Watching pornography isn’t necessarily a bad thing. About 40 million Americans watch porn every day. For some, this viewing becomes an addiction with negative consequences and leaves you wondering how to stop watching porn.
However, a porn addiction causes changes in brain activity similar to those seen in people with substance use disorders. If you are addicted to porn, your brain responds to seeing it the same way a drug addict’s brain responds to seeing drug paraphernalia.
What is Porn Addiction?
Watching pornography doesn’t make you a porn addict. Porn addiction happens when your pornography viewing has negative consequences on your daily life. Even though it is not recognized as an official psychiatric diagnosis, mental health professionals agree that porn addiction is real.
Porn addiction can be identified with the following signs:
- Intrusive Thoughts. You think about porn, even when you’re doing other activities.
- Increased Usage. You spend an increasing amount of time watching porn and it still doesn’t seem to be enough. You give up other activities or neglect responsibilities to spend more time watching porn. And may even find yourself watching porn at inappropriate times, like while you’re at work.
- Hiding. You hide your porn watching from those close to you, likely because you think they would disagree with it.
- Dissatisfaction. You feel unsatisfied until you watch porn. You may be unsatisfied with your sex life or partner unless porn is involved.
- Debt. You spend increasing amounts of money on porn, perhaps even putting yourself into debt.
- Increased Need. Not only do you continue to watch more porn, but you also need to watch increasingly more extreme porn to get the same release.
- Inability to Quit. You want to stop watching porn, maybe you’ve even tried to, but you can’t. You know your porn viewership has negative consequences. It may even make you feel guilty and ashamed, but you just can’t seem to stop.
Mental health researchers don’t think one thing causes pornography addiction. More likely, a combination of factors causes it. Those factors include a chemical imbalance in the brain, brain disease, and/or an underlying mental illness.
While they don’t know exactly what causes pornography addiction, mental health experts agree that certain factors make you more likely to become addicted. Those factors include:
- Ease of Access. The internet makes access to pornography much easier than in the past. It’s literally at your fingertips, 24/7.
- Past Conflicts. Issues with past relationships or conflicts within your home life.
- Familial History. Personal or family drug addiction or past physical or sexual abuse.
- Sexual Views. Growing up with or developing unhealthy views about sex.
How Porn Addiction Can Negatively Impact Your Life
Over time, pornography addiction begins to negatively impact your life, just like any other type of addiction or mental health issue left untreated.
You should seek porn addiction help when:
- You Develop Other Mental Health Issues. The guilt or shame you feel about your addiction causes you to develop other mental health issues. For example, you become depressed because you feel so badly about your consistent pornography viewing.
- Your Behavior is Risky. You begin to feel like you need to engage in increasingly risky behavior to get the same emotional release. This could mean watching pornography when you know it’s inappropriate and that you could be caught, like at work. It also could mean using alcohol or other substances while you’re watching porn to get the same feelings.
- You Risk Financial Stability. You’re spending increasing amounts of money on pornography, to the point that you are unable to meet your financial obligations, like paying your bills.
- You Harm Your Relationships. You are neglecting others around you because you’re trying to keep your addiction a secret. Or your partner is aware of your need to watch porn and doesn’t approve of it. It may even make them feel badly about themselves.
- You Fail to Keep Commitments. You spend so much time watching porn that you can’t get your work done and are risking your employment. This means you may also stop participating in activities you used to enjoy or spending time with others because you’re spending the time watching porn.
- You Can’t Stop. You’ve tried unsuccessfully to stop watching porn, but you can’t seem to stop on your own.
5 Steps to Stop Watching Porn
Pornography gives your brain a dopamine hit (a feel-good brain reaction) each time you watch it. You come to expect and crave that dopamine response over time. You also need to up the stakes (i.e., watch more porn or more extreme porn) to get the same dopamine response because your body begins to normalize what you’re seeing and your brain doesn’t respond the same way.
This is how addiction develops.
It may be possible for you to gain control of your porn viewing without professional treatment.
To quit on your own, try these five steps:
- Remove the Porn. Delete and block pornography and pornographic websites on all of your electronic devices. Better yet, do this and have another person put password-protected blockers on your devices. They keep the passwords, not you. Throw away any hard copies of pornography material you have.
- Plan an Activity. Staying busy can help you not think about missing the porn-related dopamine hit. Plan another healthy activity you can do when you start thinking about watching pornography. All types of activities, from exercising to listening to music, trigger dopamine release. Have a plan for what you will do instead when you want to watch porn.
- Avoid Triggers. If there are certain things that make you want to watch porn, avoid those triggers. For example, if you always sit down at the computer to watch porn in the evening, do not log on then. Also, have a plan for how to cope if you can’t avoid a trigger. It’s helpful, like in the point above, to think about a healthy activity you’ll do instead.
- Remain Grounded. When you want to watch porn, think about how porn negatively impacts your life. What loss and/or damage has this addiction caused you? Consider journaling about what you’ve gone through, how you’re coping, and what you want from life outside of addiction.
- Get Help. Recruit your partner or a close friend to help you overcome your pornography addiction and hold you accountable in breaking out of the cycle.
You should seek professional help if you can’t quit your pornography addiction on your own or you think you have other mental health issues beyond your pornography addiction.
Pornography Addiction Treatment at ILC
Pornography addiction can be treated in the same way that other sexual addiction or intimacy disorder is treated. Treatment — which usually involves therapy, medication, and self-help groups — begins with understanding what caused the addiction and recognizing the danger of continuing these behaviors. You then learn how to stop porn addiction comprehensively, manage your urges well, and have a healthy sex life.
Integrative Life Center provides treatment for sexual addiction. ILC’s addiction treatment program helps eliminate the isolation, embarrassment, and overwhelm you may have about getting help for your addiction. Our therapy options include:
- Yoga therapy. When paired with other therapy types, yoga therapy can help you physically release trauma from your body and gain control of your thoughts and feelings.
- Psychodrama therapy. These group sessions use guided drama exercises to help you learn healthy coping mechanisms and better communications methods, among other things.
- Motivational interviewing therapy. Used specifically for addiction treatment, this therapy helps you confront your motivations and resolve uncertain feelings, thoughts, and insecurities. Motivational interviewing therapy makes you responsible and accountable for your actions while developing a plan to address them.
- Dialectical behavior therapy. Uses mindfulness to help you learn how to observe your emotions in stressful situations instead of reacting to them, helping you recognize triggers and avoid undesirable actions.
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy. Perhaps the most common type of therapy, CBT helps you and your therapist identify harmful ways you think and behave. You then work together to determine how to respond to those thoughts and actions in a healthier way.
Key Takeaways
Watching pornography is not necessarily a bad thing, unless it negatively impacts your life. You can try to stop watching pornography on your own, following the steps above.
However, if these steps don’t work, you should seek professional help before your addiction worsens. ILC has the tools available to help you overcome your sex addiction. Contact us today to get started with a treatment plan.
