Exploring Porn Addiction and its Impact on Relationships with J.K Emezi

Warning: Explicit Conversation around Sex and Porn

Ever wonder if your relationship can survive a porn addiction? That's what we explore in this potent conversation with J.K Emezi, a recovered porn addict and expert in sexual compulsive disorder. We tackle the impact of porn addiction on relationships, the role of shame, and the multiple 'selves' an addict often navigates. This episode is not for the faint-hearted and may trigger some, but it's a necessary deep-dive into a topic that often lurks in the shadows. To learn more about J.K and recovery from sexually compulsive disorder visit  https://www.elevatedrecovery.org  https://www.youtube.com/@ElevatedRecovery

For more information about Rev. Rachel Harrison and Recover Your Soul- visit the website www.recoveryoursoul.net  use the code TRYASESSION for 40% off your first Spiritual Coaching session when you book on the website.

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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:47

Today's episode on Recover your Soul. I'm interviewing JK Emezi and he is a recovered porn addict, sexual compulsive disorder and, if you have youngsters, this is not an episode for anybody to be listening to. That is not of age. It has some explicit content in it and I definitely want you to be aware that for some people, it might be triggering. This is important, important information, but we're talking about it, so I want you to be aware. Porn addiction is incredibly prevalent. It has grown immensely with high speed internet and having everything on our phone. What used to be difficult and complicated to get is now right at our fingertips and is becoming a real crisis in terms of a lot of relationships and prevalent in men in their addiction. This very honest conversation around how do you recognize, how do you support, how do you stand next to, how do you leave somebody who has this situation in their life was really insightful to me. I learned a lot in this conversation and I know that it can be really helpful whether you have somebody in your life who's struggling with this addiction or know somebody who is, and pass this episode on to anybody that you think it might be useful for. I think this is a topic that we don't talk out loud about enough. We're here to support each other through it all. Enjoy the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 2:20

Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, co-dependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives, as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to Recover your Soul. I'm Reverend Rachel and I am really looking forward to this episode today. I'm so glad that you're here. I have JK Amaze with me sitting on the screen on Zoom. Welcome, jk.

J.K Emezi: 3:13

Thank you for having me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:15

I'm really looking forward to this episode because he is an expert in sexually compulsive disorder, porn addiction and a recovered addict himself, and now helps others with this addiction. This is such a big piece of soul recovery in terms of us learning more. Maybe we don't have somebody in our life directly who has this addiction, but it's a really prevalent addiction. I think that we're going to have lots to learn today. Thank you for being here.

J.K Emezi: 3:48

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to share.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:51

Tell me a little bit about your journey. Let's just jump right in and tell me about your journey and how you've gotten to this place where you now are healing thousands of people from this addiction.

J.K Emezi: 4:04

Rachel, I never thought growing up that when people ask you what you're going to do, you say I'm going to be a porn addiction recovery coach. That was the furthest thing from my mind. That's a direction life led me. I was exposed to pornography at the age of eight. You know I was a kid who loved comics. I'm 39. I was a latchkey kid. Parents had me at home taking care of my sisters. We had a nanny who was actually a cousin, who would come in and check on us. She brought a comic book one day. I was hell bent on finding out what the content was. She just wouldn't let me look at it. Being the persistent kid I was, I found it. It was pornographic in nature. Here's the thing At eight years old you may or may not know about sex.

J.K Emezi: 4:59

You may have an inkling. I don't know what it's like these days, but I knew it was something naughty that my father and mother didn't let me look at. But here I was, looking at this thing and I knew exactly what it was. The startling thing about it was that it was exaggerated because it was a comic. I'm not going to say anything about the plot or anything that would trigger you, but let's just say I was scared. There was a lot of adrenaline and I was just worried that this was what adults did, because that's how it was depicted. That leads to a very important point that if an eight year old can view something which is visual and sexual in nature and immediately translate it into their own little mind, at eight I could not get aroused. But something happened. That was every time that I experienced a strong emotion which I identified as negative rejection from my parents, needing intimacy. I knew that nudity would change my state. I didn't know that state was born of shame and shock. I just knew that in that moment it was a sort of presence, but I didn't know what presence was. I just started seeking nudity all the way through my adolescence.

J.K Emezi: 6:27

Once I had puberty and I learned how to masturbate and I experienced orgasm, I felt that was the reason for this. I was like yes, so there's something more. In my mind, orgasm became the new escape. Orgasm and pornography, you could say, was my first relationship. It provided me with everything that I could not get from the outside world. You know what it's like when you're a teenager your arms are growing longer than your legs, you got acne, you're rejected your head, just all the weird things that happened. You feel everyone's dumb. And so I just retreated into pornography. I was a daily user, multiple times a day. It wasn't just masturbation, it was masturbation with pornography. Until I hit my early 20s and around 17 years old I realized something was wrong, rachel, because I could not build intimacy with anyone. I was actually a weird kid. I didn't realize that. I just didn't realize that I was the perverted kid. I just thought I was like everybody else. But by the time I got to my early 20s I matured a little bit more. I knew I had a problem.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:50

And you're 39, so what did that look like? Was it magazines? Was it videos? It's so prevalent now and easy just to get on your phone, but it wasn't like that then, so it was probably even harder to search for than it is for young people today, or for not even for young people, for anybody.

J.K Emezi: 8:10

Yeah, it was VHS, it was video, cds and DVDs when those came out, and then it eventually became not high speed internet but just dial up internet. And that's the interesting thing, because prior to that, to access and there were magazines, of course but prior to that you had to sometimes get in a bus or get on the train and go to the other side of town and go to the CD shop or the video store, make sure nobody knew you, get the VHS or rent it and come back home. There was so much to it. I would say that I was exceptional in the sense that there weren't as many porn addicts as there are today, because access wasn't as easy. But what happened with me was, once I had access to high speed internet, pornography it took off, and that's the case for a lot of men, especially men who are in their 40s, 50s and 60s. A lot of them were not porn addicts in the traditional sense of the word. They didn't have a compulsive behavior, they just viewed porn and it wasn't a big deal. That was a generation. It was like whatever.

J.K Emezi: 9:24

But high speed internet changed it for everyone, and that was about 2006, with the advent of YouTube. Now there were tube sites. Now there was an actual algorithm that got people hooked on video and the porn sites went with it and immediately pornography became free, because they realized that instead of having a paywall where you could watch a little bit and pay for it which is the way it worked for those of you who don't know and never exposed to it Now they could offer it for free and they could get millions of viewers and they could monetize it through advertising instead of having people pay. So now it was free contents that brought eyeballs to the website for advertising, but that has created a generation of addicts, because our brains are not designed to process that much nudity or that much sex. I tell clients that, just to put it into perspective, I'm like if you are addicted to pornography now, or you even watch pornography casually now on your phone, you have, without a doubt, been exposed to more people having sex than every single one of your ancestors before you.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:44

Easily.

J.K Emezi: 10:45

Easily yeah.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:46

Easily.

J.K Emezi: 10:47

You were built for that and you weren't.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:51

For somebody who has somebody in their life who is leaning towards pornography, or even now that's the easy to be able to go onto a dating site and start texting or sexting somebody as the partner. You think I'm not providing something. It's about me. I'm the problem. I'm not beautiful enough, I'm not sexy enough, we don't have sex enough. Tell me more about that relationship of what the addiction is versus actually being in a loving relationship.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:30

If you're ready for soul recovery, as a spiritual coach I can support your healing to help make real changes that will bring you a life of peace, happiness, connection and abundance. You can also work in smaller groups by taking a deep dive in a Zoom workshop or with me in person at a retreat or an event. Join others on the Soul Recovery Path once a month for the free Zoom support group or daily on the private Facebook page. Visit the website recoveryoursoulnet to book coaching sessions with me or find all the information you need about soul recovery dates that are coming up and how to register for those groups and workshops. To support the podcast and the community, check the links in the show notes to make a small monthly donation or a one-time donation of your choice. That will make a huge impact to support this community and the Soul Recovery mission. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.

J.K Emezi: 12:29

The first thing about pornography is that it never depicts intimacy, and many people confuse sexual intimacy with sex. So you'll hear people say, oh, I learned about sex from pornography. Yes, you can learn about the basics. I'll be the first to admit that I didn't actually know where a vagina was, even though I had biology books in high school. Pornography showed me that. Okay, cool, that was helpful, but beyond that, nothing. Everything was just now. They're not. Back in the day they said plots. Now there are no plots. So now it's just people having sex. So the first thing to understand is that there is no intimacy.

J.K Emezi: 13:11

So if you have a male partner, for instance, who is struggling with this, one of the first signs is that there is going to be a very mechanical and performative aspect to sex. All right, so just what are you trying to do? Right now? It's like what do you do? I don't go that way. It doesn't work this way.

J.K Emezi: 13:34

Once you start feeling that disconnection and I tell our we work with men and I tell our clients to take cues from their partner, like she is intuitive, she knows that something is wrong, she knows that there is a disconnect you don't, because you've completely rewired your brain to just focus on the stimulating aspects of it.

J.K Emezi: 13:58

So there's no connection there.

J.K Emezi: 14:01

That would be the first piece to be aware of.

J.K Emezi: 14:04

You also mentioned that sometimes a partner feels that she is not enough, and I think for the partners watching this, what I've noticed and I've been working with men for about 11 years now, this year would make it 12, is that in most cases your partner actually loves you.

J.K Emezi: 14:22

He loves you very much. He actually cares and I won't go as far as to say, but if you didn't care he would leave, because men can check out in a relationship and just hang out they're very good at that too but in most cases he cares about you. It's just that he's exposed himself to novelty and, biologically speaking, he is wired to if we spoke strictly biologically to inseminate as many partners as possible. I tell men that you have a choice. You can rewire your brain to monogamy. That is your choice and when you got married or you got into a committed relationship with someone, that was the responsibility that you took on. You chose to do that. But if you're very casual about your pornography viewing, if you're very casual about that, then that biological aspect of you will quickly take over.

J.K Emezi: 15:22

And when your partner sees that something primal in her is triggered as well, because she immediately feels that something is wrong. She feels that Especially the longer you've been together. Right, the length of time in a relationship is also key. Maybe a body has changed after having children. Maybe you'll have gone through bouts where work or business was stressful and neither of you or one of you was not sexually receptive at that point. These are natural things in a relationship, and if you all didn't communicate and those were rough patches where nothing was addressed, having pornography show up later on in the relationship can seem painful. So the first thing I would recommend would be confronting gently your partner about that and sharing how you feel.

J.K Emezi: 16:13

I don't even think that's the problem. I think the problem develops when your partner has been actively hiding it from you, or you are shocked at the extent of their behavior, or you're surprised at the sort of material that they are actually viewing. Because when you find the pornography your partner is viewing, oftentimes it doesn't match with what you thought they were into. Right, because you sleep in someone's arms for many years, you think you know what they want and suddenly it's the opposite. They've used words of affirmation with you for so long and you're just like yeah, I'm safe, I feel assured, I'm with the right person and this person wants me. And then you see that they're viewing something that's the opposite of that. You're just like I thought you weren't into that Like we've hung out and you've had statements about that. It's not your type, but it seems like. I'm looking at your browser history, this is what you're into. What's happening.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:24

What I read on your website and that I really related is an addict recovered alcoholic myself. We have these selves, that person who's laying next to you, holding you, does love you and does feel those things and does want a certain relationship with you. And then the addict is an entirely different. I think of it like an entirely different outfit. You put on a different outfit and it consumes you of what that is. I would say I'm not going to go drink and I would be driving to the liquor store to go buy alcohol. I'm not going to drink today. And it didn't mean that I didn't love my family. It didn't mean I didn't love my husband. It didn't mean I didn't want to have my life, but it consumed me. And so what's interesting is sexually compulsive disorder, this part that is the compulsive part, that completely takes over. And so you, as the spouse, is looking at this human being and saying who are you, and the truth is they don't even know who that person is. Is that accurate?

J.K Emezi: 18:28

Absolutely, you nailed it. I think it's good to know that you have some experience with that, because you now understand what it like. You have understood what it feels like to tell your loved ones that you're going to do one thing and it's almost as if you're possessed by something else, which is just the change in your nervous system.

J.K Emezi: 18:49

There are certain needs that alcohol or pornography or sex or orgasm are fulfilling for you, but oftentimes these are needs that have not been communicated with your loved ones or you haven't taken the time or had the opportunity to find the appropriate coping strategies, so it's often something you've kept to yourself, which is one of the reasons why, if you have a partner that's struggling with this, you're shocked, because you didn't know that your partner had needs that were not being met. So I think the nuance is understanding that it's not about the pornography or the sexual behavior itself. It is understanding that is simply a symptom of something deeper that is not being addressed. So that's what we focus on.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:39

Yeah, so the needs. I want to have more clarity on that, because I think our immediate response is I'm not having enough sex with him. But would you find that it is a physical need that you're just talking about, or is it like my alcoholism? It wasn't the alcohol that was driving me, it was the hole in my heart that was driving me, and so when I addressed what I call soul recovery this underneath part of really looking at who am I and why do I feel disappointed in the world, why do I feel sad, why do I feel depressed and I'm using alcohol to fill it Are those needs physical needs or are they emotional needs that are not being addressed?

J.K Emezi: 20:22

Yeah, I think the go to for a lot of people is the simple belief. I call it simple because it is simple. It's the first thing we go to that it's sex. But I tell partners the rare we get a lot of emails from partners just very hurt is going. I've been watching your stuff, jake, I've been listening to you and this man will not listen and I know you're the guy who can call him out, because I know you can call him out. Everyone else has been really soft on him and I'm just frustrated. Is it that I'm not having enough sex? So I'm going to get outfits, I'm going to do this. I'm like it's not going to make a difference. It is not going to make a difference.

J.K Emezi: 21:06

Sometimes the addict himself thinks that it's not having enough sex and that doesn't do anything. The reasons why men engage in this behavior are they usually do it to deal with large amounts of stress, to deal with loneliness or a lack of intimacy has nothing to do with sex. They do it because sometimes they have unresolved issues that come up later on in life and when it comes to the loneliness and the intimacy part, that's just a lack of closeness. They can be in the relationship and they just do not feel close enough to their spouse and that's something that's the structure of the relationship or their lifestyle as a couple may have to change. When it comes to unresolved issues, it depends if one of the things we see commonly because we work with a lot of business owners and men who are in sales type careers right when there's a commission and they are responsible for how much they make we notice a lot of men as they hit their late 30s and enter their 40s become a little bit disillusioned because they had certain expectations of where they would be, where their family would be, and they cannot tell their spouse because they feel that it was their responsibility to be a success. Sometimes there are just unresolved emotions or sometimes just not sure. Maybe we had kids too young, maybe we started too young, maybe I'm seeing how much my kids cost. Who do you talk to about this? So they speak to me about it. I don't say that much. I feel that I was with her for too long before I got married and I had opportunities to have other sexual experiences and I didn't. And as I'm at this cusp of youth and getting older as I enter my 40s, I'm now conflicted right and we have the stereotypical midlife crisis situation, and I feel like this is an outlet for me All this to say. There are many different reasons, but one of the least likely scenarios is that y'all are not having enough sex, and I wanna caution anyone against. It's always great to have more sex in most cases, but if you see that as the solution, you're setting yourself up to get hurt If you find out that, despite having more sex with him, he's still viewing pornography.

J.K Emezi: 23:47

We look at the fantasy piece of it and you need to understand that you cannot compete with a digital avatar. You just can't See he's viewing different genres, different ethnicities, different body types, different types of sex, different sounds, and all of this is coming from his fantasy. There's nothing wrong with our fantasies. The only issue with fantasy is that we are all afraid that if somebody knew what our fantasies were, they would think we actually wanted to act those things out, and so we keep it within us.

J.K Emezi: 24:23

Pornography has taken human fantasy and acted it out. So chances are your husband has ran across certain fantasies which, if pornography did not exist as a high speed medium, he may never have viewed or even thought about. But now he's been watching it in secret, probably for years. If you try to compete with that, you're going to be severely disappointed. So if he has this problem, the first step is for him to start seeking help. He needs to completely cut it out at first so that he can reset his arousal template. And in the process of resetting his arousal template, as long as both of you are together, even though the journey is going to be incredibly painful for you more than for him he's going to go through his own pain, but you will go through the betrayal trauma In many cases some women don't, but those that do as long as he's with you, there is that opportunity to rekindle that intimacy. And the good news is I have seen hundreds of relationships start anew. That's the reason why we're called porn reboot not porn recovery.

J.K Emezi: 25:40

Recovery is about recovering that which you lost to your out of control behavior. You've lost the intimacy 10 years ago, five years ago, your lives have changed. Your kids have grown, you've had all sorts of experiences. You cannot recover something from the past. It's gone. The only thing that exists is now. So what can we always do in the now? In the now, we can always hit the reset button. We always have that moment, because everything is arising and passing. Every moment is arising and passing, and that's the beautiful thing about being a being is that you can hit that reset button and you can just rebuild everything from the ground up. And as long as you believe that we can start from where we are now and we don't have to recover, we can use the past as a reference, then there's always opportunity for your relationship to thrive again.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:37

I think that's so powerful and I'm hearing it through the eyes of pornography, but it's so true in the eyes of all addictions and that the lack of intimacy is generally what the pain is. It's not the drink or it's not the porn, it's that there's no emotional connection, that whatever that behavior is pulling somebody out, and it comes from their pain, it comes from their internal pressure, it comes from the hole in their heart rather than the circumstances around their life, somebody not being good enough. I didn't drink because my family was who they were. I drank because I was hurting and I can clearly see how porn, which is just such a heavy hit, especially for men of a primal energy, can so easily become a way to get that hit of relief for that hit of fantasy and taking away from life. Because life is hard, life is complicated, life is complicated.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:43

When we had our meeting before, what I really appreciated was the reminder that we need to find the goodness in ourselves, that as an addict, I had to remind myself that I was whole, that I was worthy of it, and I often say to my sole recovery community if we see our partner, the person who are codependent with or who is an addict as broken, then we're setting ourselves up for what's the right word for it. We're setting ourselves up for trying to fix somebody instead of trying to see somebody through their own experience and through their healing process for themselves, which is entirely different than fixing somebody. It's like being with somebody, and yet there are times when it is appropriate and healthy to stay and work through that process together. And then there are times when it's appropriate and healthy to say this relationship isn't going to work for me anymore and to move on on both ends. What are your thoughts on that?

J.K Emezi: 28:52

How. I absolutely agree. Many partners fall into the trap of trying to fix. We actually do not work with men who are in a codependent relationship. Often, on the intake interview, we will have your partner show up with you, and the reason why is we just want to screen for codependency, because that will interfere with the process. The truth is that often this behavior existed often existed before you both got together. His masturbation habits, his arousal templates, was established before you actually met. It's just magnified right now.

J.K Emezi: 29:35

His biggest fear at the end of the day is if you knew who I was, you wouldn't love me. He doesn't feel worthy of being loved and that's why, as he goes deeper into his addictive behavior, you feel that disconnect. And oftentimes, when a partner discloses that he is struggling with this behavior because there has been disconnection for so long, you are so excited that he is being vulnerable and you're just like, wow, he's opening up to me. I always love it. The rare times that he's this vulnerable, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to help him and I'm going to support him and I'm going to be his partner. That is a wonderful idea.

J.K Emezi: 30:24

Unfortunately, it doesn't really work, and the reason why it doesn't work is because you are too close to the problem and this isn't a habit. This is a compulsive behavior and you did not get together in most cases with this person to be a parent to them. You got together to be a partner with them. In many cases, you think, when they disclose to you that you are setting up a partner dynamic, because you don't know that this is an addiction. So you are not setting. You cannot have a partnership with an addict. It is never a healthy relationship. There is a fine balance, but oftentimes you will choose to be his accountability partner and support him.

J.K Emezi: 31:14

Big mistake, because he will keep engaging in this behavior and the times that he wants to hide it, his shame comes up again because he's supposed to be partners with you. He wants to be your accountability partner and he made you promises, but the behavior still remains. It didn't become less because he chose to confide in you. He's still going to act out because he needs to go through some sort of treatment and thus he will hide more from you. His shame is magnified because now you know and you will get frustrated eventually, when you find out.

J.K Emezi: 31:50

What often happens is you start questioning. I made a deal with this adult that I was going to support him through this, and he just keeps going back and doing it over and over again. Remember, you'll have other responsibilities. There's so many things happening. And in the moment when he shows up after a very long day, he just hey by the way, kevin mentioned anything about your behavior, what he's like? Yeah, I've just been in a big relapse. I've been like, what do you mean? I've just been watching stuff the past week. Yeah, like, but, honey, I thought you told me two weeks ago that we had an agreement that you would. Yeah, just, I'm sorry, that's, and that's the last thing you need.

J.K Emezi: 32:32

So the suggestion I give is, if you are aware that your partner is struggling with this and you make the choice to support them, have some space. First of all, they are doing their work, but you also need to be doing your work. You need to be doing your work to understand their compulsive behavior. And if you realize that there is pain or there is hurt or there is betrayal, you have to address those things, maybe with a group, maybe with a coach, maybe with a therapist. And the best form of support, the ideal form of support, because every couple's dynamic is different. It's one in which there is awareness. There are check ins, like checking in with their progress, but you are not their accountability partner and you are not giving in to that.

J.K Emezi: 33:30

It's a selfish urge to urge to be okay, so you slipped. What exactly did you watch? That's you seeking validation? You want to find out if they've hurt you again by viewing that specific type of pornography. And for the partner, if you're listening, that's often the most challenging thing. It's what exactly have they been viewing? Because I need to feel that they still care for me and they're not looking for something else. I need my insecurities to be taken care of. Your partner will not do that. All he can do is do his best to end his behavior. Unfortunately, the insecurity part the work has to be done by you and you have to trust in his reboot or recovery process.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 34:21

I could keep going on that, but yeah you've just described such a powerful part of soul recovery in general, which is we come here to soul recovery because we think if something else would be different, if my husband would quit drinking, or if this codependent relationship, or if my adult kids wouldn't be acting out, or if my husband wasn't watching porn, then I could be okay. And you walk through the door and you realize I don't have control of any of that, but I can take my power back and I can be okay. If I'm okay and you work on being okay and then from that place, then we can look at what is happening from what it is, instead of all of our attachment around whether it proves that we're good enough. We need to be good enough in ourself and recognize that everybody's having their own experience and support each other in a way that is very different than how generally we are raised as kids in our dynamics of what that looks like, which is that I will fix it for you. We're in this together. I'm going to check in about whether you drank today or watched porn today and I'm going to help you, man, turn the attention to yourself and help yourself and let them help themself.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 35:39

And if you can communicate the way that my husband and I have changed how we communicate with each other allows us each to have our own experiences and the intimacy that has been built through that has brought a marriage that was dying back to life, because we can share with each other and we're not needing each other. In the same way. We're both addicts. We're both still working. I'm still working on my codependency and he's still working on his addiction. So I love that awareness and addiction is hard for the person. Who's the addict and the codependent is addicted to the person. So it's a big circle of wanting the world to help us feel better about ourselves and ultimately, the goal is for us to learn how to feel better about ourselves so we can let go of the addiction. So we need the whole circle of self-reliance and self-forgiveness and self-love to be able to heal.

J.K Emezi: 36:44

I couldn't have said it better we're on the same wavelength.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 36:48

I love that. I know, gosh, we really could go on forever and I'd love to have you back for another episode to dig in deeper. Tell us about how people can get ahold of you. I know you have a lot of free resources, so tell us about how to do that.

J.K Emezi: 37:04

Yes, you can find me by searching for my name. Last name is spelled E-M-E-Z-I my initials are J-K-M-A-Z. You can find us at elevatedrecoveryorg. We have a podcast it's called the Porn Reboot Podcast, with over 500 episodes which teach you about the reboot system. You can also find us on YouTube Just search for J-K-E-M-E-Z-I, and on Facebook you can find us by searching for Porn Reboots.

J.K Emezi: 37:35

So we have a free group with free coaching which is provided weekly. It's discreet, it's anonymous. That is probably the biggest thing about what we do. A lot of people are concerned about having that first conversation about their behavior. I just want to make it clear having a conversation with us is not an obligation to do anything. Sometimes you just need a space to speak to somebody who understands exactly what you're going through. So we have men who have spoken to us five, six years ago, who only decided to start working with us today, and that's because they moved further in their control of their behavior over those five years and now they're ready to actually work with a professional. So I would highly recommend you check out our YouTube, our podcast as well, and then visit the website. We've got free video trainings. We've got a free e-book. We've got free courses, we've got challenges, we've got quizzes, we've got it all. So I would say educate yourself, get comfortable with your behavior and just see what happens.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 38:44

That's amazing. I'm so grateful that you're here today sharing this with the Soul Recovery community and just so grateful that you're out there being a light and people who are dealing with this in their own lives on both ends the addict and also the supporter because I think the more that we can understand the compulsive behavior and how it gets there, that we can back off, do our own work and attend to ourselves. As I like to say, Thank you for being here today.

J.K Emezi: 39:17

Thank you for having me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 39:19

Until next time, namaste.

J.K Emezi: 39:20

Namaste.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 39:23

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Recovery Soul podcast and being part of this amazing and growing community. If you loved this episode and you want even more, there is a bonus episode with even more content every Friday. This is by subscription. You can access that by being a Patreon member, and there's three tiers of giving of your choice or an Apple podcast subscriber. Once you have subscribed, you have access to a whole back catalog of episodes as well. If you would go to the website recoveryoursoulnet, and I would love for you to subscribe to email updates so that you can keep posted of everything that's going on different events, what dates are coming up? Any reminders? There's only a couple emails each month.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 40:07

I hope you follow Recovery your Soul on social media. You can find us on YouTube, instagram, facebook, the private Facebook community page, tiktok and, if you want guided meditations, look for Reverend Rachel Harrison on Insight Timer. I really encourage you to take advantage of the one-on-one coaching. This is a unique intuitive connection between the two of us.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 40:33

There are nine steps to soul recovery and I do use those nine steps to loosely guide us through whatever you're coaching that you need, but really it's about creating a way for you to feel comfortable around your healing of your past, looking at the situations in your life. What are the patterns, what are the beliefs that are holding you back? Breaking free from those patterns, breaking free from those beliefs, letting go of control, letting go of the people around you and taking your power back, discovering who you are and who you want to be in the world, and how I can support you to do this. And also, you're sharing this podcast with your friends. Putting five stars, leaving reviews, really sharing this with others is growing the community. Thank you for being part of this community. Thank you for supporting Recover your Soul and I know that together we can do the work that will recover your soul.