53 Breaking Free from Masturbation, Part 2

1. Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics -- the podcast formerly known as Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!  
   1. 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.  
   2. 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. 
   3. 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.  
   4. 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.
   5. '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. 
   6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.  
   7. 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
   8. This is episode 53, released on February 1, 2021
   9. This is the fifth episode in our series on sexuality and the third one on masturbation.  
   10. And it is titled:  Breaking Free from Masturbation, Part 2
   11. We're following up on our last episode, episode 52 -- Breaking free from masturbation Part 1.  Part 2 is following Part 1.  
   12. So today, we're continuing with finding 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.
   13. 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. 
   14. We address 6 more mistakes that Catholics make in their attempts to overcome masturbation
   15. And we will get into 10 more remedies for those additional six mistakes, and the last remedy is the most important one -- so important that I think of it as the secret solution, the one so few people who struggle with masturbation really consider, so we're saving the best for last there.  
   16. 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
   17. People are also finding that these episodes are helpful for getting to the root any symptomatic behavior -- binge eating, excessive shopping or video games, too much vegging out on Netflix, and so on.  
   18. Just to review, in the last episode, I promised you a map, not a ride in a limousine or on a flying 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.  
   19. Some of you have been suffering for a long time.  I get that.  God sees your efforts, he sees your good intentions.  
2. 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.  
   1. So we need a way of understanding and modeling interior integration and also its nemesis -- interior fragmentation.  
   2. I borrow heavily from Internal Family Systems approach, aka IFS approach, originated by Richard Schwartz.
   3. I reviewed it in the last episode, number 52.  
   4. Parts are like personalities within us.  Imagine a kid who is considering taking a cookie from the cookie jar.  One part of him wants to have the cookie and another part wants him to be good and not have to struggle with a guilty conscience, and another part doesn't want to face Mom's anger if he gets caught.  
3. Mistakes
    
   1. List of mistakes
       
      1. Review of the first four
          
         1. Considering masturbation as the primary problem. -- Gotta go deeper
      2.  
         1. Pursuing compartmentalization or fragmentation instead of interior integration
      3.  
         1. Going it alone
      4.  
         1. Using only the spiritual means
      5.  
   2. 
      
      1. Here are the next six
          
         1. Having a Power spirituality or a macho spirituality
      2.  
         1. Passive Spirituality
      3.  
         1. The why for the change
      4.  
         1. Shaming the self for failures
      5.  
         1. The All or Nothing Trap
      6.  
         1. The biggest Mistake, the one almost everybody makes with this.  Stay tuned till the end
      7.  
   3. 
      
4. 
   
   1. Mistake 5:  Power spirituality -- Macho spirituality
       
      1. Slogan for the Power Spirituality -- God helps those who help themselves
          
         1. In February of 2000 George Barna did a poll asking if “The Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves” and the results were eye-opening:
             
            • 53% of Americans agree strongly [that it could be found in the Bible]
         2.  
            • 22% agree somewhat
         3.  
            • 7% disagree somewhat
         4.  
            • 14% disagree strongly
         5.  
            • 5% stated they don’t know
         6.  
      2. 
         
   2. 
      
5. 
   

Of “born-again” Christians 68% agreed, and 81% of non “born-again” Christians agreed with the statement. Despite being of non-Biblical origin, the phrase topped a poll of the most widely known Bible verses. Seventy-five percent (75%) of American teens said they believed that it was the central message of the Bible.  

1. This saying is ancient, goes back to Greece -- The Gods help those who help themselves, you see this expressed in two of Aesop's fables  
2.  Aesop was an extraordinarily ugly slave who by his wit and intelligence gains his freedom and becomes a counsellor to rulers in Greece.  He is believed to have lived between 620 and 564 BC -- his stories may be much older than that, having been handed down in an oral tradition.  

    A WAGGONER was once driving a heavy load along a very muddy way. At last he came to a part of the road where the wheels sank half-way into the mire, and the more the horses pulled, the deeper sank the wheels. So the Waggoner threw down his whip, and knelt down and prayed to Hercules the Strong. “O Hercules, help me in this my hour of distress,” quoth he. But Hercules appeared to him, and said:

    “Tut, man, don’t sprawl there. Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel."

    “The gods help them that help themselves.”

1. 17th Century English political theorist Algernon Sidney made the modern rendering in English.  
2. My grandpa Roberts ...