When you have an urge for porn and you decide that you’re not going to look at it, how does that feel?
Do you know and can you name the feeling?
You might not since you might never have thought about it before. I know I didn’t the first time I started noticing.
I know now, it’s all very clear.
When I deny myself something that part of me wants whether it’s porn or even just a piece of cake, my brain throws a fit and starts whining and complaining.
The feeling I get is sadness like I’m missing out on something.
It’s literally sadness and if I could put words to it, it would say “aww come on!!!!!” in a really whiny voice.
And then the excuses start.
It’ll be the last time
One look won’t hurt.
I’ll be good tomorrow.
I’ve done so good, it won’t matter.
I deserve it, I worked hard.
When all of this is happening I know something is going on so I start to look at it. I’ll ask myself, what is going on right now that my brain wants me to use porn. It doesn’t take long to determine what it is. It can be just not wanting to do some work or maybe I’m stressed about something.
In all cases, it’s some type of avoidance. It might be just boredom because it’s Saturday afternoon and there’s not a lot going on.
When we start to look at & address the core issues, we are really focusing on THE problems that needs to be resolved so that we don’t need to turn to porn.
Up until the point when you start doing this, your brain is running on autopilot and giving you thoughts to look at porn so that you can escape the pain of the current moment.
That autopilot is our current conditioning and it is what needs to change so that we can get free of porn.
Once you start focusing on the core issues and changing the resulting behaviour THEN you start creating NEW conditioning to replace the old conditioning.
That is how this works. You do that enough times and you will literally train your brain to do something else other than using porn.
That something else is up to you. You might take a moment and address the core issue and then decide to go for a walk or call someone or tell your wife you love her (This is a GREAT IDEA! Why not tell her every moment you would have been looking at or thinking of using porn?).
But I think it’s important to take that moment to acknowledge what is going on and then deciding to do that something else. This is the training. This is what your brain needs to learn.
It has to learn that you’re capable of handling whatever it is that you’re trying to avoid. It has to learn that you can handle that and go do something else vs your old conditioning which simple has you running from the pain into the pleasure of porn.
What things can you do instead?
What things do you WANT to do instead?
Feel free to let me know, I’m always interested in talking with anyone who wants to talk about this stuff. It’s one of my favorite subjects.
