Anger, Porn Addiction & One Simple Mental Technique to Overcome Both
- Jake Kastleman
- Nov 27, 2024
- 20 min read
Anger and porn addiction—what do they have in common? At first, it might seem like the answer is nothing.
But think about it: how many times have you been angry, and shortly afterward found yourself relapsing on porn?
Or maybe you felt stressed or frustrated after a hard day at work, only to come home and slip up.
Doesn’t the shame you feel after watching porn feel similar to the shame after losing your temper in a big fight?
In this article, I’m going to show you the connection between anger and porn addiction, uncover their root causes, and share one simple mental technique to overcome both.
Anger and Porn Addiction Are Symptoms, Not the Cause
We often view anger as the problem. We tell ourselves:
If I could just get my anger under control...
I just need to breathe, think positively, or be more disciplined...
Why can’t I stop being so selfish?
The same pattern shows up with pornography addiction:
If I could just stop watching porn, my life would be so much better...
I need to distract myself, stay busy, or focus on exercise...
But here’s the truth: anger and porn addiction aren’t the real problem. They’re symptoms of something deeper.
We often focus on “controlling” ourselves, but ironically, this drive for control fuels addiction and anger. Perfectionism, shame, and fear build up so much pressure inside us that our brain seeks relief. And while anger or addiction may lead to long-term harm, they do both lead to short-term relief or distraction from the shame and fear we’re experiencing underneath. In other words, the constant internal judgment and control necessitates the need to escape via anger, porn, or other releases.
Anger management and stopping porn addiction aren’t about control. They’re about understanding the root cause.
Fear and Shame: The Hidden Roots of Anger and Porn Addiction
At the core of pornography addiction and anger are two emotions: fear and shame.
In Western culture, we don’t talk about these emotions enough. Instead, we slap labels over them—like anxiety, depression, OCD, or perfectionism. And while these have biological factors, we often don’t address the underlying pain.
To some degree, fear and shame are the emotional baggage we carry from childhood:
The criticism from a parent or teacher.
The neglect or lack of affection we may have experienced.
Hurtful comments from siblings or peers.
Even if our caregivers did their best, those experiences shaped us. As adults, these unprocessed emotions often manifest as anger, addiction, or both.
Fear says: You’re not safe. Shame whispers: You’re not enough.
When left unchecked, these emotions drive the behaviors we’re desperate to overcome.
The Mental Technique to Stop Anger and Porn Addiction
So, how can you stop watching porn and manage anger effectively? The technique is simple but transformative: Listen to yourself.
Yes, you heard that right. Listen to your thoughts and emotions without judgment. Instead of trying to control or suppress them, give them your attention
Think about how a loving parent might console a hurt child. They wouldn’t yell at the child to “stop crying!” Instead, a loving parent would gently ask:
What’s wrong?
Why are you hurting?
How can I help?
That’s how you need to treat yourself.
L.U.C.A: Listening, Understanding, Compassion & Admiration
This technique involves practicing L.U.C.A. with your emotions:
Listening: Acknowledge your thoughts and feelings without pushing them away.
Understanding: Ask yourself what these emotions are trying to tell you.
Compassion: Recognize that even your “negative” feelings are trying to protect or help you.
Admiration: Appreciate the effort your mind and body make to keep you safe, even when it doesn’t always serve you.
For example:
If you feel angry, pause and ask: What fear or hurt is underneath this anger?
If you’re craving porn, ask: What need is a part of me trying to meet with this?
By addressing the underlying fears and shame, you can reduce the power these emotions have over you.
Applying L.U.C.A. to Porn Cravings
Imagine this scenario…
You’re out in public, and someone attractive walks by. Suddenly, lustful thoughts flood your mind. Your first instinct might be to judge or control those thoughts:
I shouldn’t be thinking this.
Why does she have to dress like that?
Okay, distract yourself—focus on something else.
But judgment and control only add pressure. And that pressure is what often leads to relapses.
Instead, try L.U.C.A.:
Listen: Acknowledge the thoughts without resisting them. What exactly are you feeling? Be mindful of it. You don’t need to delve deeper into the lust, but simply describe to yourself what you’re generally experiencing.
Understand: What insecurity or unmet need is behind these thoughts? You might see it simply as fantasizing or lust at first, but if you assess what’s happening psychologically—stresses or difficult emotions you’ve been experiencing over the last day, week, or month—you may start to see this is only a means of coping that a part of your mind is attempting to utilize as a distraction.
Compassion: Thank that part of you for trying to protect or soothe you, even if it’s not the healthiest way.
Admiration: Recognize the effort your brain is making to care for you.
You might discover that your cravings stem from loneliness, stress, or the need for connection. Addressing those needs directly will help you break free of porn in the long term.
If you take this LUCA approach the moment a trigger appears, you may now be in a clearer state of mind to choose something that addresses your needs directly, rather than using porn, lust, or fantasizing as a distraction.
Breaking the Cycle of Anger and Porn Addiction
Both anger and pornography addiction thrive on the same fuel: judgment, control, fear, and shame. By shifting from judgment to compassion, you can stop the cycle and heal at a deeper level.
When you practice L.U.C.A., you’re no longer fighting against yourself. Instead, you’re partnering with yourself to create lasting change.
It’s not about perfection. It’s about learning to treat yourself with the kindness and understanding you’ve always deserved.
If you’ve ever wondered how to stop porn addiction or how to manage anger, know that the answer starts within. It’s not about strict self-control or distractions. It’s about learning to listen, understand, and accept yourself—flaws and all.
The path to healing might feel messy at times, but with patience and practice, you can overcome porn addiction, manage anger, and break free of shame. You’re stronger than you think—and this simple mental technique can guide you toward lasting freedom.
If you’re ready to get rid of porn addiction, set up a Free 30-min Consultation with me. During the call, you and I will break down the causes of your porn addiction together. You will gain personalized direction and insights for your recovery, and I’ll answer any questions that you have about the program. Set up your Free Consultation now.
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Transcription of Podcast Episode 76 | Anger, Porn Addiction & One Simple Mental Technique to Overcome Both
You may have been told that quitting porn simply requires discipline and self-control. That you just need to be more productive, more focused, and more motivated. Man up.
What's wrong with you? Why can't you just stop? Have more self-control. Don't you even care about your wife or your kids? I'm here to tell you that these voices are lying to you. Through a personal journey of over 20 years and working with men from the US to the Middle East, I can tell you that porn addiction is just a symptom.
And here on the No More Desire podcast, we don't deal in symptoms. We pull up the roots of addiction by building a recovery mindset and lifestyle, one step at a time. Welcome to the show, my friend.
I'm so grateful to have you. Let's take one more step together on the path to not only quit porn, but lose your desire for it entirely. It's time to go deep.
Hey, my friend. This is Jake Castleman with No More Desire. Welcome to the show.
I am so happy to be here with you. Today, we're going to talk about anger and porn addiction. We're going to talk about what these have in common.
And it might sound a bit strange at first. You might think, anger and porn addiction. I'm not into that.
I don't combine those two things together. Look, I get that. But from a mental and emotional perspective, we're going to talk about how the roots of both of these are extremely similar, if not identical in many ways.
And there are, of course, nuances and other kinds of branches when it comes to porn addiction or anger, that we may move towards one or the other for different reasons. But a lot of the roots are the same. I want you to think about this real quick.
How many times have you been angry and shortly after you've relapsed on porn? Or how many times have you felt stressed or frustrated about work and you've come home and slipped up with porn? Or how similar does the shame that you feel, in other words, the feeling, I'm not good enough. I did something bad. I'm a bad person.
How similar does that feel between you watching porn and the feeling you have afterwards or you getting in a big fight with your spouse and the feeling you have afterwards? Today, I'm going to show you the connection between anger and porn addiction. I'm going to show you their root causes and one simple mental technique that you can use to work through both of them. And I believe if you apply this, I don't believe, I know because of the results that my clients have gotten, I know if you apply what I'm going to give you today, it's going to be profound for you.
It's going to be extremely powerful and it's going to lead to some major transformation in your life. And if you want to go deeper into what I talk about today, I have the eight keys to lose your desire for porn. It's a free workshop.
If you go to nomoredesire.com, I go deeper into a lot of things to do with this recovery mindset that I talk about today, in addition to seven other keys that you'll learn in that workshop. So that's nomoredesire.com. You'll find it there on my homepage. Anger and porn addiction are both symptoms of an underlying emotional state.
We can often see anger as the problem. I will say, if I could just get my anger issues under control, I just need to learn how to breathe or be more disciplined, to think kind thoughts or be more positive. I've watched many of my clients do this when they first enter the program.
They try to willpower their way through that anger, or they try to positivity their way through, quote unquote, through that anger. Or they think, I just need to stop being so selfish. This is not how it works, my friend.
We do the same thing with porn. We think, if I can just get this porn habit under control, then everything in my life is going to be so much better. Maybe you think that same thing.
You think, I just need to stop watching it. I just need to get busy with other things, distract myself with sports, exercise or other activities. I just need to get more disciplined.
Discipline is not what you need, my friend. Your perspective on that is one of the things driving your addiction. Here's the thing.
When we center our attention on anger or porn addiction or anxiety or depression, or many of these other, quote unquote, bad behaviors, again, notice I have quotes on that, quote unquote, bad behaviors. They're not bad, but we view them that way. It's a much more nuanced perspective on how we need to view it in order to find success.
We're not addressing the cause when we do that. When we turn our attention to the behavior itself, we're not addressing the cause. We're addressing the symptom.
We often talk about controlling ourselves, as I was just kind of discussing. Controlling ourselves. It's preached from the hilltops in Western psychology, or sorry, not Western psychology, Western society, that we just have to have more self-control.
This is the very driven individualistic kind of culture that we live in, which has many benefits or many good things about it, but we miss the mark in several areas. You know what's ironic about this whole idea of just having more self-control? Control is one of the greatest drivers of addiction in the first place. We try to just judge and control ourselves into doing things so frequently, and we'll try to do that to other people too.
If we try to do it to ourselves, we try to do it to other people in some kind of way, shape, or form, and we may not perceive that. It's always how it works. And this leads to so much perfectionism, stress, shame, fear.
It fuels all of these feelings. And then we then end up feeling angry with ourselves because we feel like we're not good enough. Why can't I just control myself? What's wrong with me? Or our brain feels the need to numb out or escape using porn because we're so uptight and we just can't handle it anymore.
We can't handle all the self-judgment and all this, you know, trying to control myself into doing things, bullying myself into doing things, willpower my way through things. It does not work. It does not work.
And both religions and faiths, mostly Eastern faiths, and then also psychology today is coming to understand that very deeply. It's becoming a fact. I wouldn't say it's becoming one.
It is one in many ways, psychologically. Willpower is not the way to do things. We need to take another approach.
And I'm going to talk about that today. A lot of these feelings can be completely unconscious. This self-judgment, this control, we try to control ourselves, try to control others and how much it is fueling our addiction.
We don't realize how much we're judging ourselves or others, and how much pressure it's building up or feeling so perfectionistic all the time. We're just doing the best that we can. I want that to be well understood.
You're just doing the best you can. And meanwhile, you keep driving yourself to addiction or to anger over and over again because, in good part, because of this judgment and control. Hey, my friend, if you've been struggling to quit porn, I'm here to tell you that you're not a bad person.
You're not a bad husband. You're not a bad father. And you're not damaged beyond repair.
I'm also here to tell you that you can overcome this addiction for good. It's not about simply fighting cravings, staying busy or attending support groups. You can't expect yourself to just be more disciplined and get over it.
Here's a secret. Your addiction is a symptom. And by building a recovery mindset and lifestyle, you can actually get rid of your cravings for porn.
And I'm helping men across the world, from the U.S. to the Middle East, do that right now. In my intensive one-on-one recovery coaching program, I'll teach you step-by-step methods to successfully process your thoughts and emotions so they don't evolve into cravings. These methods are evidence-based and founded in psychological approaches like IFS and CBT.
We'll also work on lifestyle changes that utilize principles from neuroscience, religion, philosophy and even nutrition. And I'll help you improve your relationships by learning how to engage with your spouse from a place of acceptance, compassion and courage. If you want to become part of a worldwide movement of men who are developing this recovery mindset and lifestyle, head to nomoredesire.com and set up a free consultation.
I'll see you in the program, my friend. So fear and shame are at the core of anger and porn addiction, both. They're fear and shame, two of our most fundamental negative emotions or challenging, difficult emotions.
I feel like we don't talk about these enough. We talk about anxiety, depression, bipolar, manic-depressive, and a lot of other labels that we have for different ways our brains react to or try to cope with fear and shame. These are at the core.
These are the fundamental emotions. You could kind of call them both fear. Shame is this fear of being rejected.
It's fear I'm not good enough. But we give a lot of labels to things in Western psychology. And I think that there's merit to it.
I think that it gets some things right, but I think it doesn't do us favors in a lot of areas because we see ourselves as powerless. Whereas if I see I'm dealing with fear and shame underneath the surface that's driving a lot of these things, it's part of what's driving it, well, then I can do something about that. I can change the way that I think.
I can process this fear, this shame. I can look at it, observe it, understand it, and I can work with that. If I say I have a disorder and I can't overcome it, or it's just something I'm going to always deal with, that takes away my power.
And I don't like that. Then there are other factors in addition, of course, to that fear and that shame. But these are two of the primary matters we should really focus on as individuals going through therapy or being coached, and then as coaches or therapists.
Many people don't focus on this fear and the shame, which are so fundamental to any mental illness, in my opinion, or any addiction. That would include things like anger that we deal with. We try to manage people.
We try to give them tasks. We try to give them structure. We try to do this to ourselves.
Meanwhile, where people are hefting around these giant bags of fear and shame, that they need help opening up, inspecting, and unpacking. That's what we got to do for ourselves if we know how, or we need to go to a professional that knows how. I'm teaching my clients how to do this all the time.
Opening up, inspecting, unpacking those bags of fear and shame. And so what are those habits that you have of being caught up in fear and shame all the time? What's the baggage that you're carrying around from childhood? What's the ways that mom and dad treated you poorly, or how siblings treated you poorly, or how they simply didn't show up for you? They didn't give you the love that you needed. There's no shame in that.
We often think like, well, my childhood was fine. A lot of people go through worse things. We often downsize and really diminish the value of our experiences, and how challenging they were, and the pain that we went through.
We don't want to look at it. And there's good psychological reasons for that. Our brain, parts of us are trying to keep us safe from inspecting and seeing that pain.
So again, there's no shame in it. Your parents, your siblings are probably trying to do the best that they could. And even if it wasn't very good, or it was even terrible, they were doing the best they could.
But then you were left with these burdens of fear and shame that you're carrying around into adulthood. And so you need to unpack those and work through them. And there's many different mental techniques to do that with yourself in the present moment, in addition to going into the past and analyzing and working through some of these things you experienced.
But you can do that with the things you experience now as well. And you can unpack and work through a lot of that fear and that shame that drive both porn addiction and anger. And so here's something simple that you can do.
Here's a mental technique that you can use to overcome both porn addiction and anger. The mental or emotional technique that I'm about to give you is very simple. But you could spend a lifetime learning it and applying it.
That technique is to listen to yourself. I'm going to give you more details on this. But it's to listen to yourself.
What do I mean by that? Specifically, I mean that you need to practice hearing out your thoughts and emotions. Stop judging them. Stop attempting to control them.
Be present with them. Understand them. You're going to notice mindfulness here.
Presence. Awareness. Again, this is stuff that's being taught in Western psychology now for a reason.
We are advancing in our understanding of the mind. We're going back to simple ancient principles in Eastern philosophies and faiths. And we're now applying them in Western psychology.
We're seeing that they've been right all along. Be present with your thoughts, with your emotions. Understand them and express acceptance and compassion for them.
Like an all-loving father would be present with and console a four-year-old child because in truth, those parts of you that are using judgment or control or that are caring for your shame are probably psychologically around the age of a four-year-old child or a seven-year-old child or a nine-year-old child. They are young and immature. That's how they feel.
It's genuinely how it feels for us. It's how we process things at that unconscious level or subconscious level, which we can bring to the conscious level. It's the amazing thing about listening and really processing through these thoughts and emotions.
This practice is simple to some degree, right? Very simple. It's so simple that we overlook it and we get it wrong all the time. So here's more specifically what I mean.
You want to show LUCA, which is an acronym. And if you've been listening to my podcast for some time, you know I love acronyms. It makes things memorable.
LUCA, listening. We already talked about that. Understanding.
Compassion. And admiration. And that last one, admiration, we miss a lot of the time.
We need to give admiration to the parts of us that are telling us things, that are trying their best to approach situations just like a little kid would, and those parts of us don't really understand how to do it properly. And so if we can listen to them, understand them, give them compassion, give them admiration for how they are trying their best, we can start to come more into our true self and into that self-leadership, self with a capital S. That means when you have thoughts that are judgmental towards yourself or others, I want you to step back as a witness for those thoughts. Notice that word witness.
That is an extremely powerful word. It can sound simple if you don't understand the implications. To be a witness for your thoughts and emotions.
I want you to see them with understanding. What are they trying to teach you? What are they trying to protect? In other words, what are the insecurities underlying the judgmental or controlling thoughts? If you're thinking that about situations or other people or yourself, you're trying to judge and control things, how are those thoughts trying to motivate you to take action or to change or what are they trying to keep safe? Now those thoughts aren't helpful, right? Ultimately in the long run, in the short run, short term, they can be what we need, which is ultimately why they're there, why they popped up in our childhood. Those thoughts, okay, the thoughts of the judgment and control strategies, they have shown up because we've dealt with fear.
We've dealt with shame. If we can use judgment and control, these kind of offensive strategies, we can keep people at arm's length. We can try to make things work out the way we want them to or need them to.
We can use those in an attempt to decrease suffering for ourself or for others. If it's for others using judgment and control, where we try to control them into changing, and that's ultimately because we don't want to suffer. We don't want to watch them suffer.
So it is a self-centered thing, but nonetheless, it's a survival strategy. It's something that we all do as human beings. Unless we become conscious of it and we work out of the habit of it, we can change it.
Judgment is a part of your mind doing its best to help you manage a situation, to drive you, to keep you on task, to get you to fall in line. All for what? Again, so that you stay safe. So you need to listen to that.
Understand it. Show it your admiration for what it's trying to do. In other words, we could put it in the way of what this manager is showing up to try to do for you.
It's using judgment and control to try to manage you. That's a part of you. Don't beat it up.
Don't fight it. Don't express hate for it. Instead, give it Luca.
And it will start to honor you and trust you over time. And trust your leadership rather than it stepping in the lead. And then you can tell that part, right? If you're giving it listening, understanding, compassion, and admiration, tell it, if you give me a little bit of space, I think that I can heal what you're trying to protect.
In other words, there are underlying burdens or insecurities here that this judgment or this feeling of needing to control things is a mask for. It's a disguise. It's a wall.
And what is that? What are those underlying insecurities or burdens? And then when you can get to those, give those, Luca, listening, understanding, compassion, admiration. Very simple. Very, very, very powerful for people.
And this is all rooted in current psychological teachings and modalities that are working for people around the world. It's just my brand, and Luca is my word that I use, that I've found to be consistently true. You can do this.
You can also use Luca. You can apply this to porn cravings. You might get confused.
Like, how does this apply to my cravings for porn specifically? Let me break that down. If you're out in public, you see a girl walking by with a crop top, right? Or whatever the situation might be. You're online.
You're this or that. Lusting and fantasizing comes up. And what comes along with that for many of us? Judgment and control.
In other words, I shouldn't be thinking these thoughts about her or man. Why does she have to wear that? Now all these temptations are coming up for me. If we have a religious background, we might talk that way.
Does she know what she's doing to me? Or I need to distract myself now. Okay, what else can I focus on? I can focus on basketball, or I can think about this or that, or think about work, or I'll think about something else. I'll just distract myself.
Meanwhile, this lusting and fantasizing and these thoughts and this obsessive fixation is just building and building and building. You're feeling this pressure. None of these approaches of distractions or judging this other woman, saying it's her fault or judging yourself that you shouldn't feel this way, they're all simple strategies the mind uses to try to change us and to try to get what we find valuable.
None of them are going to work though. They actually feed the problem. None of these approaches is going to work long term because they are all based in judgment and control.
And judgment and control are the lifeblood of the force that is directly counter to the escaping force of addiction. In other words, judgment and control thoughts and feelings are what heap pressure on top of you mentally and cause you to feel the need for escape in the first place. I'm going to state that one more time.
Judgment and control thoughts and feelings are what heap pressure on top of you mentally. They cause you to feel things like perfectionism, anger, shame, fear. They can increase those.
Loneliness, right? Those aren't all based in judgment and control, but they contribute to all these feelings. And then in reaction, we have another part of our mind that comes up and says, essentially out of necessity, another part comes up and says, dude, I cannot take this. I cannot handle this anymore.
Out of necessity, another part of your brain is doing its best to show up and relieve that pressure that you feel of the perfectionism, of the rigidity, of the self-judgment, of the pressure and the stress. It is showing up out of necessity. It says, this is way too much pressure.
I have needs. Stop trying to control and judge me all the time. And eventually it says, all right, I've had enough.
I'm checking out. I'm extinguishing these emotions. And you experience a porn relapse to do that.
Or you binge on food, or you watch TV, or you numb out with social media, whatever it might be. Same exact function. You're dealing with this inner critic and this firefighting mechanism, we could call it, to extinguish your emotions, spray them out, comes up, and that is the addiction.
So I hope you found today's episode helpful, my friend. Follow this podcast. Give it a rating.
It helps me out big time so I can reach more people. And please check out my free ebook, The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings, or my free workshop, The 8 Keys to Lose Your Desire for Porn, on my website. And if you want to take it to the next level, set up a free consultation for me.
There's a link for that in the podcast description. My program is unique in that I have four anchors. I have daily assessments that my clients do so that I know exactly what's going on in their mind, the struggles that they're going through.
I get all the results from those daily assessments. And when we come together on a weekly basis, we talk about exactly what you're experiencing on a weekly basis. I don't just ask you how recovery is going.
I have all that feedback, so I see deeply into what you go through and have solutions ready for you coming into sessions, or topics for us to discuss specifically so we can navigate and come to solutions together. I have a structured recovery program that takes you through each step of developing those skills necessary for recovery, a tailored recovery plan that we build out, and, of course, we meet once a week. You meet with someone who has professional experience and personal experience in this field.
So if you want to dive into that, head to my website, go to, just fill out the application for the program. Again, you can hit free consultation in the description below. God bless and much love, my friend.
Everything expressed on the No More Desire podcast are the opinions of the host and participants and is for informational and educational purposes only. This podcast should not be considered mental health therapy or as a substitute thereof. It is strongly recommended that you seek out the clinical guidance of a qualified mental health professional.
If you're experiencing thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or a desire to harm others, please dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
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