Doing vs. Being: The Missing Key to Porn Recovery
- Jake Kastleman
- 15 minutes ago
- 31 min read
Do you ever feel like your mind just won’t shut off?
You’re running from one thing to the next—work, texts, tasks, scrolling—always doing, rarely being. You feel anxious when you slow down, restless when you stop, and guilty when you rest. And when you finally do take a break, your brain reaches for something on your phone, a video, or maybe even porn, to force you into a moment of presence.
This constant motion, this doing, might look productive on the surface. But underneath, it’s a symptom of a brain that’s overstimulated, under-regulated, and craving relief. And that craving, when ignored long enough, can become a full-blown porn addiction.
In this article, I want to show you something that most men miss: the real reason we keep turning back to porn and distraction isn’t because we lack discipline. It’s
because we’ve lost the balance between doing and being.
The Chaotic Mind: Attention Fragmentation and Porn Addiction
From a neuroscience perspective, a racing mind reflects an underactive prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for focus, impulse control, and self-awareness. When it’s under-stimulated, your brain struggles to quiet internal chatter.
Pair that with the flood of dopamine we get from constant technology use, and you’ve got the perfect storm: a restless, anxious mind that can’t sit still. This called attentional fragmentation, and it’s one of the hidden drivers of porn addiction.
We live in a world of endless stimulation: social media, notifications, video games, podcasts, and the constant hum of productivity. Every time you grab your phone between tasks, your brain gets a quick hit of dopamine, a chemical high that mimics the same reward system activated by porn.
The problem? Every spike leads to a crash. Over time, your baseline dopamine levels decrease, making everyday life relationships, work, and spiritual connection feel dull and unfulfilling. That’s when the urge for porn hits hardest.
Your brain craves intensity because it can’t feel a sense of presence.
The Addiction Beneath the Addiction
After over a decade of sobriety from pornography, I’ve come to realize something profound: my brain still finds new ways to seek stimulation.
Not from porn anymore, but from productivity, information, and distraction.
I’d scroll through emails, check messages, read articles, listen to podcasts, and even study personal development content—all under the illusion of growth. But when I really looked closer, it was the same old pattern: I was addicted to doing.
That addiction to doing is a subtler form of the same dopamine loop that fuels pornography. It’s the mind’s way of avoiding discomfort—especially the discomfort of silence, stillness, and unfiltered presence.
And when I started to pull back—limiting my phone use in the morning and evening—I felt withdrawal. Real withdrawal. Anxiety, sadness, restlessness, even grief.
Because here’s the truth: when we detach from the noise, we come face-to-face with the emotions we’ve been escaping from.
The 30-Day Presence Challenge: Breaking the Cycle of Distraction
To reset my own brain, I began what I now call the 30-Day Presence Challenge.
Two hours every morning with no phone or technology.
Two hours every evening completely tech-free.
Silent workouts—two to three times a week without any audio input.
No music. No podcasts. No stimulation. Just breath, movement, and awareness.
Within days, my brain started to resist. I felt edgy, irritable, and unfocused. But after about a week, something beautiful began to happen. My mind started to quiet. My creativity increased. My patience deepened.
And something even more important began to shift—my relationships.
I noticed myself sitting longer at the dinner table, actually talking with my wife instead of scrolling. My toddler laughed and played while I simply watched, fully present. Our home felt lighter, calmer, more connected.
That’s when I realized: it wasn’t porn that had stolen my presence. It was distraction itself. Porn was only one symptom.
The Psychology of Doing vs. Being
In psychology and neuroscience, this dynamic can be seen as left-brain vs. right-brain functioning.
The left brain (masculine energy) is about logic, order, planning, and achievement. It thrives in doing.
The right brain (feminine energy) is about emotion, creativity, connection, and spontaneity. It thrives in being.
Both are vital. But when we live dominated by the doing mind—constantly working, achieving, striving—we suppress our being mind. And the being mind, starved of attention, fights back through compulsive behaviors: porn, scrolling, overeating, or emotional withdrawal.
In Internal Family Systems (IFS) language, the manager parts of the mind (the doers, controllers, planners) suppress the firefighters (the ones that seek comfort, pleasure, and relief). When those manager parts become overgrown, the firefighters rebel—often through addiction.
Porn becomes the brain’s desperate attempt to restore balance.
The cure, then, isn’t just discipline or willpower—it’s integration.
Healing the Split: Balancing Masculine and Feminine Within
As men, we’ve been taught that our worth comes from what we produce. That we have to be strong, driven, relentless. But what’s missing from that message is presence.
Healthy masculinity isn’t about endless doing—it’s about grounded doing. Action that flows from stillness.
And stillness, I’ve learned, is not weakness. It’s strength under control.
When we reconnect to the feminine within us—the part that feels, breathes, creates, and plays—we restore the balance our nervous system desperately needs.
That balance between doing and being is what allows you to regulate your emotions, connect deeply with others, and stay grounded when cravings arise.
It’s also what allows you to experience real intimacy—not the illusion of connection porn offers, but the embodied connection of soul, heart, and body that your partner longs for.
Practical Ways to Rebuild Presence
Here are a few simple practices that have helped me—and many of my clients—rewire their relationship with attention, dopamine, and presence:
The Silence Sit: Sit in stillness for 5–10 minutes a day. Breathe. Feel your body. Watch the thoughts without chasing them.
Device-Free Dinners: One meal each day without screens. Talk, laugh, or simply be together in silence.
Nature Immersion: Spend 30 minutes outside—no headphones, no phone. Let your senses reset.
Embodied Workouts: Train without audio at least twice a week. Feel the muscles. Hear your breath. Connect with your body.
The Eye-Contact Practice: Once a day, spend two minutes looking into your partner’s eyes without words or agenda. Presence restores intimacy faster than any technique.
These small acts of “being” re-train the brain’s reward system. They lower stress hormones, raise dopamine sensitivity, and strengthen the prefrontal cortex—all proven by neuroscience to reduce compulsive behavior.
The Grief of Letting Go
When I put my phone away for longer periods, I didn’t expect to grieve it—but I did.
Late one night, holding my newborn, I felt a deep sadness. It hit me: my phone had been my companion. My constant comfort. The same emotional bond my clients often describe with porn.
So I grieved it.
I let myself feel the loss, the discomfort, and the emptiness. And through that grief came a deeper freedom. Because the truth is, we can’t move forward without letting go of the things we used to depend on.
Porn, distraction, productivity—they’ve all been ways to cope. But healing begins when we thank those parts of ourselves for trying to help, and lovingly choose a better way.
Presence Restores Relationship
When we are fully present, the people around us feel it.
Your wife knows when you’re only half-listening. Your kids know when you’re pretending to play. The people you love don’t need your perfection—they need your presence.
When you put your phone down, look into your wife’s eyes, and breathe with her—you invite safety. Connection. Openness.
Porn and distraction rob us of those sacred moments. But presence restores them.
And when you can be still long enough to connect with the people you love, you’ll start to feel another Presence rise within you—the presence of God, the still, quiet “I Am” that lives beneath the noise.
As Eckhart Tolle once said, “Be still and know that I Am.” If I’m never still, how can I truly know God—or myself?
The 30-Day Rewire: Practical Recovery Plan
Here’s what I challenge you to do for the next 30 days:
Morning: Two hours tech-free. Pray, move, or sit in silence before checking your phone.
Evening: Two hours tech-free. Be with your family. Read. Reflect. Breathe.
Silent Workouts: Train without audio 2–3 times a week. Reconnect to your body.
Daily Stillness: At least 5–10 minutes of quiet sitting.
Weekly Reflection: Journal what you notice—energy, focus, relationships, cravings.
Watch what happens to your mind, your energy, your patience, your sense of connection. You’ll find that your urges begin to fade—not because you’re forcing them away, but because you’re no longer starving the part of you that needs being.
Rewiring the Brain, Reclaiming the Heart
From a neuroscience standpoint, presence rebuilds the same circuits porn destroys. It strengthens impulse control, restores dopamine balance, and revives the motivation system in the prefrontal cortex.
From a psychological standpoint, it integrates your inner parts—your doer, your achiever, your comfort-seeker—under conscious leadership.
And from a spiritual standpoint, it returns you to alignment with your higher self, with God, with truth.
You stop living from fragmentation and start living from wholeness.
That’s what it means to be free—not just from porn, but from the compulsion to constantly escape yourself.
Be Still and Become Whole
If you want to heal from porn addiction, it’s not just about quitting a behavior—it’s about transforming your relationship to life itself.
The real recovery happens in the moments when you resist the urge to distract and choose instead to be present.
When you breathe through discomfort instead of numbing it. When you sit in silence and actually feel your emotions. When you trade scrolling for stillness and noise for meaning.
That’s when you begin to rewire your brain, rebuild your masculinity, and rediscover who you truly are.
Because healing porn addiction isn’t about doing more—it’s about being more.
Be still.
Be aware.
Be alive.
God bless and much love, my friend.
Free Resources:
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Full Transcription of Episode 119: Doing vs. Being: The Missing Key to Porn Recovery
Jake Kastleman (00:03.566)
Testing, testing, testing, one, two, three, testing, testing, one, two, three.
Jake Kastleman (00:29.262)
Do you ever feel like you can't shut your mind off? That your thoughts are one continuous stream that never ends? Do you find it difficult to be present without getting distracted or thinking about the next task, the next responsibility, or the next fun thing you want to do after whatever it is you're currently doing? Do you often feel mentally chaotic, ruminating on things or find it difficult to
Forgive or move on. What if I told you that all of this plays into your pornography addiction? In today's episode, we are going to address this widespread phenomena of attentional fragmentation and an anxious generation and how it plays into addiction. We will discuss how we as men are particularly susceptible to this and practical steps that we can take to shift that susceptibility.
to balance the constant doing of our lives with more being and how this shift frees us from one of the primary drivers of pornography addiction. I'm excited for today's episode as it is personal for me and particularly pertinent to today's generation, to all of us. Before we dive in, a reminder to follow this podcast, hit the notification button and shoot me a rating so I can grow this show and reach
more men. With that, we'll dive in.
Jake Kastleman (02:14.638)
The topic of today's episode is extremely important and it's also extremely personal for me, especially given what I talked about last week. When your mind is constantly racing, it reflects an underactive prefrontal cortex, meaning that your brain struggles to quiet internal chatter and regulate your impulses. This mental chaos driven by dopamine seeking and emotional rumination is one of the most common challenges that we all face.
in the Western world, to be constantly distracted, to lack presence, to feel mentally chaotic, to feel anxious, depressed, stressed. These days, it's as if everybody has anxiety, everybody has depression, everybody has some kind of a mental disorder, everybody has ADHD. This is commonplace, and we face it so frequently that we don't even know that we're stressed out, that we aren't present.
And when we aren't present, our brain craves something to force us to be present. This is an incredible secret of addiction. A part of our mind seeks addiction to solve this problem, to forcefully bring us into the current moment.
problem is addictive substances or addictive behaviors like porn spike our dopamine and this leads to a subsequent drop in dopamine which robs my ability to feel present and connected. We are a generation of constant doers, guys. We are always busy, never silent, constantly stimulated, ever distracted, TV, movies, video games, social media, tasks, productivity, calendar, events, responsibilities.
The world is filled with opportunities to be distracted and stimulated. And not that obviously some of these things don't need to be done or some of these things aren't good in a reasonable measure. But this constancy, this constant rush, this fast pace takes us out of the real world and into a virtual world consistently.
Jake Kastleman (04:34.222)
We're always pulling out our smartphones. We're always on devices. We're always taking ourselves out of the present moment. And the more time that we spend there, the more prone we are to be in that distracted mindset. And the more time that we spend in the virtual environment, the more we want to be there and the more prone we are. After all, how can real life compared to a fantasy, a place of constant excitement, fraught with any experience that I might crave,
then how can a real relationship or real sex with a real person compare to a risk-free, rejection-free world of any woman that I want in seconds? Or any experience that I want in seconds? Video games, TV, know, junk food, whatever it is. How can real life compare, which does not so easily give gratification, so instantly give me so much pleasure?
Most things worth it in life, like relationships, don't give that. And I think it's one of the primary reasons that more than half of marriages cannot stay together. We lack the ability to be present.
Last week I invited everybody to complete a 30 day challenge with me. And this is again, this is a thing that's personal for me. I'm just coming to understand more about this and this challenge for me personally and what I've invited people to do their own version of or to follow what I'm doing is to do three things. Number one is to set aside two hours in the morning with no phone or technology. And then to set aside two hours in the evening with no phone or technology.
And then for me, I like to exercise in the mornings. I also exercise. I set the goal to exercise two to three days per week with no audio stimulation, no podcast, no audio book, no music. Right. And for the rest of us, you know, no videos, no, none of that. Right. Just being present, breathing, feeling your muscles, feeling the body, being present with the exercise, a challenging thing, right? Not as entertaining or distracting.
Jake Kastleman (06:47.288)
But this is essentially a challenge to unhook, detach from technology and be present because of how it fuels addiction. Pornography addiction, yes, but other addictions too. And I'm gonna talk a bit more about my personal addictions I've gotten into almost 11 years after being sober from pornography. I have, in doing this the last week, and it was originally my wife who brought up, know, and I talked about in the last episode,
She said, we are not fully present as a family during the evenings. We're on our phones, we're not paying attention to each other. And I felt this very visceral reaction to that, like, I'm not on my phone that much. And when that defensiveness came up, fortunately, after getting a little bit, after getting resistant to what she was saying and kind of...
feeling my own excuses. don't think I brought up too much, but I kind of said, yeah, you know, I kind of hear what you're saying. And then I kind of thought about it I noticed the defensiveness in me and I was like, you know, that's a pretty clear sign that there's truth to what she's saying. And since she said that, I made this challenge to myself and I'm extending it to all of you.
to do this for 30 days and to see how it shifts your perspective when it does for you in your life. And for me, I have already experienced some significant things in a very short period of time. And I want to tell you about those. I have not experienced addiction withdrawals in a long time. And I do not like experiencing addiction withdrawals. I hate it. It's a horrible feeling.
chemical imbalance in the brain and coming out of something that we've built a habit of and craving it and longing for it and feeling anxious and depressed and not able to focus and kind of crazy and mood swings. Ugh. It's misery. And in coming off my phone and setting these boundaries,
Jake Kastleman (09:04.384)
I started to notice that I was able to be more present and so I took my goals further. I have my minimum challenge I've set, right? Two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening, two to three days per week with no audio during my workouts. Just being present with my workouts. I have extended this and I've been spending less time on my phone than ever, putting it away in a drawer and leaving it there.
Jake Kastleman (09:32.45)
Guys, I wanna cry honestly talking about this because I did not realize how I have let this go on so long. How over years of time, I have slowly been dragged into this tunnel of being distracted with my phone. And...
In experiencing withdrawals, it was interesting because I realized what is my addiction to? And I mentioned it last time. It's an addiction to productivity. It's an addiction to information. And primarily what I've realized is, is an addiction to distraction. I'm not on my phone doing social media and watching a bunch of YouTube videos and playing little mobile games. I don't do that. I'm not saying that because
I'm like, look at me. I'm saying that because I had to do that in order to get sober from porn because those things spike dopamine and they build addiction tendency in the brain. They, they decrease motivation and other areas of life and the ability to enjoy the moment and actually enjoy normal things in life because they're so stimulating.
So I don't participate in those things anymore other than practical learning kinds of activities, right? So for me, I, you know, reading, using chat GPT and AI to ask questions so I can learn about a certain topic or things that I'm trying to get better at or instructions, productivity, calendar, tasks.
email, text messages, you know, I've noticed as I've come off my phone this constant mental, you know, these little pings in my head that's like, I gotta check what my phone says. I wonder if somebody messaged me. Oh, what if somebody reached out to me? Or what if somebody needs something? Or I should get back to them quickly because if I do, then I'll have less to do later. Oh, that's an amazing one that this part of me comes up with all the time.
Jake Kastleman (11:52.052)
If I get it done now, that means I'll have more time later. The only problem is there's never more time later, is what I've realized. I'm in this constant spinning productivity all the time, this constant assimilating of information. And in taking time at the gym to put down the audio books, the podcasts, the things that are good for learning, things that have really helped me, but putting them down during my workout to actually be
Present with my body, present with my breath, feeling the workout. It's led to better workouts for me, for one, which is nice. I get a better workout because I'm more focused on what I'm doing. It's led to me just feeling more present in life overall. Again, I'm really new to this, so I still have more to experience. I'm sure I'll face other challenges.
It has fostered this ability to actually be able to focus better. And the ironic thing is in the times where I am productive, because I'm not constantly productive, my times of productivity are so much better. My focus is so much better. My creativity, I think, is increasing. And this blows me away. Like, how have I been in this for so long? You I knew about this. I've heard people talk about
But now I'm experiencing it myself. It's really quite something amazing. So I want to tell you just some other things that have been really so positive about this. And I said in my last episode, I'd talk about this in 30 days, but I have to talk about it now.
Because I've been off my phone and I've put it away in the evenings, I didn't even realize this was happening. But because we have a newborn and we have a toddler, often our toddler eats for like five minutes and then he's done. So then he's playing and someone will often go play with him. He's starting to play on his own more, especially now that we have a newborn. And so he's getting used to, I need to actually like entertain myself because mom's busy, dad's at work, right?
Jake Kastleman (14:02.262)
And, but essentially because our dinnertime have not been so kind of integrated, like our family being fully engaged with one another, and then someone's feeding the newborn or taking care of it, right? We've gotten in this habit since we had a child of, and to be frank, before that it was often my wife and I watched TV while we ate food. Like that happened frequently, or we'd be listening to something.
It's just the constant stimulation. So what I would do, we would like eat in shifts, right? And so I'd go sit at the dining table and someone else is in the living room. My mother-in-law lives with us in the basement. so she's involved there too. And while someone was sitting there, know, feeding the baby or hanging out with my son, my toddler, you know, I'd be at the dining table eating and doing what? Scrolling.
you know, information, articles, looking at my calendar, text messages, reading things, you name it, whatever it is to be productive or look at information or to be distracted. And now that I've put that down, now it's like, I'm not going to go sit in the dining room by myself. Like I'll sit in here with, you know, my, my wife and chat with her while I eat. And so I found us getting together as a family.
like instantly sitting down together and actually talking or just being present with each other. This has led to so many more conversations. This is amazing because for so long, I felt like my wife and I never had time to talk. Now all of sudden we have abundant time to talk. It's like we get to talk for two or three hours, well, maybe not three, but two hours a day, you know? And I'm like, my smartphone has been standing in the way of this.
I have built a relationship with an inanimate object that's taken over and replaced at least a portion of my relationship with my wife.
Jake Kastleman (16:10.744)
So you wouldn't think that these things are addictive necessarily, right? Not in a cliche sense. We think of drugs, we think of alcohol, and now we think of porn. We think of maybe video games, TV. But these more subtle addictions, going through the withdrawals, I really did feel crazy for a few days. Mood's all off, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling depressed, I'm craving. And I actually had to go through an experience the other night. I was up in the middle of the night with my newborn and I...
was feeling sadness, great sadness. And I do this with my clients all the time. My clients have to actually grieve their addiction because we build a relationship to our addiction, to pornography, right? We have to actually grieve it when we leave it behind. And I've processed this with clients and helped them through that experience. So I, in realizing what am I feeling using the RAIL method to work through it? Okay, what's the protective stuff that's going on?
What are these parts trying to do for me? These parts of my mind? What's the fear that's underneath? And what I got to is just, I am feeling neurologically imbalanced. And then I felt a grief, like I need my phone. I want my phone. So weird. Again, for me, I'm just like, I did not consider myself one of these people. But in putting it down, now I see, wow, that was a lot deeper than I thought.
And so I had to grieve it. I grieved it that night and I allowed myself to be sad and to grieve and I walked toward that part of me and said, it's okay, I'm here. I hear what you're saying. You're grieving this relationship. This has been a companion for you for a long time. I'm here with you. I feel compassion for your loss. And I was able to grieve it that night. And coming out of that, you know, I'm blessed enough that within a few days, I think,
I experienced a vast majority of the withdrawals and now I feel better. That is often not the way it works for something that is more intense like pornography. All of this has brought me to an understanding of something that I have not considered this deeply before. And that is the balance most of us men are lacking between doing and being.
Jake Kastleman (18:36.376)
So doing versus being, what do I mean? My whole life, I've had this constant nagging inside that I have to stay busy, keep going, never stop. During my years of deep addiction, that meant that I had to constantly seek dopamine hits, YouTube, TV, video games, pornography, junk food. Nowadays, it's meant constant productivity, learning.
tasks, calendar, work responsibilities, family responsibilities, chores around the house. And I will say even when I'm not doing those things, I'm busy obsessing over them in my mind. Judging myself for not doing them as often or as well as I should, right? That's often what I do with house chores. I don't actually do them. I just worry about doing them. I'm hoping that will shift a bit given this, you know, trying to foster more presence so I have more attention.
which increases my capacity to actually feel organized and clear enough to do things in a moderate manner rather than this all or nothing kind of mentality. That's the hope. We'll see what happens. And really I just need to also not be lazy with house chores. Something I can perpetually put off until I eventually get around to it I'm like, okay, okay, I'll clean the bathroom, right? Not saying my bathroom is hideous or disgusting, but it goes longer than it should.
So it's never ending, right? And I'm not alone in this. This fixation with constantly doing is shared by most of my clients that I've worked with. This constant chaos, this busyness of mind, this constant expectation that I have to be always going, always learning, always progressing, always accomplishing. This constant productivity is glorified in modern Western culture. That's one of the worst parts. We are taught that we should always be working.
Always be busy, progressing, getting things done. This is not just us men, this is women too, right? As men, particularly though, because we're prone towards this doing, doing, the masculine mind, we take this message to heart. We feel a constant pressure to perform. We take our work home with us. We're with our family, but we're not really with them. We're checking emails, texts, DMs, calendar, you know, calendar.
Jake Kastleman (21:01.856)
news within our business's market. We feel this constant push to stay connected while being disconnected from the people that actually matter. And it's not that we're fully disconnected, right? But just partially. That's one of the most sinister things about it, I think. Never quite all the way there. We're there, just not fully. Even if we're not on our phone as well.
Our brain is still so used to being distracted that we have a hard time being fully engaged with our wife and kids. And that just makes us want to crawl back into the virtual world to distract ourselves from that feeling of inadequacy.
If you struggle to connect with your wife or with your kids, if your relationships aren't what you want them to be, I challenge you, and this is a challenge to myself too, to take a long look at this pattern of distraction in your life. Is your attention constantly fragmented? Are you in a perpetual state of productivity, quote unquote, at the expense of truly being present?
Or are you constantly going back and forth from YouTube, social media, podcasts, articles, and the people around you, or the things that you actually feel you want or need to be doing? Or just being present? I've had a compulsive habit of checking my phone in between almost everything I do. Getting up in the morning, check my phone. Get in the car, check my phone. Finish my work, check my phone. Sit at the dinner table, check my phone.
Constant. That's not good for my brain. That is not good for my ability to be present and to pay attention. It is not good, ironically, for my productivity because it breaks my ability to focus and to be innovative, to come up with ideas because I'm not there. I'm split. Now that I'm just barely beginning to shift this, I'm coming out of a tunnel.
Jake Kastleman (23:12.734)
slowly that I didn't even realize I was in. I find myself saying, my world is opening up. I'm like, how did I let this get so bad? And again, this is new for me. So I don't want to, know, pink cloud or anything like, look, everything's changed. And then I'll come to another problem later, right? But I have experienced some of this. It's been lovely. Lately, I'm putting my phone down. I'm just being silent. I'm feeding my newborn without the phone.
Not that I can't use that sometimes, right? There's certain things I need to get done, things I want to write about, things that I want to read, write, read a book, right? On my phone. But it needs to be deliberate. That's one of the things I'm realizing. When I get on my phone, those notifications, they're right there at the top of the screen. I debate on getting an app that gets rid of those, but I also want to know when a text message comes in. So I have trouble with that. But am I getting on my phone and then won't open those motivation? Those,
notifications and get distracted or am I I know what I'm doing I know I'm getting on my phone I'm getting on there to read a book and open that up right while I feed my newborn that's okay sometimes I can be with my newborn and other times I can do that or chatting with my wife or my mother-in-law sitting in the quiet am I putting these things down and being silent focusing on my body and my breath during workouts
all of these things that I was too distracted to fully experience for all these years.
For all those that are Christian out there, or if you believe in God, I want to say something that is hard. Christ said, be still and know that I am. And by the way, I'm not the one who made up what I'm about to say. It comes from Eckhart Tolle. Be still and know that I am. What does I am mean? I am is a title for God, the great I am.
Jake Kastleman (25:19.69)
If I am not still, I cannot know God.
Jake Kastleman (25:25.494)
One of my main unconscious fears of doing this and actually being present and silent is that I will not accomplish enough. Not enough time, too much to do, always rushing, this constant internal message, I need to catch up, I'm falling behind, right? So many of us feel it.
In making this change, so far, I've found the exact opposite to be true. I'm not falling behind. I'm not running out of time. I'm not trying to catch up because I'm no longer in the race. The sense of urgency I've dealt with my whole life is decreasing.
Jake Kastleman (26:17.804)
Now, I want to pull away from the neurological and psychological view of doing versus being that we're talking about and give you another perspective on it that has taken me years to understand. I think it's very significant. I think it can also be loaded from a cultural perspective. And I'm going to share it in the very best way that I can. And I ask you to open up your mind and to be aware of those parts of you that might judge what I'm about to say or feel odd about it. Or maybe you won't feel that at all. And if so, I...
grateful.
Okay, this perspective is psychological, but it's also symbolic. And it's particularly powerful when it comes to addiction recovery and the happiness in your relationship with your wife. And that is the masculine versus feminine polarization of the human mind.
And I go much deeper into what I'm about to talk about in my program that I do in coaching with my clients and the lesson materials that I provide. So many of us have been taught to demonize masculinity. We're taught that it is toxic. Not true. We're also not taught what femininity or masculinity for that matter really is. As it has been, femininity particularly has been so deluded.
with masculine traits that the two seem to be the same thing. Sameness. We went from equality, and what I'm about to say comes from G.S. Youngblood, his book, The Masculine in Relationship. I highly recommend it. Very powerful.
Jake Kastleman (27:56.268)
We went from seeking equality between the genders or the sexes, however you want to put
We went from equality to sameness over the last 30 years or so. But knowing the difference between these two, the masculine versus the feminine and how they function, is fundamental. It can give us incredible insights that empower our recovery from porn and from other addictions and empower our relationships. Most of us are woefully undereducated.
I know this has been the case for me until I started learning about these things from places that were not. I was never taught, either I was never taught in school nor in church in a fundamental way, the differences between the masculine and the feminine in an archetypal sense, in a foundational sense, because our society pretends that they are the same. They are not the same.
and pretending that they are denies fundamental truths that can help us with the health of our relationships and the health of our psychology. Okay. Here's what I mean. Our mind contains masculine and feminine polarity, parts of our mind that disagree with one another and often war with each other. This gets a little complex. Just give me a minute.
So we have parts of us that tell us to get up, get busy, accomplish things, be productive. We have other parts that tell us stay in bed, watch TV, eat nachos until you bloat.
Jake Kastleman (29:44.684)
We have parts of us that tell us that they can be harsh. They can have high expectations. They believe in duty, strength, resilience. They push us to progress. We have other parts of us that just want us to enjoy the moment, experience sensation, be creative, bring comfort to ourselves and others. And these parts can also be prone towards complacency. Too much relaxation, too much being.
In other words, we have certain parts of us that are masculine, and we have certain parts of us that are feminine. Again, this is archetypal, so please don't think about men and women as a whole as defined by what I'm saying. The masculine is about order, ambition, analytics, protection, justice, duty. The feminine is about nurturing, creativity, fun, spontaneity, harmony.
Whether we are a man or a woman, we all have both masculine and feminine energy, right? We carry both, and we have both the masculine and feminine within our mind. We actually see it represented in the left brain versus the right brain. The left brain is about order, morality, planning, duty, right? Logic. And the right brain is about emotion, expression, creativity, fun, spontaneity.
Flexibility. Imagination. In other words, we have one side of us that is about doing, that's the left brain, it's the masculine, and another side that is about being, the right brain, the feminine. It's fascinating. Fascinating. On average, men tend to be more masculine, right? Or left brain-centric, more about doing. And women tend to be more feminine, or right brain-centric.
more about being. Though there are definitely many exceptions to this based on the individual. I myself feel that I have probably more of that femininity of the nurturing, the engaging with deep emotion than a lot of men do. I'm more in that end of the spectrum than some men are. So it depends. It depends on the person.
Jake Kastleman (32:09.592)
And I'd say no matter where we're at, our task is to develop more of the masculine or feminine side within us to develop balance. Again, don't think of it as man versus women. Think of it as masculine versus feminine traits, qualities. Flexibility versus rigidity. Order versus, I want to say chaos, which is true, but it's flexibility, it's creativity.
It's comfort, it's fantasy, it's imagination. Anyway.
So how does all this play into addiction recovery? This is profound. If you can just pay close attention here to what I'm about to tell you.
You struggle with addiction. One way of looking at it, this isn't the only way, there's a lot of reasons that you struggle with addiction. You struggle with addiction because you lack the, you lack a balance between doing and being. You spend too much of your mind and your time and your focus trying to do. Do, do, do, do, do. That sounds a little funny. You spend so much focus on that and you're obsessive about it.
and you fail to be. Now, that's not universally true. Some people be too much. They need to have more doing in their lives. They need to pursue things. Get up and get off their butt, right, and go out and do in the world so they can feel purpose in their lives. Now, in saying that, I'm sensitive to the fact that that could sound like I'm saying women are lazy or they just be all the time. It's not, I'm not saying that. Women can be prone to complacency
Jake Kastleman (33:58.508)
or relaxing too much, being too flexible, not enough doing, not enough ambition. Now, other women, no. They're like really driven, very much in that space. Right? A lot of men can be way too rigid, way too controlling, way too in the mindset of doing, doing, doing, and results, right? It's not about the experience. It's not about enjoyment. It's about results. Who cares about enjoyment? Who cares about presence? That is why we have women.
If you want to look at it a spiritual sense, like an existential sense, we have women, we get married to women to help us develop the side of us that we are not naturally inclined to. And it's one of the reasons why we suffer conflict so frequently. Because we are straining to grow the feminine aspects of our mind. Creativity, flexibility, presence.
Right, emotion, expression, they're trying to bring this out in us. And we, on the other end, are trying to provide the doing, the masculinity, the structure, the expectations, the courage, right? Women can be courageous as well, but that's different. It's a different type of courage. And they are also capable of the masculine courage, right? Because they have both inside of them.
So as far as how this specifically relates to addiction, if you have a part of you that is dominating your life, a manager part as we would call it in IFS, that is all about order, all about morality, all about expectations and planning and structure and productivity, you have multiple parts that are like this. If they are very dominant, they are obsessive, they are fixated, they're bloated,
They're massive and they cover other parts of you that are about being, that are about relaxation, that are about comfort, that are about imagination, that are about creativity and fun and enjoying life. No results needed, no goals, just enjoying life and being who you are. Enjoying that moment. If you have these parts that cover those other parts, the way that the mind works
Jake Kastleman (36:19.0)
that I've seen consistently in me, in my clients, and you can study this in multiple areas. IFS teaches it. It's where I get this from. I bring it into the masculine versus feminine framework. It's manager versus firefighter, if you're familiar.
Jake Kastleman (36:39.924)
When that happens, the way that the mind works is the rules of the emotional mind. Not the mental mind, the emotional mind. Is that if I have emotional aspects, parts of my psyche, that are overblown in the masculine, and order expectations, accomplishments, results, then those other aspects of my mind that I ignore, and I exile, and I stamp down and suppress, that are about the fun and creativity and presence,
I don't spend time being in my life, they will show up and they will backlash to an equal and opposite measure to the masculine parts of my mind that are overblown, that are too involved. And how does that happen? Often for us men, it happens through addictions. Because addictions are trying to make me present. They're trying to bring me into being, not just doing.
Pornography is trying to make me feel something now. Connect in this moment. Right? Live in imagination.
Enjoy, seek comfort, to nurture myself. But it's not working. It's too extreme, it's destructive. When I don't consciously bring in these feminine traits into my life, being, then they show up in destructive ways by default. Because I'm not choosing them with my agency, now instead the natural man or the ego or my psyche
is taking over for me. It is seeking to regulate, to establish balance that I'm failing to provide. Because those parts of my mind don't trust me to do it. So they take over and do it themselves. But when they do it that way, it's always destructive.
Jake Kastleman (38:38.838)
Now, how does this influence your relationship?
If you are failing to be, if you are failing to feel emotion, failing to be expressive, failing to show up in the moment with presence, your wife feels it. Intuitively, women know. If you're not fully present, she feels it. You're not fully there, she feels it. You try to serve her or be there for her in ways that aren't actually aligned with nurturing and genuine joy about serving and being there for her.
Instead it's a goal for you or you're trying to get something out of it. She feels it. She knows. And by the way, I'm speaking to myself on this because I'm just talking about my life and what I'm trying to shift to, right? So if you can bring being into your life and you can balance these polarized parts of your mind that are about doing versus being, and you can strike that balance, not perfectly.
but seek to strike it. Now you open up, now your wife opens up. Okay, she opens up emotionally, she opens up physically, she opens up spiritually. She feels that you're actually there, you're being with her.
Jake Kastleman (40:01.486)
I want to talk about some practical ways of being every day.
Sitting in silence with your thoughts once a day. Being present with your body during your workout. Watching the trees blow in the wind, just sitting outside. Okay, setting aside time to do this. Those masculine parts of your mind will tell you that this is a waste of time. That's gonna come up. But in order for you to be productive and effective at doing in the times that you need to, you need times where you are just being. You have to have both.
Again, speaking to myself here, put your smartphone and all other tech away for designated times of morning and evening.
Take designated time to just sit with your family, put away all distractions, chat, play, right? Do would you rather games. Get to know each other. Look up a list of questions to ask each other so that you can engage. That would require a technological device. But if you're using it for that purpose, that's different. As long as you don't get distracted with the other stuff. Be deliberate, be conscious. Take time to just stare into your wife's eyes.
Once a day, you could ask her, hey, I want to do this because I want to connect with you. It sounds weird, but it's profound. Try it. You will see a story behind her eyes. You will be more present with her. You'll see into her. You're just being with her. No goal. You may have a goal. I'm to get closer with my wife. But the being is more important.
Jake Kastleman (41:41.166)
So another thing is to walk in nature, right? Go on a walk or just out in your neighborhood without your smartphone. Sit with your kids and play toys with them just for 15 minutes a day.
Jake Kastleman (41:56.024)
Do something creative. Play music, paint, write poetry, et cetera, for no other reason than that it's enjoyable. Okay, do this once a week, set aside some time to do that. Or do it together as a family.
So this upcoming week, set aside time to just be. Do one of these activities for a designated time. Put away all other distractions. When your mind wants to wander or brings up all the things that you could be doing, remind yourself that it is okay to feel that and calm that part of your mind. Show compassion for it. It has taken in the message that in order for you to earn your self-worth, you need to constantly be doing. And it's incorrect.
but that's the way that part of you feels. And it can learn differently, but it takes time. It's a normal part of our minds.
And also you can remind that part that in order to do effectively like it wants, you also need to take time to just be. This will then give those being parts of you less reason to attempt to bring you into the present by seeking comfort and escape through destructive means like porn.
Jake Kastleman (43:09.056)
Lastly, I want to say that in order for us to build stronger relationships with our loved ones and with the people around us, for us to feel truly present with the human beings around us, our smartphones, our technology, they've detached us from one another. Our relationship to one another has been confiscated by our relationship to our technology. We relate to things
As we relate to people, we gain relationships with things like our smartphone. We feel it's a companion. And if I want to have stronger relationships, I need to give up those fake relationships.
And I am also working on that right now. And by doing this, for those of you who are religious or spiritual and believe in God, you will gain a greater and stronger relationship with God as well, because your relationship to self, to others, and to God are all one. And so if you put things before those relationships, right, idols, as the scriptures say, then you will not feel that love in your life.
that love that's underneath everything.
So that is my challenge to you, my friend. God bless and much love.
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