In this episode of 'WTF Do I Do Now?', host Mandy welcomes Brando, who bravely shares his journey through porn addiction after finding it when he was 10. Brando opens up about his struggle from childhood into adulthood, performance anxiety, the negative impacts on his mental health and relationships, and the shame associated with addiction. They discuss the importance of vulnerability and the role of conscious practices like breathwork and therapy in recovery. Brando's inspiring story highlights personal growth, the importance of support systems, and the transformative journey toward self-acceptance and a healthier life.
In this episode of 'WTF Do I Do Now?', host Mandy welcomes Brando, who bravely shares his journey through porn addiction after finding it when he was 10. Brando opens up about his struggle from childhood into adulthood, performance anxiety, the negative impacts on his mental health and relationships, and the shame associated with addiction. They discuss the importance of vulnerability and the role of conscious practices like breathwork and therapy in recovery. Brando's inspiring story highlights personal growth, the importance of support systems, and the transformative journey toward self-acceptance and a healthier life.
All right. Welcome back to another episode of WTF do I do now? I am so excited to welcome this next guest to the show. Today we have Brando with us and he has experienced a struggle with porn and I just want to honor his bravery and his courage and his vulnerability for coming on to the show today because it's a taboo topic that not many people speak about and I just want to honor you for coming on. So thank you
Thank you, Mandy. And thank you for just like shedding a light on this topic. Like you said, it is something that oftentimes just lives in the shadows. And what I found is that things that live in the shadow have a way of perpetuating themselves into a vicious cycle. So the light is very much a healing aspect of this whole thing for myself and others. So thank you. Honored to be here.
Amazing. Thank you. And. So I think we can just go ahead and get started if you want to do a brief introduction of yourself and when your Relationship with porn started and what that journey looked like
A brief introduction of myself, I'll keep it really short and maybe sticking to the parts that might be relevant here is like you said, my name is Brando, born and raised in California engineer by education and work for the first several years out of college. And after that began my own personal journey of following my enthusiasm and trying to find my way out of, depression, finding my way out of a feeling of stuckness, and in many ways has led me on this little, what I call, this surrender experiment where I'm following the enthusiasm, following the curiosity, but also following these things that overlap a lot with my own healing experience.
And at the time, I didn't know what were going to be the pieces of my own healing. And I just would reach one new plateau or one new perspective and gain more insights and going on that sort of journey over the past four or five, six years has directed me in a place where I have, I'm not, I don't have all of the answers, but I know very well what has worked for me to get me to the place where I am now.
And that's just a very high level there. Porn addiction. I'm not sure where the best place to start, but since I spoke a little bit about my life and where I was at work and a little bit about depression is I was working as an engineer in a manufacturing company and there were a lot of parts about it that I enjoyed and there were some parts that I didn't, I think like most people.
And it was so easy to point towards this job as the reason for a lot of my ailments or for a lot of my dissatisfaction. But as I look closer and I guess some of the other underlying beliefs or different aspects that were there were, my romantic life wasn't exactly where I wanted. The purpose that I wanted in life wasn't exactly where I wanted it to be.
The community that I wanted wasn't necessarily where I wanted it to be. And so I knew something really had to change. And the way that progressed from there was I had this deep inner knowing that if I didn't change things drastically, that my hope, like my whole life wouldn't be an expression of what I wanted it to be. And I'm starting in the middle here. And I think at some point I'll like go back to the beginning of where it all began.
But I think this is a, an interesting place to begin because the desire for a romantic relationship, one that really fulfills you, one that feels co nourishing, supportive, one that really can help you along your way to Be the biggest and best version of yourself is a deep desire of mine and probably for many people.
And I knew at my core, as I was working through just my own experience, that having this dense powerless relationship to porn, I just really felt like I wouldn't be able to achieve that. And I think on a manifestation level, the vibration that you carry is like the vibration of the type of people that you attract.
And I want to be attracting all the things that I just mentioned. And when I'm in this place where I'm feeling stuck and powerless, I knew that isn't the life that it wasn't the man I wanted to be. That wasn't the husband. That wasn't the brother. That wasn't the uncle. That wasn't like the friend that I wanted to be to all the people in my life.
I can pause there for a moment, but I can also circle back to the beginning.
I think Everything you're saying is amazing and i'm already so touched. So yeah, feel free to keep going
Okay. I guess I'll speak a little bit about how it all manifested. And I don't think it's a very uncommon story of mine necessarily, or at least some of the pieces, but in the beginning, my relationship to porn I, I don't exactly remember my very first time watching porn, but what I do through some of the work that I've done have begun to understand why I was reaching for it.
And maybe when I was nine or 10 years old, I think a dynamic of having turmoil in the family and an unsteady, just like household environment led me to porn as a self soothing, self or just a coping mechanism. It was mindless and, in those coming of age years where one's sexuality is coming online, it just almost seems like something that made sense.
It was a refuge in some sort of way. Moving on past that, into my teen years and adolescence, where I start to begin to understand my own identity a little bit more. And, you throw girls into the mix, you're in high school, your own ego starts to come online in a strong way.
Then things like performance anxiety, And it wasn't necessarily with sex in the beginning. This is actually an important point that I wanted to, I'd like to dive into. We'll circle back to it, but things like performance anxiety, feelings of unworthiness and insecurity started to really develop.
And at the time I don't think I had any framework of trying to understand it, nor would I have used any of these words. I just would have, try to suck it up and try to be the most manly version of myself in different situations, whether it be on the basketball court or at a party or whatever it is.
We're like just given this inherited framework from our peers and from our culture and the movies that we watch of like, how are we supposed to be? And porn obviously brings a very a very specific way that a man is supposed to show up. I feel like I'd like to pause there. And then I can circle back to the performance anxiety piece, because this was a really important part of my development.
In high school, a big part of my life was sports. And I believed, or at least I was told very often by my dad that I was very good at basketball or sports in general. And I was very lucky to have that sort of voice developed, like my dad's voice there developed. That was one of the beautiful benefits.
Like I can do anything that I set my mind to. I can overcome any challenge and I can beat anyone if I wanted to, but there was like one very, key challenge in having a father who was so deeply involved in my sports success. And that was, I would say, allocated some of his own self worth to the success that I had on the court.
And so what would happen there is that I would The pressure of having my dad at games would almost be so debilitating for me that it would be very hard for me to show up in the fullness of what I knew I was capable of because we're going to practice day in and day out and it becomes very clear and my dad's not there.
It becomes very clear that, okay, I can hang with the guys as like a freshman, I was playing varsity. With like the seniors and juniors. So that was like a big, ego boost, but then something would happen in these games. And one of the aspects of my parents dynamics that came to the forefront during these years was that my success, when I would do poorly in sports and in all things in life in general, is that.
My mom would get blamed and yelled at for me doing poorly, whether it be in sports, whether I got in trouble at school, whether I was doing poorly in school. And this was something huge that I only had uncovered or discovered through my time in therapy, which was a short little bit. And we'll talk about that later.
But having this connection and understanding that the very beginnings of my performance anxiety began almost as a protection mechanism. So that I wouldn't, so that I wouldn't see my mom get yelled at or blamed for something.
Um, yeah. And that was huge. That was really deep. That was very emotional thing to discover. It's that was very much a shadow that I lived with and existed with for, all of this developed between 10 and 20 years of age. This is coming to the surface when I'm 28 years old.
So that was a hard thing to, to live with. And so the great benefit of this type of incessant anxiety to try to perform, whether it be in sports, whether it be with women or whether it be in life and career is that yes, there is a positive benefit in. Inspiring one to do the things that they need to do to be a productive human in this modern world and in the ways that this world, Western society allocates success and worth.
And so I'm grateful for that in this certain way where. It really motivated me to do the normal markings of success things, get a good job, create your own business, have some version of this thing that you can point to. And for me, it was the business of, Hey, I'm successful because I have this thing, . And so the performance anxiety though, as it relates to sex things, the porn has a way of really showing. A very one sided,
I don't want to say it's it's 0 percent real, maybe like 1 percent is more, it's more realistic, cause there are aspects of it that are real. We humans are these vastly unique beings with so much dimensionality and we have the capacity to express ourselves in so many beautiful ways.
And, some of it is. Some of that stuff that we might see but then there it what seems to be left out is just all of these other pieces that you know, what I found later in life is Actually what resonates with me like the way that I want to approach sexuality Sex intimacy and all of those things.
It's like with this deep sense of reverence This deep sense of honoring this deep sense of knowing like how powerful of a act we are engaging in this thing is like, is the center of the creation of every human. And it has the potential depending on what your own personal practices are. It has the potential to connect you to God.
It has the potential to connect you deeply to these parts within yourself. It has the potential to bring up so much emotion, as I've experienced, especially in the past two, three years of approaching sexuality with a deep sense of consciousness, and really seeing with a lot of partners who are also conscious, not a lot, some partners that are conscious, and where we invite into the space.
Like anything that comes up during an intimate experiences, it's so welcome. It's so safe. Please allow yourself to be angry. Please allow yourself to cry. Please allow yourself to pause. Please allow yourself to, let those parts of yourself that were repressed or were traumatized in a previous time.
To come forward and when we almost set that framework, I'm getting a little bit off topic here, but we'll circle back and I'll pause, but when we set up that framework, what I've realized is there is so much there. There's so much pain and trauma there. And I think that points to how special of an act this is.
How special the experience and practice sex is in general as an energy and as a thing that we experience. I'll pause there and maybe I can also use your support on helping guide this in a linear direction. But I know there's like pieces that I was I wanted to jump onto and they're like, okay, bye.
The train's going this way for a moment.
Thank you. Thank you for sharing all that. You brought up so many good points. I feel like I'm still processing a lot. It was just beautiful. But something that really stuck out that I would love to Get more of your insight on as you said you obviously came across
it as a young kid 10 - years old and it was a self soothing technique.
It was mindless it was like a coping mechanism and I do think that is true for the majority of people is that when you first come across it, no one's there to educate you on how this could be harmful.
No one's there to even there to talk to you about porn. And I'm curious if at what point in your journey did you start to think Maybe this is causing negative effects in my life. Maybe this isn't. Like, when did you start to rethink
That's a really good question. You're right. It's a very innocent act in the beginning and is actually even beyond in this innocent. It is it's a helpful thing in a way like these addictions and I say helpful, cautiously, but addictions often manifest themselves because they are there to fulfill their a very human need, and we reach for something that seems to somehow work in the short term or for that moment, and we continue to go back and reach for it.
To answer your question, the first thing that comes to mind is, I think I have two different moments that I might point to. The first is with my first girlfriend in high school. And we were together for three years. And we tried to have sex on a few different occasions. And so this is high school. I've been watching porn and by the time high school came around, it was very regular use.
I don't exactly know if I know how frequently, but it was enough for me to know that it's compulsive. It's an addiction already at that point. And so with, in this relationship, I experienced erectile dysfunction. It was really hard. No pun intended, it was difficult for me to stay hard.
Yeah, there's always a trap there with that one. Yeah, and those experiences as a man in this world are very difficult because we allocate so much of our self worth on to how hard, how much pleasure we can bring, a woman during sex. And so this was actually a very traumatic experience for me where I started to become very fearful of sex. And, I think it was around that time, as I started to like, try to figure out like, what's going on here, I've never heard of this thing, of I've only seen through porn, that men are able just to have sex and are seemingly have this endlessly hard cock, it's just, And
When you're talking to your friends in high school, surely no one talks about their failures or I don't even like the word failure now, those moments that, they weren't able to please their woman, we have a lot of machismo, especially in the locker room, it's like you don't talk about that stuff.
So that was the first time I began to, Maybe have a suspicion, but it wasn't until my second girlfriend in high school, who also was a long term relationship, another three years that went into college, where I, it became very apparent to me that I was addicted to porn. Before that, I had a very strong.
Self belief that I wouldn't ever be addicted to anything like it was a very conscious thing and I smoked weed and at that time and Felt like I was able to observe the people around me who are Addicted to weed even though I'd be like in the same circles as them and maybe smoking as much as them Realizing that I don't have this necessary need for it. And so it's yeah, I'm good.
And I didn't drink, much just because something about it didn't body very well. Or maybe I was just sensitive and attuned. I don't know. But I was gifted in that way. We're never really sunk in with me. But it was in the second relationship where my porn use was out in the, somewhat known, out in the open, to the point where it started to develop issues in the relationship where she would feel feelings of insecurity and right, rightfully and it was in that relationship that many times I tried to stop, and I remember tracking it, and I don't think I fully even journaled at that time, but I did have some sort of Notebook that I was tracking like how many I was literally checking the number of days.
I've gone without it and I'm realizing okay I couldn't and I would say there were they were earnest efforts But I didn't really have a framework or knowledge base on like how to go about stopping because at that time and I think Often is the framework that we are given for success is at least for me was to use willpower and having a willingness and having willpower is very important.
I think willingness without it, the healing journey can never be successful. But I also found that the healing isn't necessarily successful without willingness. So it is a great place to start. It is a prerequisite, but You often need more. I would say almost every time you need something else there, and that would be knowledge and support.
And then when did I, so throughout college, I don't think I was really trying to stop. I was single. So, having a relationship and a partner that it becomes a, a very centered problem around is something that will spur someone to try to stop like myself, but throughout college and then the years following college for about five years I didn't really do anything about it.
I just was aware of it and it was almost like this numbing experience to go to porn. And I think the numbing experience of it was because
I'm guessing a little bit right now, but there was a deep sense of shame that was developing, especially after trying to stop in that relationship and being unsuccessful in some sort of way. And so, I never necessarily reached for porn and after, felt like, wow, that felt amazing. I feel great.
I can really take on whatever it is I need to take on now. It was just like, Yeah, it was shrouded in these dense densities. And I think that's, I think that was just like almost a mindless numbed experience. Mm-Hmm.
Thank you so much for sharing all that and I love that you mentioned the shame and the numbness because I think that is what makes these porn addictions so hard to overcome is when you feel the shames Then you're trying to numb the emotions of the shame and it just keeps repeating but then on top of that it's no one is say no one, I don't want to generalize everyone, but most people don't have conversations about porn, with their friends or their family because of that shame.
And I, that's why I think it's so important to have conversations like these. So people know one, they aren't alone and two, that healing is possible. And so I would love to dive more into what was your road to healing? I know.
Our other conversations, you've mentioned like shadow work and Tantra. And yeah, for anyone who's listening to know, like what a route is, what worked for you, what might've not worked and yeah, just more insight into the road to healing.
Let me just, there's a few of 'em. I just want to collect them and present them all at the same time. road to healing is not linear in, in any way. In around 2019.
Around 2019, 2018, I was, I started to get the notion that I wanted to take this a little bit more seriously. Especially because I was feeling a little bit, as I said, depressed at work and that feeling was starting to expand and take over my life a little bit more. And my porn use and my romantic life was always something that I just knew wasn't where I wanted it to be.
I started buying some books on it. I just started to educate myself. I had one friend who I talked to about it and. The books were interesting in retrospect. And I don't I'm almost curious from your perspective of if what I say next is actually resonates with other people. I imagine I'm unique in this where I actually felt all of the books almost didn't help at all. Either they were neutral or actually like, I don't know, But perhaps when I talked to about the things that actually did support me it starts to make a little bit more sense But I'm curious on your perspective and then your experience talking to people if you've heard this before
Yeah, I've heard that there's one it's really fucking hard to quit Sorry for swearing, but it's really hard and there are so many resources out there And a lot of them don't seem that helpful and on top of that. There's a lot of resources that say it's okay to watch porn, and not
That it is or isn't okay, but in a way that it enables the porn use by being like, oh humans are meant to be sexually curious, or, there's ethical porn, but yes, I have heard from People who have tried to quit that it took a lot of different
Type of attempts so I am always curious about people's healing journey because I haven't experienced an addiction. But from the collective that I hear, it's Really hard and the resources aren't that great. Which is why you now see, an uptick in, coaches who are helping people overcome porn because you do need more of that like one on one support or the group effort to know, like a group coaching to know that it can just be really difficult to take it on your
Yeah. And thanks for the permission to slip for swearing. I feel more safe now.
Oh yes, swear all you want. Just
Let's fucking go. I
think for me, the reason why I felt like it wasn't working and it dovetails a little bit with my next step, which is I hired a therapist for the first time and who specialized in porn addiction. And actually there was a lot that I benefited greatly from my work with the therapist. But to close the loop on what I felt wasn't working with the books and some of the knowledge that was, that I was receiving through these books was that somehow just creating a new habit cycle or using willpower to a lot of willpower to lean on these like new protocols that I would create, if a like a stimulus arose, or this urge arose for me to reach for porn, that now you take your 10 breaths, you try to replace it with something else, and I think that is at its core very useful and valuable, but will always break down if that's all you're coming at it with in a way.
Like there, there are deeper roots that need to be healed or else these, the urge I've found will always be there. And willpower, I think can last for a while, depending on who you are, it can last. a week, a month, a year, a decade. But if you're like constantly exposed at a certain point, you might not be your strongest at all times when you're hit with a certain challenge.
And so that didn't feel like a winning strategy. And it certainly wasn't for me, even on a week to week basis, like going a week without watching porn was like, Whoa, success. But that was hard, and so to get I started working with a therapist and
what unfolded there, there was some pieces that were very valuable and then there was one piece that I felt like actually almost exacerbated the problem for me. What was very valuable was that through his questioning, through the way he would guide me into my past. Help me unearth and s excavate some of like where all of this began, and I shared a little bit about it earlier.
Massively helpful. And at that same time I was I was training to become a trauma informed breathwork facilitator. So it's a six month program. It was quite intensive and I was going pretty deep breathwork journeys four or five times a week for, six,
Whoa.
at this time when I'm remembering for the first time that, I've developed these patterns to, protect my mom or, all of those times where I entered a sexual experience and I felt lesser than or unworthy or emasculated or unattractive.
And it was so I felt very lucky to have both of those components at the same time where on the therapy level, it was the classic thing you hear about it is very cognitive based, at least for me, in my experience, my therapist, and then to have this very somatic. And if you will call it an energetic experience through, through breath work to almost go back in time and touch those moments in history in my own personal history to revisit with a sense of tenderness, caring, softness.
And a nurturing of these past versions of myself because these journeys can get these breathwork journeys can feel a little bit psychedelic and quite visual, depending on your yourself and how you're going about the experience. Yeah, that was profoundly helpful to have both of those happen at the same time.
The other gift of the becoming trauma informed, which I saw that. You're four months into becoming a trauma. What program are you in?
I'm doing it with a coach who actually, she went through partner betrayal trauma where she found out her husband was addicted to porn. So now she made a program it's called Advanced Trauma Relationship Coaching so we focus on trauma which, it's been really cool getting to Learn from her and she's also been a source of healing for me so right when you said you were training to become a trauma informed Somatic
Yeah. Yeah. So congratulations on you going through that program and being four months in this. So what I'm about to say probably resonates with you, but what be becoming trauma informed did was it granted me the lens that many of the ways that we show up in our lives and all people usually stems from some sort of trauma.
And that lens is quite a compassionate lens. It is the lens that like. Okay, this person who has this weird thing about them, undesirable trait, or is lashing out, whatever it is that I'm judging about some human or myself, usually comes from someone who's been hurt at some point. We hear that phrase, hurt people.
Or hurt people are, you know, are usually expressing themselves in a way that we can easily judge out in the world. So that granted myself a lot of self compassion in that experience. The part that was not helpful with my therapist, though, was I felt like
So first of all, when we were tracking my use of porn, masturbation, orgasm, and I'm not exactly sure why, I never asked him directly, but he would use this acronym, PMO, and it's almost like we would never say the words porn, masturbation, orgasm. As if it's so taboo that we're not even going to say it.
And so we would just say PMO. And that always just felt weird to me, but it also just felt
I think this is common and makes a lot of sense that porn use becomes demonized. And I totally get it. And I was there for a long time. I think there is an aspect about porn use that should not be celebrated, but I think, as I'll speak later, that I think celebration is also a very beautiful thing to bring into a lot of aspects of these denser parts of our own experiences.
So eventually I stopped working with a therapist. I'm just going to continue on and thread it into the next leg of the journey here. I stopped working with a therapist floundered around without the support of him, obviously as well. Cause but I felt like I was plateauing. I was just doing the same thing of stopping, starting, stopping, starting, and being more shameful about it every single time.
Cause every relapse is almost an affirmation of your own powerlessness. And that becomes a cycle of. more shame, more powerlessness, more reasons to need another self soothing coping mechanism. But I want to get to this next part because I think this is where things get a little bit more interesting.
I go on a journey through Central America and I signed up for this basically it's called contact improv or, but I signed up for a course called contact beyond contact as a partner dance facilitator training in this town in Guatemala that some might describe as a little bit spiritual or conscious or a little bit hippie, but in my experience there I was there for a month and I was dancing with humans, women, men
often and being in this community that is call it conscious or spiritual what you've experienced when you're there is that even when you're at the cafe, all of a sudden, you're in these deep, intimate conversations with maybe a stranger or someone that you you've just recently become acquainted with.
And maybe even like somehow you're like, just. In these experiences where there's just more physical touch is present, not even sexual. It's just a little bit more touch, or a lot more touch. Just to give a little bit of framework cuddles at the cafe with a stranger. It's not that weird.
And cuddling's great, it's I think it's one of those Things that every human kind of likes, but it's also a little bit weird and you can't engage in it, and if you do, then all these questions arise, especially if you're a hetero man, with the hetero female, then it's okay, what does this all mean?
But I found when I was there after being there for a month is It surprised me. I hadn't even had the desire or the impulse to reach for porn once in a month. And that was also the same time that I found my coach and I had a secret objective. I had a feeling this town would have someone that can really help me along this journey.
But it was cool that the journey itself was already presenting the healing that I needed, or at least a lot of insight. But even in reflection and almost analyzing this month that I was there, I'm like, how is it that with, I applied zero willpower, I applied zero willpower and. This is by far the most successful attempt.
It's hard to even call it an attempt. It was just like a by product of the way I was living my life had created the conditions such that I wasn't reaching for porn. And so this sort of shattered this belief that porn was filling this unmet need of of having sexual fantasies or desires fulfilled or wanting more sex.
And what I really found was what I personally desired probably in addition to sex itself, but more importantly, I think at the core of it was just intimacy with other humans and physical touch. And when I say intimacy, it's not even sexual intimacy. Cause this was being fulfilled even on days where I'm just like, I only danced with men and it was by myself, at the cafe.
Was a huge realization. I don't know if you've heard that before. Was very interesting to discover that it wasn't necessarily like sex things that I was seeking out of porn.
I ironically met a man when I was in Bali and we were just friends. I, he knew a bit of my story about with my ex and his porn addiction and everything, and in Bali is when I started researching porn a lot more and speaking up about it. And him and I we talk every now and then. And then probably when we're at about two months into Bali, he's I actually never really he's I have always had a difficult relationship with porn but I just didn't give much thought to it until ironically came to Bali. And even they're like, conversations are a lot more intimate.
Like you, they have contact dance, their contact improv. And it's when you're, , Telling the story about it. Wouldn't be odd to see people like cuddling at a cafe. My mind immediately went to Bali too. Cause I feel like there's just such this close connection between human beings. And yeah, he said the same feedback where he's I had no desire to look at porn.
I just didn't even think of it because my intimacy needs were getting met with people, not even in a sexual way, but just like that deep desire for human connection, which, and I think that is what porn strips out. That's what it doesn't show about real intimacy.
It doesn't show the emotional, like the emotions behind it, or just even like conversations and telling people about your vulnerabilities, your insecurities, your dreams, your goals, whatever it may be. So yeah, I'm so happy you were able to be there and have that experience. And it just shows that when you listen to your intuition and that calling,
Yeah,
it was a big illumination. Yeah. So the town I was in was called San Marcos. I forgot if I've shared any of it with you, but. Have you heard of San Marcos at Lake Atitlan? It's very much like Bali vibes and a lot of the community there, they do their circuit of maybe like Bali San Marcos and then like Nevada city or something like that.
Yeah.
I guess I'll add that to my next list.
yeah. So it was there that I found a coach. I'm going to take a moment to collect my thoughts for this next chapter, unless you have any other things that want to be any threads you want to pull on.
I'm curious how you worked with the coach and or if you don't want to go into details of that, if you just have any advice for anyone who might be listening struggling with porn or has gone through the common thread of trying to stop, then relapse, stop, relapse,
Yeah,
all of it.
Yeah,
It is, I think in many ways, that is the nature of healing. It is the nature of progression and development as just as human beings and to have a lot of grace for yourself, a lot of compassion. A lot of forgiveness. And these are almost platitudes at this point to be saying these things that are like the things you'll see on a mug at target perhaps, but on a very deep, as often things are the deepest, as often are the deepest wisdoms. They get printed on a mug and target.
Yeah, it's the journey, it's going to be a difficult one. It will challenge you in many ways. And. I like to not look at it in success failure dynamics or bad good dynamics because I think at a certain point, this has just been my own perspective that I've developed slash borrowed just from other pieces of wisdom that I've read and learned over the years is that within our own challenges, within our own pain lies the seeds.
of our own unique gifts and our own unique challenges are specifically placed and perfectly orchestrated for you to transmute them into your unique gifts. And I think this is a very powerful framework because It just reframes the whole experience of this challenge and, I'm no saint or I don't know what I'm not special.
It's not like I've been able to embody this framework my whole part the whole way. But at moments like we stop and we reflect on Okay, what is being gifted to me here? What is the opportunity that is being presented? What is the lesson here? What is something that can be felt more deeply?
Other pieces like I said earlier the support, finding proper support is important. Maybe that's just something we want to get into.
And I think that this dovetails nicely with my work with the coach because she actually provided me a lot of these things, but, you know, yeah, I'll just jump right into my work with the coach because I think from there, it encapsulates all the other like little bits of advice that I might have because essentially they've been gifted to me in a way.
So my coach, her name is atta of woods. She is a conscious relating conscious sexuality coach. She specializes in consent practices. And it was in a workshop that she was teaching at a festival about consent and boundaries that I was so drawn to her. And I was like, I think she's the one. the person. And so I reached out to her afterwards and we started working together.
I think the ways that I worked with her, we, she the, our very first session was just like a somatic experiencing session. Just it wasn't a massage, but it was just her, like just feeling into my body. Some of it was energetic. Some of it was just like seeing how it would respond just to touch.
But I think the part that I want to get into is it was through her support that I really began to embrace this part of the journey. I was really beginning to to release some of the shame. I was being encouraged to like and this is where things start to get almost flipped upside down. But what I found in my own personal experience is that Porn has such a charge, it has such draw, and part of it, for me, was that it's because it wasn't allowed.
It's almost like the kid that, when you tell a kid you can't eat the chocolate cake. All of a sudden, everyone wants to eat a chocolate cake, but let's say you tell the kid that he can't swing this hammer, it's like the hammer was just gonna be there. Maybe the kid didn't want to swing it, but now you told him that you can't swing the hammer.
Now all of a sudden he wants to swing the hammer. She really led me to this place where I was encouraged not to shame myself. Okay, we are going to do everything we can to stop watching porn. But the approach was going to be different. The approach was going to, how do I arrange my life in such a way that all of my needs do get met, especially with this new found information of that actually the core needs that I desire or that I need are physical touch and intimacy with humans.
And in some ways, it's okay, yes, this can be challenging. Once you leave this little bubble, that is a conscious community. And you're coming back for me, orange County. Some might call it back to the matrix. So it was like, how do you actually integrate your experiences so that you're back in normal life and you can create an environment for yourself that's supportive.
So I started to. Attend more, just dance experiences, just experiences where you can touch what touches normal and just doing it with friends as well. But beyond arranging your life in such a way that it supports you. It's also, okay, we already know the path. is going to be nonlinear. There are going to be times where even when you use all of your willpower, use all of your tools, and you've done everything right, there's still going to be times when the charge is so strong that it feels like you have no other choice but to still reach for porn.
And in those moments, how can we actually invite myself to embrace the experience of watching porn. And this was actually a big, another big flip because to that point, like I said, it was shrouded in shame and numbness, but how do we actually open up our feeling body and invite as much Pleasure and enjoyment out of this experience and that had a remarkably interesting effect of removing the draw that porn had.
It wasn't 100 percent effective, but for some reason in those moments okay like you get to enjoy this. And it was almost like from her perspective or what she almost had to say to me was like, And what she was happy about, like what I was, how I was approaching the coaching container was that I was open enough to try it, but also skeptical enough, I was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm just going to try this.
Cause it sounds like a dangerous place to be like, okay, we're going to embrace this thing that, and then, and I was really happy. I did, I was really happy. The other. piece that was really important was creating a self pleasure practice. One that was actually healthy. One that, because one of the, one of the needs that porn was fulfilling was like this, just this sexual need as well.
And to create a practice or a ritual in my case, where I approached myself. as my own lover, as sacred, as, the honor, just everything that we were talking about earlier, like the, what a powerful practice and act this is to be. And what a gift, what a miracle it is to just be able to experience ourself in this way and perhaps feel the divinity of our own being in this way was a really big game changer and it does require some discipline, because it is a rewriting of a habit, a very deeply ingrained habit. But when that impulse does arise, that's one of the tools is okay, you can create this ritual. But actually, part of creating the environment such that porn wasn't a thing that you needed to reach for was actually creating it as a practice.
The same way that we have a meditation practice is the same way that we almost have a self pleasure practice. And one of the important pieces of the practice is this like, not having a goal in the practice and when I say self pleasure, most people are thinking but it's not even masturbation, self pleasure it, it is and it can be just the pleasure that one feels when they're brushing their fingers along their skin like this.
It is just the pleasure of taking a deep breath and it can be self pleasure that comes in the form of masturbation as well. But it's almost just like any other practice when we call it yoga or breath work or meditation as a practice. Usually it's like we have an idea of like we're going to do it a certain number of times out of the week or we have a a daily ritual of sort.
I don't necessarily have it scheduled in, but I do know it's, it is a part of my relationship to myself. And I find that it's very important to have this practice in place just for me to show up as the version of myself that I do. And one of the core reasons why this healing journey had been so important for me is because I had for a long time, I was even looking at my notes.
The recap notes with my coach over the past year. And even then I was saying something that I was saying more recently, and I've just forgot I'd been saying it back then too, was that deep inside of me, I have this desire to honor and review and, approach and see the divine feminine with this deep sense of honor and reverence.
And I just knew that with the conditioning that I've experienced through porn and otherwise that there was some sort of blockage there or not even a blockage. It was like an extra thread that I didn't want to be there. It was like the reverence that and objectification simultaneously, if that makes sense.
completely and objectification it's such a real thing with pornography because you just start to view people as objects rather than people with thoughts, feelings, or emotions. And I think that's such a good point to call out. And I think that's so beautiful that you can now see the woman and her sacredness and.
yeah, that's
no
on, I didn't mean to
cut you off.
profound. It was a very deep desire of mine. That was like one of the core reasons why, like I said earlier, that I knew this, I knew I needed to heal because part of the way I want to show up as a human in my community, as a father, as a brother, as an uncle, as a grandpa is like, That is so sad to hear the stories of those that, that don't carry that to the point where, you know, some version of sexual abuse happens or some version of a non consensual intimate relations happens.
Like, while, and this might be, I want to be careful with my words here that there is a sensitivity and a compassion for that hurt human. While at the same time, there's no place for that to ever happen. Our issues oftentimes aren't our fault, but they are our responsibility to heal from them.
And this was me like really taking a lot of ownership and responsibility to okay, the cards that I'm dealt doesn't necessarily need to be like this powerless destiny. It actually can be this very empowered destiny.
Yeah, is such a good point. I feel so, I had goosebumps when you were saying that yeah, we're not, the cards were dealt, they're not, we're not blamed to them, but it is our responsibility, especially as we age and we're adults and we're in relations with other our behavior is affecting others and we need
Take care of
yeah. Yeah, it's very I definitely believe that. It's been a beautiful part of this journey to Like I was saying earlier
It's interesting to say the cards that we're dealt isn't our destiny. is and it isn't, it's like It is. Because there are a limitless number of different ways that your card, the cards that you were dealt, how that can unfold. And I think that's where our own individual free will comes into play.
There is the destiny, there are preset things that we're given. And then, actually, that's your oyster. And Anything within that oysters is still fair game.
Yeah, I don't know that much about your journey Just like just the little bits that you've been sharing recently on your socials, but it has really You know, it got me really curious about your perspective and your experience. But I also just look forward to, experiencing you as a friend and knowing you a little bit more on the personal level, because yeah, you're someone I really just energetically jived with, like at super bloom had some really awesome moments.
That was like, cool. There's a got a human here.
Me too. Yeah. . It was really cool. And then when I got your message after super boom, I was like, Whoa yeah, I totally believe in the energetics of the universe. And it just,
You to people for some reason.
So that was really cool. . But I know we're at the end is there anything else you wanted to say that we didn't get to?
Yeah, I guess I touched on it a couple times But I think one of the important things one of the most supportive things actually to whether it be to transcend yeah, to transcend past challenging times is to almost connect it to a future version of yourself or a future scenario that you know you want to bring into your life.
And so for me, it was envisioning the type of father that I want to be in the future, even though I don't have children now. It's just like something Maybe it's just the timing in my life. I'm about to turn 31. But it was able to anchor the whole experience to something in the future that I knew was going to be so important to me, and that I knew that I did not want to be experiencing the shame, the same shame that I have been feeling for the past 20 years to this future version of yourself.
That's one and as I'm saying that maybe a second piece comes up is like also just returning back to that inner boy or the inner younger version of yourself that who was so innocent that reached for these things and just have so much compassion for that version because they didn't do anything wrong.
Yeah, all of it was amazing points, but especially the part just having compassion for this younger version of you because you're right, you weren't doing anything wrong, no one was doing anything wrong by getting curious and looking at porn when they were young we're sexually curious beings, you're coming into your adulthood there was nothing wrong for doing that yeah, thank you for making that
Thank you so much, Mandy. This was, this was very meaningful for me. Quite healing and very cool to actually go back to all these different parts of myself because I'm in that stage too, where it's not in the day to day conversations that I'm having. It is in some of the conversations, but to be able to open myself up to you, a new friend like this is is also a continuation of my healing journey.
So I appreciate you.
Of course, and I appreciate you. This was also helpful in my own healing journey too. So thank you. And I know it's going to be helpful to other people. I know a lot of people will be able to relate. So thank you again for coming on here and being so vulnerable and just open and thank you for being you.
It's amazing. And then for anyone listening yeah, just thank you for listening. I appreciate it so much and I'm just going to, I always want to leave the episode off on this note. If you are going through partner betrayal trauma and you want to find a support group feel free to reach out to me on Instagram.
I'll include the link in the bio but , it's free. I didn't make it. I'm just a part of it, but it has a lot of professional resources. There's a community of women and yeah. So thank you for listening and have a great day.