Beat Porn Triggers Using this 5-Step System to Overcome Porn Addiction
- Jake Kastleman
- Aug 28, 2024
- 28 min read
Updated: Sep 14, 2024
Many of my clients have the same question when they start my porn addiction recovery program: “When triggers for porn come up, I just don’t know how to handle them. Are there any simple practices I can use to overcome porn triggers?”
In today’s article, I am going to show you how to beat porn triggers and overcome porn addiction using a 5-step system that is simple and easy to apply.
With this 5-step system, you will no longer be confused about how to handle porn triggers because you’ll have a strategy in place every time a trigger comes up. You’ll be prepared with the recovery mindset and lifestyle strategies you need to combat porn cravings and come out victorious.
Direct & Indirect Triggers for Porn Addiction
When you’re taking the first steps to overcome porn addiction, triggers can feel overwhelming. And they come in many different forms, both direct and indirect.
Direct Triggers for Porn Addiction
A direct trigger is anything that is directly sexually arousing. This would be things like:
Seeing a woman in a gym outfit.
Seeing a lingerie ad online.
Encountering a woman dressed immodestly.
Watching TV shows, movies, or playing video games with sexual content.
Browsing social media posts that contain girls in bikinis or other sexualized images.
These triggers can bring feelings of fear when you struggle with porn addiction. Perhaps you become aroused and then you feel afraid that arousal is going to lead you to relapse with porn.
It’s also very common for my clients to experience a mental tie between sexual arousal and feelings of shame, because they hold an unconscious belief that sex and attraction are “bad”, “immoral”, or “inappropriate.”
Feelings of fear and shame intensify the arousal experience and fuel feelings that can lead to porn relapse. This dynamic is especially common for those with religious backgrounds, and religious shame and porn addiction often go hand-in-hand.
Indirect Triggers for Porn Addiction
If you’re a bit more advanced in your porn addiction recovery journey, you may already be aware that pornography addiction is not so much about direct triggers as it is about all of the various aspects of your mindset and lifestyle that are adding to your susceptibility to porn addiction.
In other words, there are negative emotions, thought patterns, and beliefs that are fueling your porn addiction, and it is likely that you’ve been experiencing these for some time now.
These mental habits that power porn addiction are often unconscious; you may be completely unaware of them.
During the years that I was addicted to porn, for instance, I dealt with the following unconscious negative emotions, thought patterns, and beliefs:
Social anxiety and general anxiety: These feelings made me feel disconnected from others, and porn became a false sense of connection.
Shame and low self-esteem: I often felt less than unimportant or unseen, and using porn was an escape from these painful feelings.
Perfectionism and all-or-nothing thinking: I believed that if I couldn't be perfect, I was a failure, and porn was a place where I could numb those feelings.
Learned helplessness and pessimism: I felt these emotions often in my life, and the stress produced by them fueled my cravings for porn without me knowing it.
Anger and insecurity: My unresolved anger and feelings of inadequacy often led me to seek solace in porn.
Feeling emotionally restricted: I found it difficult to express my emotions in healthy ways, and porn became an outlet.
Lacking purpose and meaning: Without a sense of direction or meaning in life, porn was an easy way to fill the void temporarily.
I was very quiet and shy as a child, and I often felt anxious and insecure. These feelings followed me into adulthood. Because my mind was in a constant state of suffering, I needed places to escape. Porn was one of those places.
I had no idea I was in this constant mental suffering, as it was just my normal state. I could only quit porn once I gained the necessary knowledge and skills to manage and heal from the mental and emotional burdens I carried.
Once I developed a recovery mindset and lifestyle, I could finally get rid of porn addiction because I had dealt with the underlying reasons I kept going back to it. I no longer needed porn to escape because I had developed an internal and external ecosystem in which recovery could thrive.
Today, I’ll give you my 5-step system that’s part of that recovery mindset and lifestyle to stop porn addiction.
5-Step System to Beat Porn Triggers & Overcome Porn Addiction
Here is the 5-step system for beating porn triggers and cravings:
Awareness
Compassion
Assessment
Responsibility
Planning
1: Awareness
Porn triggers only have as much power as you give them. What do I mean by that? The more time you spend fearing them, denying them, fighting them, trying to escape them—the more power they gain.
Carl Jung famously said, “What you resist persists.” This is a fundamental principle of psychology. So, in order to break free of porn addiction, you need to practice accepting triggers when they come up instead of fighting them. See them for what they are and become aware of them.
Bring immediate Conscious Awareness to the Trigger: What am I feeling?
Is my heart beating fast?
Am I feeling fear?
Am I feeling aroused – sexually or physically attracted?
Am I experiencing thoughts of lust or fantasizing?
This only takes a few seconds. Don’t give this unneeded focus—we don’t want to prolong the trigger—just recognize it and bring awareness to it. The quicker you do so, the better, so that the trigger can’t gain a proper footing in your mind without your awareness.
The goal is not to eliminate triggers but to change your relationship with them. By becoming aware of your triggers without judgment, you reduce their power over you.
It’s not about pretending they don’t exist or running away from them; it’s about facing them with a calm, observant mindset. Over time, as you practice this awareness, you will notice that the intensity of the triggers begins to diminish, and your ability to manage them increases.
2: Compassion
Have self-compassion and understanding. It’s crucial to remember that you’re human and it’s normal to have sexual desires. That’s okay!
As men, we are loaded with testosterone—10 to 20 times that of women. Does this mean we should act on every sexual impulse and say, “Well, I’m a man, so it’s fine”? No. Of course not!
Why would you want that life? No control over your sexual inclinations? No freedom to make your own decisions? Being a slave to your biological cravings?
That’s not the path to happiness or fulfillment.
You want to live a life of meaning, purpose, and excitement. You want to make a difference in the world. To achieve this, you need to take responsibility and build a recovery mindset and lifestyle so that your life isn’t dictated by sexual desires.
Sexual attraction is normal—everyone experiences this. If you can de-stigmatize it and let go of the shame and fear surrounding sexuality, you can remove some of the mental intensity that fuels porn addiction.
Remember, you have a history with porn addiction. You’re building new skills and working hard to change your habits. Triggers are tough, and it’s not easy to change long-standing behaviors. That’s okay. By having some compassion for yourself, you can start to remove the negative emotions that drive you toward relapse.
Acknowledge that you’re doing the best you can in a challenging situation and that progress is a journey, not a destination.
3: Assessment
Once you’ve become aware of a trigger and approached it with compassion, it’s time to assess the situation.
Ask yourself: What got me here? What negative emotions or thought patterns am I caught up in that are contributing to this desire to escape using porn, masturbation, lust, or fantasizing? Ultimately, these are all coping mechanisms to handle mental discomfort like fear, shame, insecurities, etc.
Consider the following questions to help identify the underlying causes:
What’s going on in your life right now that feels out of balance?
Do you feel out of control or in mental chaos?
Are you feeling lonely or isolated?
Do you feel unimportant or overlooked?
Do you have dreams that are not being realized? Are you taking steps toward achieving those dreams?
Are you allowing fear to hold you back from living a more fulfilling life?
Are you feeling distant from loved ones or struggling to connect with others?
Are you engaging in behaviors that are inconsistent with your values, leading to feelings of guilt or shame (aside from watching porn)?
Reflecting on these questions can help you understand the deeper emotional and psychological patterns that are driving your addiction to pornography or masturbation.
This assessment isn’t about blaming yourself; it’s about gaining clarity. When you identify these patterns, you can start to address them directly, making it easier to break your porn habit by dealing with its root causes.
4: Responsibility
Taking responsibility means owning your actions. It’s about understanding that while you cannot always determine what triggers come your way, you can determine your conscious response to them.
This step is not about blame—it’s about empowerment. You are responsible for your feelings and actions, and that’s a powerful thing.
When you feel a trigger coming on, consider what actions you can take to manage your response. Here are some strategies:
Get yourself out of the situation. If you’re in an environment or situation that’s making you feel triggered, leave if you can.
Talk yourself through hard emotions. Are you feeling overwhelmed, angry, uncertain, hurt, or lonely? Speak to yourself with the kindness and understanding you’d offer a friend. Talk yourself through solutions or options for dealing with the emotions in a positive way.
Journaling: Write out what you’re experiencing. Talk about what’s hard and what you might do to mitigate the suffering.
Reach out to a support system. Whether it’s a therapist, a friend, or a support group, talking about your triggers and your feelings can provide relief and perspective.
Do something fulfilling: Though you may not feel like it, choose to get caught up in something uplifting like exercise, music, reading, writing, service, talking with family or friends, etc. Stretch yourself and get outside your comfort zone. Sometimes this may feel impossible. Give yourself time to adjust and often you’ll feel differently soon.
By taking responsibility for your actions, you gain freedom. You acknowledge that while triggers might be inevitable, your reaction to them is within your control. This mindset shift is crucial in breaking free of porn addiction.
5: Planning
While Responsibility was about determining actions you can take when you are triggered, planning is about developing a proactive strategy to handle triggers. It's about creating a recovery mindset and lifestyle that is ready to combat triggers effectively. To create a plan, consider the following:
Know your triggers. List them out and think about situations where you’ve been most vulnerable.
Develop coping mechanisms. Create a list of actions you can take when you feel triggered, such as taking a walk, calling a friend, or engaging in a hobby.
Set boundaries. Limit or eliminate access to potential triggers. This could mean unfollowing certain social media accounts, avoiding certain types of movies or shows, or setting up digital restrictions.
Build a support network. Identify people you can reach out to when you’re feeling triggered, and let them know you’re working on overcoming porn addiction. Ask for their support and encouragement.
Practice mindfulness and relaxation techniques. These can help you stay grounded in the moment and reduce the emotional impact of triggers.
Stay consistent with your recovery plan. Make it a habit to review and update your plan regularly, based on your experiences and any new triggers you identify.
With a plan in place, you’re no longer at the mercy of triggers. You have a clear, actionable strategy to manage them, making it easier to quit porn and build a healthier, more fulfilling life.
Remember, overcoming porn addiction is a journey, and having a plan is a powerful tool to help you navigate that journey with confidence and resilience.
Beat Porn Triggers & Overcome Porn Addiction One Step at a Time
Triggers will come up, and that’s okay. What’s important is how you choose to respond to them. By using this 5-step system—Awareness, Compassion, Assessment, Responsibility, and Planning—you equip yourself with the tools needed to quit pornography and lead a life of purpose and fulfillment.
Remember, you’re not alone in this journey, and each step you take brings you closer to a life free of porn addiction.
For the ultimate guidebook to beat porn triggers, download my free eBook: The 10 Tools to Conquer Porn Cravings.
You’ll learn 10 quick mental techniques that you can use anytime, anywhere to redirect your mind and replace porn cravings with new thought patterns and mental habits.
You can also check out my Free Workshop: The 8 Keys to Lose Your Desire for Porn, where you’ll learn a practical and applied roadmap for recovery, including…
The REAL root causes of porn addiction.
How to stop porn cravings before they start.
The 5 Levels of Cognition that influence addiction.
The 4 Unconscious Drivers of porn cravings.
How sexual shame fuels pornography addiction.
1 simple daily practice to get out of the addiction funnel
And a whole lot more…
So, head to nomoredesire.com, or hit the links in the description, to grab the Free Workshop or the Free eBook and get going on the next steps of your recovery journey.
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No More Desire Podcast | Transcription for Episode 65: Beat Porn Triggers Using this 5-Step System to Overcome Porn Addiction
Welcome to today's episode, my friend. This is Jake Kastleman with No More Desire. I am very, very excited for today's topic, beating porn triggers using this five-step system.
Many of my clients have the same question when they start in my recovery program, and that's when triggers for porn come up for me, I just don't know how to handle them. Are there any simple practices that I can use to overcome porn triggers? I just had someone ask me this today, actually. And in today's episode, I'm going to show you how to beat porn triggers and overcome porn addiction using a simple five-step system that is easy to apply.
It gets results for people. And with this five-step system, you will no longer be confused about how to handle porn triggers because you'll have a strategy in place every time a trigger comes up. It's fantastic.
And you'll be prepared with a recovery mindset and lifestyle that you need to combat porn cravings and come out victorious using this simple five-step system that you can use anytime, anywhere. And let's dive in. So first, I want to talk about direct and indirect triggers for porn addiction, because when we talk about triggers, there's multiple different views on that.
When you're taking the first steps to overcome porn addiction, triggers can feel overwhelming, and they come in many different forms, both direct and indirect. And so direct triggers is what most of us may think of when we think of triggers for porn or lust, fantasizing, you know, quote-unquote, I feel triggered. And a direct trigger is anything that is directly sexually arousing.
So this would be things like seeing a woman in a gym outfit or seeing a lingerie ad online or seeing a woman dressed immodestly or TVs, movies, video games with sexual content, social media posts that contain, you know, a girl in a bikini or sexualized images, right? These are directly sexually arousing. And this is often what I hear within the addiction community. When people say, I feel triggered, they're talking about these direct triggers.
So these triggers can bring feelings for a lot of people and a lot of the clients that I've worked with and for myself included for so many years when I, while I struggled with porn addiction, these triggers can bring feelings of fear very quickly and feelings of shame. When we struggle with porn addiction, perhaps we become aroused by a trigger like this. And then you feel afraid that that arousal is going to lead you to a relapse with porn.
And so you start this spiraling effect that does, that can end up in a relapse in large part because of that negative emotion behind it, that fear and that resistance to the experience. It's also very common for my clients to experience a mental tie between the sexual arousal or physical attraction and tying that to feelings of shame because they hold an unconscious belief that sex and attraction are bad, they're immoral, they're inappropriate, right? Inappropriate, quote unquote. I often hear that word, especially with Christian clients.
Feelings of fear and shame intensify. I need that to, that's really important that we understand that and that you understand that as you're working through your own recovery and you're trying to overcome this addiction, fear and shame intensify the arousal experience. And they really add obsession to what otherwise is just a normal kind of thing, which is physical attraction, sexual attraction.
And I'm no, in no way I'm saying when we spend time in obsession or fixation that that is normal and acceptable. It's acceptable that you're experiencing it because that's part of addiction, but I'm saying that we can change that and overcome it. But as far as sexual arousal or feeling physical attraction, these are very normal things that when we feel fear and shame about them, it really plays into the addiction.
And so that dynamic of feeling that fear and that shame is especially common for those of us with religious backgrounds and religious shame and porn addiction often go hand in hand, which is extremely challenging and not at all the intent of the religion in most instances, I would say. But nonetheless, something that can certainly happen and has happened for many, many people. So let's talk about indirect triggers.
Okay, so we've talked about direct ones, things that are directly sexually arousing. If you're a bit more advanced in your porn addiction recovery journey, you may already be aware that pornography addiction is not so much about those direct triggers as it is about all of the other aspects of your mindset and your lifestyle. Again, within my program, I'm always stressing mindset and lifestyle, build a recovery mindset, build a recovery lifestyle, because an addictive mindset and lifestyle makes us susceptible to porn addiction.
And there are multiple factors that go into that, but we need to build a mindset and lifestyle that fosters recovery. So in other words, there are negative thought, negative emotions and thought patterns and beliefs that are fueling your porn addiction. And it's likely that you've been experiencing these for a long time, a long, long time.
When people start with me, they come with many negative beliefs about themselves, pessimistic beliefs, beliefs about life, and all these stresses that they face of perfectionism and anxiety and hopelessness and low self-esteem that are all deeply contributing to addiction, which I'll talk a little bit more about in a second. But these mental habits that power porn addiction, they're often unconscious. You may be completely unaware that you're feeling these ways.
And during the years that I was addicted to porn, for instance, I dealt with the following unconscious negative emotions, thought patterns, and beliefs, things like social anxiety, anxiety, shame, low self-esteem, perfectionism, and all or nothing thinking black and white thinking, right? Obsessiveness and extremism, learned helplessness and pessimism, anger, insecurity, feeling emotionally restricted. That was another thing as well. And that goes with the anger often is just feeling uptight and restricted.
And I couldn't express myself. And then also lacking purpose and lacking meaning in my life. I had a fire inside of me I wanted to use, and I wanted to do meaningful things and change people's lives and make a difference.
And I wasn't. Instead, I was spending my days playing video games and eating processed foods and watching TV and movies and, you know, kind of engaging in school and work and other things like that, but not really invested. And that did not feel fulfilling for me.
And I had no idea what I was missing, that I was missing this purpose and this meaning. And I was very quiet. I was very shy as a child.
I often felt anxious and insecure. And those feelings followed me into adulthood. And I had, again, I had no idea that I was experiencing them because it was just my life.
It was just the way things were for me. And because my mind was in a constant state of suffering, I needed places to escape. And porn was one of those places.
I could only quit porn once I gained the necessary knowledge and skills to manage and heal from these mental and emotional burdens I carried. And that's one of the things, one of the big things, that I take my clients through a process that is very hands-on to help them build that out, to come to deeply understand the unconscious beliefs, thought patterns, etc., negative emotions that they're dealing with, and to be able to work through them and then turn over to just essentially explore that mindset and then turn it over to a recovery mindset. And if you want to know more about that, I have the five levels of cognitive processes as well as the four unconscious drivers that I talk about in my free workshop on nomoredesire.com. It's completely free to you.
And I talk about that in addition to many, many other things to help you with building this recovery mindset and lifestyle. Eight keys to build it, in fact. So once I developed a recovery mindset and lifestyle, I could finally get rid of porn addiction because I had dealt with the underlying reasons that I kept going back to it.
So I no longer needed porn to escape because I had developed an internal and external ecosystem in which recovery could thrive. And so essentially today, I'm going to give you a five-step system that's part of that recovery mindset and lifestyle to stop porn addiction. It's a very important part because when it comes to triggers, we need to be able to talk ourselves through them.
In a phrase, that's essentially what we're doing here. But we need to know how to talk ourselves through a trigger. And that can feel really complex and confusing when we don't have the skills to do it.
And so my highest recommendation, I'm going to share this five-step system with you today. But in addition, my highest recommendation to you is to pick up my free ebook on my site, The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings. If you want a powerful reference for techniques that you can use at any moment to handle porn triggers, that free ebook is going to give you that.
It's going to give you 10 quick mental techniques that you can use anytime, anywhere to redirect your mind and replace porn cravings with new thought patterns and mental habits. So you can find that in the description below this episode, or you can just go to nomoredesire.com and you'll find it on the homepage. So let's get started with the five-step system to beat porn triggers and overcome porn addiction.
And this is a, just a terrible acronym. I'm not proud of the way the acronym sounds, but excuse me, it can be a helpful way to remember it perhaps. It's debatable, but they're in these five steps.
It's A-C-A-R-P. So ACARP, again, just a horrible sounding acronym, but ACARP is the acronym you can use to remember this five-step system if it works for you. So step number one is awareness.
Porn triggers only have as much power as you give them. And what do I mean by that? The more time that you spend fearing porn triggers, denying them, fighting them, trying to escape from them, the more power they're going to gain. And our automatic response to triggers or to fear or to shame or to negative emotions as a whole, our automatic response can very easily be resistance.
Resisting it, denying it, running away from it, trying to distract ourselves from it. I don't want to feel this. When the only way to overcome is to move through, we can't try to skirt around the hard emotions if we want to actually heal.
And Carl Jung famously said, what you resist persists. That's a secret of psychology and how our brain works. In order to overcome porn addiction, you need to practice accepting triggers when they come up.
Instead of fighting them or trying to deny them, you need to face them, see them for what they are, become aware of them. Bring this immediate conscious awareness to the trigger. In other words saying, what am I feeling right now? Is my heart beating fast? Am I experiencing sexual arousal? Am I feeling fear or shame about this arousal? Am I experiencing this physical attraction to someone? Am I experiencing thoughts of lust or fantasizing? And this only takes a few seconds.
This first step in this system, this doesn't need to be something we really focus on or especially not ruminate on. That's not going to help. But to just bring an immediate awareness, be the observer of our mind as is stated in Buddhism or become the observer of your mind and look down at your thoughts and say, okay, I see what's happening.
I've just, I've just experienced a trigger. Okay. And so we don't want to prolong the trigger, just recognize it, bring awareness to it.
What am I feeling? What am I experiencing? What triggered me? Step number two in the five-step system is to have self-compassion and understanding. So compassion, right? ACARP. So A-C, compassion.
Have self-compassion and understanding. In other words, I'm a man. I'm a man.
Okay. And for women, if you're a woman, you can do this as a woman too. Women have sexual desires and inclinations, just as men do.
But speaking particularly to men, because they're a vast majority of those addicted to porn, which I could do a whole another episode on. In fact, that's a pretty good idea. Maybe I'll do that.
If you'll shoot me an email, jake at nomoredesire.com and say, I want to hear that episode. Why are men particularly prone towards porn addiction? I would love to do an episode on that, but having this compassion for ourselves is saying, I'm a man. It's normal for me to feel sexually charged and to have sexual desires.
That's okay. I'm loaded up with testosterone, 10 to 20 times the amount of testosterone that have. That's a lot.
That's a lot of drive as a whole. And it's a lot of sex drive. Does this mean that I'm a sex machine and I should just give away to all of my sexual fantasies and say, well, I'm a man.
So, you know, I just want to, I want to have sex with all the women in the world. And that's just the way I am. No, if you've listened to any of my other episodes, you know, I don't see it that way.
And quite frankly, why would you want that life? When people talk about just having meaningless sex or having sex with all these women, don't you want to have mastery over your sexual inclinations? Don't you want to have freedom to make your own decisions? Don't you want to have the freedom and the power to build meaningful relationships with women and to actually emotionally enjoy those relationships and to feel a deep respect and a love for them and from them, right? And especially if you're married, which is probably a vast majority of the people listening to this, this episode, because I know it's a vast majority of the people that I work with. You don't want to be a slave to your biological cravings. It sucks, right? You don't want that.
And so when we use excuses like I have a high sex, sex drive, or I'm just a man. And so it makes sense. I feel these desires and inclinations, or I need sex.
It's not a need. All right. It's not a need.
Okay. And I know a lot of people are going to disagree with that, but it isn't. It is a choice.
It is, it is optional and overcoming porn addiction is by no means easy in any way, shape or fashion. Okay. But we do, we do have choices over time.
If we know how to build a recovery mindset and lifestyle, we can make choices to get to a point where we are the master over our sexual inclinations. And when you are the master over your sexual inclinations, you stand to make them the greatest difference in this world to serve the most people, to live the happiest life, to feel the most fulfilled and purposeful, because you can then use that drive to do other great and amazing things. Now it's not controlling you.
Now it doesn't dictate your actions. Now your penis doesn't have the brain. We always talk about that, right? We say, I know where men's brains are.
That's only if you're allowing it to run the show. And again, I have a deep compassion for, for, for so many men who feel powerless against it. But what I'm, what I'm telling you is there is so much hope.
You have power. You can become powerful when it comes to your sexual desires. That's a bit of a tangent, but so, so the point is understand one of the points of what I'm saying, I should say is understand you have a sex drive.
You have sexual desires and inclinations. Sexual attraction is normal. It makes sense that you'd feel these things that you'd feel this desire and, and, and say, I'm a man, I'm a human being.
I have these desires. There's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing strange or weird with me.
Okay. And then, and then along with that, remember for you personally, you have a history of porn addiction. You have some new skills that you're working to build and things trigger you and it's hard.
It's not easy. All right. And that's okay.
Have some compassion for yourself and you can remove some of the negative emotion that drives you toward relapse. If you can have this compassion, both as a man, as a human being who feels sexual attraction and remembering as I state in the 10 tools to conquer cravings, my ebook, I say, remember your history. Okay.
Have that compassion for yourself. I have a history of porn addiction. Maybe it started when I was young.
My brain grew around this and it's going to take time for me to work on new mental habits and to form new beliefs and new ways that I see women and new ways that I see sex and that I see physical attraction. It's going to take time. That's okay.
Give yourself that time.
Step number three is assessment. So ACARP, right, A-C-A, assessment. In other words, what got me here? I'm experiencing this trigger, and it can be easy enough and obvious enough to say, well, I saw a woman at the grocery store who was wearing short shorts and a low-cut shirt, and I felt triggered.
I felt lust. I felt fantasizing. That's what got me here.
That's not what got you here, okay? And I don't mean that in any kind of, again, any kind of dis-compassionate way. I feel deep compassion. I understand it really, really well that the lust and fantasizing has become a habit, and it's not easy to see through it.
It's not easy to change it, but it can be changed. You can look at a woman at the grocery store and think she's beautiful, and then be able to move on with your life and do things that are more important with your life than lusting, fantasizing, fixating. But you ask, what got me here? In other words, what negative emotions or thought patterns am I caught up in that are contributing to this desire to escape using porn, masturbation, lust, fantasizing? Because this goes to a much deeper level.
As I talked about with indirect triggers, all of our negative emotions, our anger, our anxiety, our fear and shame, even, you know, our pride as well, right? Our insecurities, our lack of self-esteem, our lack of purpose and drive, and then many other things with our lifestyle, and many more things we could go into with mindset. What's leading to this fixation on body parts and on sex and on this desire for sex, right? What is behind the fixation? Because ultimately, from an IFS perspective, internal family systems and other perspectives, this is a coping mechanism. Porn addiction is a coping mechanism.
Our lusts, our fantasizing is a coping mechanism. There is the obvious side of pleasure when it comes to porn or it comes to sex or lust, fantasizing. Yeah, obviously, those things are innately pleasurable from a biological standpoint.
But our fixation upon them acts as a distraction from our underlying mental and emotional suffering. And so we need to ask, what negative emotions or thought patterns am I caught that is contributing to this desire to escape? Ultimately, or this, I say escape, I should also say control because addiction is a mechanism of control. I'm trying to use this thing in order to control my emotions because I don't want to feel hard things.
And so I'm going to use any distraction necessary in order to do that. And this addict part of me, again, from an IFS perspective, is stepping in to try to protect me, to try to help me, to try to help me feel safe, and to be safe from these negative emotions and this fear and shame and insecurities. I hope that makes sense.
So ultimately, what's going on in your life right now that's out of balance? Ask yourself that. Am I feeling out of control? Am I feeling lonely? And not just in this moment, but over time, over the days, weeks, months, or years? What am I feeling in my life? Do I feel unimportant? Do I have dreams that are not being realized? Do I need to take some steps to start realizing those dreams? Are you letting fear hold you back from living a more fulfilling life? Do you feel distant from those from who you truly are, and you know you want to do more? Do you feel distant from loved ones? Are you doing a poor job at things when you're honest with yourself? Are you being impulsive, and is that causing you to feel a low sense of self-esteem? If so, there may be some things that need to change, and that's not going to all happen at once, but there's action that you need to take. Are you procrastinating? Are there important things in your life that you're not doing, and that you continuously procrastinate? Either with your mental health, your physical health, your health in your relationships, your spiritual health, right? Or are there other, again, other pursuits, other things that you feel you need to be doing that you keep procrastinating? That procrastination is fueling your porn cravings and leading you to addiction.
I've watched it happen. It's common with every single person I work with. There's something they're procrastinating or avoiding, and we could talk about that with reference to other mental health disorders, that that plays a role in many areas and with many disorders.
So ask yourself those questions, and also I'll add, ask yourself, are you physically feeling unwell? How's your diet? How's your exercise? That plays a massive role. When my diet changed, which it changed substantially, and it took me years to years to change it, I mean, really over a decade of time and effort testing things and figuring out what worked best for me, but when I found a diet that really worked for me, in other words, a way of eating a lifestyle, some people say they think diet, and they think something temporary. I'm talking ongoing diet all the time in your life.
When I found something that really worked for me, which ultimately is the paleo diet, and I know that's so trendy and everything, but for me, I found just through a series of events over a decade that that diet worked really well for my brain and my energy levels and my physical health. I have more energy than I've ever had. My mood is better than it's ever been.
That stuff impacts you. It ultimately, from my perspective, it improved my life. Oh man.
It improved, I should say, my recovery and decreased my porn cravings about 50%. And again, when I say porn cravings, I'm talking all addiction cravings. Again, the desire to escape from stress and hard feelings, because so much of my stress and hard feelings became so much lower because I was physically feeling so much better.
So it's important to explore these aspects of your lifestyle. Are you doing things in your lifestyle that are fueling addiction, like eating processed foods and junk and crap and not eating fruits and veggies and plants, nuts, seeds, or are you fueling recovery, right? Your diet plays a role in that. All the decisions you make all day every day play a role in that recovery.
And again, with the people I work with, I help them build out that life. Number four. Okay, so we've talked about the first three, which are awareness, compassion, and assessment.
And then number four, the fourth step is responsibility. In other words, what are you going to do about this way that you're feeling right now? So you've become aware, you've expressed compassion for yourself, you've assessed, here's why I'm at where I'm at, and here's both the direct and indirect reasons for that. And now I'm going to determine what am I doing? And this is an empowerment concept is what I often like to call it.
What am I going to do to empower this situation, to empower myself, to empower my recovery? Don't waste time blaming other people or circumstances for the way that you feel. It's not about the girl in the grocery store wearing the short shorts. It's not about the ad on the computer screen that's triggering you.
These things are going to happen continuously. They're always going to happen. They will never stop.
I have been sober almost nine years, or sorry, I've been sober almost 10 years, and they've never stopped. These things continue to come up, and they're much less frequent because I choose different media, and I choose to put myself in different situations that are much better for me and my recovery. But these things, they seek you out.
They will find you in your daily life, and you're not responsible for those things happening. They're going to come up again and again, but what you are responsible for is taking action to do something about what you're feeling. Get yourself out of that situation.
Talk yourself through the hard emotions. Do a little self therapy. Are you feeling overwhelmed? Are you feeling angry, or uncertain, or hurt, or lonely? Talk yourself through those emotions like a loving parent would.
Be that source of love and compassion for yourself. Journal about the trigger. Journal and walk through these five steps.
Write them out, and in fact, I should probably create something like that. I may or may not, but journal it out. Write out these five steps, okay, and talk about what am I going to do next, okay? Or what am I feeling right now? What am I going through, and what's going to help me right now? What am I really in need of? And start doing something that helps you feel fulfilled.
Sports, music, reading, writing, serving other people, talking with friends or family, being there for someone. I often say when it comes to recovery, the more we can get focused from a selfless perspective, the more we can get focused on other people reaching out, doing good for others, loving others, helping others. That's going to go directly counter to addiction, because addiction is all about getting pleasure for myself.
It's all about my heart emotions, the difficult things I'm experiencing, and escaping them. So walk that path. Take that responsibility.
What do you need to do? And then step number five is planning. And planning is essentially, it's similar to responsibility, but it's more, there's much more forethought, as obviously it suggests the word planning could suggest forethought. In other words, how am I going to avoid these situations in the future? Or what do I need to start doing or stop doing in order to feel more fulfilled, or more belonging, or more love, or strength, or self-esteem, more purpose, more meaning, reach out to people more, do more good in the world.
What things do I need to change in my life so that I find, so that I have less fixation and obsession, and this desire to escape using addiction, and these cravings that are ultimately a coping mechanism to get me out of uncomfortable feelings with negative emotions, beliefs, thought patterns. What am I going to do differently from here in order to set myself up for success the next time that a trigger comes? And what am I learning from this experience? So rate and follow this podcast my friend. Hit that notification bell.
Give me some love. The more ratings that this podcast gets, the more people can get help in their recovery. So do yourself a favor, do others a favor, do me a favor, and rate this podcast, and give it a follow, and hit that notification bell.
If you want way, way more to beat porn triggers and cravings, download my free ebook, The 10 Tools to Conquer Cravings. I know I've already mentioned it, but this truly is a very quick reference and resource to be able to work through triggers and cravings in 10 different ways. And it's free.
It's there. It's easy to get. Go to nomoredesire.com. It's there on the home page, or you can hit the link in the description below this episode.
I'm going to give you 10 quick mental techniques that you can use anytime, anywhere to redirect your mind and replace porn cravings with new thought patterns, new mental habits. And you can also check out my free workshop that I mentioned earlier as well, The Eight Keys to Lose Your Desire for Porn. Truly a culmination in so many ways of the very best I can give you for free, at least, without working with you directly one-on-one, where I'm going to give you a practical and applied roadmap for recovery.
That includes the real root causes of porn addiction, how to stop porn cravings before they start, the five levels of cognition that influence addiction, the four unconscious drivers of porn cravings. Very powerful, very important. Once you learn those, you see addiction completely differently and you're empowered to change your mindset.
How sexual shame fuels pornography addiction. That's fundamental. One simple daily exercise to get out of the addiction funnel as well, and a whole lot more over the course of that free workshop.
So that's an hour and a half of incredible knowledge I'm offering to you for free. Things that I wish I would have known a decade ago. Head to nomoredesire.com or hit the links in the description to grab the free workshop or the free ebook and get going on the next steps of your recovery journey, my friend.
God bless and much love.
นี่เป็นโพสต์ที่มีประโยชน์มาก! ฉันชอบวิธีที่คุณแบ่งขั้นตอนออกมาอย่างชัดเจนเป็นระบบ 5 ขั้นตอน การมีแนวทางที่นำไปใช้ได้จริงเป็นสิ่งสำคัญมากในการรับมือกับนิสัยที่เลิกได้ยากอย่างการเสพติดสื่อลามก ฉันชอบที่คุณเน้นเรื่องการมีสติและการสร้างกิจวัตรใหม่ ๆ — ฟังดูแล้วสามารถทำได้จริง ไม่ใช่เรื่องเกินตัว
ฉันยังคิดว่าการหากิจกรรมหรือชุมชนใหม่ ๆ เพื่อเติมเต็มเวลาว่างเป็นเรื่องจำเป็นมาก บางครั้งการค้นพบสิ่งใหม่ เช่น การติดตามอินฟลูเอนเซอร์ ไลฟ์สไตล์ หรือลองเปิดใจทำความรู้จักกับ ไซไล ก็ช่วยสร้างแรงบันดาลใจและจุดหมายใหม่ ๆ ให้ชีวิตได้ นอกจากนี้ หากคุณกำลังมองหาพื้นที่ออนไลน์ดี ๆ ที่สนับสนุนความคิดสร้างสรรค์ ฉันขอแนะนำ FWFans เลย — เป็นแพลตฟอร์มที่รวมเหล่าครีเอเตอร์สุดเจ๋งไว้ในบรรยากาศที่เป็นมิตรสุด ๆ!