Unplug from porn by unplugging from what drives porn.
Many men find their way to work to one of our groups or trainings and often to my coaching because of their history of porn. Because it’s so available and free – we have a significant problem.
25% of search engine requests are related to sex
35% of downloads from the internet are pornographic
40 million Americans say they regularly visit porn sites
70% of men aged 18 to 24 visit a porn site at least once per month
Thanksgiving is the most popular day of the year for viewing porn
*From: https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/process-addiction/porn-addiction/related/pornography-statistics/
Rather than repeat a lot of the advice you can find on the internet, let me dive into what I’ve learned from working with men and my studies. Realize neither EVRYMAN nor I are therapists. Finding a good therapist can help.
My first orientation is to unpack what drives the porn. Telling a man or yourself to stop does not work. EVRYMAN’S approach is to take a bottom-up perspective less for the understanding and more because it drives the unwinding.
Milton Erickson, MD, a psychiatrist, and master of understanding the unconscious, used the term utilization to describe how we use less than positive means to meet valid needs. When they can’t be met in a healthy manner, we will use a less healthy behavior.
What is the need it fills as you slow down and drop down into your own experience and attraction to porn? Feel your body. Feel what you want… really want — not the fix, the deeper desire. Be vulnerable with yourself.
Feel what is missing; what are you longing for? What do others have that you want?
You may pass through layers of somatic and emotional feelings as you drop down. Likely there will be layers of shame. Shame around your body, emotional needs for connection, sex, and what you’ve done can linger in your body and past.
Feel the places where you wanted connection and didn’t get it. Start with the innocent connection a child wants from his parents. Then the connection you want from a lover. Not knowing it’s healthy to want connection and less likely knowing how to get it – what did you do? Where did you go?
We need vulnerable connection as we nourishing food. Yet, we go for junk connection and food. When we are hungry, we consume what is in front of us. Over time we become more disconnected and conditioned to reach for the quick fix.
Johann Hari’s book, Chasing the Scream (The Opposite of Addiction is Connection), complies research and stories that lay out that when we don’t have connection, we are vulnerable to addiction. The two core foci of our groups are emotional physiology and connection. When we create emotional safety and down-regulate our stress response to create connection, many problems solve themselves.
Our friend and champion, Esther Perel, speaks about how using porn trains our body and mind to impact our arousal response. Men teach themselves to get off through a fantasy easily and quickly. We program ourselves to be efficient – not connected.
The more you do porn, the further away you are from feeling the emotional and body high that comes from deep connection. Vulnerability is the most potent aphrodisiac.
Unpacking Porn
Find someone to speak to. It could be a therapist, coach, or a men’s group.
First step, be honest. Speaks to your relationship with porn. Behind judgments, past and current behaviors, and the best of your abilities, what deeper need is porn fulfilling? We heal shame by taking it out of the dark closet into the light. Feel the emotions come up as you speak.
Next, if you want to change your relationship with porn, come up with a plan. The plan should be slow. One small behavior change at a time. Approach it from two sides—slowly decreasing porn usage and the other addressing the deeper needs.
For example, if you spoke about using porn three times a week. Maybe you start with just agreeing to do a minute of somatic mindfulness before you do porn. Slow down and feel more – that is all. Then you up it by increasing the time, writing down what comes up, and checking in with another man. You get the picture – slow and steady.
Dive in with the group or coach on the needs the porn is fulfilling. I recently had a client who discovered as we dove into his deeper need; as a teenager, he rebelled against his father’s control by escaping to porn. The pleasure he got from porn was under his control.
We got there not by figuring it out. We got there by him slowing down and feeling the threads of unfelt emotions.
We came up with a plan for his ‘rebel’ to express itself in more affirming and connecting ways. Feeling, owning, and expressing the deeper want in a way that worked better for the man gave him a tremendous amount of energy. Decreasing his porn use became easy after that.
Turning around your porn usage is tough. I know you can do it – I’ve seen other men do it. Be compassionate.