Acknowledge the wins during porn addiction recovery

Tom Molyneux
May 29
2 min read

When you are going through the process of withdrawal, the addicted part of the mind (APOTM) can try and make you feel terrible. And in those moments when you are down it will say "you feel rubbish anyway...".

This is a junkie thought.

This sentence ends with "so I may as well go ahead and watch porn" but the APOTM likes to vacate junkie thoughts mid-sentence. This is just what the APOTM does.

It is important to acknowledge that you are not going to feel good all of the time. It is totally natural to feel down when you are overcoming porn addiction, and just in life in general. We are marketed the idea every day that there is something wrong with us if we aren't feeling 100% all of the time. But, the truth is, one of the greatest things about overcoming an addiction is that you get to feel.

You get to feel sad. You get to feel joy. You get to feel alive. Being in an addiction robs us of the reality of being human. It desensitises us and leaves us feeling like a zombie or robotic, or a shit ton of sadness, shame and frustration.,

Every week inside of the Beyond Compulsion Academy, we have a weekly check-in to hear client's wins. This week we had more comments than ever.

Acknowledging wins is important. Going back to porn is never going to be an effective method of dealing with challenging feelings. And as time passes by, you can get so used to the benefits of being on the straight line that the APOTM can try to make you avoid the reality of addiction. The APOTM will start saying "once isn't that bad" or "you are doing so well".

Fortunately, we can deal with these classic junkie thoughts in a very simple way using the 5-Fact script. Here's a few examples of clients wins this week:

I noticed recently a few reactions and facial expressions to everyday life were playful and carefree. Like with my sister and my nephew. This I know happened because I felt good about myself on the inside which let me express myself without reservation.

My first time using the script multiple times! Today I had really heavy urges, I chose option B multiples times but regardless of that my urges remained. I am almost certain that without the right education I would have relapsed then. Luckily I remembered that this is to be expected and that the discomfort is temporary, and thus repetition is key. I read the script many times and it feels very rewarding looking back at that moment now.

Win: had liberation day call on Friday
Win: stopped all compulsive behaviors (that I am aware of)
Win: started sleeping well again, now require 1/3 the amount of insulin I had to when I was choosing to engage
Win: got back to the gym after a 2 week hiatus during re-wiring. While I lost some strength & muscle, I'm just so happy to be back and feeling so optimistic about the future.
Win: building great relationships with the bros at the BC academy 🫡

Hey guys, I’ve had a few solid wins this week!
It was a big one - hosted a bachelor party I’d been prepping over the last 4 months. One of my best buddies made me his best man, and everything went exactly as planned. That alone felt like a huge win.

The people you surround yourself does matter.

I have been on a porn addiction recovery app called Brainbuddy for years. I got that app around 10 years ago and have met some truly amazing guys through it. However, many people on there have no direction or solution to their addiction and spin in circles. The community side of things can offer a safe, non-judgemental space and be very helpful to enable people to stop feeling quite so much shame. But, the problem persists and people keep relapsing. And then relapsing just becomes a normal part of the online community and to be expected. This is one of the reasons I built the Beyond Compulsion Academy with Mari Paulus. We want to create a place for winners to actually succeed against the APOTM. And all of this starts with the right education. Taking the phases in the correct order, getting into the relevant neural pathways and working towards being on the straight line. Living a Life Beyond Compulsion isn't always easy, but it is always worth it.