You cannot quit porn simply by overcoming sexual cravings and urges. Porn addiction doesn’t ultimately stem from these urges (as surprising as that is).
In reality, porn cravings are a symptom of underlying psychological barriers you're experiencing that are preventing porn addiction recovery.
Instead of facing or fighting porn cravings, you need to get to the root causes of pornography addiction. You need to access the mental blocks in your mindset and remove them.
I’m going to teach you how to do this today.
If you properly and consistently follow these 4 steps for emotional processing from day to day, there's an excellent chance you will eventually not need to deal with porn cravings in the first place. They simply won’t be there.
It is impossible for me to give you the perfect formula to overcome porn addiction in one blog article. That said, I'll give you these 4 steps for emotional processing that rely on sound principles from multiple psychological modalities, including CBT and IFS, as well as spiritual teachings from Eastern and Western Faiths.
Healing Porn Addiction Using Daily, Emotional Processing
To some degree, the current psychological paradigm on addiction is that it stems from biological predispositions and emotional impulsivity, as well as mental cravings that stem from stress. The suggested solutions to overcome porn addiction often include facing and fighting cravings, sitting with cravings, getting honest with people about our addictions, and going to talk therapy.
All of these approaches have merit. But I’m going to teach you a different way that I think you’ll find very effective if you practice it each day.
Instead of thinking of cravings as bad and fighting them, or simply sitting with them, we can learn to process and talk ourselves through them. We can observe and get curious about them. We can uproot them by redefining them.
Cravings often carry with them feelings of fear and shame. But if we can see them not as bad or immoral, but as a signal to us of something deeper, we can give them space to be understood and relieved without acting out.
Here is one way to see it that people have found very effective…
Cravings are protective mechanisms attempting to keep us safe from suffering.
At first, this sounds counterintuitive. How could cravings be keeping you safe? After all, pornography addiction has ruined your life and the lives of your loved ones. But, if viewed another way, it actually makes good sense.
Much as a child can try to help in ways that are wildly ineffective, the unconscious parts of our mind (which can often act like children) may attempt to protect or keep us safe using methods that are mad.
If we can perceive these parts of ourselves not as “bad” but instead misguided, we can begin to work with them, collaborate with them, love them, and eventually help them transform into something that is actually helpful.
Instead of running from cravings, or other triggering feelings of loneliness, anger, fear, shame, etc., we can observe and get curious about these emotions. We can talk ourselves through them, like a compassionate father would speak with his son or daughter.
The Psychological Layers of Porn Addiction: Protective Mechanisms and Insecurities
Let’s explore the inner mechanisms of porn addiction together. I want you to go far deeper than the cravings, obsessions, and impulses. All of these are a reaction to psychological mechanisms that are below the surface. They are all a distraction from internal suffering and pain playing out consciously and unconsciously.
We often look at addiction as a horribly negative or shameful thing. But addiction is simply a protective mechanism, much the same as anger, aggression, or perfectionism are. Our brain uses addiction in an attempt to protect or keep us safe from underlying feelings of:
Fear
Weakness
Insecurity
Unworthiness
Lack of safety
Feeling unloved
Lack of motivation
Etc.
Porn addiction and cravings are the protective mechanisms. The feelings under the surface are our true target.
How to Stop Porn Addiction
To stop porn addiction, you have to realize that you are not powerless against cravings. You do not need to simply accept them as a reality of life, nor should you need to deal with them forever. There is a better way.
Cravings, lust, fantasizing, etc. are a reaction to or distraction from underlying negative emotions. If you can assess the negative emotions under the surface - either before you experience cravings or immediately after they are triggered - then you can build new mental habits to replace porn relapses. You can talk yourself through hard emotions and essentially keep them from evolving into cravings for porn.
This requires you to dedicate yourself to consistent emotional processing throughout the day, every day. It requires you to be present with and aware of your emotions - to listen to them and give them space to be understood.
Now, I’m going to give you the step-by-step process to break through 4 psychological barriers preventing you from quitting porn. If you use this step-by-step process throughout the day, it will empower you to relieve porn cravings and keep them from escalating into porn relapse.
4 Psychological Barriers to Porn Recovery and How to Bust Through Them
I’m going to help you break porn addiction using a 4-step strategy for emotional processing. Use this strategy everyday. It’s not a one-time fix, it’s an on-going way of mentally processing challenging emotions including porn cravings. It can also be used just as easily for symptomatic (or secondary) emotions like anger or perfectionism.
This 4-step strategy to process through porn cravings is an acronym: “P.I.C.S.”
Protective Mechanisms
Insecurities
Core Intentions
Surrender (Forgiveness)
STEP 1: Protective Mechanisms
When a craving pops up, I want you to think of it less as a sexual inclination and more of an emotional trigger that is akin to feelings of anger or perfectionism.
Your mind is going to attempt to convince you that cravings have everything to do with your sexual desire, but you need to understand that they are an attempt to distract or protect you from other underlying emotions.
So, instead of running from the cravings, what I want you to do is mentally approach the craving. Move toward it. Ask it what it is trying to help you understand.
And I don’t mean giving into it, but instead going to the source of the craving and asking what it wants you to know.
This sounds strange, but you need to make friends with the part of your mind that is creating the craving. Dialogue with it. Listen to it. Understand it. Show it compassion.
Instead of hating, judging, or trying to control this part of yourself, ask it why it gives you these cravings. What is it trying to protect?
Again, it is important to understand that I am not talking about fixating on the lust or fantasies, but instead mindfully dialoguing with the part of your mind that is producing them. Try to show it love and compassion. It is attempting to soothe you using the thoughts of sex and fantasy. So let it know that you appreciate that it’s trying to help you.
Again, this may sound strange, but practice this each day for several weeks and see what happens.
STEP 2: Insecurities
Now that you’ve started listening to the part of your mind that is producing these cravings - without fixating on the lust, fantasies, or content of the cravings - the next step is to get deeper into your psyche and uncover what the cravings are protecting you from feeling.
We all have insecurities. Every person who has ever lived has insecurities. If you are a man, you may have been taught from a very young age that it was not okay to feel or admit to these insecurities.
But, my friend, you have been misguided. You’ve even been cheated, I would say. Because if you can deeply recognize and process through your insecurities each day, then you can eventually become free of them, or at least able to manage them effectively. And then, you can become more powerful, effective, successful, loving, and generous than ever before.
Whereas, if you continue to ignore your insecurities, not dialogue with your mind, and not talk yourself through the darkness…then that darkness will control you.
So, the next step is to get in touch with the underlying feelings of stress or weakness, and listen to them. What do they want you to know? What types of imbalances or hardships are there in your psyche that are burdening you? What feelings have necessitated the development of protective mechanisms like porn/addiction cravings, anger, or perfectionism? What’s actually going on under the surface?
You have to explore and talk yourself through this each day. Show yourself compassion; show yourself understanding; get to know the darkness so that you can shine a light on it. As you do this properly, the light you shine on the darkness will empower it to shrink over time so that it can transform into something better.
STEP 3: Core Intentions
Now that you’ve explored, listened to, and showed compassion for the protective mechanisms and insecurities within your psyche, you can go even deeper.
Underneath or branching out from every protective mechanism or insecurity I believe there is a good intention.
For instance, if you struggle with perfectionism, you may have a tendency towards procrastination, anger, and overwhelm, but you also have a powerful desire for quality work. You want to do things right and make sure that you are dependable.
Another example would be anger. If you struggle with anger you likely have a deep compassion for others under the surface. You don’t want people to suffer, which causes you to behave in ways that are controlling or judgmental because you want people to avoid pitfalls or hardships. These judgmental and controlling mentalities result in anger, and they’re extremely difficult for others to deal with, but there is still a core intention of care.
Now, you may be wondering, when it comes to porn cravings, how could those house core intentions that are pure and good?
The answer to this is fairly complex, but I’ll do my best to explain it.
I venture to say if you are someone who struggles with porn addiction, then you are someone who - at their core - cares deeply. For others, for the world, for the quality of your relationships, your work, and your life. You care so much that it hurts.
I know this because I was this way, and every single one of my clients have been this way as well. Addiction may have grown a callous over this care, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
As a child you may have been highly sensitive, perfectionistic, meticulous, or an overachiever. You may have had extremely high expectations of yourself that you felt you could never live up to. Or you may have created havoc to hide the fact that things bothered you deeply and you didn’t know how to handle them.
So, in order to cope, your mind chose porn because it needed something to help you escape from the pain.
Now that you’re older, it is time for you to get in touch with that inner child that carries all of these amazing gifts and a deep desire to make a difference, do exceptional work, and love others without reservation. It’s time to begin recognizing these core intentions.
If you can love and admire these core, pure intentions within you, and focus on them each day, then these core intentions can start to bloom and take the place of symptomatic insecurities and protective mechanisms. I believe these core intentions are who you actually are, despite all of the other challenges on the surface.
STEP 4: Surrender (Forgiveness)
If you can gain compassion, understanding, and admiration for your protective mechanisms and insecurities, and dig into your core intentions, you may be able to reach a place of surrender or forgiveness - to give up your burdens and start to feel some true peace.
Everyday, as you dialogue with yourself and explore these layers of your psyche, practice forgiving yourself for the mistakes that you’ve made. Surrender them up. Give them away. See yourself in a new light.
If you can do this for yourself, then you’ll be able to do it for others. It will enable you to be a more loving and effective husband and father, and to show up with more generosity and selflessness in the world.
Quit Porn by Building a Recovery Mindset & Lifestyle
If you want to not only overcome porn addiction, but actually lose your desire for porn, you must do the intensive work to get down to the root causes of your porn cravings. By building a recovery mindset and lifestyle, you can eventually no longer crave porn.
My Intensive Porn Addiction Recovery Program gives you a step-by-step system to build this recovery lifestyle and mindset. It is developed through:
Daily Assessments that instill the mental habits of recovery, and give you insights into what cravings actually are, where they come from, and how to overcome them.
Structured Recovery Program with exercises to transform your mindset and lifestyle one step at a time.
Tailored Recovery Plan that you and I build out together, and which contains your personal answers to get rid of porn cravings. This will be the plan you’ll use every single day to stay sober for the rest of your life.
Weekly 1-on-1 Sessions with a coach who has proven professional experience helping men recover, as well as personal experience with recovery.
There is no other system designed like the No More Desire ™ program. It is a program that is intensive, personalized, structured, and it helps you build a recovery mindset and lifestyle so that you can lose your desire for porn.
If you’re ready to get rid of porn addiction, set up a Free 30-min Consultation with me. During the call, you and I will break down the causes of your porn addiction together. You will gain personalized direction and insights for your recovery, and I’ll answer any questions that you have about the program. Set up your Free Consultation now.
Build the No More Porn Lifestyle
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Transcription of Episode 72: Break Barriers to Quit Porn | 4 Psychological Blocks that Prevent Porn Recovery and How to Bust Through Them
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