Where's the Pain - Why Christian Men Keep Going Back to Porn

You've been asking the wrong question. Most guys want to know why they're addicted. Why they can't stop. Why they keep going back even when they hate it. But addiction expert Gabor Maté says that's not the question. The real question is: *Where's the pain?* Because porn isn't the disease. It's the solution your brain found for a problem you've never named. In this episode, Michael walks through the machine underneath porn use, why willpower will never be enough, and how to rewrite the equation your brain has been running for years.

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Quit Porn | Restoration Soul Care helps men get past willpower and behavior management to the root — the pain, pressure, and disconnection underneath the pattern. Hosted by Michael Kamber and Nick Buda.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hey, welcome to the Restoration Soul Care podcast, where we have honest conversations about faith, neuroscience, and hope. I'm Michael Camber, a relationship and recovery coach.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

And I'm Nick Buda, a mental health and relationship coach. If you feel stuck in shame, addiction, or pain, you don't have to face it alone. Join us for some real stories, real tools, and a real path forward. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Nothing dramatic happened. It was a pretty ordinary conversation. But afterwards, I kept thinking, that's it. That's that's the whole thing. It's probably the most important thing that I could say to you. So that's what I want to do today. It's just me again today. Nick is still out. We'll be back very soon to chat, and I'm looking forward to that. But I want to walk you through the thing today that I keep coming back to in my head. So let me start with um how almost every single initial conversation I have with folks go. A guy reaches out, we get on the phone, and nine times out of ten, the very first words out of his mouth are some version of, hey, I have a porn addiction. Um that's the opener. Uh very confident, uh, rehearsed almost, like it's been there, like that's just the way he's thought of it for years. And uh it's a sentence that people carry around for a very long time. And um honestly, people are pretty relieved to finally just get it out and say it to somebody. Um, but here's what's strange to me. Uh I'll have a guy on that call who's used porn maybe once in the last three years. And to be clear, that is a problem. And he wants to talk through it, totally fair. And I'll have another guy who calls and says, Um, man, I'm watching porn three times a day. Help me, I can't stop. Um, that's two completely different situations. And yet both of them open up with the exact same sentence, and that's I have an addiction. So I want to slow down on that because I think the word is doing more harm than we realize. And the thing that I tell people is problematic is not the same thing as an addiction. Because here's the thing: you can be doing something genuinely destructive, something that's hurting you, hurting your marriage, hurting your walk with God. And it also may not be an addiction. If you're looking at porn, of course, that's a problem. Anytime our behavior is involved, it sort of becomes a spiritual conversation, right? Is the behavior good or is it bad? Is it right? Is it wrong? If it's wrong, that's what we call sin. And yeah, of course, we want to stop because it dishonors God, it dishonors the people we're in a relationship with, and it dishonors us. All of that's true. You can engage in all of that and it's still not be an addiction. Problematic, yes. Addiction, not necessarily. And I work with guys all over the spectrum. Some guys, it's intentional, it's on purpose, they're aware that they're walking toward it, but it's not this compulsive white knuckle, I can't physically stop myself kind of thing. And other guys, uh, it really is that. It really is that frequent and it really is that compulsive. And the reason I'm making this distinction isn't to let anybody off the hook here. It's because the label you put on it in a lot of ways shapes the fight that you think that you're in. Meaning, if we label it one way, that's uh the battle that we're preparing for mentally, emotionally, spiritually, all the things. So if you the here's I'm doing a terrible job at saying this. If you walk around believing I'm an addict, that work can quietly become sort of the container or cage that you put yourself in. It tells you who you are, tells your brain what to expect, and you start organizing your life and your patterns around managing an addiction instead of working toward healing it. Because addiction carries this weight. And oftentimes what we're describing when we say the word addiction, we're describing the weight of the pain at the experience that I'm I'm feeling from this thing that I don't want to be doing anymore. So if we can't take the label off for a second, not again, not because the behavior doesn't matter, it does, but because I think there's something underneath it that matters more. And the label will keep you from seeing it because it's the second we label things like this, it shuts down curiosity because now we don't have to think critically about it or engage it. Um, because here's what's true whether you're a once-a-year kind of guy or a three times a day kind of guy, the engine underneath that's driving that is the exact same. There's a feeling you don't know how to be with, there's a behavior that promises to make it go away, and that's it. That's the machine. And once you see it, you can stop fighting the wrong part of it. Um, so oftentimes we start out by asking a wrong question. Um, I'm gonna uh there's a guy named Gabor Mate. He is uh trauma and addiction, trauma and addiction expert. He's written a handful of books in the realm of hungry ghosts, when the body says no, and the myth of normal. Big, thick, serious books, really worth your time. Uh and he says something in one of those books. The first time that I heard it, uh, I was like, okay, that's it. That's that's the whole thing, which is why I'm telling you now. He says the question we always want to ask is why the addiction? And we're getting at this thing is causing problems. Maybe the spouse asks that, Why are you addicted to this thing? How could you? Or maybe you ask yourself why that. Why do I keep doing this? Why can't I stop? And he says, that's the wrong question. Um, and for a minute, think about how counterintuitive that is. Of course, we want to ask why the addiction. The addiction is the thing that's blowing up our lives. We can point at it and say, that's the thing that's wrecking my marriage. That's the thing that's making me hate myself. So obviously, that's the question, right? Well, Gabor Matei would say, no, the right question is where's the pain? Because the addiction is always in service of something. It is meeting a need. If it weren't doing something for you, you wouldn't do it. That that doesn't mean that you're uh that that you're weak. It's just how it works. Nobody keeps going back to something that does nothing for them. The porn is functionally accomplishing something, otherwise, it would have no grip on you at all. So let me say it as plainly as I can. Porn is not the disease, porn is not the problem. It's the solution. It's the solution that your brain, that your heart, um, that you came up with for the problem that oftentimes we never even name and we don't know how to name it. So uh that's the the paradigm shift, that's the reframe, that's what I'm gonna talk through in this episode. Um, the but like we've said, uh the the behavior is the smoke. If we keep trying to fight the smoke, we never get to the fire. So the right question is where's the fire? And then we can add, then we can actually get to the point of how do we take out the fire. So um I mentioned the machine a second ago. Here's how it works. Your brain learns fast, thankfully, but it's sometimes faster than you like. And at some point, uh, could have been years ago, could have been when you're a kid, your brain learned an equation. And it goes like this pain plus porn equals relief. Something hard happens, something bad happens, you feel something you don't really like, and you reach for the thing that you've learned over and over, it will take the edge off. And here's the frustrating part it works. Uh, in the moment, it works. It numbs you, it distracts you, it gives you something. And there's a physical component too, right? It's not just that it takes your mind off of it, there's an embodied release that happens. Your body's involved, not just your head. So now your brain has this clean little equation it can run anytime life gets uncomfortable. Plain plus whatever the behavior is equals relief. And you could insert whatever problematic behavior you want there that's taking the edge off. For some people, it's alcohol. For some people, it's hard drugs, for some people it's gambling. But that's the equation. Your brain is gonna spend the rest of your life trying to prove that that equation is true and that it works. That's its job. It found a solution for you and it's gonna keep reaching for it. Keep running it, keep proving it until you give it a different equation for it to believe and one that works. And again, I we the word willpower gets thrown around a lot, but this is why willpower never never works. You can't white knuckle the behavior. You can white knuckle the behavior all you want, but uh you haven't touched the equation. You've just told your brain stop using the solution while leaving the original problem completely intact. So of course it doesn't hold. You're fighting the smoke while the fire is still burning. So, how do we get under it? How do you find the pain when most of the time you don't even know that it's there? Well, you follow the feeling. Um, if you can imagine for a second an iceberg or a picture of an iceberg, uh I tr I drew this on uh my iPad for the guy this week. It was terrible. I'm not even gonna try to draw it. I'm not an artist. But picture for a moment. There's an iceberg, there's a water line, and there is the smaller part of the iceberg sitting on top of the water line, and the larger, the majority of the iceberg sitting under the water. And it's representative of two kinds of memory. The kind of memory that sets above the waterline is what we call explicit memory. It's the stuff that you can actively recall. What you have for breakfast, the conversation you had with your wife last night, what your kids are doing this weekend, you can reach up, you can, and you can grab it. That's explicit. Everything below the water line is what we call implicit memory. And this is the part that runs your life without you knowing it. It's the parts of your story that live in your body and way back in your brain somewhere that you can't actively pull up in the moment, but are that they're absolutely shaping how you show up. Everything before you were two years old that you can't actively recall, remember, it's down there. Um, elementary school, middle school, the good stuff, the bad stuff, stuff that scared you, the stuff that shamed you, the stuff that taught you how the world works. It's all down there. And you can't recall it on command, but it is running. Uh, here's the important part of this, why this matters. There's a bridge between these two. And the only thing that connects that stuff above, uh, and the only thing that connects the stuff above the waterline to the stuff below it is your feelings, your emotions. The feeling that you have right now when something is blowing up is a doorway to something older. So let me give you an example that I gave him because I hope I think it'll make it click. Uh, say your wife says something to you about how you're loading the dishwasher. You load it like a maniac, and you say, No, you're a maniac. This is how you load the dishwasher. You know, normal married people stuff. Uh, but you notice there's this little knot of guilt in your gut. And if you're paying attention, part of you goes, that's weird. Objectively, this is a dumb thing to feel guilty about. It's just a dishwasher. Uh, there's no reason a grown man should feel a wave of guilt and tension over how I stick the silverware in upside down or, you know, blunt side up. But you do. So instead of arguing about the dishwasher, you can ask yourself a different question. You can ask, When have I felt this before? And when you stay with it, you don't rush it. Sit in that feeling of guilt for just a couple of minutes and see what floats up to the surface. And maybe, maybe you go, Oh my gosh, when I was 11 at my buddy's house helping him do the dishes, his mom came around the corner and just laid into him in front of me, yelling about how he was loading the dishwasher wrong. And you weren't even the one she was yelling at, but your whole body lit up because one of the things that we learned is when, um, especially when we're talking about kids, when you yell or raise your voice around kids, um especially at a younger age, um, the yelling affects them just as much as if you were yelling at them. Uh, it's it's one of the things like we internalize that pain and that trauma, and even that what we might call false guilt or toxic guilt in our guts, um, in our little bodies, and the tension in our shoulders, this panicky feeling because there's a loud angry adult in the room, and it's scary. Um, you're 10 or 11, and something wasn't even really a big deal. Suddenly, it is a very big deal because you don't know if you're safe or not. And your nervous system took in all of it and logged it, and your brain went, okay, we don't want to be here again. So how do we survive it? We placated, we just nodded and smiled and said, Okay, you're right, I'm sorry. And then everybody calmed down, and then we were safe. And your brain filed that away as a winning strategy, and like we talked about a second ago, it's gonna run that pattern. And it's been running that pattern, depending on how old you are for 20, 30 years sometimes. Um, so that's that's how we get at it. That the present feeling, the guilt over the dishwasher, is the thread. When you pull it, it leads you down under the water line where the pain actually lives. Um, a way that my friend Jim says this sometimes: if there's a hundred dollar reaction to a $10 problem, we got to figure out where the other $90 came from. And oftentimes, we have to go below the water line because that's where 90% of the iceberg lives. I'm not going to get into uh percentages, I'm terrible at this. Um, but it works the same way for everything, it works the same way for porn. That feeling in the moment right before you reach it is the thread. It's telling you something about yourself and it will lead somewhere. Oftentimes we just never follow it because following it is uncomfortable. And honestly, porn is right there and it's easy. So if the brain learned pain plus porn equals relief and it's been proving that true for years, how do you actually change it? Because you can't just delete it. Um, you don't get to reach in and just sort of erase the equation with an eraser. Uh, what you have to do is give it a different equation and prove that it's true. You have to give your brain um this new equation over and over and over again, uh, the same way the other one got proven. And the new one looks like this. Plain, sorry, pain, pain plus a safe person equals relief. Pain plus deep relational connection plus somebody safe in my life gives us the relief, right? That's that's the rewriting of the equation. Every time you live that out, every time you feel the pull, instead of isolating, you reach for a real human being, real connection, and you let yourself be known in that moment. You are proving the new equation. You are laying down new wiring and you're telling yourself, I can experience this complicated emotion that feels like it's gonna ruin me with someone who is trustworthy, who genuinely loves me, that I can trust, and I'm okay. Um, neuroscience calls this co-regulation. You're literally borrowing the calm nervous system of another safe, trustworthy peep person. Now, if you were feeling sort of amped up in the moment and you called somebody else and they were like, Oh, I can't believe you're about to look at porn, you piece of crap. How could you? Well, what's that gonna teach you? It's gonna force you back into that old equation. Okay, right. All right, remember now. People aren't trustworthy. I'm gonna be judged, I'm gonna be shamed, and now I'm more uh in pain because of that. So I better just go back to porn and isolate. So this is why finding that safe person is actually uh of uh super important. Like I said, the Bible calls this renewing your mind, neuroscience calls it rewiring your brain. It's the same thing, two different words. Here's what gets me. Here's what gets most people. You actually have a lot more agency over this than you believe you do. I know it doesn't feel that way because we've proven the old thing true so many times, uh, but it's real. You can change the equation. That's the mercy of God at work in your body, in your nervous system. But uh, and this is the part I cannot let you miss, and I've said it a hundred times, you can't do this alone. So think about this new equation again. There's a person in it, a safe person. Um that actually rewires relationship. And like we've talked about a hundred times, we're relational creatures created in the image of a relational God by relationship for relationship. There's no other way around this. Um that's the cruel little trap of this thing because porn addiction, porn use thrives in isolation. Shame tells you you're hot to hide, that you're worthless, um, and that the one thing that would actually bring some healing to it, bring it into the light, bring it into relationship, let somebody see you, is the exact thing that shame screams at you to not do. So uh we have to be aware of that. There's a proverb, um, not remembering where it's at now, but it says, like a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly or sin. And I used to read that as just, you know, stop being dumb, don't do dumb stuff, stop sinning. But I think it's describing something specific. It's describing what happens when we try to meet our own needs in isolation. We go back alone to the thing that never actually fed us. And we do it again and again, mistrusting people, mistrusting God, and just running the cycle. That's not really freedom. That's a dog returning to his vomit. And on the outside, that's supposed to repulse you and go, Oh, that's gross. I don't want to do that. And that's an appropriate response because, yeah, that's what God's telling you about your sin and all of this dumb stuff that we do to try to get our needs met in isolation. That's dog vomit. Stop going back to it. Um the way out always runs through a person every single time. Um, here's what here's the thing that shame is actually counting on, though. Um it's going to try to stop you from making that behavior because um shame always runs one play. It runs the same thing. It's been running it your whole life. And that thing is to hide, keep walls up, show the people the good parts of you, the competent parts, the version of you that has got it all together. And whatever you do, don't let anybody see the thing in the dark. Because, and here's the lie underneath the whole thing. The one you've maybe never said out loud. Um, if they saw the real you, the actual broken you, they would leave. That you are intolerable in your true, broken, limited state. That's that's the thing that shame is trying to prove. That's the entire that's the thing that the entire hiding strategy is built on. So, what we do typically is we manage a curated version of ourselves and we call it protection. I think I'm just protecting myself and protecting the relationship. Uh, what you're actually doing is starving it. Because here's here's what's actually happening. And I need you to hold both of these halves at the same time. So stay with me. Because they're both true at once. You are more broken than you've ever feared, and you are more loved than you've ever dared to hope. Both of those things are true. And most of us typically only ever hold one. Either we're white knuckling the broken part and hiding it, exhausted from the hiding, or we sort of paper over it with, well, God loves me, in a way that never actually touches the broken parts of us. So it stays kind of cheap and worthless and it really never sinks in. But when you can hold both of those things, hold that tension at the same time, when you can look straight at the worst of what you do and not look away, and at the very same time, know that you are still wanted, still pursued, and still not abandoned, something can actually change. Your stint, your sin stops being the threat that you have to bury. It now becomes a doorway into depth. Let me say, let me, I'm gonna make sure I say this clearly because I'm not telling you that porn is okay. It's not. Being loved in your brokenness does not make the brokenness good, but it does mean the brokenness is no longer the thing that that disqualifies you from being known. Brought into the uh when it's brought into the light, it's the very thing that lets you be known all the way down. So think about this for a moment with your wife. If you've only let her see the good parts of you, if she never gets, if she only gets the highlight real, how well can she actually love you? She can't. She loves a version of you that doesn't exist. She loves a false version of you. The only version of you that can actually be loved is the real one. And the real one includes the thing in the dark. So when you finally bring it into the light to her, to a brother in Christ, to a coach, what you discover is that the thing you were certain would end the relationship is the exact thing that takes it deeper than it's ever been. The wall comes down, and instead of the abandonment that you are bracing for it, you get grace, you get mercy, you get seen, and you um finally being seen fully and not left. That's the most healing thing that a human being can experience. That's how God created us. So that's the new equation made real. Pain plus a safe person equals relief lived out in your actual life. So here's what I'm asking you to do. I'm not going to send you out of here with uh just try harder because that's the whole problem. We've been trying harder at the wrong thing. Uh, there's two things I want to send you out of here with um one that's inward and one that's outward. Here's the inward thing. The next time you feel the pull, not when you act on it, just when you feel it before you act on it. Pause and ask two questions. What am I feeling right now? Name it. Is it anger? Is it loneliness? Is it guilt? Fear? Um, don't just settle for something like stressed or um I feel off because who knows what that means. Get specific. And then the second question is when have I felt this before? Stay there. Two minutes. It's not the end of the world. You can do that. You can stay there for two minutes. You're not trying to stop the behavior in the moment. So take that pressure off. You're doing something different. You're following the thread down and you're gonna look for the pain. And I am aware that you could still go look at porn after that and use porn. Again, that's not okay, but um, channeling my inner uh John Piper, don't waste your relapse. If you do this and learn something and still act out, that is good information, that's good data that we're gonna carry into the next situation where you could go act out. If you keep doing this process and you never learn, you never pay attention, yeah, that's dumb. And that's um an abuse of God's grace, like Paul talks about, um, where he says, should we can't should we continue in sin, that God's grace may abound? He says, by no means. But when we do that, when we give ourselves over to sin and we don't learn anything to change it for the next time, that's an abuse of God's grace. A healthy use of God's grace is to say, I don't have it all together. I'm gonna take a swing at this, knowing that if I fail, that God has got me. Two different things there. Um here's sorry, that was the inward piece. Here's the outward piece. This week, pick one safe person and tell them one true thing. I'm not talking about a graphic confession. That's not what this is, uh, because details of those things really don't help anybody. Just one true thing that you would normally just keep in the dark. Let one person see one part of you that you would usually hide, and then watch the shame subside. Um, watch them not recoil, watch them not walk away. Watch that in the moment happen in your brain go, wait a minute. This isn't how this was supposed to go. Because here's what I've seen over and over. The guys who get free from this aren't the ones who got better at fighting. They're the ones who got more curious about where it hurt and brave enough to stop the hiding. They quit asking, why can't I stop? And they started asking, where does it hurt? And then they let somebody else into it. That's the key. That's the path. It's a long road. I'm not going to pretend it's not hard or easy, but it is a hopeful one. And for a lot of guys, it's the first hopeful thing that they've experienced in a long time. Um, you are more broken than you feared and more loved than you hoped. And those two things being true at the same time is the most freeing thing that I know that I can tell you. So keep going, find the pain, come out of hiding. And if you have questions, hit me up on Instagram at MikeCamber with a K. You can hit me up on the website, rscky.com backslash get started. Nick and I, Nick or I would be delighted to have a uh short call with you just to hear where you're at and see how we can help you or point you in the right direction. Uh, and if nothing else, just pray for you as you're continuing on the journey of recovery. Okay, see you next time. Hey, thanks for joining us today. If you found this helpful, do us a huge favor and subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. Or better yet, send this to someone who needs encouragement.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

For more tools, resources, and information about our coaching, check out rscky.com. Keep showing up. Yeah, we'll catch you next time.