Transcription
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Helpers Here podcast, brought to you by the Beyond Compulsion Academy. In this video, I'm going to be talking about the top three things I've learned in 2024 when it comes to porn addiction. I've learned so much, hopefully I can share some lessons with you. I honestly don't think that I would have overcome porn addiction if I didn't know these things.
Today, the first thing that I now know, and it's quite controversial in this world of no fap and porn addiction advice, is that relapse is not part of recovery. In the past, I honestly thought there was a lesson in every single relapse. I'd be sat there journaling, analyzing, documenting what had happened and the lessons to be learned. But the relapses are the actual problem.
So, what actually happens is that when we have a craving for porn and we choose to watch porn, dopamine is released. And what then happens is we end up in discomfort and withdrawal because so much dopamine's been released. We want to kind of stay on that level, but we don't, and it feels pretty terrible. Like you have a bit of a come down. And so then you have this craving for porn because you're feeling so bad and you're in this withdrawal. The addict part of the mind just wants you to give in, as such, and look again. So then you go watch porn, and the dopamine's released, and you just kind of carry on in this cycle of feeling terrible. So then you watch porn, so then you feel terrible again, so then you watch porn, and it's just round and round and round, right?
So, if you're thinking that you're learning something from relapsing, well, you're really just not. You're just prolonging the sentence. You're just staying in the addiction. And I'll share a bit of an example actually, which hopefully will illustrate this point even further. So, I remember this one call I had, probably a few years ago now, at the Samaritans where I volunteer. And essentially, it was someone who was in a prison, and they'd gone into prison for like a really minor offense. I think they had PTSD and they'd been in the army. They had some anger problems, and I think their partner had like cheated on them or or something like that, and they'd hit some guy, maybe he was trying to get with her in the in the club, or it was something like that. I can't remember exactly what it was. So he's gone into prison for like a few months. And then because of his PTSD, he was really struggling to deal with his emotions, and he ended up hitting some prison guards. And what happened then is they prolonged the sentence. So he stayed in the prison longer. But then it just kept on going in that cycle where he kept on getting pissed off at stuff, and he kept on lashing out, and you know, getting out of control, getting really angry, hitting people, and fighting in prison. And then he just ended up in the prison for like years and years. And, you know, I felt so sorry for the guy. He was genuinely one of the the nicest guys I've spoke to. Um, but he just had this PTSD from being being in the the army. And it's a similar sort of thing that goes on with with pornography and the addiction. That each time we engage, just like maybe punching a prison guard, it's like each time we relapse, we're just staying in that addiction longer. It's that which is leading to us wanting to engage again in the future and having all of that discomfort. So we've got to get really, really clear that relapse is not part of recovery. Relapse is prolonging the addiction. That's what's keeping you in the addiction is the relapsing.
And it took me a while to realize this. I had to completely break out of the mentality that this was some sort of spiritual journey or like this was some adventure to go on where you're always learning and you're always improving. Because that's just not true. Like the truth is, you you engage, you want to engage again in the future, and that's what keeps you stuck in the addiction. When you stop engaging, and you stop for good, repeatedly dealing with urges correctly, that's when you're going to stop having all the urges and all the symptoms and all the feelings that you want to get out of, like withdrawal, for example. Right? So that's the first thing I learned is that relapse is not part of recovery. Hopefully that makes sense.
The second thing is that you don't need a reason to engage in this compulsive behavior. In the past, I remember every time I went on a night out with my mates, and the next day if I was like on my own and I was hungover, I'd feel so, so bad. And I'd be like, "Ah, you know, I just need to get out of these feelings, basically." And and one way or another, I'd make it okay in my mind for me to go and look at porn. On the other things that would really sort of trigger me in the past would be things on social, you know, TikTok, Instagram, seeing something sexually provocative, or being ill and just not feeling well at all. In fact, I'm a little bit unwell at the moment, but I've not even thought really about looking at porn. And that's just because I've gone through this process of dealing with urges repeatedly. So now that trigger, that brain map in my mind that associates a certain discomfort with craving to escape and look at porn, it's it's been disconnected through doing the work.
The other thing would be like feelings like anxiety, loneliness, feeling stress, feeling maybe frustrated with myself, feeling like I'm not good enough, feeling like a failure, things like that, sort of quite intense, difficult emotions would definitely make me want to look at porn. But again, what I want to really get across is that you don't need a reason to look at porn. There is only one true reason. That one true reason is that you have addicted your pathways. You have this emotional psychological dependency on a mind mood altering experience. And if we believe that we need a reason to look at porn, and we make up these excuses, these rationalizations, we're basically going to stay in the addiction indefinitely because there'll always be another new reason. You know, I dealt with a lot of the emotional stuff in my own life, and then I was just horny. I was just a horny guy who wanted to look at porn. So there's always a new reason. And there'll always be a new excuse. I remember when I was in Portugal, just like playing football one day, and I'd removed all the triggers in my life with that porn because that's what I used to think was the right approach. It definitely isn't. But I was playing football on this pitch, and there was like a Playboy magazine. And because of that, I was like, "Ah, well, that was unavoidable. So, you know, it's not really my fault." And ended up looking at more sexual content when I got in and masturbating and relapsing. So there'll always be, there'll always be triggers. There'll always be new reasons. There'll always be excuses, rationalizations. And so we need to get really clear that actually, you can just engage in this behavior. You don't need a reason. But the truth is, you have addicted new pathways, and that's why you want to engage.
Final thing, talking about that having a having these cravings, you know, and these addicting all pathways, is that the truth is that experiencing urges is absolutely crucial, and permanent mental freedom is possible. It does take, you know, a little bit of time. It does take some work, really, in terms of actually dealing with these urges correctly. But you can overcome this problem for good. You know, it's not this sort of journey that people make it out to be. It's a thing where you start off in an addiction, and you deal with the urges repeatedly, sort of urge after urge, you just make your choice time and time again. And what this does is it really does change those brain maps. It changes the neural pathways that you have. And then eventually, by the end of doing that repeatedly for a prolonged period of time, and doing it consistently, willingly accepting temporary discomfort, you're going to experience peace of mind because you're going to know you're in control of yourself.
And I think the other piece to this is probably once you understand the addicted part of your mind, and you change certain thought patterns, and you identify junky thinking, as we call it, you know, any rationalization, excuse to engage in the compulsive behavior. When you correct all of that, you're left without really these like addicted neural pathways, without the addicted thought patterns, and you do really genuinely get to experience just peace of mind and freedom from the problem. You don't need to worry about it. It's just something that you used to have a problem with that's solved now. So that's a bit of hope, though, I guess, for anyone sort of watching or listening to this.
And I think the other thing with this is, you know, I do want to provide a bit of hope to people because I was in this addiction for so many years, and it messed up my mental health so much. And I want to kind of show that the things that I tried for so many years, that 99% of people are trying, aren't the things that actually lead to the real freedom. You know, most people are going to say that you need to avoid all your triggers, and like there's all these different like things you need to do to like overcome the problem. Where I'm just saying, no, there's one reason you have addicting your pathways. And most people are going to say, you know, relapse is part of recovery, and that it's just this journey. When again, I'm saying, no, it's definitely not. So hopefully, by providing an alternative perspective and an alternative method, we can, you know, help provide some hope and hope and inspiration to people who actually want to overcome this problem for good.
Right, so yeah, if you want to learn a bit more about the Beyond Compulsion method, you can go over to beyondcompulsionacademy.com. And there's also a compulsion test there where where you can learn if you are addicted to porn, get a score out of 100, and then I'll personally reply to that and see how you're doing. So yeah, thanks a lot for watching or listening to today's episode of Helpers Here podcast. Hope it's been useful, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye.