Samir Gardner argues that men return to pornography because they subconsciously believe they cannot attract women. He recommends shadow work, a Jungian practice of confronting painful memories, to break the cycle and learn self-validation without relying on others' approval.
There is one subconscious trigger that so many people have that they're not aware of, that if they were to remove, it would change a lot for them. Now, it is very simple and I'm going to present it to you, okay? But please don't take this video as just another video that you watch where I just teach you something and then you're like, oh, sounds good. And then you just move on to another video because what I'm about to present to you is crucial. And when I say it's crucial, it is because after years of talking to people that struggle with PMO, almost everyone that I talk to seem to have this one struggle that the people that don't struggle with PMO, they simply have fixed. So what is that subconscious trigger? It's very simple. It is the simple belief of ability. Okay. What do I mean by ability? Imagine this. This is how I used to think. I used to think, well, yes, I can quit porn and masturbation, but the problem that I have is I don't think that I am worthy or that I can attract the opposite sex. So think about it from a rational standpoint. If I use something like PMO in order to satisfy a desire like intimacy, and then I cut off PMO, meaning I cut off what I think is the outlet for intimacy, but then in order to get real intimacy, in order to really satisfy that need the right way, I believe that I can't Now I'm essentially left with zero outlets. Do you see how that could be an issue? But here's the thing, it doesn't have to be that way. When I really left PMO, right, one of the things that I worked on was not just being free from this bad habit or removing other bad habits like video games, like music, like social media, like all of these things that would constantly distract me at that time. Even though removing those things were extremely beneficial, I still had a limiting belief that I kept ever since I was a kid. Ever since I was a kid, I believed that no woman would ever find me attractive. And then throughout my teenage years, I would go to school, for example, and not only would I be bullied, but I had no woman shown any signs of interest in me whilst the people around me were confident with women whilst I wasn't. I was the shy, timid, nice guy that thought that women were too good for him. I would literally think that if I were able to be in a relationship, that would mean the world to me at that time. If let's say there was a school project that we had to do during class and they said that they would randomly assign you a partner, I would start stressing out and I would hope that I wasn't with a woman. Not because I didn't like women, not because I didn't find them attractive, It wasn't because of that, but because I would start stressing and sweating whenever there was a woman. And when I was younger and I would be, for example, paired up with women randomly in class, my palms would start sweating and I was so shy. And that had just a toll on me because I then believed for so many years that I would maybe even die alone and never really get attraction from the opposite sex. So guess what? Imagine that I were to leave PMO, but in the back of my mind I think, I'll never get intimacy, I'll never have a real relationship. Well, sure, I can go on day 5,000 of no porn and no masturbation, but then you and me probably know that at one point we would want intimacy, right? Not to say that PMO gives intimacy, but you get my point. So I went on and started to work on that belief. I remember at that time I started doing what we call shadow work, which is a popular concept from Carl Jung where I would go and look at the deep, dark, my desires and my past and what happened to me and reliving those exact moments where I got bullied, where I got rejected, where I got laughed at. And then I asked myself one question, and this is a question I ask to almost every single student of mine, and that is, how can I validate my own self instead of trying to use women to feel validated? It might sound overly simple, but this is the exact question you want to have the answer of so that you can literally go, okay, from a man that is constantly seeking the validation of women, and on top of that, thinks that he's never going to be able to attract one, and therefore he goes in PMO because of that belief, to a man that doesn't require the validation from women, actually has an interesting life that women are actually more attracted to, and therefore you're going to be able to fully realize that yeah, you can quit porn and masturbation right now because eventually at one point, if not soon, later, you'll then meet your real desire for real intimacy. What we as humans are, have that innate predisposition for. Because I see so many people trying to quit porn and masturbation and so on, but then they know that they don't want to live a lifestyle where they're fully abstinent and they want to be married and have intimacy there. But then it's like they don't even believe that they can get that woman, that they can get married to. It's kind of like saying I'm going to give up junk food, but then you have no healthy foods in your refrigerator and you only have junk food there. So it's like, sure, you might have the desire to stop eating junk food, but if you get hungry, you're going to go and eat that junk food because that's all there is for now. But the moment you change that and you realize, oh, there is a grocery store where I can get healthy food there, you realize, oh look, I don't need junk food anymore. Oh look, now I actually can really move on from junk food. Forever. Now, please, it is not to say that it is impossible physically to quit porn and masturbation, even if you believe that you can't get a woman. But what I'm saying is that you can facilitate that process. And that I would argue that as human beings, especially as men, as we have a form of innate ongoing drive to satisfy that innate desire, that if we were to actually abstain from PMO, we would find back that drive and hunger, which will then allow us to take action which will then help us create that inner conviction that we are able to attract women as it would be the only option anyway. So this is just a small tip. I hope this was helpful. If you wanna know more, I have a free school community in the description. You can join it now. I post there and I have also many videos that you can watch on my YouTube channel where I go more in depth. Anyways, I'll see you guys in the next video.
