The Deeper Roots of Porn Addiction: Trauma, Shame, and Emotional Pain (with Patrick Devosse)
- Jake Kastleman
- 2 days ago
- 40 min read
Updated: 4 hours ago
When men come to me asking how to overcome porn addiction, the question is almost always framed the same way. They assume the solution must be more discipline. They believe the real issue is that they simply haven’t been strong enough—that if they had more willpower, more control, or more focus, they would finally break free.
But after years of coaching men through porn addiction recovery—and walking my own path through it—I’ve come to understand something much deeper. Porn addiction is rarely about sex.
It’s about pain, conditioning, and emotional patterns that were formed long before the behavior ever took hold. And until we understand that, we will keep trying to solve the wrong problem.
The Real Cause of Porn Addiction: Trauma, Shame, and Emotional Pain
When we talk about trauma, most men immediately think of extreme or obvious experiences. But trauma is not just what happened—it’s what was too much for your system to process at the time.
That could look like rejection, emotional neglect, early exposure to sexual content, or growing up in an environment where you didn’t feel safe, seen, or understood.
Your brain adapts to those experiences. And when something overwhelms your system, your mind looks for relief. For many men, pornography becomes that relief—not because they are overly sexual, but because their brain learned, “This helps me escape what I’m feeling.”
That’s where addiction begins. Not as a pursuit of pleasure, but as a strategy for survival.
How Porn Addiction Rewires the Brain (Dopamine and Conditioning)
From a neuroscience perspective, porn addiction is not just a bad habit—it’s a learned neurological pattern.
Your brain is constantly learning what helps you feel better, and dopamine plays a central role in reinforcing those behaviors. But dopamine isn’t just about pleasure—it’s about remembering what to return to.
When pornography is used during moments of stress, loneliness, or emotional discomfort, the brain begins to associate porn with relief. Over time, that association becomes automatic.
The brain stops asking whether the behavior is helpful long-term and instead prioritizes what changes your state immediately.
This is why so many men feel like they’re fighting something bigger than themselves. They’re not just battling desire—they’re working against a deeply conditioned loop that their brain believes is serving them.
Why You Keep Going Back to Porn (Even When You Want to Quit)
This is where the internal conflict becomes most obvious. Part of you genuinely wants to change. You want integrity, connection, and a life that aligns with your values.
But another part of you is still driven by the need for relief.
When emotional discomfort rises—whether it’s stress, loneliness, pressure, or fatigue—your brain reaches for what it knows will work quickly.
Pornography delivers that temporary shift, but it doesn’t resolve the underlying issue.
Afterward, the emotional weight returns, often heavier than before.
This creates the cycle most men feel trapped in: discomfort leads to escape, escape leads to temporary relief, and relief is followed by shame or emptiness.
Because the root problem was never addressed, the cycle resets and repeats.
Porn Urges Are Signals — Not the Problem
One of the most important mindset shifts in recovery is learning to stop seeing urges as the enemy. Most men try to fight them, suppress them, or eliminate them altogether.
But the truth is, urges are not random—they are signals.
They are your body and mind communicating that something deeper is happening beneath the surface. An urge might be pointing to loneliness, pressure, emotional fatigue, or even unresolved experiences that your system has never fully processed.
But instead of listening to that signal, most men override it with behavior. And when you ignore a signal long enough, your system doesn’t stop sending it—it just becomes louder and more persistent.
So instead of asking, “How do I get rid of this urge?” a better question becomes, “What is this trying to show me?” Because when you begin to understand the message behind the urge, you start addressing the root instead of reacting to the symptom.
Emotional Regulation: The Missing Skill in Porn Addiction Recovery
At the center of all of this is a skill that most men were never taught: emotional regulation. Not suppressing emotion, and not distracting from it, but actually learning how to sit with it, process it, and respond to it consciously.
For many men, this is unfamiliar territory. They were taught to push through discomfort, ignore what they feel, and stay in control at all times. But those strategies don’t eliminate emotion—they store it. And over time, that stored emotion builds pressure in the nervous system.
Pornography becomes an outlet for that pressure. It provides temporary relief, but because it doesn’t resolve the underlying emotion, the pressure builds again.
This is why the cycle continues.
Real recovery begins when you develop the ability to stay with what you feel without immediately escaping it. That might mean sitting with discomfort longer than you normally would, journaling honestly about your internal state, or acknowledging something you’ve avoided for years.
This is not easy work—but it is the work that creates lasting change.
The Mental Shift That Breaks the Cycle
The turning point in recovery is not when urges disappear—it’s when your relationship to them changes. Instead of reacting automatically, you begin to pause and create space between the feeling and the action.
In that space, you start asking better questions. What am I feeling right now?
What triggered this? What is my system trying to do for me? This is what Patrick described as becoming a “mental investigator,” and it is one of the most practical tools a man can develop.
As you begin observing your thoughts and patterns instead of identifying with them, something shifts. The behavior that once felt automatic starts to feel optional—not because you’re forcing change, but because you understand what’s happening at a deeper level.
Awareness doesn’t just give you insight—it gives you leverage.
How to Start Rewiring Your Brain from Porn Addiction
Once you begin to understand the pattern, the next step is to start replacing it with intentional action. Every time you choose a different response, you weaken the old pathway and strengthen a new one.
That might mean processing emotion instead of escaping it, moving your body instead of staying stuck, or reaching out to someone instead of isolating. It might also mean grounding yourself in the present moment instead of drifting into fantasy.
These are not dramatic changes—but they are powerful ones. Recovery is not built in one big decision; it is built in small, repeated moments of alignment.
Moments where you choose presence over escape, awareness over reaction, and growth over comfort.
Over time, those decisions compound. What once felt automatic begins to loosen, and what once felt impossible begins to shift.
Identity, Purpose, and Building a Life Beyond Porn Addiction
As a man moves deeper into recovery, a more fundamental shift begins to take place. He stops seeing himself as someone who is trying to avoid porn, and starts seeing himself as someone who is building a life.
This is a critical transition. Because if your focus is only on avoiding porn, your attention remains centered on it.
But when your focus shifts toward purpose, connection, discipline, and growth, you begin to create a life where pornography no longer fits.
Instead of asking, “How do I stop?” you begin asking, “Who am I becoming?” And that question begins to shape your identity, your habits, and your daily decisions.
Recovery becomes less about restriction and more about expansion.
Reconnecting to Your Body: The Missing Link in Porn Addiction Recovery
Addiction pulls you out of your body and into your head—into fantasy, stimulation, and escape.
But your body is where your emotions live, and if you are disconnected from your body, you are disconnected from the signals driving your behavior.
Learning to slow down and become aware of what’s happening inside of you is essential. Whether through breathwork, movement, or stillness, you begin rebuilding a relationship with yourself that is grounded and real.
From that place, urges begin to lose their intensity. Not because they disappear, but because you are no longer trying to outrun them.
You are present with them, you understand them, and that presence gives you control in a way that force never could.
Final Thoughts: You Can Change
If you take nothing else from this, take this: you are not stuck—you are patterned. And patterns can be changed.
When you begin to understand the deeper roots of porn addiction—trauma, shame, and emotional pain—you stop fighting yourself and start leading yourself.
And that shift, from resistance to leadership, is where real recovery begins.
Because recovery is not just about quitting porn. It is about becoming the man you were meant to be.
Want to explore more of Patrick’s work and the Reborn Method?
Visit nomoredesire.com/tools for recovery tools and training, including my free eBook, Workshop, The RAIL Method ™ and more to help you break free from porn.
For community support, you can Join the April Challenge. During April, the NMD Brotherhood is learning to stabilize the brain, improve energy, and decrease urges through simple daily nutrition habits.
If you'd like to understand the neuroscience of using nutrition to fuel recovery, and get step-by-step exercises, learn more about The Gut-Brain Protocol Online Course (Use code "APRILCHALLENGE" for 15% off).
And finally, if you're serious and ready to commit, join the No More Desire ™ Intensive Porn Addiction Recovery Coaching Program with group coaching, coursework, online support, and recovery skill-building.
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Full Transcription of Episode 139: The Deeper Roots of Porn Addiction: Trauma, Shame, and Emotional Pain (with Patrick Devosse)
Jake Kastleman (00:00.168)
I really want to start out this conversation with people getting to know you, Patrick, because you have this amazing story now helping other people overcome pornography addiction as well. Tell people about that experience, about your history, your story. And when you started to notice these earliest signs of this addiction to pornography that it was developing for you.
Patrick Devosse (00:26.21)
you try to make it short and maybe just put out some key moments. All came from sexual abuse and actually people which were showing me this. I call it the addiction birthday. When you realize actually and figure out the thing or actually the situation what brings you into this circumstance that you are addicted to pornography, then suddenly something shifts in your brain and you suddenly understand things.
I was actually outsourcing my emotions because I had all these horrible pictures from this abuse and I couldn't handle this and I don't want to tell anyone. I told my mother back in the days, but she was so sick and she then dies several months later. It was a survival mechanism if you want it because your brain want that you survive and as little kid when nobody is listening to you.
As my mother died, I was transferred to Germany, coming back to my father because they were divorced when I was in a really young age. All the emotions were just out to us. I couldn't feel joy or whatever else, love was pretty hard to feel because every time where the brain just got close proximity to somebody, there was this inner defense mechanism saying, stop. But I just came out of this cycle.
I believe it was over not that long, four or five years ago, that I actually realized what happened in my childhood. And later on, all the bricks came together and give me this incredible picture. I could also see from outside what my story actually was giving me. It was in the middle of COVID. I nearly committed suicide because of that.
because you don't understand yourself, you just want that the pain ends. You can describe it in words, which I had this experience. I just sit on the sofa and nobody was there. My wife left me because she had told me, okay, when you're normal again, you can come back and then we can talk because this pornography addiction made me really aggressive macho guy hitting the gym and treating everyone like I am the chef.
Patrick Devosse (02:49.696)
Everything was then quiet. was, because of COVID, unemployed, just sit down and then suddenly all the noise was taking down. I realized I'm alone and I never had the situation before. Suddenly the pain, which were actually being numbed by pornography, pornography wasn't strong enough anymore. This whole trauma network was firing again. And I just...
Scream at the top of my lungs and say please God give me answer. I had no faith in nothing I just believe in myself and my ego. I was so Tired then and just lay down and I don't know how long it was It feels like two day of sleep as soon as I woke up I had suddenly I can see it until this day right in front of my mind a big advertisement flashing lights bold letters and texts
and I was just displayed you're addicted to pornography. had believed that I had taken any drugs or whatever to have hallucinating. Everything started to make sense. And I sat down on the computer and starting just writing and I expressed all my feelings, emotions, which I've never done before. And I was addressing to my wife and
It took me about 30 minutes to ride and five hours to hit the send button. A huge 50-60 kilogram just a backpack drops from my shoulders. Then she came back and say to me, I will help you. And six years later, the journey is still the same. No relapse, understanding yourself.
Jake Kastleman (04:38.934)
It's so powerful, man. Some of the things that I reflect on with that are these very universal principles of what it takes to recover and start to overcome addiction. And I think one of those within the psychology realm will call it processing emotion or emotional regulation. Within the spiritual realm or the religious realm, we would call it confession, right? You reach this place in your life where finally these egoic
kinds of protective mechanisms that you'd grown for many years. Out of necessity, it felt like emotionally, right? Parts of your mind just trying to protect you from all the pain that you held inside. You reached this point where those weren't working anymore. The porn wasn't working anymore. The aggression and, I'm the best and I, know, I'm a big man. What did you call it again? You said, I can't remember what you called it.
the chief or the chef, the chef, I'm the chef, right? I'm the head chef. And so all that failed you, right? And I think this is required. We either have to choose, I'm not gonna do this anymore. That's that surrender, right? Again, in religious or spiritual sense, surrender. And I'm gonna open my heart up, right? And we talk about in scripture, we talk about a broken heart, right?
Patrick Devosse (05:38.55)
Yeah, the chef, yes.
Jake Kastleman (06:03.8)
In other words, your heart broke open and the pain came out finally. And you got in touch with what was really there and the loneliness and the sadness and the fear and the shame and everything. And you started to write it out, right? First you screamed, right? And I think that expression of deep emotion
Sometimes it gets very physical, right? Our body and mind are one and so we have to express that and bring it out. And this kind of, this unlocks something in you and you have this miraculous experience of this hallucinogenic experience, if you will, right? You're like, what am I on? Am I taking drugs right now? But a miracle of you are addicted to porn and having this realization that hit you to your core.
where things linked together. And then you began to write about your emotions. And I love that because that is one of the number one things that I teach my clients to do in my program. And I'm sure that you teach as well, right, is we have to get in touch with the real emotions that are underneath. We have to write about them, meditate upon them, express them, confess them. And this thing of confession goes far beyond sitting in a room with
an authority, this is internal confession, this is confession between me and a higher power or whatever that belief is that I have, I've got to go through that process and that started to free you. That's the best.
Patrick Devosse (07:41.762)
Yeah, that's true.
Jake Kastleman (07:44.728)
Yeah, I love that. I love that. So I think for some people who've been listening to my podcast for a while, this will be familiar. For others, they might be new. Many people, myself included, years ago, it's probably been 15 years since I would have thought this way. But we are taught and kind of think that porn addiction is just about lust, right? Or it's about lack of discipline.
We think our mind is overly sexual, we just can't control ourselves. What would you say to someone who's going through that and kind of caught up in that line of reasoning?
Patrick Devosse (08:26.99)
It's a really good question. so my belief on this is that we actually have a really false paradigm, society paradigm, what we are all following. And it is nobody's fault because there's not enough awareness and pornography when you see it is not at all especially not this internet pornography. When you compare it, let's say 70 to the 80s,
You had to go to a video store and just buy those things. And the thing right now is we have actually 24-7 available for us. And this makes it really, really new. And so people might believe that it is just like you told last or just that you were over sexually or whatever else. And
It is not you that is actually that way. It is just your mind which is being trained on there.
Jake Kastleman (09:32.506)
Yeah, a part of your mind, right? That's gotten caught up in that, yeah.
Patrick Devosse (09:37.566)
And the danger about pornography, I classify it as a drug. And some people say, no, it's not and whatever else. Okay, then I ask what is the difference between cocaine and pornography? Because when you see it and I've talked with some doctors on it, on MRI scans, when somebody's watching pornography, it is highlighting the same brain areas as cocaine and other drugs. And the purpose of a drug is to release dopamine. In this,
This is actually what pornography is doing. And I am not an expert on this, but I've written an article which actually concluded that pornography release 300 % more dopamine than real sex. So we have the evidence and it is clear that pornography is a drug. But the only difference is that pornography is social recognized.
But when you say, I am a cocaine addict, people were saying, it's not good. It's unhealthy. But why are people actually saying it's two different things? We don't, we just have one evidence is that it is socially recognized. And I believe this is the biggest mistake because this was something that John Gray was telling me in one of our interviews that
Jake Kastleman (11:03.67)
Now for who don't know John Gray, tell people who that is.
Patrick Devosse (11:08.31)
Yeah, it's actually the author of Men Are From Mars, a are from Venus, a relationship expert, sold over 15 million books. And I believe he's a really big authority in this field. So a trustful person, not somebody on Instagram.
Jake Kastleman (11:25.418)
is and he just promoted your book recently. It's so exciting, Yeah. It's awesome.
Patrick Devosse (11:28.6)
Yeah, exactly.
So yeah and he told me that it is like force feeding you cocaine and when we see it everywhere for example you go out on the airport or somebody is watching on phone and they just see it subconsciously it tells men every day you are the king of the tribe because back in the days the only woman which undress in front of you were
the women who wanted to have sex with you and the purpose of sex is to create new life. So it was reserved, for example, for the tribe chef. And we have to understand the concept. We go through life, see every day naked women on advertisement or some clothing advertisement and TV, Instagram, Netflix.
All this stuff, it's full of it. And the human being consume more of this naked content in one hour than an ancestral man back in the days in his whole life. And this is really something what makes me think about that those people are actually not, it's not their fault that they have this overstimulated mind because you
prime yourself without knowing it. And that's the purpose of advertisement to prime you to buy things on the subconscious level. That's the basic or the purpose of it. So when people say, it's about this, this, I am just this person who is addicted to pornography over, over sexual, I tell them, no, it's not because they just put themselves in a box without knowing.
Patrick Devosse (13:25.122)
that they don't have to, because it's not their fault.
Jake Kastleman (13:28.738)
Yeah, I've heard this quite a bit. You know, I'm a highly sexual person. I just have a high sex drive and I will say the same thing. It's that's training, it's conditioning. It's not the type of person that you are. It's just something you've been conditioned into and you can be reconditioned, right? Exactly. And it's a coping mechanism. And I love what you said about, you know, I think of this as an evolutionary perspective.
you know, that for generations and generations of time, you have these tribes, et cetera, right? Where the dominant male, right? Women who would procreate with him, right? Mate with him. This was a feeling of dominance, success, et cetera. And of creating life, right? I think on the very kind of spiritual side, like that's a beautiful, amazing thing, right?
Yeah. Now it's being fabricated and deeply broken through the virtual experience of it. And that we are, you're saying, within an hour, consuming more in the way of, and consuming, I say that word purposely because it's consuming, it's not participation or, you know, a connection that you would experience with a real human being. It is just consumptive, more in an hour than anyone could experience in their lifetime by far, you know.
by far and that has ramifications. And I actually like that you say porn releases 300 % more dopamine than cocaine, correct? That was the research that you.
Patrick Devosse (15:09.643)
Motivated and sex actually.
Jake Kastleman (15:11.95)
Oh, then sex, that's right. That's what you said. Yes. That makes sense. Thank you for correcting me on that. We don't want to be wrong on that. So 300 % more than sex. And I know for me, if I went back 15 years, I'd be like, why? If someone told me that, I'd say, why is that? And I have some things to say about that, but I'm curious what you understand about.
Why, that is, why 300 %?
Patrick Devosse (15:42.734)
Yeah. So we have to separate that pornography is not sex and sex is not pornography. And when I tell this to some people, think, why it's the same? No, it's not. Because when you see sex is an exchange of energy, you're involved with a loved one, partner, even when it's casual sex. For this explanation, it's the same.
But you have this energy exchange and you open yourself up, you give yourself the most fragile part of you and you are actually involved in the most powerful force in the human body, which is the sexual energy. And when you start it just to play around with this and see it as a fun thing and
coming to perspective of pornography. Pornography gives you nothing back. There is no way that you get something from pornography. The only thing you get is this dopamine hit and then you feel like crap. And for people just masturbating all day and giving away actually the most precious thing, which is actually the purpose to create new life, it's DNA. You just give it away. So you just pull yourself
out of your soul actually what is there for reproducing life and there's no sharing. You get nothing back. And this is something to understand that when you have sex there are many hormones involved. There's prolactin, testosterone, estrogen and all that stuff. In pornography there is no exchange. You just get this big high and suddenly ejaculation boom then you're low.
And then the shine say cycle kicks in and you go back to pornography again. And to go back to you, to your question, I believe that I don't know it for, for certain, close connection. is actually, when you have sex with a woman, it can be, what is the right word in English? don't get in my mind.
Jake Kastleman (18:05.943)
What was the thing that you're trying to refer to just when you're connecting in a social way?
Patrick Devosse (18:10.778)
It is active. You can't just sit there and watching. So you are in a receptive mode when you're watching pornography and it goes everything in your subconscious mind. But if you're involved in sex, you have to stand up, you have to move, you have to do this, that, and slower, faster or whatever else. And it is exhausting. And pornography.
Jake Kastleman (18:35.694)
There's physical exertion, there, yeah. It requires things of you.
Patrick Devosse (18:40.254)
Exactly. And you get rewarded by doing nothing. And this is really something which goes in the wrong direction. And you saw it in the history, all kinds of people who just play with the sexual energy were actually devastated and end up in alcoholism. And just to see that this powerful force is
more influence through pornography and that people actually go even more into this cycle of ejaculating all day, masturbating five to ten times or even more. This is really... yeah, it's
Jake Kastleman (19:22.158)
Just to a point. Yeah. I, one of the things, you know, I think of several things when you talk about that, one, this lack of connection, right? Where we're not, you say, I'm not getting anything out of porn. And some people might say, well, it's really enjoyable and entertaining. That's only, I would say it's just that you're getting a very small piece of what a sexual connection and interaction can get you. Right. And then if you take that deeper, like a marriage relationship.
or if you're not married, but you're committed to someone, you're living with someone, you're building a life together. Now you have a relationship that has been built over months or years of time. If you have children together, now you're creating a family together. You're needing to combine all of this and there's so much meaning and depth in that. You remove all of that. Now there's emptiness, right?
Patrick Devosse (20:15.49)
Yes.
Jake Kastleman (20:20.546)
I'm by myself, I have just consumed someone rather than connecting with them, I'm using them. And I think on a deep spiritual level, we feel that when we do that. And there's parts of us that scream out in agony, why have you cheated me? You've given me nothing that is supposed to be promised in this kind of an experience. And then from a nervous system or a neurological perspective, we've trained ourselves to
release when things get hard to give up and to just seek out this easy comfort and this instant gratification. Now we can't hold and contain any kind of power or resilience in our lives because every time I face discomfort or something hard, my brain goes back to this, ah, this is the thing that I need. I'll get this quick dopamine hit. Continuously trying to, I would say, bring us connection.
but always being disappointed afterwards when that connection doesn't happen. And I know for me, I understood this intuitively actually during the years when I was trying to quit. I remember I had a very meaningful experience where after watching pornography, I felt so empty and I realized, you know, what am I looking for in this? What am I seeking? And I felt very distinctly in my mind, inside my body, felt this.
longing to connect with another human being. I wanted a relationship. I said, that's really what I, I want a relationship. I want to connect with people and I'm not getting that through this.
Patrick Devosse (21:56.834)
Yeah, absolutely not. And the fact you say that other people, through pornography, you can feel their basic emotional level, there is science behind it. It's the mirror neurons. It is actually that you can feel what other people are feeling. And that's why we are spiritual beings and we are all connected on an energy level.
People who are doing pornography, it's based on hate, it's based on ego and all that stuff. And they believe they are something better and those people are really trapped. And this is something which I also wrote in the book, a quote is that pornography is based on trauma and keeps you in trauma. And this is just, you can call it a spiritual concept because there is scientific evidence.
be behind it. So it's really a great thing to understand why you're actually feeling this, this, this bad after consuming this, because you get in the shame cycle afterwards and this give you anxiety, depression, turns you again to pornography because your brain needs this dopamine hit. So it's really a devil cycle. And most of the people don't understand this, why they feel so empty.
but it is actually linked to this concept of this mirror neurons that let you feel what other people feel.
Jake Kastleman (23:33.12)
Yes, I like that. And I think we can't help but write, call it karma, call it spirit, call it mirror neurons. We can't help but feel that impact of what we're doing and what we're participating in. I think it's just inevitable. So Patrick, one of the biggest focuses in Reborn, your book, is this
and his childhood experiences of trauma and trauma during life as well, right? And it's important, I think, to say trauma. We can say little t, big t trauma, right? You definitely talk about big t trauma and this sexual abuse and things, but also just the hard things that we face. know, one of the biggest things for my own recovery has been emotional regulation, nervous system regulation, learning how to do that, right? And I consistently teach that.
And, but specifically on the topic of childhood experiences that most commonly kind of set the stage for pornography addiction. I wondered what some of those patterns are that you're familiar with, that you've seen, whether in your own life or in the people that you've worked with and talked with.
Patrick Devosse (24:52.012)
Yeah, so basically it's every time the same when you see it that way. It's a trigger actually what is activating a neural pathway in your brain. And this is leading you that your identity do the thing they want to exist. And we have to understand that we have, I mean, it's not this concept of split personality and this
I am a crazy guy, a woman. That's not the thing I want to say. But you actually have different identities in you. It's the same when you go to work, you treat people others and you go home with your family. And it's the same thing with pornography. So we have to understand that different patterns are nearly all patterns and somebody who's addicted to pornography is from one identity and that's...
why it's so hard for men when they quit pornography, they have so much time. For me it was the same. Suddenly I have 4-5 hours more in one day and just sitting down and saying, man, it is this withdrawal symptoms and you just want to do something but you don't know because you just wasted so much time of all those years. So you have to rebuild everything and
I call it the mental investigator. I'm sure there's somebody who also use this concept just to sit down and it is a lot of some people call it meditation, but actually you're observing your thoughts. So you don't have to accept anything. And by doing this, you can go for life. I mean, I do it back in the days for 10 minutes a day.
And you have to practice this because it is really intense when you do it in the first place. Everything you see is triggering you. Everything is linked to something, to an event. And when you become better at it, you suddenly realize things you do on a consistent basis, how you talk, how you walk. And then it becomes interesting because when you don't have the awareness of something, then you can't change because there is no
Patrick Devosse (27:10.986)
evidence in you, in your conscious mind that you can say, I actually do this, this and that. So awareness is a lot in the things that I'm teaching just to see that certain things, like you mentioned, the patterns running you into a behavior which you're even not aware of it. And this is a really critical concept to understand, especially in childhood, for example.
somebody touched me here on the shoulder, I suddenly feel a little bit uncomfortable. I even don't know until this day why it is, but I can imagine that it has something to do with an experience in my childhood. If it's willing to this abuse of other things, I don't know, it's okay. But when somebody do this and I feel this emotion coming up, I just try to
link my heart and my brain in one line and saying, no, we don't need to react on this because this is just something what is not serving us. And those are little games you can play with yourself. And it's actually fun because you then end up in a place where you can do so much more and you can lose fear of things. And yeah, it's a really good concept.
to identify patterns and then just change it to something that is useful to you.
Jake Kastleman (28:45.954)
Yes. Yes. And I, there's a few different things that I think of when it's in the IFS field, internal family systems, parts work. I love that you said observing your parts. my gosh. It's absolutely transformed my life. About three years ago is when I started to do parts work in IFS. If you're, are you familiar with IFS Patrick? Yeah. When I say that term. Cool. Yeah. Yes. Based on what you're saying, I figured that's probably the case. Yeah. So.
Being able to speak to different parts of you like they're tiny people inside you, right? They have full spectrum personalities. They're just these sub-personalities that exist inside of us and getting to know them, understand them. You know, the part of me that's been hyper-sexualized or acting out addictively has reasons. It's trying to help me. And when I get to know it and understand it and I get to see the good inside that part, I can actually help it and assist it in converting into
what I would say is it's true identity. It really is. Because we are good inherently as human beings, I believe. And that's incredibly powerful. That self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-compassion, not any kind of justification or excuse for behaviors, but instead an opening up and an understanding and an observing, which then assists us in changing naturally as we go through that process.
I love that you said linking the heart and the brain. I don't know if you're familiar with heart-brain communication, gut-brain communication, if you've looked in some of this or know anything about it, but I did an episode a little while ago on the three brain, I just put up three fingers, the three brains. So heart, brain, heart and gut, right? There are all these conglomerations of neurons, obviously the most are up in our central nervous system.
We also have our, what is it called? Intrinsic cardiac nervous system. I hope I'm saying that correctly in our heart. And then we have our enteric nervous system in our gut and all of these communicate. And there's actually far more communication going from heart and gut up to brain than vice versa, which is pretty amazing because there's a lot of communication going down from the brain to the heart and the gut. But linking those up,
Jake Kastleman (31:12.056)
This is one of the concepts that's been profound for me, that integration and we'll call it brain heart, gut coherence. When I can actually link these up and it's no more complicated in some ways than just attuning myself to that part of my body and asking what am I feeling here and bringing it forward and then helping these parts kind of come together, speak with them, get to know them. And that sounds bizarre to us when we first hear of it, but when you experience it,
It becomes intuitive and it becomes life-changing.
Patrick Devosse (31:45.422)
Yeah, that's true. So I maintain this feeling all day. I'm just familiar with the heart coherence and heart breathing. And that's absolutely transformed my life because no matter what happens, if something goes in my mailbox, which is not pleasant, something to pay or whatever, back in those days, I would just freak out. Oh my God, I couldn't pay that bill. But right now, when something like this happening on somebody is just cutting me on the road, I have this inner
Jake Kastleman (31:51.925)
Love that, yes.
Patrick Devosse (32:14.094)
calmness, can call it. So nothing can upset you because you actually choose that it will not do this. And this is a really good concept to understand, especially for people who like me back in those days was listening to rap music and just feeling driving the car, hanging out the biceps out of the window. And when somebody just look at me and say, what is normal? And I really don't like this guy back in those days.
Really full of adrenaline, aggression, you know what I mean, maybe.
Jake Kastleman (32:47.744)
I do. Yes. My whole life was anger. Mine was more simmering anger with bursts of aggression occasionally, but just constant simmering anger, which was perhaps similar in some ways for you. Yeah.
Patrick Devosse (32:58.862)
Yeah. And in this situation, it might feel good because your ego comes up, but afterwards it is so exhausting because you're just playing or acting somebody who you're truly not. Because you're not designed to shout every day and to treat people like shit. it is really, when you understand this concept, I guess that 90 % of the people on this planet never experienced this.
But if you truly feel this, let's say, energy or connection between brain, heart, and as you mentioned, the gut together, I am more familiar with heart and brain, but even that is so powerful. are calm and nothing is, even when it's loud, my 11 month old son had a little bit with his teeth with problems and he is just crying all day and I'm relaxed.
Jake Kastleman (33:59.063)
Right?
Patrick Devosse (33:59.422)
It's a really great tool to use, especially for recovery.
Jake Kastleman (34:04.474)
It is, because we get so caught up in our heads, right? In modern Western society, we've been taught everything is science, everything is the five senses, you everything is material. We have become detached, right? Very much trained into being detached, whether that be deliberate or not deliberate, right? And we pass that down because it's just what we know.
Now, there's religion and spiritual practices and things that are trying to call us back to that, but there's just this ongoing kind of narrative and teaching of this, of disconnection and that all that exists is the physical world. And so attuning to the heart, this is the place in the body that some people would say, you know, this is where your spirit resides or where your soul resides, right? Is in the heart. That's where it's at.
you know, whether it works that way or not, when I attune to the heart, it has a different perspective than the head. And that's important because if I get caught up in my head, I'm in this self-critical zone. I'm, you know, constantly trying to do everything perfect and maintain this image. then what happens often for guys is their heart or their gut response by taking the foot off the accelerator. That's,
this constant pressure and placing it on the brake forcefully through porn or food or TV, video games, whatever it might be to take you out of that. Now, when I start to attune to my heart or gut, now I get in touch with these other feelings that I carry and to start to engage these parts me that have been pretty ticked off that I'm just living this head focused life that's completely out of tune with.
my real needs, you I don't perceive any of my feelings. So those feelings are, I would say, forcibly trying to make themselves known through my addictions. And that's paradoxical, but it's very much how it works.
Patrick Devosse (36:13.91)
Yeah, that's interesting. And I also believe that, I'm not sure if it's true, but this is my belief that the brain can get conditioned with all this stuff, video games, like you mentioned, pornography and all that stuff, but the heart cannot. So I believe that when you want really the answer, then hear with your heart and not with your brain. Because...
When you are trapped in any addictive behavior, smoking, drinking and all that stuff, I believe you're not able to make conscious decisions because it is just suppressed and your brain needs actually a substance to really work. And when you are in an addictive state, I believe you should hear more on your heart and afterwards when you go and say, I want to quit, then you can use
and start slowly to use this technique and saying, okay, I feel it, my heart, I will link it to my brain. So by doing that over time, you can build brain cells, which recognize this feeling. So you get more intrinsic, that you get outside factors from stimulation. That is my thoughts on that.
Jake Kastleman (37:33.624)
Yeah, I like that. So it's, it's a different perspective than what I'm, what I'm kind of suggesting. And it's a powerful one too, cause I think one of my clients that has suffered with pornography addiction for many years, you know, for decades, one of the most powerful things that he's done that's been so simple in concept, but so profound is to just start to get in touch with gut and heart.
and bringing out these emotions, bringing out these parts and asking, know, okay, what does this part of me say? What does the wisdom there say? Again, sounds so bizarre when we've, you know, grown up this very brain centric kind of psychology and the way we've been brought up. But when, as he's done that and he spends each day writing, journaling about his feelings, getting in touch with emotions, meditating upon them, he is able to
When a craving comes up, he attunes to his heart or his gut and he just gets into the feeling of, what does this part of me say about this? And he'll have a peace come or he'll have a sense of, you're feeling lonely right now, you need connection. Or he'll have a sense of, you're stressed out right now, work, feels overwhelming. You need to calm down and find some presence. He'll get attuned to what?
is actually going on in his body. Whereas when we're up here and we're trying to logically figure it out, why is this happening? Why is it? It's not gonna work.
Patrick Devosse (39:06.574)
Especially that your brain is just a record of the past and your condition from environment and what other people tell you. And when you just make out a decision out of this, let's say record or CD you have in your head, it will not work until you create an identity what is actually serving you.
Jake Kastleman (39:29.861)
Yeah, I like that. I like that. In fact, in parts work that I've done with people over the last couple of months, I've been emphasizing this brain heart-gut connection. I'll actually, this is something that people with an IFS taught me. I was taught the conference room technique. I don't know if you know about this, but essentially you get in touch with different parts and you recognize and appreciate them. You come to understand them.
And you bring them into a room and you say, can we have a conversation? Right? And so it's this imaginative experience and you're coming inside and you're feeling, right? It's very intuitive. I will have people get in touch with what's in your head, what's in your heart, what's in your gut, right? Whether that be through a craving experience that they've had recently, actually going back into that and exploring it or anger that they're feeling, whatever it is, right? And attuned to these three parts, bring them all into a room.
And let's ask them if they can understand each other. what happens, not always, but what happens a lot is there is a very just emotionally kind of intuitive experience that often can't be put into words that I've experienced and that clients have experienced multiple times now where they just start to kind of understand each other. Different parts of us bring different wisdom to the table. Maybe one part's really anxious and it wants to do everything right.
Maybe another part is like, dude, you got to chill out and like, we got to be calm. And another part's like, look, I think that we could do both. You know, I think we could be calm and I think that we could also accomplish things. And they just start to kind of attune and there's this coherence that happens for people sometimes where they just feel like, I'm more integrated. know, these parts have kind of come together and I'm more calm now. That's incredible how intuitive that's been for some of the people that I work with.
Patrick Devosse (41:25.826)
Yeah, I believe the inner work is actually really valuable, especially because you get trained so much to look things from the outside. And when you start again working from the inside, because everything you're just doing will start here in you. So when you say, I gonna do this, this and that, you need to take a decision. The decision is intrinsic.
There is no way that something from outside saying unless somebody holds a gun on your head, then you will maybe do it, right? But otherwise, even this is not your free will. And it reminds me of, I'm sure you know this man, it's absolutely amazing, Viktor Frankl.
Jake Kastleman (42:13.614)
Yeah, you referred to him. In your book,
Patrick Devosse (42:18.182)
And he was really a guiding light for me because comparing pornography to surviving two concentration camps is nothing. just saying, yeah, it's that difficult. Yeah. People that are saying that they have no idea what kind of abuse they had all in those kinds of camps. And he said that no matter of how they chained us or abused us,
They will never able to take control over our mind unless we let them. And this sentence is actually most of the powerful thing Java ever heard. Because it is just telling that you have a free will and nobody can take this away from you. And this is for the inner work you just mentioned a really great idea because you can actually talk how you want to yourself. So,
Either you use it for giving you motivation or you can put yourself down. And most of the time when people are not aware of this concept that they can talk to themselves because they believe, I'm just a crazy guy, but it's not true. And they start to suddenly feeling that they can influence their self with their own thoughts and not just being a product from the outside world. And when you start to doing this, like you mentioned.
things get coherent, everything comes together and you actually have a foundation. And it is, I believe, 1000 % more powerful than therapy because the therapist, you can lie to him. You can tell him things which are not in the right way. But when you talk with yourself or are really honest to yourself, things start to change and honesty in everything.
This is the thing that will ultimately set you free.
Jake Kastleman (44:20.398)
I like it. And I think one of the concepts that's been very powerful for me in my recovery is, cause I used to get overwhelmed when people would tell me, I'll just be positive or just talk well to yourself. And I didn't understand how to relate to feelings of shame when they'd come up or feelings of fear. It'd be like, well, I should just get rid of that. And what I should do is just be positive and instead actually welcoming.
the part of me that feels the fear or welcoming, the part of me that feels the shame and saying, hey, what's going on, man? Tell me about what you're feeling. And then just being able to relate to and show understanding for that part of me and feeling into it. And then when I do that, the pain can clear eventually. Sometimes it's very quick within minutes or seconds even, or sometimes it takes more time. Maybe it's deep and it's complex and it takes days, right? But once the pain clears, we
have the coherence and we have the sense of peace and the sense of presence or the sense of love, I would say, right? It's powerful. I want to be sure, Patrick, that we dig in specifically to the reborn method, right? This is your book called Reborn. You have three books now, right? This is the third one. I would love to dig into
either the basics or the specifics of the reborn method. so people can kind of understand what that looks like, what you teach.
Patrick Devosse (45:52.376)
Yeah, so actually the reborn method, I name it that way because when you give up an addictive behavior, something of you has to die and it is the addictive part. And you give birth to something new and I call it reborn because I mean, men could not relate to this, but giving birth to a child is really painful. And this is actually
just setting up a mirror and saying, okay, you have to go through this pain. You have to suffer because you reborn yourself in a new identity. And that's why I call it that way. And basically there are seven steps. But I also have written that it can be for some people three steps, for some it is 10, 12. You can actually create your own program. So this is just based on my experience.
And just to have kind of framework to say that this is seven steps, but it is understanding a lot. Creating new behaviors, also adjusting your nutrition and creating actually a new identity, go out with relationships and just go into real life, not this digital thing and just procrastinating all that stuff because
It is sometimes overwhelming, especially in days of AI and video games and all that stuff, just to distract yourself from those feelings you mentioned. And just also the concept of journaling and all that stuff. yeah, the concept is reborn because withdrawal through this addiction, it can be painful for me. was a lot. For some days I couldn't even go out. I had to close all the windows.
black out the room. I had so much pain in my eyes. I just lay there and cry all day. And my wife had to pick me up from the floor. had really colds and it was... yeah. But I don't want to frighten anyone because this for everyone it's different.
Jake Kastleman (48:10.956)
Yes. Yeah. And I think it's so powerful to hear you talk about that man. And that can sound to us very unpleasant, cause it is to be frank, but it's so powerful and so worth it. And I think back to all the experiences that I've had, and this is for me, much as you said, know, minimum of about 15 minutes a day, I'm going internally and I'm often hashing out, what's something hard?
that I felt and went through in the last 24 hours, right? It doesn't have to be big, it could be small. I felt angry with my kid or I felt offended or I felt whatever it is, sad. And I go into it and I dig into it and sometimes that's, you know, not so bad. Like there's pain and I go through it, but sometimes there are really intense feelings to work through. But our nervous system, if we don't do this and you went through it in a very, very big way in clearing,
clearing, clearing all this pain, right, from childhood and things. If we don't clear it, it just stores. It just stays in our body. And what's fascinating, we carry emotion, not just in our brain, right, but as we've been talking about, we carry it throughout the vagus nerve, but also our nervous system fills our whole body. We carry it throughout our whole body and we carry it in our muscles. We carry it in our fascia.
So the layer underneath our skin. And when I started hearing about this years ago, I was like, that's weird. That's that's hokey or I thought it was, but there's plenty of research now and it's pretty well known at this point. It just hasn't quite hit the mainstream, but we are emotional beings. We are spiritual beings. We carry all of this throughout our whole body. so things that are physical have emotional roots, right?
And this is all tied together, right? And not all physical things have emotional roots, but there's often emotions I can work through for physical pains even. That's incredible. But we have to work through it. We have to dig through it. And that requires going through the pain, right?
Patrick Devosse (50:26.4)
And I mean, lot of things, nearly all things are based on pain. For example, if you want to develop muscle, for example, you have to go through pain because there's no trigger that actually grows the muscle. the same with the concept with the childbirth, it's unbelievably painful. get my oldest images back in the days when my son was born was... Yeah, I just sit there and I...
I thought, okay, well, what can I do? Nothing. Just say, okay, everything is going all right. Yeah. Yeah. Who are you kidding? Yeah. It's great. But just to see that pain is so maybe I tell it another way. When you neglect pain, you're just getting 50 % from life because just seeking pleasure all day.
Jake Kastleman (51:05.23)
So traumatic. Yes.
Patrick Devosse (51:22.898)
is actually what people end up in addiction, pornography, video games, food, alcohol, drugs. So when people just want to say, I don't want to have pain or bad experience in my life, it's when they're saying, okay, then I will party my whole life. But what then happens after 30 years or even after 10, the pain will come. So they have to change. Then I ask myself, okay, why don't you change right now because
You will do it in 10 years if you want it or not. Otherwise, when you want to take it to your grave, that's fine. But you will have a miserable time until this happens. So change is based on pain and it's with everything. There's no exception about it.
Jake Kastleman (52:13.656)
I think it's a hard reality, but it's a reality. Yeah, change requires pain. And I think the way that we relate to those emotions is extremely critical. Again, we have a world that has trained us into this pleasure paradigm and this paradigm of, negative emotions, bad emotions. And I'm very, I'm very...
deliberate these days about referring to them as painful emotions. They are inherently unpleasant. They do not feel, yeah, they hurt, right? But they're not bad. They're not negative. They are necessary. They're messengers. They're things that are there for us to work through. Two of the terms that come to me triggers our trail heads. This is taught by Dr. Richard Schwartz, who's the founder of IFS.
Triggers are trailheads. we are, we are taught the mainstream narrative is, you're triggered. Don't get triggered. People can't get triggered. And it's the exact opposite of what we need in order to feel happy. When a trigger comes up, it's a message. It's a part of my body, mind complex, letting me know, Hey, there's something here that's, that hurts. And I really need you to pay attention to it. And I need you to work through it because I need you to understand.
And we are actually actively resisting and suppressing those things. And that creates more pain, more anxiety, more depression, more inability to focus, you know, these ADHD kinds of symptoms. We have all these things that are so prevalent and so pervasive. We have no idea that we're feeding it through this habit of just pushing down all pain and trying to get rid of it.
Patrick Devosse (54:09.036)
Yeah, that's true. So if you think it like this, this is you're just like a box. And when you just constantly, because this is what happened if you wanted or not, and don't think on your own and just let everything right down in your subconscious mind, one day it will explode because there's no space anymore. And
when people don't take the decision actually to make changes in their lives, life will take this decision for you and it's really uncomfortable. So when you say, will change, especially in pornography and you take a committed decision, not saying after 90 days, I just relapse because this is actually what's happening for a lot of men because in saying after 90 days, everything is healed and then
I can watch pornography one day and then 90 days again. So they suffer 90 days and just give themselves the reward. But just to see that this is really a bad strategy because 90 days you feel like crap. One day for 15 minutes, it's good and then 90 days again like crap and it is not a pleasant life. So there is a certain amount of pain you have to tolerate as a human being. And when we think about
how our ancestral live, they were fighting, they were killing each other. So we are in a much safer place right now in 2026. And we have to accept that our root nature is also based on pain. So just like you tell, having all time pleasure and seeking things that are just hitting us, just a quick dopamine hit, it's really unhealthy.
And just to see that people suppress the emotion through all this stuff. Because actually it's not rewarding you, it's just delaying the pain and it is masked then as depression, anxiety and people then get even more into this behavior. And one day it's over, like I said on the couch and nearly end everything. So yeah, I think it's
Patrick Devosse (56:33.07)
Quick mind shift, but to understand this is it takes a while and even until this day sometimes I have things in my life which are not pleasant, but I'm actually aware of it that I am in control of my emotions and I can choose how much pain I want to give for myself. Because there is useful pain for example which I use on a consistent basis just to tell me, okay, what would you do if you die tomorrow?
What would you do if this is the last day? When you, for example, delay some things you wanted to do in your life and by doing that, you can actually use this tool to put yourself into new conditions, which when it is based on just pleasure, you would never do like writing the three books or just asking people for help, collaboration and all everything.
This is based on fear and fear is also based on pain. So we have to understand that everything comes together and like I say 50 % happiness, 50 % pain. That's just how it works. It's the cycle.
Jake Kastleman (57:48.578)
I love that. And I think if I'm not willing to experience the pain, I can't experience the joy. know, exactly. the, the deeper depths I'm willing to go with the pain, not again, you said there's different types of pain, which pain that refines me, right. And that I can actually use in order to grow. Then I can, that's, that's the level of depth I can go to with the joy and the meaning and the peace in my life. I have to have both.
Patrick Devosse (58:20.75)
This means what's actually the concept about the human being. And when you neglect those facts, then you're not a whole human being and this is what actually puts you into this state. yeah, for some, it may be hard to understand or also to admit, but when you get used to it, you don't think even about it.
Jake Kastleman (58:47.832)
Well, Patrick, such a privilege to have you on the show, man. It's been a powerful conversation for me. I've genuinely enjoyed it. Thank you for coming on. I want to make sure that people know how to get in touch with you. put all this in the show notes, but just for people to know, where should they go if they want to work with you or connect with you?
Patrick Devosse (59:07.02)
Yeah, I have a pretty big website. It's called rebornmethod.com. And I also have an Instagram channel. It is rebornmethod.official. And yeah, I'm also on Reddit. It's also a reborn method. I have a community and yeah, really looking forward. If somebody wants to ask things, give my best to give those answers.
Jake Kastleman (59:33.134)
I love it. Well, you're filled with so much passion and this deep desire to serve and help people around the world with this problem. And that's something that I can definitely relate to the passion on that, man. So good for you for helping people. And yeah, wonderful to meet another brother who's in this same space. So thanks for coming on,
Patrick Devosse (59:53.976)
Yeah, thank you for having me on the show. And I believe everyone is listening as we're beginning, just telling that they're just sexual hyperactive or whatever. I can tell to those people it is not your fault and it is just something which is made up. And I believe when people understand that they are actually normal, but we're dealing with a hyperstimuli and it's not your fault. So keep up your journey and
Have faith. Everything changes.
Jake Kastleman (01:00:27.608)
We can change. That's right, man.
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