Transcription
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Helpers Here podcast, brought to you by the Beyond Compulsion Academy. When we're trying to stop porn, we kind of have this question: "Do I also need to delete social media?" And so, what I'm going to do is explain how to get from this land of compulsion, where we're feeling pretty terrible, you know, feeling disgusting, we're probably quite lonely and isolated, and lacking in confidence, feeling frustrated, and not got much focus. How do we get from there? Well, we're probably, you know, addicted to social media as well. Where do we, how do we get from there to actually just feeling in control, feeling excited for life, feeling connected to people, respecting ourselves, feeling honest, living with integrity, and just generally feeling good?
So, what we're going to do is we're going to go through the process, like, how do we actually get there? So, what we have to start off by understanding is the thought patterns which we have when we're in this land of compulsion, when we're in an addiction. So, there are sort of thought patterns which will lead to people staying in that addiction in regards to social media in particular, is things like, you know, "I'm, I'm helpless. I can't help but give in. It's automatic." And what we need to do is change these thought patterns. So, we use a process similar to cognitive behavioral therapy. Now, the truth is, you are not helpless. You are empowered to make choices moment by moment for yourself. Helplessness requires your consent.
"I'll slip into autopilot and start physically responding to my arousal right away." This is another thought from one of our clients. At one point, truth is, there's no such thing as autopilot. You know, you are in control of yourself once again. You know, there is a space between your thoughts and your action. What you've got to realize is, if you were actually helpless, if you actually were living in autopilot, then you would be a genuine danger to society. That's just not the truth. It's a junky thought. It's what we call an excuse, a rationalization, a justification to stay in the addiction.
Another one that we have in regards to social media in particular is, "This doesn't have nudity in it, or it's blurred, or it's see-through clothes, so it's not porn, it's softcore." So, if you're making up an excuse to engage in a behavior which you also don't want to engage in, then it is a junky thought. And so, another one is, "You know, I didn't go searching for it, I just came across it. You know, maybe it's just the algorithm's fault." Now, well, again, it's like, if you were, I don't know, you were an alcoholic, and what would you do? Like, would you just spend all day in the bar? You're going to spend all day on social media just kind of accidentally seeing something sexual? You know, you're on the explore page on Instagram and oops, just seen something incredibly sexual. That's the life I lived for probably about 10 years. So, it's not the greatest thing, uh, to be in. You're still going to be in that land of compulsion and have all the consequences. That's the main thing. We don't want you having these consequences.
Another couple of junky thoughts we've got: "One peek won't hurt." The reality is, you look once, you're going to want to look again and again and again. You know, that's been your experience. It's not that you look once and then suddenly that desire is satiated. Desire doesn't get satiated in addiction. It's the opposite. And then, "It's really not porn," or "It's not really porn." That's the thought pattern that I used to have so many times in the past. You know, this would keep me in the porn addiction. The truth is, it doesn't matter if you class it as porn or not. If you're making up an excuse to do something that you also don't want to do, we've got a problem. It's a junky thought, and we want to be in control of ourselves.
So, what I think is really important to acknowledge is that, yeah, social media can lead to cravings. And we've kind of been indoctrinated by the likes of James Clear's, you know, cue, craving, response, reward, habit cycle. I don't really think this is very relevant when it comes to addiction. Instead, what I believe is we have addicting neural pathways. And therefore, we have craving, we have compulsive desire. And there's a really good quote actually by this woman called Dr. Valerie Von, who's a global authority on addiction, and she's a leading researcher in neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. And she said that, "There are clear differences in brain activity between patients who have compulsive sexual behavior and healthy volunteers. These differences mirror those of drug addicts."
So, what we're talking about here is addiction. You know, it's similar to if you want to overcome heroin or some other kind of drug, or maybe it's like nicotine, or some food, or whatever it is. You know, we're talking about addiction. It's not just some bad habit. So, we've got to treat it with a bit more care, I guess. You know, we've got to actually deal with it effectively. Now, what we can't do is change the addiction or pathways by just removing all the triggers. We're going to feel disempowered. We're not going to feel like we really have a choice over our behavior. And ultimately, we're going to have those cravings anyway because of this psychological, emotional dependency on this mind-mood altering experience.
Now, where we can make a choice, and this is the key thing, is we can make a choice between that craving and that response. And when we make that choice over and over, what happens is we actually change those addictive neural pathways. And that's what I want for everyone I work with, everyone I, you know, share these videos with. So, what we want to do is get out of this addiction because the addiction is leading us feeling, you know, drained, tired, lacking in confidence, feeling disgusting, always feel like we've got this desire, and more. We're feeling frustrated with ourselves, and we're anxious, maybe disconnected. We're just not living up to our full potential in life.
So, how do we actually overcome this problem? Well, we start off here in the addiction. It's no fault of our own that we end up here. We're just susceptible to porn. I mean, this is crazy that we even live in this world where it's accessible to people at, like, age 11, 12, when our brain is incredibly malleable as well. So, it's, uh, it's hard that we ended up here. It's not our fault. But that's just what happens. And it's largely due to the normalization of it and the lack of awareness around this problem. So, we end up with these addicted neural pathways. It's not our fault. There's no sort of shame around it. It happened to me. I was in the addiction for at least 10 years.
So, what we then do, though, is every time we have that desire, that urge, because we're going to have that desire because of how the brain's rewired. Now, every time we have that urge, we have a choice. We have a choice between the stimulus and the response. If you're on social media, you see something sexual, you have a choice. You're not helpless. You don't have to just give in and start looking at sexual content because helplessness requires your consent. And so, if we deal with those urges correctly, time and time again, what we're going to have is, we're going to have peace of mind at the other end.
So, what we don't want to do, though, because I've talked quite a bit about how the, how the craving can be caused by social media, but I think what's also worth acknowledging is that what we don't want to do is like have this craving for porn, and then we're just like, "Okay, well, well, you know, I can just maybe go on social media, get like my dopamine hit that way." Because what will then happen is we're just going to have like these urges for social media, and then we're going to have more and more urges for social media. And then what we've done is we've basically just created a new addiction. We've just replaced porn with social media. That's kind of a path that I went down a bit in the past. And what that does is, as I say, it just creates a social media addiction, and then we stay in the primary addiction as well of porn because we've not changed those addicting neural pathways to porn.
Now, I really like this quote by Einstein, which is, "If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solution." When it comes to overcoming porn addiction, I don't think many people have really understood the problem. The problem is addicting neural pathways. It's addiction. And we've got to understand the addicted part of the mind. So, we've got to understand some of those junky thoughts, rationalizations, excuses, so that we can overcome this problem correctly. The number one core problem, though, of course, is dealing with those cravings. That space between the stimulus, you know, you're triggered, whatever it is, that space between having the craving, however it's caused, it doesn't really matter because you're going to have it. You know, that space between that craving and your response to it is where you actually have a choice.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." It's a beautiful quote there by Victor Frankl, who wrote a really good book called "Man's Search for Meaning." So, what we want to do is just make the right choice between that craving and response. And the problem that I think a lot of people have is that between that craving and that response, they're trying to replace it with something else. And I think social media is one of the first things that people will use because you can easily just go on Instagram and scroll, or whatever it is, and then you're just out of that temporary discomfort which is caused by the craving due to the addicting neural pathways. So, we don't want to do that.
Instead, we can actually make a choice by thinking through rationally, "Okay, what am I choosing to do and why?" You make a choice in that moment, you rewire the brain. You do that repeatedly, you keep on rewiring the brain. On the other side of that, what you're going to have is the, the land of liberation, the freedom, the peace of mind you actually want. Now, what you're going to have here is you're going to feel in control of yourself. You're going to be present. You're going to have peace of mind. You'll trust yourself. You're going to feel a lot more connected and have a lot more joy and actually be excited to live your life, more focused, feeling honest, and living with complete integrity as well.
So, this is possible. You know, should you be on social media or not whilst you're trying to overcome a porn addiction? Ultimately, you can do whatever you wish to do. But the most important thing is that we know how to deal with our choices, how to deal with our cravings by making choices that we're proud of day in and day out. And so, it's up to you what you choose to do. But if social media is getting in the way of you making the choices that you're proud of, or you're just replacing porn with social media, or you're going on social media and that's leading to having cravings all the time, but then you're going to make up some [ __ ] that, you know, you're, you're not on social media to look at porn, but actually you're looking at sexual content on social media all the time. Well, then maybe, maybe we have a problem and we want to make a change.
But yeah, hopefully that's been useful. Hopefully you can see now that the real problem is actually, are you in control of yourself or not? Because once you're in control of yourself moment by moment, then it doesn't really matter whether, you know, you have, you have cravings to do whatever, because you're always making choices you're proud of moment by moment. That's the most important thing here. So, so hopefully this has been useful. Thanks again, and we'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye. [Music]