The “Peacemaker” Part of You Is Driving Porn Use—And It’s Not Your Enemy
- Jake Kastleman
- 1 day ago
- 28 min read
For years, I believed my porn addiction came from a broken part of me.
A weak part. A perverted part. A sinful part.
And if I could just crush it hard enough, through discipline, shame, prayer, or willpower, I’d finally be free.
But that belief kept me stuck far longer than it should have.
What I’ve learned through my own recovery and through working with men across the world is something far more unsettling and far more hopeful:
Porn addiction often doesn’t come from a bad part of your mind. It comes from a good part that’s gone rogue.
A part that was designed to bring peace, comfort, and relief, but learned to do it in the worst possible way.
I call this part the Peacemaker.
And understanding it may be one of the most important shifts you ever make in overcoming porn addiction.
Porn Addiction Isn’t About Lust—It’s About Emotional Self-Soothing
Most men assume porn addiction is driven by sex drive, temptation, or lack of discipline. But that explanation falls apart the moment you ask a deeper question:
Because for many men, porn functions as emotional self-soothing.
It’s not primarily about pleasure.
It’s about relief.
Relief from pressure. Relief from anxiety. Relief from constant mental noise. Relief from the feeling that you’re never doing enough or being enough.
This is where the Peacemaker comes in.
Meet the Peacemaker: The Part of You That Wants Relief
The Peacemaker is a part of your unconscious emotional mind.
Its job—when healthy—is simple: help you calm down, relax, and enjoy the moment.
The Peacemaker is the part of you that can:
Exhale
Be present
Enjoy silence
Feel comfort without guilt
But for many men struggling with porn addiction, this part feels broken or nonexistent.
We don’t know how to just be.
We’re constantly driven. Constantly thinking. Constantly on edge. And when the Peacemaker can’t access healthy comfort, it looks for comfort any way it can.
Porn becomes the shortcut.
Not because the Peacemaker is evil—but because it’s desperate.
Like a four-year-old trying to solve adult problems, it reaches for the fastest thing that works
.
Two Minds, Two Rulebooks: Why Willpower Fails Porn Addiction Recovery
Here’s where most recovery advice goes wrong. It assumes your mind is a single unit governed by logic.
It’s not.
Psychology and neuroscience make this clear:
The thinking mind and the emotional mind operate by entirely different rules.
You can reason with your thinking mind. You cannot reason your way out of an emotional survival response.
That’s why willpower approaches— “Just stop.” “Just let it go.” “Just get serious.”
often fail in porn addiction recovery. They ignore how the emotional brain actually works. And when willpower fails, shame fills the gap…which only strengthens the cycle.
The Nervous System Pattern Behind Porn Cravings
To understand porn cravings, you have to understand the nervous system.
When you’re under stress, your body enters a sympathetic state—fight or flight.
This isn’t bad. It’s what helps you perform, lead, and take action.
But when that state goes unregulated for too long—through chronic stress, pressure, or emotional suppression—it becomes unsustainable.
Your body must find a way to come down.
That’s where the Peacemaker steps in.
From a nervous system perspective, porn often functions as a dorsal vagal shutdown—a numbing, collapsing response that forces your system to calm.
This is why porn is often grouped with other coping behaviors like:
Binge eating
Scrolling
Gaming
Alcohol
TV marathons
Different tools. Same function.
Porn isn’t just a “sexual problem.” It’s frequently a stress regulation strategy.
The Shame Whiplash That Keeps Men Trapped
After porn provides temporary relief, something else happens.
Shame. Depression. Self-disgust. Hopelessness.
Then another part of you appears—the Inner Critic.
It attacks you:
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Why do you keep doing this?”
“You’re wasting your life.”
This critical part tries to push you back into action by increasing pressure. Which throws you back into sympathetic overdrive. Which overwhelms the system.
Which triggers the Peacemaker again.
This loop is not a moral failure.
It’s a biological and psychological feedback loop.
How to Work With the Peacemaker Instead of Fighting It
Here’s the counterintuitive truth:
Fighting the Peacemaker strengthens it. Turning toward it, disarms it. When an urge appears, instead of asking:
“Why am I like this?”
Ask a better question:
“What are you trying to give me right now?”
Relief? Comfort? A break? Peace? Then acknowledge the intention:
“Thank you for trying to help me.”
This isn’t indulgence. It’s leadership.
Once you recognize the need, you can meet it directly, without porn. When the need is met, the behavior loses its grip.
The Hidden Pressure Fueling Porn Use: Achiever and Loyalist Parts
In almost every man I work with, the Peacemaker is polarized with other dominant parts.
Two are especially common.
The Achiever: Pressure Without Pause
The Achiever part says:
“I should be doing more.”
“I’m running out of time.”
“My worth depends on performance.”
This part can fuel success—but when unchecked, it keeps your foot on the gas nonstop.
No breaks. No silence. No rest.
Eventually, the system slams the brakes.
That brake is often porn.
The Loyalist: Anxiety and Over-Responsibility
The Loyalist is driven by safety and responsibility.
It scans for threats. Plans for worst-case scenarios. Worries about letting people down.
When this anxiety runs unchecked, the Peacemaker steps in to numb the overload. Porn becomes an escape from responsibility itself.
Neither part is bad. They’re simply overworked and under-regulated.
Silence, Stillness, and Why Modern Men Relapse
One of the most overlooked factors in porn addiction recovery is silence.
Real silence.
Not scrolling. Not background noise. Not “relaxing” entertainment. Actual stillness.
Most men never come down. And men who never come down eventually numb out. Your nervous system cannot stay activated all day without consequences.
If the Peacemaker doesn’t get attention consciously, it will take it unconsciously.
Practical Practices to Rewire the Comfort System
Recovery doesn’t require perfection.
It requires repetition. Small, daily practices that teach your nervous system it’s safe to rest without porn.
The 60-Second Permission Drill
When you feel overwhelmed, behind, or restless:
Stop. Set a 60-second timer. Do nothing productive.
Feel your feet. Feel your breath. Feel the urge to move—and let it pass.
If you don’t have 60 seconds, that’s not a time problem.
It’s a nervous system problem.
The “What Are You Trying to Give Me?” Check-In
When cravings hit, ask:
“What are you trying to give me right now?”
Then meet the need directly:
Relief → breath and silence
Comfort → warmth and stillness
Escape → nature or music
This turns the Peacemaker from an enemy into an ally.
The Evening Decompression Ritual
Many relapses happen at night—not because men are weak, but because they’re exhausted.
Create a nightly ritual:
Low light. No phone. Silence, prayer, journaling, or reflection.
Let the day drain out of you before your system collapses.
The Real Goal of Porn Addiction Recovery
The goal isn’t to kill parts of yourself.
It’s to lead them.
Unconscious parts become compulsions. Conscious parts become strengths.
When you learn to regulate emotion, calm your nervous system, and restore real comfort to your life, porn loses its job.
Not because you fought harder. But because you no longer needed it.
Final Word
You don’t overcome porn addiction by becoming more aggressive with yourself.
You overcome it by becoming more grounded.
More aware. More regulated. More present.
And when you do, the Peacemaker—the part of you that once drove porn use—becomes one of your greatest allies in building a meaningful, disciplined, and peaceful life.
If you want to go deeper into this work, I invite you to join the No More Desire Brotherhood and explore the Self-Code Model, where we take these concepts into structured, hands-on recovery.
Freedom isn’t found in war with yourself.
It’s found in leadership.
Free Resources:
Grab my Free eBook and Free Workshop for more strategies to overcome porn addiction, rewire your brain, and rebuild your life.
Recommended Episodes:
Full Transcription of Episode 129: The “Peacemaker” Part of You Is Driving Porn Use—And It’s Not Your Enemy
Jake Kastleman (00:01.006)
Welcome to No More Desire, where we build the mindset and lifestyle for lasting recovery from poor. My name is Jake Castleman, and I'm excited to dive in with you. Let's get started, my friend.
Jake Kastleman (00:27.726)
addiction doesn't come from a bad part of your
It's simply gone rogue.
Jake Kastleman (00:38.959)
It's healthy, but this part has adopted a bad role, pointing you to porn for comfort instead of healthy roots. Working with men across the world who struggle with pornography, I've noticed a consistent pattern, and it's the same one that resided in me during my years addicted to porn. This pattern is one of ongoing mental discomfort. We don't know how to just be
take a break, to relax, to genuinely be at peace. So the part of us that can kick back and enjoy the moment, the comforter or peacemaker, as I call it, seems to be broken or non-existent. Sure, we can have fun, but are we really enjoying ourselves? Or does it feel strained, discontent, like there's always more to do? We never feel like we're quite enough and we're never quite present.
Today, my friend, I'm going to teach you how to bring peace back into your life as a husband, as a father, and as a man. Not through willpower or just letting go, but through simple, grounded practices you can actually use to bring out the comforting, peacemaking, joyful part of you that lives for the moment, to turn what has been your enemy, your addictive self-saboteur that's pointed you to porn addiction, into your friend.
There are anxious, critical parts of your psyche that have quietly pushed the comforter in you toward porn. And it's time to bring it back. We'll talk about how to begin restoring real comfort, presence, and peace without numbing out so that your psyche and nervous system can calm and you'll no longer require the release of porn. Before we dive in, my friend, a reminder to follow, subscribe, like, and rate this podcast.
so that others who are searching for help can find it too. All right, let's get started.
Jake Kastleman (02:44.717)
So we just recently launched the public online community, the No More Desire Brotherhood. I'm really excited about the community. There's already so many members who have joined and I invite you to come in, my friend. We've had a lot of special interactions, a lot of men supporting each other. All these guys who go through the same things, we know each other's minds because they're so similar to our own and it's been awesome to bring everyone together.
Go to nomordesire.com slash community if you want to be a part of that brotherhood. So I want to talk about this peacemaker today, this part of the unconscious mind. This is something that I'm passionate for because I've seen miracles happen for guys once they learn how this works. And it can sound so paradoxical and so strange. It's counterintuitive the way that the emotional mind works.
As I've said in other episodes, the emotional mind and the mental mind do not operate according to the same laws. They are completely different structures of law, so to speak. There's different rules and they operate in very counterintuitive ways as far as the emotional mind versus the mental mind. So this peacemaker, this
peacemaker part of the mind, this part of the unconscious mind, it seems bad as far as men thinking, okay, I go to porn for comfort, right? I go to porn for self-soothing. I go to porn so I can try to feel some semblance of peace in my life. I hear this a lot. It's the same, one of the same reasons that I went to porn and this can seem bad. We can feel really ashamed of this. Like what's wrong with me? Why am I so twisted? Why am I so messed up as a human being?
And I felt that same way. And this is a part of us that's been twisted. That's one of the things we need to fundamentally understand. It's a part that actually means well and is trying to help you rather than harm you, but it is not working. And that is how the emotional unconscious mind operates. It is like a child. These parts of our mind are imagine like they're four years old and they're trying to solve a problem, emotional stress, anger that I go through in my life.
Jake Kastleman (05:09.121)
feelings of sadness, feelings of fear, feelings of shame, inadequacy, I'm not good enough, all these things that we carry, these insecurities that we carry as men that most of us don't talk about, this peacemaker part of our mind can hop in and seek to bring us soothing, to actually bring us out of that pain. What it's trying to do for you is to solve this issue, right? So if I am going through anger,
And I don't know how to regulate that anger properly. And I teach my clients the rail method. It's been, it's a very powerful method in my own life. And for many of the men I've taught it to who haven't had luck with other systems of emotional regulation, but then once they learn this and they incorporate it, it's very, very powerful based in IFS principles and, and parts work principles and incorporating emotional mindfulness and Buddhism to
bring together this very powerful process for how to work through things like anger or sadness, fear, shame, et cetera. So if I don't know how to regulate that anger properly, this can actually convert into another part of me responding to the angry part of me with an escape mechanism or a comfort mechanism because anger is inherently painful. It does not feel good. So this peacemaker
part of my unconscious emotional mind can come in and say, I've got you, don't worry, my friend, I know what will help. We'll watch porn. That's what will regulate our emotion. And then from a nervous system perspective, if you listen to episode, I believe it's episode 122 or 123 with Chris Chandler, we talk about the nervous system. We talk about the dorsal vagal system, the ventral vagal system and the sympathetic nervous system.
very powerful teachings to help us understand how the nervous system operates. Because when I'm angry, I'm in a sympathetic nervous system state, which is not to be confused with the word sympathetic, it's a very different meaning. Sympathetic nervous system is fight or flight. I am focused, I can be on edge, I can be tense, stressed. Now, sympathetic's not bad, just when it's...
Jake Kastleman (07:33.643)
when it's not regulated properly, when it's not balanced properly, it becomes too extreme. Now it's something that's causing me pain. But I always want the sympathetic nervous system involved to some degree in my life, you know, on an ongoing basis, but I just need it to be in balance. So the sympathetic nervous system comes online with the anger, right? If that continues long enough, eventually it reaches a point of
unsustainability, my body is out of homeostasis. So it requires that I find some way to calm. Otherwise, I'm going to start committing violent acts, right? And I would like that to not happen for multiple reasons that we can imagine. I don't want to get hurt. I don't want others to get hurt. My mind knows this for survival. So the name of the game is survival. So it says, okay, Jake,
You're not regulating consciously. You're not stepping back to deal with, to handle this anger in a way that is effective. And again, many of us don't actually know how to do that. So of course we can't handle it effectively. We've been told to just not be angry and just get over it or just let it go or just forgive. All of these are willpower approaches to the situation and they don't really work very well.
other than for those of us that have grown up in really stable homes and environments where our mental and emotional state just isn't that extreme, our biology is pretty even keeled and things like willpower can actually function okay for some of us. But for the rest of us that have more sensitive minds or we grew up having really challenging experiences or feeling detached or disconnected, lonely, going through pain, we carry these different burdens with us, right? And so we don't know how to regulate that.
properly and the Western modern culture is saying willpower, willpower, willpower, just in all sorts of, by all sorts of different names and in different ways. So I'm in the sympathetic nervous system state. My body says we need to regulate nervous system says we've got to bring things down a bunch of notches. So we need to bring you into dorsal vagal state. We need to bring that in online. So
Jake Kastleman (09:57.185)
This peacemaker part comes in and says, I need to bring you peace. I need to bring you comfort. Let's use porn to do that. Or it could be something like, let's use video games to do that. Let's use TV to do that. Let's use junk food to do that. Let's use shopping addiction, shopping to do that, Alcohol to do that, a depressant, whatever it might be, right? We gotta send you into a dive, right? And addiction can function the opposite direction as well, right? I'm too numbed out. I'm too bored. I am too...
I'm checked out, I need something to bring me online into sympathetic state, right? It just depends what the function is for you, either on a given day or generally how you operate personally. let's send you into dorsal vagal, get you shut down, do this dorsal dive. Your nervous system is your unconscious mind, the emotional mind, this peacemaker is sending you into a dorsal dive.
An unconscious emotional regulation that you're not aware is happening to shut you down because it needs to calm you. Now, this happens to a lot of us unconsciously when we're going through chronic stress, as many of us do. This is actually, we're taught this is normal. Now in our modern Western society, it's normal to be stressed every day. It's normal to not be able to focus. I can't pay attention and I'm not present. My mind is always busy. I'm always going. I'm always on the move. I'm never...
really fully enjoying life. This is actually even celebrated in our current culture. So you watch porn, you go into the dorsal dive, boom, you've been shut down. Now you're depressed. Now you feel ashamed and horrible about yourself, right? And now you've got to find a way to get back up into sympathetic state. So then you have a critical part of you come in and start berating you.
saying that you're, what's wrong with you, you're a horrible person, how could you do this? What would your family think? Why do you keep wasting your life? Why don't you get things together? When are you gonna finally get serious about this? Or you start making ultimatums, right? So this part of your mind is making all sorts of promises about how you're gonna change things.
Jake Kastleman (12:17.901)
trying to bring more of the sympathetic state online, right? Bring you back up, okay? One way of potentially seeing that. So that part is trying to motivate you. That critical part is trying to motivate you to be better. That's not gonna work ultimately unless you come in with a deep self-awareness and you know how to emotionally regulate and you use that to supercharge you into
sobriety for it to actually mean something deeply to you. But you you have to know how to engage with that experience. And again, the rail method, IFS, these other things that I've taught on other episodes, and I teach my clients within the intensive recovery program. We can engage with relapse in such a way that it motivates us to action, but we need to, we need to deeply engage with and dive into that experience full on. And we need to know how to do that properly. Because there are definitely ways to do that that will not work.
So what's, we've kind of gone through the unconscious and how this works. I wanna talk about how to interact with the peacemaker. So when you are in a stressed out state, you're going through hard things and you have this inclination come up, let's watch porn. I want you to explore that, step back, breathe into it and become aware. What is this part of me trying to say?
I want you to imagine this peacemaker part, like a little kid who's coming in and saying, Hey, I've got you. I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to, to, calm you down. Right. I'm going to use porn to do it. Terrible tool, right. It's not an innocent tool, but the, the intentions of that part of your unconscious mind are innocent. would say sounds strange, paradoxical, weird, especially for those of us that are religious. Right. And I think that's Satan telling me to do that. I totally understand.
The way you want to interact with that is not by condemning it. You want to engage with it with openness, acceptance, compassion. You want to seek to understand it so that you can convert it into something that you want to be able to help it calm, right? Calm, so that you can proceed forward and take the action you want rather than fighting with this part, which only supercharges that part to become more intense. Now you're in a mental battle. It's not going to work. So.
Jake Kastleman (14:45.653)
Instead, you turn towards this part and you say, what's so counterintuitive, what I've said on other episodes, thank you, peacemaker, for trying to bring me comfort. Thank you, comforter, for trying to soothe me. I see your intention. I see that you're trying to help me out. Okay, this is an emotional energy that needs to be expressed. So once you've appreciated this part, you want to ask, what are you trying to protect me from? What's going on in my life right now?
You might be stressed out from work. You might be having a hard time as a dad. Maybe you're ticked off because of your kids and how they're acting and you're overwhelmed. You feel like you're being a bad dad because you're losing your patience. Now you're filled with shame and feelings of inadequacy. Now this comforter shows up. We got to check out. I can't handle this anymore. I've got a critical part in us that's just unloading on us. I have all this shame welling up inside of me. But you may be completely unconscious of that unless you engage.
and get aware of it and that takes practice over time, right? So you engage in that emotional energy that has to be expressed. You're gonna focus inward, you're gonna open up to it, you're gonna breathe into it and you're gonna say, on in, I welcome in this fear, I welcome in these feelings of shame and you're welcome in like a friend. Again, so counterintuitive. You're gonna be with it, you're gonna hold space for it. And then you're going to,
allow it to express what are the messages, speak them internally and let that part of you know I'm here for you. I'm here for you. And underneath fear, underneath shame, underneath sadness, we're always going to find deeper good intentions, deeper good desires that I have. So what fuels, and once I can get in touch with those, right, then I can convert this into a...
a personal growth experience rather than a relapse experience. This can fuel my long-term sprightly. It builds self-efficacy. I can engage with painful emotion. So what fuels the peacemaker behaving this way? It is polarized with another part of your unconscious mind. So we've gotten to some of the underlying causes with the fear, the shame, the grief. I've talked about them before. Talk about them a million times over again. There's always more to learn.
Jake Kastleman (17:06.701)
We can easily forget these things. So, but this peacemaker is polarized with one of two or two parts, an achiever part and what I would call loyalist part. Okay, so achiever, we've talked about this in other episodes, the achiever polarization. So virtually every man that I work with has this mentality. Now that
is in part because that's a lot of the guys that I attract. Not all of them are this way that I'm about to say, but a lot of them. The high achievement expectation. Expecting ourselves, especially in this current culture, to achieve a lot on a given day, every day. Right? Always going, I need to maintain my self-image. I need to portray myself a certain way. I should achieve more. This feeling of consistently, this feeling of I'm running out of time.
That was my whole life. I always felt that way. Didn't realize it until I was in my late twenties. And I really started to understand that this was an ongoing pattern for me, that I was always feeling like I was running out of time. That was just my underlying belief, a burden that I carried. So these things, this mentality, right, of needing to achieve a certain status, high achievement, I'm running out of time, this sense of urgency all the time.
this sympathetic nervous system state, this may lead to higher achievement. It may also lead to stagnation though. Both are possible. And ultimately, this is dirty fuel. If I'm fueling achievement this way, it's dirty fuel and I'm going to experience some kind of whiplash on the backend. This is that peacemaker. So the achiever demands
success, demands high achievement, it demands that I do extremely well and that I portray a certain image, I perform at a certain standard, right? And if I'm feeling this way all the time, now the peacemaker comes in on the back end, I've had my accelerator, my foot on the accelerator all day, whoa, I'm just, I am driving that card at 80 miles an hour all day long, I'm not taking any breaks, right?
Jake Kastleman (19:27.384)
or faster, depending on how fast you are. Right? The point is there's no breaks, there's no times to be. And so this peacemaker comes in to say, we need a break, right? Take the foot off the gas, plunge on that break. Why the plunge? Because it is reacting in an equal and opposite direction to the achiever part of my emotional mind. Boom.
or boom, just binge ate, or slam, I just watched, you know, three hours of television, right? Or even something that's more mild, right? Maybe I sat down and played a half hour of video games, but I'm doing that as an escape, a self-soothing mechanism. And so I'm actually not emotionally regulating. I'm going into a state of hypnotic busy-mindedness. This is not helping.
My self-mastery is not helping my life or helping me be who I want to be. It's making me weaker. Right? Now, we all have coping mechanisms of different kinds. We shouldn't expect perfection of ourselves necessarily, but we should work to improve this over time. So noticing what's happening when this peacemaker comes up. Okay, here it is. It's trying to offload the pressure. So I need to work with that achiever part of me to help it calm in my life.
to get more reasonable expectations and help it step out of this extreme role, I can still achieve a ton in my life and do great things, but I need to know how to relate to these feelings and be deeply self-aware and step back. Now, it's important to mention that just because I have a high achieving mentality does not mean that I'm high achieving. I may have these expectations and they may actually fuel me to be stagnant and to be depressed and to not achieve much in my life.
That is a version of perfectionism, all or nothing thinking. It is very unexpected for a lot of us, all or nothing. This is the nothing end, right? Then other times I expect myself to do everything and my nervous system shuts me down again, right? It's there's too much pressure. I'm in sympathetic state. Boom, shut you down, put you in a dorsal state, right? And I flip flop through this every single day, multiple times a day, and I don't get much done.
Jake Kastleman (21:49.539)
Now, the other possibility, I've had multiple clients that are this way too, is a loyalist polarization with the peacemaker. Loyalist, what is this part of me into? This part of me is into safety, security, it's into trust, it's into support, it's into relationships. This part wants to solve problems. It wants to plan for worst case scenarios. It wants to make sure I account for every detail.
Excellent part of me, by the way, the achiever part, the peacemaker part, the loyalist part, these are all amazing parts of me. They're beautiful in their own ways. They can also be incredibly destructive and wreak pain in my life in their own ways. They're equally terrifying, equally wonderful, all in their own ways. So this loyalist part can be extremely anxious, always thinking of worst case scenarios.
Always focused on the details and trying to do everything right and account for every last problem. It's trying to make sure that nothing goes wrong. It's seeking for that safety and security. It can also feel that if I don't show up in just the right way in my relationships in cultivating a safe zone for my family members, then I must be a bad person. So it can be extremely critical. So you have these, an achiever party that's very critical or a loyalist part or both.
to differing degrees, depending on who you are. We all have these parts that I'm mentioning. It just depends on how prominent they are in our lives. they, how healthy are they? How unhealthy are they? How do they show up? There's not a black and white thing. I go into far more detail on this in the coursework of the program with clients. So, and if you, I will be launching that course, the self-code model.
that goes into deep description on all of this and far, far more. And I'll be launching that within the next couple of weeks, should be here. So it'll be available for purchase in the online community. Again, to get to that, nomordesire.com slash community. So how to incorporate the peacemaker in healthy ways. We wanna bring this peacemaker in healthy ways. Just this self-awareness of these dynamics, right? If you have these parts in you that are acting up, that is really helpful.
Jake Kastleman (24:12.494)
Become deeply aware. That's so much of what we're aiming for here is deep self-awareness, deep understanding of how these parts are showing up, why they're showing up that way. They mean well, they're trying to do good things. This loyalist part of me is trying to solve problems. It's trying to bring security and safety in my life. It's trying to show up well in relationships. It's trying to plan and prepare. It's just too extreme. So I can appreciate that part, send it gratitude, understand where it's coming from. And this peacemaker,
So this week in the inner circle, that's the private community within the No More Desire Brotherhood. We are working on exercises, written and meditative exercises to engage with this peacemaker part, with other parts to get to know and understand how they operate. So we're gonna do that together as a group. If you are not in the inner circle,
Let me teach you some practices that you can do, some simple daily practices to bring this peacemaker into everyday life because you want to bring it in in healthy ways. Because if you don't, it has to show up. Okay, I teach that all parts of you, they are involved. It's just how conscious they are. And do they show up in healthy or unhealthy ways? If they show up unconsciously, it's unhealthy. If they show up consciously, it's healthy, right?
I can bring them in in really good ways. I take breaks throughout the day. I take time for relaxation, time for peace. So I need to take times of silence. This is so incredibly common. So many men that I talk to, this is non-existent in their lives. I know it was for me for much of my life and I'm working on incorporating more of it in my life right now. So...
Take times of silence throughout the day, just for five minutes even. And if you can, for 10 minutes, know, a few times a day at least. Part of you will say, that achiever part will say, nope, not enough time, can't do it, I have too much to accomplish. I don't have time to sit back for 10 minutes, I can't take a break. You wanna know what that does? Makes you less productive, makes you less creative. It makes your mind less flexible.
Jake Kastleman (26:34.475)
You can't actually work as efficiently if you don't take time for silence. And I don't mean breaks like watching YouTube or social media scrolling. I'm not talking about that's not a break. That's hypnotic busy-mindedness. It is not a break. It is the opposite of a break. It is damaging your dopaminergic system and it's actually making you more susceptible to pornography addiction. Now you may not be perfect in that. Just wean yourself off of these things over time.
get into other healthier mechanisms, Little things you can do like going on a walk outside, right? And being in nature, breath work, meditation, focusing on thoughts, journaling, prayer, or just sitting with your thoughts. There needs to be time for silence because your mind has emotional energy and it needs to process through it. So allow yourself to be, just feel. Such a simple concept, it's been taught forever.
And it seems cliche until you begin to practice it and you begin to cultivate the habit. You get over the initial activation energy of trying to build this new habit that's really hard at first, but you actually begin doing it on a regular basis. This is one of the things that we need to have regular exercises of doing in our lives. So for instance, okay, you can take these times throughout the day
not just in silence, but also to have multiple times where you are relaxing in the moment with something you're doing. Yeah, you're in the shower and you feel the hot water. This is something I've been trying to do lately. a part of me says, I don't have time for that. I have too much to do, right? There's, there's that achiever part of me. okay. And then I remind that part, okay. I may, I may have a lot to do, but do I have.
30 seconds? To have just 30 seconds right now? To just be in this moment, just feel the hot water on my body, right? When you sit down to eat, breathe, allow yourself time to actually eat the food and be in the moment without scrolling on your phone. Put that aside. When you're with your child, your son, your daughter at the park, hold their hand, bask in that moment, allow yourself a minute to just feel it.
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And if you're in pain or you're stressed, feel that. Be with it. When your wife hugs you, take an extra moment to be with her in that moment, right?
So a few more hands-on practices here, the 60 second permission drill. So when you feel overwhelmed, you feel behind, you feel restless, or like you should be doing something, this achiever comes in and it's like, we gotta do more. We gotta get something done. When your mind says, don't have time to relax, that's usually when we need it most. So here's the rule. You don't have to fix everything. You just need to give yourself 60 seconds.
60 second permission drill. So stop what you're doing, set a 60 second timer, sit still and do nothing productive. Feel your feet on the ground. Listen to your breath, feel your breath, feel your body. Okay, doing this builds the ability to feel emotion, to feel empathy and to feel through cravings. Okay, it's very important to practice this each day. Let the urge that you feel to do and to be busy rise.
be with it and allow it to pass and it may not pass. That's okay. You're just going to be with it. Okay. So this teaches the peacemaker that it can get relief without porn. I can emotionally regulate voluntarily. We don't have to go to porn to find peace. Okay. And this breaks achiever dominance. The part of you that says we always need to be busy. We always need to be doing. Okay. It is helping that part calm and relax. So it's not so dominant.
And this trains us to feel safety in stillness. If you don't have 60 seconds, that's not a time problem. It's a nervous system problem. It's an emotional issue. It's a belief issue. Our greatest asset is not the amount of time we have. Our greatest asset is the amount of attention and focus that we have. And this cultivates the ability to have more focus and attention in life. Another practice.
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the check-in to ask, what are you trying to give me? When cravings hit or restlessness starts creeping in, instead of asking, why do I want porn? Ask a better, know, why do I want porn? What's wrong with me? Why am I so bad? Why am I like this? Why am I so jacked up? Why can't I get these thoughts to go away? Ask better questions. Ask this part of you, what are you trying to give me right now? What do you think that I need? Is part of you showing up for a reason?
It's trying to bring you comfort, soothing, peace, why? There's deeper needs it's trying to solve. Pause, don't force the answers, just feel into it. And feel this part's trying to bring you relief, comfort, escape, to try to help you feel okay, a break from the pressure, right? Then give a healthy version. Engage in a healthy version of that need. So relief through breath and silence, comfort through warmth and stillness, and dress in something warm.
Right? Or take a warm shower, a hot shower, right? Calm the body. Or escape, as far as escape, get out in nature, right? Or escape through music, just sitting and listening to music, engaging with it mindfully. Now, depending on who you are, a shower may not work well, by the way, depending on where you stand on that. So.
This converts the peacemaker from an enemy to an ally. It actually engages this peacemaking part of my mind in a healthy way and helps it get engaged in a way in my life that is productive, right? It's leading to regulation in a good way. This stops the internal war, this builds self leadership inside of me. When you meet the need directly, the behavior loses its grip. Cause now that part of me says, I guess the needs taken care of.
and that can calm, maybe it's not gone entirely, but it reduces and that's helpful. We wanna do this early on, not when we're overwhelmed with urges. That's not a good time, we need to do it early. Another practice, the evening decompression ritual, Daily, especially at night when many relapses tend to happen. If your peacemaker only gets attention when you're exhausted, it's gonna keep pushing you harder. So instead of,
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Engaging in peace only when you're destroyed. Don't react. Instead respond. Take initiative. So have an evening decompression ritual where you sit down, you meditate. You know, I have something where I'll go over gratitude from things of the day in my prayers. I'll just breathe. I'll sit. I'll be in silence. I'll confess my feelings from the day and things that were hard for me and that hurt. Right? So this is done for me in prayer.
But for you, depending on who you are, it can be through meditation, it can just be through confession, in journaling. Confession is powerful. The gratitude is powerful. These things are taught to us for reasons, right? We can decompress utilizing them. So no phone, low light, get away from the phone, the scrolling, being on videos, all that stuff that we tend, many of us tend to do as a way to relax at the end of the night is not relaxing. Again, it is hypnotic.
busy mindedness, it's hypnotic stimulation. It is not letting your mind rest. It's, it is giving the illusion of rest, but it's keeping your mind busy. And it makes us more susceptible to wanting pornography. Because pornography is not, it's in that same vein, right? There's the stimulation, the kind of this reward with very little effort, right? Which is what social media does to us, TV does to us.
So just letting the day drain out of you in those ways, very powerful. All these things that I can easily forget every day myself. But when I do this, it makes such a difference for my recovery, such a difference for my happiness. And I believe it can make a great difference for you too. So if you wanna go far deeper into this, you want to get specific hands-on exercises for how to do all of this,
Go to nomoresire.com slash community. ahead and create an account, get in there and look up the self-code model. That is the online course when it is published. You're going to learn so much more about this. I've been really grateful as men have taken that course.
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and to hear the miracles that have occurred in their lives. I really mean that. you know, I put this out there knowing there was truth in it and there was power in it and it worked well for me, but I wasn't sure how it would do for others. And I've been pleased to see it's really helped guys a lot. So if you're interested, check that out. And I hope today's episode has been helpful for you, my friend. God bless and much love.
Thanks for listening to No More Desire. It's a genuine blessing for me to do the work that I do and I wouldn't be able to do it without you, my listeners, so thank you. If you've enjoyed today's episode, do me a favor. Follow this podcast, hit the notification bell and shoot me a rating. The more people who do this, the more men this podcast will reach. So take a few minutes of your time and hit those buttons. If you want to take your sobriety to the next level, check out my free workshop, The Eight Keys to Lose Your Desire for Corn.
or my free ebook, The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings. These are specialized pieces of content that will give you practical exercises and applied solutions to overcome porn addiction. And you can find them at nomordesire.com. As a listener of the No More Desire podcast, you are part of a worldwide movement of men who are breaking free of porn to live more impactful, meaningful,
selfless lives. So keep learning, keep growing, and keep building that recovery mindset and lifestyle. God bless.
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Everything expressed on the No More Desire podcast are the opinions of the host and participants and is for informational and educational purposes only. This podcast should not be considered mental health therapy or as a substitute thereof. It is strongly recommended that you seek out the clinical guidance of a qualified mental health professional. If you're experiencing thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or a desire to harm others,
please dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.