Free Yourself from Porn Addiction w/ Zack Blakeney

Free Yourself from Porn Addiction w/ Zack Blakeney

December 1, 2023

In this episode our guest, Zack Blakeney, shares his journey to overcome a 16 year porn addiction.

Episode Transcript:

Intro: [00:00:00] Mark Azulay is an industry leader in psychotherapy and men’s mental health. He’s helped countless guys get back on their feet, deepen their relationships, and excel in their lives. Now he’s taken all that he has learned and is sharing it with you. In each episode, Mark will interview an expert in the field of masculinity and men’s work.

We’ll cover topics such as emotional intelligence, masculine identity. Anger management, financial health, trauma recovery, marriage and divorce, ethics and spirituality. Tune in and become a better man. 

Mark: Welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Mark Azulay. And I’m here with Zach Blankley. We are talking about, um, masculinity, right?

And we’re talking about porn addiction. We’re talking about leadership. Um, Zach is a consciousness and transformational coach that helps guys overcome the barriers that get in their way for being great leaders. Zach, welcome to the show. [00:01:00] 

Zack Blakeney: Thanks a lot. Mark. It’s an honor to be here with you. 

Mark: Yeah. So I want to start in the beginning with your story.

What got you into this type of work? 

Zack Blakeney: Well, yeah. So my own personal experience with 16 years, porn addiction and, uh, the pain and struggles and suffering that came from that experience. And, you know, I like to start, uh, in a specific area of my life, which is a time in which I was married. And I also had a business with my ex wife and at that time, you know, we were leaving the gym.

And at the time as well, we were considered the kind of like the darlings of the gym, people saw us as being a power couple, you know, we, uh, we had a lot of respect and admiration. Well, as we’re leaving the gym, she grabs my hand and she says, we need to talk. Now, anybody in a relationship knows that those four words typically result in some sort of serious conversation.

And for myself, it was no different. Although I almost had an anxiety attack. Uh, because at the time I had been hiding, not very well, uh, [00:02:00] a porn addiction that had been plaguing my life for 16 years. So it all started for me back when I was 14 and when I was 14, it was the year 2000. So we had just moved from dial up AOL internet into broadband internet.

Uh, this is really the birth of internet pornography with high speed internet. And, uh, you know, I was 14, I was horny, I was curious and, uh, I was told that I shouldn’t watch it. And if you tell any human being they can’t do anything, the first thing it does is spark curiosity to why. Uh, so for me, I chose to start watching it.

And at the time, uh, I wouldn’t know that that choice was going to lead me down a pathway of pain, but it did. Uh, so by the time I got into college, you know, and I was free and by myself, this is where it really started to get bad. I had my own computer, you know, I was living in a house with three other guys, uh, and I found myself in my room, you know, masturbating pornography three to four times a day, uh, telling my roommates that, uh, you know, studying.

You know, who knows they might’ve been doing the same thing. [00:03:00] And, uh, and, and during that time is really where I started to get lost in what I like to call the jungle of genres, you know, all these different genres started popping up, uh, BDSM, you know, different types of, um, uh, sexuality porn, uh, really anything that could really satisfy somebody’s pleasure or desire, and it was during that time where I started having difficulty with being with women.

So I’m in my early 20s, and I’m also experiencing something called porn induced erectile dysfunction. Uh, and this essentially is a symptom of mapping your sexual attraction to, uh, visual imagery on a screen rather than the physical experience that sex actually is. And from that moment on, uh, I really started to spiral down into, uh, a lot of victim rhetoric.

What’s wrong with me? Uh, why am I not like other men? Um, you know, why am I cursed, right? And at the time, I had no awareness that my mind wasn’t me. Uh, [00:04:00] so I also, uh, denied that porn was the problem, right? Because porn ultimately became the safe place that I would dive into when all these things were happening.

So from there, it started to escalate more, uh, and, and escalation inside of porn is just like any other addiction. You start to watch more graphic scenes. Uh, you know, I would open up multiple tabs at a time. This is just dopamine that’s being elicited during the process. Uh, and then also I started to catfish men and women on, um, Craigslist.

Back when Craigslist was a thing. Uh, now I never actually showed up anywhere. That’s what catfishing is, but I would talk dirty and do all that stuff. Um, You know, there’s something I noticed about my body at the time that my body was like shaking. So I had escalated myself into adrenaline, essentially. Uh, so I did that in the shadows for a long time.

You know, I met my ex wife when I was 27. And, uh, when I first met her, it was kind of like fireworks. You know, I even thought that she healed me from the addiction because we had a really great sex life and we’re just madly in love for the first year. [00:05:00] Uh, but after the honeymoon phase left, you know, we started to decline and then ultimately became even more divided.

She started to find hints of porn and our division left us into, uh, or led us into a drug addiction as well. So I got lost in drugs, you know, MDMA, cocaine, the hard stuff. And by that time, uh, you know, my wife didn’t really recognize who I was. So all this coalesced up to that point where we were leaving the gym and she grabs my hand and we go to the car and she says to me, uh, let me see your phone and I reluctantly gave it to her.

And she goes to my in private browsing and she hits Google. And I like to say this story and say, Hey, in 2016, if you had an Android, even in private browsing would save your repeat searches. And some of the searches came down, the things I would never want her to see. And she said, what’s this? I said, I don’t know.

It wasn’t me. She said, this is your phone. [00:06:00] Who else could this be? And I said, I don’t know. Somebody hacked my phone. It wasn’t me. So while I’m in the middle of this denial, I actually become aware of another voice that’s speaking inside of me, kind of from my heart and saying, tell her the truth. Tell her the truth.

She asked the third time. She said, look, if you don’t tell me the truth right now, I’m going to leave you. Third time, still the instant reaction was denial. It wasn’t me, but then I started crying and I said, but I did watch that. So this was the first time I was associated with like this two parts of who I am.

And really didn’t really understand what that was, but it was ultimately a mini awakening to something different inside of me. And as I was leaving, it was the first time I ever considered, you know, uh, really considered committing suicide. You know, thought about driving my truck off the road, going to a local sporting goods store, buying a gun.

It was very easy. It was very accessible. And while I was doing that, this voice actually spoke again inside of me from my heart and [00:07:00] just asked a question, uh, who’s listening, who’s listening to these voices inside of me? Who is that? And I didn’t know what the answer to that was at the time, but that question did stop me from killing myself.

This curiosity kind of piqued something else inside of me. About four weeks later, uh, she came home from work. And, uh, again, we were still working together at the time, and I could tell that she wasn’t in a very good mood. Uh, and at the time, you could classify me as being anxious attachment in my communication style, and she was anxious avoidant.

Uh, which is a very toxic communication style together in a relationship. So, uh, so I kept pushing. Hey, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? Kept pushing. And, uh, ultimately pushed, not physically, but pushed her mentally and emotionally into locking herself into our closet. So I’m on the other side of the closet door and, uh, you know, I’m saying, please don’t leave me.

I’m working on it. At the time I had started to go see a sex therapist and, um, even was, you know, considering going to, to, to meetings, but I’ll, we can talk about why I ended up [00:08:00] not. Um, but you know, I would say I was working on it and I was like, please don’t leave me. Well, she swings open the door, uh, and she says, I want to die.

And then she starts running for the kitchen, presumably to grab a knife. Uh, so I get in front of her and I say, please don’t do this. I’ll go, I’ll go. And it was during that moment that it was like all the choices I’d ever made in my life had flashed in front of my eyes, like a movie that I was watching.

Uh, and it was, it was astounding. And also I had to deal with the pain and the shame of, you know, the woman that I loved the most at the time no longer wanted to be there because of my actions. Uh, as I sat on the couch about 30 minutes later, that voice spoke to me again and said, who’s watching? Who’s watching?

Who’s watching this movie of who you’re supposed to be? So those two questions, who’s listening and who’s watching became strong motivators for me to start diving into first the science. So I moved [00:09:00] into, you know, uh, neuroplasticity and subconscious remapping and epigenetics. Like I want to know what happened to me scientifically during the addiction.

Uh, then that drove me a little bit further into, uh, I guess you say consciousness or spirituality, uh, believing that there was some sort of substantial reality below all this unsubstantial. You know, experiences that I kept having, and then that unlocked something deeper for me. Maybe what I could say is an inner wisdom that’s intuitive, uh, that, uh, I have no other explanation except for it has guided me now to this point where I am in my life now.

And I’m now 37. All that happened about seven years ago. So I’m happy and grateful to say that it’s part of my past, and now I’m here to help men that are suffering through the same type of experiences that I have. 

Mark: That’s a really, really well said. And that story, that visceral moment, it’s just, just gut wrenching.

This idea of, you know, her [00:10:00] running to the kitchen and you being like, no, I’ll do it. It’s like, oof, I mean, that pulls on the heartstrings. I, I wonder for you, I got a bunch of questions from your story. When did you know that porn was the problem? Cause I think, you know, you talk about it, it’s so like normalized, I think, especially for young men in their twenties and thirties.

When do you know that like, Oh, this was the thing. Was it the moment you got caught or would you have an idea before that there might’ve been something wrong? 

Zack Blakeney: No, I started to hear the voice that I’m talking about, you know, it was more like a whisper. I would say mid twenties, 25, 26, uh, it was before I met my ex wife where like I actually had the awareness that like being with her reduced the amount of times I was watching porn and this attachment that I had to it.

Uh, so what I like to say is that whisper kept talking and I kept not listening. So I actually started to experience an awareness of interconflict, like there are people that have interconflict and aren’t aware that, like, these voices are inside of them and you get to choose, right? But there was an awareness that, oh, like, I’m in [00:11:00] conflict with myself.

Uh, and the more I was in conflict with myself, the more chaos I would experience in my external world. Right. Uh, you know, the more I would lie, the more I would control, the more I would have division with friends, the more I would be people pleasing, the more, like, it was just like this massive explosion of, of inauthenticity, inauthenticity, there you go, of who I was.

Um, and, and that duality plus the reflection back for my experiences was causing more pain and more pain and more pain. So it was like a pressure cooker, you know what I mean? To the point where it led up to that experience where, you know, I tell guys all the time, look, look guys, I’d like to tell you that I was just courageous enough to come out and talk about it.

But I got put into a corner, and that’s what forced me to talk about it. But I would love for any men listening to realize that, uh, that doesn’t have to be your experience. And one courageous step towards transparency is the first step to heal. 

Mark: Yeah, it’s that rock bottom moment. And like I said, the stuff around the addiction, so I’m in recovery from drug addiction.

I’ve been sober about 10, 11 years [00:12:00] now. I was really catching to what you were talking about with the lying and the dishonesty and the shame and this idea that like there was this like wretched creature inside of me that I had to hide from the world. Can you say more about that about kind of the more, um, like the emotional?

Moment. Yeah. 

Zack Blakeney: Yeah. So ultimately my ex-wife didn’t leave me because of the porn addiction. She actually left me because she didn’t trust me anymore. Yeah. And it was, it was the lying, the controlling, and the manipulation. So when I went, uh, 120 days, no nothing, which is what I was, uh, advised to do from my, uh, from my therapist.

I was really proud of myself. Right. My ego was all happy about that. Look, I’m not watching porn anymore. And, you know, we actually ended up having a sexual experience that was completely natural, which I was really happy about too. But these other map behaviors around there was tough, right? So when we’re talking about the lying, that wasn’t stopping.

I was still lying. Uh, I was still manipulating. I’m still controlling. And, uh, really we have to start getting down to the causalities of [00:13:00] our actions, our behavior. And that’s what you were talking about, which is ultimately the main driver of addiction is shame. Right? And then we can put guilt and fear and all the other lower, what we call vibrational resonating emotions that we hold inside of ourselves.

Uh, and until I was courageous enough to dive into there, uh, and to really look at it and to start learning how to alchemize these emotions through, uh, self awareness and forgiveness practices and everything else wasn’t until these urges, uh, to watch porn would start to subside. Right. Right. Right. Uh, so the, the, the gentleman that I work with, I say, Hey man, you might have a porn problem.

We’re not going to talk about porn too much. We’re going to talk about all the other things that are causing this happen to happen. And ultimately they’re unresolved experiences that you feel some sort of shame, guilt, fear, anger about that. We need to dive into that. You’ve been putting to the side and denying that they exist.

Mark: Yeah, I agree completely. Right. It is. I love the word alchemized too. It’s this idea, which I think is a very masculine quality, which you’re really demonstrating of like taking responsibility for your [00:14:00] life, like all of it, right? Who you are, what happened to you, it’s up to you to determine what you’re going to do about it and integrating those whole, because I know a lot of addicts, me included, we had this kind of split personality, you know, this idea of there’s a bad me that I need to hide and a good me.

I need to pretend to be in prop up, but it’s during that integration that I think where the real power comes from. 

Zack Blakeney: Yeah. And that was a really powerful moment for me as well. And I keep referring to this voice and I’m just going to tell you, this voice was just more of who I am or my soul. It was about a month after my ex wife left, uh, and I was in meditation.

I’d picked up meditation at this point and the voice spoke and said, what would happen if you started taking 100 percent responsibility for your life right now? And at the time I was in the middle of the blaming and complaining. I like to say that these are the two sources of victim consciousness or mindset, blaming, complaining.

And I looked at everything that I was blaming, everybody I was blaming and all the things I was complaining about. And I had this lens to look through of responsibility. And, uh, I like to tell guys in the beginning, man, when you take responsibility for the things that you have been, [00:15:00] uh, Uh, not, it’s really heavy in the beginning, like it’s heavy.

A matter of fact, there’s a very distinct, it’s very difficult to decide whether or not you’re taking responsibility or you’re blaming yourself, which ultimately equals shame. But as you continue to live with responsibility, it becomes very light because responsibility gives you that pathway to have an experience that maybe is out of alignment with who you are.

Thank you. You’re welcome. Take responsibility and close the integrity loop, whatever that is. And then when you can do that consistently, you don’t hold on to these emotions. The emotional baggage of these things don’t stick inside of you because you know how to clean it, express it, and then heal from it almost instantly.

Mark: Yeah, it becomes like once you get through that backlog, which I want to just underline what you’re saying sucks, you know, it’s really, really heavy. And there’s often a lot of these demons we have to face, um, alone and kind of in the dark, right. This idea of like, yeah, I did do that. I did say that I am, I was that person.

Uh, but then, yeah, once you get through it, then it becomes more of like a maintenance kind of cycling program, [00:16:00] right. I’m like, okay, let’s like deal with the conflict as it arises instead of pushing it away. 

Zack Blakeney: Absolutely. 

Mark: Yeah. So we’re going to chat more about that when we come back from our commercial break.

Um, there’s a lot of good stuff you’re talking about here. I want to talk more about the victim mentality. I want to talk more about the spirituality and the opening up to that because I think a lot of recovery, like, the next step is that spiritual thing, right? Go from surviving to thriving. Um, and I want to hear about some of the barriers and solutions that the many work with experience and how you get over it.

So. If you’re listening and any of that stuff is interesting to you, hang on in there. And we’ll see you on the other side.

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Intro: You’re listening to the men’s therapy podcast with Mark Azulay to reach the show today, [00:19:00] please call 1 888 346 9141. That’s 1 888 346 9141 or send an email to podcast at men’s therapy dot online or visit www. menstherapypodcast. com. Now back to the men’s therapy 

Mark: podcast. Welcome back to the show. I’m here with Zach Blakely and we’re talking about porn addiction.

Um, but not just poor addiction, right? Because we’re talking about the stuff that’s around it, the shame, the victim mentality, and giving a hope for what happens afterwards, which is this idea. And I’ve experienced it as being a recovery to of spirituality, of deeper connection with the present and being more just awake and alive.

So I’m excited to chart that course with you, Zach. Um, let’s start at the beginning, right? Let’s start with this kind of shame, victim y thing that I think, you don’t want to admit it, but a lot of guys are in and a lot of guys stay stuck in. Yeah. 

Zack Blakeney: Well, first from my experience, shame is an effect [00:20:00] of what society tells us we should be compared to what our experiences are.

So what I like to say is one of the biggest pains that we experience as human beings is that we sacrifice the truth of our own experience compared to what other people tell us to believe about that experience. So we’re all raised into environments of different belief systems. And these belief systems are typically, uh, based off what is right and what is wrong.

What is good, what is bad, and whatever is judged as bad. And if we align our behavior to that, then we start to judge ourself as bad. Uh, and religion can play a big aspect of this and I’m not anti religion, but I do want to bring awareness to, uh, what religion has and continues to contribute to the shame that people feel about being unworthy of God’s love, uh, through this idea of sin.

Right. So really, if you take away what a sin is, and I was raised Roman Catholic. So, you know, if I were to give anybody a background, you know, [00:21:00] you essentially are born a sinner. You’re born unworthy. Uh, if you end up sinning, you need to go to a priest so that they can absolve your guilt. I have never had that experience work for me.

I don’t know any Catholics don’t have the experience work for me. The truth of the matter is from my experience is that nobody can absolve your guilt, but you. That’s your own personal relationship with yourself. So a lot of Christian beliefs have been intertwined into the American societal belief systems on how laws are created.

Again, this is not just Christian. Religions all over the world also dictate the laws of countries, right? So I say this because shame doesn’t come from an experience that you have about yourself that you do yourself. It comes from the experience you have and then you judging it against what you’ve been told is right or wrong.

So when we’re working with, when I’m working with men, it’s starting to really identify what have they taken on in their life, right, that they’re starting to believe about themselves, that is compounding and even [00:22:00] compacting the shame inside of them. And even more so, it makes it so that they don’t want to release it because these belief systems, they’re so strong inside of that, it ends up just keeping it inside of them.

Uh, so with that. There’s an internal measure that every human being has, and it’s an internal measure of morality. They just don’t really understand it, right? I, I, I call it the intuition. You can’t really understand your intuition. Your intuition doesn’t speak. It has sounds. It’s uhuh or Uhuh, right? Uhhuh or Uhuh.

That’s it. Like, this is good, this is bad. That’s your own internal measure of what you know is true and what is not. But the problem is, is that our mind gets so filled with these other beliefs that people have and what we believe about ourself, that it cuts off from our ability to hear intuition. And that’s when we’re not even who we are.

Ultimately, all of those beliefs are other people’s words, other people’s beliefs that you adopt inside of yourself. And that’s why it feels so untrue. So I just wanted to talk about that in a sense of shame, because [00:23:00] shame is really a emotion that when experienced is the anchor to everything that you want to do in your life.

I’ve worked with guys that are CEOs that have 20 million businesses that are doing excellent in business. They have porn in the background. They can’t keep a relationship. They’re not happy. They might have all the money. They’re not happy because they can’t keep a relationship, right? So wherever it decides to pop up and intertwine and however it is that you interpret this shame is going to show up in so many limiting ways from you experiencing yourself for what you really are, which in my experience is love.

So doing that type of work, when we talk about, we’re talking about alchemy earlier and what that really means. When I do shadow work with gentlemen, it comes from a premise that you’re love. That’s what you already are. And you know what, the more you try and be loved, the more you fail at what you already are, and the more you feel like you’re not.

So if you imagine yourself as just a big circle of love, and then you have shame, guilt, anger, fear, as these anchors that are holding you back from experiencing yourself as [00:24:00] such, the pathway is to go into them. And find out how to create one, a mental framework, because your mental framework right now is creating an effect of shame.

So we need a mental framework that creates freedom. And then through that, start moving into the body and start working into the emotional space. Many men aren’t emotionally intelligent. Well, the first step of emotional intelligence is emotional literacy. You know, how are you feeling? I’m uncomfortable.

Okay. Can you describe a feeling to me? No, they can’t. They don’t know how to name to it. So like you can’t be emotionally intelligent until we’re literate. So I help them with emotional literacy and then we move into emotional intelligence. Once we have that, then the optimization can actually start happening where you turn something that you feel shameful into loving yourself for it.

And that process is the pathway. 

Mark: Mm hmm. That’s well said. And I have a question about the alchemization, right? This idea. So let me back up a little bit. I think a lot of young men are motivated by those lower vibrational frequencies, right? They’re motivated by fear, by anger, [00:25:00] by spite, by rage, right? Like this idea of like, I got to get out and I got to get mine.

And my belief is, I think as young men, we have to go through that. I don’t think you can avoid that. I haven’t met a guy who hasn’t gone through that. But then there is this moment where it has to transition to being motivated by love or being motivated by like a banner is what I call it, right?

Something greater than yourself, right? A purpose, things like that. It’s kind of more holistic and more like renewable energy, right? Versus being motivated by like, or run on like kerosene, right? You’re running on solar or something. Um, but that’s really hard, right? I think it’s really hard because it doesn’t feel that same level of like the hero’s journey.

If you’re not fighting the world, You know, if it’s not you against everybody. So I’m curious, I guess the question one, do you relate to that? Do you agree with that? And two, how do you help guys make that transition, right? Changing the fuel and the motivation that they run their lives on. 

Zack Blakeney: Yeah, well, because they actually start realizing that they have to do something based off of the rhetoric that they are saying to themselves, maybe they have to be successful [00:26:00] to prove their dad wrong, right?

Maybe they have to and that’s what ends up with exhaustion, burnout, moving into addictions, being dissatisfied, no matter how much success that you’ve had, right? I mean, the same guys I’m talking about that I work with, they’re doing very well in their lives. They’re still not satisfied. And also they’re not grateful.

Right. Right. It’s like never enough. And that’s a carrot that the ego will bring you down chasing till the end of your life. And then you’ll look back at the end of your life and realize that you had everything that you ever had and you couldn’t enjoy it when you had it. Um, so that’s the trap that a lot of men fall themselves into.

So how do we move from that? Well, there’s a difference between have to and want to want to, I promise you creates a much more aligned, efficient and effective pathway to getting what you want. Because ultimately it’s coming from a heart’s desire of what it really is that you’re looking for rather than trying to conform yourself to what everybody else told you you should be, right?

That’s still in the same aspect of this. So when you start to realize [00:27:00] that creativity. Uh, is a, is a thing that’s absolutely needed in entrepreneurship. Uh, it’s, it’s needed. Well, first of all, one, you can’t not be creative. Like I run into people all the time. They’re like, I’m not very creative. And I was like, what a creative thought you just came up with.

Like, you can’t not create. That’s what you’re doing all the time. But when you can tap into your source of creativity, You also become more creative with your productivity, with your performance, with your efficiency. You don’t overwork because you don’t, you don’t need to overwork. You actually look for solutions, right?

Too many guys fall into, and I love this, this, um, this terminology and it’s from Outwitting the Devil, if anybody’s ever read that book, but it’s called a hypnotic rhythm. And too many guys fall themselves into a hypnotic rhythm, which is essentially their subconscious body doing these things. And it’s just overloaded with too much information and too much work and too much stress and too much anxiety and all this other stuff.

And that’s the rhythm you’re in when really there’s a rhythm over here that doesn’t include all of that. And you still get the result you want to get without all the emotional stress and pain [00:28:00] that you’re experiencing through that process. So the how to is by doing the inner work. And inside of that, if I, that’s like my number one question I get asked, how’d you do it?

So if I told you how to do it, you wouldn’t do it. This isn’t, this is a learning comes through experience, right? So if I sit in this chair and I read every single business building book or addiction healing book, consciousness book, whatever on the planet, I could die in this chair. It would take me 60 years.

I die here thinking I knew everything, but I’ve done nothing. That’s understanding a concept. I can give you all the concepts in the world. Unless you take action on it, you don’t know anything. So I’m very hesitant to go to the how and rather than say, hey, I can give you a mental framework, but ultimately I can’t make you take the steps.

You’re only going to know this works for you if you take the steps. 

Mark: Yeah, I think that there is a faith component to it and not a religion, but this idea of like things will get better, right? I think the step one is [00:29:00] investing in hope. You know, I’m being like, okay, I can get better beyond this. Um, so I want to move you to the spirituality piece, right?

Because I think for a lot of guys that overcome addiction, overcome struggles, trauma, whatever, right? They get out and they’re like, okay, I made it back to zero, right? I was at negative 10 and now I’m at zero, but my life is still boring. I’m still missing things, right? Um, how do I get to positive 10? And for me, I think spirituality and more connectedness is that path.

So I’m curious what that path is like for you. 

Zack Blakeney: Yeah, so, again, I was raised Roman Catholic, then I got into college, I started taking world religions, I became more agnostic, then I got deep into, to hell on earth for myself, became an atheist, uh, and then coming out of that, you know, rediscovering God in the way that I understand to be God, and not only understand, but to experience God.

That’s why I like to tell guys, like, would you rather have an understanding of God? What would you rather experience? God, right? There’s two completely different things and believe for an experience. Uh, [00:30:00] and, and this is what I’ve come to in my own studies of studying everything that I’ve been. And this is very confronting for a lot of people to hear, but you are God.

I am God. Everything around us is God. The tree outside is God expressing itself as a tree. I’m God expressing myself as Zach. You’re God expressing yourself as Mark. And through that, I’m not individualizing and singling myself out to say that I am, and you are not. I’m saying that we are. And when I took this perspective and I started to experience what was inside of me, I felt the wholeness.

I felt this voice that was inside of me become louder. I experienced things that have happened in my life that would make no sense unless I had faith. And, and the faith, you know, to me, faith is, is like, uh, I think it’s Indiana Jones and the temple of doom or something where like he needs to cross a bridge, but the bridge is not, it’s not visible, but he has to take the step and that’s, and he takes a step and then it shows up, right?

That, that is faith. It’s a fool’s game. It’s [00:31:00] actually the full archetype. If you ever study like mental archetypes, it’s the fool’s archetype, which means that I’m going to take a leap of faith and trust. So then when I started actually getting into science and I was like, okay, we got, we have energy and metaphysics and vibrations and all that sort of stuff.

I, I realized something that resonated very deeply with me, that God has been communicating with me my entire life. And that God doesn’t communicate in the way that you want him to communicate or it, whatever you want to say, through maybe messages or to physically manifest in front of you because God is everywhere.

But God communicates me, through me, through my emotions. When I experience shame, God’s like, Hey, uh, this is a signal that, Hey, this isn’t me. This is something you’re experiencing and you have the opportunity to choose me, which is love or whenever, every single time I’ve ever loved somebody with, with conditions.

Right. And then it was hurtful. I got it. I got an emotion, guilt, fear. God’s like, Hey, that’s not how you love. That’s not what love really is. Love is unconditional. [00:32:00] Okay, cool. So if you think about this, that each emotion has a vibrational residence or hurts that has to do with energy, this entire universe is energy and energy can either be created or destroyed, but it must be intelligent because here we are speaking to each other.

It must be intelligent because there’s a divine design to all of this. Then is it possible that God is always communicating to you? And ultimately love is the choice we can always make. And when we make that choice, we find ourselves in the wholeness, in the love, in the warmth of the creator that is always presently inside of ourselves.

That understanding plus the experiences I’ve had with that mental framework has brought me to tears, man, like tears of joy, tears of gratitude, tears of feeling like I’m not alone, and I’ve never been alone and I can never find Those experiences with the mental framework or belief systems that religion had put into my mind.

I could only find it with my own internal [00:33:00] experiences and journey to finding what I believed, had faith that God was, and then got to experience myself as such. 

Mark: Yeah, I think that the tears are big. I think especially for a lot of guys that, you know, we’re trained to numb, right. And we’re trained to compartmentalize and we’re trained to like shut it in the box and just move forward.

So for those guys out there, when you start to feel something, listen. Do it, you know, like, I think maybe similar to you, Zach, like, I am very set skeptical and cynical of a lot of this stuff. Right. Um, and I had to have these like, you know, blasted in my face experiences of emotional release and catharsis and these moments of like meeting God or dropping into the present moment or just being like, Oh my God, this is real.

I think it takes a lot to convince the modern man that there’s more to life out there. So like, you know, just to kind of underline what you’re saying. To the guys out there, like, I think there’s a faith component of like, put yourself in a situation, but then study yourself like a scientist and be like, okay, does this work for me?

Ad: Does 

Mark: this work for me? Right. Does this new [00:34:00] format, does this new mindset work for me? Um, is this expanding my definition of what it means to be a modern man? 

Zack Blakeney: Well, and ultimately the question I always pose to guys or anybody I talk to is like, um, I don’t care what you believe, but why would you believe something about yourself that would bring you to a response of shame, guilt, unworthiness, like.

You are creating this for yourself. Why would you do such a thing to yourself? And these are just questions to open up. And I could tell them, I was like, if you have a strong belief system that is religious based that brings you to love and gratitude and forgiveness and compassion, wonderful. And also, if it doesn’t Why would you believe that about yourself?

Why would you adopt something that ultimately ends in shame and pain? 

Mark: Right. Why would you install that program on your computer if it’s a virus, right? Like we get to control what we put in our minds. So we’re going to move towards our final commercial break here. When we come back, we’ll provide you the listener with some steps to take.

I think first, some concrete steps around overcoming a porn addiction or overcoming guilt and shame. [00:35:00] And then some steps if you want more in life, you know, if you want to go from that survival to that thriving mentality. Um, So we’ll see y’all on the other side of the commercial break.

Ad: Enjoying our shows and can’t get enough of us? Follow us on Instagram at Voice America Talk Radio and see what we’re cooking up for you. 

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Intro: You were listening to the men’s therapy podcast with Mark Azulay to reach the show today, please call 1 888 346 9141. That’s 1 346 9141 or send an email to podcast at men’s therapy dot online or visit www dot men’s therapy podcast. com. 

Mark: Now back to the men’s therapy podcast. Welcome back to the show. In this final segment, we want to give you the listener [00:38:00] something to take away and start doing right now.

We know that men love action steps, and if you feel inspired by what Zach has been saying, I would encourage you when you’re done listening to just dig right into it. Um, so Zach, let’s start kind of. Again with the porn addiction, how can someone start to really understand if they are addicted, if they need to do work?

I mean, what steps can they take to start to break it? 

Zack Blakeney: Yeah, so ultimately we can like go on the spectrum of like addiction or that you’re dissatisfied with your use, and I would tell anybody that’s listening, any man that’s listening, if you’re dissatisfied with your use, that means that shame is holding it in.

And ultimately, that is the pathway for this to become a full blown addiction if you don’t keep your awareness on it or maybe even start stopping now in a way, right? So first of all, I like to say there’s four levels of attachment. One, there’s mental attachment, physical attachment, spiritual attachment, and then we have the emotional attachment.

All right, so the mental attachment is all the different thoughts that you have about [00:39:00] pornography. And what I like to do is I like to create pornography into an entity. That entity is a mistress. So instead of just thinking about genre, just think about it as a mistress because your, Your ability to become more self aware will, uh, will, will rapidly increase when you start to realize that you’re in relationship to everything, right?

So by giving porn a mistress, a entity to look at, you can now start looking at the relationship with it. So you have your stories that you say about it. Uh, then you also have, we have to look at the physiological addiction, which is really what the addiction is, is biochemical addiction. Uh, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, uh, which oxytocin is the binding chemical, uh, which actually creates some sort of weird loyalty towards porn because you’re actually in love with porn by the oxytocin being emitted during the masturbation or orgasm.

Uh, then we look at the emotional, right? So we’re going to look at all the different ways that you’re shaming yourself, the guilt. These are the causalities of the effect of watching porn. And then we move into like, what religious trauma, [00:40:00] spiritual, what religious trauma is actually keeping us in the belief systems that have happened.

So this is just giving you an idea of where I work within these planes. Typically I start with the mental and the biochemical or the physical plane. And, uh, one of the most powerful things they do in the beginning is start creating space. So we create space by one, finding the mental attachments and then identifying the triggers.

When we identify a trigger, really your body’s just looking for dopamine and in some way oxytocin. So I like to interject, uh, breathwork inside of there, like, Hey, let’s do some Wim Hof when that happens. Uh, and certainly I have some mental strategies. I have like some impulse control strategies, but there’s nothing more effective than breathing techniques.

Whether it’s that alternate nostril. Um, doing some somatic breath for about 2 minutes. Uh, this increases dopamine in your body, so you’ll notice that if you do that when you feel triggered and you actually just, let’s just say Wim Hof is one thing to think about, uh, your body will produce a whole bunch of dopamine and the, uh, desire to watch will decline.

Now, it doesn’t mean it [00:41:00] goes away. This is a program that you’ve built for yourself over how many years that you’ve done it. And really what you’re trying to do is download a new software, right? So while we’re downloading new software, when you do it for a computer, the difference between a computer and a human brain is that a human brain will resist it.

Where a computer will readily accept the software, but you will spend time in resistance. And there’s all sorts of things that create that resistance barrier. So that’s just something to think about in a sense of a powerful tool. Uh, breathwork is kind of like a modern thing at this point, but it absolutely can, can hasten and quicken, uh, your ability to heal from using porn.

Uh, the second thing is, uh, I like to talk about the four walls of dishonesty. Uh, so if you look at these four walls, you could think about these as the four walls that imprison your soul. And I can use this for addiction, but I can use this for authenticity because ultimately anybody that’s listening to that struggle with addiction, we’re all addicted.

We’re all addicted to something. Everybody’s an addict. It’s just, what are you addicted to? [00:42:00] So inside of this, we have the four walls of dishonesty. The first wall is hiding. Uh, what you hide from others, you hide because you experience shame about it. And, human beings are the most transparent beings on the planet, you can’t hide anything even if you think you can.

But with that being said, hiding perpetuates the pattern of what continues to happen because you’re not being transparent about it. And I have yet to meet somebody that hides something that they’re proud of. And if you can, if somebody can prove me wrong, please bring it on. But ultimately, typically if you’re hiding it, it’s cause you feel shame about it.

Next one is denying, denying, uh, what you deny doesn’t make it go away. It actually, it strengthens it to have more of a hold on you. The simple fact that you are denying it exists, makes it exist. If you weren’t denying it, it wouldn’t exist at all. There would be nothing there. So the denial, instead of putting it to the side, uh, there’s a context that I teach and these are just rules and one of the rules is what you resist will persist.

So you deny it, you put it to the side, but you wake up and you still experience it. And then you [00:43:00] deny it again, you wake up, you still experience it. This is suffering, right? So the inverse of that is acceptance, right? And you start accepting and looking at the areas that you’re denying. Uh, the next one is lying.

That one’s pretty straightforward. I can’t tell you how many times I said to myself, this will be the last time. And I think it was thousands of times more before it actually was the last time. It was the last time until I stopped saying that. Uh, how, how you fabricate stories to people, um, how you might tell your wife that you’re fine when you’re not.

All of these little areas are areas where you are lying, uh, to the people around you. And more importantly, you’re lying to yourself. Uh, and then the last wall is trying. And most people don’t think about try as dishonest, uh, but ultimately it is because what you try to do, you don’t achieve, you don’t get the results.

How many times you said, I’m trying to stop this habit or I’m trying to quit porn or I’m trying, that tells me that you aren’t committed to it because ultimately trying makes you feel temporarily better. I’m trying the long term you suffer because you don’t get the result that you’re looking [00:44:00] for. You are out of integrity in that moment.

So, as a journaling prompt, if you just ask yourself, you know, what am I hiding from others? What am I denying that exists, that obviously exists because I’m denying it? Uh, what am I lying about to myself and others? Uh, and what am I trying to do that I have yet achieved? And you were to do a journaling prompt on that, and you just allow all that to come forward, you will find all the diff what your walls are made of that’s preventing you from experiencing yourself as the highest version of yourself, of the authentic self.

Mark: Yeah, I want to just, you know, bring it into some of the conversation we have on this show about masculinity and this idea of integrity, which I think is what I hear you talk about, right? This idea of keeping your promises of being dependable when you ask guys like what makes a good man, I think dependability is often one of the first things they say, you know, and these prompter putting forth are incredible because it helps people develop that dependability within themselves.

And again, like the addiction, look, it’s bad enough, but it’s all this stuff around it. You know, I know for me, when I was getting sober, these promises [00:45:00] that I made to myself and broke, that’s hurt me more than using, right? I mean, yeah, I would use for a weekend. I get fucked up, but it ultimately be fine. But what would be the worst part is that I would slowly lose trust in myself.

So when I would say like, yep. I’m not going to drink this weekend. You know, that a voice would be like, you’re fucking lying, right? Like you are going to drink, you drink every weekend. You’ve, you’ve been here before, and that can be really devastating to guys mental health. So I think like keeping those promises and practicing integrity and dependability with yourself first and foremost forever can then let you do it for a woman in your life or for your children or at work or whatever, but we have to do it for ourselves first.

Zack Blakeney: Yeah, wherever you’re out of integrity is this is an effect of shame. So go with principles, principle of cause and effect. There’s a cause for every effect. There’s an effect for every cause. It’s, uh, it’s not possible to not have one without the other, uh, cause for addiction or really any behavior is our emotions.

It’s the vibration. The effect is the action or the thought, and then the action. [00:46:00] So when you make a commitment and then you don’t uphold your commitment, you’re a fraud to your own word. Yeah. And so you’re going to feel like an imposter. And so imposter syndrome is an effect of shame. So if you are out of alignment with your word at any area, that is an effect.

And you can start questioning yourself from that effect to find the deeper cause to why am I out of alignment with my word here? But again, what you’re talking about, of course, you feel worse if you’re a fraud and you’re feeling like the imposter because you cannot be in integrity with your own word. I consider integrity to be the highest form of masculine energy.

We’re just talking about as an energy, not necessarily as a man or woman. And then I consider the highest form of feminine energy to be grace. And the difference between grace and forgiveness is when you, uh, actually experience grace, grace is that you’re already forgiven. Forgiveness is I need to forgive myself for a specific time, but this is coming into God’s grace.

God, in my experience of God says, look, you can go mess up all you want. I already forgave you. I’m just waiting for you. That’s what God’s [00:47:00] grace is. So if you were to operate with these two integrity, I do what I say I’m going to do when I say I’m going to do it. And then when I lapse integrity, instead of opening up deprecation and shaming yourself for it.

You realize that you’re not perfect and you gave yourself grace, then you pop back into alignment. You recommit to the commitment that you have and you keep going forward and you’ll, you’ll take off like a rocket ship with the results you want to get. But too many guys, when they’re out of integrity, then they move to beating themselves up and then they start going down a negative spiral again.

That puts them back where they were before. 

Mark: Yeah, I like that idea of grace. I think when I talk with my guys about it, I use the framework of humility of being like, yeah, you mess up, but you’re also not the main character on planet earth. So like, the important thing is getting back on the horse, right?

It’s not about over dramatizing the fuck up. It’s about like, okay, let’s write the ship. Let’s keep it going. Um, and coming that with that kind of divine humility of like, yes, I’m one of, you know, whatever up to now 8 billion and we’re going to keep moving. [00:48:00] So I think as we’re wrapping up here, let’s move into this spirituality part, right?

So now we’re talking to the listener who has done this work. I mean, they’ve been in therapy for a while. They’ve overcome their addictions or their traumas, right? They’ve done a lot of that kind of, you know, the backlog work you were talking about, they’ve cleared out the channels, but now they’re trying to live a life of integrity and try to live a life being the man that they want to be.

What would you recommend for that guy to do? 

Zack Blakeney: Uh, to realize that your wholeness is experienced in duality. So here is what I mean by that. You talked about like you have to have the experiences of anger and guilt and sadness and all these things to experience the other side. You absolutely do. Uh, polarity says that I wouldn’t know sad or happiness without sadness.

I wouldn’t know what worthiness was unless I felt unworthy. I wouldn’t know these things. You’ve built a program for a very long time. I built a program that was hinged on lying and manipulation and porn addiction for 30 years of my life. When I get in trouble, trouble, whatever that might be, [00:49:00] my first instinct is still to lie.

My shadow expresses itself and says, here’s an opportunity. And my awareness to my commitment to be honest says, yep, that’s an opportunity, but I’m committing to be honest. The moment you cut off one side of the polarity is the moment that you no longer have awareness on it and it starts to run your life.

Carl Jung, until you make the unconscious conscious, it’ll rule your life and you will call it fate. That’s what that is. And also, if you only want to focus on one side, you cut off the other possibility and then so you don’t feel whole the way I operate now is a statement. And I’m talking about this as well.

Is that by experiencing what I was not who I am was revealed to me. So, without experiencing. When I was not, I wouldn’t have who I am today and experience myself as such. That allows me to love my shadow. So inside of this, if I always keep my shadow in my awareness, that I have an opportunity to either lie or be honest, I can then, who’s listening, who’s watching, [00:50:00] observe the two possibilities and choose what I would like to align to, to be.

So for me and anybody that I coach, I say never, I don’t want to say never, but I say, do your best to not say that’s who I used to be. The moment you do that, you cut off the possibility of who you used to be showing up to who you are right now. So I always say I’ve had those experiences. And I remember those experiences.

Those experiences are not emotionally charged for me. They’re just a thought or memory of what it is. And when the opportunity comes for me to have an experience of what was and react in the way that I did, I also am aware of the opportunity to step into a higher version of myself and choose it. But I could not be aware of that choice if I didn’t keep my shadow in my awareness.

That is what I mean by your wholeness is experiencing duality. You have your shadow, you have your light. It’s always going to be there. As long as you keep your shadow open, you have the best opportunity [00:51:00] to step into the man that you truly want to be. 

Mark: Yeah. And I just love the idea of beaming love instead of shame at that shadow.

You know, I think a lot of guys feel like they have this monster on the inside of them, but what it often is, it’s, it’s a hurt little kid, you know, it’s a hurt little kid lashing out. And there’s always a good reason why we have the shadow. You know, I think what I hear you doing is debunking this idea of evil, right?

Like there’s no evilness. It’s not, it’s not bad for no reason. Right. But there is hurt. There is pain. There is shame. There is. Lies that we told ourselves when we were five in order to make sense of the world, right? I mean, there’s all this stuff to start to unpack and bring out of that bag. Um, and in that, I think you get to this part of you that is just pure, you know, that’s pure, but, but, but confused and maybe afraid.

And I think, you know, we talk about masculine values. Fatherhood is a huge one. And again, the first place to be a father is with ourselves is with that inner child. And that hurt part. 

Zack Blakeney: Yeah, and if I could just offer a story and I talk about a mental [00:52:00] framework that allows you to heal. Again, this is going to be a parable, take it or leave it, but ultimately it’s the story of God and the two little souls.

So God and the two little souls are up in heaven and soul number one goes to God and says, God, I want to experience forgiveness. And God says, well, you’re in heaven, little soul. This is all love up here. But if you go down to that planet earth down there, you can experience forgiveness down there. And then little soul says, uh, well, how would I experience forgiveness?

Little soul two raises its hand and says, well, I’ll go down to earth with you and I’ll do something that you consider to be wrong so that you have the opportunity to experience forgiveness. Little soul number one says, what really? You would do that for me? Why? Little soul number two says, well, because I love you, that’s why.

And you want to experience forgiveness. So this type of mental framework allows you to start seeing all these different areas in your life where, Hey, I couldn’t experience forgiveness unless somebody quote unquote did me wrong. That’s giving me that opportunity. And then you start to see something bigger that [00:53:00] every experience that you have in your life, love is always an opportunity to choose.

And it’s up to you to have the awareness and the mental framework and the spirit and the belief system that aligns with the ability to choose that and to experience yourself as that. 

Mark: Yeah, beautiful. Love that story. So as we’re going towards the end here, Zach, where can people find you online if they want to work with you or hear more of what you have to say?

Zack Blakeney: Yeah. So, uh, you can find me on any of the social media platforms at Zach Blakeney. Nobody has my name. So that’s an easy spot. Uh, you can check out my website, www. iambornfree. net backslash get free now. Uh, and you can also do backslash free training if you want a free training, the company is called Born Free, uh, as a remembrance to the fact that you weren’t born an addict.

So you can’t be an addict, you’re just experiencing yourself as such, and you can also experience yourself as free. 

Mark: Fantastic. Yeah. And for listeners out there, this will be in the show notes as well. You can click on the link, um, in your [00:54:00] podcast platform. So thank you so much for tuning in, Zach. Thank you for being on the show.

Um, We’ll see you another week, another episode of men’s therapy podcast.

Intro: Thank you for joining your host, Mark on the men’s therapy podcast. Be sure to tune in again, live next Friday at 2 PM Eastern time and 11 AM Pacific time on the voice of America empowerment channel. And anywhere podcasts are found to support the show, leave a review on your favorite podcast platform for more information or to apply to be a guest visit www.menstherapypodcast.com