably going to happen. If you're with family, hopefully.

Speaker 1: 16:31

And that can also be a trigger to have family conflict or maybe even go back to the house where you first encountered porn. Yes, holidays are a minefield for many guys.

Speaker 2: 16:46

I love that you brought that up, actually, because it's true, that's a whole other end of the spectrum and it depends on what it looks like within your family. But a lot of men have struggled with pornography addiction. They grew up in homes that were broken or there's abuse or there's neglect, etc. It's a whole other topic.

Speaker 1: 17:03

So even just being aware that some of these challenges are going to come can help to change our expectations and assumptions about how a trip is going to go.

Speaker 2: 17:17

Yeah, exactly, and that's one of the things I reflect on is those expectations. We can hold those unconsciously. That's something very important to work on. It's just going with a knowledge and understanding you may have a expectation of man. This is going to be amazing. It's just going with a knowledge and understanding you may have a expectation of man. This is going to be amazing. It's going to be so much fun, it's going to be the best. And then something starts to go wrong, breaks my perfect, little, you know, view of how things should go. And then, all of a sudden, I'm pissed off. People are fighting, we're in conflict, and then everything's ruined. Look, I've ruined all of it.

Speaker 1: 17:50

I'm such a jerk it's like we go down the faster scale, if you guys are familiar with that tool forgetting priorities, anxiety, speeding up, ticked off, exhausted and relapse I love that I haven't heard faster before. It's very good the faster scale was developed by Michael Dye and it's a huge part of Pure Desire's Seven Pillars workbook and it basically describes a lot of the precursors to the overwhelming urge to watch porn or some other addictive behavior and it follows a predictable pattern and a lot of those things can easily happen on trips.

Speaker 2: 18:28

Yes, a hundred percent. Some of the other things that easily happen on trips yes, 100%. Some of the other things that we want to watch out for, and these are so pervasive in our culture nowadays. We want to watch for those what I term as base pleasures. Plato would have termed a lot of his writings as impure pleasures. Would have put it that way. We can look at a lot of different.

Speaker 2: 18:51

You know John Stuart Mill, et cetera other people that have written on this, aristotle but we have these base pleasures, such as TV, social media, video games, that we used to view this philosophically, but now we can break it down to neuroscience, with an understanding of dopamine, where there are these behaviors, these activities that we'll get caught up in, that are very low effort, high stimulation, instant gratification activities. In other words, I sit down to play a video game, right, all I got to do is sit and just move my fingers and I've got the screen. That's just like feeding me dopamine, which is like overwhelming amounts of dopamine. I'm advancing through levels, I'm having these intense experiences Maybe there's a bunch of violence, right, and I'm just like, whoa, this is awesome. I'm in fantasy land. That is we now see, and then, from the neuroscience perspective that that's spiking dopamine very, very high. And then I'm experiencing a drop in dopamine afterwards. And if I do that once for maybe I play video games for a half an hour probably going to be fine, but if I'm doing that for two hours, three hours, even once, that's going to hurt.

Speaker 2: 20:08

If I'm doing that regularly now I'm just in this chronic low dopamine zone and my dopamine is not just. It's not just pleasure, right, we often think it's the pleasure chemical. It's my motivation, it's my focus, it's my feeling of being connected to other people, it's my feeling of purpose. Now I'm lacking all of that and now my brain is just like it's just reaching out, it's just craving give me more dopamine. I need more, and that's going to set me up to go straight to porn, because that's one of the ways I can get the highest dopamine hit.

Speaker 2: 20:42

So we want to balance those things. If you're going to watch TV, sit down and do that. For my personal preference would be like 20, 30 minutes. Or maybe like watch one or two movies while you're on vacation for a week, right, not like every night, especially when we're in this chronically low dopamine state, and I know that's a high standard I just set.

Speaker 2: 21:01

By the way, I'm not saying that's easy to do. You also need to understand where you're at and what you can reasonably do, but to to be aware of this right, when I'm in this low dopamine state all the time, anything that I'm doing to imbalance that is going to probably feel really extreme. So if I can start to replace these base pleasures that are these it's low effort, it's instant gratification, it's high stimulation with with noble pleasures, things that are more a higher level of effort right, or a higher level of presence, I need to be present in the moment with a moderate dopaminergic release right. Things like reading or writing or spending time with others, having conversations, building or creating you creating. I can do a little bit of passion, project stuff while I'm out on vacation. Those things are going to actually help build your dopamine-nurgic system, heal and repair your dopamine-nurgic system, whereas the base pleasures damage it. We just want to balance that out as much as we can while we're on vacation.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Totally, because we're thrown off balance.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Yeah, we're dysregulated and I think that's another aspect. Drew, I love that you're bringing that up. We are out of our comfort zone. This is a big one that I see all the time Is we think that we're going to go out on vacation and be like, great, I get to shake things up. But the trouble is often again we can have these kind of sensitive minds and I think that can change. That's shifted for me right In 10 years of sobriety your mind can become less sensitive, less like stringent or perfectionistic, less obsessive.

Speaker 2: 22:41

But I remember, especially in the first few years of recovery, it's like I had to keep like a strict schedule, my comfort zone and things. It was very hard to experience transitions or to do things that were outside of my norm. It just threw me way off. So I had to really bring in as much routine as I could. So you know, for me when I'm on vacation in the, in the mornings I'll have my routines, so I get up earlier than pretty much everybody else so I can do those and that's hard. But that means I go to bed a little earlier than some people do. I don't stay up really late, get up a little bit earlier so I can do these things.

Speaker 2: 23:19

And then I have a time where I kind of go over the day right what's going on today? And typically there's hopefully some kind of plans of a couple of things we're going to do and I kind of order that in my mind because there's a part of me that really wants kind of some level of control or some level of like certainty or where we're going, some level of security in that schedule. So I go okay, here's some things that are going on today. Here's kind of what I can anticipate, kind of like a father or a good mom would like do for their kid. You know like, hey, here's some things we have going on today, so you kind of know what to expect to help level their kid out. I got to do that for myself.

Speaker 1: 23:57

It's like we got to do that for our inner child.

Speaker 2: 23:59

Yes, that's exactly what it is.

Speaker 1: 24:03

In case you guys didn't know, jake has a great article about this topic on his website and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. One of the things that you say in that article that I love the most was an encouragement to live in the moment. Forget about your agenda and expectations, get connected, be present with each other and accept the imperfect. Wow.

Speaker 2: 24:28

Yeah, and I do that perfectly myself. Fortunately, I have it all figured out.

Speaker 1: 24:37

The more I learn about this and talk about this, I feel like I want to become an imperfectionist. You know, the opposite of a perfectionist.

Speaker 2: 24:50

Yeah, the opposite of a perfectionist. Yeah, everything's something I started saying to myself a while back, because I'm always continuously trying to learn and progress and still have some of those perfectionistic tendencies and obviously fear and shame and grief and all those things that we all deal with right. It's always stuff every day that I'm working on. But one of the things I started saying a little while ago is nothing is optimal. Nothing is optimal ever Like. What scenario do you have in life where you're just like dude, that was just perfect, that was everything I ever wanted, ever dreamed of Exactly Like. Maybe twice in your whole life that might happen. So it's. I think it's good to go in with the expectation, not a hopelessness like stuff's going to go wrong, oh man, so bad, but stuff is going to go wrong and stuff's going to be non-optimal, and that's part of life. That's how it's going to happen. I think that opens you up then to be more creative, enjoy the moment more, be more present and not feel this pressure Totally.

Speaker 1: 25:55

And within that posture of just living in the moment and being present, it still really helps to have a plan. So what would you recommend to somebody who wants to make a safety plan the next time they're traveling? Who wants to?

Speaker 2: 26:09

make a safety plan the next time they're traveling. So you want to sit down previous to going out, because if you're already on the trip you're a bit late. It's going to be hard to try to work that all out after you're already out there. Sit down and determine okay, what are my daily routines? Okay so, mental, spiritual, physical, what can I set up for myself each morning, or in the afternoon or in the evening, whatever works best for you? I love the mornings, but I know some people it's like I cannot wake up that early. But if you can start your day that way, set up a few things for me. I I'm a little extreme with this and I know this sounds, this sounds intense, but it took me years to get here. I spend a half an hour in my spiritual time. I spend 15 minutes journaling and then I exercise for about another half hour. Okay, so it takes time to do all that and I get a healthy breakfast that I set my day up really well with a good quality breakfast. Get some vegetables, get some fruit, get a good quality breakfast, get some vegetables, get some fruit, get some good quality carbohydrates, protein, good fats. I start my day that way because that's the maximum amount of fun, right, like I want to have energy, I want to feel good, I want to feel happy. That way I can actually have a really good time that day. So determine what time do I need to kind of get up generally and go to bed generally in order to make those routines work.

Speaker 2: 27:35

Plan activities right. Your entire day doesn't have to be loaded. You don't have to have it loaded front to back, but plan some things with your family if you're on vacation of here are the things that we're going to do each day. Right, we're going to go out to this event or we're going to go on this hike, or we're going to go each day. Right, we're going to go out to this event, or we're going to go on this hike, or we're going to go do this, that right. Plan some stuff and then plan some things something as well that you can do. That is going to be especially if you're an introvert, but I think this is for a lot of people. Plan something you can do that's on your own, independent, where you can take a break and take time out right To write or to read, to do something. That kind of fulfills you, it helps you recharge. It helps you feel a little accomplished, it helps you feel good, be more present, plan in those things.

Speaker 2: 28:24

If it's a business trip, you need to plan in all those same things. It's just going to look a little bit different, right, and that cause you're going to have meetings, you're going to have um, networking events, presentations, et cetera, things that you're doing. You still need to take care of yourself while you're out there, physically, mentally, spiritually, maybe even more. It's more important Even You're facing stress and expectations in this whole environment. So set up what structure you can in those ways.

Speaker 2: 28:56

And if you're looking at that business trip and all, maybe it's a conference you're going to and you can see the whole schedule plan in for yourself. Maybe some people are going to be out socializing for two hours in between meetings. Maybe that's not for you. That's not unacceptable, that's really acceptable. Just to know yourself and to be realistic, yeah, I'll chat with people and hang out for a half hour, 45 minutes an hour, and then I've got to go kind of be by myself, chill, go on a walk, pray for a while, right or meditate. Do something to get re-present. Pray for a while right or meditate. Do something to get re-present, get rebalanced. These are the things you want in your safety plan.

Speaker 2: 29:39

Now, that's structure. In addition, you want to outline some things that you know when you go out, there are going to be triggering times for you. So this would be like at night, right At 7 or 8 pm or whatever it is. If you're on a business trip, let's say you get back in your hotel room, you're going to be by yourself. That is grounds for serious danger, right? So you want to set up a plan, as you're saying. This is all part of a safety plan. What's going to enable you or increase the likelihood that you can stay sober? What's going to set you up in a safe way to stay sober? Well, I'm going to call my wife, right? Let's say, check in with her. How did the day go, how was your day, honey? Let's chat for a while. Let's talk about how things are going. I'm going to check in on hey, here's kind of the things that I have in place, what I'm doing tonight before I go to bed. So, checking on those things, you can get a bit of that accountability and communicate that and then have your nighttime routines of winding down.

Speaker 2: 30:39

I would recommend again, if you're addicted to porn or that's been a challenge for you, trying to recover from it. That wind down time is not social media. It's not you sitting watching TV. Then you're in virtual zone, right. Your winding down time is going to look very different. It's going to be reading a book, or it's going to be going out on a walk, it's going to be doing some meditation. It's going to be sitting and breathing, right, writing out your emotions, journaling, getting those emotions down in case you can offload the stress of the day.

Speaker 2: 31:14

And then I will add if you're going on a trip where you are able to bring your family, I'd recommend that, especially if you're early on in recovery, if you're able to bring someone with you or stay in the same room as a coworker or something, or do something where you can be with somebody so you don't have to be by yourself. Because part of you will say that part of you that's so determined and wants to be independent but can be really critical it'll say I can do this, it's not a big deal, I'll do it all on my own, we can manage that. Or maybe it's a little more uh, creative or deceptive side of you that is saying you'll be fine, don't worry about it like everything's going to work out. You won't watch porn while you're out there. Acknowledge those parts of you, they're important parts of you, and make a better decision if you're able to or get that structure in the evenings, if you're going to be alone right and try to connect with somebody.

Speaker 1: 32:15

It's so wise, as much as there are parts of me that don't like structure, it is liberating and sometimes we need to adjust that structure and adapt it. To be realistic, you know, especially if your trips are like my trips, unexpected things happen, and so there's also a beauty in being flexible, and even if I can't do the entire plan, settling for as much of it as makes sense is still great.

Speaker 2: 32:52

Yeah, and I think, kind of going back to what we're saying about the mindset on the trip, I love that you brought up that part of the article. I'm thinking back to a recent vacation that I went on with my family to California and it was really good in a lot of ways, but it was also hard, because I am again this person with like a drive, this like fiery passion inside. I want to adventure, I want to do things that are meaningful, I want to make a difference and if I don't give that a path, it often will turn to destruction, like either I'm going to get angry and start a fight, like just because I want to feel something and I don't even realize that's happening. Right, I've become more aware of that and I try to, early on, be like ah, what I call it is the adventuring part of me which is like courageous and bold. Right, it's like let's just start some stuff, let's just fight. That way I can feel the stimulation I'm needing, right. So if I'm able to call attention to that part, I can either redirect it to be like you know, I've got to go out and do something exciting.

Speaker 2: 33:54

So when I was out there, I was feeling that tension and I was like, hey, babe, I'm going to take our son out, we're going to go on a daddy-son date. We're going to go get some food. We're going to walk around some stores and hang out. Right, I got some good one-on-one time with my son. We chilled, we hung out. That gives me some of that meaning. It's not incredibly, overwhelmingly exciting, right, but it's a time for me to go out and do something different, right, and laugh with my son, hang out right, eat some good food and get some of that stimulation that I needed.

Speaker 2: 34:25

But even if not that, even if there's not an option, at least I can step back and be aware of the part of my mind that might be seeking out an escape, or the parts of my mind that are highly driven right and can move into more of that. So, one of those parts that can act as a manager. It's like, dude, we got to get stuff done, we got to be productive, like we got to be on point, and if we're not doing that, we're worth nothing, right? So, turning to that part and being like, hey, it's a driven part of me, it wants to get stuff done, it wants to be productive. It's a super positive part of me, love that part. It's okay that right now it's a little slower paced. Chilling, I'm relaxing, you know. I got my toddler, I got my wife who's sick, she's pregnant, right. It's more low key right now and, yes, that feels kind of tense for me inside and I'm going to be present without tension.

Speaker 1: 35:25

It's all right, so good. I love the way that you're incorporating parts work into this conversation and into the work you do. It's one of the most valuable approaches we found for outgrowing porn. Jake, what is your favorite thing about freedom from porn?

Speaker 2: 35:40

Oh boy, lots of things. It's interesting, as you say that, because there are so many changes that take place neurologically when you get out of porn, and so dopamine because that's such a heavy contributor there's many other factors in porn addiction and when you're recovering, so many things that improve, but just dopamine alone, because it's something that's involved in motivation. I remember it was such a struggle to find motivation. I had these ambitions inside of me of you know, I want to build a business and I want to make a difference and I want to serve people. I want to have fun and I want to do things that are exciting and I want to make a difference and I want to serve people. I want to have fun and I want to do things that are exciting and I want to do all this stuff. And it's just like, and I feel capable of none of it. It was hard, really hard, to get myself motivated, and motivation comes so much more naturally for me now. It doesn't mean it's always easy, by the way, but far more frequently it's like it's just there, like this pool of motivation is just there, and I simply didn't have that capacity before.

Speaker 2: 36:38

Focus as well. Right, I struggled with what could be termed ADD, adhd and, by the way, as I say this, I'm not saying that everyone who has ADD or ADHD is an addict and that's why you can't focus. But for me it was very much this like addiction created, you know, this imbalance in my dopaminergic system. I had such trouble focusing. It was all over the place. It's like a roller coaster. Sometimes I'd be really focused and I'd be in it, and other times it's like I've got nothing. I hated that. I could not stand that, because I had this deep desire inside of me to live a meaningful life, and I think we all have that desire, whatever form that comes in for us. Right, I wanted to live a meaningful life, then dopamine also plays this integral role in connection.

Speaker 2: 37:26

I just felt detached from the people around me, like I couldn't connect. I didn't feel as much empathy as I felt like I should feel, or as much emotion or sadness or care. I was like what am I? A sociopath? Like I must just be this screwed up, horrible person. I felt like that inside and it was like what was playing a big part in that was the addiction, where it was just sapping me and draining me of this emotional energy that I deeply needed and should have as a human being.

Speaker 2: 37:57

I think, for those who are in the struggle now, having that compassion for yourself, for that understanding of, yeah, I can't feel this and this is playing a big role in that. It's not that I'm a bad person, it's that I've got this challenge I'm dealing with and I'm working to overcome it and this is actually going to get better, like I think it's exciting. It can give you hope I can overcome this one day and I can actually have so much more emotion, excitement. I can feel more connected to my wife, to my kids, oh, and that's a wonderful future to look forward to. Those are some of my favorite things.

Speaker 1: 38:36

That's why we do this, for ourselves and for others. All those desires for meaning and adventure and purpose, connection, focus, motivation are all affected by our sexuality and our relationship with porn, or the lack of it our sexuality and our relationship with porn or the lack of it.

Speaker 2: 38:58

Yeah, and I'll also say this as well which is the same part of you that acts out addictively? From what I understand from parts work and what I've experienced inside myself and things I've studied, et cetera, Same part of you that's addicted to porn is the same part of you that is like bold, courageous, adventurous, risk-taking, fun, spontaneous, probably funny. When you start to move out of addiction, that part of you can shift and change. You don't got to sit on top of that part or demonize it or be like. This is a horrible part of me and I want it to die. It's going to be a dissatisfying, unhappy way to live sobriety. I've done it. I did it for like five years. It was horrible. That part of you can convert. It's actually a really good part of you and it can convert into something that's really positive and amazing.

Speaker 2: 39:37

I will say that without it's going to be so ironic without that part of me that used to behave as a porn addict, I wouldn't have built the business that I have and be able to coach men one-on-one, because that part of me has passion, has adventure, it was willing to take the risk to build a business and do something adventurous that other parts of me thought was freaking crazy, Like that's impossible, You're crazy, and it was like let's do this. I wouldn't have built this business without that part. But it was only able to act that way because it wasn't constantly channeled into this role of being addictive and destructive. Now it behaves a lot of the time in a really positive way in my life. Man, I absolutely love that.

Speaker 1: 40:23

Pray. Scott. Jake thanks so much for being with us. And guys, if you want to connect with Jake or learn more about his program, go to nomoredesirecom or check out the other links in the show notes and remember you are God's beloved son. In you he is well-pleased.