Becoming Safe for Your Own Longing
A Trauma-Informed Search into the Nervous System, Safety, and Belonging for Sexual Addiction Recovery
There’s a certain ache that never really goes away.
Not because God wants you to stay miserable,
but because your body and soul were made to long—
for communion, safety, and reverence.
So many of us grew up being taught that our longings are dangerous.
Something to suppress.
Something to white-knuckle.
Something to shame.
But here’s the truth:
When longing is exiled, it doesn’t die.
It just hides.
And finds secret ways to cope.
Suppressed desire doesn’t purify desire—it distorts it.
And when the heart is neglected,
the body will cry out—subconsciously, compulsively—
through addiction, self-rejection, and shame.
Especially where sexuality and sensuality become the content of the compulsion.
So what am I trying to say?
That even the parts of your mind that reach for relief in hidden ways
are carrying something sacred about your story.
Something that doesn’t need more condemnation.
It needs communion.
It needs care.
Imago Dei: Longing as a Call to Communion
You were made for union, not just abstinence.
Your longings are not sinful in themselves.
They are directional.
They were placed in you by God—to lead you through the flesh toward His Presence.
But that ache has also passed through the Fall.
Through trauma.
Through loss.
Through nervous systems shaped in households and churches that didn’t know how to hold it.
And so… the ache often gets warped.
Longing collapses into compulsion.
Desire hardens into dissociation.
Spirituality becomes strategy instead of surrender.
Let’s name what’s often been missed:
We’ve all gotten too close to the sun—
and burned.
We’ve been scorched by shame, secrecy, silence.
And in the absence of emotional safety,
our bodies learned to cope.
To soothe.
To survive.
But we weren’t made merely to survive.
We were made to be seen.
Held.
Co-regulated.
Healed in relationship.
That’s why self-regulation alone will never be enough.
You need the Body of Christ.
You need others.
And you need to stop condemning the part of yourself that found a way to cope.
Three Wounds: How the Pattern Forms
The First Wound – What happened to you: the trauma, the neglect, the disconnection.
The Second Wound – What you came to believe about yourself as a result: shame, unworthiness, self-disgust.
The Third Wound – What you’ve done to cope with that pain: addiction, fantasy, repression, denial.
As Dr. Thomas Lewis puts it:
“The brain is an organ of adaptation. It encodes experience. When we are young, the pattern of our emotional environment gets laid down in our nervous system like grooves in a record.”
These grooves run deep.
But they are not destiny.
When the Body Becomes a Battlefield
Your nervous system doesn’t lie.
It prophesies.
It keeps speaking even when misinterpreted theology silences you.
It keeps aching for safety, relief, and connection even when your will tries harder.
And if you’ve been caught in cycles of compulsive behavior—pornography, masturbation, fantasy, hookups—this isn’t just a moral issue.
It’s a physiological, emotional, relational wound crying for relief.
Your addiction is a trauma response.
A learned behavioral strategy.
It is not your identity.
It is not your fault.
But it is your responsibility to heal.
Grace Doesn’t Bypass the Body
The good news?
Neuroplasticity is real.
Grace is real.
And they’re not in competition.
Confession: Deactivates shame through relational vulnerability.
Eucharist: A sacred encounter of co-regulation with the Body.
Contemplative Prayer: Enhances mindfulness and emotional attunement.
Sabbath: Trains the prefrontal cortex to rest, reset, and receive.
Meditation on Scripture: Integrates the narrative self with Divine meaning.
But here’s the thing:
If you’re not safe enough to feel...
you’re not safe enough to heal.
That’s why true healing begins with presence, not performance.
With safety, not strategy.
With compassion, not condemnation.
A Practice for Calming the Compulsion
Adapted from the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model
Try this next time the urge arises:
1. Pause & Notice
“I’m feeling the urge to ___. Something in me is seeking relief.”
You are not the urge. You’re the observer of it.
2. Orient
Look around. Name 3 objects.
Feel your feet. Ground into the moment.
Say: “I am safe right now.”
3. Track Sensation
Where do you feel the craving in your body?
Stay there for 30–60 seconds.
Gently ask:
“What would I have to feel if I didn’t act out right now?”
This opens the door to the root of the pattern.
4. Reorient the Energy
Do 10 slow squats
Wring a towel and exhale deeply
Place a hand on your heart and one on your belly:
“You are allowed to feel this in a regulated and moral way. You belong.”
5. Connect
Journal. Text a safe friend.
Pray:
“Jesus, help me become a sanctuary for what aches in me.
Let Your love meet me in this ache, so I no longer have to numb it.”
With practice, the compulsion becomes less a punishment—and more a portal.
A Personal Note
I’ve walked with men and women carrying decades of shame and secrecy.
I’ve also walked this road myself.
And I’ve seen that real change happens—not through force, but through becoming safe for your own longing.
When your nervous system is no longer your enemy...
When your story is no longer hidden in secrecy...
When grace touches the fragmented flesh...
That’s when healing begins.
That’s when communion becomes possible again.
What’s Next
I’m co-creating a small therapeutic group for men navigating the intersection of trauma and unwanted sexual behaviors.
This will be a sacred but also clinical space for nervous system healing, psychic reintegration, and spiritual reconnection.
If this resonates with you—or someone you love—that lives in California, you can join the waitlist here.
You are not too broken.
You are not too much.
You are not unworthy.
You are loved.
You are good.
You are becoming whole.
With you in the ache and hope,
Kolbe
For Further Reading
The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel van der Kolk
Be Restored – Dr. Bob Schuchts
20 Practices for Embodied Healing – Jan Winhall
Unwanted – Jay Stringer
The Drama of the Gifted Child – Alice Miller
Anatomy of the Soul – Curt Thompson
The Holy Longing – Ronald Rolheiser
P.S. I’m also designing a guided Incarnational Healing course—a gentle pilgrimage into the soul, body, and Presence. If you’d like to be among the first to know when it opens, join the course waitlist here.
