Breaking Free: Overcoming Emotional and Psychological Dependencies on Pornography

Episode 197

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I'm Zach. And I'm Darcy. We're an LDS couple who struggled with unwanted pornography in our marriage for many years. What was once our greatest struggle and something we thought would destroy us, has become our greatest blessing in trying. Our hope is that as you listen to our podcast each week, you'll be filled with hope and healing and realize that you too can thrive beyond pornography and create the marriage you have always desired.

Welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. We're so glad you're here and we believe in you.

Hey everybody and welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. I'm your host, Zach Spafford, and today we're gonna be exploring the emotional and psychological dependencies that make quitting porn difficult. So sit back, relax, and let's just dive in. Last week I gave you a list of the most common issues that make quitting porn difficult.

I'm not gonna talk about each of them at length today, but you can refer to last week's podcast for the list and all the descriptions. I'm just going to. Go through the list really quickly right here. So last week we talked about temptations and triggers. This week we're gonna be talking about emotional and psychological dependency.

Next week we're gonna be talking about loss of coping mechanisms. Then we're gonna talk about shame and guilt. Then lack of support and understanding. And then finally, episode six of this miniseries, we'll call it, is lapses and discouragement. So the number two reason why quitting porn can be difficult is the emotional and psychological dependency that often accompanies its use.

You see what happens is pornography becomes intertwined with our emotions and psychological wellbeing, and it can create a well worn mental pathway that isn't easily exited. So let's talk about what emotional dependency is and. I'm not a big fan of the Woo. I really, I try to keep this as factual as possible.

I try to keep the work that we do in this podcast and in my courses as clear cut and actionable as possible. But I also think there is value in understanding what is going on internally and emotionally. Because when we understand that, we can figure out what to do. Many of us struggle with pornography and turn to explicit content as a coping mechanism to deal with challenging emotions such as stress, loneliness, or low self-esteem Porn often provides a temporary escape and a sense of comfort from those emotions.

Breaking free from this emotional dependency really requires addressing the underlying emotional issues that fuel our porn. Consumption coaching or counseling with a professional that focuses on pornography can be helpful in developing healthier coping mechanisms, managing stress, and building a stronger sense of self-worth.

By working with a coach, we can navigate these emotions more effectively and reduce our reliance on pornography as a coping mechanism. One of the main reasons why a coach is really helpful is that they know the way it works and can often see things that you can't when it comes to your performance. I was actually speaking to a guy out of Michigan yesterday, and as we were talking, what struck me was that he didn't have a clear process to resolve his emotions without suppressing them.

What it looked like for him was he would have, stress and then instead of dealing with the stress in a direct and capable way, he basically would suppress it. He would move on to the next thing to try and keep himself busy, or he would try to work on a project at home, or he would try to distract himself with his phone.

And that often led to him choosing pornography. And as I told him this, he basically said, yeah I really don't. Which gave us a space and allowed us to talk about how he can now do that work and exercise that muscle with the right skills, training and practice. Too often as people who want to quit porn, we focus on porn and we think that's the problem.

It's likely problematic, meaning it's not something you want in your life. It's something that you find morally abhorrent. It may be something that your spouse finds very difficult to acknowledge and have in their life and in the relationship between the two of you, but it's porn is very rarely the actual problem, being able to examine the underlying emotional difficulties that we struggle with and address them directly gives us a clear path to move forward. Part of emotional and psychological dependency is that porn can create a conditioned response within our brains that then acts as a habit. Because we are always trying to minimize energy costs in dealing with difficulties, and that habit is cued to engage in porn.

So we have a cue. So whatever that cue is, it could be stressed or lonely, or we are alone, or whatever it is that your cue is. That cue begins us. On the pathway to engage with pornography, and it starts up our brain's reward system. And that reward system becomes activated as we engage with explicit content, which then releases neurotransmitters like dopamine.

That induced pleasure, and that is the reinforcement of the behavior and this reward cycle that we just talked about can lead to cravings and an intense. Desire for even more explicit content. It may not for you, but it may. So it just depends on where you sit with this. But what you're seeing in this mo emotional and psychological dependency is a really clear pathway that your brain is traveling in order to bring you to a place where you are suppressing your.

Your unwanted, unpleasant, undesirable emotions and replacing them for at least a period of time with arousal that creates dopamine. We all love dopamine. Everybody loves dopamine. It's a good thing to have dopamine, but that dopamine release reinforces this cycle. So understanding this helps us.

To become capable of intervening. Overcoming the psychological dependency that we have on pornography is very much aided by understanding the neurochemical changes that occur with porn use because then we can actively work. To rewire our brains, we can actively work to engage with these emotional and psychological difficulties with techniques and systems and processes that we know that we have studies that show will PR and prove out That will allow us to go through those psychological difficulties.

Go through those unpleasant emotions and difficulties without choosing something that goes against our moral values. Techniques like acceptance and commitment training, mindfulness practices, and engaging in alternative rewarding activities that more fully align with your values. Those will be invaluable tools as you work to eliminate your struggle.

The accessibility and the in. Anonymity of pornographic material in this digital age present an additional challenge because the ease of access and the normalization of explicit content make it harder to resist temptations. That's not to say that we need to go around making sure that you know the world is safe for everyone because we can't, that's not possible.

It's, you could spend all day, every day trying to eliminate any sort of temptation from your life. And you would fail. Instead, what we wanna do is we want to implement protective measures such as content filters, skills-based training, or regular coaching, which can help create barriers and reduce the likelihood of falling back into old habits.

But we wanna think of these as barriers and solutions. So for instance, I realized I was spending too much time on social media recently, and I was just scrolling my phone and I thought how can I eliminate or make it more difficult for me to access the platforms that I'm just scrolling on, like YouTube?

And I came up with this simple idea, it was just to delete my web browser. Now you might look at your phone, you might go, oh I can never delete my web browser. But I thought, why not? It doesn't bother me. It's not a big deal if I delete my web browser. Most of what I do on my phone isn't stuff.

That is furthering my goals or bringing me towards my values, or helping me achieve anything of value to me. So I deleted it. Now, the, this resulted in me using my phone a lot less, like reducing it, reducing my phone usage by hours a day. But occasionally there are things that I have to do that require a browser.

So I, I have over the last month or so, On occasion, put my browser back on for short periods in order to accomplish a task, and then Red deleted it. Yeah, this may seem silly, but that is just a tiny barrier and it makes it less likely that I'll just pick up my phone and scroll. But overcoming pornography is about minor changes across a broad range of behaviors that can aggregate to large, meaningful, and permanent change.

So content filters, skills-based training, and regular coaching help you. Put those barriers up, create that process, and allow it to become a habitual process. Now, the last thing that I wanna talk about in this emotional and psychological dependency is the fear and the discomfort of facing emotions without a numbing effect.

Available to you, like pornography, like food, like your phone. That, and that can be a real deterrent for individuals who are quitting porn. Some people are like, ah, I don't think I can handle my life without that. To be honest, this is crucial. It's crucial to recognize that the process is.

Likely going to be challenging and very uncomfortable at first, but it's also a necessary step towards healing and regaining control over our lives. Seeking support from a coach or participating in coaching programs can provide valuable guidance and assist you throughout this journey. So as you do, the process is gonna become more familiar, more natural, more habitual.

This is the difference between a willpower and motivation based program and one that's sustainable over a lifetime. Willpower and motivation. They fade. We've talked about this before. Habits are more automatic, more deeply ingrained, and less likely to require mental energy once they're well established.

But you're gonna have to practice. You're gonna have to practice and not game time situations. You're gonna have to be willing to spend a little bit of time on this when you're not in the midst of the need. You'll have to do the work, but the work is a hundred percent doable. Remember, thriving beyond pornography is totally possible.

It requires perspective, action, and willingness to address underlying emotional issues, but it is a hundred percent doable. And if you want to quit, Porn, you're gonna have to take a deep, hard look at what are the emotional and psychological dependencies that I am getting out of my pornography viewing habit, meaning when I choose to view porn, what am I actually avoiding?

What's the thought? What's the feeling? What's the emotion? What's the struggle? What's the action that I'm avoiding by choosing pornography? And for a lot of us, sometimes it's just I'm bored. Sometimes it's, oh, well, I'm just trying to reward my sister self for a difficult, long, hard day. Instead of sitting there and feeling uncomfortable or feeling lonely or feeling like.

I'm not being rewarded. All of those things are viable things that are, you're gonna have to look at, but you'll have to do that work. You'll have to be willing to do that work and not everybody is. So I want you to be aware of that. I want you to see that quitting porn I. Is very difficult if you're not willing to look at the emotional and psychological dependencies that you've created that your brain is using to drive you and push you towards choosing pornography instead of dealing with the difficult, uncomfortable realities in your life.

Again, thriving beyond pornography, it's a hundred percent possible. It requires perspective, it requires action, it requires willingness. I want you to join me next week as we're going to continue exploring the different aspects of thriving beyond pornography, and in particular, we are going to talk about the loss of coping mechanisms.

Pornography has been a coping mechanism for you for a long time. Almost certainly longer than you've wanted it to be. So we're going to learn a little bit about that, and then I'm gonna give you a skill that you can use to cope differently with your emotions. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with somebody who might benefit.

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, thrive Beyond Pornography for more episodes on breaking free and living a fulfilling life beyond unwanted pornography use. Until next time, take care. Love you guys, and I will talk to you next week.