The Subtle Lies That Keep You Relapsing | Exposing the Mental Traps and False Beliefs That Sabotage Porn Addiction Recovery
- Jake Kastleman
- May 14
- 38 min read
What lies does the addictive part of your mind keep feeding you? Do you keep relapsing with porn because you are giving in to common mental traps and false beliefs that we already have clear answers for?
What if you had a master list of every tactic your mind might come up with to get you to relapse? And what if you knew how to respond to those tactics effectively? Not by using willpower, or fighting cravings, but instead methods that disarm the addictive part of your mind using sound psychological strategies?
Today, I’m going to teach you these tactics to prevent relapse; methods that I’d be willing to bet you’ve never heard of. Not only that, I’m going to teach you exactly how to mindfully respond to cravings and challenging emotions, so you can substantially increase your chances of conquering them and emerging sober.
I’ll teach you mental and emotional strategies that have taken me years to develop on my own journey to overcome porn addiction. These are not generic approaches everyone else is talking about, but unique tactics based on sound principles from Buddhism, Taoism, and psychological practices like embodiment, somatic therapy, emotional mindfulness, and parts work.
These approaches don’t only help you stop porn addiction. They also help you increase your emotional intelligence, which is likely something your wife or partner has wanted for a long time. They will help you come in tune with what you’re actually feeling, so you are better able to express those feelings in a healthy way.
With that, we’ll dive in.
Staying Clean is Not Simply a “Choice”
Many people will give you the false idea that sobriety from porn is simply a matter of choice. They’ll tell you that you just need to be motivated enough and commit in order to get sober. In addition, many wives believe that if their husbands simply cared enough about them then they would not watch porn.
These claims are false. They ignore the brain science of pornography addiction, as well as the psychology of how addiction operates.
The goal of recovery is not to simply stop watching porn. Nor is it to become motivated enough, or to become more resolute in your ability to say, “No”. On the contrary, the louder you say “No” to your mind, the louder the addictive part of your mind will scream back, “YES!”
Instead, your approach needs to be one of sound education and practice. You need to know how to recover. You need the proper skills and daily habits that fuel recovery.
You know you want to be sober. You know why it’s important. But if you don’t know how to do it, and the steps to do it, then all the motivation in the world can’t get you there.
The Tragic Truth of Using Punishment as Motivation to Get Sober
As men struggling with porn addiction, we’re often given the message that feeling bad will get us clean. We punish ourselves before and after a relapse, and we wonder why all those bad feelings don’t get us sober.
Your wife comes down on you with anger, threats, and efforts to control. Understandably so, as her feelings of emotional and sexual safety are on the line. She feels distrust and dissatisfaction, and she likely buys into the lie that your porn addiction is a reflection of her own inadequacy.
Yet for all her efforts to get you to change, you remain addicted. This can feel like the ultimate betrayal for her.
But the truth is that anger, threats, and punishment cannot fix addiction. Instead, they feed it.
The Shame<>Addiction Cycle
When we struggle with addiction, we also struggle with conscious and unconscious shame: the belief “I’m not good enough”, “I’m inadequate”, or “I’m a bad person.”. We often come from broken homes, or abusive or neglectful upbringings. Perhaps not physically, but at least emotionally.
We never learned how to work through difficult emotions or forgive ourselves. We weren't taught how to get in touch with our fear, shame, or grief in a healthy way, processing it and letting it move through us.
Our home was likely a place of invulnerability to some degree. We got the message implicitly or explicitly that it wasn’t safe to express feelings of fear or inadequacy, and if we did it would be met with indifference, invalidation, half-hearted care, dismissal, criticism, or even punishment. So, since we couldn’t get adequate help with our emotions, we sought out addictions to regulate our emotions for us.
We grew up believing that negative feelings weren’t welcome. We were taught to judge them, control them, or escape from them. Because of this, we became overloaded by unprocessed shame—the feeling of not being good enough, being flawed, or being unloved—and this fed our addictions.
As our addictions developed, we felt an increasing level of secrecy and shame surrounding the addictive behavior. So, we started carrying shame on top of shame, burying past feelings of fear and inadequacy under more feelings of the same. To escape these feelings, we went to our addictions, and the cycle goes on and on.
Utilizing anger and punishment often plays right into this shame<>addiction cycle. It cannot fix addiction because it triggers all those years of negative patterns.
We haven’t learned how to healthily work through hard emotions. Taking in criticism is like throwing a toddler into the deep end. We can’t swim. So, before we can get sober, we need to learn how to swim.
Preventing Relapse: Handling the Inner Critic
Every person who struggles with addiction has a harsh inner critic, often developed during their child and teenage years. How do I know? Because I have struggled with the same thing, just as every one of my clients does. My inner critic has become much quieter over the years, converting into a more and more positive part of me, but it still gets critical sometimes.
The voice of this inner critic can be so pervasive that we don’t even realize it’s there. It’s like white noise playing on repeat since we were a small kid.
When we face cravings or temptations to watch porn—or even simple sexual arousal—this critic may emerge in full force. It tells us:
“Stop thinking about that. What’s wrong with you?”
“There you go again. Fixating on women’s breasts. Stop it.”
“If you were a good person, you wouldn’t have thoughts like that.”
“How many times are you going to do this? Control yourself!”
“If people only knew what was in your head, they’d be disgusted by you.”
“Don’t let anyone know who you really are, or they’ll reject you.”
Our brain brings up sex, and our critic begins battering us. We are filled with disgust, shame, and hopelessness. We believe we are more flawed than anyone we know.
This critical inner voice, despite its efforts to turn us away from porn and relapse, actually ends up being a primary driving force behind our desire to escape. It fills us with shame, and we want to make that feeling go away.
We relapse, in part, as a strategy to make this voice shut up. We are exhausted by its constant berating, and porn drenches it in dopamine. At least temporarily.
Responding to Your Inner Critic
The natural inclination is to ignore this inner critic. To tell it to be quiet, distract yourself, or replace its critical voice with positive thoughts. None of these tactics work.
The key here is not to ignore this inner critic. Don’t tell it to shut up, or attempt to distract yourself. If you do this, it will only get louder. Or, it might let up for now, but come back with a vengeance later.
Instead, you must do the exact opposite of what you think. You must do what feels least intuitive. That is, you must turn your attention directly toward the inner critic. Then, you must show it your appreciation.
Sounds crazy. I know.
Be a Witness to Your Own Mind
The goal here is not to simply allow your inner critic to berate you and fill you with shame. Instead, the goal is to give it space to express itself and be heard. If you do this right, this critical voice can feel validated and calm itself. Over time, it can even convert into a more and more positive aspect of your mind.
Your brain is extremely convincing. It will seem to you that your inner critic is speaking truth. You may feel that this inner critic is who you are. But it isn’t speaking truth, and it isn’t who you are. Not exactly.
Understand that thoughts and feelings are not truth or reality. They do not necessarily signify anything other than the inclinations of your conscious and unconscious brain. You may believe that they define you. But they don’t.
The inner critic is just a part of your psyche; a part of who you are. The most effective way you can handle it is to give it your full attention, even briefly. Be a witness for it. Observe what it is saying.
This is not only a cognitive practice, but an embodiment practice as well. Emotions are not just in the mind, but in the body. Focus on the place in your body where the challenging feelings are. This gives you far more holding capacity.
Hold space in your body for the feelings of self-judgment, anger, and control. Allow this critical part of you to be heard, rather than running from it. If you run and resist, it makes the experience of self-judgment far more difficult.
You can even hold space in your body for feelings of shame (“I’m not enough”, “I’m bad”, “I’m inadequate”). Turn your attention directly towards the shame. Give it time to be felt. What are the messages it carries? Hear them, and allow them to flow in and out of you.
Appreciate the Inner Critic
Once you’ve directed your attention to the critic and held space in your body for its emotion, you take the next step that feels completely counterintuitive. You show it appreciation.
Realize that this voice has your best interest in mind. It is trying to help you. It may be doing so in a way that feels distressing or causes problems. But it genuinely wants the best for you.
Again, it may not go about this in the most effective way. It can actually cause the very pain it’s seeking to solve by heaping pressure on top of you that makes you want to relapse. But again, it’s doing the best it can.
This is likely a part of your mind that is highly analytical, moral, regimented, productive, image-conscious, and wants to maintain high standards. It sees the world through this lens, and it wants to avoid anything that impedes progression in these areas. This is a valuable part of who you are! If you didn’t have it, that would not be good! All that said, the lens through which it sees can sometimes foster judgmental or controlling behaviors.
Like a father with high expectations for his child, this inner critic can become quite forceful sometimes, but it cares. It doesn’t see the full picture, and its behavior is imbalanced. But if you can step back from it, observe it, and appreciate it, this can help it calm down and settle into a more balanced role within your psyche.
This harsh inner critic can get more calm over time, converting into a positive, goal-oriented part of you. This process of holding space for it, hearing it out, and appreciating it are all steps toward helping it integrate and eventually become a healthy part of you.
Preventing Relapse: Handling the Inner Escapist
Every person who struggles with addiction has a part that acts as the “escapist” or “pleasure-chaser” part of their psyche. How do I know? Again, because I have the same part in me. And every one of my clients does as well.
This escapist or pleasure-chaser can be very creative, convincing, devious, and distracting.
This part of us is the “addictive part”, so to speak. It can tell us things to get us to watch porn such as:
“After all the hard work we’ve done, we deserve this.”
“Men are supposed to do things like this. It’s normal.”
“I’m successful. I deserve some relaxation.”
“Who cares. What difference does it make?”
“I’m only doing this because my wife doesn’t satisfy me.”
“With how stressful my life is, I need an escape. Who wouldn’t?”
“It’s just one time.”
“It’s not hurting anybody.”
“I’ll only do it for a little while.”
“I’ll do better tomorrow.”
“I just need to see that one video, and then I’m done.”
“I can’t be blamed for this. It’s just because I have such a high sex drive.”
This part of us will use any means necessary to get us to pursue our drug of choice. It will rationalize, justify, manipulate, and deceive. Whatever is required for us to soothe and escape.
Responding to the Escapist
The key here is not to ignore this inner escapist. Don’t tell it to shut up, or attempt to distract yourself. If you do this, it will only get louder.
Instead, you must do the exact opposite. You must do what feels least intuitive. You must turn your attention directly toward this escapist.
The goal here is not to ignore or demonize this part of you, nor to say, “Get thee hence, Satan!” These approaches don’t work. At least, not if you want true, long-lasting sobriety and to become the greatest version of yourself.
Instead, turn your attention directly toward the part of you that is telling you to escape, soothe, numb out, or seek pleasure. Become aware of what it is telling you and the feelings you are experiencing.
Focus on the Escapist Part of Your Mind, Not the Fantasies
Now, please don’t misunderstand. It may sound like I’m telling you to believe this part of you, enable it, or indulge in its fantasies. I am not saying that.
Instead, you are turning your attention to the source of the justifications and temptations. You are getting curious about it and you are becoming present with it.
You are stepping back and observing the feelings of desire, temptation, arousal, etc. Watch and become aware of them. Locate these feelings in your body and focus on them. Pay attention to the sensations and open up space for them to move through you, rather than resisting them.
Resisting emotion does not help us overcome it. It stifles our growth. Awareness and presence with emotion allows it to be processed, helping us grow through it.
Appreciate the Escapist
Just like your Inner Critic has your best interest in mind, your Escapist also has your best interest in mind.
Here’s the point where you might say, “Okay, Jake. That’s bull. How could that part possibly have my best interest in mind? It’s ruined my life!”
That’s true. It has wreaked havoc in your life. Don’t misunderstand me. I didn’t say that the behaviors of this part aren’t reprehensible. I simply stated that it has your best interest in mind…according to its perspective.
This part of your mind has been working very hard throughout your life to soothe you, help you feel pleasure, comfort you, enable you to escape. It has attempted to relieve you of pressure.
Perhaps you grew up in a highly perfectionistic home, or with parents who loved you conditionally. Maybe you felt disconnected or misunderstood by kids at school, or you were bullied as a child. Maybe you felt unseen by others, alone, or scared.
Whatever the case may be, at some point this Escapist developed the habits you now have of seeking out pleasure to distract you from your internal mental and emotional pain. It rescued you. And it’s continued using the same tactics to help you escape life’s problems now.
In it’s own way, it’s a hero. It’s been trying to save you. It’s a misled, destructive hero, no doubt, but a hero in its own right.
The Escapist’s True Nature
Just like the inner critic, this escapist part of your personality is actually good. It’s an important part of who you are. Sounds strange, right?
This part of you is likely an adventurous, fun, risk-taking, exciting, interesting, creative, and perhaps performative part of you. It’s probably funny too.
This part of you is likely also courageous. Again, you might think, “Courageous? Seriously?”
But think about the immense risks this part of you has taken to get your fix. It will go to any lengths to help you feel good. It loves the chase, the thrill, the passion. Has it acted foolishly? Of course! But can you not see the innate talents it has that, if pointed in the right direction, could be very positive for your life?
You need a courageous, daring, adventurous, and risk-taking part of your personality. It’s important on so many levels. If you demonize and try to stuff away this part of yourself, you may get sober, but you will not be truly happy.
We have a modern culture that beats the fun out of adults. We’re taught that fun and creativity aren’t worth as much as productivity and responsibility.
These fun parts of us often become twisted into indulgent, pleasure-seeking parts because they are underdeveloped or attempting to manifest themselves the only way they can: destructively. If we don’t give them room to grow and be a part of our lives, they will turn to whatever means necessary to get a thrill.
By turning your attention toward this part, getting to know it, and showing appreciation for its efforts to help soothe you, over time you can help it calm down and integrate more and more into your personality.
In addition, if you seek out healthy ways of adventuring, having fun, and feeling passion in your life this part of you can eventually become a very helpful, cherished part of your personality.
From Self-Sabotage to Porn Addiction Recovery
This article has likely challenged many of your beliefs about porn addiction. If so, I’m glad.
Emerging in the psychology field is a more powerful system for recovery that no longer pathologizes addicts, but instead helps them see themselves with compassion and understanding.
Quitting porn does not need to be a constant fight. If you can practice these methods I’ve outlined, you can build a relationship with yourself that empowers your recovery and assists you in developing your personality in profound ways, leading not only to sobriety but genuine happiness.
These practices take time to learn. Don’t expect them to come easily. Give yourself a few months of consistency to start to understand and implement them. Give yourself grace as you discover a new way of porn addiction recovery.
You can do it my friend. We’re in this together.
Free Resources to Quit Porn:
👉 EBOOK: The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings
👉 WORKSHOP: The 8 Keys to Overcome Porn Addiction
Related Articles:
Full Podcast Transcript (Episode 96): The Subtle Lies That Keep You Relapsing
“What follows is the full transcript from my podcast episode. While it overlaps with the ideas in the blog post above, it includes real-time insights, spontaneous reflections, and a more personal tone. Feel free to skim or read through for anything that stands out to you.”
Jake Kastleman (00:06.146)
What lies does the addictive part of your mind keep feeding you? Do you keep relapsing with porn because you are giving into common mental traps and false beliefs that we already have clear answers for? What if you had a master list of every tactic your mind might come up with to get you to relapse? And what if you knew how to respond to those tactics effectively?
not by using willpower or fighting cravings, but instead methods that disarm the addictive part of your mind using sound psychological strategies. Today I'm going to teach you those tactics to prevent relapse, methods that I'd be willing to bet you've never heard of. Not only that, I'm going to teach you exactly how to mindfully process through cravings and challenging emotions.
so you can substantially increase your chances of conquering them and emerging sober. I'll teach you mental and emotional strategies that have taken me years to develop on my own journey to overcome porn addiction. These are not generic approaches everyone is talking about, but unique tactics based on sound principles from Buddhism, Taoism, and psychological practices like embodiment, somatic therapy, emotional mindfulness, and parts work.
These approaches don't only help you stop porn addiction, they also help you increase your emotional intelligence, which is likely something that your wife or partner has wanted from you for a long time. They will help you come in tune with what you're actually feeling, what she's feeling, so you are better able to express those feelings to her in a healthy way. With that, we'll dive in.
Jake Kastleman (02:10.038)
Many people will give you the false idea that sobriety from porn is simply a matter of choice and they'll tell you that you just need to be motivated enough and commit in order to get sober. In addition, many wives believe that if their husbands simply cared enough about them, then they would not watch porn. And these claims are false. They ignore the brain science of pornography addiction as well as the psychology of how addiction
operates my friend. The goal of recovery is not to simply stop watching porn, nor is it to become motivated enough or to become more resolute in your ability to say no. I remember how hard I worked for that in my life and in my recovery thinking I just needed to say no hard enough. I remember multiple people told me that you just got to say no to the temptation. You just got to say no to these cravings.
The louder you say no to your mind, the louder the addictive part of your mind will scream back, yes. Instead, your approach needs to be one of sound education and practice. You need to know how to recover. You need the proper skills and daily habits that fuel recovery. You know you want to stay sober. I believe that.
pretty much about anybody who's listening to this right now. You know you want to be sober. You know why it's important for yourself, for your loved ones, for all the goals that you have, all the things that aren't going well in your life because of this addiction. But if you don't know how to overcome it and the steps to do it, then all that motivation, all the motivation in the world can't get you there. Here's the tragic truth of using punishment
as motivation to get sober. We often think we can punish ourselves into getting sober or that we can intimidate ourselves or just say no hard enough or just shame ourselves into it or criticize ourselves into it. We often do this inside, even if logically we know maybe we shouldn't do that, we do it internally all the time. As men struggling with porn addiction, we're often given the message that feeling bad will get us clean.
Jake Kastleman (04:32.203)
We punish ourselves before and after a relapse and we wonder why all those bad feelings don't get us sober. Like why I feel so bad about it, I feel so horrible about it, why can't I stop? Your wife comes down on you with anger and threats and efforts to control too and understandably so. Her feelings of emotional and sexual safety are on the line. It's a very, very challenging place for her to be in with betrayal trauma and PTSD symptoms that she is suffering due to your addiction. That's the truth.
And it's a hard thing for you to experience as her spouse, the one who is inflicting the pain. It's terribly difficult on both ends for different reasons. She feels distrust. She feels dissatisfaction. And she likely buys into the lie that your porn addiction is a reflection of her own inadequacy. It's not. Yet for all her efforts to get you to change, you remain addicted. She keeps trying to motivate you. You're not doing it. Why?
This can feel like the ultimate betrayal for her. The truth is that anger, threats and punishment cannot fix addiction. They feed addiction. And the shame addiction cycle is the reason. When we struggle with addiction, we also struggle with conscious and unconscious shame. The belief, I'm not good enough. I'm inadequate or I'm a bad person. We carry, we often carry these things from childhood or from teenage, our teenage hood. We come from broken homes.
We suffered abuse, we suffered neglect, perhaps not physically, but at least emotionally. We never learned how to work through difficult emotions or forgive ourselves. We weren't taught this by a lot of our fathers or our mothers. We weren't taught how to get in touch with our fear, our shame, our grief, our sadness in a healthy way, processing it, feeling it, letting it move through us. Our home was likely a place
Maybe your home was likely a place of invulnerability to some degree. You got the message implicitly or explicitly that it wasn't safe to express feelings of fear or inadequacy. And if you did, it would be met with indifference perhaps or invalidation, maybe half-hearted care. Maybe the person you're telling about, a sibling or a parent, wasn't really listening to what you're saying.
Jake Kastleman (06:55.554)
dismissal perhaps, criticism of these hard feelings that you had or these imperfections you had or even punishment for them. So since you couldn't get adequate help with your emotions, you sought out addictions to regulate your emotions for you. You grew up believing that negative feelings weren't welcome. You were taught to judge them, control them or escape from them and you may not even know this.
But you may be using these tactics in your daily life, constant, ongoing, to such a degree it's so pervasive you don't even see it's happening. I get that. I lived that way my whole life. Because of this, I became overloaded with unprocessed shame, the feeling of not being good enough, being flawed, being unloved, and it fed my addictions. I was addicted to food and video games when I was a little kid, then I got addicted to porn, drugs, alcohol, and then I got addicted to other...
Things that would be more subtle like nutrition and exercise and work right thinking that I was doing something good for myself when in reality I was just escaping yet again through something that I saw as more productive as My addictions developed I felt an increasing level of secrecy and shame surrounding the addictive behavior So I started carrying shame on top of shame on top of shame burying past feelings of fear and inadequacy under
more feelings of the same. And to escape the feelings, then I went back to my addictions and the cycle goes on and on and on. And I could even be aware that this was happening. I knew about the shame addiction cycle, but I couldn't get out of it. I didn't know how to overcome that. Utilizing anger and punishment often plays right into this shame addiction cycle. It cannot fix addiction because it triggers all those years of negative patterns. I felt so much anger towards myself.
And the more anger I felt, the more I engaged in escape mechanisms of addiction.
Jake Kastleman (08:55.246)
If you haven't learned how to healthily work through hard emotions, in criticism is likely like throwing a toddler into the deep end. They can't swim. So when you get criticized or you're faced with anger, you don't know how to handle it. Your wife brings criticism to the table, right? She gets angry or she makes threats, et cetera.
you don't even know how to take that in any kind of a productive or positive way. Because you're already so filled with feelings of inadequacy underneath the surface and feelings of fear that any kind of anger or criticism can feel very, very heavy. And this can be hard for us to admit as men, because we want to be strong. We don't want to be weak. And we want to be a leader. We want to be masculine, have healthy masculinity. But so many of us aren't taught how to do this. And that is
What I'm teaching today is going to teach you how to develop healthy masculinity. So before you can get sober, you need to learn how to swim through these challenging emotions, through cravings, through the criticisms that you face both internally and externally, and this escape kind of mechanism that's in your life. How do you swim through all of this? I'm gonna tell you exactly how to do that.
Every person who struggles with addiction, we want to start with this inner critic. Every person who struggles with addiction has a harsh inner critic. And I'm going to tell you how to prevent relapse by handling this inner critic in a way that you may not expect. This inner critic that you have is often developed during your childhood or your teenage years. I know this because I have struggled with the same thing.
just as every one of my clients does, mine has become much quieter over the years and it's converted into a more and more positive part of me, which is amazing, it's a miracle, but it still gets critical sometimes. That's just part of being human, right? Unless you've worked real hard on a lot of healing, I think there are people who've gotten to the point where this inner critic just doesn't really show up other than in really rare circumstances. The voice of this inner critic,
Jake Kastleman (11:19.022)
Okay, for those of us who struggle with addiction, those of us who've grown up with this perfectionism or these high expectations or this critical voice inside of this, what would you call, imposter syndrome, all the same voice, same source. The voice of this inner critic can be so pervasive that you don't even realize it's there. I didn't know it was there for most of my life. I dealt with it all the time. It was a constant background noise. It was like white noise playing on repeat since I was a small child.
When we face cravings or temptations to watch porn or even simple sexual arousal, this critic may emerge in full force. Okay, and this gets to that master list of things that go on in your head. It's gonna tell you things like, stop thinking about that, what's wrong with you? Okay, and this isn't just with reference to porn. This is with reference to things like fear or with reference to things like anger or maybe sadness.
or feelings of shame, stop thinking about that. What's wrong with you? We'll have this critic come up in our head, stop being weak. There you go again. Stop thinking about that or stop fixating on women's breasts. Stop that. What's wrong with you?
Or something to the effect of if you were a good person, you wouldn't have thoughts like this. You wouldn't think about women the way you do. How many times are you going to do this? Control yourself, right? If we relapse or we're on our way to perhaps potentially relapsing, we've got that critic that comes up. How many times are you going to do this? Control yourself. Don't think these thoughts. Don't relapse. Stop it. Right? It's like this.
It's like this patriarchal figure in our mind that gets up on our grill and it's criticizing us. It's up in our face. It'll say things like, if people only knew what was in your head, they'd be disgusted by you. Or, don't let anyone know who you really are or they'll reject you.
Jake Kastleman (13:24.128)
And there's a lot of other things that this inner critic can say, but that's a lot of them. And there's all sorts of different forms that comes in. Our brain brings up sex, right? Our critic begins battering us. We're filled with disgust, shame, hopelessness. We believe we are more flawed than anyone that we know. And this critical inner voice, despite its efforts to turn us away from porn and relapse using this criticism, actually ends up being a primary driving force behind our desire to escape.
And when you look at the psychology of it, it makes sense how this polarization happens. This critic fills us with shame and we wanna make that feeling go away. So we relapse in part as a strategy to make this voice shut up, right? I just can't handle the pressure anymore. I gotta make this go away. We're exhausted by the constant berating and porn drenches this constant berating in dopamine, right?
porn releases a great mass of dopamine spike. And so we're trying to feel better. We're trying to gain this escape from this constant inner pressure that we're feeling that we may not even perceive as there, these self-esteem issues, these insecurities that we're feeling, we may have carried since childhood most likely. And so this escape of porn makes it go away, at least temporarily. And then it comes back in full force. The natural inclination though,
What I want to address with this inner critic.
You need to learn how to respond to it. And again, it's gonna be in a way that you don't expect, that maybe no one has ever told you about before in your entire life. And this is again, based in sound principles from current psychological strategies and ancient wisdom. The natural inclination is to ignore this inner critic, to tell it to be quiet, distract yourself, or replace its critical voice with positive thoughts.
Jake Kastleman (15:27.224)
till to be quiet, I'll distract myself from the feeling, or I'll just think positively. All it brings up a criticism about me, says something mean about me, I'm just gonna think a positive thing instead. Or some people have said, for every one negative thought, think two positive thoughts. Okay, these are strategies that we can use, but they often do not work long term. There's good intention behind them, but there's a better way. None of these tactics work long term, not in a way that's really sustainable. They're often very painful.
And it's like forcing positivity into our lives or forcing that part of our mind to be quiet or distracting ourselves all the time. The key here is not to ignore this inner critic. Don't tell it to shut up. Don't attempt to distract yourself. If you do this, this inner critic is going to get louder or it might let up for the time being, but it's going to come back with a vengeance later. And you know what this is like.
It's the way that I live my whole life. Instead, you must do the exact opposite of what you think or perhaps what you've been taught. You must do what feels the least intuitive. That is, you must turn your attention directly toward the inner critic. And then you must show it your appreciation. That sounds crazy. I know that sounds absolutely crazy. Why would I show appreciation for this part of me that's battering me?
Why would I turn my attention directly to it? Isn't that going to like empower this part of me? You need to learn to be a witness to your own mind and here's how to do it. The goal here is not to simply allow your inner critic to berate you and fill you with shame. That's not what we're going for here. Instead, the goal is to give it space to express itself and be heard. If you do this right, this critical voice can feel validated.
calm itself. Right? That's what we all need. What do we all need? We all need validation. We express concerns, we express fears, we get angry, we need validation of our feelings. You don't have to agree with this part of you, but to validate it helps it to calm. Over time, it can then be converted into a more and more positive aspect of your mind. I promise you it's extremely powerful and this is a part of that process. Doing this ongoing, right? And it doesn't happen all at once. You're not just going to get good at this in a day.
Jake Kastleman (17:54.722)
You can't just do this for a week and be like, Jake, this whole validating the inner critic thing doesn't work. Turning my attention to it and appreciating doesn't work. Okay, I'll get more detailed with how this works. It does work, but it takes time. Your brain is extremely convincing, all right? It will seem to you that your inner critic is speaking truth. It can feel that way until you learn to be able to see through it. And you build these new habits of mindfulness.
You may feel that this inner critic is who you are. It can be very convincing that this inner critic is who you are, but it isn't speaking truth. It isn't who you are. You don't need to believe every stupid thing that you think. As Dr. Vander Kolk says in his book, The Body Keeps the Score, you don't need to believe every stupid thing that you think. Your thoughts aren't you. Your feelings aren't you.
Thoughts and feelings are not truth or reality. They do not necessarily signify anything other than the inclinations of your conscious and unconscious mind. You may believe that they define you and that's part of the great delusion, the great illusion of this life.
but these thoughts and motions don't define you and they don't equate truth or reality. is very important as I teach you how to approach your mind here that you understand that fundamental truth. The inner critic is just a part of your psyche. It's a part of who you are. The most effective way that you can handle it is not to distract yourself or turn away from it, but to give it your full attention. Even briefly.
Be a witness for it. Observe what it is saying. This is, you want to observe what it's saying and be a witness for it.
Jake Kastleman (20:26.766)
Sorry, one second. I'm just gonna grab Jake really quick. Hey, can you watch Russell for just a second while I talk to the mortgage lender? Are you about to hop on with somebody? Nah, I was just recording my podcast episode. I'm so sorry. Russell just pinched himself. He needs a diaper change and I'm just trying to figure out some stuff with the loan.
Jake Kastleman (00:01.698)
You want to be a witness for it. Observe what it is saying. This is not only a cognitive practice, but an embodiment practice as well. And this is a very important component of this. And it may seem too simple or it may seem strange, but embodiment is a very important part of this practice. Emotions are not just in the mind. They're also in the body.
Focus on the place in your body where the challenging feelings are. This gives you a far more holding capacity. Okay, it gives you an anchor for your focus. So a lot of times we'll experience feelings in our chest, in our stomach, we may experience some different emotions in our shoulders or our traps. Center in on and focus your mind on where the feeling is, right? A lot of times,
will feel anger, will feel self-judgment. Focus in on that. Hold space in your body for the feelings of the self-judgment, the anger and the control. And again, I know this seems counterintuitive, but when you start to practice it and you learn how to embody emotions, it's critical. It's very, very powerful when it comes to experiencing cravings or comes to experiencing anger, this inner critic, this self-judgment. Allow this critical part of you to be heard rather than trying to run from it.
If you run, if you resist, it makes the experience of self judgment far more difficult. It prolongs your suffering. You can even hold space in your body for feelings of shame as well, like the feelings of I'm not good enough, I'm bad, I'm inadequate. What do you wanna do is the same thing. You simply turn your attention directly towards the shame. Give it time to be felt. Again, part of you says, I can't feel this, I shouldn't feel this, I don't wanna feel this.
Okay, but if you turn your attention directly to it, give it time to be felt, embody that emotion, focus your awareness on the anchor point in your body where you're feeling the shame, and then just listen. What are the messages that are there? Hear them, allow them to flow in and out of you. Again, this may be reminiscent of mindfulness practices if you've heard them before, but there are some nuances here.
Jake Kastleman (02:22.774)
Next, you want to appreciate this inner critic. Once you've directed your attention to the critic and held space in your body for its emotions, you take the next step that feels completely counterintuitive as well. You show it appreciation. Realize that this voice has your best interest in mind. Again, it can sound so odd. It's trying to help you though. It may be doing so in a way that feels distressing or causes problems, but it genuinely wants the best.
for you. This is a critical aspect of long-term recovery, peaceful recovery that actually feels good. That's not a struggle all the time. Again, this inner critic may not go about this in the most effective way, but it genuinely wants the best for you. It can actually cause the very pain it's seeking to solve by heaping pressure on top of you. And that makes you want to relapse. But again, it's doing the best that it can.
This is likely a part of your mind that's highly analytical. It's highly moral. It's regimented. It has deep values, a moral code it wants to live by. It's productive. It's image conscious. And it wants to maintain high standards. It sees the world through that lens. And it wants to avoid anything that impedes progression in those areas. Again, this is a part of your personality, of you as a whole human being. Okay, this is one way of seeing it that I think is
I know is very, powerful for people. It's been very powerful for me. This is a valuable part of who I am, right? This analytical, moral, regimented, productive, image-conscious part of me that has high standards, that can act as that inner critic. It's valuable. It's a good part of who I am. If I didn't have it, that would not be good. All that said, the lens through which it sees can sometimes foster judgment or controlling behaviors.
So like a father with high expectations for his child, this inner critic can become quite forceful sometimes. Often we can actually take this voice on from our fathers in our very early years. But just like that father, this party cares. It doesn't see the full picture and its behavior is imbalanced. But if you can step back from it, observe it, appreciate it, tell it thank you for trying to help me, and feel that inside.
Jake Kastleman (04:44.93)
Hold that emotion of gratitude for it. This can help you help it help this part of you calm down Settle and settle into a more balanced role within your psyche At least somewhat maybe not completely but at least some and that's helpful This harsh inner critic can get more and more calm over time converting into like I said earlier a positive goal oriented party this process of holding space for it hearing it out
and appreciating it are all some really great steps towards integrating this into your personality in a more effective way so it can eventually become a healthier part of you.
So I hope this is making sense so far. The other thing that we want to work on, same exact principles. We're going to use these principles to apply to preventing relapse by handling the inner escapist. Every person who struggles with addiction not only has this inner critic, on the polarized end, the other end, they have a part that we could call the escapist or pleasure chaser. At least it acts that way in addiction.
It acts as an escapist or a pleasure chaser, part of your psyche. Again, how do I know this? Because I have the same part in me and every one of my clients does as well. And again, this can, I'll talk more about this, but this can actually become a healthy part of you as well, which is really surprising. This escapist or this pleasure chaser can be very creative, convincing, devious, and even distracting, right? When it comes to addiction, this part,
of you is the, what we might term the addictive part, quote unquote, so to speak. It can tell you things to get you to watch porn, such as, and this is a continuation of that master list of things you need to watch out for, these tactics that your brain uses to get you to relapse, these subtle lies. It'll tell you things like, after all the hard work that I've done, I deserve this.
Jake Kastleman (06:51.51)
some form of that. Or, men are supposed to do things like this. It's normal. Guys watch porn. This is just part of a guy's life. Right? Or, I'm successful. I deserve some relaxation.
Ooh, just even saying that makes me cringe. But that's a lie that can go on in our mind, right? It's very human. Who cares, this lie, who cares? What difference does it make? What difference does doing this make? Or, I'm only doing this because my wife doesn't satisfy me. Ooh, again, I cringe when I say that one. It's a common one.
Or this lie, with how stressful my life is, I need an escape. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't need an escape from a life like mine? Or something to soothe them or, you know, feel good. This is just my way of feeling good.
It's not hurting anybody. Or the classic lie, it's just one time. I'm just gonna do this one time, not a big deal. Or I'll only do it for just a little while.
Again, it's not hurting anybody. It's a common, common lie as well. Only gonna do it for a little while. It's just one time. It's not hurting anybody. Or the lie of, I'll do better tomorrow. I'll do this today and then I'll do better tomorrow.
Jake Kastleman (08:18.562)
or this lie that's very classic of, just need to see that one video and then I'm done. Or often this part of us that's the kind of the pleasure chaser would be seeking that peak experience, that one video that I'm most curious about, that's just the kind of thing I need to see and if I can just see that one video, then I'll finally be done.
Or this lie, I can't be blamed for this. It's just because I have such a high sex drive. I have to be real with you my friends, I hear this one a lot. And it's BS. Okay, you're not addicted to porn because you have a high sex drive, you're addicted to porn because you have mental and emotional struggles under the surface that the porn is a coping mechanism for.
You have not yet learned how to be emotionally mindful and work through and process through hard emotions effectively. And you likely carry things from your past that play heavily into this. You are carrying mental and emotional burdens that you have not yet worked through, processed through, and released. That is a major part of why you seek out porn. There's other reasons too that we're not getting into in this episode. But as far as the mental emotional end,
That is why you're seeking out porn. And I know that's hard to take, especially as men. Again, we want to be secure, we want to be confident, we don't want to be seen as weak, we don't want to be seen as leaning on a crutch. This is part of being human, Everybody has a crutch to some degree, to some extent. This is yours and you can overcome it. This part of you, this escapist part, will use many, any means necessary.
to get you to use, to pursue your drug of choice, it will rationalize, will justify, it will manipulate, it will deceive whatever is required for you to soothe and escape. So I wanna tell you how to respond to this escapist. The key here is not to ignore this inner escapist. Again, you might think it is. You also don't need to tell it to shut up or attempt to distract yourself from it. If you do this, it will only get louder or it will come back with a vengeance later.
Jake Kastleman (10:37.91)
Instead, you must do the exact opposite. You must do what feels least intuitive. You must turn your attention directly toward the escapist. The goal here is not to ignore or demonize this part of you, nor to say, get the hence, Satan. Yeah, that's talked about a lot. If you're religious or you're Christian, that's talked about a lot, to turn to this part of your mind and call it Satan and tell it to go away.
I am sorry to tell you it does not work. That is, and if you want to take it from a Christian perspective, the things that I'm sharing in this episode are about understanding and compassion. It's about showing compassion for the parts of your mind. Jesus Christ showed compassion and love for sinners. Why would you not do the same thing with parts of your mind that are sinners?
Jake Kastleman (11:30.094)
The approach of demonizing this part or condemning it doesn't work. Just like that point in time in the Bible where Jesus Christ kneels down next to the adulteress, he speaks to her, says, I don't condemn you. He shows her compassion. Okay, why? Because he sees her for who she truly is. And that's what I'm trying to help you do here. And I'm talk a little bit more about that in just a minute. These approaches don't work.
At least not if you want true long lasting sobriety and to become the greatest version of yourself. Okay, you can get sober by telling these parts, by demonizing these parts or telling them to be quiet or get the hence say, and you could get sober, but it's not gonna be a fun sobriety. I've done it before. Instead, you wanna turn your attention directly toward the part that's telling you to escape, telling you to soothe, telling you to numb out, telling you to seek pleasure. You wanna become aware of what it's telling you and the feelings that you're experiencing. Now.
Please don't misunderstand. This may sound like I'm telling you to believe this part of you or enable it or indulge in its fantasies. I am not saying that in any by any means not in any form. This is very very different. You are turning your attention to the source of the justifications and the temptations and you can do this mentally as you practice. You will you will get used to it. You can build this skill anybody can you're getting curious about it. You are becoming present with it.
You're stepping back and observing the feelings of desire, of temptation, of arousal, exactly as they are and you're holding space for them. You watch and become aware of them. You locate these feelings in your body and you focus directly on them. It sounds so strange. like counter, it's counter to what we've so often been taught or what parts of us are inclined to do. You pay attention to sensations, you open up space so they can move through you.
rather than resisting them. If you resist emotions, it doesn't help you overcome them. It stifles your growth. Instead, this awareness and this presence with emotion allows it to be processed, to move through you, right? We hear about this in psychology all the time, processing emotions. This is very needed, and this is a powerful way to do it. And that's gonna help you actually grow. Things like fear or cravings or anger or perfectionism or shame or grief, sadness.
Jake Kastleman (13:51.118)
If we are able to focus directly on them and feel them fully in our body and our mind, they can actually help us grow. They're signals. They're there for a reason. Now, just like you're in a critic, once you've turned your attention to it, you're focusing directly on it, you want to actually appreciate the escapist. It's like, what could I possibly appreciate about it? This escapist also has your best interest in mind.
And at this point you might be like, okay Jake, that's bull. How could this part possibly have my best interest in mind? It's ruined my life. That's true. It has wreaked havoc in your life. Don't misunderstand me. I didn't say that the behaviors of this part aren't reprehensible. I didn't say you need to agree with this part of you. I simply stated that it has your best interest in mind according to its own perspective. Again, it's an interesting way of thinking about the mind here.
So open yourself up to a different way of perceiving the mind. This part of your mind has been working very hard throughout your life to soothe you, help you feel pleasure, comfort you, enable you to escape. It has attempted to relieve you of pressure. Perhaps you grew up in a highly perfectionistic home with parents perhaps who loved you conditionally. Maybe you didn't know that at the time. Maybe you don't even know it now. Maybe you felt disconnected. Maybe you felt misunderstood by kids at school. Maybe you were bullied as a child.
Maybe you felt unseen, alone, scared, whatever the case may be, my friend. I understand all of these feelings. At some point, this escapist developed the habits you now have of seeking out pleasure to distract you from your internal, mental, and emotional pain. It rescued you. It rescued you, and it's continued using the same tactics to help you escape life's problems now. Suffering, stress.
anger, feelings of pain. In its own way, this part of you is a hero. It sounds so odd to say that, but it's been trying to save you. It's misled, it's been destructive, but it's a hero in its own right. And that it came into your life for a reason to try to help you with the other things you were going through in the pain in your life. And it did it in the best way it knew how. Okay, it wasn't mature in the way that it did it.
Jake Kastleman (16:20.276)
or highly effective in the way that it did it caused the pain it was trying to fix. And now you're trying to build a relationship with this part of you. So just like the inner critic, this escape as part of your personality is actually good. It's an important part of who you are. That sounds strange. This part of you though, according to personality theory, and if we put things together within psychology, we look at parts work, we look at IFS, we look at personality types and how this all fits together. This part of you is likely in it. Likely.
an adventurous part. It's a fun part, it's risk-taking, it's exciting, it's interesting, it's creative, and perhaps a performative part of you. It's probably funny too. This part of you is likely also courageous. And again, you might think courageous, seriously? Like courageous in what way? Like this part that's been so weak and it's done such horrible things in my life, it's been so foolish. But if you think about it,
Think about the immense risks that this part of you has taken to get your fix. It'll go to any lengths to help you feel good. It loves the chase, the thrill, the passion. Has it acted foolishly? Yes, of course. But can you not see the innate talents that this part of you has? If pointed in the right direction, they can be very, very positive for your life. They could be very positive.
You need a courageous, daring, adventurous, and risk-taking part of your personality. It's important on so many levels. If you demonize and try to stuff this part of you away, you may get sober, but you won't be truly happy.
Again, I speak from personal experience on this. I lived in that way of sobriety of stuffing down this addictive quote unquote part of me for years. And I did stay sober, but I was not happy.
Jake Kastleman (18:13.08)
So I want to challenge your thoughts on this and how you perceive addiction. We have a modern culture that beats the fun out of us. We're taught that fun and creativity aren't worth as much as productivity and responsibility. So these fun parts of us often become twisted into indulgent pleasure seeking parts because they are underdeveloped or attempting to manifest themselves the only way that they can, which is destructively. If they don't,
If you don't give it room to grow and be a part of your life, then it will turn to whatever means necessary to get a thrill. You've got to be careful with this, okay? This is best navigated with someone who knows what they're doing and can help coach you or guide you through. But by turning your attention toward this part, getting to know it, showing appreciation for its efforts to help soothe you, if you can just do that and just start to understand, okay, this part's trying to help me feel good. I get it. Thanks, man, for showing up.
You can really talk to this part of you that way. And I'll add that you need to do this early on. Don't wait for cravings to go on for a long time before you do this. Do this immediately. The moment a craving comes up, that's where you wanna practice this. Because that's before this time, this part has time to step fully into the lead and take you over. Once you're there, it's really hard to do something like this. You still can potentially, but that's not the practice you're going for.
Over time, you can help this part calm down. You can help it integrate more and more into your personality. part of this, if you seek out healthy ways of adventuring, I need to add this note, adventuring, having fun, feeling passion in your life, this part of you can start to convert and become more and more helpful and a cherished part of your personality. I speak from experience. Without.
This part of me, this part that's adventuring, courageous, it's risk-taking, it's spontaneous, it's passionate. Ironically enough, that exact same part that used to play an addictive role in my life that was the reason I had pornography addiction is the same part that I now utilize in adventuring to create and build this business, to work with clients, to build curriculum, to do new things, to venture out and explore, to learn, because it's exciting.
Jake Kastleman (20:33.218)
Right? If I didn't have that part, I wouldn't be able to do that because I would have been too scared and I wouldn't have felt the passion and excitement to do it, to jump off the ledge out into the unknown and start this business.
So you can do things like that in your life too, in whatever form that might come. So you're moving from self-sabotage to recovery here. This episode has likely challenged many of your beliefs about addiction. If so, I'm honestly glad. Emerging in the psychology field is a more powerful system for recovery that no longer pathologizes addicts, but instead helps them see themselves with compassion and understanding. Quitting porn does not need to be a constant fight.
If you can practice these methods I've outlined, you can build a relationship with yourself that empowers your recovery and assists you in developing your personality in profound ways, leading not only to sobriety, but genuine happiness. These practices again, take time to learn. Don't expect them to come easily. They don't. Give yourself a few months of consistency, really practicing this and integrating it to start to understand and implement these things.
Again, you're turning your full attention to the inner critic, you're appreciating it. You're turning your full attention to this escape as part of you, you're appreciating it. Okay, and you're feeling all these things within your mind, within your body, you're hearing out what these parts of you have to say, and you're holding space to allow them to express. Give yourself grace as you discover a new way of porn addiction recovery. You can do it, my friend. We're all in this together.
God bless and much love.
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