Self-Control & Porn Addiction | Why Willpower Always Fails & the 3 Pillars to Quit Porn Successfully
- Jake Kastleman
- Feb 25
- 18 min read
There are a lot of voices out there telling you that all you need to quit porn addiction is more discipline. They say you just have to want it bad enough, fight hard enough, and exert enough self-control.
But if you’ve ever tried to stop watching porn using willpower alone, you already know—it doesn’t work. In fact, relying on willpower actually fuels porn addiction. Today, I’m going to show you why, and more importantly, what works instead.
Willpower Is a Symptom of Recovery, Not the Cause of It
We are taught that staying strong, thinking positively, and being highly motivated are the keys to quitting porn. But here’s the problem—these are not the causes of recovery; they are the results of it.
Real recovery from pornography addiction is not about forcing yourself to resist urges. It’s about becoming the kind of person who naturally doesn’t need porn anymore. Willpower alone won’t get you there.
Instead, lasting freedom requires both “will” and “power.” These don’t come from sheer effort but from creating a new way of living that removes the underlying causes of addiction in the first place.
Relying on Willpower Creates an Addictive Mindset & Leads to Relapse
We’re often told that self-control is the answer to addiction, but I take issue with that word “control.” In reality, control is not the antidote to addiction—it’s one of its primary causes.
Many people struggling with pornography addiction developed a self-critical mentality early in life. Maybe you learned to beat yourself up for mistakes, suppress weakness, and put extreme pressure on yourself to perform. Maybe you were taught that emotions like sadness or stress should be hidden or ignored rather than processed in a healthy way. This creates a dangerous cycle of perfectionism, isolation, and anxiety.
Porn then becomes an escape—a way to numb out and release some of that pent-up pressure. But here’s the kicker: the more you rely on control to stop porn, the more you fuel the very mindset that drives you to watch it in the first place.
The Teeter-Totter of the Addictive Mindset
Think of the addictive mindset like a teeter-totter. On one side, you have the Manager—the part of you that is logical, responsible, and driven by harsh self-discipline. This side criticizes you, pushes you to accomplish, and demands perfection.
On the other side, you have the Rebel—the part of you that craves excitement, fun, and relief. This is the side that seeks out porn, video games, food, or any other escape from the relentless pressure of the Manager.
The problem? Both sides are constantly fighting for control. The more the Manager pushes down with criticism and rigid self-discipline, the harder the Rebel pushes back with urges to escape.
This back-and-forth struggle is what fuels porn addiction, keeping you stuck in the cycle of trying to quit, failing, and feeling worse every time.
Slowing Down the Teeter-Totter
To overcome porn addiction, the first step is to slow this teeter-totter down. This means practicing self-compassion rather than self-criticism. It means learning to accept your emotions instead of trying to suppress them.
When you stop being so hard on yourself, the Rebel inside you has less reason to fight back—and that means less desire for porn.
See how this has nothing to do with willpower?
Stepping Off the Teeter-Totter
The ultimate goal is not just to slow the teeter-totter down, but to step off of it entirely. You don’t have to keep bouncing back and forth between self-control and porn relapse. Instead, you can build a life where porn naturally loses its grip on you.
The way to do this is through the 3 Pillars of Recovery—Psychological, Biological, and Relational.
The 3 Pillars of Recovery
Instead of playing the willpower game, trying to avoid and distract yourself from cravings, you build your life in such a way that addiction becomes less and less of an issue. This is what we call a Recovery Mindset and Recovery Lifestyle, built on these three pillars:
Pillar #1: Psychological – Mastering Your Mindset
Your thoughts and emotions play a massive role in your ability to quit porn. Ask yourself:
Do I beat myself up for my struggles, or do I practice self-compassion?
Do I try to resist difficult emotions, or do I learn from them?
Do I have a clear sense of purpose and meaning in my life?
Do I have a daily spiritual or mindfulness practice?
When you change how you relate to your thoughts and emotions, you take away porn’s power as an escape mechanism.
Pillar #2: Biological – Strengthening Your Body
Your physical health directly affects your ability to quit porn. Here’s why:
Nutrition: A poor diet leads to low energy and brain fog, making it harder to resist urges.
Exercise: Movement releases dopamine naturally, reducing your need for artificial highs like porn.
Base vs. Noble Pleasures: Base pleasures (porn, junk food, video games) give quick but empty rewards, while noble pleasures (real relationships, meaningful work, physical activity) create long-term fulfillment. Shifting towards noble pleasures reduces the desires and habits that make us susceptible to addiction.
Pillar #3: Relational – Deepening Your Connections
Porn thrives in isolation. If you want to get rid of porn addiction, you need strong, healthy relationships. This includes:
Your Relationship with God (or your spiritual beliefs)
Your Relationships with Others (family, friends, support groups)
Your Relationship with the World (having a sense of purpose and contribution)
Your Relationship with Self (feeling gratitude for your strengths, and feeling compassion for and improving upon your weaknesses)
When you build real, fulfilling relationships, you feel less of a need for porn to fill the void.
It’s Not About Willpower
As you can see, quitting porn has very little to do with willpower. Instead, it’s about reshaping your life. The more you invest in your mindset, body, and relationships, the more you naturally develop the “will” and the “power” to overcome addiction.
So if you’ve been struggling, stop trying to fight harder. Start focusing on building a new way of life—one where porn addiction simply doesn’t fit. This is how you finally break free of porn and reclaim your freedom for good.
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Transcription | Episode 87: Self-Control & Porn Addiction | Why Willpower Always Fails & the 3 Pillars to Quit Porn Successfully
Jake Kastleman (00:01.708)
It's a joy to be here on the podcast with you today, my friend. There are a lot of voices out there that tell you that you just need to be disciplined enough to overcome porn addiction, that willpower is the way to go in order to overcome your addiction. And that if you're just more disciplined, if you're more on top of things, if you're motivated enough, then you'll quit porn.
And I'm here to tell you that you cannot use willpower alone to quit porn because relying on willpower actually fuels your porn addiction. In today's episode, I'm going to teach you why that is. So the first thing that I want to talk about is that willpower is a symptom of recovery, not the cause of recovery. What does that mean? We're taught
that by staying strong, thinking positive, wanting it bad enough, we can do anything that we set our minds to. This is especially a Western culture type of mentality. And there's a lot of merit to it in many ways. But the trouble is we are talking about, again, symptoms of recovery here. We're looking at staying strong and being motivated to quit as the method to quit.
when in reality these are the outcomes of taking so many actions that result in this motivation, this focus, this positive thinking, this staying strong. We cannot start here as that is the result, not the cause. We do not stay sober using willpower. Instead, I want you to think of sobriety as requiring both will and
to remain clean. So we cannot produce sufficient will and power by force. This is not the way that psychology works. We understand this deeply now through many different studies and through a great deal of clinical work within the psychology field. We cannot produce sufficient will and power by force. Instead,
Jake Kastleman (02:24.28)
We produce the will and the power to stay sober as we discover a new way of living. And I'm going to share with you in today's episode three pillars to quit porn. Three pillars that we need to base our lives upon and I'm going to give you practical steps that you can take in order to get sober, to build out this life that's going to provide you with both the will and the power to stay sober.
So before we get into those three pillars, those will be near the end of the episode. I need you to understand some things about the addictive mindset and why willpower will always fail in the end. Relying on willpower results in an addictive mindset and it results in relapse. We're often taught that self-control is the antidote for addiction. And I take issue with that word
control because control is not the antidote for addiction. It's actually one of its primary causes and one of its primary factors. And here's what I mean. One of the main reasons that we seek out addiction is because we have a self-critical mentality. This is what I've witnessed in myself and what I dealt with deeply throughout my life as a
as a kid and as a teen and into my 20s, I was highly self-critical. And I still deal with that perfectionism and that self-critical nature. It's just much less intense and I know much better how to manage and work through it, talk myself through it. I understand how to speak to myself and I'm continuing to work on that and build skills in that to get better and better. Many of us picked up this self-critical mentality from parents
from siblings or from other people close to us. And we learned to beat ourselves up for mistakes, heap large amounts of pressure on ourselves. And when things were hard, we were taught to hide our weakness, stuff it down, get it together, right? Man up. This resulted in a deficit in our emotional vulnerability and our connection to other people. If we can't be open about our insecurities,
Jake Kastleman (04:50.06)
and about the hard things that we're experiencing and reach out and connect with other people and get real about understanding what we're feeling instead of ignoring it, stuffing it down, trying to hide it, distract ourselves from it. We will develop an addictive mindset. We become isolated. We believe everything is up to us. We feel anxiety, depression, perfectionism. We have unreasonable expectations of ourselves.
And so much of this can be very unconscious. Okay, this perfectionism, these unreasonable expectations. And so because we deal with these things both consciously and unconsciously, all of this pressure necessitates a means of escape, i.e. And then eventually porn addiction. And for many of us, this started in our childhood. I've shared multiple times on the podcast.
My addictive mindset started when I was very, very young.
In fact, there's a really good chance that I was kind of born with an addictive mindset. And I've learned recently in psychology about how we carry traumas, or least we certainly can carry traumas genetically and epigenetically. And so I, in my family line, especially on my, well, on both sides of my family, but especially my father's side,
there was a lot of very traumatic experiences that people had, abuse and neglect and terrible things that happened in relationships and in their life circumstances, a great deal of stress and a great deal of sadness and hell that people went through. And I venture to say it's not unreasonable to say that that has been passed down to me genetically.
Jake Kastleman (06:46.792)
And this is what's shown in the research. They've done research on rats that shows that this is the case, that actually this can be passed down to the third and fourth generation, which is fascinating for those of us who are religious or for those of us who are Christian and believe in the Bible. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ says that the sins of the parents shall be passed down to the third and the fourth generation.
And I used to read that passage and think, gosh, that sounds really harsh. Like God is just this punishing, vengeful God who wants to heap sins and mistakes down upon the heads of people down to the third and fourth generation. Why would he do that? Why is it their fault? And now I read that and I think Christ was sharing a truth.
He was teaching people, hey, when you make choices, they impact people for generations to come. This actually works genetically. And I believe there's also a way it works spiritually that we can't see. But through science now we understand this works this way genetically. We actually pass down traumas epigenetically to our, our posterity and it travels down through multiple generations.
And so the amazing thing about that is, I think two things. One, we can have compassion for ourselves that I carry things that are not mine. And so I can understand that I came with things that were hard. And then number two, there's amazing hope that I can pass down better things to my children, literally in my DNA, in my Duna. I can pass.
things down to my children that are better than what I got. I can change my genetics.
Jake Kastleman (08:53.39)
So I want to talk about the teeter totter of the addictive mindset. So think of the addictive mindset like a teeter totter. On one side, you have the manager, a part of you that is harsh, logical. It's a logical taskmaster. It uses criticism, judgment, and fear in order to motivate you to get things done.
This manager that we all have, we all, mean, if you get into an IFS model of psychology, we all, we have multiple managers. Most of us would have multiple. These managers that direct your life. They push you to accomplish things, be responsible, be reliable and get things done. And so we'll just talk about this as one manager to keep it simple. This manager is with you at work, at home, everywhere you go. Maybe especially at work.
maybe especially at home, maybe it shows up in different ways. But I see this with all my clients. I have certainly seen it with myself. I've had personal experience with it. And so this manager, this self-critic, right, can show very perfectionistically and heap a lot of pressure on us. So that's one side of the addictive mindset. One side of the teeter-totter. On the other side of the teeter-totter, you have the rebel, okay?
A part of you that wants to have fun, live with excitement, take risks, be adventurous. This is the part of you also that points you towards addiction to deal with your problems. And these two parts fight against one another. Now to make things interesting, let's imagine that there is a crowd of children surrounding this teeter totter that I've just described with the manager and the rebel on it.
and they will throw rocks at whichever person is at the top of the teeter totter.
Jake Kastleman (10:54.36)
So when one side is down, the manager is down, kids are going to throw rocks at the rebel who's on the upper side. The rebel is down, manager's up, kids are going to throw rocks at the manager. Okay? It's a weird scenario. That's what we're going with. Children throwing rocks. These are some violent children. Both the manager and rebel would like to avoid having thrown rocks thrown at them, right? So they're both fighting to keep their side of the teeter-totter pressed down. So when the manager
part of you in this addictive mindset, when the manager part of you presses down on one side of the teeter-totter, it's self-critical, it heaps on the pressure, it's perfectionistic, the rebel naturally wants to press down on the other side because it's having rocks thrown at it. And vice versa. When the rebel presses down and you engage in impulsive behavior and addictions and all sorts of pleasures, the manager's like, let me back down. I got to re-engage and get
I gotta get into the lead. So they go back and forth in this way, day after day, month after month, year after year, and in psychology we call this polarized parts. Again, if you go to IFS or parts work, these parts are polarized against one another. Parts are in, these parts are in conflict, and you feel this on a day to day. This self-critical part of you that's trying to drive you, keeps pressure on you, I need to do everything.
I need to do it all on my own. There's no one who's here for me. I need to be strong. I can't feel weakness. That part beats you up. It shames you for weaknesses. It's harsh. And that's all to motivate you to be productive, to fulfill your responsibilities, et cetera. Is it done in a good way? No, it's done in a very self-destructive, harmful way for you. But ultimately that part of you means, well, it is trying to motivate you the best way it knows how. Much as a father who is highly critical,
might try to motivate his son by beating him. A horrible thing. Not helpful. Very destructive. Very damaging. But this is sometimes how parts of our mind can interact with us in these misguided ways that are harsh and critical and not helpful. And then you have the rebel side. It's always trying to take the edge off of the manager side.
Jake Kastleman (13:21.634)
to get away from the pressure and the self-criticism. Much like a teenager in a family with a authoritarian father might rebel, go off and do crazy things that are impulsive. So you are numbing out using porn, TV, food, video games, etc. Whatever means necessary.
Jake Kastleman (13:45.304)
So what do do?
Over time, you can slow this teeter totter down. If you want to overcome porn addiction, you often start by working on being less self-critical, more understanding and compassionate towards yourself. You work on self-acceptance, having reasonable expectations, and managing fears and anxieties and anger. Really being aware of these things, calling awareness to them, expressing understanding for yourself.
getting behind the why of why you're feeling these fears, these anxieties, this anger, calling attention to it and understanding yourself. And this gives the rebel side of you that would push you towards addictions less of a reason to rebel against these critical thoughts and hence less of a pull towards addiction.
Can you see how this has essentially nothing to do with willpower?
Jake Kastleman (14:47.48)
So.
The other thing that eventually you want to do, or that you can start practicing doing, is to step off the teeter-totter. Over time, your goal is to practice stepping off of the addictive mindset teeter-totter. More and more you choose a different way of life, one that does not play into these polarizing parts of your psyche. And you do this by...
using three pillars of recovery. Three pillars of a recovery mindset and a recovery lifestyle. So instead of playing the willpower game, trying to avoid and distract yourself from cravings and temptations, you build your life in such a way that the addiction becomes less and less of an issue because you are losing your desire for it. In other words,
Again, you build what we call a recovery mindset and lifestyle. You've heard me say it a million times. You'll hear me say it a million more times. And it's founded on these three pillars, psychological well-being, biological well-being, and relational well-being. And there's a lot in there. And we're going to just barely brush the surface here. But to give you an overall view and an understanding of what you need to practically do on a day-to-day basis,
and on an ongoing basis in order to lose your desire for porn.
Jake Kastleman (16:18.562)
We work on our psychology, our biology, and our relationships.
Pillar number one, psychological. So this is your mindset. You're always going to have challenging thoughts and emotions, but how you respond to those thoughts and emotions, internally and externally, defines everything, both now and in the long run. If you are self-critical or judgmental when you feel weakness or you feel emotional vulnerability, this fuels addiction.
because of that teeter totter.
If you simply try to resist difficult feelings, that's pressing down on willpower and control, and that is building pressure inside of you. You do not want to rely on willpower in order to overcome addiction. It does not work. That rebel will respond by saying, this is too much. I got to escape this. This is too much work.
So you want to have a more resilient, mindful way of approaching emotions.
Jake Kastleman (17:37.418)
And if you can incorporate, again, self-acceptance, self-compassion, this can empower your sobriety.
And then another very important aspect of this pillar, this psychological pillar, is finding meaning and purpose in your life. Are you engaging in activities and doing things and making a difference in the world in ways that bring you fulfillment?
Jake Kastleman (18:07.648)
If you're not, then addiction, we need purpose and meaning in our lives. And we will either find it consciously, or we will find it by default. And addiction is default. Pleasures are default. In other words, we are trying to fill the purpose and meaning whole in our minds and our hearts and our psyches, our souls, with addiction.
You have to have meaning and purpose. You have to be making a difference in the world in some in small ways or big ways And then the other aspect of psychology that's extremely important, which I covered in last week's episode is the spiritual side of psychology if you do not have a spiritual practice of some nature you are missing out on so much of what determines your psychological well-being
And I will add to that, if you do not have a relationship with higher power or with God, then you are missing out on a major catalyst, a fantastic support for your sobriety. If you can get a daily spiritual practice,
where you're engaging with God, you're building that relationship, not one of fear or resistance or blaming God for things or one that where you're just asking for blessings all day and then you complain that God's not delivering, but one that's founded on gratitude and the good of others, right? Gratitude for the, for whatever blessings in your life and then praying and focusing upon
Making a difference in the world, the good of other people, characteristics you want to build to be a better person.
Jake Kastleman (20:06.53)
These are crucial for your psychological well-being.
So that's the first pillar. The second pillar is biological. So this is going to be your nutrition, your exercise, and then what I call your base versus noble pleasure balance.
So biological, often we think about our neurology, our neurotransmitters, our hormones, our chemical imbalances in our body. And these things definitely occur through addiction. And we are also born with certain dispositions based on our families of origin, based on what we were born with as far as our building blocks. And these things can shift. They can improve through our
pursuit of nutrition, exercise, and noble pleasures. So you want to take your nutrition seriously. Okay. I think it's as simple as this in a lot of ways. Get off of processed foods, get onto whole foods. This is not a mystery. Fruits, veggies, beans, nuts, plant foods. If you can, the more vitamins, minerals, and fiber that you can get in your diet, the better because that fiber is going to
feed probiotic bacteria in your gut and those probiotic bacteria are going to produce hormones and neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin that are going to then feed your brain. You're going to feel healthier. Your immune system is going to be healthier the healthier that you eat. So that means you're not going into fight or flight mode. And the less you go into fight or flight mode, the less stress and anxiety and depression you feel, less stress, anxiety and depression you feel, the less cravings for addiction you're going to feel.
Jake Kastleman (21:53.87)
and you're gonna be able to stay sober far easier.
The next thing is exercise. Exercise increases dopamine. There is something that occurs in our brain when we exercise where we increase the input of pain. And as we increase the input of pain and we work our muscles and our body, we are naturally rewarded with a surge of dopamine that is not like the surge of dopamine you gain from porn. It would be, I would say, one that is more natural.
Porn can be such an overwhelming amount of dopamine that damages the mind. But more so, the important aspect is there is both pain and pleasure. You are earning the pleasure, which is so important for your neurochemistry. So exercise is powerful in that way and for many other reasons, in increasing your energy and your mood and improving your overall feelings of well-being and your self-confidence, your knowledge I can do hard things.
And then we have base versus noble pleasures, which is essentially base pleasures are low effort, instant gratification activities that yield an intense mental reward. We want to decrease as many of these as possible. Noble pleasures are things that require effort and they entail some level of pain. Even if that's pain of, you know, reading and writing is mentally challenging, it's taxing, so it's painful in a way.
But reading and writing also bring pleasure in that there's learning, there's growth, right? It feels good to learn and to grow. So we want to increase the number of noble pleasures that we're partaking in. And again, exercise would be a noble pleasure, right? There's pain and there is a reasonable level of pleasure in response.
Jake Kastleman (23:50.274)
And then pillar number three is relational.
Your relationships are so important to your sobriety. Many people know this now. The opposite of addiction is connection. This is going to be your relationship to God, to others, to self, and to the world. The better your relationships are in those categories, the more connected you will feel, the more peace you will feel,
The greater sense of, again, purpose and meaning you will feel, and that just fills the hole that we keep trying to stuff addiction into. So really getting those things in your life, getting those good relationships in your life. And I recommend pursuing systems for that, organized ways of gaining those good relationships in your life. And I work on with my clients, I work on
multiple aspects of that and everything I've talked about, step-by-step systems, to integrate all of these pillars one step at a time into their lives and really checking in with them and holding them accountable to be able to build out those systems in their lives in these practical ways.
So it's not about willpower, if you haven't gathered that at this point.
Jake Kastleman (25:17.854)
As you can see, getting rid of porn addiction has very little to do with that. Instead, as you build this recovery mindset and lifestyle based on these three pillars, you gain more will and more power to overcome your addiction. So I hope this has been helpful to you, my friend. God bless and much love.
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