Slipping back into habit – keep feeling failure
If you’re truly determined to achieve life-long membership of the unhappy porn addiction club, following the next piece of advice should come quite naturally. I’ll bet you’re doing it already…
Permanent Addiction Tip 3: Don’t learn, get livid!
Every time you indulge in another mammoth porn session, be sure to rapidly descend into a personal hell of hopelessness and shame. Even if it was a brief slip back into cybersex, beat yourself up good and proper anyway. Angrily tell yourself that you’ll never be capable of change. Scrub out any hope of quitting or sticking to a recovery plan, and write yourself off yet again as a sad, hopeless case. Easy, non?
A non-addict might think that the post-porn comedown of anger and self-loathing would make it easier to quit. If doing something makes you feel so bad afterwards, you’re going to be less inclined to repeat the experience, surely? Not so for porn junkies. The hopeless comedown is a sure-fire guarantee that sooner or later, porn will be back on the menu. In this state of desolation, the addict loses any grasp of perspective or insight into their compulsive behaviour. You’re feeling bad, so you’re going to look forward to the one thing you rely on to feel better – more porn. And so it goes on.
So, dedicated porn martyrs, don’t take a deep breath and quietly consider the situation. Don’t remind yourself that relapse is part of the quitting process; an opportunity to get another handle on the problem and change. Whatever you do, don’t actively learn from your experiences. Just punish yourself with anger and despair, and your ongoing pornography addiction is in the bag!
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Hello,
YES! That might all sound true but actually the opposite also applies?!!. Falling back into familiar old habits, feeling very bad about repeated failure, feeling awful yet again, is the very thing that in the end can become the catalyst (motivation needed) to change. When you use porn so much & fail so many time in the end perhaps it has to get worse before it gets better. In the end when you know that using porn again IS guaranteed to make you feel terrible about yourself, its possible that you reach a point of aversion. You stop using porn because you know using porn has such a dreadful price emotionally. You know NOT using porn is a much happier place to be. This has nothing at all to do with courage but everything to do with the desire to let go of self loathing, knowing that NOT using porn will feel an awful lot better than using porn.
Each day presents a new set of opportunities, and therefore a chance to make different choices. Porn use is a choice I know it may not feel like it at times but believe me it is. Just because you relapse once or twice or many times doesn’t mean you cannot choose to change in future.
Remember just because you have used porn (are using porn) DOESN’T MAKE YOU A BAD PERSON!
My husband slowly started to recover when i began to make him feel even worse than the end of his porn sessions.
When i caught him red-handed one day i told him i hated him and took our baby girl. That was the day he began to change.
I’m not too cure on how it works but don’t most addicts begin to realize they need change when something devastating happens as a result of their addiction?
Ivan and Chyna Doll, you both make really strong points here.
I’d say that all addicts have their own tipping point where they find sufficient motivation to turn the habit around. For some, it’s the accumulation of bad feelings, tiredness and frustration over the sheer amount of time being devoured by their habit. They catch themselves before things really get out of control.
Sadly for a minority of addicts, this isn’t enough. They might need to experience some rock-bottom crisis – maybe trouble at work, redundancy, threats of divorce, public humiliation. These guys are in the worst grip of addiction.
The tipping point for any individual often depends upon the underlying motive behind the habit. Weirdly, addictions always serve some purpose, even when they make our lives a misery.
In my original post, I wanted to make the point that bad feeling and despair can actually work against any motivation to change the habit – it just builds low self-esteem and hopelessness. An essential part of recovery is realising that the habit formed for a reason, and giving yourself a break from self-loathing. As Ivan says, a problem with porn does not make you a bad person.
I agree, looking at porn doesn’t make you a bad person. I believe what does make a bad person is how those negative emotions are handled.
I’ve known many addicts of different things, with the majority, violence and anger at everyone else was their answer.
Though one thing i find very sad is that pornography addiction is not a valid addiction to many people. With that being said it feels like society is justifying porn addiction by not taking it seriously.
I know how it feels like to be addicted and to suffer relapse, I even did a chart of my relapses. It does not seem to go away, one slip and the guilt trap will ensnare the victim. I am suggesting a new way.
According to a website, a habit is used to fill a void. So why not use a void to fill a habit. What does that mean? That means simply learn to do nothing. A void means something is not satisfied, for example, a sex urge, a relationship that is broken, or maybe being just damn piss about oneself, see the cause wasn’t porn to start with, it was the problem that drove us towards porn, so that means as long as we can accept that we feel damn lousy the way we are not, that things are not going right now, and this is the most important part – DOING NOTHING is better than doing a wrong.
We give ourselves time, and most important of all, our mind. Once you recognise doing nothing is a good option, it does TWO important things. First of all, you will not need to run to PORN to feed your ego or numb yourself of your problems. Second, it will give you the peace of mind to accept circumstances and the brain resources to solve your problem at hand, and if you choose not to solve it as least you got the sanity to do the things you truly want to do.
Let me know if it works for you at jakeliving@gmail.com