From Fetish to Freedom: Understanding and Transforming Your inner Child w/ Drew Boa
Where sexual fantasies come from is rarely random. The specific shape of what grips you is a story, and fighting that part of yourself keeps it powerful.
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Where sexual fantasies come from
Where sexual fantasies come from is rarely random genetics or simple appetite. Drew Boa traces the specific shape of a man’s pattern to a specific moment in his formation. Which is why filters never touched his, and why the way through runs closer to Psalm 139:23 than to willpower.
A kid who loved Jesus and hated porn
Drew Boa describes himself in that period in one line: a kid who loved Jesus and hated pornography and could not stop using it.
But there was something more specific going on, and it is the reason this episode exists. It was never pornography in general. There was one very particular thing he kept returning to, and it felt, in his words, irresistible and magical.
He had no idea why. His two working theories were that God had made him this way, or that he had some random genetic flaw.
That is where most men are parked. The specificity feels like evidence of being broken in a way nobody else is.
And here is the detail that makes his story useful. He got a full year free from pornography and relapsed anyway. Not because he had not worked hard enough. Because that one particular thing still had power, and nothing he had done had touched it.
He has now been free ten years, and what changed was understanding where it came from.
The thing filters cannot block
Drew’s pattern was braces and orthodontics.
He says it plainly on the episode, so I will say it plainly here. And notice immediately what that means practically: no filter on earth blocks it. There is no website to bar. The material was available through ordinary social media and image search.
Blockers, filters, accountability software. None of it could help him, and that fact alone should tell you something about what these tools actually do.
He also mentions, almost in passing, that getting braces himself did not remove the pull. It intensified it, and turned it back on himself, which alarmed him and which he could not explain at the time.
So where did it come from?
Seventh grade. He was at an all-boys school that had started running events with an all-girls school, and he was meeting girls for the first time. Every one of those girls had braces.
Then his family moved.
He went from somewhere he belonged and loved his life to somewhere he felt like a stranger and hated it. He became antisocial, retreated to a computer and video games, and started fantasising nightly about those specific girls from the place he had left.
His summary of what the fantasy was doing is the part I want you to sit with. It was trying to complete something that got interrupted. To finish what had started and been cut off.
He adds that our sexual development can get stuck at a point. A man is twenty-three and his fantasies are still thirteen.
That is where sexual fantasies come from far more often than men assume. Not appetite. An unfinished sentence.
Arousal is not desire
This is Drew’s central distinction, and it does more work than anything else in the episode.
Arousal is what your body craves. Desire is what your heart actually longs for.
They can be connected. They are not the same thing, and being aroused by something does not mean you want it.
He walks his own example down to the bottom, and it is not really about braces at all. The fantasy put him in a position of power. Underneath it was a thirteen-year-old with no voice and no choice about a move that took everything from him, dropped into a huge school where he could not imagine making a friend or speaking to a girl.
Powerlessness on the inside. Power in the fantasy.
Jay Stringer’s Unwanted is the fullest treatment of this, and Drew leans on his observation that fantasy tends to carry both repetition and reversal. It repeats the story and it rewrites the ending.
The sexologist Michael Bader compares a sexual fantasy to a microchip, an enormous amount of data compressed into a very small space.
I found my own version of this in conversation with Drew, and it landed hard. What gripped me years ago was animated pornography, and I had never once asked why that shape. Talking it through, the answer was obvious and I had missed it for decades. The safest I ever felt as a child was watching Saturday morning cartoons. I had been abused. Safety was the thing I did not have, and my body went looking for the closest available symbol of it.
I have been free fifteen years, and I still did not see the connection until somebody asked the right question.
Naming the desire underneath the arousal is the entire move. The free 5 Hidden Desires assessment is five honest questions built to surface exactly that, and it ends with one practical next step. Take the assessment
Drew is careful about what he is not saying. He is not telling you to go and live out the fantasy. He is saying find the desire underneath it and get that desire met in a way that gives life. For him the need was belonging. For me it was safety.
Any part of yourself that you hate will hide
Now the part that will bother some readers, and it bothered me until I thought about it properly.
Drew rejects what he calls the military mindset. The version of this where a man is at war with his own sexuality, attacking every thought, exhausted from fighting himself.
His objection is not that fighting is wrong. It is that fighting yourself does not work, and Scripture agrees with him more than we usually admit. Paul’s account of trying to win this by effort ends with a man crying out that he does not do what he wants, and asking who will rescue him (Romans 7:18-24). It does not end in victory by struggle. It ends in a plea for a rescuer.
Drew points out what the three standard responses actually are. Attack the thought, avoid it, or ignore it. Fight, flight, freeze. Those are trauma responses, which means a man fighting this way is not escaping his trauma, he is performing it.
His alternative is to face it. Not indulge it, not annihilate it. Come close enough to understand it.
And then the line I have not been able to shake: any part of yourself that you hate will hide and retaliate.
That is true of a man and it is true of a boy. If the part of you that carries this is a thirteen-year-old who lost everything, and your entire strategy is contempt aimed at him, you should not be surprised that he keeps acting out.
Drew draws a distinction worth holding. Evil is real and worth fighting. But many of us raised in purity culture learned to fight against our sexuality rather than for it, and those produce very different men.
Compassion is not softness
Drew takes the word apart, and the etymology preaches.
Passion means suffering. Com means with. Compassion is suffering with.
So self-compassion is not congratulating yourself or lowering a standard. It is being willing to sit with your own pain instead of solving it, fixing it, or leaving the room.
And he makes the connection that keeps this from being therapeutic mush. That is precisely what Christ did. He did not fix human suffering from a distance. He entered it. Isaiah calls him a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, who carried ours (Isaiah 53:3-4). Hebrews says we do not have a high priest unable to sympathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15). At his friend’s grave, knowing he was about to fix it, he wept first (John 11:35).
He suffered with us. Refusing to do that for yourself is not holiness.
The trauma definition that changes who this applies to
Most men reading this have already excused themselves. My childhood was fine. My parents loved me. Nothing happened to me.
Drew’s working definition is the one that pulled me up short. Trauma does not depend on the severity of what happened. It depends on whether it got processed. If you were alone and powerless with it, it went unprocessed, and unprocessed things stay in the body and frequently surface sexually.
Nothing dramatic has to have happened to you. A move at thirteen was enough.
He also names a habit the church is particularly good at, and I have done it from a stage. We drop a true verse onto someone’s suffering. God works all things together for good. It is true, and used at the wrong moment it short-circuits the very process that would have healed them.
His phrase: grief is not something you get over, it is something you get into.
Diane Langberg has spent decades making the same case in trauma work, that healing runs through the wound rather than around it. And Drew ties it where it belongs. Choosing to feel the suffering of your story is joining Christ in his death, which is the only route anybody has ever taken to resurrection.
What this costs
It costs you the secret, and the specific one.
Drew’s turning point was a group of men in college. He had shared a little. Then came what he calls the gut-wrenching hesitation, and he told them the exact shape of his fantasies.
What came back was love, acceptance, friendship, tears.
His conclusion: my deepest, darkest secrets do not disqualify me from being loved.
You cannot get that by being loved in general. You can only get it by being loved after the specific disclosure, which means the cost is going first without knowing what comes back. Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18), but you have to get close enough to be in range of it.
It also costs you the war story. Some men have organized their whole Christian identity around fighting this. Laying that down and getting curious about a thirteen-year-old feels like surrender.
What I’d have you do this week
When the pull is disproportionate, stop and ask one question.
Drew’s rule of thumb is that when the feeling inside you is bigger than the circumstance around you, it is not really about the circumstance. Not frustrated but infuriated. Not lonely but completely unreachable. Not pleasure but a magnetic pull.
So ask: when have I felt this before?
Then work it from the other side. What does that pull promise you? Acceptance? Then ask when you felt rejected. Power? Then ask when you were powerless. Safety? Then ask when you were not safe.
That question is a time machine, and what it usually finds is a boy.
Then do one concrete thing. Find a photograph of yourself from around the age you first encountered pornography. Look at his face. Ask what he needed and was not given.
I did a version of this years ago and thought it was ridiculous. A counselor asked me what I saw in the mirror, and what I saw was a scared little boy. He had me speak Christ-centered truth over him, out loud, daily. It was the most foolish-feeling thing I have ever done. Months later I looked up and saw a man.
David prayed the same direction, and it is not a gentle prayer. Search me and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts, and see if there is any grievous way in me (Psalm 139:23-24). That is a request to be examined all the way down by someone who already loves you.
Drew’s last image is the one to keep. Pornography is a pacifier. One day you put it down, not because you defeated it, but because you outgrew it.
Heal the boy to free the man.
Kill shame. Stand strong in Christ. Live on mission.
If you want the full map, that is what The Porn Exit Plan is. It works on what is underneath the behavior rather than blocking access, and it builds accountability that holds. It is $37 and private. See the Porn Exit Plan
About Drew Boa
Drew Boa is the founder of the Husband Material podcast and Academy, where he coaches men through connecting their sexual patterns to their formative experiences, and hosts the Porn Free Man’s Conference. He has been free from pornography for ten years, having come through a struggle that filters and accountability software were structurally unable to help with. His work centres on emotional and sexual maturity rather than avoidance alone, and his approach is summarised in one line: heal the boy to free the man. His work is at husbandmaterial.com.
Sources named in this article
- Drew Boa, founder of Husband Material, in conversation on the Shame(less) Podcast
- Jay Stringer, Unwanted, on repetition and reversal in fantasy
- Michael Bader, on a sexual fantasy as a compressed store of data
- Diane Langberg, on trauma and healing through the wound
Scripture: Psalm 139:23-24; Romans 7:18-24; Isaiah 53:3-4; Hebrews 4:15; John 11:35; 1 John 4:18.
Show Description
In this transformative episode of Shame(less), host Ken Freire sits down with Drew Boa, founder of the Husband Material Academy and Podcast, to discuss the connection between sexual fantasies, childhood wounds, and addiction recovery. Drew shares his personal journey of breaking free from porn addiction, explains the importance of understanding triggers and fantasies, and offers practical advice for healing the inner child. Together, Ken and Drew unpack the power of vulnerability, self-compassion, and spiritual growth to help men overcome shame and live purposefully.
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction & Background
- 00:36 Understanding Fetishes & Personal Stories
- 03:18 Can you just to help people feel a little bit free, share what were those fetishes that you struggled with?
- 08:21 Deeper Desires & Emotional Needs
- 21:58 How can men overcome their struggles with porn and understand their fetishes and fantasies?
- 29:10 Approaches to Porn Addiction: Military vs. Self-Compassion
- 37:00 How do you help men through the Husband Material Academy?
- 37:48 Husband Material Academy & Resources
Transcript
welcome back to another great episode of the Shameless podcast today I have with me Drew boa he is the founder of the husband material podcast and Academy and he's also the host of the porn free man's conference that's actually happening here in January 2025 uh welcome Drew and that's correct right it's happening January 20125 that's right January 10th and 11th oh I love it man it's a free conference so all righty we're just throwing out value for you at the beginning of the podcast that you should go check out that Free Conference but today what we're going to talk about is how to understand fetishes and Fantasies men have that entangle them in sexual addiction and Drew you're going to be talking about your own story and how you've been helping men through this but before we do that I just want to jump before we jump into the conversation I want us just to get to know each other a little bit and for my guest or not my guest but the listeners to get to know you a little bit what's one quirky thing about you that you would want people to know I love elephant seals you know those huge seals with the the big noses and they fight each other on the beach that's my favorite animal that's awesome what turned you on to that animal being like I love this animal out of everything that's out there I was driving along the highway in California right along the coast and I saw these huge logs on the beach they looked like giant sausages I was like what are those we pull off the highway and come close to these creatures and I was looking at the elephant seals and I just thought they were big lazy ugly things but then there was an interpreter at the beach and he started telling us all about them and why they are the way they are and my mind was blown and actually that's the exact same way I feel about my sexual fantasies I used to think I don't like this part of me I wish it didn't exist but then now that I can interpret those fantasies I see so much more that I can appreciate and it's given me a lot less self-hatred a lot more self-acceptance dude that's awesome I love how you just pivoted right into the conversation for today you know it's fascinating because earlier today I was talking to my kids about the honey badger and they're like What's the honey badger and I'm telling them these stories of like they fight lions and Vipers and all this stuff and they're like oh so can they beat Lions I'm like I don't know and my son was like I want to be a honey badger it was like all of a sudden this perspective of what this thing is capable of shifted and that's what we're hopefully we'll talk a lot about today is that shift of like when you have these mindset shifts life can be transformative for you so before we dive in all the ways that you help men with their fetishes and Fantasies tell us a little bit about your story man like how did this come about with you and your struggle yeah I was a kid who loved Jesus and hated porn but I couldn't stop using it and there was a very specific type of person that I would always want to look at the images and videos all had the same theme it was the same thing that felt irresistible it felt magical to me that I always keep coming back to but I didn't know why I just thought well I guess maybe God made me this way or it's just some random genetic flaw in me somehow for some reason have this fetish and even even after getting a year free from porn I still relapsed and it was because porn still had power over me and this very particular type of porn had power and so when I went on a deeper journey and began to understand where that came from it became so much easier porn lost its power and I've been free for the last 10 years man I'm amazed and and thank God that you've been free for the last 10 years but I know that when you've relapsed that part must have felt completely destructive I remember when I relapsed it was just like oh my gosh what the heck I've tried so hard and it was around the the one or twoe marker and I was like Lord am I just gonna go back in a tail spin and have I really grown at all yeah have you even healed me Lord because I feel like I'm back at the beginning yeah you forget about all the victories all the small wins you had it just kind of like you go back to scare one all the condemnation hits the self-hatred the self-loathing and you're just like what in the world um happen so for you drew you know you talk about you had victory over porn in general but there was this one fetish that you had and I know for a lot of guys it's actually hard to talk about their fetishes right it's that one thing that they like to keep secret that they don't share because they're like I don't know if people will get me or if people are going to make me feel a certain way or judged can you just to help people feel a little bit free share what were those fetishes that you struggled with it was braces and Orthodontics which would often be found on teenage girls but sometimes also adults it could be an older woman with braces when I got braces I thought that would take away the fetish but it actually only increased it and I started to masturbate to myself and that was alarming and concerning to me and I didn't know why now that I've begun to learn more about myself it just seems obvious that well okay braces hm what's behind that where does that come from well it goes back to middle school and what I experienced when I was 13 and 14 years old and that was a time when I was surrounded by kids with braces going through puberty and and my first interactions with girls were all girls with braces and there's more to it than that but wow when I realized this is not the mature adult Drew it's the little boy in me that has this attraction and attachment it made a lot more sense and I all of a sudden had had less shame because it's it's something that I can look at with compassion and say yeah it makes a lot of sense that this little boy was feeling those things and it gives me something to do now I have a relationship with that little boy and if I had to summarize my whole approach in one sentence it would be this heal the boy to free the man that and that is such a powerful statement heal the boy to free the man and we'll do a deep dive on what you do and how you do that but let's go back a little bit because it's fascinating when you think about your fetish right when you think about braces that's not something that like internet filters block or anything like that right so you had almost unfettered access at that point to fall into your struggle right yeah I didn't need a porn website I could use functional porn through social media and Google Images so porn blockers internet filters accountability software could never help me um and so I needed a deeper approach when when you think about other men CU you work with a lot of men now in this Arena and just helping them overcome pornography what are some of the other fetishes that you see that people have that you're like wow it doesn't matter about internet blockers it doesn't matter about these things that people struggle with there are infinite sources of sexual arousal here are some of the common ones age either younger or older gender attracted to porn featuring men attracted to porn featuring women transsexual porn lesbian porn gay porn diapers feet kissing fight the new drug has research on all the different most popular types of porn anime porn um even non-human elements uh Power and domination either being more drawn to submission or drawn to bondage domination and there are endless combinations some people are attracted to more like a group type of scenario or one-on-one some people want to be a participant in their fantasy and others just observe because that feels safer but all of these things are significant and nobody's attracted to porn in general there are all always very peculiar particular things that turn us on and turn us off yeah and those things end up being I think you said it earlier or when we had talked initially right it you have found that whatever that fetish is or it could also be fantasies that you have it's actually a window to something greater a desire that you may have or something pure within you that you're longing for and what you've talked about your inner child right explain that a little bit more yeah it's not the mature logical adult you that's attracted to some of these things it's more emotional vulnerable young part every trigger tells a story and as we begin to understand those stories we Trace our triggers they no longer become threats they become opportunities for healing and Ken I was really encouraged in our first conversation to hear you share a little bit about what your triggers are and a fetish that you've dealt with in the past yeah you know it was interesting because when you and I talked we were just talking about inner childhood and you actually said something that was profound you were like lots of times when you were a child there's some security that you want and if you can't find it you try to find anything else to be secure right and uh you and I were talking and I was sharing my story of abuse and I don't know how or what you said but I remember telling you I'm like oh my gosh this explains so much why my fetish was anime right or like hentai is the proper vernacular right and I was just like oh my gosh I like was so attracted to hentai and I was like well why was I so attracted to hentai and it was because I remember the moments that I felt the safest was when I was a child right right and I was in back in the day when we were younger right Saturday morning cartoons was the jam right you put on uh wb11 or whatever it was and you're just watching or Cartoon Network whatever and you're just watching it but those were the moments that I felt the safest and when I think about hentai it there's a correlation there of like oh well that made me feel safe I want to find something that makes me feel safe here too and again I've been healed from that for 15 years but it wasn't until you and I were talking that I saw that connection and I'm like oh how did I never seen that before and it's fascinating so that's why I was like Drew we got to get you on the podcast we got to talk about this stuff right so people could realize that there are things that happen to you in your childhood or even just the way you perceive your childhood that frame why you want these things so I I gave my example can you give your example of like you had braces and in Middle School certain things started to happen what was the things that started to happen your own heart and mind that you were like oh I have this fantasy with braces when I was in seventh grade I was just getting to know girls for the first time I attended an all boy school and we were starting to have events and excursions with the all girl school and I was having my first time just getting to know other girls and all these girls who I was getting to know had braces shortly after that we moved right as that was starting to Blossom for me and I moved from a place where I felt like I belonged where I love my life to a place where I felt like a total stranger and I hated my life and after we moved I became somewhat antisocial and I spent a lot of time in my computer spent a lot of time playing video games and that's really when I began to fantasize and masturbate every night and I would be thinking about those specific girls from the place I moved from and those images of these teenage girls with braces has really burned into my brain you know what's fascinating is I love how you were talking like you felt belonged you know like there was belonging there but it was this height of like I'm feeling belonging and you're probably going through puberty so you're seeing these girls and now you're like imagine what it could be if I could find this connection with them but then all that got ripped away exactly it got totally interrupted and cut off and my fantasies were almost like trying to complete what was incomplete h trying to finish what got started but never finished and that's what happens in our sexual development we can get stuck at a certain point so even as I'm growing older maybe I'm 17 maybe I'm 23 my fantasies are still stuck at that earlier age yeah and so that's just one example I think there's another part of it where I was not specifically fantasizing about female genitals because I grew up in Purity culture and believed that nudity was evil so I really had a negative view of women's bodies and so I think that contributed to me being very drawn towards people's faces and mouths rather than the rest of their bodies got it and so there's a lot of layers there that and that's why you would say like when you heal the inner child heal the boy right and the man will be free right like that concept of there's layers of multiple things that you have to heal it's not just one thing right it's not like just complete the fantasy there's several things that have to be taken care of right right and so I'm not saying that the solution is to somehow live out your wildest fantasies but find the desire that was underneath it and fulfill that desire in a healthy lifegiving way so for you one of those desires was safety yeah safe especially with your story of abuse my story was one where I deeply desired to belong be included but I moved around so much growing up that never happened I never felt like I belong anywhere so that's what my healing really looks like is belonging and then there are more layers a sexologist named Michael Bader who said that a sexual fantasy is like a microchip it contains vast amounts of data in a very small space and so it's almost like a window as you said into so many different things that contribute to those fantasies so I would never say that somebody's experience caused a fantasy but lots of different things contribute and as we understand those contributions we see exactly where we need to heal and you know as you think about that the contribution I think about my own life yeah right and going back to desires as well whenever I find myself struggling a lot more in that area of lust right or like oh my gosh I desire someone else I look back most of the time like nine out of 10 times it's because I desire to feel emotionally connected seen or heard right again and that goes back to my abuse right where it's just like I didn't feel seen I didn't feel heard I I felt victimized so what now I want to do is like who's going to hear me who's going to listen to me who's going to be there for me and most of my fantasies and these are things I talk to my wife about uh on the regular is like oh I felt this emotional connection with this individual so now my fantasy world is thinking about this person but that person can change next week it's ultimately because of the desires that I've had in my heart that I want fulfilled so this is a huge distinction we have to make there's a difference between a Rous and desire yeah arousal is what my body craves desire is what my heart truly Longs for and those are two different things they can be connected but just because I'm aroused by something doesn't mean I desire it but that arousal is connected to a deeper desire does that make sense how do you help a guy distinguish those two because I think for most guys they connect those those are interconnected overlap I think most of the time people are going to hear that they're like what is he talking about it's the same thing right let me give you an example one of the fantasies I've had is for oral sex specifically from a woman with braces and that's the arousal okay that's the surface level sexual symptom that's what my body is telling me it wants me to do to get oral sex or to look up images and videos of that just to masturbate to that those are the urges and attractions at the surface level if we dig down to the soul level we get to the desires and for me oral sex put me in a position of power H so underneath that is the teenage Drew who felt totally powerless and Jay Stringer talks about this in his book unwanted which is a really great exploration of this he says our fantasies include aspects of repetition and reversal so this fantasy is repeating this story of my life with girls with braces and yet it's also reversing that story because instead of powerless I'm powerful at least that's what is promising to my heart that's what's going on at the soul level and why that arousal is there because it's connected to this desire to not be powerless and when I was moving when I was 13 years old I was totally powerless I had no voice I had no choice and when I went from this small all boy school to this huge public school full of people who were like aliens to me I I felt like like there's no way I could talk to girls like there was no way I could make friends and that powerlessness and ultimately a a feeling of futility anger fueled that fantasy for being the one in control yeah and the other caveat to that too is that anger fueled you to isolation actually right because you isolated yourself and then from isolation then the fantasies were able to start having free reign because you felt like you didn't belong anywhere right so you just it was a cycle that you kep it totally is and one of the most important ways to break that cycle is to break the isolation and to tell someone to open up and be honest with a safe trustworthy person about some of these details for your life yeah how did you get to that place JW because you know it sounds like you grew up at a Christian home you knew about Jesus you love Jesus you had this struggle but when did you get set free from this particular fetish and start to like share with people hey this is what's going on well it happened in stages and one of the most important stages is when I got to college and there was a group of guys who wanted to pursue Freedom together did a little bit of my story and I was a little bit vulnerable and then one day I still remember the gut-wrenching hesitation of like okay do I say it yeah and then I told the group that all of my fantas fixate on girls with braces and they responded with nothing but love acceptance affirmation friendship hugs tears and I realized that my deepest darkest Secrets Don't disqualify me from being loved that's so powerful man you actually were able to now fully experience love because you were fully known Bingo that's it that is one of the first steps toward being able to strip porn of its seductive power being honest and open bringing the darkness into the light so cleansing and these things that feel like they have a secret magical power all of a sudden don't feel so scary anymore yeah yeah I I I always think about it as like this big monster hidden in the darkness and then when you open like when there's light it's like oh it's like a little ant you know like just squash it right for you drew you know one of the steps was being fully known being fully loved walk us through some of the things that you have found to help men overcome their their struggles with porn and then just understanding their fetishes and Fantasies we've talked about opening up to other people and connecting with others another important piece of this journey is connecting with yourself and specific specifically connecting with the younger self so here are some of the ways that I help guys do that when you feel sexual attraction or urge that's not just a normal feeling but it's very strong it's disproportionate yeah it feels intolerable or irresistible when the feelings inside of you are bigger than the circumstances around you it's reasonable to assume that they're connected to past experiences not just the present something more going on so we might ask the question and if I'm not just feeling frustrated but I'm feeling infuriated when have I felt this way before hm I wonder if I'm not just feeling lonely but I'm feeling completely un unreachable oh when have I felt that way before on the other hand if I'm not just feeling sexual pleasure but I'm feeling like this magnetic pull and how does that make me feel you know maybe with the type of person in the porn that you prefer it makes you feel accepted okay well then when have I felt the opposite of that when have I felt rejected yeah if this type of person makes me feel affirmed well when have I felt like a disappointment and so we ask some of these questions and it's almost like a time machine it takes you back to implicit memories also known as body memories and often times underneath these big feelings there's a little boy underneath these big monsters there's part of you that screaming for attention yeah you know I I remember there was this one time I was working with a counselor especially when I was in the midst of like heavy recognizing all the trauma that I went through all that stuff and he asked me this one question I I'll never forget it he's like Ken when you look in the mirror what do you see and I was like dude I'm a man I don't look in the mirror for longer than 5 Seconds you know just to brush my teeth he's like no no I want you to look in the mirror and what do you see and I was like that sounds super awkward but I I did it anyways and I remember looking in the mirror and seeing a SC scared Kenny right a scared little boy because of all the pain all the trauma and the fear that I had and I was like I see a scared person and I didn't want to look in the mirror anymore I was just like I'm done I'm out I'm like what kind of voodoo magic did you just pull off I thought you were a Christian but somehow this thing brought this intense memory and he's like okay here's what I want you to do moving forward I want you to look in the mirror every single time and there was these a list of affirmations that I had to do I would say they're Christ centered affirmations but affirmations that I was speaking life into that little boy yeah and uh I was speaking identity into him and I remember looking at myself one day and I'm just like going through the list and I'm just like this first honestly to for everybody listening to the first time I did this it was so awkward it was so weird I thought that this was the most foolish thing I could have ever done but I I was like I'm going to try it right and I tried it and little by little I just remember when it clicked and I remember looking in the mirror and I didn't any longer see the seven-year-old boy I saw a 19-year-old man in front of him and I'm like this is who I am and like something clicked in me and it was because what I felt like I was doing was like I was healing the inner child that you were talking about throughout those affirmations that I was walking through that's so beautiful sometimes you can also do that by finding a picture of yourself and spending some time with that picture find that fifth grade you or that second grade U or maybe the time of your life when you first encounter pornography look into his eyes listen to his heart what does he need that's where we start Drew you use a lot of language and you said this earlier actually at the beginning of the episode where you want to help men with a lot of self-compassion and a lot of things out there right now when it comes to Ministry and helping men is kind of like the alpha male like let's go to war let's go fight like let's kill sin which in sometimes you need that right there's a spiritual battle that we all do face I don't want to negate that but your language seems very different walk us through that and help us understand how do we for men who are listening to this they're like that seems so foreign to use that kind of language because they're more in the war mentality yeah I call it the military mindset so many men pursuing freedom from porn are feeling frustrated and exhausted from fighting a con battle against themselves against their sexuality problem with the military mindset is that It ultimately leaves you in a a battle that you can't win so whenever we resist a thought or a feeling we actually reinforce it research has shown that whatever you suppress will come out one way or another in fact by trying to get rid of sexual thoughts and feelings we give them more power whenever you're fighting against something you're giving it power so when guys are trying to get free they have the thought of maybe I should go watch porn immediately they want to either attack that thought avoid it or ignore it which by the way is a trauma reaction fight flight or freeze so you're stuck in that battle you're still stuck in your trauma What If instead of fight flight and freeze you could face it not having to avoid it forever and not trying to annihilate it but instead of B ing yourself befriending yourself because there's a little boy in there who needs to be loved if you're trying to fight a battle against him it's going to be frustrating it's going to be exhausting evil is real we need to fight evil in fact I would say we need to fight for our sexuality but a lot of us who grew up in Purity culture especially felt like we need to fight against our sexuality here's the truth any part of yourself that you hate will hide and retaliate oh that's good say that again any part that you any part of yourself that you hate will hide and retaliate and that is especially true for the sexual parts of us so that's why we need to do this work of coming close to what's happening inside of us getting to know that little boy giving him what he needs and maybe helping him grow up yeah that's a very different approach it is a very different approach and I think hopefully most men you know there's two things actually in this approach that I think is going to be the hardest thing to encounter and I'm sure this is what you encounter is most men are lack the ability to want to go deep with their emot because they're scared right like they're like if I open up about this stuff what's going to happen so most men only have like three emotions right happiness anger sadness that's all they know they don't know the Deep tentacles of those three but the second one is really that like self-compassion for themselves as they walk through this how do you two-part question here Drew how do you help them to open up more right and then two how do you bring Christ in into it so that they can start to see like wow Jesus actually can heal all these things well you're so right that men are often emotionally immature emotionally illiterate because we're taught that to be a man means to be less emotional oftentimes guys will apologize if they're feeling strong emotions like I'm sorry that I'm crying right now and so a huge part of what we to help guys feel more safe to be emotional is just to go first and be vulnerable and the guy Witnesses somebody else being vulnerable that makes it a lot safer the word compassion is a compound word passion means suffering like The Passion of the Christ and Cal means with compassion means suffering with so self-compassion means suffering with myself specifically my feelings not trying to solve my feelings not trying to fix my feelings but just being with them in the pain in the deep dark cave that I sometimes feel like I'm in the middle of compassion means I'm right here I'm not going anywhere anywhere I'm with you and I love you exactly as you are right now I don't need you to change I'm here and that's how Jesus relates to us that's what he came to Earth to do to suffer with us you know Dre as I listen to you one of the things that I think you are trying to communicate with people is that whenever there's been wounds that have occurred to you or things that have happened to you as a child we try to disassociate with that person and really now you're saying hey let's come alongside and be with that person and then also see how Jesus was actually with us through the the Meer through the muck through the pain that like throughout all of history Jesus that's what he came and did he came to redeem the lost right he came to be with those who are hurting he did not come to save those who are well y or those who are are saved right like he came for the poor he came for the needy he came for the lost that's kind of what I'm hearing you say am I right on that mostly I feel like that's what I'm saying because a lot of times we don't allow ourselves to feel we distract ourselves with our phones or we say oh it was no big deal or we slap a spiritual truth on our suffering like oh you know God works out all things together for good and in doing that we Short Circuit the process of healing so a lot of guys will say I had a great childhood my parents love me everything was fine yeah not realizing that trauma does not depend on the severity of your suffering trauma depends on whether or not it was processed and if you were alone and Powerless then it was unprocessed no matter how severe it was no matter if you would call it a big trauma or a little trauma if it didn't get processed it is still stored within your body and it often will come out sexually that's why we can't just skip over our suffering or spiritualize it we have to get into it grief is not something you get over it's something you get into fully and Jesus is the one who can help us do that because he experienced death fully and Resurrection so as we choose to suffer and choose to really allow ourselves to feel the suffering of our story we're joining Jesus in his death so that we can experience his resurrection power true that that's so good just the thing about his death burial and resurrection and that's how we have to process our grief that's so good uh I love it man Drew as you think about helping more and more men right you got that fre conference that's coming up January 10th right yeah um I'm sure you guys will go deeper into these things but how do you help men I know that you have the husband material Academy but what kind of stuff happens there that maybe for some people who are listening might be like man I love what you're saying I need help I need to be pointed in the right direction the academy walks you through the process of healing the boy step by step from the very beginning with support so we have these coaching calls every week where men are sharing the specifics of their childhood experiences they're sharing the specifics of their sexual fantasies taking the risk to be known allowing themselves to be loved connecting the dots so that we get empowered and then ultimately Meeting those deeper needs and desires with God and with each other and within ourselves we're becoming sexually and emotionally mature men and that's what this is about it's not just about purity in the sense of trying to avoid negative things it's about maturity it's about growing up and so we're doing that week in and week out in the academy and the free conference is going to be a live experience where you're going to have experts walking you through various aspects of this and I can't wait that's awesome man any final thoughts that you have for our listeners who might be like and I think specifically where they might just feel stuck like I resonate with what Drew saying I know I have inner child problem like issues that I need to heal through I have fetishes I have fantasies but man I'm just scared I'm stuck and I don't know what to do just any final words of encouragement the fact that you have listened to this entire episode is evidence of your bravery and the beauty and strength of your heart because you could have turned this off you could have done something else but instead you're here choosing to ask these questions and be vulnerable that says so much about who you are you have not given up there is hope and if you're like me probably tried a lot of things that haven't worked you might even think that you've tried everything and I'm asking you to consider if maybe just maybe there's a different way and it's not based on fighting a battle it's based on being loved and you might think oh yeah I know God loves me or I know what love is all about there's a difference between intellectually agreeing with love and experiencing love and the more you experience it the less power counterfeit versions of love will have and eventually you'll get to the point where you don't need porn anymore I like to say porn is a pacifier one day you'll drop it because you've outgrown it and I don't know when that will be for you but I will be jumping up and down and celebrating with you every step of the way amen I am the same way it's a symptom that's not that's not the root issue let's solve the the root issue uh people are going to see a lot of freedom and that's our goal that's why you have the husband Mater Academy that's why I have started the Shameless podcast is because that's what I want for men is that they would find that freedom that relief that love to experience where they' be like God I know that you've created me for something far greater than this superficial mudpie like CS Lewis likes to talk about it right um he's like I'm made for so much more and they start living that out Drew as we wrap up here uh if people want to know more about what you do or just reach out to you what's the best way go to husband material.com perfect simple husband material.com I also put that in the show notes Drew thank you so much for being on the podcast and for doing this and for helping uh men learn to love themselves and be on Mission so thank you thank you thank you and for those of you who are listening reach out to Drew reach out to myself if there's certain things that you want follow-up questions about I'd be more than happy to answer and help you and so will Drew that's what Drew's been doing for years now is helping men overcome this and be husband material so with that hope you guys have a great day and God bless