Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / Pornography Addicts Get Rebooted

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Pornography Addicts Get Rebooted · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

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Hey, guys and dolls. Before we jump into this episode, a note
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about our content today. This is created for adult audiences only. We advise
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listener discretion, so if you need a breather, take a break and come
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back later. This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about the game
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of living in and with chronic pain and trauma, getting to the heart of
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how to heal. I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show,
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I plan on discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, ballistic practitioners,
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loved ones in anybody that is interested in having their voice bird in the chronic
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pain and trauma world that we live in. I have always been a very
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sexual human being from a very young age. I love it. I love
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sex. I love it a little rough, I love it soft and intimate.
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I love espressing myself through the act of sex. But I would never
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consider myself to be like a sex addict per se. I've enjoyed it in
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my long term relationships with the majority of my relationships have been fairly long term,
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but I also, to be completely honest, is I have also been
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in some pretty shady places and have had some promiscuity issues right growing up,
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some of which I'm proud of and some of which I am not right.
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And I know a lot of the reason why promiscuity came into play for me.
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And that is one word, and we've all heard it on the show,
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and we're going to hear it on this episode and we're going to continue
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to hear it. And that's trauma. And as we've spoken about it time
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and time again, as an adult, it kind of feels sometimes like using
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trauma as an excuse for our young adulthood or even our behavior now has grown
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up adults if we can call ourselves adults, Like, let's get real,
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are we really adulting? Like no, but I feel like sometimes it's kind
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of People might feel like it's a cop out to blame it on past traumas,
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and that is complete bullshit. So that's the first thing I want to
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make sure that everybody is listening to today. Please do not feel shame.
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Please do not live in fear of people judging you anymore. Just don't do
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it. It's good. It's not good for you, and it's not good
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for me, and it's not good for anybody around you. Right, we
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all have faltered, we all have fade we've all made bad decisions, we've
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all let ourselves down, blah blah blah. Right, and we can all
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be sad about it and mope about it and make piss poor decisions going forward
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because of that, or we can choose to channel it in a better way
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and a more healthy and productive way for our lives that it can shift our
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mindset to be much more positive for our world in our environment. Right,
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because remember, there is hope. That's one of the messages that we always
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talk about on this show is there is hope through the messiness that you know,
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trauma causes and has caused. When it comes to my sex life,
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as I mentioned, I am an uber sexual being, always have been,
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and one thing that I never got into though was pornography and my friends and
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my sweet You know this, but I always say, I am my own
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porn star. I don't need porn. I'm my own porn star. And
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I am fortunate and grateful that I have a very sexy and healthy sex life,
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fun, exciting. I'm so grateful for it with my sweetie. But
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porn, like I mentioned, has never played a role in my life,
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but for my guest today, it has played an enormous role in his life,
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and he is here to share his message of hope and success from porn
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addiction. So let's talk about it, baby. So without further ado,
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I'd like to introduce you to my guest today, jk Amazing Amyzine. He
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is thank you for having me on Lindsay and you are probably the first person
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who's interviewed me. He just nailed to name even while guessing it during housekeeping,
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So thank you. I am impressed. I'm excited to be here and
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talk about this. This is going to be interesting. It is very well
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said my darling. I am just I'm blessed to have you here and grateful
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because this is going to be fun and interesting. He is going to share
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his inspiring and motivational story of guys. I means rising from poverty and addiction
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and low self esteem which we just talked about a little bit, from going
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from depression to happiness, from freedom from his addiction and health and financial success.
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This man is insane. He's a seven figure entrepreneur runs Elevated Recovery,
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which is an addiction recovery service as well as the Porn Reboot program. The
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most successful addiction recovery system for men struggling with porn addiction. Here has multiple
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brands such as Optimum U it's a program for addiction to getting fit and healthy
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while recovering from porn addiction, the Dating Reboot program for men seeking to learn
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how to date and develop healthy sexual intimacy, which is really interesting, and
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the Financial Reboot program, which helps recovered sex and porn addicts manage their finances
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and generate wealth. And he has a podcast, the Porn Reboot Podcast,
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and also has written a book, The Seven Secrets of Porn Freemen. I
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am exhausted just saying all of those things, So rolling out the red carpet
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for you, babe, I'd like to start with your struggles with your addiction
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to online pornography and how being exposed to it at such a young age and
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led it to being consumed by the addiction. And let's just take it from
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there because we've got a lot to cover here. We do have quite a
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bit to cover. And thank you for that amazing intro. Pornography. Well,
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I got exposed to it when I was eight years old. We had
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a family member who was also a nanny and I've always been a big fan
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of comic books, very imaginative, and I was a voracious reader. I
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had read everything in the house and I really wanted to read that comic but
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she wouldn't let me. I'm tenacious as well, and it took me a
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while, but finally I figured out where she was hiding that comic book.
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And it was a pornographic a comic book. I don't even want to share
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that. I don't want to trigger anyone. But I don't even know what
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the theme of your podcast is and how sexual you get with things, and
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it was it was it was pornographic material. And being eight years old,
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I grew up in a conservative of household, I knew that it was quote
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unquote wrong. But the moment I looked at it, Lindsay, I had
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this, it was as if there was this chemical explosion in my brain.
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Something happens to my nervous system. And it's very interesting because being conservative,
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it was this is wrong, this is bad. So there's adrenaline, this
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fear of being caught. But there's also this curiosity of a child. I
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want to know more. But then there was the theme of it. I'll
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just share the theme here. This is probably the I would say, this
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is the least conservative podcast I've been on in a while. It was the
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theme was this young man gets married, and it doesn't start like that.
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It starts out very innocently with a man getting married, his father being so
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proud of him, and it goes on like this for a couple of pages,
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and then halfway through he brings his bride home and leaves, and then
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it gets super sexual with the dad starts having the dad and his new bride
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start having sex and even mentioning it. Now it's just agreeing something because I
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haven't shared this story in a very long time. I don't think I've even
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shared it on my podcast. And they start having sex, so it's also
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destroying the concepts of marriage for me. That's their parents had drilled into my
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head. I hit it, but in that moment something changed for me.
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From then onwards, anytime I experienced a strong emotion that I wanted to escape
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from, I would run. I would find a way to recreate that state
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of adrenaline, that rush, just to get myself out of whatever it was.
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Sadness, parents angry at me not doing well in school, and the
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only way I knew how to recreate it was by seeking something of a sexual
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nature. Mind you, none of this was arousal. At that point,
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I wasn't capable of physical sexual arousal. And that continued till I was about
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thirteen years old and learned how to masturbate, and then I made the connection.
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I was like, ah, so I can see more than just adrenaline
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from this. There's this intense, almost spiritual like ecstasy that I can experience
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from it. And that set me down a path of basically chasing my in
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dudgenos opiates forward the next decade of my life. Well eight years old.
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Wow, I mean we're so I remember, like you're talking about triggering stuff,
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like I remember my birth father and my stepmother, and my stepmother was
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this very sexual being. She was this person that came into my world that
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was not my mom, and she was chosen over me and my mom,
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and so I was always wow, this is coming out of like the cobwebs
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right now, Holy crap. But she was. She was this representation of
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this person that I wasn't and that my mom wasn't. But my dad really
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loved her and I would always like go through all of her stuff and she
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had sexy lingerie like all over the place and I would steal all of it,
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like I would take all of it. And it was one of those
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things for me that kind of started me going down an interesting sexuality like role
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in my life with sex, my sexuality and how I felt about my body
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and how I felt about myself. It was like my own version of like
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I walked in on them having sex, like there was weird stuff that happened.
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And I think back about how all of those little tiny things at one
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instance it doesn't mean that much, but when they all add up over time,
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it framed like who I thought I needed to be and I needed to
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be her, and and so I took my sexuality in like my own weird
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way in regards to like her modeling very bad behavior quite frankly. But it's
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so interesting at such a young age how we form these Like you said,
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your brain just like popped off and you're like, whoa. And that's exactly
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the feeling that I had, that adrenaline that I could be someone like her
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that my dad would actually love. Because I'm not in as sad as that
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is, God, Oh my goodness, yeah, oh sad as it Maybe
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it's it's I think it's it's the reality. I like to call it our
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our arousal templates. And it's always interesting to go back and understand. I
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like how you said, just kind of pulling it out of the cobwebs.
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We can we can go to therapy and we can talk about all sorts of
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things. But you can sit with someone and have a conversation and they ask
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a question and they're just praying. You're like, oh crap, yeah,
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I tingle in my bottom when you were talking, and I was like,
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I'm unsure what this tingle is all about? Right now? What's this?
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What's happening? Is this a good one or is this a bad one?
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So? Okay, so you're this young kid, you're between eight and thirteen
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years old. So now it happens when you're thirteen and you've experienced as you
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start masturbating, you understand this. You for feeling that you didn't make any
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connections with so what happened from there? I start using it as a coping
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mechanism for everything. It is the most pleasurable thing in my life at that
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moment, and it becomes an escape. Now. Of course, at the
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same time, there are multiple things happening in my life. My mom and
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my dad start having issues. She moves to a different country to work.
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So I'm dealing with these abandonment issues. We're a latchkey kids, and we'd
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have to come home and we're not allowed to leave the house. But I
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begin to use this as a coping strategy for all my insecurities, and I
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go deeper and deeper into it. At one point, we have a neighbor
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who was older than me. He probably was about sixteen seventeen years old,
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and we were latch key kids, and I would let him into the home
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home because he had pornography on a VHS tape. Way to aid us,
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buddy, I know, right, yeah, just like I don't know what
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you're talking about. What's a big ass tape with like, don't worry about
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it. Yeah. So I'm I'm watching this with him while I'm supposed to
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be taking care of my baby sisters. And part of my I would say,
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my trauma with this comes from being so addicted to this that I broke
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the safety rule, like my parents were trusting me to take out of my
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little sisters. So he would come over and he would we would just watch
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porn and then he would you know, it's just like a male bonding thing,
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just watching porn. And he's like, that's what this is, that's
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that's what it did, that's what women do. And I'm like, okay,
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cool, I'm learning about this stuff. But then he started leaving the
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tapes and he was like, keep watching it. I'll let myself out.
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It turns out he was going into my sister's room and doing things to them,
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and I had no idea. And this was always in the evening my
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parents came. My parents were in a medical profession, always coming home late,
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so it wasn't until my sisters leave a little note for me and say,
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hey, please walk your friend out because he's doing things to us.
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And mind you, they're very young. They're like, you know, nine,
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ten years old. Oh my gosh. I'm conflicted, I'm angry,
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I'm ashamed, and the worst part is the only thing I can do to
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make me feel better is to go back to the tapes he's left me and
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keep watching them. And that's the moment that I realized that well I don't
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realize it in retrospect, I do. That's the moment that I'm stuck in
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the cycle. That's the only thing I can do to feel better. But
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yeah, and I mean I get it. It's just I mean, it's
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like any form of addiction, whether it's food, whether it's alcohol, drugs,
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sucks, porn, whatever it is. We all these are coping mechanisms
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that we did. You know, that we that we find for ourselves based
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on the environment that we were brought up. And just like you're talking about,
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like it's it's nuts. Like I was also raised in a very very
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conservative Christian home, and I was an only child. And I talk about
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my sister on this show. She's actually by calling my sister. Were two
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days apart, but she's my sister. But I am an only child,
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and you know, I didn't have I didn't have a sister or a brother
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to like bounce ideas off or like ask questions or like be curious with.
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It was just me being curious with myself and being in a split home,
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going back and forth and all of that. The quote unquote cliche of a
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divorced You know that everybody's working from a divorced family. I swear to God,
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there's far more than than not unfortunately, you know, and dealing with
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emotions that you're unsure of what they actually are, like where are these coming
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up from? We're so so young and having to be faced with a adult
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situations and adult decisions that we have to make at such a very young age,
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Like how and I talk about it openly on the show, and it's
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the first time I spoke about it. But when I started my show was
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talking about when I was raped when I was a little girl, and I
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never talked about it. I haven't. My parents still don't know, Like
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I always told them, like, if you're going to listen to my podcast,
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you're going to have some questions. My mom's like, la la la
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la la. I'm good. Let me know when it's a big success and
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then I might start listening. Right, But those past traumas, I've protected
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the adults in my life for my whole life, starting at such a very
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young age at nine years old, I have protected the adults in my life
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instead of feeling protected by them. And that is something that I've been working
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through. Even with each episode that I speak with people like yourself, where
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I'm learning about things about me and triggers are coming out within me. Like
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even when we were talking about my step I'm like, WHOA, I have
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not thought about that thought in I don't even know how long, thirty years,
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that's insane. So thank you thing. I'm going away for the weekend
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because I might be a dress for a little bit of this good timing.
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I think subconsciously you probably set it up that way. Yeah, maybe.
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And that's what I find so interesting about this process and why I find podcasting
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to be such an amazing medium for people like you and myself and of course
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our listeners, because your show is amazing as well. So here we go.
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So now you're here and you've you've discovered this amazing thing in your mind,
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right, can you talk about how that has transferred into your adulthood and
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what you're doing, how you got through it, and how you got out
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of it, and then we'll go from there because your stories are just amazing.
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Well, the first time that I realized it was affecting my adult life
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was when I got to college. And in college, I was trying to
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date like everyone else, and I just couldn't because I could not view women
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as the concept of intimacy was completely missing. I had spent thousands of hours
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just being a spectator in other people's lives, and I tell, I tell
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my clients like, if you don't think you have a problem with pornography,
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just remember that you have watched more naked people having sex than every ancestor that
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came before you. You have seen more of them. And that was very
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difficult because in my mind everything was a scene like it just you met the
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woman and for some reason she thought you were hot because you were the plumber
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or the pizza or whatever. And then it sounds funny, but I was
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a grown now I know. I mean, I was like, well,
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you know, and of course I came across as a very creepy person.
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I was giving off super weird vibes way before this because I had no concept
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of this, and that became very difficult. So I did the next thing.
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The next best thing was I was like, okay, fine, where
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where do people get laid quote unquote? And that was in the bars.
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So I then picked up a drinking problem because then I would go out,
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I would drink, I would try to grind. Yeah, yeah, I
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would drive. Now i'm dating. I'm dating myself. Remember the days were,
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and you're younger than me, motherfucker. When grinding was a thing.
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How you think grind people are? Like? What grinding disgusting. Yeah,
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it was disgusting people, It was disgusting. So I would go out there
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and I'll try to grind, uh and grind. I don't mean it doesn't
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mean hard work today, I'll tell you that much. Right. Oh,
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I got to get back to the coal mine. No, this is not
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that kind of grind. This is a creepier grind. And I was,
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I'm ashamed to say it, became quite good at it. But it was
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not a substitute for It was not a substitute for intimacy. I would then
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come back tipsy and I would I would proceed to watch a lot of pornography
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to feel better, and then started escalating into acting out behavior. I got
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to a point of desperation where um, I would get on Craigslist, and
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there's so much stuff that's dating myself. I'll get on Craigslist. They had
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these personals and I would try to find the sexual partners on there. It
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all came to a head one evening. I had come back from one of
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these bars and I was tipsy, and I'd watch some pornography, as I
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usually did. I was doing this on a daily basis every day, and
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I started a conversation with a woman who was apparently babysitting, and she was
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like, Hey, I'm looking for somebody to have sex with and babysitting and
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the kids are asleep. I'm twenty one years old and everything. Now I
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have this ear goggles on. There's a I mean a fog of arousal from
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pornography. I'm not thinking straight. And I'm like, yeah, sure,
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and she sends me these pictures and I'm like, Okay, this is this
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is this is the deal. It's going to happen. And so I jumped
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in my car and I drive across town to this really messed up neighborhood.
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I pull up in an alley way. She gives me directions and then she's
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like I see you, and I'm like, I don't see you. She's
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like well, She's like, just turn off the car and come out,
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and I stop panicking. At that point. I'm panicking right now. The
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only thing that saves me is that I left the car on drive. It
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was automatic, and I didn't put on the brake or anything. Just I
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put my foot on the brake, but it wasn't in drive. And as
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I'm sitting there just texting, like where are you am I at the right
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place. Blah blah blah blah blah. Somebody smashes my driver's side window.
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I just feel the glass on WHOA, and I panic. I dropped my
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phone and I hit the accelerator. I drive through a yard, I drive
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through the fence, through the lawn, and I come out on the other
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side of the neighborhood and I speed away my cars like in pieces and lindsay.
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I remember just driving back home with my hands on the steering wheel.
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I twisted the plastic covering it. And I'm driving back and I'm shaking,
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and I'm saying, Jak, you weren't raised like this. You weren't raised
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like this. You weren't. And I'm driving home in absolute shock. I
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don't even remember how I got home, because I used my GPS to get
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there, but I don't know how I got home. And I get home
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and I remember coming in and I realized I had a big problem. I
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wasn't raised like this. I was a guy who was watching porn. I
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didn't do anything bad. I wasn't doing drugs. I wasn't doing anything.
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But I realized in that moment, I could have been on the news the
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next day. And all of this was because I was chasing sex. Just
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I was desperate. My life was sad. I remember just looking at myself
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in the mirror. I probably weighed about one hundred and twenty pounds. I'm
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about six foot one. Back then, I remember looking at myself and I
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was like, everything about you has to change, like everything. We're not
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called porn recovery. We're called porn reboot. The concept of recoveries, recovering
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that which you lost. And I did not want to recover any of the
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things I had been raised with. I didn't want the conservative of up bringing.
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I didn't want the ideology. I didn't want to template. I was
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done. I was going to recreate myself from the ground up. And that's
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how the journey of rebooting and healing began for me. Yeah, and I
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think I love that whole part about going back, because like, Okay,
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take the lessons that we need to learn from our past mistakes and the things
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that we've done or things that have happened to us, because it's not just
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about what we've done, it's things that have happened to us, right,
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and that we've had no control over. I couldn't control some dude in a
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park raping me when I was thirteen years old. There was absolutely no way
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that I could control that situation, right, But having looked at it now,
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I learned some lessons about how I was affected by that event and how
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because I was unfortunately I was well. A lot of it was because of
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the conservative home that I was brought up in. I was not going to
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talk about it. There's no freaking way. Like to this day, I
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sort of got if my mom finds out, she will be in a straight
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jacket, just like just shaking back and forth like a crazy person, like
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she will not be able to handle it. Not that my mom isn't a
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strong woman, but she's not like me in the way that like I can
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dodge punches and get punched, and I'm still freaking right back up like those
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old clowns. Remember, like it's just person down, it pops back up.
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That's me fucking every goddamn day. But I don't think that my little
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mom is like that. And so I protected her for so long and protected
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my dad for so long, and I'm still doing it, but now that
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I'm at least vocalizing it and talking about it and working through some of that
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stuff. I don't want to recover from it. I want to move forward
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from it. And that is a totally different viewpoint. And I love that
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you're I love that about you for this because I never even thought of that
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concept. I mean, I've thought about it, but you verbalize it very
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very well. So okay, So now that you're here and you've made your
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decision, you're like, Okay, great, I need to change. This
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is scary shit. So what did you do? The first thing I started
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working on was my habits. Firstly, I couldn't find any example of somebody
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back in the day who had quote unquote overcome the behavior. There was no
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one talking about pornography. Addiction wasn't a thing, yea, it was just
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strange people like you. I've heard of sex addicts, but warn't addicts.
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I don't think that's a thing. So I actually just had to figure out
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a way to do it, and I did the twelve step groups. I
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did sex Addicts Anonymous, I went for all sorts of retreats. I was
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out in California quite a bit, spending money I did not have, and
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a lot of woo stuff that will say thisssed a lot of that was helpful,
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A lot of it brought self awareness, but I realized that I did
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not have a strong foundation for changing my self image. It had to start
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with the most basic of habits, and by that I mean habits with my
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environment, Like what was I doing when I was online? What was I
23:30
doing in response to strong emotions? Were they habitual patterns with reactiveness to certain
23:37
things? So I had to dive deep with that. Changing the habits,
23:41
the basic habits, not all of them, really helped build a strong foundation.
23:45
The next thing was I started working with some coaches, but I quickly
23:48
came to realize that a lot of coaches were really good at teaching the whole
23:52
habit thing. Habits were not enough. My lifestyle had to change as well.
23:56
I actually had to become intentional about certain practices. But it was things
24:00
like meditation, little things like journaling and learning how to reflect. Even some
24:04
of the exercises we teach within our program, which is one of which is
24:07
called dialoguing, where you name a subpersonality or you name multiple subpersonalities within yourself
24:15
which are used to copo, which come up when you coopo when you become
24:18
sexual and learn how to be compassionate with them, learn how to have conversations
24:22
with them. That became a part of my lifestyle for a long time,
24:26
and during that time I needed accountability if not just slipped back to my old
24:30
habitual patterns. The lifestyle part was good, but I remember going about eighteen
24:36
months of doing awesome things were great, and then I just let everything go
24:41
on there. I thought, I was like, I'm good, I'm back
24:42
in control of my behavior, and I was right back. It didn't take
24:45
like three weeks. And I was terrified, Lindsay, because I was also
24:48
afraid of the twelve step conservative approach, where you were told that once an
24:55
addict, always an addict, and that I would have to do this one
24:57
day at a time for the rest of my life. And I was scared
25:00
of being the sixty year old guy in the circle telling everyone about my black
25:06
and white, boring life that had all these boundaries, because I truly believe
25:10
that I could if I even stopped living this way, I would go back
25:14
to the behavior. So once that happened, I was like, I am
25:17
not. This is not going to be an excuse for me to start living
25:19
day by day and none of that. I went back to the drawing board.
25:23
I started over again, and this time I stopped being so hard on
25:27
myself. See, prior to this, with my behavior, I was trying
25:32
to be perfect. It was like, oh, you are so you had
25:34
one drink after five years, Jim, Well you fell off the wagon.
25:38
You've got to begin, You've got to start all over. And I was
25:41
like, wait a minute. I trying to tell me that all the rewiring
25:44
that happened in my brain, all of that is, all those three years
25:48
of sobriety. I have to throw them out of the window because I had
25:52
a drink once, because I watched pornography once, because I saw an escort
25:56
once. And that's the problem with traditional recovery is there is not enough self
26:04
compassion and understanding of the journey. I learned that my slips and my relapses
26:10
were just data. That's it. I could be emotional about it in the
26:14
moment, but I could just watch the emotion. Okay. I could label
26:17
it like, JK, you're frustrated, JK, you're feeling shame. Now,
26:22
JK, you're feeling guilt. And for each of these like shame,
26:26
I was like, okay, well what do I do about the shame?
26:27
Well, don't keep the shame in the dark, bringing it into the lights.
26:30
And I started doing these things habitually. So when I say I went
26:33
back and I reworked it, I reworked the habits. I started doing things
26:37
like making it habitual to bring shame into the lights. I started doing that
26:41
over and over. Slips became data, it became progress over perfection. And
26:45
the funny thing is when I stopped being perfect, I started shedding all that
26:52
conservative conditioning because all of it was really even though they didn't tell you that,
26:57
still we wanted you to be perfect. When you to be a perfect
27:00
Christian, a perfect person, a perfect your house is a mess on the
27:03
inside, but you have to go outside to the neighborhood and make it like
27:07
seem beautiful. And I just started shedding all the perfection. Over the months
27:11
and the years, that started happening, and in the process, my self
27:15
image started changing as I did that. So the system that we have is
27:19
habits first, lifestyle and self image. That's a that's amazing, preachy about
27:27
it. But no, no, you don't. You don't at all.
27:30
You don't at all, like please catch is a man of the preacher man.
27:34
No, No, it's we yeah, No, you didn't sound apreachy
27:37
at all. Um it's and I'm like, I'm not befuddled because that's one
27:42
of my favorite words, and I'm not confused. I'm just I'm trying to
27:45
wrap my brain around all that because that touches in a lot of different places.
27:48
And this isn't just in pornography. This is just addiction as a whole
27:52
and self esteem as a whole. And I love that perfessor. I'm super
27:55
ocd. I'm a total perfectionist and I hate that about my Well, okay,
28:00
as they stopped that negative self talk. I don't care for that part
28:03
of my life because it actually has gotten me into trouble by trying to be
28:07
perfect. And I know that sounds like how is that possible? Because all
28:11
it did was detrimental things to myself, my relationships, my business, all
28:15
this holding all of these people up to these absolutely like off the charts like
28:21
levels of you have to hit all these marks or I'm never gonna be happy.
28:25
I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a second,
28:26
like, you gotta clean your house first before you start pouring things at other
28:30
people too. But a lot of that comes from trauma. A lot of
28:33
that comes from shame, a law that comes from guilt, where I know,
28:36
for me, if I can be there's an a lot of more set
28:38
song called perfect right. I identify with that song, and that also ages
28:42
me. But I identify with that song so much because if I was only
28:47
perfect, and as a kid, I always I lived under the guise of
28:52
if you do anything wrong, You're going to hell. That's it that These
28:56
were the messages that were drilled in. You're not allowed to make mistakes,
28:59
You're not allowed that, you're not allowed. You're not allowed to you're not
29:00
allowed, and shame and guilt and detention and expulsion and suspensions followed because I
29:07
was always doing the wrong thing, even though I knew I was supposed to
29:11
be doing the right thing, but I didn't even really understand what the right
29:14
thing was. It's so convoluted, especially when you're raised like you and I
29:18
were, in conservative Christian environments. It's very challenging to grow up under this
29:22
veil of shame all of the time, like you're never going to be good
29:26
enough, And I know now that I am good enough, and now I'm
29:30
just I'm like, well, I think part of that is just getting older
29:33
and being like, I don't give a shit what you don't like what I'm
29:34
doing. Okay, great, that's on you. And that's something I've learned
29:37
too, and I say this to my sweetie all the time too, is
29:41
we cannot own how other people are shaping their experience around us. We cannot
29:45
own how they are going to respond to something that happens in their life or
29:51
in hours. So if something happens in my world and my mom responds a
29:53
certain way, I don't own that. I don't own her response and her
29:57
reaction how she's going to deal with that. I can't because that's not fair.
30:02
But I lived my whole life like that until I would say, probably
30:04
the past three years. It's nuts. So how long did it take for
30:08
you to get to the place that you're at right now? Because obviously,
30:11
well maybe obviously it's not the right word. I'm assuming that you're not into
30:15
pornography anymore. I am not assumption. Get two ways to answer that I'm
30:19
not into pornography. It took my entire life to get here. It's an
30:23
interesting question because my clients wants a perfect story. You know, marketing,
30:32
right, you need to have like the whole hero's journey, and they want
30:34
to know exactly what it is. And I know you're you run an agency
30:38
as well, and you're a marketer. There's this balance that I try to
30:44
strike. We're very successful at what we do. So where I tell guys
30:48
that it took me a year and a half to two years for me to
30:52
control my behavior. Now that's not exactly how long it took. It took
30:56
me my entire life to do it. But from that moment when I went
31:00
for eighteen months and I slipped, I relapsed, and I went back and
31:03
I reworked everything, that's when it took a year and a half to two
31:07
years. And then they love to ask, They're like, so, when
31:10
did you know that this wasn't a problem for you anymore? I was like,
31:15
when I just literally one day, I just realized that I didn't have
31:18
a filter on my computer and I just wasn't walking around in fears. Like
31:22
when did you know that you were done wedding the bed? I always asked
31:26
them and they're like, ah, I don't know. One day. I
31:29
guess maybe I must have been about eight years old, nine years five years
31:32
old. I don't know as exactly it's the same thing. And I truly
31:34
believe that when you work on making something a part of your lifestyle and you're
31:40
intentional about changing yourself image, it's going to happen organically. That will be
31:45
moments where you will find yourself in a situation where in the past you would
31:48
be reactive and you realize, maybe then or later, that I wasn't reactive.
31:53
In my case, I do have a few stories, but one that
31:56
stands out is being at a party in New York. I believe and this
32:00
was a deep in my adventurous space. Now I'd started working out, I
32:04
was changing the way I looked. I was like I grew my hair out.
32:07
I was intentionally creating an avatar that I had. I had created.
32:12
Everything you see around is based on an avatar, like literally a comic book
32:16
character that I saw in my head like a child in my early twenties.
32:21
I decided I'm going to build this man, including the way I expressed myself,
32:25
the way I spoke everything. I remember being at this place. Now
32:30
I was like I could now I could get dates. Now I'd learned about
32:32
intimacy. Now I was actually only engaging in sexual behavior. When intimacy was
32:39
there. If there wasn't any intimacy, I wouldn't do it every If you
32:42
know this, there's this author, Mark Manson. M oh yes, I
32:45
do, yes, so his books are behind me. Okay, excellent.
32:50
So Mark is born on the same day as I am, the same year
32:53
I believe, yeah, nineteen eighty four, and he was my coach.
33:00
So back in the day when Mark was sleeping on his mother's couch in Austin,
33:04
Texas, he was also a dating coach. And one day he decided
33:07
he was going to He'd read the four hour work Week and he was going
33:10
to up and go to Geoe Arbitrage and he was going to go to Argentina
33:15
and work, which was amazing for him because his career took off right after
33:17
that. And he sent out this email blast and he's like, guys,
33:21
I need money to go to Argentina. So I'm going to take a few
33:23
more in person coaching clients. It's twenty five hundred dollars go to Austin and
33:28
spend an entire weekend with him approaching women. So I flew out there.
33:32
I didn't have the money, put it on a credit card. I went
33:35
out there and I worked with him for a long weekend. He would literally
33:38
make me go up to women and it was exposure therapy. It was go
33:42
up to them and just say hello, and then he would just keep critiquing
33:45
me, and we did. This was just one weekend. We could do
33:49
hundreds till he got to the point that I was literally walking up in a
33:52
mall having conversations with women, going and having a juice with them, walking
33:57
around the mall, holding your hand, thanking and just moving on with my
34:00
day like no, no intent, no like I'm going to have sex with
34:04
you, just authentically connecting over and over and over again, change my life.
34:08
I'm out in New York. Fast forward a few months later, living
34:12
this life now that I'm I've learned how to communicate on the intimate and I'm
34:15
in a party and they just start playing pornography on a projective. Oh shit,
34:20
yeah, and everyone's just cool. Some people are watching. I don't
34:22
know what this party was trying to become. Oh yeah, like I've never
34:25
been I've been to a lot of fucked up places. I've never random bard
34:30
trying to do. And I'm I'm standing there and I see it and there's
34:35
something far back in my mind that just explodes like, oh, that's porn.
34:39
But then what follows is pain. I feel sorry for the actors and
34:46
the actresses, like I feel compassionate. I wouldn't call it sorry or pity.
34:51
No, I get what you're saying. Yeah, I understand that they're
34:54
doing this in front of a camera, and it's not it's not pity,
34:58
as in what would a person have to go through to be so fucked up?
35:01
No, it wasn't that. It was just that as a species,
35:06
we have somehow come to a point that there's still this part of us that
35:08
enjoys looking at this, like, look at this situation. These are people
35:13
well dressed and everyone is casual. Yet we have to we have to satisfy
35:19
that animal urge by putting it up on a screen. And I just felt
35:22
so sad. I remember leaving the party and I walked the streets of New
35:25
York that evening and it was a realization that hey, I was not aroused
35:30
by that. Well that's that's a big moment right where it not shows up
35:35
in front of you. That's like, you know, walking around with a
35:37
bunch of vials of coke to people that are coke addicts, like that's a
35:39
challenging situation we put in, and but your that realization is pretty neat.
35:45
We were like, huh, this actually doesn't do anything for me anymore.
35:47
That's neat. So then you you've got this, and then now you've decided
35:52
you're going to help other men. And I know we've talked about it on
35:54
our meeting Green and stuff about like why why is there a difference between so
35:59
many men and using pornography versus women. I don't necessarily know statistically anything about
36:05
the difference between how many men versus women. I know in my world it
36:07
has been more statistically that men have been interested in important than women. But
36:12
there are so many women that are in porn So can you speak a little
36:15
bit to that? And then how you got into helping these men that need
36:20
that. We're just like you that need somebody like you in their life.
36:22
I think a lot more women are using pornography these days. I think the
36:28
way that women, Again, this is everything I'm going to say from this
36:30
point on is generalizing. Okay, okay, all right, it's gonna spray,
36:37
and they're gonna be stray bullets, and some people in the audience are
36:39
gonna be oh, my god, splashing all over these people. Yeah yeah,
36:44
yeah, so I'm just gonna be shooting if I hit you with a
36:46
stray bullet. Don't hate me, Don't go into my podcast and leave a
36:49
negative review. Just know that the man is just generalizing. Okay, I
36:53
love you all, and uh yeah, support me, lindsay, oh my
37:00
god. Generally speaking, what I found is that women's response to pornography it
37:06
varies across the board. I find that women are a lot more open to
37:09
it. I find that they can enjoy it in different ways. In fact,
37:13
it was interesting in my early dating phase, before I got into relationship,
37:17
I would find that there were women who would enjoy all sorts of pornography.
37:21
I'd seen women who enjoyed lesbian pornography, and a few months later they
37:24
were like, I just like watching videos of men masturbating. I was like,
37:29
that's it. She's like, yeah, that's what I'm into now.
37:30
And I realized, Okay, the arousal template of women in general is a
37:35
lot more it's a lot more vary than men's. Oh I would yeah,
37:38
I would think so, yeah, And I think it's a it's a very
37:43
interesting. Yet, there is one thing I must say this does not make
37:46
women immune from the negative impact of pornography. Unfortunately, because a woman's arousal
37:53
template generalizing is a lot more varied, she's also likely to get addicted or
38:00
get compulsive with behavior that absolutely cannot be replicated by a man or a man
38:07
with a normal sized penis. And that's the reason why since the pandemic,
38:12
they are all kinds of sex toys that have come out. They're dragon dildos,
38:15
there's like a whole Game of Thrones themed thing. There's all kinds of
38:20
crazy things, and they're women now who simply cannot orgasm with a man.
38:24
Doesn't help that there are a lot of men who now view sex as something
38:29
performative because they've watched pornography for so long. So for them, it's always
38:32
that women to say, like a man, this guy i'm with, it's
38:35
almost as if he's he's not there with me, But that's because he's performing,
38:40
because he thinks, like that woman who is gushing all over the place
38:45
on on porn hub or whatever. He thinks that that it's what the guy's
38:49
doing that's making her do that. He has no idea what her arousal templatives.
38:53
He has no idea, how that they're how much drugs are involved in
38:58
that, that it is not normal to have sex for three hours straight.
39:04
Every single time they've grown men who really think this and they come up they
39:07
have all these issues with it. So that's all I'm going to say about
39:09
it. Let's just let's just tie it up in a bow and say that
39:13
women's arousal template is a lot more vary. Sometimes they haven't addressed a lot
39:19
of trauma for the same reasons that you brought up. They're still subconsciously in
39:23
some cases protecting someone or something, and until they've really delted those things,
39:29
it's it's very difficult to fully embrace the impact of pornography on their life.
39:35
Some of them are using it to medicates, and some of them are using
39:37
sex to regain power over something that they've lost, which is not really the
39:43
case with men. With men, it's it's it's a lot more clear cut.
39:47
So from that, and thank you for speaking about the women part of
39:50
it, because I wanted to touch on that for sure in our conversation.
39:53
But so now you're here and you're working with men, So what are you
39:58
doing for the men of this planet right now to help them? Through this
40:00
and to help change their brains, you know, because it is a lot
40:05
of retraining of your brain and a lot of habitual things that you don't need
40:07
to be changed, and things like that. How are you helping the men
40:10
of this world. Well, we're using our system first of all, habits,
40:14
lifestyle, and self image. But it's interesting that you should ask this
40:17
now because over the past couple of weeks I've noticed that just there's been this
40:23
trend towards a lot of pornographic material becoming mainstream. Pornography is not really a
40:32
noun anymore. It's more of a verb. Pornography something that's being done to
40:37
society. It's becoming incredibly commoditized, only fans being an example. And as
40:44
a result, just human sexual dynamics have changed, and I'm finding a lot
40:49
of men coming to me and I'm realizing that the dating issues are completely different.
40:52
So now we have men who are young men who are trying to date
40:58
women, but these women and also have a sugar daddy, and it's becoming
41:01
quite normalized because I'm just finding a lot of men who deal with that.
41:06
I'm finding men who are dating women and now they're starting to screen them to
41:09
find out if they have an only fans first. Well, yeah, these
41:14
changes that I've learned over the eleven years of coaching men to pay attention to
41:19
them, because if they're happening with my clients, it's only a matter of
41:22
time before you start seeing articles normalizing this. Yeah. Yeah, so that's
41:28
a change that's happening, and of course we adapt to work with the men.
41:30
But I've come to realize that it's not a war. I'm not I'm
41:35
not battling the porn industry. I do believe the porn industry what it has
41:38
become right now is very very harmful. It's harmful, it is degrading,
41:45
It supports sexual exploitation, it supports the sex trafficking industry, and it causes
41:51
it to grow. Don't get me wrong, there is a time and a
41:54
place for a pornography. I have clients to come to me and they say,
41:58
hey, man, I've been listening to your podcast and to wonder maybe
42:00
I have a point addiction. I'm like, we actually have a quiz on
42:02
our website. As I take the quiz, they're like, yeah, I
42:05
took the quiz and it says I don't have a problem, But man,
42:07
I really like sex. And I was like, dude, just because you
42:10
watch some pornography, even if you watch it every week, and when you
42:15
decide to stop, you can stop whenever you want to. It doesn't mean
42:17
you're you're a bad person. But just because you have a specific fetish.
42:22
That's the thing with fetishes. A lot of people show up and they're like,
42:23
I have a fetish and I found it import and I feel dirty like
42:28
that. The problem with fetishists is that, well, first of all,
42:30
fetishists are normal part of human behavior. The only problem is that we are
42:36
so afraid of what people would think of us if they knew what our fetish
42:39
is. And a result of that, it brings up shame. That shame
42:43
causes you to you multiply that shame. Because the porn industry knows what you
42:46
watch. They are the kings of marketing. Before any marketing concept online becomes
42:52
mainstream with any agency, the porn industry has the data to test it.
42:58
They come up with everything. They come with everything because they can human behavior.
43:02
They can watch what are the people in Utah watching. They're like,
43:07
okay, fine, you know what we're gonna do. We know where this
43:08
is headed. Well, isn't the Mormon Church like the porn center of the
43:13
world pretty much. We know they're going to end up watching whatever a Mormon
43:16
missionary porn and they're like, we're going to create that, so they literally
43:22
create that. I shot a video the other day. Now I'll circle back
43:24
to this, but I wanted to mention this. I shot a video the
43:28
other day, and this was on gender, the proliferation of what's called sissy
43:34
pornography, which is basically straight men dressing up in women's lingerie and then progressively
43:44
getting to the point that they identify as women, and how some individuals in
43:47
the in the trans community are not happy with this because these men are viewing
43:53
this pornography and they view it to the point that it rewires their brain.
43:58
They begin to identify as women, and some of them even start taking hormones.
44:02
Now this can sound out there. It really can sound out there when
44:07
you hear it. But when you receive over two hundred emails a day like
44:09
me, and you keep getting like four or five of these every day,
44:15
you realize there's just a whole other world out there. So it sounds like
44:19
fringe stuff, but it really isn't. But what we do for men at
44:22
the end of the day, is we provide a safe place for them to
44:25
come in and express themselves. A lot lot of our clients have never spoken
44:30
to a therapist. They've never spoken to anyone. I've had many people try
44:34
to give me a marketing advice on how I should present my podcast. But
44:37
the reason people come is because we are We try to be as wildly authentic
44:42
as we can. We are open, we're raw. We talk about what
44:45
it means to be a man, and there's no topic that I will not
44:47
address. I will talk about everything. And I tell my clients there's nothing
44:52
that you have gone through or you have experienced that I have not not just
44:58
experienced myself, but I have not had a client out of our thousands of
45:00
clients. Nothing's going to shock you who's who's gone through it. But you
45:05
also have a discreet community. Discretion is very important as well, where you
45:08
can show up and say, hey, I have this weird fetish or I
45:14
stepped out on my wife, or the FBI today, we've got somebody the
45:17
FBI just rated their home. The FBI just rated me, and now I'm
45:22
under investigation. And you have a place where men will raise their heads and
45:25
say, hey, the same thing happens to me, and yes, you're
45:29
probably gonna lose everything at least because your your reputation has already gone. But
45:32
it's okay, here's what I did, and here's here's how I got out
45:37
of it, and this is what my life is like. So it's a
45:38
safe space for men to express themselves to begin the process of healing. And
45:44
we also provide a lot of resources after that. Once you're rebooting and you
45:47
hit that reset button, sometimes you need to relearn sexuality. So I'm not
45:52
the only coach. I'm the head coach. We have a trauma informed coach,
45:54
we have a life coach, we have a neuroreprogramming coach. So if
45:58
some traumatic issues from the past come up, we also address that. All
46:01
of this with one very simple goal. When you leave our program, we
46:07
want you to know that you are in control of your behavior. And despite
46:10
the fact that we have coaches and I have experience, I truly believe that
46:15
you are the best expertise yourself. Like we can support you, we can
46:20
guide you, but at the end of the day, no one's going to
46:22
spoon feed you. That's a little bit of tough love what we want you
46:25
to be able to be dependent on yourself moving forward. I love that.
46:30
I love the spoon fed part of it because yeah, everyone's like, well,
46:34
I'm just gonna go in there and everyone's just gonna, you know,
46:36
handle me with kid gloves and they're gonna make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
46:40
Now, guys, like, that's not going to fix anything. This
46:44
has been so like I opening in so many places in so many ways,
46:46
and I applaud you for a getting through what you've done and what you've been
46:51
through, and that you're helping others. And on his podcast, the Porn
46:53
Reboot Podcast, he speaks with and he doesn't just talk about the industry anybody
46:59
talks about finance. He talks about growth, and he talks about our emotions
47:01
and all of that that he also talks about with other people that have rebooted,
47:07
and they are vulnerable and they're coming on and they're sharing their stories.
47:09
And it's wonderful that these people are coming forth and sharing their stories, not
47:14
unlike people on this show as well. So thanks for doing that, because
47:16
pretty awesome what you're what you're all about. I appreciate it. Lindsay and
47:20
I actually want to take a moment to thank you, but just being a
47:23
curious human being. I don't know if people give you enough credit for it,
47:28
and you haven't shared too much, but you're a busy person. You
47:32
do a lot in life and I feel that, and you're also working on
47:36
yourself. And the energy I get from you is you get you go from
47:38
one thing to the other. But you have you seem to have this capacity
47:42
to feel pain while being busy, while interviewing, while doing stuff, and
47:47
I think it's it's it's phenomenal and I just appreciate you as a human being
47:52
for just being able to live with this. I don't know what that's like,
47:58
but just want to acknowledge that. Thank you and thank you for making
48:00
me cheer up right now because I was good the entire episodes, my first
48:05
episode when I did not cry until the very thank you. I do appreciate
48:08
it, and um yeah, it's it's about showing up, man, you
48:12
know. And I the thing that drags me out of my bed when I'm
48:15
in the worst pain on the planet is doing this damn show. It is
48:19
it's it is my soul food, and it is meeting people like you and
48:22
having conversations today with someone as wonderful as you are that make it worth all
48:27
of it. So thank you. I just wanted you to you. You
48:30
kept asking me questions, are you aving now? Give me a chance to
48:34
love you? But you just kept going from question to question. I'm just
48:37
like, I just want to appreciate, well, thank you so much for
48:40
your time today. And we definitely are going to do a part two because
48:43
I think that this is an absolute need to have these conversations and to not
48:47
feel shamed and it not feel guilty, and I know that there is hope
48:51
and there's so many levels and layers to all of this um that come from
48:54
our early onset childhood trauma stuff too, things that may have happened to you
48:58
yesterday. So don't beat yourself up. Where can we find you, my
49:01
darling. You can find me. First of all, YouTube is one of
49:05
the best places to find me. Just look for my name JK. Last
49:08
name em easy I. Our website is Elevated Recovery dot org, and my
49:14
podcast is the Porn Reboot Podcast. Now when you google me, you'll see
49:17
a lot of people called porn reboots coming up in the last couple of months.
49:22
Don't don't disavoid all of them. We have to trademark on that,
49:23
and I'm suing all of them. I just I'm serious. I've been doing
49:30
this for eleven years, so so we've been we were the first, we
49:32
were doing it, but a porn reboot podcast. Please feel free to send
49:37
me messages. We've got a wonderful free private Facebook group. We don't pitch
49:43
you anything in there, We really don't. We I tell guys and girls,
49:47
or if you've got a male partner who's a porn addict, send him
49:51
over and he can spend a year or two years in our group just getting
49:53
to learn about this and becoming comfortable with it. We would love to have.
49:59
That's awesome, and please do so, guys, And I'll put all
50:01
this in show notes and social and all of that stuff. And we've got
50:05
his website in his podcast and his tiktoks and all that his social media.
50:07
Can you speak really quick about social media because I know that we talked about
50:09
your handles changing a little bit. Yeah, so my handles change all the
50:13
time because social media thinks that we are pornography. So sometimes just one wrong
50:19
hashtag, we'll get our Instagram dun't so right now. We actually do not have enough