Pornography addiction can be a really tough thing to live with. Not only does this condition force you to spend huge portions of your time watching porn, at the expense of other important areas of life, it is also extremely isolating.
It’s very hard to talk openly about compulsive sexual behaviour, to give it it’s official diagnostic name, and many people living with this condition feel completely alone; ashamed to come forward and unsure where to turn for support.
Like any addiction, porn addiction can be beaten. A severe addiction often requires professional intervention, to help you set boundaries and rewire your brain to the point that you no longer feel such overpowering urges.
If you aren’t quite at that stage, or if you’re working with a professional and want to do some additional work on your own time, there are definitely some steps you can take to reduce your compulsive need to watch porn. Here are some ideas to help you fight back against compulsive sexual behaviour.
How to Overcome Porn Addiction: Urge and Opportunity
Like all addictions, internet pornography addiction is driven by urge and opportunity. When in the grip of an addiction, we feel constant, often overpowering urges to act in a certain way. And if we have the opportunity to do so, we act on that urge.
Without both the urge and the opportunity, we can’t perform the compulsive behaviour (watching porn in this case). This gives us two ways of attacking an addiction: control the urge or remove the opportunity.
Remove the Opportunity
Let’s start with opportunity, since it’s a bit more straightforward. Think about when you typically watch pornography. For many, it’s when we’re alone, with nothing else to do, and when we have access to a phone or computer. If we avoid being in this kind of situation as much as possible, the amount of time we can spend on porn will inevitably go down.
So how do we do this? One option is to fill your schedule with as many activities as possible. Stay busy until you’re so tired you can’t face doing anything but going to bed. If you have specific times of day when you’re most vulnerable to temptation, such as when you get home from work, be sure to book a regular activity for then as well.
Schedule in things that you enjoy and which involve other people, so that it’s harder to back out of them
Another option is to limit your access to screens or to porn itself. You can get filters which block you from visiting certain websites and other helpful bits of tech to make it harder to get onto your usual porn sites. Failing that, leave your laptop at work or keep your phone in a drawer somewhere out of the way so that temptation isn’t right in front of you all day.
Now, of course it’s possible to work around any filter or failsafe you install, and you can always go and get your device no matter how far away you leave it. The idea is that if you increase the time it takes from getting the urge to acting on it, you increase the odds of being able to stop yourself.
Control the Urge
If removing the opportunity to watch porn is about putting practical things in place, controlling the urge is all about learning mental strategies.
The key principle is that an urge is just a thought. It doesn’t mean anything unless you choose to give it meaning by acting on it. If you choose to not act on the urge to watch porn, over time it becomes less powerful, and the thoughts pop into your head less frequently.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. Urges are extremely hard to ignore— that’s the whole point. But there are some mental tricks and tools you can make use of to help you in the battle.
Exposure and response prevention: this is actually a technique used to treat obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a condition defined by uncontrollable urges. The idea is that when you feel the urge to do something, you instead practice a different response.
Say you’re sitting at home and you suddenly feel the temptation to go to your room and start using porn. Instead, get up and go for a quick walk around the block until the temptation has passed. Or go and make yourself a drink. Or do twenty start jumps. Anything to focus your brain on something else until the urge subsides.
Over time, as you practice responding to urges with a totally different action, the power they have starts to dwindle and it becomes easier to ignore them.
Mindfulness: mindfulness meditation is a really useful skill for helping you see your thoughts more as possibilities, rather than inevitabilities. This meditation practice is all about learning to sit and notice your thoughts without judging them or acting upon them.
You can practise mindfulness using guided audio meditations, or by simply sitting still and noticing all the thoughts and sensory experiences that come your way.
As you practise this, it becomes easier to let go of thoughts without acting on them, and easier to switch off from the compulsion to watch porn.
It’s possible to learn both of these methods yourself, but a whole lot easier with the support of a trained and experienced psychologist, so get in touch with our team if you want to know more.
Find New Coping Strategies
Compulsive sexual behaviour often arises as a coping strategy. When we feel stressed, down or anxious, we seek out ways to comfort ourselves. Snacking, having a drink, watching some TV, or using porn are all examples.
None of these things are inherently bad in themselves. But if you rely on them too much to feel better, you can become unhealthily attached to them. If porn use is your go-to response to feeling down or stressed, it’s a good idea to try and find some alternative coping strategies.
The list of possible coping strategies is endless. Go for a walk. Call up a friend for a quick chat. Read a book, watch some TV or play a videogame. Listen to some music. Get into yoga or kickboxing. Become an artist. Anything. Broadening your repertoire of things that make you feel better will naturally make you less drawn to using porn all the time.
Stay Accountable
Finally, it’s much easier to battle addiction when you have other people in your corner. If you look at other forms of addiction, such as alcoholism or drugs, the entire recovery system is built around providing support and accountability. The same principles can serve you well in overcoming porn addiction.
When you’re the only one who knows about your porn habit, it’s easy to rationalise or make excuses for your actions. It’s also easy to get trapped in a cycle where all your guilt, shame and fear of being discovered create a strong urge to use porn to calm down, leading to even more guilt, fear and shame, and so on.
All of this can be alleviated by seeking support. There are plenty of peer support groups, both local and online, where you can chat in a judgement-free environment to people going through the same struggles as you.
You could also set up an accountability system if you feel brave enough to confide in another person about the problems you’re having. You’re much more likely to think twice about giving in to temptation if you know you’re going to have to justify it to a friend later on.
Stay Strong
Breaking any habit takes time, perseverance and a strong plan. But no matter how well prepared you are, it’s likely that you’ll slip up along the way and fall back into your old ways.
Try to see this as a learning opportunity rather than as a total failure. What triggered you to slip back into using porn? How can you avoid that particular pitfall next time? With each setback, you learn more about yourself, and your ability to stay strong in the face of temptation grows.