The Motyv Podcast · Shayden J. Bertagnolli MS LMFT Men's Mental Health Expert

The Motyv Podcast Episode 14 | How to Increase Your Self-Awareness About Lust, Depression, and Niceness

·41 min·2 clips

“Sadness is the cure for depression,” one speaker says, because denied sadness turns into loneliness.

1. The Motyv Podcast Episode 14 centers on self-awareness about lust, depression, and niceness. 2. Blake, Jordan, and the main speaker trade examples from therapy, men’s groups, parenting, and everyday relationships. 3. The episode asks what changes when a person names the real issue instead of using the wrong word. 4. The first distinction is lust versus attraction, introduced as a common problem in pornography and bad-habit work with men. 5. The speaker says attraction is “non-agentic,” meaning it is not simply switched off by willpower. 6. A flashlight metaphor is used to show how attraction can be focused on a spouse instead of scattered toward “anything shiny.” 7. Pornography is described as broadening lust through desensitization, thumbnails, and increasingly extreme material. 8. The speaker says some men have trained themselves so heavily that “straight men” may need porn to climax. 9. The group ties lust to hunger, fasting, and the way discipline can strengthen control over impulses. 10. They also say the space between noticing attraction and acting on it is where discipline and love are built. 11. The second distinction is depression versus sadness, and the phrase “sadness is the cure for depression” is introduced. 12. The speaker defines depression as a “game of rejection and denial,” often tied to refusing to accept reality. 13. Sadness is framed as a response to loss, unmet expectations, or losing self-control at home. 14. One line says, “Unseen sadness is loneliness,” connecting unexpressed grief to isolation. 15. The group discusses how dismissal from parents or others can add a second wound on top of the original sadness. 16. They also mention chronic depression as different from a temporary depressed state that can change when the denial stops. 17. The tone stays conversational, with interruptions, examples, and quick back-and-forth among the speakers. 18. The format mixes therapy language, personal anecdotes, and practical definitions rather than formal teaching. 19. People interested in men’s mental health, boundaries, and habit change will get the most from it. 20. Listeners looking for light entertainment or no self-examination may skip it.

As heard by us

A patient conversation about naming feelings clearly before they blur into confusion.

This episode keeps circling a plain but useful idea: the right word can make a feeling easier to carry. It moves through depression and sadness, lust and attraction, niceness and kindness, then guilt and resentment, using those pairs to show how naming things clearly can change…

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Why you'd press play

You want cleaner words for the mess you're feeling.

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