128: The Beliefs You Must Let Go of Before You Can Quit Porn | Why Painful Emotions and Unconscious Beliefs Are the Real Trailheads to Sobriety

Is it possible to quit porn by changing your beliefs?

Can you overcome porn addiction—not through willpower or positive thinking—but by going deeper into the painful emotions and unconscious beliefs that actually drive the habit?

In this episode, I challenge the popular idea that you can “just believe differently” or manifest your way out of porn addiction. While mindset does matter, most advice about belief change misses a crucial step—and that missing step is the reason so many men keep relapsing despite doing “everything right.”

Porn addiction is not just a behavior problem.
 It’s not even just a habit problem.

At its core, porn addiction is driven by unconscious beliefs, emotional conditioning, and nervous system patterns that were formed long before porn ever entered the picture.

In this episode, I walk you through a real-life case study of a client (we’ll call him Joseph) who struggled with porn addiction for nearly 20 years—and is now over three months sober for the first time since he was a child. What changed wasn’t his willpower. It wasn’t positive affirmations. It was the way he learned to work with painful emotions, triggers, and deeply rooted beliefs like shame, defectiveness, fear, and unworthiness.

I also break down the step-by-step belief-release process Joseph used—drawing from Internal Family Systems (IFS), parts work, emotional mindfulness, somatic psychology, and nervous system regulation—to release old beliefs and allow new, healthier beliefs to take root naturally.

We’ll explore the psychology and neuroscience behind why this approach works, including:

• Implicit (unconscious) beliefs and emotional memory
• Why beliefs live in the body, not just the intellect
• Memory reconsolidation and why old beliefs must be activated before they can change
• Prediction error and how self-efficacy is built through lived experience
• Why acceptance—not force—is the key to lasting porn addiction recovery

This episode is for you if:

• You’re trying to quit porn but keep relapsing
• You feel trapped by shame, fear, or emotional overwhelm
• You’ve done therapy, programs, or accountability—but something still feels missing
• You want a deeper, more compassionate, neuroscience-backed approach to recovery

This is not a quick fix. It’s not a magic wand.
 But it is a grounded, psychological and neurological path toward real freedom—one that integrates emotional healing, nervous system regulation, and a healthier relationship with yourself.

If you’re ready to stop fighting your mind and start healing it, this episode will change the way you understand recovery.

Link to Blog Article for this episode

If you’re looking for deeper support and real connection in recovery, I’m opening the No More Desire Brotherhood on January 15th. The pre-launch is open right now, and when you join you’ll get free lifetime access to my 4 Pillars of Recovery mini-course, plus exclusive pre-launch bonuses. You can learn more and join here: https://www.nomoredesire.com/prelaunch

Grab my Free eBook and Free Workshop for more strategies to overcome porn addiction, rewire your brain, and rebuild your life.

Transcript

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 (00:18.351)
Hey, brothers, I have an announcement I'm genuinely excited about, and I want to take a minute right now to tell you all about it so you can be involved. On January 15th, 2026, I'm officially opening doors to the No More Desire Brotherhood. This is a free online community that has been in the works for a long time, and launch day is finally here. The No More Desire Brotherhood is a space for men who are serious about overcoming porn by building a recovery mindset,

and a recovery lifestyle together. Inside, you'll find support, accountability, and real connection. You'll take part in exclusive conversations, access content I don't share anywhere else, and engage in monthly challenges designed to help you set goals, share wins, and keep moving forward with brothers just like you. My entire course library will also live in this space for those who want to take the next step and invest further in their recovery.

This community isn't just about quitting porn. It's about living with meaning, emotional stability, and daily habits that bless you and the people that you love. I created this community to be what I needed during my years of porn addiction. And I'm personally very excited to connect on a deeper level with all of you, thousands of men who listen to this show, most of whom I haven't met yet. I want to know each of you and bring depth to this movement like never before. And if you've

ever wished you had other men walking this path with you, men who get it, who won't judge you, and who are committed to this growth, this is your place. The community officially launches January 15th, but starting right now, I'm opening a pre-launch group. When you join, you will become an exclusive pre-launch member, helping found the culture of this brotherhood that will live on for years to come. As a special bonus, you will get free lifetime access to a course

I've created called the Four Pillars of Recovery. This is a foundational curriculum I've taught hundreds of times and refined over many years. It underlies everything that I do at No More Desire and it's transformed men's lives across the world. I will release this as a paid course in the near future, but when you join the pre-launch, you'll get it for free. Not only that, you'll gain access to five exclusive pre-launch bonuses with this online course that you cannot get anywhere else.

Jake Kastleman (02:43.488)
This opportunity will disappear January 14th at midnight, so come join us before that. To sign up, go to nomordesire.com slash pre-launch or hit the link in the show notes. Aside from the bonuses and the pre-launch exclusives, I'm just so excited to meet you. So come be a part of it all and I'll see you in there, my friend.

Jake Kastleman (03:10.03)
Is it possible to quit porn through the power of belief? Can you overcome this painful habit simply by shifting how you see yourself and what you believe is possible? Are all of the inspirational speakers who say, just believe in yourself, correct? And do you simply lack the confidence to get sober? There are a lot of messages out there about the law of attraction manifesting in the power of a positive attitude.

What if I told you that these approaches miss the mark? That they lack something fundamental for change? That they have a piece of truth, but are missing a crucial step that gets in the way of authentic progression? These messages tell you to focus on the positive. Just believe in yourself, focus on what you want, envision your desired future. But what if I told you that the answer to changing an unwanted habit, like porn use,

and having the joyful life that you want is not found in focusing on the positive, but by giving your full attention, undivided attention, to the negative first. Painful emotions and triggers are not curses, but blessings, if they are utilized properly. They are trail heads for self-discovery and growth, but only if I know how to use them.

effectively. And in today's episode, I am going to teach you to do exactly that using a real life example of a client who suffered a 20 year porn addiction and is now three months sober for the first time since he was 10 years old. Addiction stems from deeply entrenched habits. These habits stem from repeated behaviors.

Repeated behaviors stem from consistent emotions and many of our emotional responses emerge from deeper unconscious beliefs, which we developed in childhood and that continue throughout our lives. Unconscious beliefs do not run according to our agency or power of choice. They run separate from it. They can take us over. They influence every event in our lives. But these old, unwanted beliefs can be released layer by layer.

Jake Kastleman (05:33.675)
until eventually there is an empty space where a new belief can be inserted.

Jake Kastleman (05:48.268)
So a quick update right before we dive into the message of this episode about the power of belief. I want to reiterate, today is the last day, I guess it would, yes, today is the last day to join the pre-launch of the online community, the No More Desire Brotherhood. Today's the last day to get exclusive bonuses with the Four Pillars of Recovery online course.

Be sure to go on to nomordesire.com slash pre-launch to get that. So here's the paradox. We cannot form a new positive belief that catches and endures without first moving through the old negative belief, coming to understand and accept and find forgiveness to give away, to let go.

We cannot do that without creating a space in the mind. When we do this, when we actually focus on the negative, the old negative belief first and give that open room to express inside of us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, then it creates space in the mind. If there is no empty space, there is no room for a new belief. My client that I'm going to be talking about today and sharing his approach,

that took him from 20 years of porn addiction to over three months of sobriety and continuing forward. I'm going to share how he did this. So my client held a belief system that supported his porn addiction. He didn't want this to be the case, but the emotional mind does not function according to logical rules. So to change this, he did not convince himself that he no longer needed porn.

he did not take a logical approach to an emotional problem. Instead, he moved through the layers of his emotional mind to uproot the old belief system and insert a new one. So today I'm going to teach you how to do the same thing that he did step by step. And I'm going to explain how and why it works from a psychological and neurological perspective. So before we dive into that, just a reminder to follow the podcast, hit the notification button and shoot me a rating.

Jake Kastleman (08:10.549)
for this episode, helps people find this podcast as well. So my client, we're gonna call him Joseph. He was addicted to porn for close to two decades. He viewed nearly every day since he was 10 years old. He went through multiple addiction programs, therapies, rehab facilities. He is the most, what shall we say, awarded client that I worked with as far as the number of things that he had tried.

There's only one other client that might give him a test for his accomplishments in as far as that goes. He spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to get rid of porn addiction, but nothing he did seemed to break through until now. Joseph has been sober for over three months now. He's no longer afraid of his addiction.

He feels confident that if he did relapse, he'd know exactly what to do to get back on the horse. And this all came about by digging deep into his unconscious belief system and moving through those burdens that he's carried his whole life that have kept him stuck. Beneath his pornography addiction, he found a gambit of harsh self-defeating beliefs that have been running his life for a very long time. Some of these beliefs were specific.

to his addiction and others centered on fear, on shame, feelings of unworthiness, drove his need for the escape and the soothing of porn. These burdened beliefs he's carried are not exclusive to him, by the way. They're the same ones that I carried, some of which I still carry to varying degrees and the same that all of my clients carry. Beliefs like, I'll never get sober. I can't endure intense pain without going to porn.

I could never leave porn behind. I rely on it. And then beliefs like, I'm not good enough. I'm defective. I have to fix myself. If I can't get sober, then I'll never be worthy as a person. When I struggle, it means I'm a failure. My body is a problem. It's a big one. It works against me. I hate my body. And this is consistent, pretty much across the board in a lot of cases. I have to be better. I'm falling behind. That's a big one too.

Jake Kastleman (10:35.942)
I suck at focusing and I can't maintain attention long. That comes with the addiction, but it also starts before the addiction. Why don't women like me? I'll never find a good girl. Again, that comes with the addiction, but happens before the addiction. And all of these are like a cycle. These beliefs are reinforced by what pornography does to the dopaminergic system, the nervous system, what it does to our brains, our psychology, our emotions. But these beliefs also start previous to the addiction and lead to the need for it.

So also beliefs like I'm a loser, people would reject me if only they knew the true me. That's the lie that we carry inside. And then God doesn't care about me. He's not here when I need him. I'm alone and I have to do this on my own. These burdens are either identical or similar to those of many men. Perhaps you can relate to them. So how do we change beliefs that are so painful and so deep? There is a process.

This is the amazing thing. Speaking to this client, it truly blew my mind. I've done this work with many people. I know how to do it. But the way he described it and some of the nuances he used are really meaningful. And the massive progress he experienced in such a short period of time was phenomenal. So I'm gonna teach you this process today. So it doesn't look the same for everyone, by the way, but there are key principles that we can follow. And a structure,

that I'm gonna give you that can help. So what I'm going to share with you as a heads up may sound strange to many of you. It may challenge many assumptions that you have about how the mind works or how to overcome problems. It may even sound a little woo woo. I get that. I'm not here to convince you of facts. I will share many things about the neurology and psychology of this and why it works after I share his process. But.

I'm just here to share what my client shared with me, which is according to many of the same principles that I use to get sober and practices very similar to those that I use professionally to help men in my program to leave their porn addiction behind. Joseph used principles of IFS, the rail method, which I teach and I have an online course in my community for that, emotional mindfulness, somatic psychology and other teachings to process through his internal beliefs.

Jake Kastleman (13:02.683)
and step out of his porn addiction. So before we begin, it's worth saying that this is not a one and done thing. I'm not giving you a magic wand. Joseph did the work. He suffered. He went through an arduous process and he continues to use the practices that I will describe every day. Not to the extent that he used them for a while, by the way, because he went through a very in-depth, elongated process.

but he still uses these every day. So this is a psychological process, a neurological approach to healing the mind. Joseph is not the only one doing it. People all over the world are doing this in various forms. It requires pain, work, trial, error, and layer by layer discovery. So again, it's not a magic wand. I'm not about to tell you something here. It's gonna fix all your problems, but I am gonna tell you something that if you implement it, if you do it, I would have a hard time saying you're not gonna experience some pretty wonderful.

blessings, benefits. That doesn't mean now I'm free from porn forever, but it does mean you can progress emotionally and porn can have less of a hold on you. And if you work with a professional on this, you could get sober or you may do it on your own. That is totally possible as well. That's your path. Choose what's going to work best for you. So after sharing what Joseph did, I'll explain the rationale behind the method, the psychological and neurological reasons why it works.

All that said, to me, this process is nothing short of sacred. This is spiritual. This is something that I debated on sharing, but I feel that it is very, powerful. And so I needed to share it. So it shouldn't be overlooked. And as I share this, please understand that if you have a history of abuse or trauma,

or other issues or this feels unsafe for you, do it with a professional, a therapist, a coach, someone who can walk you through this process. Do not do it on your own if you do not feel safe doing so. So.

Jake Kastleman (15:14.876)
Number one, Joseph started with a desired belief statement. So he would consciously speak, and he did this over weeks of time, every night. So he would consciously speak something like, I can sit in any uneasiness without going to porn. God within me, I'm powerful. Now for a lot of us, again, this can sound woo woo, the God within me phrase. I'm not saying you have to say that, but the phrase God within me is one that he learned from Joseph Murphy.

author of The Power of the Subconscious Mind, which book he derived multiple steps of the following process from, and he combined them with parts work in IFS that I taught him that he's learned from other professionals. I've never read that book myself, by the way. I can't speak to its validity, but he did speak very highly of it. He's also spoke very highly of Joe Dispenza's work as well in his process. So, and I haven't read that Joe Dispenza's work either, but I've heard really good things. So.

They're on my list. This phrase, God within me, is reminiscent for me of the powerful belief of our God image. We are filled with God's truth, God's love. He gifted each of us the ability to heal and overcome through His power that is vested within us. I believe that because I've seen it. Through this power, we can be made whole, through the power of God. Or if you're Christian, through the power of Christ. And for those who are agnostic or non-religious, that is okay. You can modify this how you like,

We all carry a power within us. I hope you believe in the soul at least, consciousness, because without that belief, there's a lot that I would say you could not do, to be honest. So next, he watched for internal protest. When he said the new belief that I spoke of, right, I can sit with any uneasiness without going to porn, he noticed parts of his psyche immediately pushed back.

Hell no, we don't believe that. He treated that resistance as evidence of an underlying belief rather than a failure to be identified with. Then he explicitly invited the resisting parts of his mind forward. I teach all of my clients to do this with every painful emotion, something I practice in my daily life and it's very counterintuitive, it is paradoxical and it's completely life-changing. Instead of seeing internal resistance or disbelief, fear,

Jake Kastleman (17:42.535)
shame, anxiety, anger, cravings as a threat or something to suppress, we invite it in. And when I do that, I'm actually pulling back with self-awareness. And I would say I'm stepping into my God image. I'm stepping into the light of God within. I'm stepping into self-leadership as it is referred to in IFS, self with a capital S, this wise presence that is within us, our consciousness.

our light of truth and love, if you will. stepped back, he, instead of suppressing or indulging in, he invites it in, right? Okay, here's a part, I invite this part in. Joseph gave this part of his psyche permission. If there's anything that needs to be felt or said, it can come. I invite it, I welcome it. Just as Christ welcomed and invited sinners, right? He said, come in.

dine with me, I will sit down with you, I will listen to you, will befriend you. Okay, that's what we're doing with our emotions. He listened to the beliefs, the resistance, the insane beliefs, he gave them space to express becoming a compassionate witness to them and seeking to understand and deeply feel them. Now, we have a hard time understanding this. Again, if we don't believe in consciousness or a soul, again, if we do not have that underlying belief, I would say it is nearly impossible to do this.

Because you have to believe that my consciousness is housed inside the body and mind, the body and brain, the nervous system, right? Which is a, it's a brain complex that runs throughout my whole body. And when I do parts work or IFS, I do internal work, I practice self-awareness, I speak to the body, to the mind. This can sound weird to a lot of us. I completely understand that. There's this...

disbelief in so many of us because of how our current modern Western culture teaches about the body and the brain. We believe we are the body and the brain, but we can actually, if we believe we're consciousness, right, we're a child of God or we are a soul or we are Atman, right? If you will, we carry this presence in us. We can speak with the body and the mind and we can communicate back and forth with it.

Jake Kastleman (20:00.377)
I believe that is potentially what people are doing when they do IFS work and people all over the world are doing this. The Buddhist taught it since forever. Buddhism has taught it since forever. This is self-awareness. And then it is also what comes to the power of prayer in confession, stepping back and being aware of what I'm feeling and confessing it to God, bringing it forward so that I can find forgiveness. So that I can actually, I can deeply understand myself, find compassion for myself and forgive, release it, let it go.

through that power of self-awareness, right? So he maintained the posture, I allow it. Okay, he neither indulged nor suppressed, no arguing with the part of his mind, no moralizing, no pushing it away, no spiraling into it, just being with it, welcoming it. He also didn't hold an agenda. This will lead to healing, right? If we walk in with a goal, paradoxically, it screws it up every time. Instead,

He made self-understanding and presence with his body and mind the goal. He was simply there to understand a little more about himself, what he goes through. That's it. Okay, no goal, no agenda. Hard to let that go. If you feel that agenda, just be aware of that as well. Just as they would teach in Buddhism or Daoism, other Eastern philosophies. So again, bringing together the Eastern and Western together is one. So he tracked emotion in the body. Many of us have been taught that emotion resides in the brain. That's since been...

proven false. It does not reside just in the brain. It resides throughout the entire nervous system, the entire body. This has become evident with published works such as The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, which has sold over 300, 3 million copies. Joseph noticed sensations in the body as parts of his psyche surfaced. He would notice a knot in the neck. He noticed clenching. He noticed shoulder blade pain. He noticed shifting pain around the body.

He actually got deeply in depth with me on what that looked like. A really incredible experience that he had when it comes to somatic psychology, how his emotions were trapped in different parts of his body and how he released them. Fascinating story. I don't go into as much depth as he shared with me here, but it was beautiful. was nothing short of sacred to me. For a lot of people, I think it would be really shocking to them, the process that he described, but it...

Jake Kastleman (22:25.679)
To me, it was beautiful. he used these sensations in his body as signals that deeper material was coming online in his nervous system. And rather than running or resisting them, he welcomed the feelings. He sat down with them, he listened to them and opened up with curiosity and compassion. And he did many movements in his body, which is what he just felt like he needed to do at the time. That's a very interpretive kind of fluid process that for a lot of us feels really odd.

but he decided to go with it. And so he went through different movements and in order to release emotion. Again, not the only one, lots of people have done this. So next, he let the unconscious part of him speak uncensored. Uncensored, this is a big deal. This is difficult for a lot of us, especially if we have a religious or highly conservative background, myself included. I get it, but I have since started practicing this.

Joseph allowed raw anger and grief to surface. often think it's bad. We shouldn't feel those things. And that actually keeps us from healing. So he expressed this and including expressing it toward God, he would actually say the words and I won't say it explicitly here, but F you God, where were you? Right? Cause he had a lot of experiences in his life where he just felt this bitterness towards God. he allowed himself to express that, not seeing it as truth.

or reality, but this is what is held inside the body. he brought it forth. He recognized, you know, this isn't me speaking. This isn't the real truth. It's just, it's a part of my mind, body complex. It's part of the nervous system. And so it's expressing itself. Again, a really different way to think about it, but it had to be understood. So it needs to be confessed. This is the power of confession that's described in Western religion, right? We actually confess, we bring it forth.

we speak it as it really is. Again, for a lot of us, and by the way, that doesn't go for human relationships. Like don't do that with your wife, right? But doing it with God, someone who is all knowing and open and unconditionally loving, he can take that. It's okay, right? He lives, resides within you. So you confess it to yourself. You're confessing it to that presence that's throughout all things. You're confessing it. So again,

Jake Kastleman (24:50.799)
For a lot of us, this sounds crazy or even self-indulgent. know, so what? What was I saying here? So instead, okay, okay, here's the thing I wanted to say. As I say this, I realized there's a lot of us that can think, you know, okay, I'm speaking from my mind body. He understood it was a part of his mind speaking the truth that it carried. A lot of us can really indulge in this and say, so what, nothing I do is my fault.

It's not that, it's not that you aren't your, when I say you're not your mind and your body, instead it's the difference between the belief, I am my body slash brain and I am a steward over my body slash brain. So I am trying to build, I am trying to bring forth these things, confess these things so that I can gain understanding. That does not negate my agency or my ability of choice, but I'm a steward over them. I am not them, I am a steward.

over them, very different, very different approach. So effectively, what I teach my clients to do is I'm trying to build trust with and come to understand my mind and these unconscious parts. I am not my thoughts and emotions. Instead, I am the consciousness that can step back, see them and seek to harmonize them through self-awareness and self-compassion. This approach aligns with Eastern philosophies of Buddhism and Taoism. And it also aligns with Christianity by taking a Christ-like approach to every thought and emotion. Instead of believing painful emotions or thoughts,

to be bad, I bring love and understanding to them by giving them space to be heard, befriending them and helping them choose a better path. Next, my client allowed memories and images to rise and move through them. If you do this and you allow to come forward what needs to come forward, memories will come to you and you may instantly turn them away and be like, yeah, I don't even need to think about that. That was when I was like seven years old. They're coming forward for a reason often for a lot of people.

And so you want to actually allow them forward. So this step did not come quickly, by the way. Joseph would often remain in this focus state for 90 minutes to two hours. You don't have to do that. I did this 15 minutes a day. As far as the rail method, IFS parts work, are the things that I teach my clients to do. It can be a very simple daily practice that can be very powerful. But the amount of time he spent, he had a lot of pain to work through and he's now 90 days sober. So the work speaks for itself.

Jake Kastleman (27:19.255)
A lot can come up in the mind when we give it this much silence, right? So as he listened to parts of him that carried beliefs and painful emotions, visions of earlier pain appeared, dark times he experienced, difficult emotions, anger he carried, grudges towards God he held and other people, towards himself. He stayed with the memories while maintaining permission and allowing them to come forward. He remained open and moved through them as long as they needed.

By the way, those grudges towards God, it's actually worth stating. When we get into parts work and internal family systems work, we start to perceive ourselves as little sub-personalities that have relationships with each other. Super weird to a lot of us, but you start experiencing and you see it is totally real. It is really, really fascinating and a beautiful way to work with the mind that's really effective for a lot of people.

We see that parts of our nervous system, our brain, our body, mind complex actually hold grudges towards us. Like our consciousness, our higher self that's inside, they lose trust for us because we make so many poor decisions in our lives, especially when we have addiction and they actually hold grudges towards that presence, our consciousness. So when I hold a grudge towards God, one way of looking at it, and this may seem

Anyway, I'll just say it. One way of looking at it is a part of my mind that is actually holding a grudge towards me, towards my higher self, my higher consciousness. And so I actually need to rebuild trust with that part. Really fascinating. I've seen it a lot. There's an actual self-forgiveness process we need to go through. We need to apologize to our body, our mind. I've done this a lot, countless times, and it sounds

odd to a lot of people, but when you start practicing it, you actually understand the self relationship you have and how through addiction you've been betraying your body and mind for so long, it becomes very angry towards you, very hurt, very betrayed. And so you're rebuilding self-trust, a phenomenal way again to perceive the mind and to work with the mind, really, really healing.

Jake Kastleman (29:32.033)
He repeated this process nightly for three, for weeks. Again, he did this every night for about three weeks. It was not always so intense, but it followed the same basic framework. Through repetition, themes became clearer and more consistent for him. He came to deeply understand all of the most prominent painful beliefs that he carried inside, getting to know them intimately, recording them and understanding every detail. I don't actually know that he recorded them. That's more so my advice. He may have, he may have not.

He noticed recurring theme beliefs and stayed with them. Again, this work is not one and done. And often we must rehash the same beliefs and patterns again and again, feeling our way through them. Cause it's not about figuring them out so much as it is giving them time to fully feel. We have to fully feel through them until they can finally release. We may have to rehash the same thing over and over. I've done that countless times myself until eventually it releases.

takes time and it may release 10%, 20%, 50%, 75%. Maybe it doesn't release entirely or maybe it does eventually. I've also had that experience. So one of Joseph's most prominent beliefs was I'm defective, which he had to hear, feel and move through in various memories and from different angles again and again and again and again. It took time. It was deeply painful and he had to be willing to feel that pain with, with,

his body-mind complex. This is self-empathy at its finest, something that many of us are not taught how to do, but which people, especially in Eastern cultures, have practiced for a long time. Many of us have not been taught this because our view of the body-brain is so misaligned with something like this. We are taught that we are our body and brain, so how could we possibly feel with our body and brain? But,

If we turn this belief on its head and instead believe again that we are consciousness or spirit that is housed inside the body, then we realize we can communicate with our brain and body. So next, he moved through the painful belief before reaching for the new belief. This is one of Joseph's key insights, move through the painful beliefs first, then I can feel the new belief come in.

Jake Kastleman (31:55.681)
This is where things like manifesting or the law of attraction fall so tragically short. They start by instructing us to focus on the new desired belief. But if we do not take the time to move through the old unwanted belief, we are simply attempting to stack a new belief on top of the old beliefs. Again, for a lot of us, part of us is gonna reject this. Why would I need to go through the old beliefs? I'll just develop new ones. I'm telling you, it doesn't work and it may work.

Okay, but the old belief is still there. We may block it for a while, but it's still running our life or sabotaging us in ways that we may not be conscious of at all, all along the way. We have to fight hard to keep it down. This is what a lot of us do. And that is an exhausting unnecessary war. I did that for years. I believed in the law of attraction deeply and it made my life a place of suffering. I instead converted to this, so much better, so much better. Okay.

We fully feel all painful and joyful emotion, fully. That is a better way to live. That is a way of surrender. It's a way of presence. It's a way of self love and it enables love towards those around us. So he installed new beliefs after the system cleared space. New beliefs that he embodied included, I can sit with uneasiness without porn. That was one of the biggest things he faced was the belief I can't experience discomfort without going to porn.

you know, at a certain point, right? When something has become hard or painful enough. I am loved either way, whether I'm sober or not. I can handle anything that needs to happen and God is within me and there is power within me. The install of these wasn't forced. It seemed to arrive, is what he told me, once the old belief had been metabolized.

And he kept practicing the cycle until his conscious mind could genuinely say, we trust you now. So fascinating. It is significant to note that Joseph's final beliefs were not, I'm free from porn forever, or I no longer need porn. are not, those are not surrendering beliefs. Those are not beliefs of presence. Instead, it was being at peace with who he is.

Jake Kastleman (34:19.049)
regardless of whether porn is a part of his life or not. This is paradoxical, but from a place of worthiness, peace, and freedom from fear, the need for porn fades. This is Joseph's new belief system. More and more, Joseph no longer wants porn because he no longer feels the same fear, shame, and charged emotion that once surrounded him.

he is less and less attached to it because there are not so many painful emotions embedded into it. We become attached to painful emotions I talked about in a previous episode the same way we do pleasurable ones. Because our brain processes these in the same regions of the brain, we can build relationships with and be attracted to painful emotions.

just like we can, pleasurable ones. If you wanna know more about that, episode 126, grieving your porn addiction, I highly recommend it. It's been very, very powerful for a few clients I've spoken to. had a client who had a deeply sacred experience following that process. I do recommend it. A summary of this process in one sentence, kind of. Speak a desired belief, notice resistance,

invite the resisting part, allow the body, emotion, memory to fully express without suppression, stay anchored in self and God. Repeat until the old belief loses charge, then the new belief becomes believable.

Really cool process, guys. Not something to be overlooked or trivialized. Let's talk about why this approach works, the psychology and neuroscience of rewriting unconscious belief.

Jake Kastleman (36:20.385)
Hey, so why old beliefs live in the body, not the intellect? A core finding in neuroscience is that many of our most powerful beliefs are implicit, not explicit. Implicit beliefs are learned early in life. They are stored as emotional and bodily patterns, not words. They live largely outside conscious awareness. These belief patterns are tied to the amygdala. Threat and emotional meaning is housed there.

the Insula, so interoception. I talked about that in a previous episode, I believe it was 1.21, how incredibly powerful the power of interoception is and how we need to do embodiment practices like breath work or exercise without any kind of music or audio books, know, being in the body, sitting and doing nothing, like really practicing presence, mindfulness. It's been taught forever.

but this is very crucial for sobriety. Interoception is our ability to sense what we're actually feeling in the body, both emotion and physical sensation. It's crucial because porn addiction actually damages interoception deeply. It traumatizes the body. So subcortical memory systems as well.

This is where these belief patterns are held. So procedural slash emotional memory. This is why I can know I'm safe, but still feel unsafe. I can logically believe porn is destructive yet still crave it. This is the paradox that many people who haven't been addicted to porn don't understand. And when people who are addicted to porn, can cause them so much shame. But once they understand, this is the psychology. This is the neurology.

This is not you being a horrible person. This is just how the body and mind operate. So we have to actually insert new beliefs and convert the way we feel, not just what we know, but what we feel. This distinction is foundational in trauma research and attachment theory. Such as Bessel van der Kolk, who I talked about, Body Keeps the Score, or Alan Shore. Beliefs aren't created by thinking.

Jake Kastleman (38:38.635)
They're created by experience. You cannot mentally reason a belief out of a system that did not mentally reason it into existence. Again, it's not logical, it's emotional. That explains why the concept believe differently when people tell you that. That's why it fails.

So I wanna add something, I'm gonna go through a lot more points here, many more points of why it works this way. Because it's fascinating and you should know why so that you can understand how significant this really is. But one of the things Joseph did was actually, he sometimes did these exercises when he was drifting, when he was half awake, something he learned through the power of the subconscious mind by Joseph Murphy, I that was the book.

This was part of his approach. So that matters because the brain becomes less dominated by the prefrontal cortex. The manager in this state, it goes to subcortical emotional memory. It becomes more accessible. That subcortical emotional memory becomes more accessible and defenses. Emotional defenses, mental defenses we have soften. So this is consistent with research on state dependent memory, hypnotherapy, EMDR.

and somatic therapy practices. In simpler terms, the deeper belief system only becomes available when the thinking mind relaxes. Effort and control block the process. Effort and control block the process. That is so paradoxical, guys. But this is how our brain and body are set up.

God's wisdom is not man's wisdom, I would say. And that goes straight into Buddhism as well, which I know they don't talk about God, but the things that Christ taught were paradoxical. Just as mindfulness is paradoxical, we invite what is painful and that then decreases the pain. We invite the suffering, decreases the suffering. So if I want access to the unconscious mind, I must do so from a state of acceptance and openness.

Jake Kastleman (40:47.765)
Otherwise I'm blocking the path to healing. So I would say we can do similar things by not by being half awake, because that sounds kind of hard to me, but by practicing meditation and mindfulness as well as contemplative prayer, journaling. This can kind of bring us more into the unconscious mind. That said, Joseph's half conscious approach is fascinating and I should probably experiment with it more myself. I have had a few experiments

experiences, but not a ton. one of the most, by the way, that is also what we do in dreams. Our mind is more malleable in dreams. And that's what EMDR therapy does, is it actually activates like the same rapid eye movement processes that dreams do. And our brain is much more impressionable in that state. So one of the most important discoveries in modern neuroscience is memory.

Re-consolidation. Why the belief had to be activated? We're talking about that here. Why did the negative belief, the painful belief have to be activated before it could change? Very simply, when an old emotional memory or belief is reactivated, it becomes temporarily unstable. During this window, it can be updated or released. But if it is not activated, it stays locked and new beliefs bounce off.

Fascinating and strange, isn't it? This explains why when Joseph stated a new desired belief, parts of his psyche immediately protested. That protest was actually the gateway. In other words, his trigger was a trailhead, a signal that could lead him down a path to transform that belief if he followed it. The nervous system brought the old belief online. It brought it forward.

As a signal to him, hey, we don't believe this. Can you please help us out? Is one way of looking at that. The body is there to help, not work against you. Trying to help you heal.

Jake Kastleman (42:58.881)
So why allowing instead of fighting was the turning point? When a part of me believes this emotion is dangerous, I must stop this, I can't handle this, the nervous system enters threat mode. Threat mode narrows perception, increases compulsive behavior and threatens habit loop, or strengthens habit loops. By contrast, when Joseph said, this is okay, I allow it, I can handle anything that happens, right? I am inviting, welcoming this painful emotion forward.

He shifted the nervous system towards safety and regulation. I'm here for you. He's communicating to getting to his nervous system. This aligns with polyvagal informed therapy. It's going into the ventral vagal system. Emotional regulation research also talks about this and self-compassion research. The brain only updates beliefs when it feels safe enough to stay present. Fighting pain reinforces the belief that pain is dangerous. It actually fuels the thing I'm afraid of.

Fear is a form of faith. It's just the opposite end. When I fear something, I believe in it and actually causes that thing to happen. Allowing pain disproves that belief experientially, which again is what we need. We do not heal through logic. We heal through emotion slash experience. It becomes an experiential thing. We have a new emotional experience with that thing, which makes sense. Why we could have painful memories come up. And then when we have a new

experience with it emotionally, it shifts how we believe. Why unconditional acceptance dissolves fear of relapse? Several therapeutic traditions, by the way, we're getting close to done here. Several therapeutic traditions converge here. Acceptance and commitment therapy, paradoxical theory of change by Gestalt. Real change happens when you stop trying to change. That is paradoxical. And then mindfulness-based

relapse prevention. By the way, when I say real change happens when you stop trying to change, it's a self-awareness approach. It's an openness approach rather than a willpower approach. They all show the same principle. What you stop trying to eliminate loses its power. You have to gain acceptance for anything that you actually want to release.

Jake Kastleman (45:22.529)
When Joseph became genuinely okay with panic, relapse, failure, and discomfort, the threat that fueled addiction disappeared. Porn was no longer needed to escape something catastrophic. Loses the root cause of the issue. And then why new beliefs finally felt true at the end of his practice. Beliefs update when the brain experiences, I expect, collapse.

but collapse didn't happen. That mismatch is called prediction error. It's actually a new thing that I learned. Each time Joseph felt intense emotion, stayed present, survived and maintained self-love, the nervous system revised its internal model. I can handle this, right? I expected to collapse, I didn't collapse, I can handle this. I can be in pain without relapsing.

This is also how self-efficacy forms, very crucial for all of us, not through affirmation, but through lived experience, my ability to face problems and move through them.

So, conclusion, the brain doesn't change beliefs through positive thinking. It changes beliefs through lived experience. When you allow painful emotions instead of escaping them, your nervous system learns something new. I can survive this. Once that belief is learned at the body level, the old belief, which was, need porn to cope, has nothing left to stand on. God bless my friend.

Before you go, a quick reminder that the No More Desire Brotherhood launches January 15th, and right now the pre-launch is open. Join now and get free lifetime access to my 4 Pillars of Recovery course, plus exclusive bonuses only for pre-launch members. This offer ends January 14th at midnight. Again, go to nomordesire.com slash pre-launch or hit the link in the show notes. I'll see you inside, my friend.

Jake Kastleman (47:32.673)
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 8 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, you 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 (48:49.249)
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.