Abstinence and Perfection Keep Failing Us
Beyond Discipline: Build Capacity, Not Control
Hi all, it’s been a little while. I’ve been going deep with my family, my clients, and the steady process we go through each summer within our Sex, God, & Money course.
In the times we’re moving through,
and I are seeing more than ever how important the work we’re developing within EMUNAH is for these times of intense transformation (at every scale). The micro patterns we see within our internal lives are just as present in our interpersonal, intergenerational, and institutional dimensions of our lives. That is certainly true for the topic of today’s essay.As is usual for me, this essay is something that’s been alive within me for a long time which has been recently sparked by some conversations with friends and clients who have cycles of going through periods of rigid discipline with something they perceive as a vice, an approach which often results in a more extreme counter-reaction than if they’d approached this dimension of their life with compassion, curiosity, and relationship to begin with.
And as always, I’m interested in your thoughts! Have you shifted from a pattern of control and restriction to an approach more focused on expanded capacity and dynamic relationship? Would you like to?
I’m very interested to hear how this lands for you.
So many times in our lives, we’re taught that abstinence is strength.
That control is what brings success.
That perfection is required.
“Delete the app. Throw away the bottle. Go cold turkey on sugar. Quit porn forever. Cut out carbs. No screens after 8 pm. No negative thoughts allowed. Never touch it again.”
This is what strong people do—or so we’re told.
And we’re taught that rigid commitment is discipline. That showing up perfectly is what proves you deserve results.
Meditate daily without fail. Follow the diet perfectly. Hit every workout. Never miss a morning routine. Journal every night. Stick to the program, no exceptions. That’s what disciplined people do—or so we believe.
If you’ve tried either approach (and most of us have) you know what often happens:
The harder you fight to stay away, the more power it holds. The tighter you grip your routine, the more fragile you feel when life inevitably interrupts it.
You swing between extremes: on or off, pure or failed, in control or collapsed.
Too often, both paths (abstinence and rigid commitment) lead us to outsource our power to the very thing we fear or crave.
Important caveat: There are times when abstinence is not just wise, but essential. In cases of addiction, harm reduction, trauma healing, or personal safety, stepping away fully can be life-saving. This essay is not arguing against abstinence itself.
What matters is the intention behind it. Are you choosing from fear or clarity? Suppression or self-respect?
The principles shared here—building capacity, shifting relationship, expanding agency—can make abstinence more sustainable. They align with effective methods like Allen Carr’s EasyPeasy approach, which shows that real freedom comes not from force, but from changing how we relate to what we’re letting go of.
When abstinence is chosen with awareness and supported by capacity, it becomes a path to real freedom.
So the deeper question is this: from what place are you choosing? Fear or agency?1 Compulsion or capacity2? Control or relationship?
This essay is about building right relationship3—not from restraint or purity, but from presence, clarity, and embodied freedom4.
The Pendulum of Abstinence and Rigid Commitment
Abstinence is often sold as strength. But more often, it’s a shield for fear. When we attempt to cut something out entirely—without building an aware relationship to it—we increase its charge. The forbidden thing becomes infused with shame, curiosity, and craving. The more we push it away, the more power it holds. The more power it holds, the more likely we are to collapse in cycles of rebound, guilt, and self-blame.
Rigid “positive” commitments are the same in disguise. Daily meditation, perfect diets, endless productivity streaks—these are not bad practices. But when perfection becomes the standard, shame becomes a constant shadow. A single missed day can trigger a cascade of self-judgment and lead to a relapse of extreme behaviors on the other end of the spectrum. We become less resilient, more fragile, and more likely to spiral when life inevitably throws us curveballs.
Both paths teach us to outsource power. We hand our agency to the thing we fear—or the performance we idolize. Either way, we move from relationship to reactivity.
You can see this pendulum playing out across every dimension of life:
Sex and Porn: swinging between repression and compulsive seeking.
Alcohol: rigid abstinence → collapse → shame → repeat.
Food: purity-driven eating → binge cycles → body distrust.
Work and Productivity: unsustainable grind and hustle → burnout → collapse.
Exercise and Movement: all-in perfectionism → injury, fatigue, or disengagement.
Wellness Identity and Lifestyle: rigid perfectionism around “health” → anxiety, social isolation, loss of joy.
Meditation and Mindfulness: perfection-driven streaking → shame cycles → increased tension and loss of presence.
Spiritual Discipline: rigid self-denial → compensatory indulgence or bypassing what’s real.
This constant swinging between rigid control and reactive collapse takes a real toll on the body. Many people live in a state of the gas and brake pedals pressed at the same time: bracing for perfection while fearing failure, chasing purity while suppressing desire. The nervous system is caught in an unsustainable loop of tension, vigilance, and eventual shutdown.
The somatic effects are real. Chronic dysregulation within a nervous system caught between over-control and collapse. Binge and avoid cycles. The body tense, braced, then exhausted.
And the psychological effects run deep. Erosion of self-trust. An inner voice that moralizes every slip as failure. A shrinking sense of agency and choice. Over time, this erodes confidence in one’s ability to navigate life itself—training people to see themselves as fragile, broken, or incapable.
At the root of this pendulum is a larger cultural story: the narratives of Purity and Perfection. We are taught that we can achieve goodness through purity and worthiness through perfection. But both narratives are fragile. They drive all-or-nothing thinking. They collapse the moment life reveals its messiness and complexity. They leave us with only two roles to play: perfect or failed.
This is not how resilient humans are built.
This is not how embodied freedom is cultivated.
And this is not how true relationship to life is lived.
Why the Theory of Abstinence Fails
Why does abstinence so often fail? Because it asks the impossible: to build freedom through avoidance.
It assumes that if we simply remove the thing—whether it’s sugar, sex, alcohol, porn, screens—the deeper forces driving us will disappear along with it. But they don’t.
The charge remains unprocessed.
The unmet needs remain unmet.
The nervous system stays braced.
Abstinence alone builds fragility, not capacity. It trains us to rely on the absence of triggers, rather than on the presence of inner agency. And because life is life—messy, unpredictable, multidimensional—the triggers will return. When they do, if we haven’t built capacity, we collapse. The forbidden thing rushes back in, amplified by the shame and tension we’ve layered onto it.
Avoidance is not freedom. Right relationship is.
Perfection Is Impossible
Perfection doesn’t just fail because it’s hard. It fails because life itself will always outgrow any perfect plan.
There will always be something. Birthdays, holidays, sleepless nights, grief, travel, joy, illness, love. If your relationship to discipline only works in a controlled environment, it is not sustainable—it is fragile.
I’ve seen this cycle play out countless times. A client eats “clean” for weeks, then goes to a family birthday dinner and has cake and wine. One deviation triggers a full collapse: “Well, I blew it. I’ll start back on Monday.” It was Thursday. The entire weekend became a binge cycle—not because the dinner was wrong, but because the mental model was.
“You have a big family,” I told them. “Birthdays will happen every month. If you build a system that collapses every time life happens, you haven’t built a life—you’ve built a trap.”
The truth is, if you are going to live fully, you are going to live in relationship to an unpredictable world. Rigid perfection collapses under life’s natural dynamism. The goal is not flawless execution. The goal is Dynamic Harmony5, a living, adaptive relationship to discipline, pleasure, and self-care that flexes with the realities of life.
Perfection is brittle. Dynamic harmony is resilient.
Focus More on Capacity than Control
Living well is not achieved through force or restraint. It is built through the capacity to meet life, moment by moment, without collapse, without compulsion. Multidimensional thriving depends on this: the ability to meet experience openly, discern response wisely, and move forward intentionally.
This is not a new idea. Across wisdom traditions, the same deeper truth emerges: flourishing is not achieved through control, but through capacity.
The Stoics understood this: true strength is not about controlling the world, but about controlling one’s response. “You have power over your mind—not outside events.” This is capacity in action.
The Taoists knew it deeply: the Tao flows. Forcing creates resistance. Capacity allows flow. “Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.”
The Buddhists walk the Middle Way—not repression, not indulgence, but the capacity to meet life as it is. Shakyamuni Buddha taught: “There is a middle way between the extremes of indulgence and self-denial, free from sorrow and suffering. This is the way to peace and liberation in this very life.”
Jewish wisdom calls us not to withdraw from life, but to choose it—again and again, with presence. “Choose life.” (Parashat Nitzavim) Not control life. Choose it. Engage with it. Build the capacity to stay with it.
Somatic practice teaches the same truth: you cannot heal by avoiding discomfort—you build capacity to be with it. This is the path of embodied freedom.
Addiction science affirms all of this: connection heals. Avoidance alone is fragile. Capacity—through relational presence and embodied agency—is what makes long-term recovery possible.
And even in popular culture, this wisdom breaks through. One of the simplest expressions comes in a scene from Ted Lasso, where the point isn’t to cut something out entirely—but to change your relationship to it.
Dynamic Harmony is the integration of this ancient knowing. You do not need to "win" against life, or against yourself. You cultivate the capacity to meet life, move with it, and shape your response with presence and integrity
This is not weakness—it is the deepest strength. This is what real freedom feels like in the body.
The Pendulum Problem
The pendulum is everywhere. You can feel it in your body. You can see it in your behaviors.
On one side: abstinence → hyper-control → inevitable collapse → shame → repeat.
On the other: rigid commitment → perfectionism → inevitable failure → shame → repeat.
But beneath both behavioral loops is a deeper rhythm, a nervous system pendulum swinging between extremes.
When your nervous system struggles to meet what’s arising, it swings. You flip between states of intensity and shutdown—not because you are broken, but because your system is trying to protect you.
Hyperarousal → urgency, compulsion, over-efforting.
Hypoarousal → shutdown, collapse, withdrawal, dissociation.
Both are driven by capacity limits. When we lack the ability to stay present with what arises, we swing. Even surface “discipline” can mask deep internal dysregulation.
I’ve seen it firsthand. Over the years I’ve met dozens of elite fitness influencers with physiques carved like statues. But beneath the perfect abs and relentless routines was often a fragile relationship to food, body, and self. Cycles of binge and restriction. Self-worth tied to performance. Nervous systems caught in survival patterns, using “discipline” as a shield and projecting strength that is only skin deep.
Perfection and purity narratives fuel both pendulums.
The more tightly we grip, the more forcefully we swing.
The more forcefully we swing, the more fragile we become.
Right Relationship and Dynamic Harmony are the exit from this loop, but not through forcing "balance." It’s through building capacity, growing the range of tolerance, cultivating the embodied ability to stay present, to meet what arises, and to move with life instead of against it.
Building Capacity & Dynamic Harmony Across Life’s Dimensions
If the first part of this essay showed us the problem, this is the heart of the solution:
Shift the goal from control to capacity.
Capacity to be with what arises. Capacity to move with life’s rhythms. Capacity to widen your ability to act and to rest, to do and to receive, to live fully across all dimensions.
This is what Dynamic Harmony gives us.
Dynamic Harmony is not a static balance. It is not a life hack. It is a living, embodied rhythm—an intentional movement between states of Stabilization6 and Expansion7, between Open & Active8 modes of being.
At the heart of it is this question:
Can I build Dynamic Harmony with this thing,
instead of falling into control or collapse?
The Nervous System and the Pendulum of Capacity
The nervous system has a window of tolerance9, a range within which we can stay present, adaptive, and responsive.
When we’re inside this window, we can meet life openly.
When we’re pushed outside of it, we swing:
Into states of high activation → urgency, compulsion, over-efforting.
Into states of low activation → collapse, withdrawal, shutdown.
Most people live with a narrow window. Decades of disconnection, trauma10, shame, and cultural conditioning11 shrink our capacity. We become easily pushed out of presence. We flip between extremes—between striving and collapse, between “on” and “off,” between gripping control and giving up entirely.
But this is not a life sentence.
Through intentional practice, we can expand this window.
We can consciously build capacity.
We do this by learning when and how to:
Stabilize and rest → honoring the need to recover, integrate, and ground.
Expand and take action → stretching into new experiences, building resilience, staying present through growth edges.
Moving between these states (consciously) is what builds Dynamic Harmony.
It is a living rhythm of thriving.
When we live this way, the pendulum is no longer something that controls us.
It becomes a dance we participate in intentionally. Each intentional swing—between stability and expansion—widens our capacity to meet life fully.
We become able to do more, feel more, receive more without collapse, without gripping.
Dynamic Harmony is how we build a good life.
These essays are an extension of what we share within EMUNAH, the space we’ve created for collective growth during times of deep transformation. Our approach integrates education, embodiment, and empowerment with an aim of breaking from the cult dynamics of so many self-improvement methods and communities. You can explore the free foundations we offer within the platform here below:
Relationship is More Powerful Than Control
Many effective approaches to change—from modern addiction science to ancient wisdom—share the same principle:
We do not find freedom through force.
We build it through capacity and clarity.
When we shift our relationship to the thing,
not grip against it, we build true agency.
Rather than perfect abstinence or flawless moderation, it is about building the capacity to meet life’s energies—pleasure, stress, desire, grief, uncertainty—without being ruled by them.
We each have the power to build right relationship across every dimension of life.
Life Dimensions: Capacity in Action
Porn → Build capacity to meet sexual energy with presence—not suppression, not compulsive seeking. Most people’s sexual shame sits inside a window too narrow to hold the charge of their own desire. Widening that capacity allows for healthy, integrated sexuality—not reactive patterns.
Food → Build capacity to eat from attunement—not ideology or shame. If your window is too narrow to hold pleasure, hunger, and nourishment at once, you will swing between restriction and binge. For many, food is also tangled with body image and self-worth—driven by internalized beauty standards and cultural narratives of control. Building capacity here means reclaiming food as nourishment, not a measure of worth.
Alcohol → For some, abstinence is necessary; for others, building capacity to drink consciously or abstain wisely is the path. Identifying what you are really craving here is a game changer. As Carl Jung wrote to Bill W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous: “The craving for 'spirits' is really a craving for Spirit”—for connection, depth, and meaning. When we build capacity for true connection within ourselves, with others, and with life, we transform the need beneath the craving. This is the deeper path.
Exercise & Movement → Build capacity for regenerative, life-giving movement, not external metrics, not rigid performance, not avoidance. Many people swing between extreme fitness cycles and complete disconnection from their body. Building capacity here means learning to move with presence, intuition, and adaptability—honoring both growth and recovery.
Meditation & Wellness → Build capacity to engage spaciously—not rigidly. Too many people hold a narrow view of meditation: cross-legged, eyes closed, silent. That can be valuable—but it is not the only way. If your practice collapses when life gets messy, it is not resilient. True meditation builds presence that moves with life. Walking, moving, creating, breathing—all can be practice when approached with intention. The goal is not posture—it is relationship.
Work & Productivity → Build capacity for regenerative cycles of action and rest rather than grind and collapse. Many people can push hard but cannot recover. Others can rest but cannot engage fully. Dynamic Harmony trains both capacities making us more resilient, creative, and alive. Work is meant to be a creative rhythm, not a chronic stress cycle. Building capacity here means honoring both drive and restoration—so your work serves your life, not consumes it.
The Key Principle
I don’t believe your nervous system wants perfect balance. It wants range. It wants capacity. And this is what Dynamic Harmony helps us build: a living relationship to life’s rhythms—one that continually expands our capacity to meet what arises.
The more we practice it, the wider our window becomes.
The wider our window, the richer our life.
This is how we build a good life:
A life where we can feel deeply, act wisely, rest fully, receive joyfully.
A life where we are not trapped by the pendulum—but dancing with it, consciously.
This is the path of integrity, embodied freedom, and remembering your wholeness.
The Appropriate Role of Abstinence
Abstinence alone is not the path—but there are times when abstinence is wise.
In certain moments, abstaining fully is the most skillful choice:
Addiction and harm reduction. When compulsive patterns risk harm, abstaining gives space for healing and the rebuilding of capacity.
High-charge areas where capacity is not yet stable. Sometimes the system is not yet ready to engage with certain energies or behaviors safely. In these cases, abstinence can be a compassionate boundary—not a failure.
Abstinence can also be a powerful teacher.
Diagnostic tool. Removing something for a period of time can reveal how it was impacting your system—physically, emotionally, relationally.
Nervous system recalibration. Giving the body space from certain inputs can allow deeper layers of tension, craving, or avoidance to surface and be worked with consciously.
Space to rebuild relationship. Abstaining can create room to examine and reshape your relationship with a thing—not from fear, but from curiosity and clarity.
For example, I regularly take cycles off of caffeine—giving my nervous system space to recalibrate. When I return to it, I do so mindfully, using it to consciously support active states, not as a default or dependency.
The key is intention.
Abstinence should serve the building of capacity—not mask fragility.
If used wisely, it can create the conditions for Dynamic Harmony to emerge.
If used reactively or from shame, it can reinforce the very pendulum we are seeking to step out of.
The goal remains the same:
sovereignty12, capacity, and Dynamic Harmony.
Not purity. Not perfection. Not fear.
Building Capacity is a Practice
This isn’t a switch you flip.
You won’t snap your fingers and step out of old patterns.
Capacity is something you build—over time, with practice, with patience, with compassion for yourself.
There are real forces that shape the pendulum: trauma, cultural narratives, family conditioning, nervous system patterns that have been with you for years. You are not failing because you swing—you are human.
But you are not powerless.
In fact, much of this path is about reclaiming the power you’ve been taught to give away—whether to perfection, to abstinence, to the thing itself, or to the shame around it.
You don’t take that power back all at once.
You build it. You embody it.
At first, this takes effort. It takes attention. It takes some conscious, even uncomfortable choices. But this is effort that serves your freedom and relieves you of shame.
And the more you practice Dynamic Harmony, the more that freedom becomes embodied, more fluid, more honest, more joyful, more authentic.
Not perfect. Not pure. But yours.
And that is worth everything.
This is the work that we cultivate within EMUNAH, an online space for cultivating an authentic life through education, embodiment, and empowerment. Designed to be a virtual library for our members to take their time, go deep, and cultivate connections with real presence, I welcome you to explore the free areas of EMUNAH below.
And if this is an element of your life you’d like direct support with,
I’d be honored to connect.
Agency → Agency refers to one’s capacity to act from presence and choice—rather than from reactive patterns, conditioning, or avoidance. In the EMUNAH approach, agency is the core of embodied freedom: the ability to choose your response, not be ruled by past programming or survival loops.
Capacity → Capacity refers to the embodied ability to stay present with, and responsive to, life’s energies—without collapse or compulsion. It includes the ability to meet stress, pleasure, desire, uncertainty, and emotion with openness and choice. Expanding capacity is the heart of Dynamic Harmony.
Right relationship → Right relationship refers to an intentional, dynamic way of relating to any experience, input, or practice—built on presence, clarity, and agency. It moves beyond control or avoidance, allowing us to engage consciously across life’s dimensions.
Embodied freedom → Embodied freedom is the capacity to inhabit your life fully—moving with presence and choice across body, mind, and soul—instead of being driven by fear, avoidance, or perfectionism.
Dynamic Harmony → Dynamic Harmony is a living relationship with life’s rhythms—moving with presence and flexibility, not rigid control. The goal is not static balance or perfection, but intentional engagement across body, mind, spirit, and life itself.
Stabilize → Stabilize refers to prioritizing and intentionally structuring your life for states of rest, recovery, and integration—where the nervous system can recalibrate and the body can repair.
Expand → Expand refers to intentionally entering states of action, engagement, and growth—where the nervous system is stretching into new experiences and building resilience.
Open & Active → Open & Active is a principle of Dynamic Harmony—referring to the intentional alternation between open states (receptivity, presence, stabilization) and active states (movement, engagement, expansion). Practicing this rhythm consciously is what builds capacity across life’s dimensions.
Window of tolerance → Refers to the range of arousal within which a person can function effectively and stay connected to the present moment. When outside this window, we enter survival states of hyper- or hypoactivation.
Trauma → The definition of trauma we work with within EMUNAH is anything that is too much, too fast, too soon—or not enough for too long. It’s not always about what was overwhelming, it can also be about what was missing. Both shape how your nervous system learns to survive. This is not weakness or brokenness, it is intelligence. Your system adapted. The work is creating enough safety to let it process what it needs to so that you can move forward with presence and authentic choices in your life.
Cultural conditioning → Cultural conditioning refers to the pervasive messages, norms, and values absorbed from one’s social and cultural environment—often unconsciously—which shape how we relate to body, self, others, and the world. Many of these inherited patterns reinforce perfectionism, disembodiment, and shame.
Sovereignty → Sovereignty refers to one’s ability to remain anchored in their own embodied truth and agency—even in the face of external pressure, internal charge, or cultural conditioning. In EMUNAH, sovereignty is not about force or control—it is about inhabiting your life with clarity, presence, and freedom.
Suppression or self-respect? This really is the dichotomy to (honestly) assess yourself by. I think intention plays heavily into success with implementing new practices or removing old ones. I also find it helpful to remind my clients that energy can’t be destroyed so the energy they were putting toward the old way can’t just be extinguished through abstinence; you must transform it into something else. You offered a great solution in “leaning into new experiences.” Range is also important less something new becomes a compulsion. Great take.
Love it and resonate deeply. Learning about the window of tolerance for profound and life changing for me. I just gave up alcohol a month ago due to a history of habitual patterning around my dependency to alcohol after my parents passed away as a young adult. I needed to eliminate it to remind myself that I do not need it anymore. I did not have tools then but I do now. I needed to interrupt the pattern to learn that. With that said, I’ve built a ton of capacity over the years so this felt possible. Thanks for your wisdom and affirming my own deeper knowing.