Transcription
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Helpers Here podcast, brought to you by the Beyond Compulsion Academy. For me, one of the worst things about being in addiction is the way in which it led to me looking at certain categories, things like [ __ ] content, femdom content, and the way I felt after watching those things was, was dark. I mean, it was really, really bad.
I would literally be walking around and I'd be like bumping into people. I'd be like so lost in my own mind. It's like I was just in this different world entirely, and I just didn't feel like I was in reality. I'd be talking to somebody and all I could think in my mind, like while I'm having a conversation with them, is, "Do they know? Like, can they tell that I've just looked at this content?" And I would just be filled with so much shame, regret. It's like every cell in my body was just filled with disgust for myself, and it hit me hard. It really did. Hit me hard.
So, what I'll talk about is how I ended up looking at those certain things, the certain thought patterns I had, and how to overcome this for good. Because now, I really do have peace of mind, and I can think so much clearer about things. I understand why I looked at that stuff. I understand where I went wrong, and now I never even want to look at that stuff anymore, which is a great place to be. So now I have more confidence, I'm sure of myself, and I think the main thing for me is just the groundedness and stability of knowing day by day, I am in control of myself, and I don't have to ever go back and and feel all of that shame and self-disgust.
So, the first thing I will say is, what happened for me is I was in an addiction. I was addicted to porn. And when you're in an addiction, you have what we call junky thoughts. So there are any junky sort of excuse, rationalization, justification to engage in your compulsive behavior. Now, one of my junky thoughts a few years ago, at some point, was, "Okay, if I look at this content that's maybe on Instagram or on YouTube, well, that's not porn because it's not on a porn site. So because it's not actually got like naked people having sex, it's okay." That was the rationalization that I had.
And so what I would do is I'd go on Instagram and I would type in certain hashtags, and then I'd go from like one hashtag on a photo to another, and then it'd end me down this, it'd lead me down this rabbit hole where next thing you know, I'm basically looking at the most sexual, the most degenerate content I can possibly find on Instagram with this illusion in my mind that, "Oh, well, this is okay. This isn't porn." So that led me to looking at these [ __ ] captions, which was basically photos of quite attractive looking women with these captions basically saying that you want to like dress up as these women and then have sex with with men. So it was really focused on trying to to turn heterosexual men gay. And I'm not going to lie, that personally was very confusing for me, like why was I looking at that sexual content? But now I understand it all so much better.
What was going on is it really did just heighten my arousal at the time. It was kind of this thought of like, "I'm looking at something I shouldn't be looking at," and it, it really destroyed my mental health, to be honest with you. It honestly did. It was one of the worst things for me. The other thing that I looked at was a lot of the femdom content on YouTube. So again, this illusion that, "Well, it's not really porn because it's on YouTube. You know, everyone goes on YouTube. This is all right, right?" So I'd end up looking at these jerk-off instruction videos and femdom content. And again, it was also based on me being degraded by the content I was watching. So it was all centered around making the viewer feel a ton of shame, making them feel like an idiot, making them feel weak, pathetic, humiliated. That's what I was looking for.
And I think another reason why I was looking at that content is, first of all, I had that junky thought of, "This isn't porn," which is a complete denial of the reality of addiction. The second thing that I had going on was a lot of self-deprecation. Like, because I tried to quit porn hundreds of times and I hadn't managed to do that, whenever I'd started to look at a bit of sexual content, I started to feel really like a failure, like a bit of a mess, like there was something wrong with me. So I'd then sort of have thoughts like, "Oh, well, you know, you've messed up already. Maybe this is just who you are," or things like, "You know, you deserve to be punished. Basically, like you deserve to be punished for already looking at sexual content and messing up." And because of that, I'd seek out content which would basically destroy my mind even more. And I'd have this mixture of anxiety, norepinephrine being released combined with the sexual arousal, and it, it was just a complete concoction of different neurotransmitters. Like, oh, it was just a complete mess. It was a complete mess, to be honest with you.
And yeah, it honestly did destroy my mental health. Like the amount of confidence I had left after choosing to look at that content, I don't think there was any confidence left. It was gone. I, I was depleted. I was, I was the shell of the man that I usually am. I was like a different person after one of those sessions.
So, I want to get across the first thing is that if you're looking at any content like that, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It's not about your sexual desires. What it's about is you've been caught up, you've been susceptible to being involved in an addiction. You have a psychological, emotional dependency on a mind's mood-altering experience. And the mind mood-altering experience is taking the form of looking at maybe femdom content or [ __ ] content or any other category which you don't feel proud about looking at. You're involved in this emotional, psychological dependency. It's, it's addicting your pathways. That's what we're talking about here. It's addiction.
And so, in my mind now, I see it more like being addicted to maybe heroin than I would about the question of, "You know, why have I looked at this? What, what does this mean about my sexual desires?" I think any question like that can actually be quite detrimental because it's not getting us to the place of freedom. What we need to realize is, "Okay, I have this compulsive desire. I have these addictive pathways. So how do we change that?" And that's where I come in. Because what we do with our clients is we help them connect to that compulsive desire, think it all the way through, and then make a choice in that moment. And they do that repeatedly, moment by moment. That's the same process that I took to overcome this problem for good.
I got a lot of help from an amazing woman called Mary, who taught me the Beyond Compulsion method, and then I implemented it, and it changed my neural pathways. And now I don't even have that desire for the femdom or joy or [ __ ] or whatever it was I used to look at, because I now associate in my mind that content as being like this weapon that destroyed my mental health. So we can change these neural pathways correctly. It requires some work, some learning, and then obviously some action when you have that desire.
So, the first thing that we teach as part of our five-fact script is we teach people to understand that they are going to want to engage in their compulsive desire, and that that wanting is okay. And that actually, we need to have that wanting to connect to it to change the neural pathways and change that brain map. So the problem with when when you're looking at certain content like [ __ ] or femdom or content which fills you with so much shame, it's really hard to actually connect to the wanting thing because you feel like, "If I want that thing, then there's something wrong with me."
And so what we need to understand is that you are going to want it. There's nothing wrong with you. Your mind is involved in an addiction, and that's why you want it. But if we avoid all that wanting and we act like we don't want that thing, we're going to end up in what we call the constant conflict, where we do have the wanting, but all we're focusing on is that we don't want it. And then we end up feeling agitated, frustrated, and eventually we choose to get out of those feelings by engaging with the thing that part of us does want.
So, the first thing that I just think is so essential if you want to overcome an addiction like this is accepting that you do want it right now. And that will change when you connect to it and think through it correctly, time after time. There's nothing wrong with that wanting. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It doesn't mean you actually truly want that stuff. What you have is like an addiction in the way. So maybe like right now, the addict part of your mind wants it. But like the rational you, yeah, sure. And I appreciate the rational you doesn't want it, but we have to deal with the addiction first before we can actually be back in that rational place of realizing, "Yeah, I actually don't want that stuff for me anymore."
So hopefully, this short podcast video can help you. Hope you know you're not alone in this. And if you would like more support in overcoming an addiction like this, then you can get help from me and my mentor Mary Paus. I'll leave a link in the description. Thanks so much for watching or listening, and we'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye.
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