111: Why High-Achieving Men Get Addicted to Porn | How Emotional Intensity Drives Cravings—and How to Harness Your Perfectionistic Mind for Lasting Recovery

Why is it that so many high-achieving men—men who value discipline, morality, and service—secretly struggle with porn addiction? On the surface, it doesn’t make sense. How can a man who leads, provides, and sacrifices also be the same man sneaking away to watch porn in the dark?

In this episode, I uncover the paradox of the high-achiever and porn addiction. I’ll show you why high-achieving men are especially vulnerable to pornography, how emotional intensity fuels cravings, and why perfectionism can become both your greatest strength and your greatest weakness.

You’ll learn:

• The neuroscience behind why emotional intensity and dopamine cravings drive porn use.
• How the perfectionism trap creates all-or-nothing thinking, shame, and the painful double life.
• Why your high standards and drive for excellence aren’t the problem—and how to reframe perfectionism with compassion.
• Practical strategies to channel your intensity into recovery: structure, healthy outlets, and self-compassion.
• The benefits of integration—how to find real freedom, deeper relationships, greater productivity, and inner peace without porn.

This isn’t about fighting yourself or lowering your standards. It’s about learning how to respect your intense, perfectionistic mind and lead it wisely. When you do, your emotional intensity stops fueling cravings and starts fueling lasting recovery.

If you’ve ever wondered, “Why do I, as a high-achieving man, struggle with porn?”—this episode is for you.

👉 Listen now and discover how to transform your greatest struggles into your greatest strengths.

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Recommended Episodes: 

How Obsession with Perfection Nearly Ruined My Recovery

Make Friends with the Addict Part of Your Brain

The Inner War that Keeps You Addicted to Porn

How Being Self-Critical Fuels Porn Addiction

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Transcript

Jake Kastleman (00:08.206)
Have you ever wondered how you can possibly be a man who values achievement, growth, morals, values, and duty while also being a man who watches porn?

Jake Kastleman (00:23.533)
You be so deeply wanting to make a difference in the world, pursue dreams, help people provide for your family and be dependable and loyal. And yet another part of you wants nothing more than personal comfort, escape, and self-gratification through porn. You may ask yourself sometimes, am I really the man who sneaks around behind the scenes, acts out sexually, and then hides it from my wife?

Or am I the man who loves my wife and my kids, helps around the house, and serves in my community?

What if I told you that high achieving moral men with lofty standards of excellence are often those who become addicted to porn? And what if I told you that those who do not have these high standards, passion and a drive for achievement are not as susceptible to pornography addiction? Does that sound strange? It's because it is. It's paradoxical.

The emotional mind does not function according to logic.

Jake Kastleman (01:46.454)
Today, I'm going to reveal the psychological patterns and habits that get high achieving men addicted to porn. I'm also going to explain the neuroscience behind these patterns and practical mindset and lifestyle strategies to break them. Your high achieving mindset is not your enemy. Instead, it is how you respond to and relate to this mindset that gets you into trouble.

You simply need to know how to respect and understand your intense perfectionistic mind so you can experience long-lasting recovery and remain a high achiever. When you do this, your sobriety will emerge and you will find more time in your life for enjoyment and peace. All the while, your productivity doesn't have to suffer, but it will actually increase as well.

Before we get started, a reminder to follow this podcast, hit the notification bell and leave me a rating. It helps this show grow and gets it in front of those who need help overcoming porn. With that, we'll dive in.

Moving into today's episode, just want to say again, I have an event coming up soon. I'll start giving more details on it, but it's with my good friend, Taylor Chambers, with the good and the free. He's putting on an event called Porn Resilient. Me and I believe about 12 other experts who are all talking about and sharing our tools, our practical strategies to overcome pornography addiction. It's going to be a really exciting event. I'm really looking forward to it.

At that event, I am going to be talking about the RAIL method, which is a tool that I've been working on for the last year and a half. I'm launching an online course that is going to reveal this tool, the steps to it, lessons for it, exercises and guided practices to implement it into your life. It's going to actually guide you through cravings and help you utilize cravings as fuel for long lasting recovery. So very excited about that.

Jake Kastleman (03:57.141)
Look for more information on that soon. So I wanna start by talking about this paradox of the high achiever. You how can the same man who's disciplined, dependable and driven to provide also be the same man who sneaks off to watch porn when no one is looking? This is something that I asked myself all the time. I was very confused on my identity and who I was and the things that I was doing behind the scenes completely conflicted with what I believed to be true.

and who I believed myself to be. I had this great drive to be someone great and to do good in the world, but everything I was doing behind the scenes from drugs to alcohol to porn to having sex with different women and all the different things that I did, completely disagreed with who I felt I was. And that was really challenging as someone growing up in a conservative environment where I believed in goodness, I believed in God, but all the while I'm doing all these things, completely disagree with that.

And truly in my teenage years seeking the acceptance of other people, trying to belong in a way back when I was in drugs and alcohol, which was about 15 years ago. So these things are not as simple as they seem. On the surface, these two realities feel completely contradictory. A man who shows up at work, supports his family, contributes to his community and genuinely cares about his character shouldn't also be the man that's hiding a a habit that chips away at his integrity.

Yeah, this is the exact paradox countless men live with every single day and I work with these men all over the world. And here's the truth I want you to hear clearly. This paradox doesn't mean that you're weak willed. It doesn't mean that you're secretly a fraud or that all your good qualities are fake. In fact, it's usually the opposite is what I see constantly. The men who wrestle most intensely with porn addiction are often those who hold themselves to the highest standards. Men who deeply value growth, excellence, morality,

Service. That might sound strange, right? But it makes sense when you step back and you look at how the mind works. I've talked about this on other episodes. Your drive for achievement, your discipline, your success comes from the same emotional intensity that can also drive you to escape through porn. In other words, the energy that makes you a high achiever is the same energy that when unbalanced, makes you vulnerable to addiction. And when you understand how different parts of the mind work emotionally,

Jake Kastleman (06:19.605)
This act, I actually have a system called the self code model that outlines how this functions. It's really fascinating. And it starts to make emotion quite logical when you're able to understand the inner dynamics of the emotional mind. So if you ever wondered, which one am I? The strong dependable leader or the man who sneaks way to act out? The answer is you're both. Okay, not because you're double-minded or broken beyond repair, but

because you're an intense high capacity man who hasn't yet learned how to respect and harness that intensity. And once you understand that paradox, you can start to use those qualities as fuel for recovery instead of letting them drive you toward cravings. Again, I wanna stress that it's really a reflection of your goodness, your gifts, your talents, and the deep good you wanna do in the world that fills you with pressure, which then on the back end, there is a response from another part of you that

brings escape and a seeking for comfort. And so there's just an imbalance. Your goodness is getting twisted. The emotional intensity in the brain. I want to dig into that a little more and why this paradox exists. Not just in theory, but an actual wiring of your brain, the neuroscience of it. So high achieving men tend to run on a different kind of fuel. You push yourself harder. You set higher standards. You often feel emotions more intensely than others. I would say you're a high

a person that an HSP, highly sensitive person. That can sound so weak or negative to people. It's not weak or negative inherently. Inherently, can lead to weakness. It leads to pain, but it can also lead to massive strength. I deeply value that aspect of myself. I believe myself to be that way and I use it in my work every day. So it can be channeled into good things, but if it defaults, it's easy for it to become one of your greatest vices.

And this is what I see in honestly every man that I work with. That intensity is what drives you to achieve, to grow, to stand out. But it also creates a constant undercurrent of stress. So the problem is the brain is always looking for balance. When your emotional intensity spikes, whether from pressure at work, a sense of failure, relational conflict at home, or even just the weight of your own perfectionism,

Jake Kastleman (08:43.741)
your nervous system goes searching for relief and because porn provides a massive flood of dopamine, this feel-good chemical, it becomes the fastest, easiest way to regulate that intensity. So neuroscience shows that the reward system in the brain doesn't care whether the stimulus is healthy or destructive. Again, let me say that one more time. Neuroscience shows that the reward system in the brain doesn't care whether stimulus is healthy or destructive. It just wants

to bring you down from the emotional high or pull you up from an emotional low. Porn, that's important to understand by the way, when you're on an emotional high sometimes, it's really intense and a party tries to bring you down, sabotage you from the happiness you're experiencing because it feels too uncertain, too unfamiliar, too intense. And so party will try to actually bring you down. It's a fascinating and truly a horrible way that our mind can work. But when we understand it,

and we can see it, it doesn't have to own us anymore. It's an amazing thing. So porn hijacks that system, the dopaminergic system, right? Trains your brain to associate intensity with the need for release. So over time, their craving isn't just about sex. And honestly, porn is not about sex ever at all. It's very symbolic. If you listen to episode 110 that I did with Drew Bowa, we really, we talk at length about that.

I highly recommend the episode. It's about escaping the emotional pressure cooker of your own mind when you're a high achiever. It's about seeking comfort and soothing for a mind that can be a merciless task master. So when you feel that that inner tension, the frustration of not meeting your own impossible standards, the anxiety of trying to keep up, the guilt of not being enough, your brain fires off a signal. I need relief.

Now. And porn is the quickest, most reliable fix that it knows. This is why high-achieving men are particularly vulnerable. The very intensity that fuels your excellence also fuels your cravings. Your perfectionistic mind becomes both the driver of your success and the trigger of your addiction. You're not giving in because you lack discipline. You're giving in because your brain has been trained to use porn as an emotional regulator.

Jake Kastleman (11:10.921)
And because you are someone with an intense mind, it's difficult for you to regulate that emotion. Most of us, myself included, were not taught how to adequately do that. Our parents with their best of intentions just didn't know how to teach us to do that. Many of them didn't know how to do it themselves. So it's important to know though that what has been learned can be unlearned.

we can build new neural pathways. So when you learn how to channel your emotional intensity in healthy ways through practices that calm your nervous system, reframe your perfectionism and reconnect you to your deeper values, that same intensity becomes your greatest asset for recovery. So if emotional intensity is the engine, right,

The engine that drives your cravings, perfectionism is the fuel that keeps that engine running hot. I see perfectionism constantly. Again, it's in every man that I work with. High achieving men often live in what I call the perfectionism trap. On one hand, your perfectionism helps you excel. It pushes you to perform at a high level, to keep commitments and to hold yourself to standards most people wouldn't dream of attempting. But on the other hand,

That same perfectionism sets you up for constant inner conflict. And it's important to note that not one or the other is better. We need people of all sorts, sorts and types and forms. People who are more relaxed, more about comfort, more about ease, more about flowing with the moment, we need those people. They fulfill very different needs in the world than those of us who are more on the high achieving end. If all of us were like that, it would be a really stressful world.

It would be imbalanced. We need the balance of all parts, all people. Okay, and that's been driven home for me in my life, especially as of the last few years. I didn't used to value that. I do now. So here's how this plays out for you. Okay, all or nothing thinking. This is so common. This is a constant theme with those of us who struggle with addiction. Perfectionism whispers to you, if you can't do it perfectly, why bother doing it at all? So when you slip up,

Jake Kastleman (13:29.172)
even slightly, your brain labels the entire effort as a failure. my gosh, it's so frustrating that that's the way that our brains can work. That's the way my brain can work too. This all or nothing thinking happens to me every day. So in recovery, that means one small mistake can trigger the thought, well, I've already blown it, so I might as well go all in.

That thought has grown less intense and less frequent for me now. It's worth saying that this can decrease in intensity over time, but it may never leave you entirely. That's okay. You can learn how to relate to it and work with it. It's one of the main things that I work on my clients with when it comes to the emotional pillar of my program. And I have four different pillars. So the shame cycle, okay, that's another thing after you give in, right? You relapse perfectionism piles on guilt and self-loathing. See?

You're not who you say you are, you're a fraud, right? And this could happen with any number of behaviors, not just relapse with porn. That shame then fuels more cravings for escape, which fuels more acting out, which fuels more shame, and the cycle repeats and repeats and repeats. Same thing can happen with anger, right? We berate ourselves often unconsciously for getting angry. And this then leads to more anger because shame and fear and grief fuel anger. It's one of the things that, that one of the...

protective responses we can have psychologically to the fear, shame and grief. And then the double life, right? Because you hold yourself to such high standards, you can't bear the thought of anybody knowing about your struggles. No one can know about this. So you live in two worlds, the dependable man in public and the secret addict in private. And that split doesn't just drain your energy, it reinforces the belief that you're living a lie. And this further breaks you inside. It leads you to be being broken, right? And then you have to be mended.

through the powers of truth and the powers of love, right? Whether you believe in God or not, truth, love, those are two key principles of life to me. This is how we heal, right? In our external relationships and internally, I have to live according to truth and I have to show myself love, show others love, right? And I believe that comes through the power of God and actually being connected with higher power, right? But regardless of whether you're there or not, truth, love, these are things that we all believe in.

Jake Kastleman (15:48.056)
And if you don't, you should, okay? So what makes this trap so painful is that it twists your best qualities against you, right? This all or nothing thinking, the shame cycle, the double life, your drive for excellence, your deep sense of morality, your desire to be dependable, all of it gets weaponized by perfectionism. Instead of fueling growth, it fuels self-condemnation. And from a spiritual standpoint, this is the great lie of the dark side. We just said the great lie of Satan.

Alright, so evil would have you believe that you are defined by your addiction. would have you believe that you're defined by your mistakes. And God would have you believe that you're refined by your mistakes. Evil says you're defined by them. God says you're refined by them. Hey, my friend. If you've been struggling to quit porn, I'm here to tell you that you're not a bad person. You're not a bad husband. You're not a bad father. And you're not damaged beyond repair. I'm also here to tell you that you can overcome this addiction

for good. It's not about simply fighting cravings, staying busy, or attending support groups. You can't expect yourself to just be more disciplined and get over it. Here's a secret. Your addiction is a symptom, and by building a recovery mindset and lifestyle, you can actually get rid of your cravings for porn. And I'm helping men across the world, from the US to the Middle East, do that right now.

In my intensive one-on-one recovery coaching program, I'll teach you step-by-step methods to successfully process your thoughts and emotions so they don't evolve into cravings. These methods are evidence-based and founded in psychological approaches like parts work and CBT. We'll also work on lifestyle changes that utilize principles from neuroscience, religion, philosophy, and even nutrition. And I'll help you improve your relationships

by learning how to engage with your spouse from a place of acceptance, compassion, and courage. If you want to become part of a worldwide movement of men who are developing this recovery mindset and lifestyle, head to nomordesire.com and set up a free consultation. I'll see you in the program, my friend.

Jake Kastleman (18:01.262)
God would help you understand that it is your core goodness that drives you to addiction. He'd help you understand that dynamic. This core goodness is getting twisted into fear, shame, anger, and cravings. The lie is the fear, shame, anger, and cravings, but they can be a trailhead for going down under the surface to see, what do I really want? Who am I actually? And how are these reflections of what the needs I'm trying to meet, the fears that I hold, and the gifts?

that I have the good desires, in other words, that I have, okay? That can be really complex, but we can train ourselves, we can learn. That's what the rail method that I'll be talking about in the upcoming event is all about, is how to do that from a practical standpoint with a guided audio and written practice for you to do that. So all these things point to the truth, okay? You care and you want to do the right thing. That's the truth. You're simply getting stuck in a lie that you're not good enough.

And this is one of the main fuels of your addiction. You're getting stuck in the lie that you are your mistakes, that they define who you are. That's simply not true. Okay, perfectionism itself is not the enemy though. It's not the enemy. The problem isn't that you want to be excellent. That's good. The problem is how you relate to that desire. When you let perfectionism become your inner critic, it destroys you. But when you learn to respect that drive for what it is, that inner critic,

Right? As this is a driving of intensity and passion, you begin to redirect it toward healing. You begin to be able to relate to that inner voice differently. So breaking free from the perfectionism trap doesn't mean lowering your standards or settling for mediocrity. It means bringing compassion into the picture. It means realizing that excellence and failure are both part of growth. It means learning to listen to the perfectionistic part of you with understanding rather than shame.

So most men approach recovery with an adversarial attitude toward themselves. They think if I could just get rid of this part of me, the cravings, the perfectionism, the intensity that I'd finally be free. Can I just exile these parts of me? Ooh, not good. Doesn't work. Tried it. I promise you it doesn't work. Here's the reality. You can't win a war against yourself. When you fight your own intensity, when you fight parts of you, you only add more pressure, which fuels the same cycle that you're trying to break.

Jake Kastleman (20:24.612)
speeds the problem. It is the problem in so many ways, this inner war. Okay, instead the key is learning to respect your intense mind. Think of it this way, a high performance sports car is incredibly powerful, but if you don't know how to handle it, that power can spin you out of control. Your intensity works the same way. It isn't a weakness, it's horsepower. When you learn how to steer it, that same intensity becomes the fuel for recovery, growth and lasting peace.

This is the same thing that I've experienced in my own life. My perfectionism was one of the core drivers of my addictions. Now I know how to relate to it. Sometimes it gets overwhelming. I give in to shame. I experience fear. I experience anger. Experience all those things every day, okay? Pain and joy every day. We all experience it. I still experience all these things, but I understand how to get in touch with these feelings and I practice moving through them.

just like I teach my clients to do using tools that I live in my own life, the RAIL method, and also the self-code model, which is a fairly recent development in my program. So in these methods and models, I essentially teach that respecting your intense mind means shifting from judgment to curiosity instead of asking, why am I like this? With shame, you begin to ask, what is this part of me trying to accomplish? What does it need?

What are its good desires? Okay, you can actually learn to witness shame. You can open up space for shame. You can welcome shame in as odd as that sounds. It sounds so counterintuitive. It goes exactly against what parts of us say we should do. We welcome it in, we listen, we feel, we be with the shame, okay? We seek to understand it, we get curious about it. It's not something that's going to overwhelm or destroy you, even though you can feel like it is, but you can learn through it. It can be actually a great source of growth.

So you start to see that your perfectionism, your drive, and even your cravings, they all have a purpose. They're trying to protect you. They're trying to comfort you or to push you to be better. Cravings, right? That's about comfort. It's about escape. It's about fantasy. Those are often the things that it's about, right? It's a part you trying to bring those things so that you can feel happy in that part of you. Again, doesn't have truth. That part of you, it's not true, but that's what it's trying to do. Parts of you just don't...

Jake Kastleman (22:46.678)
always know how to do these things in healthy ways. When you approach your mind with curiosity and respect, something amazing happens. You stop feeling like you're at war with yourself and you start to experience integration, harmonizing of the parts of your mind. You begin to realize your perfectionism is really a longing for excellence and integrity. Your cravings are really a signal that you're feeling overwhelmed and need rest or connection. Your intensity is really untapped energy.

that when channeled can create breakthroughs in every area of life. This is the shift that allows recovery to stick. Sobriety isn't about suppressing or shaming the intense parts of you. It's about understanding them, respecting them, and then leading them with wisdom. And here's the paradox again. Once you stop fighting your intensity and start respecting it, you not only find freedom from porn, you also unlock a deeper level of productivity.

creativity and peace that you've never known. You don't have to give up your productivity. You can become more productive, but you can also bring in a more balance into your life. It's very paradoxical. It's amazing how it works. But to me, that's the truth of God. This has so much to do with aligning my life with love. And love at its core, I believe, is self-awareness and connection.

It's self-awareness, so it's stepping back to witness parts of me and understand them, and it's connection, in other words, coming to deeply connect with all parts of my mind, no matter how heinous or insane or crazy they may seem, to seek to understand them through a lens of truth and a lens of self-compassion, self-acceptance, love, and then I can then channel my agency into good things. But if I don't do that, if I hide parts of my mind or I try to get rid of them or I fight them or I try to bury them,

Now they rule me because they're going to show up in destructive ways. So some strategies for harnessing your intense perfectionistic mind. I want to get practical with you. How do you actually make, how do you actually take this intense perfectionistic energy and turn it into a strength instead of a stumbling block? Let's get practical. Number one, reframe perfectionism with compassion. Just like I was saying, instead of letting your inner critic dominate, start listening to your perfectionistic voice with curiosity. When it says,

Jake Kastleman (25:10.702)
You're not doing enough or you failed again? Pause and ask, how is this part of me trying to help me? What does it want from me? What standards is it trying to set? And what good is it reaching for? Nine times out of 10, that voice is just trying to keep you safe from shame or to push you towards excellence. It is trying to help you earn your self-worth.

That's not the ultimate truth. You already hold self-worth as a human being inherently. But so much of this game is about parts of us trying to earn self-worth. When you respond with compassion to that part, I see you. I appreciate your drive. Thank you for trying to help. And that may seem inauthentic in the beginning, but you practice that and eventually it can become authentic. Then you can develop a healthier relationship with these parts of your mind. They can turn from your enemy

to your ally. Number two, use structure to your advantage. High achievers thrive in structure. If you leave recovery to chance, your intense mind will fill that empty space with cravings. So build intentional rhythms, morning routines that center you, prayer, journaling, meditation, scheduled workouts, the channel energy, clear nighttime rituals so your mind can rest.

And you want to think of these things as anchors. They don't make you rigid. They make you free because they keep your intensity directed instead of scattered. If you don't direct it, it's like a fire. It's going to burn crap down or it's going to warm the people around you and create life. It's got to do one of the two. And if your wife or somebody else judges you and says, you're so rigid or why do need these routines? Why can't you just relax? Okay. She's probably got a point. You could be less rigid and you could be more relaxed. I myself could be as well.

But I also know that there are parts of me that need to plan, they need structure, they need systems. I need that in my life. I don't get that. I feel like a freaking insane person. I feel like a basket case. Okay, so I need that stuff in my life. Cause I have an intense mind. Okay, it comes with weaknesses and strengths. I tend to be less flexible than some people, less readily able to turn on a dime and change my plan. I've worked on getting better at that, but that inherently was it.

Jake Kastleman (27:29.231)
It was and is something that's very challenging for me. So you can work on that, but also understand you need that in your life. You need some structure. Number three, redefine success in recovery. Perfectionism tells you you're only successful if you never slip up again. But lasting recovery doesn't work that way. Real success is about consistency. It's about progress, not flawlessness. It's about using failures as learning experiences. I.e. what got me here? What's...

What's out of balance in my life? What do I need that I'm not getting for my physical, emotional, or spiritual health? What relationships do I need to strengthen? Who do I need to be there for? Who do I need to serve more? Or who do I need to reach out to for help? Number four, channel intensity into noble outlets. Porn hijacks your drive for pleasure and excitement. Recovery means rerouting that same drive into outlets that actually nourish you.

So physical intensity, running, lifting, breath work or cold exposure, you gotta do something that's intense. You gotta do something that brings you out of your comfort zone that feels maybe it's freaking painful. You gotta do something that hits that intensity. Creative intensity as well. It doesn't have to be some intense physical thing. It could be writing, it could be building, it can be music, it can be design. It's gotta be something that feeds you.

Relational intensity as well, investing deeply in your marriage, your kids, your friendships. The more you feed your brain with healthy, stimulating experiences, the less it will crave the counterfeit. By the way, I'm saying a lot of things here. You can find all of this in the blog. It's all written there so you can get a full list of how all this works. So head there, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Number five, practice rest without guilt. This one is huge.

Okay, high achievers often confuse rest with laziness. I get that. I'm the same way. I have that same voice in my head, but your nervous system can't heal if it never comes down from high alert. Schedule downtime on purpose. Okay, reading, walking, stillness, or just relaxing or silly conversations. Have fun, hang out. Okay, you need this too.

Jake Kastleman (29:49.209)
Teach your body and mind that peace isn't the enemy of productivity, but one of its foundations. You need stillness, otherwise you burn out and seek escape through addictive behavior. And that doesn't help productivity. And in fact, as I'm recording this episode right now, I realize I'm speaking very quickly. I would like to instead take times of silence, a little more time with this episode and bring some pauses here and there for you to be able to think

But to be frank, I am extremely busy and I'm trying to get this episode done in time. So I apologize for the rush, but I hope that you're still getting the messages. So when you put these strategies into practice, you stop wasting energy, fighting your own intensity. Instead, you're steering it, you're channeling it, and you're letting it fuel the very recovery you've been longing for. So your perfectionism and emotional intensity don't have to be the things that destroy you.

with the right perspective and habits, they can become the very things that set you free. Because it's part of your intensity, it's part of who you are. It's a good part of who you are. But this takes time, it comes in steps. So have compassion for yourself as you learn how to do this, which is kind of the point. So some benefits of harnessing this emotional intensity in porn recovery, when you stop fighting your intense perfectionistic mind and start harnessing it, something powerful begins to happen.

Your life starts to feel whole again. Instead of being split between the man who achieves and the man who secretly escapes, you become one integrated person. You no longer feel like you're living a double life. You stop hiding, you stop running from yourself, and that shift creates ripple effects in every part of your life. That may never be perfect, but man can it get better. In recovery, cravings start to lose their power because you've learned to listen to them as signals rather than enemies. You can pause, breathe, and respond with wisdom instead of compulsion.

Sobriety stops feeling like a fragile balancing act and starts feeling like a natural way of living. In relationships, you show up with more presence, honesty, and emotional availability. Your wife or partner can feel the difference. You're no longer split, distracted, or burdened with shame. And all these things turned, all these things you turn, so all these things, right, the being split, being distracted, being burdened with shame,

Jake Kastleman (32:16.623)
They turned you towards self-centeredness in the past, not because you were selfish inherently. And you may have been called that many times. I know how that is. But it wasn't because of that. It was because you held pain and you're trying to, part of you is trying to protect you from that pain. Now you're using emotional intensity instead to open up about your pain and to open up to her pain. And this fuels connection. We have to be able to connect with each other's pain.

And then in your productivity as well, again, ironically, when you respect your limits, you allow yourself to rest, your performance actually improves. You have more focus, more creativity, more resilience. You stop burning energy in the cycle of guilt and shame, and you start pouring that same energy into building the life you actually want. This is the payoff of this integration. It's not about silencing your intensity or lowering your standards. It's about leading yourself wisely, respecting the powerful mind that you've been given.

and channeling it into alignment with your deepest values. And when that happens, recovery stops being about what you're fighting against and starts being about what you're living for. And that's where real freedom begins. some next steps. There's one truth that I want you to take away from today's episode. It's this, your intense perfectionistic mind is not your enemy. It's your ally if you learn how to understand it, respect it and lead it. So here's what I want you to do. Grab a journal, go to a quiet place.

and write or do a voice recording on, or you could do a voice recording on your phone. Okay, I do that all the time. Speech or text? Answer the following questions. Number one, what emotions or pressures in my life most often drive me to cravings for escape?

Number two, when my perfectionistic voice criticizes me, how do I relate to it? Do I try to ignore it? Do I hate it? Do I identify with it and believe it to be true? How would things shift if I saw it simply as a part of me with good intentions that does not ultimately have the whole truth but means, well,

Jake Kastleman (34:19.909)
Number three, what healthy outlets could I begin using to channel my emotional intensity? Physically, creatively, relationally, spiritually. And then number four, if I respected my intense mind as a gift instead of a curse, how would I begin leading myself differently? I'm probably gonna split that into five questions. I think that second question is really long and I think it could be two. So I'll probably do that in the blog. So go to the blog to grab these questions.

and that's a perfect place to reference it. Plus you get on my site, we get more traffic to the site that helps more men find this stuff so that they can be helped in their recovery as well, right? It's all about that algorithm. So speaking of algorithm, if today's episode helped you follow this podcast, share it with a brother or a friend who needs it and leave me a rating, it helps get this message out to more men who are silently carrying the same paradox that you've been carrying.

I don't want you to just think about these things. I want you to take time to write about them. Clarity comes through reflection and that reflection must be emotional, not just mental. So spend time with your feelings. Get out of your head, get into your heart. Your intensity is not your downfall, it's your power. Lead it well and it will lead you to freedom. God bless and much love, my friend.

Jake Kastleman (35:43.333)
Thanks for listening to No More Desire. It's a genuine blessing for me to do the work that I do and I wouldn't be able to do it without you, my listeners, so thank you. If you've enjoyed today's episode, do me a favor. Follow this podcast, hit the notification bell and shoot me a rating. The more people who do this, the more men this podcast will reach. So take a few minutes of your time and hit those buttons. If you want to take your sobriety to the next level, check out my free workshop, The Eight Keys to Lose Your Desire for Porn.

or my free ebook, The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings. These are specialized pieces of content that will give you practical exercises and applied solutions to overcome porn addiction. And you can find them at nomordesire.com.

As a listener of the No More Desire podcast, are part of a worldwide movement of men who are breaking free of porn to live more impactful, meaningful, and selfless lives. So keep learning, keep growing, and keep building that recovery mindset and lifestyle. God bless.

Jake Kastleman (36:59.833)
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.