Overcoming internal shame

Today I was reading a book ''No more Mr Niceguy' in this book Dr Robert Clover has suggested that as a nice guy we have many traits and to escape them we resort to different compulsive behaviors like porn and Masturbation.We develop toxic shame within ourself.To get our life back we need to overcome this shame by expressing our dark secrets with some safe people. As revealing your dark secrets helps us to overcome fast and helps us to get out of that shame.

My question is I am suffering from PIED and was porn addict for almost 15 years
Do I share this secret like '' I cant hav erectction at all' to some safe people in my life .Will it help me overcome my shame and help me to gain my lost self esteem?? Does expressing my self helps in faster rebooting ?Has anyone tried doing this in real life ??? Please suggest and share your experience.

That is a great book, you made a great decision in reading it. I think expressing your shame to someone definitely helps. If you have good health insurance, look into seeing a psychologist/therapist. That is what they are there for is to help their clients work through emotional and embarrassing things in a safe space. I've been seeing one and it has helped a lot. Essentially, what my therapist helped me learn as well is that a lot of the shameful things I've done really aren't my fault. I had a lot of things happen to me which caused me to behave in certain ways. Once you realize your past actions aren't your fault, you won't be ashamed of them anymore.

If the person who has right perspective of the matter, then saying your secret will help to reduce the burden. I did that once, not to a therapist., to a friend but he said the same suggestion as a normal person say. Didn't bring any improvement.

I think sharing your dark secret with someone trustworthy will help on your path to recovery ... but it may not be a silver bullet. Low self-esteem is also something I am struggling with. My ED problem has made me feel like less of a man. Something I am trying to work on is basing my self-esteem, self-worth, and male identity on things other than the ability to perform.

> Once you realize your past actions aren't your fault, you won't be ashamed of them anymore

I don't agree with this. There may be experiences in our past that may explain why we pursue bad behaviors, but every single one of our past actions are our "fault" (so long as we had a choice in the matter). We should take personal responsibility for our failures, make corrections, and then move forward. I think that is a critical part of personal healing.

When you share with someone who you trust you break down the shame. When you hide and keep it a secret it is almost like you feed the shame and it gets bigger. I am not sure if you are familiar with the Harry Potter books ( I know I am exposing my nerdy-ness, lol) but I feel like it is that whole Voldermort thing. You give the secret power by allowing it to have this hold on you. We are all broken and imperfect, everyone has their screw ups. The person you tell, no matter who they are has their own set of issues too. By realizing this and sharing it you not only gain more authority and control of your healing and recovery but you show others your vulnerability and it gives them a chance to realize that they are not alone in their secrets. I have also realized through encouraging my husband with his recovery how he has so much more grace for others. Before he was a lot more judgemental towards people (I was too). Now we both tend to see people's mistakes as a starting point for growth.

As far as the mention above about feeling like less of a man, I understand that a lot of men with PIED feel this way. My husband carried this attitude for a long time, he had very low self esteem for a bit. We talked one day and I had mentioned a perspective that he said was helpful to him and so I want to share it here too.....

How many actual minutes of a person's life to they spend having actual sex? Compare that with how much time they spend not having sex....how  much time to you work, play, spend with friends, live? Why base your entire self esteem on something that you only do a fraction of your life when you do so many other things so much more?  Sex and weather or not you can gain an erection is literally only one small part of a relationship. I think weather a person is kind, loving, funny, caring are WAY more important. If you really think about it then you would probably agree, right?

For my husband, when he finally thought about this he totally agreed and started seeing just how incredible a person he was. He is a good dad, friend, husband, hard worker and so much more! He finally started caring less and less about his PIED. That was when we both realized that his confidence and self esteem was impacting his performance and may what started as PIED had turned to PA and when he stopped caring and started accepting who he was and started seeing himself as an amazing person erection or not then his erections started coming back. It will be ok. I know it is scary but know that weather or not you gain an erection does not define the person you are!