54 Masturbation Recovery Stories

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode 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 confront the tough questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head on 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 difficult, demanding 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.'Together, we are on a journey toward deep transformation in our mindsets, our heartsets and our bodysets, a radical transformation at the core of our being so that our souls can one day enter into contemplative union with God. 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 our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighborThis is episode 54, released on February 8, 2021This is the sixth episode in our series on sexuality and the fourth one on masturbation.  And it is titled:  Masturbation Recovery StoriesWe're following up on our last three episodes, number 51, 52 and 53, which have all been about masturbation, the Top 10 reasons why Catholic men masturbate, the 10 common mistakes they make as they try to recover from masturbation and live chaste lives, and the 20 remedies for those 10 common mistakes.   we're getting into answers for Catholics who experience masturbation as a dead-end, as a failed promise, as an inadequate answer for their deeper needs and desires. So today, we're pulling all the conceptual information together and we are going to do three things.First, We will briefly review the 10 common mistakes and the 20 remedies for those mistakesSecond, will discuss how to make an individualized recovery plan for masturbation Third, we will pull all the information together into the stories of Richard and Luis, who we introduced in episode 51 -- we will review their histories, look at the mistakes they made is trying to free themselves from masturbation, discuss how they made their individualized plans for recovery, and how they broke free from masturbation.  Review:  10 Common Mistakes that Catholics make in breaking free from masturbation:
 Considering masturbation as the primary problem. -- Gotta go deeper Pursuing compartmentalization or fragmentation instead of interior integration Going it alone Using only the spiritual means Having a Power spirituality or a macho spirituality Passive Spirituality The why for the change Shaming the self for failures The All or Nothing Trap  Failing to see the struggle with masturbation as a gift 20 Remedies for those mistakes
 Commit to finding the real reason, with God's help.  Bring God or Mary or a saint or your angel  into the search for the underlying causes Committing to interior integration:   Interior acceptance of all parts, all desires, all impulses, all thoughts, all memories as real -- as part of reality. 
Find a confidant with whom you can check in daily.   Daily.  Not just regularly.  Daily Get to confession and address the spiritual dimensions.  Talk about it.  Spiritual Director, Confessor Working toward Intimate relationship with God Time with Friends -- being deliberate out it. Therapists -- especially Catholic IFS-informed  therapist Sexaholics Anonymous or other groups Online groups -- like the Resilient Catholic Community Embracing the parts that carry our powerlessness, smallness, neediness -- we need those things, they are essential for us to be small enough to approach God.  Those parts are precious  Focus on Humility.  Litany of humility.  Litany of Trust Entering into relationship with God as a little child. Let the little children come to me.    St. Therese of Lisieux. 
Serenity Prayer:   Pray it every day.  And listen.  
Commit to doing what you can, even it seems like very little.  Remembering that as little children we can offer very little. Exploring and discussing our motives with our trusted person.   Ask that person how he or she sees our motives.  
 Bringing those motives to prayer.  Lord that I may see.  Prayer of blind Bartimeus.  Domine ut vidiam. 
really working with our internal critic.  Understanding the reasons for the shaming, the good that the critic seeks in that -- and helping that critic integrate with the rest of your system, under the leadership of your core self. Perseverance.  It's normal to fall.  We are fallen human beings in a fallen world.  We need to get up.  Every time. 
Seeking for how the struggle with masturbation is a gift.  
Making a Plan
 All the above can be overwhelming-- Do I have to do it all? First Overarching principle -- Work your plan out with someone else, someone you trust, someone that you sense is competent to help you. This is vitally important, so you are not repeating mistake number 3, which is going it alone. Talk it out with that person at length.  The whys and wherefores of each component of the plan.  Second Overarching principle Write out your plan.  It all becomes so much when you write it out.  Third Overarching principle --  take what is helpful for you in your plan and discard what is not.  Be flexible in your plan over time.  Fourth overarching principle -- build up your plan.  It make take time, build it up over time. General trend over time -- general trajectoryWeek by week -- once you consolidate a part of your plan, add another partFifth overarching principle -- adherence to the plan is your target.  Stay with the plan.  Much more certain than just having periods of abstinence from masturbation
Review of Parts
 IFS by Richard Schwartz  
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