157: Why Father Wounds Can Fuel Porn Addiction: The Emotional Story Behind Sexual Cravings (with Chris Bruno)

Father wounds and childhood emotional neglect can shape porn addiction in ways many men do not recognize. You may believe you simply have a problem with lust or self-control, while pornography has quietly become a way to manage loneliness, powerlessness, shame, stress, or a deeper hunger to feel like you have what it takes.

In this episode, I sit down with Chris Bruno, founder of Restoration Project and Restory Counseling, to explore the unhealed boy behind pornography addiction. Chris helps men recover their hearts through the interconnected work of fatherhood, brotherhood, sonship, and storywork.

We discuss how every father wound begins with an unmet father hunger: a boy’s need for his father’s attentive face, life-giving words, guidance, and blessing. Sometimes that wound comes through obvious abuse, abandonment, or harshness. Other times it develops through the quieter drought of childhood emotional neglect—a home where a boy was provided for but never deeply known, guided through his emotions, or welcomed into manhood.

Chris explains why porn addiction can become a coping mechanism and survival strategy. Pornography may offer a counterfeit sense of power, control, accomplishment, connection, or masculine initiation. Understanding this deeper story does not excuse our adult choices. It gives us the clarity and compassion necessary to take meaningful responsibility for them.

We also explore practical storywork for addiction recovery, the difference between sexual desire and emotional activation, how to move from resentment into grief, and why healing brotherhood must offer more than a weekly accountability report.

Brother, the boy who first reached for pornography may have been trying to survive emotions and experiences he did not know how to carry. He does not need more humiliation. He needs honesty, compassion, protection, and mature leadership.

But the adult man must eventually take the lead.

Recovery is not merely about removing pornography. It is about healing the emotional roots of porn addiction, recovering healthy masculinity, building meaningful relationships, and creating a life that offers something better than escape.

Timestamps

00:00 Chris Bruno and Restoration Project
02:29 How Father Wounds Begin
06:02 Emotional Neglect and the Quiet Drought
08:42 Honor Requires Honesty
10:32 Your First Story and Second Story
14:34 What Porn Cravings Really Mean
15:29 The STAB Craving Framework
17:46 The Story Beneath My Own Addiction
20:35 Counterfeit Initiation into Manhood
24:35 Sexual Energy as Creative Energy
26:11 Desire Versus Sexual Activation
28:59 Storywork for Porn Addiction Recovery
33:32 Wounds, Losses, and Survival
37:02 Big Trauma and a Thousand Paper Cuts
38:21 Ownership Without Victimhood
41:43 Moving from Resentment into Grief
44:13 Brotherhood Beyond Accountability
47:15 How Men Can Share Their Stories
49:50 Connect with Chris Bruno

When you understand the story beneath your pornography use, you can begin building a recovery plan around your actual emotional, relational, biological, neurological, and spiritual needs.

To work with Chris Bruno and his team, go to restorationproject.net or restory.life

You can also check out his podcasts here: 

The Restorative Man Podcast
Thrive Marriage Lab Podcast

Link to Blog Article for this Episode

Visit No More Desire Tools for Recovery for recovery tools and training, the free online community, my free eBook, Workshop, The RAIL Method ™ and more to help you break free from porn.

If you’re tired of trying to quit porn on your own, the No More Desire Academy gives you a structured path to recovery through coaching, brotherhood, practical tools, and step-by-step training. Learn more about the Academy.

If you want deeper, more personalized support, I also offer 1-on-1 porn addiction recovery coaching. We’ll work directly on your patterns, emotional triggers, recovery plan, and long-term growth. Learn more about working 1-on-1 with Jake Kastleman.

My gratitude for the music in this episode (in order of appearance) goes to Ievgen Poltavskyi, NastelBomand Viacheslav Starostinfrom Pixabay.

Transcript

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Jake Kastleman (00:00.16)
Welcome to No More Desire, where we build a mindset and lifestyle for lasting recovery from porn. My name's Jake Castleman and I'm excited to dive in with you. Let's get started, my friend.

Jake Kastleman (00:15.566)
Did you ever wonder where your addiction to porn all began? Perhaps you consider your childhood to be pretty good. Sure, there were difficult experiences, maybe some bullying, strained relationships with parents. Dad and mom were busy a lot, siblings weren't very close, but generally things were fine. I mean, childhood is hard for everyone to some extent, right? But what if there are stories you are telling yourself that matter more than you know, and what led to your addiction that you carry and

What if there are details to these stories that can bring you freedom from porn? My guest Chris Bruno and I discuss our stories as men in an age that carries the death of healthy masculinity and crippled fatherhood, brotherhood, and sonship. Chris is a licensed professional counselor, author, speaker, and founder of the Restoration Project and Restory Institute. He specializes in helping men tell their stories in deep, healing ways, and for over 20 years,

He has assisted men in overcoming sex and porn addiction and discovering new identities. In this episode, we talk about events in our lives that shape our identity, lead us to addiction, and how to reshape this identity toward healthy masculinity and sobriety. We discuss father wounds and the deeply important role that fathers play in the development of porn and sex addiction, and how we can show up as fathers to help our boys stand resilient in the face of these things today.

We'll focus on story work, including practical steps you can take right now to begin working through the messages and emotions you carry that are contributing to your porn cravings. We also talk about rites of passage, our initiation as men, and the roots of sexual energy and libido, and what these drives really are. All this and much more in today's episode. Before we dive in, please like, rate, and follow this podcast. It's a huge help to me and my team and the growth of this show.

And it helps us bring you the latest in porn addiction recovery and personal growth. All right, let's get started.

Jake Kastleman (02:27.758)
Chris Bruno, love the work you're doing, man. So cool to have you here. The work that you're doing for men and for their families these days is so, so needed. so it's just a privilege to have you here.

Thank you so much. It is great to be here too.

Thanks. Well, let's start out by getting to know you a bit. You do have two different re large realms in which you work, the restoration project and the other one which has skipped my mind right now. But I'd love for you to talk a bit about your work and then your journey, really your personal journey that's taken you here. Cause that's a a great story, I'm sure. So yeah.

Sure. Well, so the the two realms are, as you mentioned, Restoration Project. That is a organization that I started 16 years ago and the focus is on helping men recover their hearts. And we do work in areas, kind of three main areas of fatherhood, brotherhood, and sonship. Every man, whether or not he has children, has a father inside of him.

Every man has a brother inside of him and every man is a son of the father and of our earthly parents, obviously. And so the the work that we do is is in those areas and resources and experiences in all of it. I was just at a weekend experience for fathers and their eight to ten year old sons as we begin the journey of raising a boy a man out of the boy. and so it's it was a wonderful weekend. So that's Restoration Project.

Chris Bruno (04:00.288)
and then the one that you forgot is Restory Counseling. I also started a counseling practice about the same time, about 16 years ago. And it is a story-informed counseling practice that has both therapy and story work coaching. So we've got a team of 16 people that are local here in Fort Collins and also across the United States. So those are the two things that I do.

Yes. And I knew as I said that I was like, it's something to do with stories. So I should have I should have double checked that. Yeah. But I I love that I'm fascinated by that story work. So we're gonna talk about a bit about that today and helping guys get an introduction into what that's all about. really, really great stuff. So and I actually I have guys do some of that in my program as well. So it'll be so cool to see a bit about how you do it. So

I we're going to talk about that story work. We're going to talk about masculinity. We're going to talk about exactly what you said about bringing the man out of the boy. We're going to see wherever this organic conversation takes us. But one of the things that you said that you've talked about and that you work on is father wounds. And I actually really want to start there. many men, when it comes to father wounds, they'll think of an absent, harsh, or emotionally unavailable dad, right? In your experience,

How do father wounds emerge? How do they shape a man's internal story? And how do they, for my audience's sake, really drive things like pornography addiction or even alcoholism or other addictions? Yeah, sure.

Well, I I think I would start with this, Jake. And that is that all father wounds originate out of an unmet father hunger. Every single one of us is born with a hunger for our fathers. and and and what I mean by that is so I mean, you have young kids. And so your your wife, our children's mothers, were able to give our children something very visceral, something very

Chris Bruno (06:08.236)
body, right? Bodily focused. They nurtured them. They grew them. They're offering them their literal physical body and in the growth and the and the development of who they are as a human being in the world. Right. And and we as men literally only contributed a small little cell to the physical physical growth of our child. and yes right and yet

There is something inside of each child that has a hunger for us men, us fathers, in the same way that a child has a hunger for their mother. And yet the way that we meet that is through what I would call like a masculine substance that God has given each one of us men to offer to our children, which comes really in the form of in two different forms. One is with our face and one is with our words. Do we have our face turned towards our child?

And do they have the words that are meant to give life, meant to bring bring life into the into the heart and mind and soul of the child? And and those words are what, you know, in Restoration Project, we call that our blessing. Do blessing, which is meant to be a covering. It's meant to be a a vision of who I see you to be as an image bearer in the world. And can I name that and call that forth in in who you are? And

And so that hunger is born in all of us, boys and girls both, for us dads to be offering our face and our words to our children. And when we don't receive either our, you know, our father's face or his words, that leaves that that hunger unsatiated. and and it goes then it it creates that that wounding. Or on the other side of things, if we do receive words from him and a face and it is harsh.

Or it is more like words unto death rather than words unto life, then that also creates those kinds of father wounds. And that shapes us, right? We just as malnourishment shapes the body, so the s the the soul malnourishment of the the lack of father woo words and and face will create an impact in that person's life, into that child's life.

Jake Kastleman (08:28.994)
Yes. And you you made a reference to both neglect versus abuse, whether it be emotional abuse or or physical, obviously, or sexual. And those that goes into a lot deeper topics. But when we talk about neglect, I think that a lot of us and a lot of the men that I've worked with, we can really be under the impression that things were great.

at home or good and there were no issues and what reason do I have to have an addiction. And the the deeper emotional work that we do, you know, a lot of men come to find, wow, we didn't talk about things in the home really. Like we didn't talk about fear, or I wasn't re didn't feel like I was able to express anger and be able to have that received and understood and be able to talk through that or process through it with a parent. Or my siblings were all kind of

separate from one another, didn't really connect with each other, we didn't really serve each other, whatever that looks like, right. I think the neglect component when it comes to, you know, people say neglect and it sounds extreme, but an emotional neglect, right? Not having that face or those words can play a profound, have a profound impact on on us.

Very much so. And almost equally to, I mean, I I'll put it in these words. We live I live here in Colorado and wildfires are a a thing in the mountains, especially in dry seasons. And so I'll say it this way: that a tree can either die by drought or fire. and but the tree that has been burned is obviously burned. The tree that is kind of withering away by drought is far harder to see that.

And just as devastating. And so especially for us men, like we're recognizing, yeah, I had a great family. I grew up in a good home, blah, blah, blah. And and the vacuousness of that home is really hard to name because it almost feels like we're betraying the goodness that was there when we're actually naming that it wasn't enough.

Jake Kastleman (10:33.326)
Yes. Cause I I I think a lot of us can we can get into the justifications in wanting to, I mean, rightly in a lot of ways, defend our family of origin. We're wanting to speak well of our parents, we're wanting to validate their efforts, but we can really skip over getting in touch with and being present with that pain, giving ourselves time to really understand it, right? What do you think that is in that gap?

For guys, what gets in the way, and how can they start to bridge that a bit into really exploring their story?

You know, the word honor and honesty come from the same root. And if we are if we are trying to honor our parents, the more honest we can be about our experience of them, the more free they then are to be the actual humans who failed at times as well. But if we believe that honoring them is is kind of turning our a blind eye to

whatever it was that that they did or didn't do that might have brought harm, right, we're we're keeping them on a pedestal that they never do they were never supposed to be on in the first place. So to honor them is to actually be honest about what it was like for me to be their son, for me to be their child, and and name those things so that that the two of us, the gap you talk about is that the two of us that can then actually talk about those things, or at least I can begin to talk about what it was like for me.

naming naming the loss, naming the gap. my a friend of mine, Dan Alender, says, we can only heal what we name. And so we have to actually name it before we can start to heal it. And if we don't name it, then then we're living in denial of what actually occurred in my life.

Jake Kastleman (12:30.51)
Dan Alander's a wise, wise man. I've I've I've seen some of his stuff. Good. He's he's very good. Yeah. And so I I I really love that a lot. And so when it comes to when it comes to porn addiction or sex addiction, I often refer to these as like a self-worth or self-identity game in a lot of ways, gaining

A sense of self-worth, a healthy sense of self-worth, not pride or cockiness or you know overconfidence with these things, but a a genuine feeling of I like who I am or I feel like I'm good enough, right? I I know who I am as a human being, as a child of God, as a as a son, as a father, et cetera. To overcome addiction, we really need to build this identity. for you, Chris, with your work with men.

What do you see within our current culture that kind of gets in the way of that or is hampering that? And what are you trying to offer men to help them start to establish that identity or that that worth?

so many directions we could go with that question, Jake. So I'll I'll start with this that in any recovery program, we have to have a vision of what it is we are recovering. okay. And so if if we're looking for healing, we need to know what we're healing. and so in the work that I do, we spend a lot of time in in recovery space talking about what the problem is or what the external behavior is or what the

Self-identity lack is, or whatever it is that you've just named. Before we jump into any of those things, we have to have a sense of what was the story before that story began. And the way that I talk about it is that there is a first story and there is a second story. The first story is who you were designed to be, the imagination that God had for who you are and who you were and

Chris Bruno (14:34.55)
And the reality that you were such a beautiful thought and delightful thought in the mind of God that he moved all of history so that you would come to be. That is stunning in my mind. and and I like to talk about it as that we are the masterpiece of God. We are the, we are the handiwork, this original first story image-bearer of who he made us to be. If we don't have even an

Inkling that that might be true. I don't need to know what it is. I don't need to know all those things, but that just an inkling that that might actually still be true. right, then that is what we are looking to recover. That is what we are looking to come back to is a deeper understanding of who that was before, back to where we were just a moment ago, before the neglect, before the abuse, before the the drought or the fire kind of came along. That is the second story. And most of our

Porn addiction, sexual addiction, and all that is our way of surviving the second story. and if we can recognize like not only what did I have to survive back to the honesty piece, but maybe what it was, who I've that is still trying to survive. And the reality that as little boys, when we started to survive and sex or sexuality or erections or masturbation or whatever it was, became part of part of life.

That felt like a very strong place of control. It felt very masculine. It felt like a great place for me to have my emotional needs at least pseudo-met when when those things were not being met in my family of origin. All of that survival was what led to the the present day addiction. And so we have to go to the story behind the story. We have to go to the story of the little boy.

Who lost his way because his way was not shown. His father didn't give him that kind of face, or his mother didn't give him that kind of presence and care. Like those are the kinds of things that need to be named. So in our culture at large, I think there's a there's a narrative out there. It's that this is just boys will be boys, and this is what, you know, every man, every man is always thinking about sex all the time. and and I don't buy it. I don't buy it that men think about it more than women do. I think about

Chris Bruno (16:55.618)
I think boys have learned to think about it as a way to pacify their souls.

I love that you said that. I think it's absolutely true. one of my colleagues, Drew Boa, says that a a craving for porn or sex is very different from the desire or arousal or attraction mechanism that's natural to us. And when I feel a craving, I can be he says it's it's always a case of emotional dysregulation.

I would broaden it in that it's either emotional dysregulation or it's physical dysregulation, where I'm experiencing something within my body of I'm really tired. And so my mind has has this habit of this is where I go to seek comfort and soothing and some semblance of fabricated balance. Right. And so so for you, is that kind of the patterns that you see for men as well?

Yes. Yes. I mean, my acronym for it that I use a lot is stab and it's stressed, tired, alone, and bored. that there's something inside of me that feels stretched or stressed. I'm exhausted or emotionally strung out, whatever it might be. I'm alone, I feel isolated, divided, away from people, disconnected in relationship, or I have a sense of like boredom. I and I want to say more about disboredom, like it's not just like sitting around being bored.

It's actually that you don't have something that is helling in your life enough to have live a bigger story than what porn is gonna offer you. And so there's some vision piece to that too.

Jake Kastleman (18:33.219)
Mm.

Jake Kastleman (18:36.984)
Yes, 'cause porn there are stories behind porn, right? And the type of porn that we seek out. Right. And it is depending on the guy, you know, some it's it's a sense of fabricated accomplishment. For some it's a sense of I'm I'm seen or I'm being intimate or connected with. For some it's a sense of a sense of status or a sense of, you know, kind of meaning. It's a sense of all these types of things that we seek

To get met through porn, which we really for me, I didn't start to see those things until a few years of sobriety and noticing, my gosh, look at all the motives that were behind my porn use. I probably could have discovered those things sooner if I had sought out better mentors, but I couldn't see those patterns, you know? I couldn't see them. Yeah.

They're very hard to see. They're very hard to see. And I think it just requires us to have eyes to wonder. and again, if we start to diagnose what's happening for the adult, it is harder to see. But when we can have space enough for the boy and begin to name the kind of atmosphere conditions, the place that he was raised, the things that were happening, the honest truth about what it was like for us as boys. then we can say, like, I why would I why would I blame my eight year old son for

These things, you know, I I certainly wouldn't do that. Why would I blame myself for those things? Because the reality is like we sought we sought out the things that helped us stay alive.

Yes. And for sake of conversation, for those who are listening to this, you know, to give an example from my own life, I grew up as a and when I was four years old, my family had a big move and I've talked about this on the podcast before. We had a big move from California to Utah. And at four years old I had no way of really understanding what that meant or how to relate to that emotionally. I had older siblings that were

Jake Kastleman (20:36.866)
Very stressed. had especially an old assembling that was very, very angry because he's leaving all his friends and he's losing all his connections. We left for my father's work, right? My, and this is public knowledge, my dad was going up through a pornography addiction at the time, right? He's since recovered and now he's teaching other men to do the same thing that I am, right? And he has been an incredible mentor mentor for me. My mother was going through betrayal trauma. So all of this is going on at four years old.

I really couldn't comprehend that mentally, but I know that I felt that, right? And when I've done work, I've I felt that kind of that turmoil. And I felt powerless to do anything about it. And whether it was from that or other things, you know, my personality as a whole, whatever it is, I carried the message of I really, really need to save people or rescue people or help people or make a big difference. And I felt completely incapable of doing that at four years old.

And I carried that into video game use that kind of gave me a safe place to feel like I was purposeful in doing something, accomplishing things. And then into pornography, which in many ways, and I was just emailing my audience about this today, it was a place for me to procrastinate that those deeper desires that I had because it felt like so much pressure. So pornography was a place I could go.

Where to be honest, to be frank, I could expend that energy and have a reason to not go pursue, as you said, a bigger life, a bigger story than the pornography was offering.

Thank you for offering that to us. And and you you were too small. You didn't have the capacity to hold or save anyone. And so of course you needed a place to go where it felt like there was, you know, a winner.

Jake Kastleman (22:32.92)
I love that. I love that compassion you expressed, Chris. And I think that's what we all need to start to feel for ourselves to come out of these patterns. Yeah. It's big. It's powerful. I want to shift gears a little bit. Yeah. still talking about masculinity, but really to hone in on rites of passage and masculine initiation. It's so cool the things that you have to teach about this. So in a culture that has largely kind of lost

these meaningful rites of passage. What are, and we we've talked a little bit about it, I think, in a way, but what are these counterfeit initiations that we are trying to fill that gap with? And what do you think we're missing that we really need when it comes to rights of passion and initiation? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I was facing that for myself with my own son as he was growing up, you know, 10, 11, 12, he was gonna hit the puberty years. And and I just knew that I wanted something different for him than than I had for myself. and I wanted to make sure that he was kind of brought, ushered, guided into manhood rather than just trying to find his own way like I had to.

One of my favorite African proverbs that I quote in the the rites of passage book that I wrote is if we do not initiate our sons, they will burn down the village just to feel the heat. And and I'm good. And I feel like we live in a world where there are there are boys burning down the village. And I'll also say it this way not every adult male is a man.

That's so that's so good.

Chris Bruno (24:19.202)
I think there are a lot of adult males who are still boys burning down the village. some are in their 40s and 50s and 60s. So, so there, there's something necessary, there's something absolutely necessary for us to be kind of ushered through the crucible experience of a rite of passage that proves to the boy that he has what it takes to be the man that he's designed to be. And there is something about this,

This ushering, this guiding that I think we as fathers are designed to do for our boys. and I think there's a similar, it's a different but similar experience for girls becoming women. But if we're talking about masculinity, like there has to be something from the father that brings that heat to the boy so that he doesn't have to go burn the village down to find it. and that is exactly what a rite of passage is supposed to be.

There's supposed to be some difficulty. There's supposed to be some challenge. There's supposed to be some proving, some testing of him. and, you know, some cultures have taken that significantly brutal, kind of, you know, in the brutal direction. I that's not what I'm advocating for, but I do think that we as boys need to prove to the company of men that we are one of the men. And there needs to be a welcome into the company of men.

And a recognition that even though at 13 or 14 when we pass through a rite of passage, right, that that you didn't immediately then become a man when you're four, you know, 13 or 14 years old, but you were considered one and you were invited to be one. And there is something about sitting in that new place that you grow into one because now that is what is kind of your you're welcome there and expected. So I think in our society,

We need to absolutely be thinking about raising our boys in such an intentional way that provides them the answers to those questions. The where we go is is pornography because it makes it feel like you know, there's some kind of crucible experience there. There's some kind of like, you know, erections feel really good and they feel really masculine. And so, you know, there's something there.

Chris Bruno (26:36.936)
Or it's our first time having sex, or it's when we get our driver's license, or it's some kind of other, you know, driving down the st street on your new motorcycle really fast, or some kind of like extreme sports, or whatever it may be, wherever there starts to feel like there's heat to be offered, we will gravitate to those places because that is what we need, the the masculine soul inside of us needs in order to prove that we are actually men.

When Ryan's wife found out about his infidelity, all hell broke loose. They had a son together and he was about to lose him and her. Ryan had been hiding his pornies for years since his childhood, but sexting other people went way beyond that. When she found out Ryan knew that divorce was more than likely and he was devastated. He wondered how he could let it go this far. How could he betray her this way?

She was everything to him, yet he'd betrayed her so severely and now he was going to lose everything. That's when he contacted me and entered the program. Together Ryan and I discovered the deeper reasons behind his behavior, the lack of emotional safety that he felt in his life, the technology habits that he had, his inability to stay present, his feelings of shame and not being good enough. I taught Ryan emotional mindfulness strategies like the rail method, and he had massive changes to his lifestyle.

Through small steps taught in the program. He even came to understand the link between ADHD and his porn addiction and was able to make improvements in both. Here's what he had to say about his experience with the coaching program. I've been sober for seven months now. Not only does the program help you with your addiction, but it does something even better. It helps you become a better version of yourself.

Jake has been in our shoes and is truly walking the walk. The program is going to take a lot. You only get as much as you put into it. That being said, if you feel like you truly do want to change your life, contact Jake and get a consultation. With the material and exercises from the program, I feel confident I have a map to better roads ahead. I've kept up with Ryan here and there, and he continues to be sober after over a year. His wife and he are building trust and continuing to raise their son together.

Jake Kastleman (28:56.482)
And I'm so, so happy for them. If you are struggling with a porn addiction, head to nomore desire.com/slash coaching. Learn more and create your own success story. All right, back to the show, my friend. I often describe sexual energy as a fire, just like you're saying. And sexual energy libido, and you you probably are aware of this, the word libido is so much broader in its scope than we often give it credit for in our modern

Society, we we think of it as a sexual thing, and it's really a general drive and a power that we carry. And actually, Sigmund Freud and also Carl Jung, they used the word, I think it was Carl Sigmund Freud that used libido, I believe, in this way as well. We always think of him as, you know, the sex guy, but he did say

Libido was a an overall general drive, right? A sexual energy that we could actually channel into different mechanisms to create and be artistic and to pursue and build. And so what I teach is sexual energy is the energy of creation and pursuit. It's not just for sex. You have you have to channel it. And if you don't, you're holding a fire. So either I'm going to channel it to create life and to warm those around me.

Or I'm gonna burn crap down with it by default. Clean. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. That's how it wor that's how it works. And so as men, we carry so much of that masculine energy and you could talk about f it from a dopamineergic perspective as well. We need to either use the dopamine or it will be expended through instant gratification just by default these days. It's

Exactly.

Chris Bruno (30:41.454)
And I and I make a distinction often between desire and activation. And if there's what we are trained in Arctic culture today is that sexual activation is the same as arousal. It's not that arousal and desire are exactly what you're talking about, this energy that comes from us into the world to be creative, to bring life.

And sometimes that is with sex and sometimes it is it is not. But that that is what desire and arousal are. It is those are meant to be a hundred percent relationally based. Arousal is relational, desire is relational. Sexual activation is not. It is that this bodily response to a situation that turns on.

parts of your body in a certain way that might look like arousal, but in fact it is not.

Yeah. I like that. I like that a lot 'cause it easily especially when we go through puberty, we don't have any a kind of you know, any kind of open discussion with our our parents or understanding of sexuality or, you know, a knowledge of what that's gonna feel like or being able to talk it out. We just begin masturbating at a young age. We begin, you know, using that that activation, right? And it's just being expressed as we

You know, for me, I didn't know what masturbation was. I just started doing it. And that's the case for quite a lot of boys, right? And so it became my comfort and soothing mechanism. And it does become that for a lot of guys, I think. And so we then mistake all sorts of feelings, emotional dysregulation, tiredness, hunger, loneliness, sadness, fear. We then face cravings or desire for masturbation of porn. We're like,

Jake Kastleman (32:41.694)
I have I have a desire for sex when it's not even about that hardly at all, if if at all. Right. Yeah. Mm. Yeah.

You just named several things that that I want to just add and also celebration and happiness and joy, right? Those get wetted together also with masturbation. That's it's not just the the the emotions or the feelings that tend towards the negative. It can also be like I just won the championship. Right.

Right. Now it's time to to to to hit that high, right?

Time to have another big release. And so there's like it becomes the space where the sexuality gets interwoven with the emotionality that is unguided and unguarded.

Yes, unguided and unguarded. I like that. Very, very true. So I want to dive into story work if you're open to that. Yeah, sure. I would love to hear about some of the basics of beginning to dive into our stories, what happened to us, you know, the past and understanding where it's where it's brought us to. How do you begin to break this down with guys? What questions do we need to ask or start to to dive into?

Chris Bruno (33:57.046)
think so I would say this. first of all, the the th the overarching story of your life generally ends up being just an itinerary. I, you know, I grew up in, you said California, I moved to Utah, I had these siblings, I went to this high school, I got married, blah, blah, blah. Like those are the kinds of maybe kind of chapter titles, if you will, of the greater story. But

A lot of guys will just stop there. Like I had a good story. We went to church. I had, you know, my dad and mom provided for me. like that kind of thing. That's that that's great and helpful. but it's such a high level. It doesn't actually describe what the geography and the topography of of the landscape of your life looked like and felt like for you to walk. and so I will often start with guys and just kind of say, hey, let's start with kind of an overview.

I'll I I kind of do a timeline, zero to eighteen. And above the line are the things that felt really good and positive. Below the line are the things that felt like they were hard or negative. and the further up or the further down, the more significant those things were. Okay. and so just to start to kind of name what are the what are the key chapter titles or thresholds or turning points, whatever you want to call it along the journey of life.

And then we begin to investigate a little bit more. So of the ones that are higher or lower, I begin to ask more questions around what was it, what was going on in your life around that time? What was true about you in those moments? What was true about your father, your mother, or the situation that surrounded you? and and tell me a little bit more. If we were to kind of take the, the, the timeline and kind of think about it as like a

a very simple coloring page in a kid's coloring book. That's the outline. How would you color in? What colors would you put? What is the story that you now begin to make meaning out of from that situation? one of the things I'll often talk about is especially with the negative ones, those are the ones that are the most shaping for who we are. and they are the most negative, and you can kind of start to map.

Chris Bruno (36:16.824)
The positive ones are very related to the negative ones because the positive are positive because the negative were so negative. and so we begin to see some of the connections. I will often say too, though, that that tragedy is what happens to you and trauma is what happens inside you. and it is the result of the lack of kindness, the lack of presence, the lack of mothering or fathering or care or tending or soothing or

whatever it may be in the moment that tragedy occurred. and so it's the moments where you were on your own to kind of navigate through and figure out what to do in the moment of something really challenging or really hard. and it's the the internal understanding, the belief structures that get put into place as a result, or the way that I would put it is the story that got written, that second story that got written by what happened to you, the wounds.

What got taken from you, the losses. And then the third part is then and how did you try to survive? So the second story for me is this the wounds plus the losses and then your survival. That's what you've been living as if it was the most true thing about you when, you know, you probably never knew that there was a a story deeper still, that there was an older story, a first story about you before any of that started to happen. So we'll start to unpack and excavate. What was it like for you in that moment that you

you know, found porn for the first time, or what was it like for you when your dad walked out? What was it like for you when mom asked you to do XYZ? Those are the, that's where the actual narratives get written and the little boy inside of us starts to make meaning out of the world in a certain way that was, as I just said, kind of unguided.

Mm-hmm. What are some of those kind of primary burdens or wounds that you see that guys carry when they develop addictions? What are some of those core messages that they'll carry along with them?

Chris Bruno (38:17.982)
so many. I mean, I would say that there's kind of some core some core wounds. one is disconnection. You're alone, you don't belong. Okay. one is we just talked about it a little while ago, neglect, and that is that your needs are not worth meeting.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Okay. one will be obviously abuse that something that you have is something that I am going to take and consume at your expense.

Hmm.

so there I mean there's there's various kinds of woundings that happen, but then the losses are actually where the narratives get written. So if you are fe you know, if there is neglect, for example, and it could be significant neglect, or it could be what most of us would say, that wasn't so bad, but it was actually, as we were talking about, a little bit more like the drought that we were discussing before. the loss is the loss of

Chris Bruno (39:23.286)
Identity, the loss of value, the loss of agency, the loss of like those are the kinds of things that start to write meaning into our lives. The loss of agency is like, I don't have ownership of my own life. I I don't someone else says what's going to happen to me. and if that's the case, then my narrative is like, well, it's it's pointless for me to show up. Because when I show up, things get taken from me. So it's better for me to not show up.

Well now we all of a sudden we have an abdicating man, or a very passive man. That's not his fault. It just means that something was taken from him a long time ago that needs to be restored. Those are the kinds of places and ways that we start to navigate through how the stories were written.

So good. What was the one you said about consuming something at your expense? Can you say that for people one more time?

Yeah. So abuse is generally happens when you have something glorious that someone who is bigger or stronger or more powerful than you has decided that they're going to take it from you. They're going to consume that part of you at your expense.

mm.

Jake Kastleman (40:39.672)
Very, very powerful. And depending on the person, right, we can all carry various versions and various types of these these these traumas, right? And I I think some of us, as you say, we can be that burned tree, right? And it's very pretty clear to us. Not always, but pretty pretty clear a lot of times, yeah, some really screwed up stuff happened. It wasn't okay. And then there are others who carry more of the these

Deeper messages that are harder to find, right, and harder to identify. And I think I think that can be difficult for a lot of people when they feel like, well, I have this pornography addiction and I, you know, I'm viewing every day or whatever that is, and I don't have this history of trauma. What would you say to those guys that they need to begin doing in order to explore their story?

Yeah, I think the word trauma gets thrown out a lot. I mean, I just did, you just did. Like we throw out the word trauma a lot. and I want to kind of bring it back to center a little bit, that it doesn't just mean that you had some kind of major episode of some significant explosion in your life. it it it does mean, however, that you may have I'll put it this way none of us were born in Eden.

Every single one of us was born outside of Eden, which means that every single one of us has has brushed up against death, brushed up against loss, brushed up against something that has felt like not well. And we have had to learn how to survive it. and so if you know, if the big traumas, if you if you will, are like the big T traumas, the little, the little ones are little T traumas, and I'll I'll say like it's it's like death by sword or death by a thousand paper cuts.

Mm. Yeah, it's why.

Chris Bruno (42:31.254)
One or two or three paper cuts, they hurt. Kind of just like, okay, I don't even need a band aid, I'm just gonna go on. Right. And and and yet when there's a thousand of them and they're repeated or they're thematic over the course of years, right? There's some significant wounding that you've experienced on a on a soul level.

And I think along with this and what you've just said about trauma and that is thrown around so much, one of the things I can I feel quite passionate about, especially when it comes to recovery, but all of life and living, you know, is a a meaningful life is to not make ourselves a victim to these things, right? To be able to process and work through them. There's there's so much of this message now of, the reason you're this way is because of this thing that you experienced. And I think

There's a much healthier version of that. how can we strike this balance, do you feel like, where we can both process what we've been through, but not make ourselves a victim to it? Mm-hmm.

I think this goes to what I was saying earlier about this the survival. Okay. Because those wounds and those losses tell you a story about who you are or who you're not. Survival then is some volitional participation and evils work against you that you say yes to. Those things that I came to believe are true and now.

I am participating in the perpetuation of my own destruction by survival. And that's what porn that is what pornography is, right? It's not that any eight-year-old wakes up and goes, I'm going to become a pornographer. Like I'm going to become somebody who's addicted to pornography. That's not what we wake up and say. And yet here we are at 28 years old, and there's a sense of like this is where I find myself. Well, it started somewhere.

Chris Bruno (44:28.224)
And it ended somewhere. And we have to address both ends of that spectrum. Where am I not responsible for what happened to me? And where am I responsible for how I have said yes to that kind of self-soothing or survival? And the reality is that those survival techniques work until they don't work anymore, until they don't meet the needs of our hearts. Right. So, so

We have to actually own what is ours to own. And when you say, you know, victim to not be victim to it, it is important to name the genesis, but it is also important for us to name our f our ongoing participation with what has been spoken over us.

Yeah. I think that's so powerful. I think when it comes to forgiveness for others or forgiveness for ourselves, but particularly, you know, when when I'm talking about forgiveness for others, I found in my journey it's been very powerful to first off acknowledge, not just acknowledge, but dive deep into what happened, right? And the ways that I was wronged or things didn't go well or the stuff that wasn't my fault, and to see that and understand that. But then

As you're saying, to take responsibility and ownership over what I can and say, okay, what was my part? Right. Or what what did I do? Or what am I doing now, right, that's leading to this or repeating these patterns. And that it's so fascinating because once I take once I truly if I've processed the rest of that stuff, once I take that ownership and that responsibility, I found a lot of times I can I can let go of that resentment because

I don't know why, but I'm I'm empowered. Right. And there's something about that that's very power that's well, empowering, obviously.

Chris Bruno (46:15.288)
Well, and I think what you're describing, Jake, is you've moved from resentment to grief. Significant move, right? To hold to hold resentment is to take whatever pain of the past has occurred and continue it on in the present. But to step into grief is to grieve what happened and what has been happening and all that that has taken from me and the cost that that has had in my life.

Chris Bruno (46:43.234)
And step into grieving it. I believe that grief is actually our a gift for us to digest the experiences of our losses. So that we can then come out the other side to be more free and more whole to continue living on in a different way.

Yeah, because I think that we can hold space for grief and sadness and that that can be, as you're saying, a gift in a way of reminding me of the things that I've lost and why that's so important to me and the kind of person that I want to be now and how I want to treat other people so that they don't experience that same hurt or that pain that I did, or, you know, who I wanna be.

versus the resentment, which just, as you say, carries on the same cycle over and over and over and over. I have to face the grief. And the grief is extremely painful, which I think is one of the reasons why we just avoid it. Yeah. For a long time. We were talking about

a passage and how we don't have those in our culture. We don't have a culture of grief. Right. We do not do grief well. and I think one of the best things that we can do is to to really learn and step into grief. That doesn't mean like to be melancholy all the time. It means to go through a season of recognizing what was lost, recognizing what was taken, and then kind of bring that into a place of like now what? Right. Now what? Yeah. Now what I what would I like to do?

Because the person that I was hoping was going to come for me back then is not coming.

Jake Kastleman (48:16.344)
Yes. Yes.

What do I want the reality that they're not coming?

Right. And we really need to reparent ourselves. Would you s would you say that? Yeah. Mm.

Yes. And parent one another in some ways and father one another. I think this is the beautiful place of what we can do in the company of men and with brothers who are in this together is to offer that kind of fathering to us that that we did not receive and desperately needed.

I love that. It's actually a perfect transition to talk about brotherhood. Yeah. in the addiction space we talk about accountability a lot, but you have a very different perspective on that and and true connected brotherhood. Can you talk about the difference between healing brotherhood versus just accountability?

Chris Bruno (49:05.26)
Yeah. Well, I'll start with, I mean, the word accountability comes from accounting, right? It comes from ledgers. It comes from balances and debts and credits and and that kind of mindset. And so historically, especially in the men's space and recovery space, to keep you accountable is to where you have a debt to make you pay that debt. So now that you're back on balance. and so I'm gonna make you

do something, confess something, pay five dollars into the masturbation pot or whatever it is, right? That you're you're kind of there's some kind of thing that you're gonna have to do in order to rebalance your ledger. Okay. and I I am vehemently against that because I actually believe that true brotherhood is not to keep you from the man you're afraid of being, but to call you to the man I know you to be.

That there is a vision of who I who I have of you. And this requires a deeper brotherhood than the just showing up to a meeting and saying what you did or didn't do this week. It is a deeper brotherhood of like, I know you and I know your stories. You have told me your stories. I have been with you as you described the four-year-old situation where you moved to Utah and what was happening for you. And when you first discovered porn, and when you first discovered like,

What was not just that you discovered it, but that what was happening for you, I know you're I know you're a four-year-old. And I also know your adult man now. And I have a vision for who you are in that first story that I was talking about a moment ago. Right. And so I to hold you accountable is to call forth the man inside of you and to remind you when you have forgotten that he exists, forgotten who he might be.

And and be with you until you kind of step back into his shoes. So it's a totally different version and vision of what accountability is. so and that I think is what brotherhood is all about. a lot in in a in a different w piece of work that I've done around brotherhood. I'll talk about like there are several different levels to brotherhood.

Chris Bruno (51:25.912)
From stranger to acquaintance and acquaintance to buddy and buddy to friend and then friend to brother. The shift, and I can describe those if you want, but the shift between friend and brother is that I actually know your stories and I am going to contend with you on behalf of you for the sake of you.

Mm. Contend with you on behalf of you for the sake of you. I like that. Yeah. I really like that. What are some small ways? Cause I I do see this concept as of brotherhood as very, very important. What are some small ways we can begin doing this for each other, even just in our own families or our communities or, you know, in smaller settings?

Yeah. I it sounds like I'm beating the same drum, but I'm gonna say just like to start start to talk about your stories. And that might not be your biggest trauma story right off the bat, but it's gonna start to be you know, some friends and I were hanging out together over the weekend and and and in our circles we we enjoy scotch and often scotch.

has an age statement to it. So like it's a 10 year or a 12 year, whatever it might be, a 14 year. And so one of the things, for example, just using a prompt like the Scotch bottle, 10 year old scotch, what was your life like today, 10 years ago? Tell me what was going on.

Mm.

Chris Bruno (52:54.19)
Tell me what your life was like 14 years ago. Or, you know, if you're hanging out with your buddies and somebody's, you know, their anniversary, what was your life like when you first asked your wife to marry you? Okay. Like start to talk very simple little story prompts, but start to talk about the stories of your life. what do you remember when, you know, if you've got a son who's turning 12, what was your life like when you were 12 years old? like those kinds of things. It's not.

Confession time. It's not telling the stories of your deepest, darkest pain or your deepest, darkest sins. It's just, what does it feel like to be you? And so often in men's circles, you know, whether it's reading a book or or listening to a podcast or processing last week's sermon or something, the text is something other than your life. It's more about your thoughts about the text than it is the sharing of your life. And so I'm always advocating for guys, hey, don't, don't.

Read a book and talk about what the book has to say. If you're gonna read a book, read it and then talk about how it relates to your life, brings up in your life. And if you can do more of that around your fire pit in the backyard or your living room or your man cave or or even, you know, like after the soccer game, whatever it is, you can start to talk about those kinds of things. That's where you move just for into the from that friend into brother. You're telling your stories.

Mm.

Jake Kastleman (54:20.948)
Mm-hmm. I love that, Chris. That's so, so good, man. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I know there are so many more places we could go. but it's been great. I think this will help so many guys. if there's anything else you want to touch on, awesome. Other than that, I would love for you to tell people where they can find you, work with you or your team, get help, go to the rest restoration project, right? Whatever those avenues look like.

Yeah, sure. Thank you. Well, so yeah, you can find us at restorationproject.net. and that's where we have all those men's experiences and resources that I talked about, with brotherhood, second half of life things, fatherhood kinds of spaces, all of that stuff is there. and then the restory restory dot life.

is the counseling practice. And we've got trauma intensives, we've got recovery programs, we've got all kinds of story work groups, that kind of stuff where where people can find some help if they want to step into this story work even deeper.

Love it. It's great. Well, Chris, thank you so much. You have so much knowledge to offer and so much I think warmth and love and just a passion for this work. So it's a just a joy to have you on.

Thank you so much. It's been great to be here with you today.

Jake Kastleman (55:50.434)
Thanks for listening to No More Desire. It's a genuine blessing for me to do the work that I do, and I wouldn't be able to do it without you, my listeners, so thank you. If you've enjoyed today's episode, do me a favor. Follow this podcast, hit the notification bell, and shoot me a rating. The more people who do this, the more men this podcast will reach. So take a few minutes of your time and hit those buttons. If you want to take your sobriety to the next level, check out my free workshop, The Eight Keys to Lose Your Desire for Poem.

Or my free ebook, The Ten Tools to Conquer Cravings. These are specialized pieces of content that will give you practical exercises and applied solutions to overcome porn addiction. And you can find them at NomorDesire.com. As a listener of the No More Desire podcast, you are part of a worldwide movement of men who are breaking free of porn to live more impactful, meaningful, and selfless lives. So keep learning, keep growing, and keep building.

That recovery mindset and lifestyle. God bless.

Jake Kastleman (57:06.958)
Everything expressed on the No More Desire podcast are the opinions of the host and participants, and is for informational and educational purposes only. This podcast should not be considered mental health therapy or as a substitute thereof. It is strongly recommended that you seek out the clinical guidance of a qualified mental health professional. If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or a desire to harm others,

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