Breaking Free from Masturbation, Part 1

Intro: 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 we 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 we can rise to the challenges and opportunities 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 our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
This is episode 52, released on January 25, 2021
This is the fourth episode in our series on sexuality and the second one on masturbation.  
And it is titled:  Breaking Free from Masturbation -- A Roadmap  
We're following up on our last episode, episode 51 -- The Top 10 Reasons Why Catholic Men Masturbate.
 In that episode, we covered the underlying psychological issues that fuel impulses to masturbate.

 But it's not enough to just understand the issues more clearly

 We need guidance on how to live differently, how to work with the entirety of ourselves -- all of our parts, 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, toward God, and toward their spouses or future spouses in a way that is 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 their deeper needs and desires. 
We will get into the first four mistakes that Catholics make in their attempts to overcome masturbation
And we will get into the 10 remedies for those first four mistakes
Not just about masturbation -- you can take out masturbation and substitute in any other sexual problem -- fetishes, porn, sexting, sexual obsessions, sexual compulsions, excessive sexual fantasies, whatever
Remember that I promised you a map, not a ride in a limousine or on a magic carpet to your destination.  It's a map, not an individualized treatment plan.  This is not therapy.  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 for a long time.  I get that.  God sees your efforts, he sees your good intentions.  

Focus of this podcast is on interior integration -- overarching goal in the natural realm.  Not talking about spiritual goals here, we are talking about the natural realm.  
So we need a way of understanding and modeling interior integration and also its nemesis -- interior fragmentation.  
I borrow heavily from Internal Family Systems approach, aka IFS approach, originated by Richard Schwartz.
 Really helps me clinically to understand the polarizations inside of myself and others -- the tensions, the conflicting desires and impulses, the internal tug-of-war, especially about moral issues that carry so much emotional weight, like masturbation

 And IFS not only helps us understand our internal world, it guides us as to how to heal, how to change, how to grow in the natural realm.  

This podcast is heavily influenced by IFS, but IFS grounded in a Catholic worldview.

Review of Parts -- IFS perspective
 Multiplicity and Unity of Self

 
Really helpful for understanding why Catholic men do what they don't want to do.
 Romans 7:15 -- St. Paul's lament  I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

 

Discussion of Parts
 within each person are separate collections thoughts, emotions, attitudes, impulses, desires, abilities, interests, relational styles, body sensations, and worldviews that are not just transient emotional states, but rather constitute discrete “parts,” subpersonalities or distinct modes of operating within the person’s larger internal system -- they seem like selves within us. 

Each part within us can metaphorically seem like its own little person, with its own particular range of emotion, style of expression, abilities, desires views of the world. 
Modes of operating
Subpersonalities
Orchestra model
Focus is on integration.  

Get forced into extreme roles -- attachment injuries and relational traumas
Three roles -- exiles, managers, and firefighters.  
Exiles -- 
most sensitive -- become injured or outraged by important other in the family or social world.  Threatens the system, external relationships
Exploited, rejected, abandoned in external relationships
Want care and love, rescue, redemption

shame.  Need for redemption 

Managers
 Protective, strategic, controlling environment, keep things safe

 Obsessions. Compulsions, reclusiveness, passivity, numbing. Panic attacks, somatic complaints, depressive episodes, hypervigilance.

 
Firefighters
 Stifle, anesthetize, distract from feelings of exiles

 No concern for consequences

 Binge eating, drug/alcohol use, dissociation, sexual risk taking, cutting

 

Parts can take over the person
 Like in Pixar Movie Inside Out -- anger taking over the control panel of the main character Riley

 We call it blending.  

Intentions of parts -- always good, but the means they choose can be very harmful, maladaptive.  

Mistakes
 
List of mistakes
 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

 Six more common mistakes, but those are for the next episode.  

Mistake 1.  Mistaking the primary problem --  Considering masturbation as the primary problem
 The primary problem drives the focus of the remedies

 
And masturbation is a problem -- but is it really the primary problem?
 I make so bold to say that on the natural level masturbation is never the primary problem

 
It's a symptom -- Let's not stay on the surfaces (we discussed the surface reasons and the underlying real reasons in episode 51)
 
Fever is a symptom
 If you had intense abdominal pain and a high fever and you came to the Emergency room

 
And was diagnosed with abdominal pain and a high fever disorder
 Treatment was a painkiller Percocet for the pain and Extra-Strength Tylenol for the fever

 And the real cause was not detected -- the underlying infection that caused the symptoms of fever and pain -- like appendicitis.

 

No physician thinks of himself or herself as a fever doctor

 
As a psychologist, I don't think of myself as ever "treating masturbation"
 First, I work with persons, not conditions or disorder

 
Second, the symptoms disappear if you resolve the underlying cause.
 If you resolve the appendicitis, the fever and the abdominal pain go away

 Similarly, if you resolve the underlying causes of masturbation, it will go away, too.    

Symptoms are like the leaves of a weed
 Here on the farm we have dogwood trees -- like to grow up.  Cut off the leaves and twigs -- no real effect.  Cut it off at ground level, they spring back up.  

Gotta get the shovel and dig them out by the roots.  

AA and other 12 step programs recognize that the addictive behavior is not the only issue -- you've got to get to the underlying causes -- Dry drunk
 
Carole Bennett in a Psychology Today article outlines these signs of a dry drunk as:
 Resentment toward friends or family, especially toward those who called him out on his drinking

 Anger and negativity surrounding recovery, especially about not be able to drink

 Depression, anxiety, and fear of relapse

 Jealousy of friends who are not struggling with addiction

 Bitterness about lost time, lost opportunities, lost relationships

 Romanticizing their drinking days

 Being self-obsessed

 Replacing the addiction with a new vice (e.g., sex, food, and internet use)

 

Tension -- White knuckling it 

Limited amount of willpower

 We do need to resist sinful impulses and temptations.  

Anti-masturbationism as a religion  (Parts)
 
Religious manager part -- deeply concerned, driven by fear of God, fear of sin, fear of hell
 Doesn't want to see the deeper issues in the system

 Feels like the self is a sinner in the hand of an angry God

 God images activated -- episodes 23-29.  

Different parts have different God images
 Statue God image

 Drill Sergeant God image

 Magic Genie God image

 Outtogetcha Police Detective God image

 Critical Scrooge God

 

Deeper issues in the system-- burdens that other parts hold about God. 
Great distrust of God
Anger at God
Deep disappointment in God.
Often about the masturbation

Not a focus on God, but a focus on the self and a focus on masturbation
 How will I resist temptation

 How long have I gone without masturbating

 How sinful was my last act -- am I in a state of grace

 Why oh why do I sin like this -- why am I so stupid?

 When am I going to change?

 I am going to get better.  I have a new book on this

 I have new spiritual practices, these give me hope

 And on and on -- little focus on God.  

Variation:  Seeing masturbation as the only problem
 
Tunnel vision
 Preserves the fantasy that I just have to conquer this one masturbation problem and then my life will be great, I have no other problems, especially I don't have the problems that are causing the masturbation.  

If you see masturbation as the only problem, then masturbation will likely  be your primary symptom.  

One closet where every problem is stuffed. 

Solution:  Find the deeper problem
 
Remedy 1:  Commit to finding the real reason, with God's help.
 Understanding the parts of us that are crying out -- deeper need

 Loneliness, Anger at God, disappointment with God, Insecurity, Feeling unsafe, Despair, Shame -- a sense of being unloved or unlovable.  

Remedy 2:  Bring God or Mary or a saint or your angel  into the search for the underlying causes-- you will have to deal with the God images

 

Mistake 2.  Pursuing Compartmentalization instead of integration
 Compartmentalization = fragmentation

 Putting these masturbation behaviors into a box, separating them from the rest of me.  That's just not me, or not really me, not really who I am.  

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 from consciousness, driving it into the unconscious where is not experienced in the same way.  
Can be adaptive in the short run -- if we will come back to the threatening experience and work with it in a later moment
If it becomes a chronic way of coping, then It doesn't work in the long run -- the revenge of the suppressed.  

Solution:  Remedy 3:  Committing to interior integration:   Interior acceptance of all parts, all desires, all impulses, all thoughts, all memories as real -- as part of reality.  

Mistake 3.  Going it alone
 Strong impulse this way because of shame -- how shame leads us to want to hide -- discussed in our series on shame, especially in episodes 37 and 38. 

Social support, personal relationships are central to psychological healing and recovery

 Dr. Lynne Knobloch Fedders  Research over the past fifty 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.

 And it makes sense

 We are social beings, we are not made to go it alone.  
Ephesians 2:19:  So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God
Galatian 6:2: Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Embarrassment, not wanting to share.  

Desire to be self-sufficient 

Solutions:
 
Remedy 4.  Find a confidant with whom you can check in daily.   Daily.  Not just regularly.  Daily
 12 Step Groups have their sponsors

 Exodus 90 has their anchors, their accountability partners.  Daily check-ins.  

Somebody with whom you can really share how you are doing with masturbation, who is tracking how it's coming along.  

We are working toward that in the Resilient Catholics Community, and later this year, we'll be discussing accountability partners.  

Remedy 5:  Get to confession and address the spiritual dimensions.  Talk about it.  Spiritual Director, Confessor -- not just a few seconds once every couple of weeks, but getting into it.  

Remedy 6:  Working toward Intimate relationship with God
 Relational Prayer

 Dealing with God images

 

Remedy 7:  Time with Friends -- being deliberate out it.  

Remedy 8:  Therapists -- especially Catholic IFS-informed  therapist -- Interior Therapist Community members.  Or maybe personal coaches.  

Mistake 4.  Using only spiritual means
 Grace perfects nature

 
Many clients have used spiritual means for years and decades and not overcome masturbation
 Corporal mortifications -- cold showers, fasting, even self-flagellation -- use of disciplines, cilices.  Can lead to body condemnation  

Preference for spiritual level problems over natural level problems - psychological issues are in the natural realm

 Neglects the role of natural causes -- natural causes needs solutions in the natural realm.  

Suspicion of mental health professionals -- understandable

 Repeat of Remedy 8:  Therapists -- especially Catholic IFS-informed  therapist -- Interior Therapist Community members.  

 Remedy 9:  Sexaholics Anonymous or other groups.

 Remedy 10:  Online groups -- like the Resilient Catholic Community  

Review of first four mistakes and their remedies -- see above.  
Wrap up
 So in the next episode, we will 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.  

Feedback.  Let me know how these episodes are landing with you -- -- some of you already have.  Get in touch with me on my cell at 317.567.9594 or my email at [email protected] -- we're still small enough in January 2021 that I can respond to everybody.  

February 19, 2021 -- 10 AM to 1:15 PM Eastern time.  I have been invited to do a webinar for the Catholic Psychotherapy Association entitled "Why Do I Avoid God?  An Internal Family Systems-Informed Approach to Parts' Negative God Images"  Here we get into how different parts see God.  Lots of experiential work.  For information and registration go to catholicpsychotherapy.org/events

 
We have the Resilient Catholic community.  That community is about transformation, about preparing the way for love in our souls. It's about being together as Catholics on a journey, on a mission to really enter into an 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.  It's about sharing our experiences in that journey on that mission.
 Get on the waiting list  soulsandhearts.com/rccd so you will get information before the general public does.  Those on the waiting list -- thank you for your patience, hoping to reopen the community in April.  

Will do a bonus podcast -- community members --  experiential exercise, on why I go it alone -- mistake 3 when I try to solve my problems, whether with masturbation or anything else.   -- Those bonus podcasts come out on Tuesday, one day later, so this one will release on January 26. 

Office hours for the RC community on Wednesday, January 27 from 9:15 to 10:15 AM Eastern time.  Register on our app.  

Bonus podcast for our Catholic Therapists in the Interior Therapist Community with more on symptoms vs. underlying problems in ourselves and our clients and we go deeper into the clinical implications of working with Catholics who masturbate and hate the fact that they do.  

Can start by subscribing to this podcast -- spotify, apple podcasts, google play, amazon.  Share the Interior Integration for Catholics Podcast on social media -- sharing buttons are on our website at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis  -- get your word out there, with your personal recommendation -- how these episodes have helped you.  Share them, let others know. 

You can reach out to me at 317.567.9594 or at [email protected] -- don’t forget about feedback, ideas, suggestions.  

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