Why Your Brain Offers Porn When You’re Bored (and What to Do Instead)
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Transcript
Episode 294
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Zach Spafford: [:We're talking about boredom, dopamine, and how to stop running from your emotions by learning to sit with them. Let's go.
So my client started the session this week by saying he had a major misstep. Uh, I think he actually might've even said a relapse, but the way he said it was really important.
"I messed up hard." That's one of the things that he said.
s is good data." Not because [:And I want you to recognize that nobody comes to me and is like, "Hey, I wanna quit porn. And then I'm like, yeah, watch all the porn you want. That'll give us data." That's not how this works.
But his mistake, his misstep is good because it's honest, it's human, and if we know where to look and how to analyze it, it tells us something useful.
We often tell ourselves that these missteps mean we're never gonna succeed or that we should be past this by now. That's actually one of the reasons people often try to distance themselves as quickly as possible from the choices they've made.
I've said it before on the podcast. I can't tell you how many times I've said, "tell me what happened in the lead up to you choosing to view porn." And the client will say, "I don't remember."
ting ourselves up over them, [:And that is what starts to yield long-term positive results. So let's start by asking. How was I feeling? That's the most important question. I want you to know how you're feeling. If you don't know how you're feeling, I want you to get the app called "How We Feel". The more you can become fluent in your own feelings, the more often you're gonna be able to start diagnosing what's going on.
The next thing I want you to ask is,
what was the story my brain was offering? I want you to understand what led to the feeling.
nd, utilizing them regularly [:So let's break down what happened in this client's life using the detour cycle. And this is exactly the same thing that we went over together during the coaching session.
There was the narrative onset. The story begins with, "I've got time to kill."
In his job, he has five minute breaks about every 45 minutes.
So there is a consistent time where he has time to kill. So this is pretty significant. And the phrase itself seems a bit innocent. It's like, yeah, of course I've got some time to kill. I got five minutes before my next thing. But that little phrase is kicking off a cycle, and in this moment it's suggesting a bit of aimlessness. For him, it was close to the end of the day, so there was a little bit of decision fatigue and there's no purpose in it. There's no direction in it, there's no, I'm gonna move towards my values in it. This is just a door that's opened so that he can become distracted
, I've got time to kill. His [:Next his brain offers him an escape, and there can be some nuance here that you'll need to start creating awareness of. Oftentimes the thing that your brain offers you as an escape is not in and of itself . But if you're being a curious observer of your activities, you'll probably see a pattern where you start with one thing and it leads to another.
In this case, my client was offered Facebook.
So then the rationalized bargaining kicks in. Knowing that this is often how his brain moves toward porn, but also not having any other way to deal with these emotions that he is feeling, this boredom that he's dealing with, he starts to bargain. "well, it's my me time. I, you know, I can do, I can do what I want for this next five minutes."
u know, the big part of your [:Now the last thing is the values breach, and this is pretty common. This is a very regular way in which we, you know, we just kind of give in and our brain just says, "Hey, you know, you've come this far, you can't go back. You can't fix this. You might as well just keep going. You might as well finish this out.
Something like that. So you see how that all plays out? What I, you see how all that plays out? But what if we interrupt the cycle?
Interrupting the cycle means getting good at stepping into the detour cycle at one point or another along the path and starting to work backward towards the thought and backward towards the feeling. So that you can deal with those directly. So what does it look like to deal with those directly?
of learning how to sit with [:Sometimes we do it with scrolling, sometimes we do it with snacks. The key is not to create a reality where you eliminate boredom or any other emotion for that matter, or any other thought for that matter. 'cause sometimes, you know, as, as we work through these boredom, boredom is kind of the thing that we need to address here.
But sometimes it's the thought because there's nothing, there's not really any issue to deal with. On the thought side here, for most people, when you're bored, you're just kind of like me. Uh, but getting good at being able to be bored is what we really would work on , when it comes to boredom. Stress, or anxiety or other emotions we might deal with differently.
But this is really how we can best address boredom. Really, all we're trying to do is we're trying to get better at being present with it. Why?
live in a comfort optimized [:We have lots of comfy couches. We have lots of good, fast. Fatty delicious food. We have instant entertainment in a way that when I was a kid didn't really exist. You know, when I was a kid, you had to literally go to Blockbuster and pick up a video and be like, "oh, I wanna watch this movie." You had to return it the next day and you had to rewind it or otherwise they would like fine you.
All kinds of things like that, right? And now you could literally get on your phone and watch any movie that's ever been made instantly.
So, we have a life that is very, very comfortable and we have a life that's built around an enormous amount of immediate satisfaction, and whenever discomfort shows up in that world, we go, oh, let's get rid of this. I want that gone, fast.
seconds. That means [:One of the things that we have to understand here is that we're actually building and exercising two muscles. First the muscle to be capable of feeling and uncomfortable, boredom, loneliness, stress, anxiety, or just a few of the many common discomforts that we feel all the time, regularly.
I like, I felt bored, lonely, uh, stressed, uh, a little bit of anxiety, maybe a little bit overwhelmed today. Like these are all things that I have felt just today. So becoming capable of sitting through those things without needing to do anything about them is a muscle that we have to develop
rm over quick dopamine hits. [:Uh, my sister-in-law does this. That's how she, you know, entertains herself rather than say, watching the movie or just reading the plot notes online.
Much like reading a book, seeking the long-term, values-based, satisfying behavior we want takes learning how to do it. You have to get good at it. You have to practice it. You have to practice it intentionally, which is somewhat difficult for some of us because we don't kind of think of it that way.
We just kinda live our lives and our lives happen to us. And what I'm talking about is being intentional about dealing with it.
So one of the things that I asked my client to start practicing is. To sit in boredom, maybe set a timer, no phones, no distractions, no books, nothing. Just sit and be alone and be bored, and then feel that boredom.
uple of ways. One is when it [:Now, I know that sounds a little bit ridiculous, but this is one of the most transformative skills that you can build.
Not because it's fun, but because it teaches you that you don't have to run, you don't have to keep doing, you don't have to step into anything else. You can just be present and not need to do anything else.
So once we've allowed boredom to be present, I want you to ask a different question.
grounded, and we're feeling [:This is the question that I want you to ask in that moment.
"What do I want to do that aligns with my values?" and this is really important, a lot of times what people do is they go, "well, I try to go off and do something and distract myself from the porn or distract myself from my thoughts or that, don't you, you can't do that 'cause it'll, because your brain will bring it back up because it'll say, Hey, we didn't really resolve this. What we just went through, what I just taught you.
That's about resolving. Feeling going through it, allowing it to exist. Uh, it might be, there are some more in depth things that we do and we learn as, as we go through the detour cycle. And we use it different in different ways. But in this instance, all you're doing is resolving the boredom by just existing with it until you're not bored anymore.
place of feeling anxious or [: start to create this person [:And that's really the skill that you need to be building.
So, here's what I want you to do. This is your challenge for the week. This is an experiment you can run. I want you to just practice being bored. I want you to sit there and do nothing for 90 seconds. Whenever your brain says, "Hey, I'm bored." Don't use any escapes. Just be present.
Once you get really good at practicing being bored, you can even go to the next level, which is. From that grounded place, ask yourself, "what do I want to do next?" This practice, I think it's probably you. You might be sitting there going, eh, maybe. Right? Maybe this might work, but I don't know about it. It seems small.
int. This is a practice that [:And here's the truth. Porn is not the problem. It's the solution that your brain's offering you when you're not feeling good, when you're trying to deal with how you feel. And the more you can learn to sit with that discomfort, the more you're gonna be able to choose in line with your, with your values.
And if you're not even sure how to start identifying where you are in the detour cycle, I don't want you to worry about guessing.
Don't try to guess. Just set up a free consult with me at GetToThrive.com/workwithzach and I'll walk through it with you and I'll help you get clear on where you are and and how you can start to move through that process in a way that starts to yield results.
All right, my friends, thanks for listening. I love working with all my clients. They're such amazing people, and I hope that one day I can see you sitting across from me making the progress that so many other people have made.
All right, my friends, I'll talk to you next week.
