The True Source of Confidence: Healing Porn Addiction, Shadow Integration & Authentic Power

In this episode of the Bridger of Worlds Podcast, host Ioannis Kokkinos dives deep into one of the most misunderstood topics in modern spirituality and self-development: true confidence.

Ioannis shares his 7-year journey of healing, including his recovery from long-term pornography addiction, the emotional patterns beneath it, and how this process transformed his relationship with masculine power, self-worth, and inner truth. He explores how social media comparison, societal conditioning, and external validation erode authentic confidence—and how turning inward is the only real path to reclaiming it.

This episode reveals:

• How porn addiction impacts confidence, identity, and masculine expression
• The role of shadow work in building unshakeable self-esteem
• Why social media creates chronic self-comparison and insecurity
• How to reconnect with your inner truth, intuition, and self-love
• Why integrating your shadow is essential for emotional and spiritual growth
• How to rebuild confidence from the inside out—not from external achievements

If you’re on a path of spiritual awakening, masculine embodiment, emotional healing, or breaking addiction cycles, this episode will speak directly to your soul. Ioannis offers grounded insights, personal revelations, and transformative reflections to help you step into your most confident, conscious, and authentic self.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Welcome
• 0:15 Returning to Rhodes
• 1:21 The Struggle with Confidence
• 2:07 Personal Journey and Podcasting
• 7:10 Impact of Social Media and Pornography
• 16:53 Overcoming Fear and Embracing Confidence
• 19:41 Conclusion and Future Plans

Transcript

Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bridger of Worlds podcast. I'm your host Ioannis Kokkinos. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're on YouTube watching, thank you for tuning in and if you're on one of the podcast platforms, thank you for tuning in as well.

Returning to Rhodes

So as you can see, I am back in the space that I was in before I left for Crete, I am back in Rhodes. For those of you who have been following me for quite some time and especially watching me, it is the same familiar space where I did start the Bridger of Worlds podcast. After being six and a half months in Crete, I am back in Rhodes for the winter season.

I have a few things that I am working on and a few things that I will be bringing to the table and to this space. So, you know, stay tuned for that. Um, this is yet again another episode that's a bit more in the moment, a bit more spontaneous. I took a few days to unpack, to unwind, to ground, you know, to anchor into Rhodes' Energy because Rhodes has its own energy signature.

Uh, similar to Crete but also different. So yeah, I wanted to jump on here because I wanna start podcasting again and really speak to what is alive in me here and now. 

The Struggle with Confidence

And what I do want to talk about today is confidence. And I know so many of us struggle with confidence. A lot of us have different definitions and different versions as to what confidence can mean.

Some of us need to express or do certain things to feel confident as opposed to others who do not, maybe will not need to do or express those things to feel confident. Right? It does speak to our individual natures and what we need and what we have within us and be forthcoming as far as expressing and, you know, bringing that and bringing that out into the world.

Like, for me, that's what confidence means. And I've, of course struggled with confidence for most of my life. 

Personal Journey and Podcasting

Um, even podcasting, right? I'm, I'm still fairly new. I've not closed a year yet. It'll be a year in February that I've been podcasting consistently an episode a week. And I have to say it was hard throughout the summer combining podcasting with work, but I did it.

And even just doing something that is so new and feels really unknown right, is such a big confidence booster. And I feel like starting this podcast has given me a lot more confidence because everything I'm expressing was obviously within me and there was never any outlet for it. I mean, okay.

I wrote here and there on social media and my Instagram, I used to write poetry and just small, little, small little articles or documents, word documents as far as what I was moving through, but being in Greece for the last seven years, my journey's been a lot more introverted and esoteric, meaning that I've really felt like I needed to just be with myself and really just commune with my inner world and my inner, my inner experience.

It's not that I'm antisocial or that I didn't miss socializing because I was a very, um, I was a very social person before moving to Greece. But as I mentioned in the earlier episodes, for some reason, for some reasons, as soon as I moved to Greece, I felt like the deep knee to turn more inward.

And, you know, this is a. Initiation of sorts. This is a milestone or a stage right? In our evolution when we decide to venture into the unknown, is to really come to meet ourselves is really to come to face, face, face ourselves. And I think it makes sense for me because I was really codependent once upon a time.

I really depended on relationships and friendships and the connections of my life, even family, to validate me, to express how worthy I was, or able and capable. That part, that connection to myself was cut off, was severed, and it was, and it is the reason why I had no confidence.

I know confidence is thrown around a lot, and it may be not, quote unquote like a spiritual term, right? Like we don't often talk about confidence in the spiritual communities or even in the spiritual teachings like. Who gives a shit about confidence? Like when you reach Nirvana, right?

And connecting to the, the bliss of the void that the, the, not the nothingness that is everythingness, right? And to feel one with creation. But confidence is very much a human need, and it is very much a part of a human experience. And no matter how spiritual we may become or how enlightened we be, we may become, you know, I practice spirituality daily.

I meditate daily. I am constantly trying to bring consciousness into everything that I do and to everywhere that I go. But I'm human, right? And we're all human. And of course, I want to feel confident moving through the world. I want to feel confident showing up. I want to feel confident when I'm speaking, when I'm expressing.

So like let's say in the last few months, or eight months, nine months, whatever it's been, of podcasting. no matter how much spirituality I'm bringing to the table, right? All the teachings, all the knowledge, all the information. I need confidence to do that. Like we all need a certain type of confidence to express what we have within ourselves.

And that can even be love. That can be friendship, that can be romance, that can be intimacy, that can be creativity. Um, truth right? And confidence for me is really interweaved with truth. It's really interweaved and interconnected with our truth. And I think a big part of why I didn't feel confident all those, all those years is because I didn't know who I was.

I thought I knew who I was. Um, but like, as I said before, I was very disconnected with the part of me, or I was just disconnected from the, the dynamic of also validating myself of also telling myself how worthy I am, how able I am, how capable I am. 

Impact of Social Media and Pornography

So obviously growing up, a lot of us, most of us were thrown into the snake pit of systemic conditioning, right?

All the movies, all the ads, all the commercials, all the, even not like social media now. I mean, I didn't grow up as a child with social media, thank God, but just constantly being bombarded with who's dating who, who's fucking who, who's buying what, who owns what, right? We're just in a constant state of comparing ourselves or being reminded that I don't have that, that the other person has, or I'm not what I want to be.

The other person is who I want to be. I think that's always been around, right? But obviously in the last decade or so, because of social media, it's really, really grown exponentially, and it can be a complete and total confidence destroyer, right? Because we lose sense of who we are, we lose sense of what our actual talents and skills are because we just play this game of comparing ourselves and losing touch with the core of who we are and the core of who we are sometimes may not be so evident, right? Like as I said, when I moved to Greece, which has been, it's been over seven years now. It can take a lot of inner seeking, it can take a lot of demanding emotional work. And this does depend on our emotional history, our, our trauma history.

Obviously, if you've been following me for a while, you know my main thing or my main trauma was moving through porn addiction for close to 15 years. That obviously destroyed my confidence. Right? And even while watching, the post repercussions, like this constant state of comparing myself to what I was being exposed to on screen, for me, completely barricaded me. So it's not to say that all men who watch porn or even are addicted to pornography will participate in this toxic game of comparing and wanting to measure up a certain way. Uh, I'm, I'm smiling as I say that because it's such a circus and it's so fake, but when you're young and innocent and vulnerable and you're already hurting and you're seeking to numb the pain, it can feel like a world of confidence and strength and power, and you're witnessing these people behind a screen, expressing dominance and expressing raw sexual energy and raw sexual power in a certain way, and that does nothing else but take away your confidence, right? I mean, that was my, that was my case, and I'm not gonna speak for every man or even woman who has become addicted to pornography. We all have our reasons for that because it's never the thing itself, right? It's never the thing that we're addicted to.

It's what brings us and what the thing represents that is the addiction. So porn as a symbol was power. That's what it symbolized. Power and confidence, right? So I used to see these men that felt like they were big and powerful and confident and it's everything that I didn't feel because I was moving through high school.

I was, you know, a growing teenager, even in my twenties. And I just remember constantly feeling lack and pornography just magnified everything. Pornography just made everything very, very, very loud within my psyche, but I already showed up to porn feeling lack. I already showed up to porn feeling a certain way because I showed up to porn because I hadn't grieved.

I hadn't mourned my transition from elementary school to high school. And I talked a little bit about this in the earlier episodes, but I mean, because today I want to talk about confidence and I guess I also want to talk about like what it's taken for me to become confident and come into this space.

And I'm not, I can't say I'm like 100% flying confident, right? It's still work. It's daily work. But no matter where we come from, and no matter what we've been through, we all deserve to believe in ourselves and to know our truth and to know who we are. And as I said, confidence is very much interconnected with knowing who we are. And I guess I feel more confident now more than ever because I have a much, much more solid idea of who I am. And that took work. It took grueling emotional work. It took solitude, it took inner seeking, it took traveling, it took meeting new people, right? Going into circumstances and you know, uh even, even replaying certain scenarios and certain patterns of my life that were no good for me, that were unhealthy, and especially in those cases, right? Like when the patterns show up and when certain scenarios keep coming into our livelihoods, they're there because they're being asked to be released. If certain patterns and certain scenarios keep repeating, it's because the, the resolution hasn't been made. The, the energy, the energy of the dynamic, the energy of the scenario has not been resolved. So it's been a lot, a lot, a lot of patterns repeating themselves in these last seven years.

Of course, with Greece, there's a lot of ancestral, generational stuff tied to it, right? So I've talked about this in previous episodes, so I'm not getting into all that today, but I guess, really what the takeaway message for this episode is that in order to feel confidence, you have to A, first and foremost love yourself, and B, know yourself, know thyself. And sometimes that takes a hard truth that takes like a hard, long, good look in the mirror because it's easy to throw things on and to compensate with material things, and acquire and purchase. Find means to escape. Find means to avoid. Fine means to numb, right? Um. But the truth is always there and sometimes the truth can be very painful. But the truth is also what liberates, and when I say the truth can be painful, it's the truth of having self abandoned yourself or having self rejected yourself, or having not dealt with some part of yourself that's been needing your attention. And this is where shadow work comes into play, right? So this is the part of us that we deny. This is the part of us that we reject.

This is the part of us that we don't want to have anything to do with. So if I were to paint my shadow as something as far as this episode is concerned, it would be the porn addict, right? Like that part of me that was addicted to porn and needed porn for whatever reason, and that part of me is not something I bring to like day-to-day life.

It's not someone, it's not a version of myself that I would present going out into the world as I left my house. So that's, that was my shadow, right? But that part of me was very much magnetizing and attracting and even manifesting scenarios and circumstances to keep reiterating.

That part of me that needed attention, that needed love. And it's not that the, it's not the truth that I, that the truth was not that I was a porn addict because that was not my truth. Yes, I lived it. Yes, I experienced it, but if that was my truth, then I would still be the porn addict, right? But I'm not the porn addict anymore, and I never technically was. It's just a version of myself that needed to heal and needed to, not hurt, needed to, um, grieve, but didn't grieve, needed to feel confident, but didn't feel confident, right? So it's this version of myself that felt deep, severe lack, but deep, severe lack can't be my truth because I'm here to experience so much more than deep, severe lack. I'm here to experience joy and fulfillment and love and a plethora of amazing feelings and experiences just like every other human being.

The truth that hurts is that yes, I may have denied and abandoned this part of myself, but learning how to hold space for this part of myself and learning how to hold and hear and listen and witness this part of myself is what ultimately led me to my truth, which is that I am worthy, that I am capable, that I am able, and you know, living in fear for so long. 

Overcoming Fear and Embracing Confidence

It's a paradox because fear wants to keep us safe, right? Like when we feel fear, it's because we want to feel safe. And it doesn't always necessarily have our backs because sometimes we wanna do something amazing.

Sometimes we want to do something great. Sometimes, most of the times it's to do something new. But fear comes in, right? Because fear has very much to do with the unknown, but then feeling fear becomes safe, right? We have felt fear for so long and it's like we don't even, we don't even know anything else except to live in fear.

We get very stuck inside this little box that we call the comfort zone, right? But that does, that does nothing except kill our potential and that does nothing else except to destroy our confidence. Because to have confidence is to want to show up, is to want to express, is to want to participate and all of us are here to participate.

Maybe you're an introvert or maybe you're shy, right? Like, I'm not saying everybody needs to go center stage, but in some way, shape, or form, we're all here to participate and we have to bring forth what is within us because what you have within you, nobody else does. And what I have within me, nobody else does.

And when we leave this planet one day, nobody will incarnate and bring forth what is within you and what is within me. So it is so crucial and it is so important and so valid to want to express and show up with whatever is within us.

And maybe some of us need more time than others, I can say with certainty as far as my path is concerned, how essential time has been. Right? Like we think of fruit ripening, right? We want to maybe eat the fruit right away or you know, it still hasn't fallen from the tree. It's not yet ripe. Like things do need to ripen.

There is a certain timing to certain things and I know that's hard sometimes because we want the thing here and now and we have to go for it and we have to shoot for it then. Yeah. And maybe we go for it and it happens and that's great. But if we go for it and it's not happening, and if we try again and it's not happening, if we try again, it's not happening.

Maybe time, timing is the issue. Maybe it's just a matter of time. 

Conclusion and Future Plans

So I'm thinking this episode was a bunch of rambling, but that's okay. This is, this is the space for it. Yeah, so I think that feels complete.

I think that's enough food for thought. There's a lot more coming. I'm back in Rhodes and as I said, there's a different, different energy here. I'm really just looking back on the episodes I recorded in Crete. I actually didn't intend on talking about some of the things that I talked about, or at least I didn't think I would do it then.

But as always, I always show up here wanting to speak with what is alive in me and what my truth is in the moment. And you know, maybe sometimes it's like a motivational talk. Maybe it's sometimes just like a lot more grounded. I do have a few things cooking as far as esotericism is concerned and what some of the future episodes are.

So stay tuned for that. I'll be making those announcements. If you're on YouTube watching, please hit that like subscribe button. I so greatly appreciate it. Please share the episode. If you still feel called, you can leave a message down below. If you're on one of the podcast platforms, you can send me a message as well.

Also share the episode if you so feel called, if you feel like somebody needs to hear this information, if they need a confidence boost, I'm on socials, I'm on Threads, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, I'd love to see you over there as well. I will be back next week, of course, with a brand new episode, as always here every Thursday on Bridger of Worlds.

And in closing, as always, please remember that you are the medicine and I'm just the messenger. Thank you very much.