From Dopamine Overload to Deep Presence: The Real Path to a Recovery Mindset
- Jake Kastleman
- 1 hour ago
- 54 min read
For most of my life, I thought the problem was porn.
I thought porn was the thing holding me back, the barrier between the man I wanted to become and me. I thought if I could just “control myself” enough not to relapse, not slip, not give in, then everything else in my life would fall into place.
My relationships would magically heal. My confidence would stabilize. My focus would sharpen. My emotional life would feel less chaotic.
But the longer I’ve worked in my own recovery, and coached hundreds of men through theirs, the more I’ve realized something important:
Porn is not the real problem.
Porn is the symptom.
The real problem is what’s happening underneath: The emotional wounds. The fractured attention. The nervous system is in overdrive. The loneliness. The shame. The spiritual disconnection. The compulsive relationship with dopamine.
And the transformation doesn’t happen when you force yourself into sobriety; it happens when you build a recovery mindset and a recovery lifestyle that dissolves the need for porn at its root.
This article is a deep dive into the exact principles I teach men every day. It’s grounded in psychology, neuroscience, embodiment, spiritual wisdom, and lived experience, from my own journey and from the hundreds of men who’ve trusted me to guide them.
If you’re ready to not just quit porn but lose the desire for it, keep reading.
This is the path.
The Dopamine Trap: Why Quitting Porn Feels Impossible
One of the biggest breakthroughs in my personal recovery came from understanding the neuroscience behind addiction. Porn addiction is often described as a “sexual problem,” but that’s almost never true. It’s an emotional problem, a dopaminergic problem, and ultimately a nervous system problem.
Dr. Anna Lembke, author of Dopamine Nation, explains that pain and pleasure are processed in the exact same part of the brain, and they exist on a kind of seesaw. When you flood the brain with easy dopamine (porn, social media, gaming, junk food, constant stimulation), that seesaw tips dramatically toward pleasure. And what happens then?
The brain compensates by flooding you with pain.
Anxiety. Depression. Numbness. Dissociation. Restlessness. Low motivation. Identity confusion.
These symptoms don’t mean you’re broken. They mean your brain is doing its job, balancing the overload.
This is why quitting porn by “willpower” alone feels impossible. You’re not fighting porn. You’re fighting your brain’s attempt to rebalance itself.
And the more overstimulated your brain becomes, the more it craves fast, easy, high-intensity dopamine hits, what I call base pleasures. These include:
Porn
Social media scrolling
YouTube rabbit holes
Video games
Junk food
Constant phone checking
These aren’t “bad” in a moral sense. They’re just mismatched with how the brain evolved. They’re too powerful, too fast, too accessible, and when they dominate your life, they drain you of the one thing true recovery requires:
Presence.
The 30-Day Presence Challenge That Changed My Brain
A few months ago, something unexpected happened.
My wife came to me one night and said, “Jake, I don’t feel like we’re really connecting as a family. I think our phones are in the way.”
She wasn’t accusing. She wasn’t emotional. She was honest, and she was right.
That night, we made a commitment: to spend two hours without smartphones every morning and two hours every evening.
It seemed simple enough. But that simple commitment turned into something life-changing.
Within days, I began noticing just how attached, borderline addicted, I was to my phone. The urge to check notifications, to scroll, to “just look at something,” to feel a little spark of stimulation. It was like a low-grade itch under my skin.
So I expanded the challenge.
I started keeping my phone in a drawer for long stretches of the day. I put it on Do Not Disturb, with only my “favorites” allowed to notify me. I began batch-texting people only twice a day. And I took on the bonus challenge: no audio in my workouts. Just breathe. Body. Silence.
At first, it was uncomfortable. Even painful.
But then something started happening.
I became more present. More grounded. More embodied. More emotionally aware. More connected to the people around me. More capable of noticing the beauty and meaning in my life.
And as my presence grew, something else faded:
My desire for easy dopamine.
From Base Pleasures to Noble Pleasures: Rewiring Your Dopamine System
As men, we crave intensity. We crave meaning. We crave achievement. And yet, many of us inadvertently train our brains to only respond to base pleasures, the fast, high-intensity hits that require no effort.
But the opposite of addiction is not sobriety.
The opposite of addiction is connection, purpose, and earned dopamine.
This is what I call noble pleasures.
Noble pleasures require effort and presence. They have pain built into them—the good kind of pain, the pain of growth. They include:
Building a business or career
Reading
Writing
Deep conversation
Exercise
Spending intentional time with your spouse or children
Community involvement
Spiritual practice
Learning something challenging
These activities don’t give you the same instant spike that porn does.
They give you something better: Long-term fulfillment. Confidence. Purpose. Direction. Identity.
But they require something most of us have forgotten how to give:
Attention. Presence. Embodiment.
And when you start shifting from base pleasures to noble pleasures, your brain stops begging for intensity and starts relaxing into balance.
This is where recovery begins.
The Four Pillars of Healing Porn Addiction
After more than a decade of personal recovery and coaching, I’ve identified four foundational pillars that support real, lasting freedom from pornography.
These are not theories. They are the lived reality of thousands of men across the world.
1. Emotional Healing: Porn Addiction Is an Emotional Problem
Most men think porn is a sexual problem.
It isn’t. It’s an emotional regulation problem.
Behind every craving is a part of you that feels something intense, fear, shame, loneliness, stress, inadequacy, and doesn’t know what to do with it. So it reaches for the fastest relief available.
Porn is just the most accessible drug.
When I began turning toward my emotions instead of away from them, everything changed. Jessamyn Stanley says, “What we resist, persists.” And that’s true for every man struggling with compulsions.
Real recovery requires creating space to feel.
Space to acknowledge anger without trying to suppress it. Space to name shame without collapsing into it. Space to breathe through fear without numbing it.
This is why practices like the RAIL Method, breathwork, journaling, and Internal Family Systems are so powerful, they teach you how to move toward your emotions instead of away from them.
And when you do that, you discover something profound: Your emotions aren’t trying to hurt you. They’re trying to lead you back to yourself.
2. Neurological Regulation: Your Nervous System Needs to Calm Down
We live in the most overstimulated era in human history. Your brain was not built for constant:
Notifications
Reels
Red dots
Sound cues
Multitasking
Rapid-switching
Hyperstimulation
And yet, we live like this is normal.
It’s no wonder so many men feel:
Anxious
Numb
Restless
Depressed
Distracted
Overwhelmed
If your nervous system is constantly overstimulated, porn becomes a predictable escape. You’re not addicted to the porn; you’re addicted to the relief.
The solution isn’t more control, it’s less stimulation.
The smartphone fast was one of the best things I’ve ever done for my mental clarity, sobriety, marriage, and presence as a father. I cannot emphasize this enough:
If you want a recovery lifestyle, you must reduce technological stimulation.
3. Biological Restoration: Your Body and Mind Are One
In the West, we’ve spent centuries pretending the mind and body are separate. But modern neuroscience, psychology, and trauma research have made it clear:
Mind and body are one system.
If your body is inflamed, exhausted, undernourished, or sedentary, your mind will be desperate for relief.
And porn becomes the easiest relief available.
Here are three biological upgrades that changed my life:
The First: Sleep. A good night's sleep helps reset cravings, emotional regulation, and impulse control.
The Second: Nutrient-dense food. When your brain gets what it needs, your compulsions weaken.
The Third: Embodied exercise. Not just lifting weights or running, but feeling your body while you exercise. Feeling the breath. Feeling the muscle. Feeling the discomfort.
When I learned to stop judging my breathing and stop believing I was “weak” if I breathed too hard, my body came alive again. I stopped fighting myself. I stopped shaming myself. I stopped carrying an old childhood wound into adulthood.
And a strange thing happened:
I became stronger.
Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually.
4. Relational Connection: The Antidote to Shame and Isolation
I’ve coached hundreds of men. And I’ve seen one universal truth:
Recovery dies in isolation and thrives in connection.
When a man has no real relationships, porn becomes the easiest substitute for intimacy. But when a man begins investing in:
Friendships
Community
Marriage
Mentorship
Brotherhood
Spiritual community
something inside him awakens.
He begins to feel seen. He begins to feel known. He begins to feel like he belongs.
And when a man belongs, porn becomes far less appealing.
Connection is not optional. It is the backbone of human healing.
The High Achiever Trap: Why Willpower Isn’t Enough
For years I believed something that nearly destroyed my recovery:
“I can outwork this.”
I thought if I just:
Stay disciplined
Stay positive
Stay in control
Push harder
Achieve more
Then the addiction would disappear.
But that approach only works on the surface. Underneath, it’s driven by:
Shame
Fear
Performance
Self-loathing
And shame-driven discipline always leads to burnout.
Eventually, I realized something crucial:
Real recovery isn’t about performance. It’s about presence.
Not controlling your emotions. But listening to them. Not suppressing your impulses. But understanding them. Not avoiding discomfort. But learning to sit in it.
This shift, from dominance to presence, is where healing takes root.
Learning to Move Toward Your Pain (The Heart of Emotional Maturity)
One of the most transformative shifts in my recovery was learning this simple truth:
Your emotions need your presence, not your resistance.
Most of us have spent our entire lives avoiding emotional pain. Avoiding sadness. Avoiding shame. Avoiding fear. Avoiding anger.
And every time we avoid those emotions, porn becomes more necessary.
But when you learn to sit with the emotion—to breathe with it, to witness it, to welcome it, you discover something liberating:
It stops controlling you.
This is the foundation of Internal Family Systems and the RAIL Method. When you sit with your emotions as you would sit with your son, curious, patient, compassionate, those emotions relax. They stop panicking. They stop overwhelming you.
They trust you.
And for the first time in your life, you feel like the man you were meant to be:
Grounded. In control. Strong. Awake. Present.
Sobriety vs. Recovery: The Difference That Changes Everything
I tell my clients this all the time:
Sobriety is not recovery.
Sobriety is simply the absence of porn. Recovery is the presence of:
Emotional resilience
Purpose
Spiritual alignment
Self-respect
Presence
Connection
Noble pleasures
Embodiment
Self-awareness
Sobriety is what you stop. Recovery is what you start.
Sobriety looks like white-knuckling. Recovery looks like freedom.
Sobriety feels tense. Recovery feels alive.
Sobriety is what you build with willpower. Recovery is what you build with wisdom.
The Recovery Lifestyle: A Practical Path Forward
Men ask me all the time: “Jake, what do I do to build this recovery lifestyle?”
Here’s where I always have them start:
First, reduce stimulation. Create daily phoneless windows. Make space for boredom. Let your nervous system breathe.
Second, increase presence. Practice being embodied during workouts, conversations, and periods of silence.
Third, turn toward your emotions. When something painful arises, welcome it instead of trying to outrun it.
Fourth, invest in noble pleasures. Select activities that require effort and reward you with a sense of fulfillment.
Fifth, join a community. Healing happens in brotherhood, partnership, mentorship, and God-centered connection.
If you consistently do these five things, your brain will change. Your cravings will drop. Your presence will rise. Your identity will strengthen. Your relationships will deepen.
And eventually, sometimes quicker than you expect, you will feel something you never thought possible:
The desire for porn is fading.
Final Thoughts: This Is the Path to Becoming a Whole Man
Breaking porn addiction is not a battle of willpower.
It's a journey of becoming.
Becoming more present. More connected. More embodied. More emotionally mature. More spiritually grounded. More capable of intimacy. More aligned with the man God created you to be.
You don’t break addiction by fighting harder. You break it by living deeper.
And as you learn to slow down, breathe, connect, and live with intention, something inside you awakens:
A truer, stronger, more whole version of yourself.
The man who doesn’t just stay sober. The man who no longer wants the thing that once controlled him.
This is recovery. This is freedom. This is the path forward. And I’m honored to walk it with you.
Free Resources:
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Full Transcription of Episode 123: From Dopamine Overload to Deep Presence: A Science-Based Path to Breaking Porn Addiction
Jake Kastleman (00:01.006)
Welcome to No More Desire, where we build the mindset and lifestyle for lasting recovery from poor. My name is Jake Castleman, and I'm excited to dive in with you. Let's get started, my friend.
Jake Kastleman (00:15.694)
So we're starting off today's episode non-traditionally because this is actually a reposted episode of myself as a guest on Jeremy Lipkowitz's podcast Unhooked. Great podcast, awesome guy. I highly recommend him. Jeremy and I go deep into the recovery mindset and how to stop needing porn in this episode. I was also on his podcast a few episodes ago. Such a great conversation. Again, he's become a friend of mine.
Really good dude. So I loved having both of these conversations with him. We cover a lot in this episode and I hope it helps you a ton. It is also fitting that today's episode is on the recovery mindset as it is a very nice roundout for the 30 day presence challenge that myself, many of my clients and you guys in my audience have participated in. The challenge
specifically was to get away from technology, particularly your smartphone, so you can step out of the insane cycle that so many of us are in of an attentional fragmentation. I learned so much more about this myself the last month, and I've taught all of you about it in multiple episodes, so that we can build our abilities of presence, of attention, of focus, and...
All of this yielding greater closeness with the people around us. Actually connecting with others, with loved ones, especially during this holiday season, very pertinent. Did you join me in doing this? If not, it is not too late. I encourage you to do it this month. This is a particularly good month to do it. It's Christmas, you're gonna be with family. I hope you're with family a lot. If you are not so privileged, you're working a lot.
I pray that the time you do spend with them is highly quality, very high quality, and this will help you so much, I cannot say enough. The specific 30-day challenge was to put away your smartphone for two hours in the morning, put away your smartphone for two hours in the evening, and a bonus for those of us who chose to participate in it, myself included, was no audio during two to three exercises per week. I then...
Jake Kastleman (02:36.43)
Shortly after that, I increased it myself to five days per week. So all my workouts during the week, no audio, just working out, just being present with breath, with movement, with my body. I did an episode, I believe it was 1.21 on porn addiction and emotional numbness that was all about embodiment. I do highly recommend listening to that.
This experience for me, nothing short of a miracle. Honestly guys, nothing short of a miracle. If you ask me, why should I do this? I would say, listen to all of the incredible benefits that you can experience, which I will tell you about shortly. For me, I started out with this 30 day challenge doing the things that I specified, but I increased it and
really got to this point where I was putting away my smartphone for multiple hours a day, not looking at it, not pulling it out in between different things that I do, and just setting it in a drawer and forgetting about it. And honestly, after the first couple weeks, I have, for the most part, not missed it. Occasionally, I get kind of the craving, like, I want to look at my phone and I want to find out what notifications are there and I want something to distract me. That comes up. It'll come up again.
very likely, but it has improved my life so substantially. And if you really want to dig into that, I encourage you to go to episode 118, Breaking the Dopamine Cycle, 119, Doing vs. Being, and 121, Porn Addiction and Emotional Numbness. Each of those episodes, I talk in depth, in real time, about everything that I was experiencing during the last 30 days doing this challenge myself.
And I have not been the only one. Multiple clients that I've spoken with, other people who listen to my podcast that I've talked with. It has been such a privilege and such a blessing to see how this has had more movement and traction than anything I've ever done on the podcast. More people have responded to this. More people have been interested in it. They've related to what I've experienced. They've related to the need to get away from their smartphone and they've experienced wonderful things by being more present.
Jake Kastleman (05:05.324)
in their life, putting away the tech and just being in the moment. It sounds like a simple thing. It is, but it's profound. So before we get to my guest episode on Jeremy's podcast, again, this is the end of the 30 day challenge. And so I really wanted to round this out and tell everybody, know, hey, I finished, I did it. I was, I would say very successful.
In my 30 day challenge, you may or may not have been, you may have had slips, you may have had imperfections, that's okay. This is a goal, right? This is something we work towards. I myself, and this is not a brag, I'm not meaning to brag, I surpassed my goal. Sometimes we do that too, it just depends. Some goals I've set, I totally fall short of and I crap out on them. Others, I will meet or surpass, right? So just depends.
This one I surpassed just because I loved so much what it was doing for my life, for my mind, for my focus, for my overall joy, for my recovery. So before we get to the episode with Jeremy on Unhooked, I'm going to just share a few of the things that I've experienced. Again, you've heard these things on other episodes, but for those who haven't and also those who've already heard, I just wanna again,
I really bring up and reiterate the things that I've experienced. So one of them is the number one thing that has meant the most to me is that I've built a much stronger bond with my wife, Marie. I have to say with reverence and humility and so much gratitude that I've expressed to her far more than once, she was the one who sparked this, you know.
A little over 30 days ago now, she came to me and she said, hey, Jake, we're not connecting as well as a family as I would like. I feel like we're not fully present with each other. Could we perhaps set a goal or a rule that we put away our smartphones for two hours in the evening or during the time we work together as a family? I talk all about that experience in episode 118 and...
Jake Kastleman (07:23.02)
truly how meaningful it was for me and my own emotions that I went through with it and the withdrawals that I experienced to whatever degree with it, the grieving that I had to go through and letting go of my smartphone to the degree that I have really putting it away. I did not realize that I had such an attachment to it. And it's made so much more room for other relationships in my life. Most of all with my wife and with others around me, with my clients, with people in my community, with neighbors, with friends.
with family members. I have more room because I'm not so attached. I talk about the relationship to technology that we have and how it takes the place of other real relationships. The second thing I've experienced is habits of procrastination that I've had consistently throughout my entire life. I've experienced improvements in these over the years as I've made changes, but in doing this, in putting down my smartphone,
stopping the constant back and forth between the smartphone and turning off notifications. I put my phone on do not disturb. I only get notified by my favorites, the people I really want to know when they text me and then all the other people. I only text sometimes very first thing in the morning and the very last thing at night. I go through all my texts and I send messages to people. And other than that, for the most part,
You know, not entirely, but for the most part, I'm not worried about it the rest of the day. Just don't even look at them. Being very deliberate about how much time I spent and that increases my attention, my focus, my ability to be present. This goes right along with the science behind embodiment that I talked about in episode 121. The activation of the insula in the brain, reduction of activity in the insula, which is what we suffer because we are so disembodied.
We are spending so much time in technology. That results in some really profound things. Emotional blunting, reduction in empathy and a reduction in my, and chronic procrastination and then also reduced sense of identity and direction in my life. my gosh, can you talk about something again, more important than that when it comes to recovery?
Jake Kastleman (09:43.5)
and overcoming something like pornography addiction, we need all those things in abundance as much as we can get them because those are the opposite of addiction. And so I have experienced a reduction in the procrastination that I went through. I, for the entire time that I have done this podcast, it's been over three years now, I believe, I have always procrastinated my episode pretty much to the last minute, right? Day before,
I'm hammering away five hours, or minimum of three hours to produce everything. There's the blog and the emails and everything that I do. I just, it's just this intense whirlwind of content creation at the last minute. And then boom, I can breathe. I fall on the ground a lot of times and I'm just exhausted. My brain is just exhausted from just going as fast as I possibly can.
because I always have other things that I'm working on in the business and other things that I'm busy with, some of which in the past have been less than productive, things that are feel urgent but are not important. And so I've improved in that over the months, but going off the smartphone and really honing my attention, I am now weeks ahead. It is amazing to be weeks ahead on my podcast when I've never managed to do that, not once in over three years.
Just the simple indirect change, this had an indirect impact, right? Putting down the smartphone, getting away from technology, stop breaking and fragmenting my attention. Now I'm getting all this stuff done ahead of time. It's been a joy. It's been an absolute miracle for me because that has been an ongoing stress for me for years. I feel more embodied. My workouts have improved, which is cool. That's not something I counted on.
But because I go to the gym without the audio now, I'm just fully present with what I'm experiencing. And also this is associated with more, again, more empathy, emotional stability, increased sense of identity and direction. I believe that I have experienced some of those things. And it's just nice to be more present with my body, more in my body. I actually want to share briefly this beautiful story. It was an amazing thing for me. This gets a bit personal and transparent, but
Jake Kastleman (12:09.63)
I, so for years actually, my whole life, ever since I was a kid, I have been, I've always felt physically like I haven't quite matched up strength wise to other men. And this has always been very discouraging for me. And I went through a therapeutic, I journal in the mornings, I do parts work, I do reflections, I use the rail method that I teach my clients to work through emotions. Sometimes I go into the past and I explore,
you know, hard, hard and or traumatic experiences that I had as a kid, whether those be little T kind of traumas, know, smaller things or, or bigger traumas, right? And so I was in the, in multiple mornings, I was working through kind of this relationship that I had to my body and this, this belief that I've carried that I'm not as strong as other men physically, and that my body is weak. And it's interesting because I've exercised for 20 years now.
And I left weights, I've done all that. People will actually tell me, wow, you're so strong, Jake. And I just, I've never felt that way. So I explored this and I said, this is a belief I carry. Why do I carry this? And I was brought back and I promise this is coming back around to what we're actually talking about the theme here. But I was brought back to an experience that I had in Cub Scouts when, it was actually Boy Scouts. I believe I was 12 years old at the time.
that I had with some other boy scouts in my troop where we were doing a physical fitness challenge. And I remember that we did pull-ups as a troop and I was the only kid who could not do a single pull-up. I was a, what would you call, keyboard warrior, except not keyboard, but controller. I spent hours a day playing video games. I didn't get outside much. I didn't get much exercise. So I knew I felt this horrendous shame.
when I couldn't get up on the bar and actually one of the kids in our troop made fun of me and he often did. He was kind of one of the bullies in my life. I don't think he knew that. He might not know that now, but it took a massive toll on my self-esteem. It was very, very hard for me. And at that time I felt so angry. I felt so filled with shame. And I carried from that experience and probably a few other experiences as well, the message, I am weak. My body is weak. I do not match up. I am not as strong as other men.
Jake Kastleman (14:32.598)
And so by going into the past and understanding this boy, Jake at 12 years old, and spending some time with him and saying, hey, my friend, I know that you don't feel as strong as the other boys. I know that you don't feel like your body is as capable. And I understand how that feels. And I'm here for you in this moment. I love you, man. And I know what that feels like. And I just held that part of me for a while. And by really getting present with the pain that I felt as a child at that time,
I was able to let some of that go. And at the exact same time, I was going through this experience of becoming more embodied, beginning to breathe more. I actually recognized that I've carried this burden that I shouldn't breathe so hard when I exercise or when I run because that means I'm weak. In other words, I'm breathing really hard. That was one of the things that as a boy I was made fun of because I breathe too hard on hikes and things like that.
And I also noticed others were made fun of, wow, you're breathing so hard. What are you tiring out? You know, what are you, are you a wimp? Those are the kinds of messages that I carried from my boyhood into my adulthood and realizing I do not allow myself to breathe when I exercise, breathe when I run. And I realized the power in breath. And I've been doing breath work for a few years now and really trying to get present with my body when I do breath work now, like the Wim Hof technique. And realizing there is
power in breath. Breath is good. It is good for me to breathe deeply. My body needs that. And really learning this love for my body and this love for the strength in my body and being encouraging to my body. And so allowing myself to breathe and I'm practicing this, right? And I'm getting better and I remind myself when that comes up, it's been this unconscious kind of need to restrict my breath or not breathe so hard. So now that I'm breathing more, I can lift more.
Now that I'm breathing more, I can go harder. And the stories, I've been on this tangent, but the story is I was at the park with my son and I had this moment. We were there for probably 45 minutes or so, just running and playing and jumping, know, sliding down the slide and jumping off stuff and, you know, climbing and just having a blast. And I just felt like a kid again. And I was like, wow, I feel so much stronger.
Jake Kastleman (16:54.658)
I feel so much more alive. And I realized, you know, for weeks now, I've been off the technology. I've been present in my body. I've been actually present with my body when I work out. I've been allowing myself to breathe. And now this weakness I felt, it's like it's gone. I feel vitality. I feel vitality right now. I feel energized. That was a profound experience for me. The other thing that I've experienced is increased
creativity. Well, and I want to round that off by saying it was meaningful to my son, right? That I could run with him. I could be energized with him. I could have fun with him and yell with him. And just, he's, he is just like an adventurer. He is just at this, you know, I have yet to see how he'll develop, but he is almost three years old and he is just so enthusiastic. And so to be able to do that with him was so meaningful for him. So the other thing I've experienced is increased creativity.
focus and presence, I believe. The ideas I come up with, they actually have time to really mull over in my brain and in my brain and my mind to take time to let them sink in and to contemplate. Before I had so many ideas, things I was reading and learning about and contemplating and writing down and constantly moving, moving, going, going, doing, but not being.
and allowing myself time to actually really just be present with an idea and allow it to develop and allow it to mold itself. I have so much more time, so much more space for that now. So that has been wonderful. And then also I have had this feeling which I mentioned in a previous episode of stepping out of the race to some degree. I've felt like I've been in this race my whole life, know, especially as in my late teens, my twenties, my thirties,
I have to keep going. I always have to be accomplishing. I'm falling behind. I don't match up. You know, I have to do more. I have to build the business faster. I have to get more done in the house. I have to clean. I have to complete tasks. I have to complete responsibilities. Go, go, go. All right, always this feeling of rushing, rushing, rushing. And that's become better over the years as I've gone through therapy and done IFS and parts work and things. But I've still felt a lot of this and this has decreased even more to some degree.
Jake Kastleman (19:20.11)
That's been beautiful for me to feel like I'm stepping out of the race. So maybe you go through that. Pretty much every one of my clients does. So that is what I've experienced. If you have not yet done this, I highly encourage you. This has gone much longer than I anticipated, but I hope it's very helpful for you. With that, we are going to now dive into the episode on the recovery mindset with Jeremy Lipkowitz. You are going to experience, I hope, a lot of wonderful things.
and what you will learn today. God bless.
Jake Kastleman (19:57.71)
What can be so confusing for us, especially when it comes to addiction, is we don't, we become attached to the pleasure of the addiction, but we also become attached to the pain of the addiction, the self-punishment of the addiction. And this is so counterintuitive with kind of our traditional understanding of, you know, go towards pleasure and avoid pain, but we can become attached to shame and guilt and
feelings of self-loathing and depression, we can really become attached to the pain. It's our companion.
you
Jeremy Lipowitz (20:42.446)
Hi, I'm Jeremy Lipquitz and with over 12 years of meditation experience as a mindfulness trainer and coach for high performers, I've become obsessed with helping people break free from compulsive, unhealthy behaviors and addictions and step into a life of true freedom so that they can finally become their best selves and cultivate deeper and lasting fulfillment. I've created Unhooked, the Breaking Foreign Addiction podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies
to master your mind and optimize your life. This is Unhooked.
Jeremy Lipowitz (21:22.542)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Unhooked. I'm your host, Jeremy Lipkowitz. Today I'm sitting down with someone I really respect in the recovery space and I'm happy to call him a friend, Jake Castleman. Jake is a coach and the founder of No More Desire, where he helps men not just quit porn, but actually lose the desire for it and build what he calls a true recovery lifestyle.
In this conversation, we dig into the difference between simply staying sober from porn and actually living in recovery. Jake breaks down his four pillars of healing. We also get into perfectionism, the high achiever mindset, and why just trying to stay in control will never create the kind of life you actually want. If you are on this journey and you want more support, community, and coaching around this work,
You can learn more about my program Unhooked Academy by heading over to unhookedacademy.com. Enrollment for the program is currently closed, but the next round opens soon and spots are limited, so jump on the waitlist today. All right, let's get into it. Here is my conversation with Jake Castleman.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Unhooked. I'm your host Jeremy Lipkowitz. Today with a friend of mine, I'm happy to say friend of mine, Jake Castleman. Jake, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Jeremy. It's awesome to be here, man. It's good to see you again.
Jeremy Lipowitz (22:49.6)
Yeah, likewise. I want to jump straight in. There's a lot of questions I have for you about your method, your background. But one thing, you you emphasize a lot that recovery is about losing the desire for porn and developing what you call a recovery mindset and a recovery lifestyle, not just white-knuckling it and trying to abstain from the behavior. How do you explain that difference to men who are just starting out?
So I think when I first started recovering from pornography, I was under this impression, which a lot of us can be under, is, okay, if I can just get this porn problem under control, then all my problems will go away. It will lead to all the other suffering in my life being fixed. And I think that's true that the addiction going away will help a lot in multiple areas, but it's more so that
I need to work on the other problems in my life to improve those areas. And by bolstering myself and overcoming a lot of the protective kind of mechanisms that I have or the things in my life that aren't bringing me joy, they're bringing me misery, a lot of the patterns that aren't serving me well, the isolation that I'm feeling in my life and relationships, the things that from my nutrition to my exercise to
what am I spending my time doing each day? All of these things are making me unhappy and that unhappiness, this lack of fulfillment, this disconnection from myself, from others, that is all feeding my need that I feel for the addiction. And that really is how I state it to clients is a part of you believes you need this truly feels that you need this.
And if we can reduce the reasons for that need, eventually it can go away. You can no longer desire pornography and instead you can desire real relationships, desire fulfillment, meaning, purpose, desire to do things that actually cause you long lasting satisfaction.
Jeremy Lipowitz (25:09.618)
What would you say, know, because I imagine there guys out there listening who are saying, what do you mean? Like, what are you talking about that I won't desire porn? Like, maybe I won't watch it, but to think that I won't desire it, that it can just be such a foreign concept. So how do you explain how that's even possible or what that really means on a kind of a physiological level, a felt sense level? What does it mean to no longer desire porn?
Yeah, I agree with you. So there are four pillars in my program that I focus on. One is emotional, the other is neurological, biological, and relational. And I separate neurological and biological for specific reasons and I'll get into that. The emotional side is the side that's the most complex for so many of us. What we often don't understand is that my addiction to porn is not really a sexual problem, it's an emotional problem.
It's an attachment that I have. In fact, I love, right? There's actually a relationship with dopamine that occurs there in the pain. So most of us don't understand that, right? It's completely illogical. It doesn't function according to logic. It functions according to emotion, to the unconscious mind. And so if I can begin regulating emotion,
And as you teach so well, Jeremy, self-awareness, right? Mindfulness. If I can start to get in touch with what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, understanding my emotions and actually regulating really, really well by having inner dialogue, by understanding things like anger and being able to work through them effectively, by understanding what a craving serves in my life or what a part of my mind is trying to achieve through the addiction and to begin to gain self-compassion.
and an acceptance for, okay, I actually understand why this is happening and I can address it and work through the layers and get to the underlying reasons of fears I'm going through, shame that I'm feeling, inadequacy in my life, or loss that I'm going through, sadness, right? Things that are often kind of stuffed in our unconscious until we take a little time to be still to get present with what we're going through. So the emotional regulation piece is fundamental.
Jake Kastleman (27:29.838)
So if I start working on that, right, then I start to get past some of this attachment that I have to the pain of addiction and the pleasure of addiction because I'm solving that pain and I'm experiencing pleasure in other areas of my life. I don't need to escape through the addiction because my emotions are actually regulated. And then neurological, right, my nervous system, because of our technological age and your podcast is called Unhooked, right, so.
unhooking from technology. I've been doing a series of a few different episodes on my own podcast about smartphones and how we're so attached to constant distraction and constant stimulation. And smartphones have especially brought that home for all of us, myself included. And so getting away from those things, from what I would call base pleasures, which are, they are
high intensity kind of pleasures, they're instant gratification, right? They're very quick and they're very fast, but very low effort, very, very low effort. And when you understand Dr. Anna Lemke's book, Dopamine Nation, she's a brilliant doctor. She talks about how pain and pleasure are processed in the same part of the brain. And there's actually a scale between pain and pleasure. When I am pressing on pleasure all the time and
just overloaded with this easy instant gratification. And what happens is I get back loaded with all this pain, right? Because there has to be a relatively equal level of pain and pleasure in my life, which again, sounds so strange to so many of us. It's like, well, no, all I want is, I mean, I want pleasure and to avoid pain. That's not really the way your dopaminergic system works. So if I'm pursuing social media, video games, TV, porn, junk food, all this stuff so frequently,
And I'm pressing on that pleasure lever all the time and that, and the other side has got to come back down. So I experienced chronic anxiety and chronic depression and I can't focus. So ADHD types of symptoms. There's multiple factors to these, right? It's not all one thing, but this plays a major role. And so if I can get away from those and instead go to what many of us did much more naturally for most of the history of humanity, which is noble pleasures.
Jake Kastleman (29:51.576)
things that require a relatively equal amount of effort and render a relatively equal amount of reward, right? It's a more mild reward. It's not so intense. It's pretty moderate. Like for instance, if I build a business, right? And you know what this is like. I have to work very, very hard on that business. I have to go through a lot of pain and a lot of stress to then get a reward. And it may be really meaningful. It's like you get that first client or you you reach that dollar mark and it's like,
Boom, it feels great. But it required pain, or in other words, effort to get there. And so there's a natural balance of pain to pleasure there. Same thing with reading, which requires effort. Writing, this requires effort. We get a sense of pleasure, but it's not like these instantly and easily accessible pleasures we get with so little effort, with technology and other things of that nature. And then biological, if you're...
Nutrition, exercise, sleep, right? So that's that third pillar. These things are extremely meaningful. Mind and body are one. You're of the Buddhist kind of background. So I think that is much more inherent in Eastern types of philosophies. Whereas Western, modern Western, we've disconnected the mind and the body since the 1600s in Descartes. He said mind and body were separate. Body's a machine. But now we understand.
really are one and there's books like The Body Keeps the Score that is driving home that truth and other books where we scientifically understand mind and body are connected. So take care of your nutrition, take care of your exercise, take care of your sleep. You are going to be in such a much more peaceful biological state, then your mind won't so frequently be saying, I need something, I need something, I need to feel better, right? Because you're already feeling good.
So you don't have as much need for that. And then the fourth pillar is relational. If I have good relationships, good connections, I'm not going to be seeking a fabrication of that connection through pornography. It's a cheap version of connection. And truly, that's one of the fundamental reasons we go to it is we want to feel connected. We want to feel safe. We want people to accept us and love us. But it's very symbolic how we do that through pornography.
Jeremy Lipowitz (32:15.766)
Yeah. So many interesting things you've touched on. One of the things that I had never heard of, you mentioned this term noble pleasures. And I kind of like this idea. One of the ways that I like to frame it is that you've got to earn your dopamine. know, you've got to actually like, when I go to the gym, I know it's giving me dopamine and I love it, but it's an earned dopamine. It's like a healthy form and that it's not.
know, pleasure is not the enemy, dopamine is not the enemy, but it has to be in a healthy balance. Otherwise, it kind of gets out of whack. Tell me a little bit more about noble pleasures. What does that look like?
Yeah. So with working out, instance, right? If I go work out, there is very little, I shouldn't say very little. When you first start working out for the first several weeks, especially, there's a lot of pain, a lot of strain. If you haven't worked out for years, your muscles hurt, your body aches, your joints are in pain. Or you're like, this is, I hate this. I hate every moment of this. This is not fun. Right?
But then because you're putting in effort and you're going through those initial stages, you reach a point eventually with a noble pleasure like exercise where you gain momentum, you get used to it, you gain the skills, right? And then it starts to feel good. Like you actually, when you go to the gym and you lift, it's like, it hurts, but it's like, it feels good, right? And so then you feel a lot more of that pleasure and balance with the pain, right?
So you earn that, right? Same thing with something like writing a book, right? And it doesn't all have to be this big. There are simpler things like, you know, meditation or sitting in silence or going on a walk.
Jeremy Lipowitz (34:08.878)
Washing the dishes, I mean my very simple thing.
The dishes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And there are ways of actually, as you know, maximizing kind of just the simple pleasure you can gain from that and being very present with what you're doing. But that again, requires effort for you to be focused and in the present moment. It's not passive. That's pretty active. Correct me if I'm wrong, being mindful in that moment. And so with writing a book though,
This, the initial strain of, of launching into that, you have to go through ideation. You have to start to structure the book. You have to look at, okay, what's the outline? What are the chapters? What are my ideas? How am I combining all this and bringing it together? There's a lot of strain. And then you start to gain momentum. You have these kind of pockets where you'll get in the zone, right? And you're writing and it just feels so great because it's all just flowing and it's coming to you.
And then other times you sit down and you're like, I know nothing. Like, I don't know anything about writing apparently. Right. And you're just, you're kind of blocked and takes more effort. Right. And you have that variability. So that, that requires our effort. It requires pain. so because I'm going through, through that very natural process of the pain and the effort, I'm rewarded with the dopamine on the back end. Right.
Whereas if I front load with pleasure with no effort, I'm going to get pain on the back end. And when it comes to those base pleasures, when I'm doing that constantly, right, every day. So if I'm spending two hours a day on social media, watching reels and all that, I'm getting dopamine spike after dopamine spike with each one of those reels. Then I develop chronic mental disorders, right? Where I am
Jake Kastleman (36:02.238)
anxious all the time. I am depressed frequently. I can't focus because your brain is depleted of dopamine. You're damaging your receptors. Why does the brain work that way? To be honest, I don't know that we actually know. Maybe there is some information out there like that, but I think it's interesting that it does work that way in the balance between pain and pleasure.
Yeah, you know, this topic of pain or discomfort is something that was just coming up in the community call I had last night. So much of this recovery process seems to go back to making friends with discomfort or being okay with things that are uncomfortable. And it seems like that's an inherent part of the recovery process is not just wanting things to be pleasurable all the time.
Yeah. You know, it's really true. And one of the things that I say is we have to learn how to tolerate painful emotions and sensations and to regulate them too, right? There's ways to be able to work through it. But to a certain degree, you're saying we have spent a lifetime, many of us, and most of the men I work with, as I'm sure is the case for you, it's decades of time not feeling painful emotions.
Don't feel fear, don't feel anger. I mean, we're turned off to the fact that we feel it. We feel maybe angry frequently, but we don't, we're not really aware of it. And so we're trying to offset the anger. We're trying to not feel the fear, don't feel ashamed, don't feel sadness. And the addiction acts as this buffer. And so what so many men go through is when they start to come out of that, they start to feel a lot more and it feels very overwhelming.
for weeks, months, and then you begin to start to be able to tolerate and move through the emotion. You have to learn how, and you actually have to learn how to be a functioning human being that takes in all emotion, painful and joyful emotion. And for us and myself included, that's the way I was. just, I didn't know how to do that. I spent a lifetime not doing that.
Jeremy Lipowitz (38:22.53)
love to dive into your background in part because, you know, I actually resonate with, I was listening to some podcasts you were on where you were talking about your childhood and how some of the early addictions for you were around video games and food. And I remember those were my first, food was the first one. I remember when I was, I must've been, I don't know, seven, eight years old, I would sneak into the kitchen to like eat the.
strawberry granola bar, you know, secretly I would hide it because I wasn't allowed to have it. And food was an early addiction for me. And then video games, you know, I was, you know, hooked on video games. would stay up till four in the morning playing and, and it's something that a lot of guys I see still struggle with. know, secretly not secretly, transparently still every once in a while, every few years, I'll kind of download a video game and
It might get out of control and then I have to delete everything and say, okay, I'm done with video games. so I'm curious what, first of all, just out of curiosity, what was the video game that you played when you were a kid? Do you remember some of them?
I, oh, I know instantly because when I think of it, I feel the nostalgia and I feel the instant draw. Like it's, it's like I played yesterday. It's legend of Zelda. All the Ocarina of Time was my big one on the N64 and Majora's Mask. Right. I was very much kind of the platformer adventure game play like just like me by myself playing my one player game. That's what I was all about. Yeah.
That was from the time I was four years old. You know, I really, I really went to video games as my place of peace, of safety, of a feeling of security. And honestly, as I reflected on a feeling of control, I, and this is really common with pornography addiction too. We, we, we seek control to hold all the cards, right? There's no risk involved in pornography. can.
Jake Kastleman (40:26.082)
determine what I see, how I see it, who I'm involved with, all that. No one's requiring anything of me. Often a lot of us, lacked power and control when we were young. I was the youngest in my family until my younger brother was born, who's five years younger than me. And so for most of my childhood, I kind of was the youngest, right? And all my siblings were two years apart. They were all older than me. And I just didn't feel
Because I was someone who was very anxious and very shy, I didn't feel like I had much of a voice. And so I think I craved that power and that control. And when I got to sit down with a video game, I could advance through levels. I could earn, you know, stars and gems and all those things. I could beat the bad guys and the boss and I could really feel important and significant, right?
So the control, the feelings of importance and significance, that was my place to experience all that. And unfortunately, when you go to that so frequently, then actually doing that in real life becomes far less attractive and very much unknown. had things like, I could have gone out for track when I was 12 years old, I actually had a PE teacher who said, you need to try out for track.
a body like a machine, you'd be perfect for this. That felt so out of my element and so terrifying. I didn't try it. Whereas if I wasn't hooked on video games and, you know, and, food and just all, and TV, all these easy outlets, I would have craved that. I would have found other ways of gaining that meaning, but we can fabricate that meaning through technology. So I grew up with that and I very much see that.
I was set up to the TV and the video games and the junk food and all that. When I was 12 years old, I gravitated. okay, so I went through puberty, right? And I started masturbating because that's what virtually every boy does when they go through puberty. Whether they know what it is or not, for most boys, it just naturally starts to happen. I didn't know what it was. I had no sexual education whatsoever. I was very isolated in that way. Unfortunately, my parents didn't teach me. They know that was a mistake now, you know, but...
Jake Kastleman (42:48.472)
They had all their reasons for that. My dad was actually struggling with the pornography addiction himself. So was hard for him to even, even address any of that. And that's public information. cause he does this, does the same thing for profession. So, for me, didn't know what was happening. but when I went through that, it was all about, there was a lot of shame and isolation surrounding that a lot of fear. And so I gravitated to what
felt shameful and isolating and fearful for me, which was to go and hide and, you know, look at these pictures and all that stuff and start to develop this, this addiction. Cause that's, that's how I related to myself. It's, it's what I was attached to emotionally and it's how I related to sexuality. And it was something to be hidden. was something shameful. It was something unknown. And so I'm not going to tell anybody about this and I'm just going to do it myself. Right. And so.
For me, kind of that history evolved to when I was 18, I discovered that I had social anxiety. I'd had it my whole life. I really didn't know that. And that started to put some pieces together for me because I realized I am under so much emotional pressure all the time to perform and to be seen a certain way. How does that play into my addiction? Right? How does that play into me running away to pornography? And I was one of the lucky ones to know that because I had a dad.
that had studied the brain science and written a book on the brain science of pornography addiction. So I kind of, understood fundamentally it wasn't just, I knew what it was, at least in general, right? So I began to explore how do I improve my emotional state? How do I improve my mental wellbeing? How can I work with my mind? I discovered I had a lot of perfectionism and that's perfectionism and social anxiety are really one and the same, right?
Perfectionism drives the need to be perfect and to be seen a certain way and the anxiety of are people gonna accept me? Are they gonna approve of me? Are they gonna love me? So I need to need to look this certain way and perform for them, So as I began to work on that, you know, I went through a lot of stages and all the things that I teach and those four pillars I mentioned, those are all things I've lived to change and alter those things and things I'm still working on, right?
Jake Kastleman (45:08.878)
now blessedly in sobriety and at a higher level than I used to be at, but we're always progressing. And so about seven years into sobriety, I had been functioning on the essentially being very disciplined about my daily routines, know, spirit, mind and body, about triggers and boundaries, know, keeping my boundaries up, having my rules.
getting out and getting social with people. I was all about the positive mindset and using gratitude and constantly focusing on what positive emotions, positive emotions, positive, it was, it was this, it was kind of an exhausting way of, of staying sober, but it was what I knew. And seven years in, when I, really hit this rock bottom where I discovered I still had an addictive mindset.
I knew that something needed to change. And that's when I started feeling inspired. I need a new way of perceiving the world and perceiving myself. And that's where elements of acceptance and compassion and self-awareness began to emerge for me. Because I could no longer keep up the constant grind of be positive, be positive, replace addictive thoughts, know, get away from them, don't face them. It was exhausting.
Yeah. And that's something I wanted to ask you about getting back to this topic of, you know, the recovery mindset and the recovery lifestyle that you talk about a lot. When you work with someone, what are some of the signs that someone is still in that just trying not to relapse mindset as opposed to living a recovery lifestyle? Like, what do you look for that might tell you this person is still in that, okay, I just got to not relapse mindset?
think that when people say things like, you know, I'm staying in control or I'm resisting or, you know, I'm just keeping myself busy.
Jake Kastleman (47:16.088)
Those words are really clear indications that a lot of people use that that shows me you're not quite there. Like you're working on it and you're trying, but you're still approaching it in a way that is not going to function well long-term. You might stay sober, but you're not going to be very happy while you're sober. It's going to be really tiring.
Yeah, I love it. There's such a big difference. If there's one thing people can really take away, there's such a big difference between sobriety and recovery. Like you can be sober, you cannot act out, but you might still be miserable if you're not actually practicing what you call a recovery lifestyle, a recovery mindset.
Yeah. And for me, at the very center of my model, you know, I mentioned the four pillars, but I'm also, you know, I have the spiritual base that underlies all that. And I know you're in the secular realm, but it's really at the core of that spiritual base is self-awareness. Self-awareness, because if I do not approach my life from a place of self-awareness, you're...
You're done. It's what whatever you're doing is not going to work. That hat that has to be at the core of what you're doing. And again, fundamentally, I that's about emotion. So, much because it's emotion is the is the greatest challenge that we face as human beings. I think. I mean, I'd love if you can disagree with that, but I don't think that there's anything that we face that's that's more difficult than emotion.
I would have a hard time disagreeing with that. mean, I think in my own experience, some of the most difficult things, you know, when I think about the most difficult things I've experienced, it's strong emotions like loneliness or isolation or rejection, you know, they're all the emotions. Those are the most difficult, like the physical external things, pain, physical pain, those are painful, but the suffering, the depths of suffering.
Jeremy Lipowitz (49:24.45)
some of these emotions does strike me as some of the worst. If someone is in that, what we might call just abstinence mindset or whatever you want to call it, but if they're not necessarily, if they're just resisting and, okay, I've got to maintain control, how do you gently nudge them in the right direction? How do you get them to actually shift their, their attitude or their perspective towards recovery?
I actually had an experience with a client a couple of weeks ago that was very, very much in this vein where he's lived his life being in the high achiever mindset, right? If I can just achieve enough, be the best, know, prove myself, accomplish enough, then I'll finally feel like I'm enough and that I have the self-worth that I crave.
And then I won't need pornography because he's aware enough to realize that pornography functions as this avenue to try to feel significant and to feel lovable, right?
And obviously it comes with the pleasure and the escape and all that stuff that we all deal with in the addiction, but that's a need is trying to fulfill. And I have been working with him on, you have to learn to just embrace and move toward. actually in that move toward painful emotion. And that phrase comes from Jenna Ramirezma who's an IFS therapist. Brilliant. Move toward the painful emotion.
And that for him has been so counterintuitive. He's like, what do you even mean? Why would I do that? That's that you want me to focus on the negative things in my life and like give space to these bad thoughts, right? And notice the languaging, right? Bad thoughts, negative feelings. This is how we term painful emotions. And I'm very deliberate about that. don't say positive and negative emotions. I've trained myself to say painful and joyful emotions. And I make that very clear because they're both equally valuable.
Jake Kastleman (51:41.678)
They're equally important because painful emotions can teach you some amazing things, but only if I'm willing to be present with them and move toward them. it's, it's, it sounds too simple to work, but when people begin to just practice it and give it time, because it was the first time you try it, it might be like, this is miserable and horrible. I don't ever want to do this again. Right. But to sit down and okay, I feel anger right now. I'm going to actually turn my
full complete attention toward that angry part of me and I'm going to say, come on in. I'm welcoming you in. you sit down with me? I'd love to just feel.
and feel with the angry part of you. What does it say? Right? I'm pissed off at this and that person because they're treating me poorly and I'm tired of not being valued and you I can't stand the way I'm treated at work and you know, I want to be out of here and I want to quit. I don't want to do this anymore. Right? Or things in my relationship, whatever it might be. Voice those messages. What does that part of you say? Not to vent because I think this is where we easily get it wrong and there's a very clear distinction, but it's very nuanced.
It is not to vent the emotion, it is to witness the emotion. Witness it and welcome it in. Self-empathize. Just this strange concept, I think, to a lot of us, because we don't think of the mind in parts. When we start to think of it in like little sub-parts, little individuals that I'm actually kind of having an inner dialogue with and seeking to understand, that has helped me so much to be able to interact with my mind in a way that's compassionate and effective.
So witness it, this is a part of me. It's not who I am, it's emotion, right? It's there, it has a message, it feels it's very important. Come on in, I'm welcoming you in and I'm gonna empathize with you. I'm gonna feel what you feel and I'm gonna listen to your messages, right? So knowing it's not true, it's not reality, but it is an emotional force and I need to give it room to feel it and be with it. And when I can just do that, and there's...
Jake Kastleman (53:45.196)
deeper levels we can go into, Which is what I do with the rail method to, I start with anger and then I get to deeper levels of fear and shame and grief and all that. But if I can just do that with something like anger or with a craving and just welcome the partner and say, what are you saying right now? What's your message right now? What are you feeling right now? And breathe into it, be with it. It's interesting how sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes,
that very intense emotion will actually fade, right, within a couple of minutes and then it's gone just because I've given it space. Or at least it will decrease in intensity simply by me bringing my full focus and attention to it. It's paradoxical, it's the exact opposite of what my mind says I should do. I need to do the opposite of what it says I should do.
remember reading this story or this parable from a Buddhist teacher, I think it was Pema Chodron, but talking about these strong emotions and how to work with them. And she gave the metaphor that these strong emotions are like bowls, you know, these bowls that are tied up. And if you put a bowl in a tiny cage, you know, it's going to resist, it's going to be banging left and right, you know, and smashing against the cage trying to get out. But if you give that bowl a wide open pasture, it might
kick around for a couple seconds, but if it has this wide open pasture, you know, it's, kind of mellow out because it has so much space. It doesn't feel that confinement. And I think emotions can be quite similar. Once you give them space and allow them to be there, they, mellow out, but it's the resistance that creates so much agitation in the mind.
And something I've been practicing as well, Jeremy, that's been interesting for me is to actually do this with physical pain as well. And I'm, I'm blessed enough to be someone who doesn't deal with chronic physical pain. So I can't speak to that. But for the rest of us who it's, it's not chronic, but it's just, when I'm at the gym, right. Practicing actually bringing my full complete attention to the muscle and to the pain I'm feeling there. Cause we think, I'll distract myself. I don't think about it. I don't want to. Right.
Jake Kastleman (55:54.424)
but actually practicing bringing my full attention to it and fully feeling it and actually expressing, like speaking to my body like it's another person and being like, hey man, you're doing great. I'm here for you. I keep it up. I feel this pain with you. Like I'm in this pain with you right now. You're doing a good job. It sounds kind of funny in ways, but it's been really helpful for me.
Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting you mentioned chronic pain. Are you familiar with John Kabat-Zinn and mindfulness-based stress reduction? So one of the reasons that mindfulness is so huge in Western society right now is because of this guy, John Kabat-Zinn, who helped usher it into the medical system back in the 1970s. And just to make a long story short, essentially they, he was working in medical systems and
They were trying to help people with chronic pain and they realized that all of these medications and medicines just weren't working for people with chronic pain. And so this guy, John Kabat-Zinn, who had been practicing mindfulness, introduced mindfulness as a possible solution and said, what if we give them tools of mindfulness and self-compassion? And they realized that this mindfulness-based approach was actually more effective than any treatment that they had to that time.
And so then they developed this program called mindfulness based stress reduction. And that's what really helped bring mindfulness into kind of the secular Western culture. So the origins of mindfulness in the West really come from treating chronic pain because it was more effective than anything else. And the core of that practice was making space for the pain, like learning how to accept it, breathe with it, not try to push it away.
And that's the core foundation of mindfulness in general.
Jake Kastleman (57:52.27)
I had no idea. That is very, very cool. That's very cool.
Yeah. Let's talk about shame because this is a big topic in this recovery process. How did shame show up in your own journey when you were dealing with your addiction?
So one of the things that, one of the memories that comes to me when you say that Jeremy is, I think I was 19 and I'm working out of the gym. I'm listening to an audio book. I was listening to Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. If people don't know Brene Brown, they should check her out. She's amazing. She's kind of a big deal. she, listening to that book, I remember distinctly her saying,
Everyone deals with shame. Everybody. And just right then I was like, everybody? But I know that there's people who are really confident and really happy and I bet they don't deal with shame, right? That's what I thought. She says, everybody deals with shame. And she said, in fact, if you are someone who thinks that you don't deal with shame, you're probably somebody who deals with the most shame of anybody. She doesn't say it that way. It's less.
direct to, but she kind of states it in like a third person or second person kind of thing. And I, I remember thinking, well, that's not me, right? Because I was thinking, well, I don't really deal with that much shame. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. And she was the first person that I learned through her books and her YouTube content about shame and vulnerability. Her, I mean, it's the most listened to,
Jake Kastleman (59:42.296)
TED Talk on psychology in existence, believe. I believe it holds the record. It's over 20 million views or something at this point. It could be more. Shame and vulnerability, that changed my life. I thought, I did not know about this. I did not know that other people felt these things. And it seems kind of backwards what I'm saying, because I thought I didn't deal with it, but I also, did deal with it. It's a little...
It's a confusing, I mean, I get it. It's a confusing, like, you kind of feel it, but you also are in denial. So yeah, it makes sense.
And so, I learned about perfectionism and perfectionism fundamentally she explained is it's just shame on steroids, right? I am not good enough. Therefore, and when we understand it through an IFS perspective, I must do everything perfect if I do everything perfect or, and perfect is a subjective term, but to this excellent extent, I got to do everything to this excellent extent.
then I will never feel shame, right? And I will never feel like I'm not good enough because I'm meeting all these bars. And the more that I've come to embrace those parts of me that have tried to act perfectly and to keep me from feeling shame, to understand and appreciate what those parts have tried to do. And to say, I see you, I see how hard you're working. I know that you're trying to help me earn my self-worth. I know that you're trying to help me feel good enough. And I love you.
I love you are trying to help. Let me see what it is that you're protecting, right? Getting underneath to the shame. I deal with shame every day, every day. The difference is how I relate to it, that I know it's there and I'm able to be with it and to feel it and show, again, empathy for that part of myself and be in it and understand, okay, what is this? What am I feeling?
Jake Kastleman (01:01:41.678)
And that it's a deeper reflection for all of us of our deeper core good desires. I really wanna be a good person. I wanna make a difference. I wanna help people. And when I don't feel like I meet that bar, I'm someone who feels the emotion intensely, right? And you can get into things, this makes me sound a little funny, but you can get into things with HSPs, highly sensitive people. It's about 25 % of the population, people that feel
both painful and emotion and joyful emotion very intensely, right? Just compared to kind of the other 75%. I'd love to be that 75%. That sounds really fun. I think that there's pros and cons though. Like I'm grateful to be who I am. But some of us just, there's more waves. We go through the higher highs and lower lows. We feel things intensely and a little, some people they feel emotion too, but it's a little more even keeled. That said,
It gives me the ability because I feel things intensely to be able to get a little more detailed with emotion, to understand things a little deeper. not saying that one or the other is better because we actually, we need both types. I'm kind of going off on a tangent here though. I think there was an original question that I've totally ignored.
No worries. The ramblings are always useful. To kind of focus this to a point, you know, we're talking about shame and one of, as you're saying, you know, being vulnerable is really powerful and like letting go of that shame. But I know that a lot of what guys struggle with, everyone struggles with, but particularly guys with porn addiction is being honest with someone that they care about. You know, for example, if you have a partner and you're struggling with porn addiction,
opening up to your partner or opening up to a men's group or opening up to a friend and saying, hey, I'm struggling with this can feel really scary when you've lived your life, trying to control things and be perfect and make it look like you have it all together. And so this question of how to be honest with others, I mean, with yourself first and foremost, but with others, when it feels scary.
Jeremy Lipowitz (01:03:56.59)
Do you have any advice for someone who knows that they need to be honest with people in their lives, but they are afraid of that vulnerability?
Yeah. So one of the main things that comes to me is, Drew Boa, one of my colleagues and also one of my friends, awesome guy, he explained vulnerable. Vulnerability is different than transparency. I'd never heard anybody put it this way before. Being transparent is not being vulnerable. And so to, for people who don't know vulnerability in order to connect.
feel a deep emotional connection with someone, I have to be vulnerable to them. And the root word, if we go to the Latin root, vulnurous, I believe I'm saying that correctly, is wound. All right, so in order to be close to someone, I must be woundable. There is this, and Brene Brown explains it the same way, there's kind of this jumping off, like I'm...
teetering over this cliff and like, okay, like I'm going to jump and like, hope there's like a floor below me. When I, when I open up to someone and I say, you know, here's something that I struggle with. It's hard for me. I'm opening myself to the possibility that that person could take that and judge me. They could take that and kind of be nonchalant like, no big deal. Like what's like, that's not a big deal. Or they could take it and try to fix it. Right.
Well, why don't you just do this with it, right? Why don't you just think more like, or this way? All these kinds of protective things that we use, that we can use in, in relationships to keep from feeling someone's pain with them. Right. And I think there's, there's also, there's a delicate balance with this too, because to be vulnerable, I also need to be cognizant and wise about who I share.
Jake Kastleman (01:06:01.506)
my vulnerable emotions with. Don't share it with somebody that you can't trust that vulnerable emotion with. Share it with someone who's earned the right to be in that vulnerable space with you, right? And share it with somebody who you've kind of reached that point with. And it's layer by layer, right? You're always reaching deeper levels of vulnerability. And some of us are more open than others. It depends on kind of your comfort level too.
Right? Is there something you're willing to say that it's, don't mind whether someone accepts or not, you're just being open? There's that point too. But learning to kind of open ourselves up to, up to being wounded, knowing it does feel uncomfortable, knowing there is risk involved, being picky about who I kind of share things with, right?
And knowing that without that, if I'm not willing to share my suffering, my weaknesses, my pain, I can't get close with somebody. And if I'm not willing to take in what they say and just be present with them to hear about their suffering or their pain, then there's no close relationship to be built. I can only get so close with someone by sharing all the happy stuff.
I have to share the pain too, cause it's, it's universal. We all experience pain. We all know what it's like. I have to be willing to go there. Yeah.
Yeah. So find a safe space, find people who have earned that right. That's maybe the first step, like a stepping stone.
Jake Kastleman (01:07:46.722)
Yeah. I think, and I think, it's good to find those communities for me, you know, my community where, where I really connect is with guys in addiction recovery. Like that is where I've gained so many of my friends is, you know, through, have a 12, 12 step group that I go to. I have gone there for a few years. you know, I, I teach a lot of things that go outside the 12 step realm.
But I still recognize the value in it and the power and so many of the principles. so I love to go there and spend time with the people and, you know, do our shares and all that. It's meaningful. I have friends I've had for years from, from that. and then I have another community that I connect with as well in the addiction recovery space. That's where I can find that brotherhood, right? Or.
The one I go to has girls and guys. So, brotherhood, siblinghood, if you will. But yeah, finding those spaces. And I think that, I go to church as well, right? That can be a good place to connect. Just finding those unorganized space, whether that be church or a community group or a club, an addiction group, whatever it is.
It can be hard to connect and actually find those opportunities without something that's scheduled, regular, a community to be a part of. I think that helps a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. Finding a place where you can put down the armor. Like for me, whenever I think of the word vulnerability, I always get this image of taking the armor off. And like you say, it's being woundable. like, okay, where can I take off the armor, take off the facade of needing to seem like I've got it all together, like I'm perfect and actually let people know what's going on inside the parts of me that I'm ashamed of or afraid to speak out. And so.
Jeremy Lipowitz (01:09:48.845)
Yeah, if you can find a place like that. mean, these recovery groups, that's one of the most beneficial parts of them is that they're a safe space to talk about what you might be ashamed of.
And there's a difference between two, know, like smash and grab or floodlighting. Those are some terms. don't know if you've heard where I'm overly vulnerable. I'm smash and grab is like, I reveal something that's so big with people that I shouldn't even be sharing that with. And it's like, I'm trying to get attention for it. Being aware if I think I'm going to be vulnerable just to get attention, then just to call awareness to that and say, okay, part of me wants attention by.
You know, what's kind of my intention with sharing this? it to connect? Is it to share something because I want to, you know, kind of reach out, connect with someone, help them feel more comfortable sharing more of them with me? Or is it because I'm kind of looking for this, this validation, right? And I'm just like desperate for someone to see my pain and see how significant it is. So being careful about that kind of walking that straight and narrow path or that middle way, right.
between the two extremes of not being vulnerable at all versus being too vulnerable.
Yeah, I mean the intention behind it is really everything.
Jake Kastleman (01:11:07.923)
Right intention. Is that one of the eight on the eightfold path?
Yeah, look at you. Little Buddhist scholar over there.
Well, notice that I wasn't even certain of myself when I said right intention. was like, I think that's on there.
Fantastic. Well, last question for you. And speaking of, you know, like finding safe people to talk to, if people are interested in learning more about your work or getting connected with you, where should they go to find out about that?
Yeah, so go to nomordesire.com. I have a free workshop on there, a free ebook as well. You can find them on my homepage, links to those. In addition, I would, for those who want to get a little more invested, I would highly recommend the RAIL method. If you go to courses on my website, that is a short course that teaches you how to work through cravings.
Jake Kastleman (01:12:05.058)
how to work through painful emotions in a systematic way that's, deep, it's broad, it's done wonders for my clients. And it's, I can't say enough about the value there. If you want to go even deeper, I do one-on-one coaching so that you'll find all that on my website.
Fantastic. Well, it's been great to have you on the show. Yeah, just love the work that you're doing. Amazing. Like, I really feel a kindred connection with your approach to recovery. And I think you're doing great work out there. So thanks for the work that you do. Thanks.
Thanks, Jeremy. You as well, It's wonderful to connect and I feel the same, so.
Jake Kastleman (01:12:49.582)
Thanks for listening to No More Desire. It's a genuine blessing for me to do the work that I do and I wouldn't be able to do it without you, my listeners, so thank you. If you've enjoyed today's episode, do me a favor. Follow this podcast, hit the notification bell and shoot me a rating. The more people who do this, the more men this podcast will reach. So take a few minutes of your time and hit those buttons. If you want to take your sobriety to the next level, check out my free workshop, The Eight Keys to Lose Your Desire for Porn.
or my free ebook, The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings. These are specialized pieces of content that will give you practical exercises and applied solutions to overcome porn addiction. And you can find them at nomordesire.com. As a listener of the No More Desire podcast, you are part of a worldwide movement of men who are breaking free of porn to live more impactful, meaningful, and selfless lives.
So keep learning, keep growing, and keep building that recovery mindset and lifestyle. God bless.
Jake Kastleman (01:14:06.048)
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,
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