92. 'The Way of Integrity' Part 3: Overcoming Addiction through Acceptance; Embracing Suffering for Personal Growth

In this episode of Unhooked: The Breaking Porn Addiction Podcast, host Jeremy Lipkowitz delves into Part 3 of The Way of Integrity series. Jeremy explores the concept 'the only way out is through,' emphasizing the necessity of confronting personal suffering to achieve growth and recovery. Drawing from Martha Beck's book, Jeremy examines the nature of pain and suffering, presenting three transformative steps to break free from your own suffering demons. He also shares a powerful exercise for overcoming fear, offering listeners practical tools for their recovery journey. Tune in for insights on facing your fears, questioning painful thoughts, and ultimately moving toward freedom.

00:00 Introduction to the Episode

00:46 Recap of Previous Parts

02:36 The Concept of 'The Only Way Out is Through'

03:19 Facing Your Personal Inferno

04:22 Learning to Sit with Pain

08:28 Steps to Unchain Yourself from Suffering

11:51 Exercise to Overcome Fear

15:23 Conclusion and Next Steps



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ABOUT JEREMY LIPKOWITZ

Jeremy overcame addiction, shame, self-judgement, and depression in his early twenties with the help of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness not only helped him let go of destructive behaviors, it also allowed him to connect with deeper meaning and purpose in his life.

For the past 10 years Jeremy has been teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices at universities, recovery centers, and companies throughout Asia and the US. He holds a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Genetics and Genomics, and spent several years at Duke University working towards a PhD in Genetics & Systems Biology before he turned full-time to teaching mindfulness.

Jeremy is also an ICF certified Executive Coach. As a former scientist and academic, Jeremy has a great passion for bringing his EI based coaching skills into the corporate and professional world. He realizes how powerful & transformative these practices can be for skeptics and senior-level managers. He is known for his calm and grounded demeanor, his expertise in habits and high-performance, and his compassionate approach to transformation.

Transcript

 You're listening to unhooked the breaking porn addiction podcast. 

On today's episode. Part three of the way of integrity series. 

Exploring how the only way out is through 

how we have to go into the Inferno in order to come out on the other side.  Exploring what your personal hell is? How do you identify your problem areas in life. And then the three steps to breaking free, the three steps to overcoming some of these hell realms. And stay tuned to the end of today's podcast for a very cool exercise. That will help you overcome fear 



when you are feeling stuck  so stay tuned. 



So welcome ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of unhooked. I'm your host, Jeremy Lipkowitz. Today is part three of the way of integrity series. As a reminder, we are going through the book, the wave integrity by Martha Beck. We have already gone through the first two parts in that previous two episodes. 

So if you have not listened to those episodes yet, Go back to those episodes and start with the first in the series. This whole thing will make so much more sense. If you start from the beginning. 



Today is part three looking at the way out.  

What we've gone through so far in the first two episodes, the first two parts of this series. Is starting off by identifying when you are off track in life in some way. And again, this doesn't have to mean that you are completely off track. 

It doesn't mean that you're. Shooting up heroin in a dark alley some way it can just be the recognition that your life is not what you had hoped. It would be that you are lost in some way that things are not going the way you want. That you need help. That you're afraid. It can be so many things, but some aspect of recognizing when you are not living your best life. 



So that was the first part. 

The first step on this journey was, again, that recognition that you have lost your way. The second step that we looked at was the exploration of what strategy you've been employing in life. Looking at what got you into that darkness. What got you into that place of feeling lost? And not running away from that truth. It can be very painful to admit to ourselves that the strategy we've been employing, the strategy we've been using, isn't working.  And so that it mission, that honesty to yourself takes a lot of work. So that's where we've been in the first two parts of this series. Today, we're exploring the next part. And Martha Beck and her book starts this off.  With a quote that is very common in the self-help and healing circles. Which is the only way out is through.  And so it's this understanding that if we want out of some bad situation, if we want to.  Make it to the other side. To have our freedom to be free from some problem. The only way out of that is to go through it, to not run away from it, to not try to go around it. To not try to circumvent the issue, but to actually go through the suffering itself, which is what's. 

So many of us are trying to avoid or escape. And in the story of Dante, this takes place when his guide, his teacher, the poet Virgil. Takes him to literally the gates of hell. 

So this is a quote from the divine comedy where they walk up to the damned gate, the gates of hell. And on that gate, it says this. Through me to the city of sorrow. Through me to eternal woe. Through me to the way among the lost people. Abandon all hope. Ye who enter here. So it's a pretty stark.  Vision a stark image that we have, that we come up to this gate.  This gate of hell, this gate of suffering and it literally warns us. 

It says this is a stark and scary and nasty place. There's a lot of suffering in here.  If you want to come in just abandoned hope. This is where the lost people go. This is where the suffering is. And in order to progress on our journey, we actually have to make a conscious decision to walk into that suffering. And this concept is such a revolutionary concept that is going to be so helpful on your journey to recovery from addiction. 

If you can really follow through with it.  Which is learning that.  One of the most radical things you can do.  In your recovery is learning how to not run away from your pain. But how to sit with it. Whether it's emotional pain or physical pain.  Learning how to be with those unpleasant emotions and unpleasant feelings is one of the strongest and most powerful things you can do for your recovery. There is a, a quote that I remember hearing in my own journey. This was maybe a decade ago and this again comes from Sri Nisargadatta. 

Maharaj who I mentioned in the last episode.  And this comes from his book. I am that which follows a few conversations between him and his students. And one of his students was asking him in a Q and a session about pain and how to deal with pain.  And at some point, the student says two, three, and a saga dots at Mahara. 

She says pain is not acceptable. And so Nisargadatta turns back to him and says this beautiful thing he says. Why not. Did you ever try?  Do try and you will find in pain, a joy, which pleasure cannot yield. For the simple reason that acceptance of pain takes you much deeper than pleasure does. So this understanding that if we can learn how to accept pain, And again, understanding the difference between pain and suffering, pain is. Something physiological. 

There's some pain that is unpleasant. Suffering is.  The way we relate to that pain.  It's the way that we have resistance to the pain in our life, wishing it were something else. But if you can learn how to sit with pain to accept it.  This will transform your life because you no longer need to run away from your pain. 

This is what addiction is. Addiction is when somebody can't be with pain. Whether it's physical pain in their body or an emotional pain.  It could be boredom. It could be stress. It could be loneliness could be fear. It could be a knee pain, a back pain, chronic pain, any kind of pain. And when you don't know how to sit with it, you run away from it and you run into. You're numbing device.  Whether it's your phone. 

It could be. Netflix, it could be junk food, it could be sex. It could be porn, whatever your coping mechanism is. It's a way to run away from pain.  And so this powerful revolutionary practice of turning towards your pain, turning. Towards, whatever it is that you're going through and not running away from it. 

But learning that being with it is the gateway to your freedom. And this is also what meditation is about. What Vipassana is about the Pasana meditation. Which mindfulness meditation really comes from this practice of the pasta. Is this ability to sit with what's happening to observe what's happening without running away from it. To sit with knee pain and observe it and say, oh, okay, this is unpleasant. 

This is painful, but I don't need to run away from this. And in doing that, you are strengthening this muscle. Of equanimity strengthening this muscle of being with your pain. And this again is your gateway to freedom. Because if he can't be with pain, whenever something difficult comes up, something unexpected stress. Some emotional discomfort, some fear arises. 

You're just going to run away. You're going to run into. Pleasure.  Distraction avoidance, all the things that we do in our addiction. This is part of the process is going through rather than trying to run away. Or run around it.  Now after this, in the chapter, following this, the only way out is through we then go into the Inferno. So Dante goes into the Inferno with his teacher Virgil. And a lot of beautiful things happen. 



And in this chapter, what I want to highlight is what Martha Beck titles, as how to Unchained yourself from the Inferno. 

So again, we're following Dante. He goes into the gates of hell. He walks down and sees all these different levels of suffering. And there's different kinds of suffering this different levels. There's this kind of torment or that kind of torment.  And.  The question is how do we Unchained ourself from the Inferno?  And so Martha Beck offers three steps. 

These are the three steps that Virgil offers to Dante and we can do them.  The first step is to observe your own suffering demons.  To observe your own suffering demons. This is the process of sitting with your darkness, turning towards your suffering. The very first step is to stop running away. And to sit there with these demons, these sufferings, these pains, whatever it is. The second step to do. 

Martha Beck says to question the absolute truth of your painful thoughts. 

And so here we look at suffering a little bit more closely, and we, again, we understand that pain and suffering are different pain is something inevitable. It happens to everyone. Suffering is how we relate to our pain, how we relate to our life. It's the stories that we're telling ourselves that we're believing to be true.  And so it's really important in this process of going through the Inferno. Is to take time to really examine the stories you're believing about yourself.  So you might take some particular topic. That you're suffering about might be your porn addiction. And then to examine the stories, you're believing that the things that are making you suffer about this. So it might be some story around I'm on lovable. If, because I watch porn, this makes me unlovable. Or because I watch porn, people will be disgusted by me or no one will accept me. Whatever it is to start to examine the thoughts that are causing this suffering in your life. It can also be related to the craving. The thought might be, I need to have this sex in order to be happy. And less, I have sex with this woman and that woman, I won't be happy. That is also a form of suffering.  So the second step is really taking the time to examine. What's the story here. 

What's going on behind this suffering.  What's. Causing the suffering. The third step as Virgil offers and Martha Beck explores in the chapter is to then move on.  Which is we sit down. We don't run away. We observe the suffering and then we question it, is this really true? And then the third step is we move on. 

We don't just linger in that truth. We don't linger in the reality that we're broken in some way we move on, we say, okay, maybe there's another reality. I don't need to stay locked in this. I don't need to be consumed. By this fear, I don't need to be believing in the story that it's telling me.  So those are the three steps that we can use to break ourselves from the chains of suffering. Again,  Observe the pain observe the suffering. 

What is it? Question it is it really true? Is the story I'm telling myself about this true. And then move on. To not just sit there and wallow in your pain and suffering, but to say, okay, it's time for me to move on. 

There is finally an exercise towards the end of this chapter that I really loved. And this is two. This is offered by Martha Beck. Where she. I asked you to think about some fear that you have in the past. She says, think of something that you used to be afraid of, like really afraid of. In your past and that you're no longer afraid of. And so take a moment right now, if you're listening to this, just think of something that you feared to be true, maybe it was being bullied by someone or that if If you've told your truth to someone, you would get teased and made fun of and something that you really feared and it no longer scares you. And then here's what she says.  Is to remember being truly scared of the thought. 

And then imagine going back in time to meet your younger self. Sit down with that child and say, I am from your future.  I can tell you with 100% certainty that this thing you fear won't happen. And you won't always be afraid of it. 



And then to feel the ring of truth in that, for me, one of the things I was afraid of when I was a kid was whenever I would go use the toilet and sit down on the toilet, I was, for some reason, afraid that there would be spiders underneath the toilet, like waiting in the toilet bowl. 

And so for, I remember a couple of years, whenever I'd go use the toilet, I would look in the toilet bowl to make sure there are no spiders in there.  And I was always afraid of that. And now I'm no longer afraid. It doesn't even cross my mind.  And so to just envision, I can envision myself sitting with my younger self, and telling myself that and say, I can tell you with a hundred percent certainty that this thing you fear won't happen and you won't always be afraid of it. You don't have to fear this anymore. 

This is what we do for the past version of ourself. Now here's where it gets interesting.  To next call to mind one of these hell thoughts that you've been having currently, one of these stories that you're telling yourself about your life.  And then imagine you can hear your own voice from the future. From a future version of yourself, it's saying in a confident and comforting voice I am from your future.  I can tell you with 100% certainty that this thing you fear won't happen. And you won't always be afraid of it. 

It is such a beautiful practice to do, you know, to to recognize there were things that you've been afraid of in the past. That never happened. And you can comfort that inner child by saying, Hey, I can tell you this won't come true. You don't have to be afraid of it.  And imagine the future version of yourself, telling your current self. Hey, I know there's something you're afraid of. 

There's some thought that you don't want to visit. Something about your life, that you're scared to look at something that you're afraid of happening. People might find out about my porn addiction, whatever it is. You might have this fear of something coming true. 

And to envision a future version of yourself coming down to comfort you and saying. I could tell you this won't come true. The deep fear that you have about this, that you're unlovable, that you're broken in some way that you'll be left behind whatever the deep fear is. To envision a future version of yourself saying you don't have to worry. I've got you in this. You don't have to be afraid. So that is one of the ways we can start to Unchained ourself from these helm realms is too. To really examine the underlying story and to free yourself from that. 



So that is what I wanted to share today. 

Just another snippet along this journey, the story of Dante, we'll be continuing to explore this over the next couple of weeks as I go through this book. I think it's, there's just so much juice here for the path of recovery. I think there's a lot that we can learn from this book. So as a reminder, if you want to follow along with me, feel free to pick up the book yourself. And start reading it. Obviously I'm going through it. In a concise way. 

Um, I'm giving you guys the golden snippets from what I see, but there's so much more in the book and I would highly recommend checking it out for yourself. 

So that's it for today signing off from another beautiful day in Amsterdam. We'll catch you guys on the next episode.