Overcoming Pornography: Regaining Agency and Managing Stress Effectively

Episode 249

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So this question came from a listener who's been working on overcoming his pornography struggle for the past three years. So let's dive in. This listener was struggling with two main issues. First, they don't believe they have agency or the ability to To use their free will to choose or not choose to view porn because it feels inherently wrong to them.

And second, they experienced significant stress and anxiety at work, which often leads to them to turning to porn. Now I want to start with agency and I want to start with this idea that "I can't choose pornography."

It's important to recognize that here, I am not advocating that you are allowed to do something. I'm not giving permission. I don't have the ability, one, to give you permission. And two, I don't have the ability to take away permission. And really neither does anybody else. And this is maybe the thrust of the whole problem here.

We have to acknowledge that in agency or free will, there are three main components. You have to know what's good and bad for you. So this is, what is it that I want? You know, I often say that Darcy uses her agency not to eat meat and that is what's right for her. Whereas I know what bacon is and I love it and it's important to me.

Then you have to have consequences and the consequences of Darcy not eating meat are that she doesn't get to eat delicious bacon and sometimes she doesn't get to eat delicious foods at certain restaurants because they don't serve anything that's to her liking. Whereas the consequences of me eating meat are that I have to watch my cholesterol.

I have to make sure that I'm healthy and I exercise more so that I maintain my health. Then the third thing that you have to have to have agency is the ability to make choices. Now, that means that you have to be able to say both yes and no to something. And if you don't have these three things, you don't have agency.

You have somehow given away your agency. And this sounds simple, but it can get pretty complicated, especially when you feel like your choices are controlled by external forces, like societal stigma, your relationship, maybe your participation in a religion. All of those, Societal forces that say hey no you're not allowed to do this.

I've worked with Muslims. I've worked with Jewish people I've worked with Latter day Saints. I've worked with Born again Christians, Baptists, all of them and at some point somewhere along the way they've been told, hey, this is something you're not allowed to choose and it's an interesting idea, but it's It's fundamentally incorrect.

And that's not, again, that's not to say that you should choose porn. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that your agency, your ability to choose your freedom of choice has to be controlled from an internal locus of control an adult, rather than an external one.

So imagine a scenario somewhat like what happened to me many times during my career, where someone would come up and offer me a beer and I would say, "Oh no, thanks, I don't drink it". And they would say, "Oh, that's right. You can't drink, you're a Mormon." And I would say, "I can, I just choose not to." And in this framework, what you see is someone saying, I own my choice.

Even though it may not fit into my values as a person of one religion or another, or a person who has no religion, no matter what, that value is mine. I can, but I choose not to. Now apply that to viewing porn.

You might think, I can't view porn because It's bad, and my religion says I can't, and my wife says I'm not allowed to.

All of that takes your agency and hands it off to something external. And it says, this thing is now no longer part of your choice.

And let's be honest, Anybody who thinks I can't view porn is incorrect because you can. And you know that you can, because you have in the past. And the fact that you're acknowledging that you can choose porn, even if you don't want to, even if it's not part of who you want to be or how you want to live your life is important because it reduces the mental gymnastics that you're going through around this subject.

The more you play this kind of game of pretend that I can't do something. The less likely it is that you're going to be able to actually resolve the struggle for yourself and then align yourself with the values that you want to live by. When we play this pretend game of, I can't do that.

And we abdicate our agency we disempower ourselves. When we say what is true, when we acknowledge truth and reality as it sits, we become more empowered to then choose what it is that we want. I can view porn.

ing from that. This is why I [: 00:05:00

Recognizing the reality, "I can view porn," you actually achieve two things. First, you stop fighting with your brain about what's actually happening. Which frees up mental energy to move towards your values. And second, you're acknowledging that you have a choice. And that choice empowers you to explore why you might be making this choice. And in this case, what's going on behind the reasons why you're viewing pornography. This self awareness is essential. It's crucial. It helps you understand the underlying reasons for your actions and then helps you address them directly rather than avoiding them.

So how do we do this? What do we do? Because, you know, this is the question that the person asked. And I think this question is really important. I think the question is a really good question because it's saying, "I don't think I truly or subconsciously believe that I can view porn. I'm not allowed to. " This framework makes it really difficult because it's interesting because he is viewing porn, but he thinks he's not allowed to he doesn't think he can.

And then the next part of his question is, "how do I deal with the stress and the anxiety that's often driving me towards porn? And what would I do to solve for that so that I don't view porn?" So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how we can resolve this problem in real time.

Let's start with stress and anxiety. For this client they mentioned that they're stuck at their desk. They're feeling overwhelmed and this often leads them to escapist behaviors like turning to porn.

I want to give you all the same framework I would give anybody who's working to manage their stress in this particular scenario. Now you've listened probably to my podcast on the detour cycle. If you haven't listened to that, feel free to go back and listen to that again. It's an essential tool in this process of putting porn behind you.

So you can go to episode number 2 38, which we published, in March and I'll put a link to that in the show notes so you can go listen to that directly. But this is really a huge component of what you need to be doing so that you can address this pornography struggle in the moment.

I think it's really important in all of this to recognize you have that agency. Not because it's good for you or because you're supposed to, but because you have this thing called agency, free will, this ability to choose. And if you didn't have this ability to choose, that would be a problem .

You wouldn't be someone who's acting of their own free will. As you understand that concept and you embody it, then you're much more deeply empowered, much more capable of choosing the things that align with your values.

By recognizing the reality that you can view porn, you achieve two things. First, you stop fighting with your brain about what's going on, which frees up this mental energy to move towards your values, so you have more capacity to solve problems. And then second, acknowledging that you have this choice empowers you.

It doesn't take away the choice. It empowers you. It doesn't say you are going to choose it. It allows you to be more honest about what you're choosing. Taking ownership rather than saying I slipped or I fell or I, I relapsed, right? All of these, all of this language of being out of control. Instead of that, it's, "I made this choice. I don't like this choice, but I made it."

And then you can explore why you made that choice, and then start to figure out how to solve for that. So let's talk about how to solve for the choice to view pornography. And what's going on in that stress and anxiety for this particular client, but you can apply this to anything, any negative feeling that you're dealing with.

And again, you can listen to the detour cycle, episode that I did in March, it's a great way to start digging into this.

You can also go to GetToThrive.com/succeed, where I put together a robust mini course on this subject, which gives you the key tools and principles that you need to actually start using the detour cycle to effectively address the stress and anxiety that's going on in your life.

So let's talk about that stress and anxiety. So this listener, he mentioned being stuck at his desk and feeling overwhelmed. And this leads him to these escapist behaviors like turning to porn. So I want to give you a framework to help manage that and make healthier choices.

The very first thing that you need to do anytime your brain is either offering you porn or feeling bad, what you want to do is you want to get curious. Start by getting curious about what you're escaping and what you're feeling. So when your brain's like, Hey, I deserve a break. That's a moment to say, what am I escaping from?

What am I feeling? the more you can dial in that question, the more you can just get curious about that question and start really living in a place of curiosity, the more likely it is that you're going to start to be able to dig to the bottom of the problem. So let's say that feeling is anxiety.

the problem. That's only the [: 00:10:00

It's just an indicator that there is a problem. And that problem is usually started with a story that we haven't gotten to yet, but the story that creates the feeling of anxiety in this case, right? So he has this anxiety and you just want to dig deeper. Why do I feel anxious? Understanding the root cause of these feelings is the first step in dealing with them, actually addressing them meaningfully.

And understanding that your feelings are data points. So many of us, so many of us, especially as men, we've been told, you're only allowed to have three feelings, hungry, angry, and horny. You have more feelings than that. And each feeling is data. It's an opportunity for you to say, "Hey, there's something going on here that I need to maybe address".

Understanding this anxiety and being really clear, the anxiety is not the problem. It's an indicator that there's something below that. So part of this process, part of the detour cycle process is being able to stay with and go through unwanted and unpleasant feelings without getting lost, without freaking out.

So this is something you have to practice and start by recognizing that any feeling that you feel in your body is Except for maybe like grief, that sort of thing. It's generally going to last about 90 seconds. So if you're sitting there at your desk and you have this anxiety, if you sit with it for 90 seconds, it'll probably go away, but you'll have to practice that.

You'll want to practice that. Because if you're anything like me, I didn't want to sit with anxiety for any period of time. So one practical tool for. Staying present with some uncomfortable feeling is box breathing and box breathing is a really simple technique. All you do is inhale for four seconds, hold that for four seconds, exhale for four seconds and hold that for four seconds. And just repeat that for about 90 seconds. This helps you stay present, helps you stay calm.

It allows that feeling to exist without having to intervene with it, without having to suppress it or manage it or do anything with it. 90 second chemical course in your body and you don't have to resort to any sort of escape behaviors.

So now that we've gotten calm, we've gotten centered, we've stayed with the emotion, we have started to dig into it, we've gotten curious, we're like, okay, I feel anxious. Now, why do I feel anxious? Well, there's a story behind that?

So this story sounds like it's something along the lines of, "I have so much to do." That's probably what this story is. That's what is probably driving a lot of this anxiety. The problem with stories like "I have so much to do" is that one, we believe them without really asking ourselves what that means.

And two, That sounds dire without having any real understanding of the actual tasks that need to be performed or any structure around it. So of course you're anxious because instead of saying, okay, I have X and Y and Z and L and N O P to do. I go, Oh, I have so much to do. And I sit there and I'm anxious because that story is an overwhelming story.

And so we just get curious. We start to ask, "well, what exactly do I have to do? What's on the list?" And so we started writing out the list and we can now, instead of saying, I have so much to do and believing that and feeling anxious about it, we're digging into and creating a plan to address what it is that I have to do.

This is as simple as breaking tasks down into smaller, more manageable steps. This is. Allowing ourselves to maybe even offload some of those tasks and say, "well, this doesn't actually need to be done right now. That's not, I don't have to do that today, or I can offload that to somebody else."

The more we dig into this idea of I have so much to do, and we get curious about it, the more we're going to start to see real concrete steps. to accomplishing what it is that needs to be done.

Now, here's the thing, we might actually dig in, you might write out, you know, a list of 55 things that you have to do, and you might still believe, I have so much to do, and you might be a little bit anxious about it.

But again, we can repeat these steps, and we can break it down, so I can go through the box breathing to deal with the anxiety, and then I can go back to my list, and I can say, okay, for the next hour, which thing am I going to do? So we're not changing reality, because reality is, "I have these things, they need to be done."

What we're changing is how we're addressing reality.

When we have these overwhelming feelings and overwhelming ideas come to us and we don't address them directly, we tend to want to escape because it seems insurmountable. It's that flight or fight response.

And what you're doing is you're escaping from your reality for a brief period, however long that is. And what's funny is we think that escaping is going to solve something, but in reality, what's actually happening is we're just postponing dealing with the thing we have to deal with anyway.

o feel anxious, you start to [: 00:15:00

And then you can address that directly. And what happens as a result is two things. One, you create a habit of addressing your problems more directly. And two, your brain actually will stop offering you escapes. Because if your brain knows that you're going to address these problems directly and you keep doing it over and over and over and over again, in a habitual way, your brain doesn't need to escape.

You don't need to run away from the problem.

If you want to truly get to a place where pornography is no longer a problem for you, where you're successful and your brain is not constantly going and saying, "Hey, what about this? What about this escape?" If you want to do that, you have to be willing to do the hard work of setting up a new habit of how to deal with the emotional states that your brain is going through.

When you learn how to deal with the emotional states that your brain is going through, which is really dealing with the reality of your situation in a more direct, and concrete way. Problem solving rather than running. Then there's nothing to run from because you've gotten good at feeling bad, you've gotten good at dealing with anxiety, you've gotten good at resolving even insurmountable odds through practice.

And this is really the key, you have to practice. Sometimes you're going to practice at game time, sometimes you're going to practice off game time. Sometimes you're going to deal with this stuff in a real time situation, and sometimes you're going to need to deal with this stuff in a practice scenario, where you've created the anxiety, you've created the scenario so that you can do this work just like you would if you were shooting free throws.

Dealing with the story directly helps you move away from avoidance behaviors like turning to porn and toward more productive values aligned actions.

And this process will eventually help your brain stop offering you porn as a solution.

These steps are not just about stopping a behavior. They're about understanding and transforming the underlying process that leads you towards viewing porn. Reclaiming your agency, managing stress effectively.

These are essential for overcoming unwanted pornography use.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with somebody who might also benefit from it. And if you have any questions, DM me, go to Thrive Beyond Pornography on Instagram and message me, or you can email me at zach at zachspafford. com.. We love helping people thrive beyond pornography.

Thanks for listening to this episode, and I'll talk to you guys next week.