What was the reason that you last chose to watch porn? Were you tired? Were you feeling lonely? Were you feeling upset? Did you have a bad day? Were you stressed out? Did you feel like you deserved it? Had you spent too much time on social media? Had you already messed up in another area of life? Were you hungover? Alright we could go on and on and on with an absolute abundance of different reasons. But, let's face it, is doing so actually productive? I'll give you a simple answer to that - NO!!! In fact, trying to figure out the reason you chose to watch porn isn't just unproductive it is incredibly detrimental. I used to do this after every single relapse. I've come up with explanations for my relapses hundreds and hundreds of times. By doing this I prolonged my time in the addiction and subscribed my fate to a life of helplessness and disempowerment. I handed my freedom and peace of mind to the addicted part of my mind and in exchange all I got was an illusion of clarity as to why I had done something which deeply troubled me. Getting out of that cycle of excuse after excuse requires some learning. A different approach is needed. I went down the path of learning the neuroscience of porn addiction. Understanding transcription factors, dopamine, and neuroplasticity opened my eyes but really the only thing I needed to know was one pretty simple fact...
I needed to know that I would want porn. And that the wanting, the desire, those cravings were to be expected. The urges were to be expected because I had unintentionally developed addicted neural pathways. As such, I would want porn. But, I denied this wanting because part of me also didn't want to watch porn. We call this the constant conflict. So, I stayed in that conflict, I resisted the truth and I developed tons of "junkie thinking" - excuses, rationalisations and justifications to engage in my compulsive behaviour. This placed me deep in the darkness of addiction and the honest truth is that I never would have got out if I didn't get the opportunity to see the light. For as long as you have a different reason to watch porn, you'll continue to treat the symptoms and never get to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is not the thing that caused you to watch porn in the very first place. We all looked at it that first time for different reasons and it doesn't really matter how or why. For example, most guys I work with were exposed to it at 11 or 12 years old by family or friends. Yes that maybe "unfair" and some of us have even had to deal with much more trauma growing up related to all of this too. But, understanding all of that won't help us change the root of the problem - addicted neural pathways. In other words the root of the problem is the inability to deal with compulsive desire. It is the lack of self-control upon dealing with urges. If you learn to deal with this root, then you get in control of yourself and you are able to overcome the problem for good and spend your remaining days in the light. But, you can not get from the darkness into the light by continuing to make up reasons. You don't need a reason. Wanting to engage and not knowing how to deal with that wanting is the only real reason you'll ever have. Hiding from the truth will keep you in addiction. If you want to get out, we're here to help by explaining exactly how the addicted part of the mind works and how to deal with it correctly in an effective way using a 5-fact script.