If you are reading this, you are probably attempting to stop watching porn and seeking assistance. The good news is that you can quit porn without spending much money on rehab if you follow the steps in this article!
Before you continue reading, this is a link to all my articles that can boost your productivity.
Porn addiction is one of the hardest addictions to beat. You will feel helpless at some point because it is a powerful addiction. (You Might Want to Read: Overthinking Cannot Solve Your Problem, But Sleep Can).
So, I want to show you how to finally stop watching porn for good. In fact, after reading my guide, you will learn how to hate it. Why? Because it is killing you slowly!
Pornography becomes addictive once you start seeing it often, impacting how you perceive relationships, the opposite sex, and sex. Aside from that, it will unquestionably muddle your thinking.
Trying to stop porn is like kicking a horrible habit like cursing or nail biting. Although there are a few exceptions, giving up porn is generally similar to giving up any other harmful practice.
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Most online research addresses dopamine, inner healing, why porn is your coping strategy, and why you watch porn for the reasons you do.
Although it is crucial for you to feel complete, this does not necessarily lead to a solution to the problem of porn addiction.
These self-acclaimed experts either lack knowledge about porn addiction (or any addiction, for that matter) or are fakes attempting to sell you something when they provide advice this way.
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As a spiritual leader, I have had the privilege of counseling people on several occasions. A percentage of young people with an addiction problem have pornography issues, and I have been able to help most of them, and in this article, I am showing you all the methods I have used.
From my little experience, I have concluded that even prayer will not solve the pornography addiction issues.
Pornography addiction is a habit, just like smoking. You cannot pray a smoker out of smoking. You would have to deal with the habit itself.
The Magic Formula to Break Any Bad Habit
It takes time, commitment, and discipline to alter a habit; even with that, each person’s process will be slightly different.
There is no magic formula for breaking any habit, whether it be smoking, drinking soda, or watching pornography.
Progress is not linear. You will have weeks when you feel like you’re progressing toward stopping the bad habit and forming a new one and weeks when you have setbacks that make you feel awful. That is quite normal. The goal is to pick yourself up, get back on your feet, and move on from your setback rather than dwell in it.
You won’t find it here if you seek the one magical secret that will fix all your issues. You probably already know the things that I want to share with you. But having the resolve to carry them out is the sole “secret” to defeating bad habits.
Why is Porn Very Dangerous?
Porn uses a phenomenon known as The Coolidge Effect to hijack and rewire the brain. How? Sexual Diversity.
Sexual diversity makes it practically impossible to become bored. There is a fact that an average man will prioritize finding a new companion over food and water. He doesn’t often have a lot of alternatives, but pornography gives the impression of choice.
The ability of the human mind to discern between actual and imagined occurrences is surprisingly limited. The fact that scary movies are frightening contributes to the addictive nature of pornography.
Even if we know it is not in front of us, we have a hormonal and physical reaction to whatever we watch.
Can Porn Ruin Your Relationship?
According to Psychology Today, a romantic relationship is more likely to end if pornographic material is viewed.
A person addicted to porn is more likely to cheat and emotionally upset the addict’s spouse. Many individuals already perceive pornographic material as an act of adultery. If the couple has kids, the relationship’s death due to a porn addiction also affects the kids.
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And yet, the way that porn is more often than not discussed at most churches tends to be incredibly counterproductive, driving teenagers and youths deeper into porn use instead of away from it.
When someone has a porn addiction problem, we do not need to demonize them. What we should be concerned about is how we can rewire their mentality and replace porn addiction with stronger routines that can put them in the right direction spiritually.
Shame can not be a good motivator for seeking improvement. Excess shame can even bring a person down.
That’s why, and this relates to the points made above, I think it’s highly ineffective to go overboard on demonizing porn use. Yes, watching pornographic content is sinful, and I’ve got nothing against calling a sin a sin.
Jesus said simply looking at a woman with lust was adultery, yet if we catch a young man gaping at a woman’s cleavage, we tend to smack him in the head and tell him to behave himself. Yet if he looks at a pair of breasts online – whoa-ho-ho! — he is sick! Filthy! Possessed! Depraved! On the pathway to addiction and Hell!
This can lead the porn user to withdraw, hide his dirty secret at all costs from his friends and family, suffer crushing guilt and anxiety, and feel hopelessly sick, which all leads back to more porn to soothe his feelings of stress and isolation!
Why You Should Stop Watching Porn
Before we discuss how to stop porn, let’s make sure we agree on why you should stop porn if you’re not convinced that it is a severe problem.
You don’t have that persistent guilt when doing the right thing. Because you know you have nothing to hide when you have a clear conscience.
However, regular porn users are aware that they are hiding something. You can rationalize it and convince yourself that it’s acceptable, but your conscience won’t accept it.
Every man, woman, and child have God’s laws engraved on their hearts, so we are responsible for evaluating our own conduct. Your conscience is that tiny voice in your brain that acts as a moral alarm system, alerting you to your wrongdoing and making you feel bad. Unless you have become very hardened, you will be bothered when you do the wrong thing, like watching porn.
I think the easiest way to solve a problem is by knowing the situation and understanding it.
So, here’s a list of reasons why you should stop watching porn:
- It can mess up your mind and bring dirty imagination to you now and then. This will seriously affect your productivity.
- Porn can rid you of your common sense. This is because your hormones would be triggered, and you will be hungry for a taste of what you had watched.
- Watching porn steals your time.
- Porn steals your focus.
- Porn can hinder your creativity.
- Porn affects its victim spiritually. You will not feel ‘clean’, and your heart will be endangered.
- Porn degrades your ability to exercise self-control.
- Porn addiction can lead to depression.
- Porn can kill your conscience.
- It can cause sexual abnormalities because you will have wrong expectations from your partners that will affect your marriage.
- It puts a dent in your self-confidence.
- Porn lowers our view of women, training us to see each other as sexual commodities.
I found out that someone elsewhere has given 40 Reasons Why You Should Stop watching porn. If you need more reasons, read the list here.
Your Life Goals Are Important
You don’t want porn to destroy your life. It will affect your productivity to a large extent.
Try answering these crucial questions:
- In three years, where do you want to be?
- In eight years, where do you want to be?
- What do you want out of life?
Everything you do with your time can be categorized into one of the following classifications: Consuming, Contributing, and Creating.
Consuming: Watching Netflix content, buying clothes, browsing on Instagram and Facebook, Visiting a museum or eatery, attending TEDx events, reading your Bible, etc.
Contributing: Replying to a tweet, leaving a YouTube video comment, commenting on blogs (like mine).
Creating: Starting a coffee shop, producing songs you can distribute, making content, etc.
Here’s the problem. If you consume the wrong things, it will negatively affect the quality of the things you can contribute or create!
How to Stop Watching Porn For Good
Here’s the part you wanted to read first. To simplify this, I will list steps to help you break free from porn addiction and explain them, one by one, right after.
- Burn all the bridges to porn
- Believe You Can Stop Watching Porn
- Rewire your Mindset
- The Method Shown in The Bible
#1. Burn all the Bridges to porn
Once pornographic material is all around you, it’s effortless to fall back into old habits. You must install filters restricting pornographic websites and content on your phone, television, and other devices.
Pornographic websites use sophisticated methods to lure you to return. One is ensuring that the first cache site in your browser when you input “www” is a porn site.
It cleverly implants the idea of revisiting porn sites instead of your original plan in your head. If you are a Psychology expert, you will know this is a form of Pavlovian conditioning.
According to Wikipedia,
Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) refers to a learning procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a bell). It also refers to the learning process that results from this pairing, through which the neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response (e.g. salivation) that is usually similar to the one elicited by the potent stimulus.
Wikipedia
When you often look at porn, your original plan wasn’t to look at porn. You went to type in the address for another site, and the last porn site you visited filled in your search bar as a suggestion. Now you’re triggered into craving porn.
So, the first way out is to burn bridges.
The bridge could be anything that takes you back to that dirty habit. It could be a friendship, a browser, a memory card you need to destroy, etc. You have to clearly destroy these ‘links.’
It probably won’t surprise you that 75% of all porn searches take place from a smartphone. Another way to burn bridges is to install porn blockers on your browser. There are many options to choose from that can help you stop your computer from even being able to visit pornographic sites. Some of the more popular choices are:
- Net Nanny
- Router Limits
- Ad Guard
- Covenant Eyes
- X3 Watch
#2. Believe You Can Stop Watching Porn
According to research, even the most deeply entrenched behaviors or traits can be improved. But you have to believe that you can change.
The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg notes that evidence reveals that those most successful at breaking harmful habits merely believe that change is possible. The association between religious belief and how long a person stays clean when trying to quit drinking could be explained by the significance of religion in changing habits.
According to research, alcoholics who believed in a higher power were more likely than those who didn’t to maintain their sobriety even under pressure.
Change is achievable. You aren’t bound to your bad habits.
#3. Rewire Your Mindset
If you feel like you can’t stop watching porn, it’s probably because your brain’s reward system has formed a potent habit.
Your use of internet porn has rewired your neurons so that you automatically start looking for it anytime you encounter an external or internal cue related to it.
For instance, sitting down in front of your computer alone can act as a cue to almost unconsciously click on porn websites.
The purpose of the rewiring phase is to substitute something other than browsing internet porn when you come across a cue for it for the habit of looking at porn. For instance, when you sit down, the first thing you do is write a few phrases in a journal that is next to your computer. A poor habit is being replaced with a positive one.
One thing to bear in mind regarding habit change and “rewiring” is that once a habit is encoded in our brain, it never truly leaves. It’s constantly there, waiting for that specific stimulus to start the habit cycle.
So when I say that you should rewire your mindset, I mean that you should re-program your mind. Don’t mind my English. It is actually very straightforward.
I have trained all my dogs myself, and in all honesty, they are very similar to human beings. When I wanted to teach a puppy to sit, all I needed to do was to say ‘Sit’ and make it sit by pushing it’s lower limb downwards. Soon enough, the puppy will realize that the word ‘Sit’ is associated with sitting and will carry out the sitting task. It has associated the cue ‘Sit’ with the action.
So, rewiring your mind involves switching from bad habits (watching porn) to healthy habits.
A trusted way to rid yourself of a bad habit is to replace it with a good one whenever you feel the urge to carry out that habit.
For instance, going for a run or going to your living room (where others are) when you feel the familiar urge to watch porn is a great way to distract yourself healthily. Or it could be listening to a healthy podcast when the cravings come. Soon enough, your brain will begin to slowly detach from porn.
#4. The Method Shown in the Bible
Of all the ways of quitting porn, I think this is the most straightforward. The Bible says that if you are unsaved, you are dead in sin rather than just being wayward, broken, or needing moral support (Eph. 2:1). Dead people require resurrection and not just recuperation.
The ultimate goal is much more profound and all-encompassing than simply “quitting pornography.”
So, if you’re watching porn week after week and month after month (maybe even year after year), you need to feel sorry and honestly repent from pornography. And that’s not enough – start doing the opposite!
Turning away from porn the Biblical way means you need to do the things that pull you close to God instead.
Conclusion
You can stop watching porn for good.
I hope I’ve given you some fresh perspectives on why it’s been difficult for you to break your porn habit. By understanding why porn is so tempting and why you developed the habit in the first place, you can remove the psychological influence that porn has over you.
Beating porn addiction falls under the “simple, but not easy” category. You might be discouraged if you’ve tried to quit porn before, and it didn’t work out.
Let me encourage you. You really can quit. It’s not easy, requiring making a plan and sacrificing some comforts and conveniences. But it’s possible.
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