IIC 52: Breaking Free from Masturbation, Part 1

In this episode, Dr. Peter describes the first four mistakes that Catholics make in trying to break free from masturbation, and ten remedies to counter those mistakes.

[00:00:12] Welcome to the podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, the podcast formerly known as Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you each week the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life. In this podcast, we ask and answer the tough questions about the real problems so many of us Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and Our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way. And we deal with these tough issues for one primary reason: to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our brother, the Holy Spirit, and our mother Mary more and more over time. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God’s truth, goodness, and beauty. Together, we are looking for a deep transformation in our mindsets, our heartsets and our bodysets, a radical transformation at the core of our being, so that our souls unite with God, and so that we can rise to the challenges and opportunities that he provides us. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski, and I am here with you to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up the natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor.

[00:01:57] This is episode 52 and it’s released on January 25th, 2021, and it’s the fourth episode in our series on sexuality. It’s the second episode in our little sub series on masturbation. It’s titled Breaking Free from Masturbation Part 1. We’re following up on our last episode, episode 51, which was the Top Ten Reasons Why Catholic Men Masturbate. And that episode we covered the underlying psychological issues that fuel men’s impulses to masturbate. But it’s not enough to just understand the issues more clearly. No, we need guidance on how to live differently, how to work with the entirety of ourselves, with all of our parts, with all of our modes of operating in the area of sexuality. So today, we’re getting into answers for Catholics who deeply desire to have their sexuality ordered toward relationship, ordered toward God, ordered towards their spouses in a way that’s life-giving. We’re getting into answers for Catholics who experience masturbation as a dead end, as a failed promise, as an inadequate answer for meeting their deepest needs and desires. And today, we’re going to get into the first four mistakes that Catholics make in their attempts to overcome masturbation. And along with that, we’re going to get into the ten remedies for those first four mistakes. You can use this episode for other things too, not just masturbation. You can take out masturbation and substitute in any other sexual problem — fetishes, porn, sexting, sexual obsession, sexual compulsions, excessive sexual fantasies, whatever.

[00:03:33] It doesn’t even have to be sexual. These guidelines, these remedies are useful for other things as well. Now remember, I’m promising you a map. I’m promising you a compass in dealing with this masturbation issue. I’m not promising you a ride in a limousine or on a magic carpet to your destination. It’s a map. It’s not an individualized treatment plan. This is not therapy. We don’t do therapy on this podcast. We don’t do therapy at Souls and Hearts. It’s not magic. You still have to make your own journey. But this map lays out the terrain and the compass will provide direction for you on that journey. Some of you have been suffering with masturbation for a long time. I totally get that. I want you to know that God sees your efforts. He sees your good intentions. He knows at this moment that you’re listening to this podcast and that your intentions are good. So even though there may have been failures, struggles, losses, all kinds of things that haven’t worked out for you in this struggle in your life, things can be different. And that’s what this is part of. The focus of this podcast is on interior integration. That is our overarching goal in the natural realm. Now, I’m not talking about spiritual goals here. We’re talking about the natural realm, but integration is what we’re looking for, having the parts of us come together in this integrated way.

[00:05:01] And we need a way of understanding and modeling interior integration, and also of understanding its nemesis, which is interior fragmentation, disconnection, dissociation, things not connecting together. So in order to provide that, I borrow heavily from Internal Family Systems approaches, also known as IFS, which was originated by family therapist Dr. Richard Schwartz. This approach really helps me to understand the polarizations inside of myself and inside of others, and between me and others, these tensions, these conflicting desires and impulses, the internal tug of war, especially about moral issues that carry so much emotional weight, issues like masturbation. And IFS, not only helps us to understand our internal world, but it guides us to healing, how to change, how to grow in the natural realm. So this podcast is heavily influenced by IFS, but it is IFS understood through a Catholic lens. It’s IFS grounded in a Catholic anthropology or worldview. So let’s just review parts again really quickly. I believe that we are both a unity and a multiplicity in our human personhood. We’re unity and a multiplicity. And that unity and multiplicity is really helpful for understanding why Catholic men do what they don’t want to do with masturbation. Saint Paul’s lament in Romans 7:15. “I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Okay, so there’s parts of him that have different intentions. They have different motivations.

[00:06:45] They have different ways that they’re seeking to bring about some good. And these parts are not fully aware of all of what’s going on inside of him, or what’s going on in the world, or understanding about what’s going on with religion. These parts are often really young. These parts don’t have the complete picture. These parts struggle with some real blind spots and some real limitations in their vision. Well, what are these parts, Dr. Peter, what are you talking about? Well, within each person, I argue that there are separate collections of thoughts, emotions, attitudes, impulses, abilities, desires, interests, ways of relating, body sensations, visions of the world that are not just transient, but they actually exist and continue over time. And these constellations or collections of all this internal experience come together in these discrete parts, these separate parts. They’re like subpersonalities. They’re like distinct modes of operating within a person’s larger system, right? The reason why Internal Family Systems is called what it is, is because Richard Schwartz discovered that people tend to function like little family units. Like there’s sometimes like a father figure within a person’s system and sometimes a mother figure, and sometimes figures that sort of correspond to kids and so on and so forth, that they seem to be like together in this family. And sometimes that family can be pretty dysfunctional. There could be a lot of problems in that system. Each part within us can metaphorically seem like its own little person.

[00:08:20] And so it’s got its own range of emotion or its style of expression, its abilities. And so we are a unity like an orchestra is one, but there’s also a multiplicity in us, just like an orchestra has multiplicity in terms of its conductor and its musicians, right? So there’s a unity and a multiplicity, and it’s that unity and multiplicity that allows us to love ourselves. It’s that unity and multiplicity that allows us to relate with ourselves. And there is a multiplicity in God, right? God is 3 in 1. That’s not to say that God has three parts. I’m not arguing that, simply that there is a multiplicity in the way that God has revealed himself to us, which allows God to love himself. You don’t see that in other monotheistic religions. It’s the specialness of that Trinity that allows that loving God. And since we’re made in the image and likeness of God, we have that capacity too. These parts, though, get forced into extreme roles because of attachment injuries, because of relational traumas, because of different kinds of wounds. And we’ve talked about those more. We got into those more in the last session, episode 51. I’m not going to review all of that here. If you want to go back to episode 51, you can hear more about that. One thing to remember, though, is that parts can take the person over, and we call that blending. They can become very dominant.

[00:09:42] And that’s problematic because again, these parts have limited vision. They have limited awareness of what’s going on in the rest of the person and what’s going on in the rest of the world outside the person. One thing, though, is that the intentions of parts are always good, but the means that they choose can be very harmful. They can be maladaptive in spite of those good intentions. So today we’re getting into how do we break free from masturbation? If you’re caught in that, let’s talk about how that works. We’re going to go through four major mistakes that people make when they’re attempting to come out of this pattern of masturbation, once they’ve recognized that it’s harmful to them. They’re making an active effort to break free. I’m not talking about people that are like, fine with masturbation. I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s a healthy thing. All that. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about Catholics who recognize that masturbation is harmful to them and that they’d like to stop. So mistake number one that we’re going to discuss is considering masturbation to be the primary problem, not recognizing that it’s actually a symptom. That’s the first mistake. Considering masturbation to be the primary problem. We got to go deeper than that. Second mistake is pursuing compartmentalization or fragmentation instead of interior integration. This is where we try to shove the masturbation off into a corner. We’re not actually wanting to deal with it, we just want to separate from it, but we’re not actually dealing with it in an integrated way.

[00:11:12] Third mistake is going it alone, trying to tread the path of recovery by ourselves. That’s the third mistake. And the fourth mistake is using only spiritual means. That’s the fourth mistake, neglecting the natural realm, not using the natural means which are the ordinary means when there’s a natural problem. In other words, people often require, you know, are demanding essentially spiritual means to resolve these means that are in the natural realm. There’s six more common mistakes that people make when they’re trying to break free from masturbation. We’re going to cover those in episode 53. That’s for next week. We’re going to focus on these four today because there’s so much to say about it. And along with that, I’m going to give you ten remedies, ten remedies to address these four mistakes. So it’s not just pointing out the mistakes, but it’s pointing out how do we overcome those? Because that’s what this podcast is all about. It’s all about not just identifying the problems. That’s easy enough to do. It’s about overcoming them. It’s about the transformation. It’s about human formation, right? So I’ve made the argument that mistake number one is to not recognize the primary problem, to think that masturbation is the primary problem in the natural realm. Now, the primary problem always drives the focus of the remedies, right? So we want to make sure that we get the primary problem straight.

[00:12:33] We want to get it right. And masturbation is a problem. If we believe everything the Catholic Church teaches us, masturbation is a problem. It’s a serious problem. It’s a grave issue. But is it really the primary problem on the natural level? Now, I make so bold to say that on the natural level, masturbation is never the primary problem. It’s a symptom. It’s a symptom. It comes later in the causal chain. There’s always a reason for masturbation. And let’s not just stay on the surface, right? We discussed the surface reasons in episode 51, in the last episode, I, you know, gave you all those, those ten reasons that men give for why they masturbate, Catholic men give for why they masturbate. We’re going to get deeper than that, right? We don’t want to just treat symptoms. Fever, for example, is a symptom. And if you had intense abdominal pain and a high fever and you came to the emergency room and you were diagnosed by the physician there with abdominal pain and high fever disorder, right? Because he was looking at the symptoms, he decided those were the problems. And he gave you a treatment of the painkiller Percocet for your abdominal pain and he gave you extra strength Tylenol for the fever. And your pain went down and your fever came down and you were feeling better. Is that okay? Of course not. The real cause of the fever and the pain was not detected.

[00:13:54] The underlying infection that caused those symptoms of fever and pain. The appendicitis. Let’s say you had appendicitis. That wasn’t being recognized. And that Tylenol and those Percocets are not going to heal that appendicitis. And if that appendix ruptures, you’re going to be in a world of hurt, right? So no physician thinks of himself as a fever doctor. And similarly, as a psychologist, I don’t think of myself as ever “treating masturbation.” First of all, I work with persons. I don’t work with conditions or disorders. I work with persons. And second, the symptoms disappear if you resolve the underlying cause. So if this physician had taken you into the operating room, removed your appendix, resolved the appendicitis, the fever and the abdominal pain are going to go away. You don’t actually have to treat the fever and the abdominal pain a lot of times. Similarly, if you resolve the underlying natural causes of masturbation, it’s going to go away as well. Now there’s spiritual aspects of this as well. I’m not focusing on those because again, I’m a psychologist. I’m not a spiritual director. I’m not a confessor. I’m not a clergy. You know, I’m not a priest. But we’re going to address them also in the sense of how they connect with the natural realm. There’s a lot of overlap between the natural and the spiritual realm in this kind of thing. So another example, symptoms are like the leaves of a weed.

[00:15:20] They’re what you can see. They’re what’s above the ground. And here on the farm here at Nourishing Acres, we have a lot of dogwood trees. And they like to grow. They like to, you know, grow in places that I don’t want them. There’s a lot of them along the fencerows and so forth. If you just cut off the twigs and the leaves, there’s going to be no real effect in dogwood tree. Even if you cut those right off at the ground, they spring right back up. They come right back up from the roots. So if you want to eliminate those dogwood trees, you got to get your shovel out. You’ve got to get down in the earth and dig them out by the roots. That’s the only way to effectively control them. And AA and other 12 step programs recognize that addictive behavior is not the only issue. It’s not necessarily even the primary issue. You’ve got to get to the underlying causes. And in AA, many, many years ago, there was the coin term of a dry drunk. And what is a dry drunk? Well, a dry drunk is an alcoholic who has achieved abstinence from alcohol, is no longer drinking alcohol. But there’s all kinds of other problems that are coming forth. In fact, there have been times where I have heard family members of individuals who had given up drinking alcohol, but were still so plagued by their difficulties, that they actually wanted them to continue drinking. Like they were more pleasant, more amiable, a lot easier to live with if they continued drinking.

[00:16:47] Right. So that didn’t get to the root of the problem. You can think of alcohol abuse as, again, a symptom. It’s also a problem in its own right, and in fact, it can kill you in its own right. I’m not saying that symptoms can’t kill you. They can be that serious of problems. I’m simply saying that we’ve got to go further upstream if we want to effectively address the symptoms, because otherwise other symptoms come up. Okay, so we also have a limited amount of willpower. You know, there have been studies that have started to take a look at willpower and how it manifests itself. And in fact, most of Catholic psychology in the first part of the 20th century was all about will training. It was all about strengthening the will, you know, and building virtues and so on and so forth. And we do need that. We do need to resist sinful impulses and temptations. But if we address the underlying issues that are driving these impulses, if we can get the needs met, we’re going to be so much further ahead. All right. So let’s start to talk about parts a little bit more. How do these parts get into this? You know, how do they get into this mistake of masturbation being the primary problem? Well, a lot of Catholics have a religious manager part.

[00:18:02] This is a part that’s heavily identified with Catholic identity, and it really wants to keep us on the straight and narrow. And for men who are devout Catholics, who are serious about the faith, you know, they’re struggling with it, but they’re still invested in it. You know, they can have a part of them that just condemns this masturbation. And this part can have a religion that’s actually fairly limited in scope. It’s not the fullness of Catholicism. It’s really anti-masturbationism. That’s the religion that this part can have. So this religious manager part doesn’t want to see the deeper issues in the system. It’s focused only on the masturbation issues. It feels like the self is a sinner in the hand of an angry God. It’s got negative God images. And remember we did a whole series on negative God images in episodes 23 to 29. So this religious manager part, this Catholic part can have like a statue God image where God just seems, you know, very far away and not responsive, can see God as being like a drill sergeant, you know, just commanding, highly demanding, but actually not helping out very much. This part can see God as an out-to-get-you police detective who’s busy tallying all the falls, all the sins that are committed, ready to condemn the person. All kinds of negative God images can come out with this religious manager part.

[00:19:35] The deeper issues in the system, though, are the burdens that other parts hold about God often. There can be a great distrust of God. There can be anger at God. There can be deep disappointment in God. And sometimes, as we talked about in episode 51, this leads to ways that parts act out. The critical religious manager part may not know any of that, may not have any understanding of what the other parts are struggling with. And that’s because that critical manager part, that religious part is operating on its own. It’s not integrated and under the governance of the core self, where the intellect and the will can really complete the picture by bringing in the other parts. It’s really important for us to have that integration. And so there can be this kind of tunnel vision. So this part, this critical religious manager part, is asking questions like, how will I resist temptation? How long have I gone since I last masturbated? How sinful was my last act? Am I in a state of grace? Oh, why do I sin like this? Why are we so stupid? Oh, when am I going to change? I’ve got to get better. I need a new book on this. Maybe I need a new confessor, a spiritual director. I have new spiritual practices. Maybe those will give me hope. And on and on. And the thing about this is that when we’re caught up, when we’re blended with a critical religious manager part, we tend to have very much focus on the self and very little focus on God.

[00:21:01] Very little focus on God, at least very little focus on God as who he actually is. And so that can hold us back from being able to experience God more fully and the healing power of his grace in our lives. Because what’s going on is that this manager part is actually following the religion of anti-masturbationism, instead of the fullness of the Catholic faith, which includes much more of a focus on God and his goodness and his mercy, his kindness, his gentleness, his understanding, his forgiveness. You know, it’s not as focused on those things. It’s more focused on self-perfection. There is a variation on the theme of seeing masturbation as the primary problem, and that is seeing masturbation as the only problem. And that kind of tunnel vision preserves the fantasy that I just have to conquer this one masturbation problem, and then the rest of my life will be great. I will have no other problems, especially I won’t have the problems that are causing the masturbation. Right. Not that it would be thought of that way, but that’s sort of the upshot of it, right. If you see masturbation as the only problem, then masturbation will likely be your primary symptom. And that symptom is going to carry the expression of distress from so many different parts, from so many different areas.

[00:22:20] So it becomes extremely difficult to eradicate, right? It comes out in a variety of different ways because it’s got a lot of different causes, because other ways of expressing distress are not registering with the person’s conscious awareness. So it’s kind of like having one closet where you stuff all the really disordered, messy things in your house. Sort of like the whole house can look clean except for this one closet. And if you open that closet door, all kinds of things are going to come roaring out, flowing out to mess up the whole house, right? So it can be really difficult for people who actually have this single symptom presentation of masturbation to actually want to deal with it, because it brings up so many more things that they thought were solved. It’s kind of like, you know, solving a Rubik’s cube on two sides and, you know, just looking at those two sides and thinking, oh, I’m almost there, when the rest of it is really messed up. And you would actually have to seriously mess up those two sides to get the different blocks back into position to solve the cube. All right, so what are we going to do? We don’t want to mistake masturbation as the primary problem. So what’s the remedy? All right. So I’ve got two remedies for you. Right. Two remedies. Remedy one, and that is to commit to finding the real underlying reasons with God’s help.

[00:23:39] Right? We need to understand the parts of us that are crying out, the deeper needs, the loneliness, the anger of God, the disappointment with God, insecurity, feeling unsafe, despair, shame, whatever it is. Could be a sense of being unloved or being unlovable. Shame is really, really prominent here. We want to get to the root of that. So we need to commit to that. What I’m going to be talking about with this one is just the commitment, the internal commitment to say, yes, I believe there’s something more than just the physical act of masturbation. I think there’s things that tie to it emotionally in terms of needs and so forth, to actually come to that mindset, which is often really difficult for certain people. Second thing, remedy two, is to bring God or Mary or another saint or your guardian angel into the search for the underlying causes. You’re going to have to deal with your God images with this. People always do in my experience, because this is so bound up with, again, Catholics, how do we how do we understand God? How do we understand ourselves? How do we understand God looking at us if we’ve sinned in this way? All right, so remedy one, committing to finding the real underlying reasons, being really deliberate about that, writing that intention down. Remedy two, bringing in God or Mary or a saint or your angel into the search for those underlying causes, because you’re going to have to deal with God images.

[00:25:00] All right. So that’s mistake number one. Mistake number one is not recognizing the underlying causes for the masturbation. That’s a huge one. It took a long time. We’re going to go on to mistake number two. Mistake number two is pursuing compartmentalization instead of integration. Right. This is where we try to put the masturbation behaviors in a box and separate them from the rest of us, as though that’s just not me. That’s not really me. That’s not really who I am. I don’t know what comes over me. I just, I’m not really going there. I’m not really thinking about that. Suppression is a defense mechanism aimed specifically at an emotion, desire, attitude, or impulse that is perceived as too threatening or dangerous to keep in conscious awareness. Suppression is the intentional effort to force that threatening emotion, desire, attitude, or impulse out of consciousness, driving it into the unconscious where it is not experienced in the same way. And that can be really adaptive in the short run, if we come back to that threatening experience and work with it later when there’s a better opportunity, right? But if it becomes a chronic way of coping, then it’s not going to work in the long run because you’re going to get the revenge of the suppressed. It’s going to come back to bite you. Right? So this compartmentalization, when we do that, when we reject what’s going on inside of us, and we simply try to box it up, not look at it, not pay attention to it, just kind of sit it over there and hope it goes away, right? Kind of like covering our eyes, right? See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, that kind of thing.

[00:26:41] We do that, we’re contributing voluntarily to our own fragmentation. So the remedy here, remedy three, is committing to interior integration, interior acceptance of all our parts, of all our desires, of all our impulses, of all our thoughts, of all our memories, all of that as real, as part of reality. It does not mean that we embrace every impulse that every part of us has, because some of those impulses can be really destructive, even if they are motivated by good intentions in some way. It doesn’t mean that we embrace every desire and try to follow it, because that can lead us into all kinds of trouble. Doesn’t mean that, but it means that we accept that these things are actually real, that we have these desires, that we have these impulses, and that we actually get curious about them because we’re trying to understand what they mean. We’re trying to connect with them. We’re trying to bring them into the fold of who we are. And with the different models that we have now and with grace, right, with the opportunity for these things to be purified, it’s amazing what can happen. Any disorder that we have in the psychological realm is going to need to be addressed before we make it to heaven.

[00:27:59] So I believe that in purgatory, there’s a lot of cleaning up, not only just restitution for sins or atonement for sins, but a cleaning up of all the disorder in the natural realm as well. All right. So mistake number two, pursuing compartmentalization instead of integration. The remedy is committing to interior integration, accepting our parts, beginning to like really say, yes, I’m going to go this way. The third mistake is going it alone, right? There can be a strong impulse to go it alone because of shame. Right? Shame wants us to hide. We discussed this in our series on shame, especially in episodes 37 and 38 of this podcast. We really got into how shame wants us to hide. We talked about Genesis 3. First sin ever committed, brought on all kinds of shame, Adam and Eve hiding in the bushes from God. Social support, personal relationships are central to psychological healing and recovery. Dr. Lynne Knobloch-Fedders, you know, says this, “Research over the past 50 years has demonstrated that one factor, more than any other, is associated with successful treatment — the quality of the relationship between the therapist and the patient.” All right. So basically what Dr. Knobloch-Fedders is telling us, it’s about relationship. It’s about relationship. And if you want to look at where the poorest outcomes are, it’s when the client feels alone. That makes sense, right? We’re social beings.

[00:29:25] We are not made to go it alone. And if you look at what our Lord reveals to us in Scripture, let’s take a look at Ephesians 2:19. “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and the members of the household of God.” You are no longer strangers and aliens. You do not have to go it alone. You are fellow citizens with the saints. You are members of the household of God by virtue of your baptism. All right, that’s what that means. And we need to embrace that because if we become lone wolves, we’re not going to make it. This is going to be way too big for us to handle by our own strength. Galatians 6:2. “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” We need to allow others to help us bear our burdens. This isn’t just about you bearing others’ burdens. This is about allowing others to help you with yours. There’s often embarrassment when it comes to this sexual stuff. There’s often embarrassment about masturbation. There’s a desire to be self-sufficient, I get it. But we can’t translate that into going it alone and then being successful. It just doesn’t work. So for this one, I have five remedies. Five remedies. Here we go. Remedy number four. Right, because I’m just keeping them in order. Remedy number four is to find a confidant with whom you can check in daily, daily, not just regularly, because regularly could mean once a month or once every other week or something like that. Daily.

[00:31:01] Right. 12 step groups that have dealt with this, like sexaholics anonymous, members have their sponsors, and you check in with that sponsor daily. Exodus 90 has their anchors, right? These are their accountability partners. If you’re in Exodus 90, you’re checking in with your anchor every day, daily check-ins. This person should be somebody with whom you can really share how you’re doing with masturbation, if that’s what you’re struggling with or whatever else you’re struggling with, who’s tracking how it’s coming along for you, who’s praying for you, who’s connected with you, who’s relating with you about it. Right. So that you’re not just left alone to twist in the wind with this in terms of your experience of the whole thing. We’re working actually toward that in the Resilient Catholics Community. We’re talking about how to set up accountability partners, and we’re discussing that. Hopefully, that’s going to come out later this year. Takes some doing to put that together well. But that daily contact so that you know you’re not alone. So that, you know, in an experiential level, that you’re no longer a stranger and an alien, but you are a fellow citizen with the saints and the members of the household of God. That’s really, really important. So that’s remedy four, for that mistake of going it alone.

[00:32:12] Remedy five, get to confession, address the spiritual dimensions. Talk about it. Talk about it with your spiritual director or your confessor, and not just a few seconds once every couple of weeks. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been three weeks since my last confession. I masturbated 14 times, and then just go on. Right. No, no, no. Okay. That will, as long as your confessor is fine with that and determines that, you know, you’ve got all the elements necessary for a good confession, including a firm purpose of amendment and all that. That absolution will forgive your sins, right? That will happen. The power of God will act through the priest. But that’s not going to actually help you in the natural realm to understand these things better, right? We, you know, yes, graces can come in. Graces can work in that way. But that’s not really using natural means. That’s not what I’m talking about when I’m talking about using natural means. We want to help people know who we are. So get to confession and make sure that you’re taking care of that. That could be really difficult for some people, again, because of the shame. Some people just act like that might just be optional. I mean, maybe in Covid, since we don’t have to go to Mass anymore, we’re all dispensed forever. Maybe confessions dispensed forever. And I understand in some cases it may be really difficult to do, but in a lot of parts of the country, you can still go to confession.

[00:33:27] Been able to do that for months here in Indianapolis. So get to confession, address the spiritual dimensions, especially if you’ve fallen out of the habit, or especially if, you know, it’s been difficult for a while because of Covid and you just never got back into it. Remedy six, working toward an intimate relationship with God. That’s through relational prayer, and that’s through dealing with your God images, right? That’s taking this stuff to God in prayer. That means you got to set aside time in prayer every day. I know that I’m also talking about the natural realm here, but you can’t just do it in the natural realm. Some people can, you know, okay, I’ve heard of cases in which people who weren’t bringing this into God, you know, could still overcome these things. But we’re talking about Catholics here. We don’t want this to be separate from our spiritual lives. So relational prayer, and what do I mean by that? That means lifting our hearts and minds and souls to God. It means actually conversing with God. It means listening to God. Setting aside that time. If you’re not praying at all, pray two minutes a day. Just start with two minutes a day. If you can’t handle that, one minute, right. The more important thing is to create a habit and set it at a specific time.

[00:34:37] It’s the most important thing. You can increase the time later. You doing a minute, do that for a week, every day. A minute of prayer. Next week, you can do a minute and a half, right? If you’re doing ten minutes, you can do ten minutes this week. Next week, you can do 12 minutes. Something like that. You want to build it up over time. The routine and the pattern is much more important when you’re working with these kinds of things. Remedy seven, time with good friends. Right? Can be family. Family is sometimes tricky. Time with good friends though, being deliberate about that. Remedy eight, I’m just going to be honest with you all here. Sometimes you need a therapist to break through some of these things, because it can be the result of trauma, because the masturbation may be all bound up with trauma. That’s not to mean that it’s determined and that you don’t have any choice, and your will is completely vitiated and all of that. I’m not saying that. But trauma, especially sexual trauma, can make things really, really complicated. And it’s a huge help. We don’t want to make this road any harder than we have to. And, you know, Catholic therapists, especially Catholic IFS-informed therapists, can be really helpful with this kind of thing because they can look at it in terms, again, of the parts, in terms of understanding it, not just in this sort of mysterious way, these random impulses and so on and so forth.

[00:35:51] But there’s actually a coherence to it all, patterns to it all. If you think about it in terms of parts, it becomes much clearer, right? So that’s one of the reasons why I’m working so hard with the Interior Therapist Community members. These are Catholic therapists that are really getting IFS-informed consultation and that are actually doing their own work on their human formation in our experiential groups. It’s an amazing thing. It’s a wonderful thing. All right. So those are the remedies for mistake number three. Mistake number four is using only the spiritual means. Now we got to remember grace perfects nature, right? Grace needs something to work on. Right. So it depends a lot on what our nature is and where we are in the natural realm. And many of my clients have used spiritual means for years, for decades before they’ve come to see me. They’ve not overcome their masturbation. They’ve done all kinds of corporal mortifications, cold showers, fasting, even self-flagellation, use of discipline sometimes. That can lead to a kind of condemnation of the body. It’s understandable why that might happen in their bodyset. You know, my body seems to be this vehicle for this sin. I can’t resist the temptations in my body or it feels like I can’t. So there can be this like Manichean or Jansenist condemnation of the body. Also a lot of clients prefer spiritual level problems over natural level problems.

[00:37:18] Somehow it seems to be better to have a spiritual problem, seems more noble or something, than to have a psychological issue. And this can neglect the role of natural causes. Natural causes, the ordinary means for dealing with these natural causes, and all this psychology stuff happens in the natural realm. The ordinary means for that is psychotherapy. It’s stuff that happens in the natural realm. It’s not the rosary. Now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pray the rosary. But think about this again using the analogy of the guy with the appendicitis. I mean, most people are not going to deal with their intense abdominal pain and their high fever solely by praying the rosary. It’s a good thing to pray the rosary. I love the rosary. I pray it twice a day. But it’s not an answer for these natural level problems, right? Just like it’s not in the medical realm, it’s also not in the psychological realm. We need to actually bring in the appropriate means. All right. So how do we do that? Well, okay, I’m going to repeat remedy eight because it also applies here. Therapists, right, that’s often really helpful, especially if other means, you know, have not worked, especially if you’ve done, you know, other things that haven’t worked. Consider that. Remedy nine, there can be the sexaholics anonymous or other groups that are online. There’s some good things being done by an organization called Integrity Restored.

[00:38:49] For example. There’s other Catholic organizations that work with masturbation. Integrity Restored is more about pornography. But obviously those two things can go hand in hand a lot. So you can look for those kinds of organizations to help. And then remedy ten are other online groups like the Resilient Catholics Community. Now, that is not a community that’s focused exclusively on masturbation, but it is a community that provides support. It provides connection. It provides an environment in which people can work through their real stuff. All right. So a review of the first four mistakes, right? The four mistakes that we’ve been talking about, very common for Catholic men trying to climb out of this pit of masturbation, is first considering masturbation as the primary problem. Second, pursuing compartmentalization or fragmentation instead of interior integration. It’s basically trying to shunt all this stuff off, stuff it in the closet. Try not to think about it. Try not to look at it. Maybe it’ll go away. That business. The third mistake is going it alone, not adhering to our Lord’s commands to like, stay together, stay in community. And the fourth is using only the spiritual means. That’s the fourth mistake. And we got a whole lot of remedies. We’ve got remedy one, committing to find the real reason with God’s help, understanding the parts that are acting out. Remedy two, bringing God or Mary or a saint or an angel into your search for those underlying causes.

[00:40:18] Remedy three, committing to interior integration, accepting all of your parts, all those desires, all those impulses, all those thoughts, and all those memories as real, as part of reality, even though we don’t necessarily endorse or embrace what all parts are thinking or feeling, we accept that it’s there. Remedy four, finding a daily confidant. Somebody that you can check in with daily. Remedy five, go to confession. Make sure you address the spiritual dimensions. Remedy six, relational prayer, working toward that intimate relationship with God and setting aside time for it. Remedy seven, time with friends, being deliberate about that. Remedy eight, finding a therapist, especially a Catholic therapist, especially one that’s IFS-informed, right? And I’m not just throwing that out there because I know that can be hard to find. I’m actually working hard to provide those for you, to actually form them for you in our Interior Therapist Community. Remedy nine, sexaholics anonymous or other groups. Remedy ten, online groups like the Resilient Catholic Community. All right, so in the next episode, we’re going to continue with the mistakes people make in the natural realm in overcoming masturbation. There are six more mistakes for us to cover, along with many more remedies. We’ve got another ten remedies for those six mistakes. You know, I’m really curious about how these episodes are landing with you. Some of you already have gotten in touch with me. Thank you. I’ve gotten some calls, some emails. I’m going to invite you to get in touch with me on my cell, (317) 567-9594.

[00:41:49] Call me or text me. Or my email at crisis@soulsandhearts.com. We’re still small enough now in January 2021 that I can still get around to responding to everybody one way or another, right? February 19th, 2021 from 10 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. Eastern Time, I’m going to be doing a webinar for the Catholic Psychotherapy Association called Why Do I Avoid God? An Internal Family Systems-Informed Approach to Parts’ Negative God Images. You can hear all about how different parts look at God differently. We get into how different parts see God. There’s lots of experiential work, and for information and registration, go to catholicpsychotherapy.org/events. We also have the Resilient Catholics Community. That community is all about transformation, all about preparing the way for love in our souls. It’s all about overcoming the natural obstacles to tolerating being loved and to loving. It’s all about entering into that intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ our brother, the Holy Spirit, who is Love himself, and with our spiritual parents, God the Father and Mary our mother. We’re sharing our experiences. We’re sharing our journey. We’re sharing our mission, right? So you can get on the waiting list, soulsandhearts.com/rccd, and you can get information before the general public does. We’re really hoping to reopen in April or May. I know some of you have been on there for a long time.

[00:43:11] I’m really appreciating your patience. I have been really working hard to relaunch the Interior Therapist Community. That’s the community of therapists, to really get them ready, because there’s a lot of people in our Resilient Catholics Community that want a Catholic therapist that’s got this kind of training in IFS. I want to be able to provide training, consultation, and support them in those therapists’ clinical work. All right. So there’s going to be a bonus podcast for community members. There’s going to be an experiential exercise on why I go it alone. This is mistake number three. Why I go it alone when I try to solve my problems, whether that’s with masturbation or anything else. So this bonus podcast is going to come out on Tuesday. It’s one day after this one. So this one’s going to release on January 26th, 2021. Remember that office hours for the Resilient Catholics Community is on Wednesday, January 27th from 9:15 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. Eastern Time. Register for that on our app. We’ve had a great response to that. We got people coming. I’m really excited about doing that. And that’s where you can ask questions about any of this stuff. It’s an open forum. You can ask it. We do record it and it becomes available later for our members that couldn’t be there to listen to it later. For our Catholic therapists in the Interior Therapist Community, we’ve got more on symptoms and underlying problems in ourselves and our clients as we go deeper into the clinical implications of working with Catholics who masturbate and hate the fact that they do.

[00:44:35] So we’re going to go into that in that bonus podcast, that’s also going to come out on Tuesday in our Interior Therapist Community. You can really support me by subscribing to this podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Google Play or Amazon. I don’t really fully understand how that all works, because I don’t really know how to subscribe to a podcast, but Jody has told me that I should tell you that. So I’m telling you that. And, you know, share it with people, share it with people that, you know, might really benefit. You can share this with your therapist, right? If this is something you’re struggling with and your therapist isn’t dialed into it, you can share this with your therapist, right? Sharing buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis. Get the word out there. Get your recommendations out there. Again, you know, feel free to touch base with me too, 317-567-9594. That’s my cell. Or crisis@soulsandhearts.com. And don’t forget about feedback, ideas, suggestions, whatever, however this is landing with you. And with that, we’re going to wrap it for today. God bless you all. It’s good to be with you. We’re going to invoke our patroness and our patron. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.