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FIRST THOUGHTS

In a time when the internet is more pervasive than ever, we are increasingly exposed to pornography from a young age, which can be extremely destructive. Many people fall into this trap, some occasionally and others more frequently. It can be tempting to believe that engaging in moderation will not cause harm, but by rationalizing this behavior, we reveal our inability to break free from it. Pornography is literally designed to keep us hooked and, ultimately, lead to addiction.

I am happy to have found this book and look forward to diving into this sadly unexplored subject.

INTRODUCTION

• Back in the days, most of the pornography was generally harmless
  • Therapists would often recommend X-rated videos or pornographic stories in couple’s counseling
• In the mid-1990, this view on pornogrpahy slowly started to switch
  • From helping people and couples with their intimate relationships to make people have a relationship with it
  • It competes with partners as a sexual outlet

Not a harmless fantasy

• Being involed with porn often requires a consiredable form of dishonesty and secrecy
  • This leads to negative states such as irritability, depression, shame, isolation, etc… it can also lead to more extreme and illegal activities
• It was reported in 2002 that 50% of divorce cases were involved with pornography
• Partners and children also affected
  • Feeling emotionally abandoned and powerless

What has changed?

• Easy access of porn on the Internet, anonymously
• ‘You no longer have to go looking for porn, porn is looking for you!’
• 25% of all daily Internet search engines and 35% of all downloads
  • Youth under the age of 18 being the largest consumer group (!)

Why we wrote this book

• In our society, we tend to avoid discussing sexual issues
• Porn affects the user’s relationship with itself and with others

What to expect

• identify and evaluate the impact of porn,
• decide whether it’s time to quit using porn,
• learn how to stop using porn and deal with cravings,
• rebuild self-esteem and restore personal integrity,
• heal a relationship harmed by porn use, and
• develop a thriving and satisfying sexual life without porn.

I – BECOMING AWARE

1) The Hidden Power of Porn

Porn was the best sex I ever had. Tremendous rush. I didn’t have to emotionally connect. (…) But it wasn’t cool when I got caught. Porn has a destructive side. I lost my job and nearly my wife. If you keep doing porn long enough it will ruin your life. I don’t think the power of porn is really understood by most people.

Dave, a pastor in his fifties

• Porn rewires your brain
  • Problematic sexual desires, experiencing functioning problems
• Most of us are exposed to porn unprepared (school education)
• Free of porn, you can create a healthy sexuality, boost your self-esteem and satisfying intimate relationships

Porn defies clear definition

• Porn is in the eye of the beholder
  • ‘I can’t define it but I know it when I see it’ – Potter Stewart
• The authors describe pornography as any sexually explicit material that is intended to be or is used as a sexual outlet
  • Definition based on the type of relationship the user develops with the material

The superhighway to porn

• From the Greek words ‘porno’ and ‘graphie’ translating into ‘the writings of or about prostitutes’
  • Like prostitution, porn does not take in consideration human sexuality and needs (human affection, foreplay, afterplay, consent, safety…)
• The porn industry generates more than 97 billion dollars every year
• ‘I couldn’t believe what was turning me on.’ Kirk, 48 year-old postal clerk

Porn delivers

• Instant sexual turn-on
  • Unlike other physical sexual stimulants, the mental nature of porn can make us use it without anyone knowing
  • Gets stored in your mind
  • ‘Genitals first’ mindset
  • Enters our body through our senses, making us react in an instictual way
  • Our brain sees no difference between porn and sex
• Drug-like Euphoria
  • Changes your hormone level and your brain chemistry
    • Dopamine and other ‘feel-good’ chemicals (adrenaline, endorphins, serotonin…)
    • Brain overload = reduces body’s own ability to produce and release hormones naturally = leading to cravings
    • Symptoms of withdrawal
      • Porn recovery taking on average of 18 months (!)
• Power trip
  • Illusion of being powerful and in control
  • Hunt and conquest feeling
  • Voyeurism
  • Porn is focusing on the notion of self-centered power
• Slot-machine excitement
  • Similar to gambling
  • ‘Intermitent reward system’
    • Powerful method of habit shaping and behavior
• Love affair
  • Alternative sexual outlet
  • Your feelings and connections towards porn are similar to a real human
  • Same chemicals released when a person is sexually attracted and in love with a human
  • More orgasms = more sexually and emotionally attached
  • Secrecy and deception, like a real sexual affair

The bad outweighs the good

• conflict with values, beliefs, and goals,
• compromises honesty and oppeneness in a relationship,
• upsets and competes with an intimate partner,
• harms mentally and physically,
• makes you less attractive as a partner,
• causes sexual desire and functioning difficulties,
• shapes sexual interests in a destructive ways,
• causes family, work, legal and personnal problems.

• Nothing beats experiencing genuine love and a healthy relationship with another real human being

Porn distorts sex. There’s no real consent, equality, or mutual respect. It teaches you to take but never give love. Porn doesn’t truly reflect what’s best for us sexually. It’s unreal. You can’t find any joy or lasting sexual happiness there.

Max, early 20’s

2) First Encounters

• Childhood is the root of a big part of our behavior and attitude
• Finding porn as kids can teach us to be secretive and to hide these things from others
• Reactions to these first encounters vary (age, sex, social and family environment, religion…)
• Parent’s reaction and communication plays a big role on the future relationship between porn and the child
• Reasons a child can stay hooked on porn:
  • Learning about sex
    • Sex education in schools… Porn is often our only source of information about sex
  • Belonging to a group
    • Secretely sharing something in common strengthens the bond of a group
    • Girls often would unify by expressing a critical reaction of porn, boys would often abstain of doing so (‘cool factor’)
  • Sexual permission and pleasure
    • Especially when we’re young, porn teaches us that our sexual feelings and fantasies are natural and normal, and should even be pursued
    • Can feel liberating for someone who got teached a negative view of sex (ex. homosexuality)
    • Way for boys of proving their ‘masculinity‘
    • From ‘self-loving’ to ‘doing to’
  • Coping with emotional stress
    • Drug-like properties + mind-and-body-altering sexual response
    • Kids especially vulnerable
    • For many, porn is their first sexual relationship – big impact

3) The Porn Relationship

• We are likely to become emotionally and physically dependent to anything we regularly make our emotional and sexual comfort and satisfaction
  • We learn to associate pleasure with each interraction

Drifting away from porn

• Primary inhibiting factors:
  • Personally disliking porn
    • One-dimensional (‘by men, for men’), non-realistic, boring, relationship towards women, risky…
  • Having limited contact with porn
    • Time, money, privacy, accessibility…
  • Feeling sexually secure and satisfied
    • Having a hulfiling partner and a healthy sexual life, sexually secure and confident
  • Wanting to experience emotional intimacy
    • Close and meaningful sexual relationships

Getting deeper into porn

• Primary acceleratng factors:
  • Associating porn with pleasure
    • Sexual fantasies, visually stimulated people, pleasurable orgasms related to hormones..
  • Having frequent and easy access to porn
    • ‘(…) Internet pornography is the ‘crack cocaine’ of sexual adiction. It was certainly for me.’ – Victor, 51 year-old social worker
  • Using porn to medicate distress
    • Comfort when feeling lonely, desperate, frustrated, anxious, sad, angry…
    • Escape mechanism
    • Pleasurable physical sensations
    • People suffering with psychological conditions
    • Sexual dissatisfaction
  • Having difficulty being intimate in relationships
    • Real relationships require energy and work (emotionally and physically)
    • Fear of rejection
    • Lack of confidence of skills or sexual attractiveness

4) To See or Not to See-The Consequences of Porn

• Pleasure often make us ignore and rationalize the negative side effects and consequences of our actions
  • We often realize these effects too late

The negative consequences of using pornography

• Most common negative consequences of porn use:
  • Easily irritated and depressed
    • Keeping secret our practises that we feel bad about
    • Thug-of-war between our emotions (temptation VS shame)
    • Suffering in silence – often leading to more porn use
    • Pojecting our feelings onto other people and situations – defense mechanism
    • Internalized anger turns into depression
  • Isolation
    • Turning away from people, tunning out
    • Choosing porn over people
    • Porn is possessive and makes you become self-centered
  • Sexually objectifying people
    • Pornifying: form of sexual objectification turning real life and people into the kind of fantasy portrayed in porn
    • More picky with partners
    • Using someone for sex VS sharing a sexual experience
  • Negleting important life areas
    • Sleep, education, career, family, relationships, money…
    • Problems with sex
      • Most of our behaviors are learned behaviors
      • Unrealistic expectations
      • ‘Visual Viagra’
      • Tuning out during sex
  • Unhappy partner
    • Trust issues
    • Disrupted sexual intimacy
  • Feeling bad about ourselves – self esteem
  • Risky and dangerous behavior
    • ‘Porn gives you what you want, but also makes you want things you didn’t start out wanting’
    • Masturbating on certain types of porn makes your ignore how disruptive and hurtful they are
    • Desensitize to violence, see people as objects without feelings, needs, and essential rights
  • Porn addiction
    • Porn can change your body and brain chemistry – similar to cocaine
    • Addictions develop slowly over time and on a biological level
    • Withdrawal process often uncomfortable (depression, insomnia, irritability…)
• Porn addicts:
  • Crave porn intensely and persistently;
  • Can’t control it and ultimately fail when trying to stop;
  • Continue using it despite being aware of harmful consequences.

Taking porn problems seriously – or not

• We don’t want to believe that our source of pleasure is harming us

5) Partners in Pain

• A relationship with porn sabotages the the fondamental values of a healthy relationship (honesty, fidelity, affection, intimacy, respect, support, trust, love)

• Stages a partner goes through when in a relationship with a porn user:
  • 1. Being in the dark
    • Feeling sexually neglected and rejected
    • Lack of emotional closeness
  • 2. Shock of discovery
    • Feelings of shock (not reckonizing your partner), anger, betrayal, sexual inadequacy
    • Sense of grief
    • Feeling unsafe
  • 3. Emotional wounds
    • Women often suffer in internal psychological ways, often difficult to see or understand
    • Loss of respect
    • Lack of trust
    • Sharing the most intimate gift one has to offer in a relationship, our sexuality, to a fantasy
    • ‘He’s more faithful to porn than he is to me’, Sue, a husband’s wife
    • 4. Trying to cope
      • Becoming a Porn Cop, trying to restore honesty, accountability and trust. Often creates tension and conflit
      • Competing with porn, engaging in certain emotionally humiliating or physically painful sexual acts – feeling like a performance instead of sharing love
      • Seeking help – often difficult, fear of external judgement

5) Hitting Bottom

• External crisis (being left by partner or getting caught at work) or internal breakdown (mental, emotional, spiritual breakdown)

II – HEALING

7) Getting Motivated to Quit Porn

• Desire to take back control of our lives
• New level of maturity and self-responsibility
• Ambivalence: coexistence of opposing attitudes and feelings within an individual. Mental conflit
  • Quitting something that has given us pleasure or fulfillment in the past
  • For any addiction, ambivalence eventually needs to be resolved
• Strong motivation, find your why
  • From Atomic Habits by James Clear: you need to build an identity based habit (make the good habit part of your identity)
• Less ambivalence, more motivation:
  • Acknowledge how porn brings you harm
    • How it hurt your past, damages your present and threatens your future
    • Stop being denial
    • External and internal consequences
  • Identify what matters most to you
    • Values, beliefs, life goals
  • Face your fears
    • Change
    • Giving up the source of instant pleasure, emotional well-being, sexual enjoyment, and relating to others
    • Feeling of withdrawal (depression, anger, stress…)
    • Identifying and admitting your fears and false beliefs
      • Saying your fears out loud or reaching out to someone
    • You are not alone
  • Taking responsibility for own recovery
    • Change has to start from within, not your surroundings – take responsibility – you are in charge
    • From David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me – The Cookie Jar Method: making a list of your successes you had and what you managed to overcome in your life
      • Ex: Giving up a bad habit, overcoming illness or injury, financial difficulties…
    • ‘Fake it until you make it’
    • Self-talk
      • ‘You can’t climb uphill with downhill thoughts’
    • ‘(…) you don’t make a dog drop what’s in its teeth unselss you can offer something else’ – Ethan

8) Six Basic Action Steps

• The Six Basic Action Steps
  • Reaching out to someone
    • Significant first step
    • Weakens your connection to porn (isolation, secrecy, denial…)
    • Often difficult (shame, guilt, fear, anxiety…)
    • Untangles shame from women (porn being a guy thing)
  • Get involved in a treatment program (therapist or group meetings)
    • Requires a level of openness and vulnerability
    • Good for providing new tools, role models, insights and to evaluate progress
    • Group meetings can bring emotional support, reduces feelings of shame and motivates the porn user to stay on track
  • Create a porn-free environement
    • From Atomic Habits: make it invisible
    • Physical and psychological distance
    • Clear it out, keep it out, turn away from it
    • Quitting porn is often scary or upseting, it’s a concrete physical act of separation
    • The more you let it reach out to you, the more difficult it becomes to detach from it
    • Just because something exists doesn’t mean we have to keep it in our consciousness
      • You always have the option to control what you put your attention to

Think of it as a toxic substance removal effort – porn has been poisoning your life, and the only way to improve your health and the health of your environment is by getting rid of it entirely.

The Porn Trap

• Create a porn-free environement
  • From Atomic Habits – have an accountability partner

• Take care of your physical and emotional health
  • Your ability to succesfully quit porn will be affected by how well you are able to recognize how you’re feeling (bored, lonely, anxious, stressed out, angry, hurt…) and respond effectively
  • It’s easier to stay away from porn when you are actively doing positive for yourself, emotionally and physically

• Start healing your sexuality

• Each step complement each other and work together
  • The most challenging steps are often the most rewarding
    • If you feel reluctant to do a particular step, ask yourself why do you feel this way

9) Handling and Preventing Relapses

• Escaping the porn trap is a series of successes and setbacks
• Self compassion and forgiveness
• Porn relapse: falling back into the former problem behavior of using porn
• An effective slip-up can make a recovering porn user pay closer attention to their behavior and reinforce vulnerable areas in their lifestyle
• Addictions that changes brain chermistry, like alcoholism and porn addiction, take time to heal
• Recovering porn users are especially vulnerable because of the sexually stimulating society and environement we live in
• Relapse is inevitable, being coky and thinking it wont happen to us will only blindside us and let our guard down
• Staying in the Porn-Free zone
  • Knowing what your triggers are and how to react to them is essential to prevent a relapse

1. Stop
   • Interrupting old patterns of porn use which make us resume control of our thoughts and behaviors and making good decisions for ourselves
2. Get away
   • Awarness exercice
   • No matter how sexually aroused you are, your environement, or how you may feel, you ALWAYS have the choice. YOU ARE IN CONTROL
3. Calming yourself emotionally and physically
4. Reach out for suport
5. Reafirm your commitment to your well-being and recovery
   • Find your why

A relapse is only a failure if you let it be. I’ve learned that a relapse can be seen as merely a temporary step back. Regardless of how disappointed you may feel about it at the time, it always has something important to teach you.

Corey

11) A New Approach to Sex

• Humans are sexual beings. Sex is classified as part of the physiological needs at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy. While not critical for individual survival, it is vital for the survival of the species and contributes to emotional and social health when expressed in way that are aligned with our values
• Prioritize communication in your relationships

12) True Freedom and Fulfillment

Some people are casual drinkers. I don’t know if a person can be a casual porn user. I do know that I cannot. Just like people say, ‘Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic,’ I feel that way about being a porn addict. I am one. I can’t go near porn if I want to stay healthy.’

Logan

• Your level of freedom comes down to your everyday choices
• Since porn in literally everywhere, we need to frequently reaffirm our commitment to stay away from porn
  • It is a lifelong process
  • Even if it is not easy, the feeling of accomplishment you have from keeping porn away from your life is extremely powerful and rewarding
• ‘I feel a real sense of freedom and community.’
• ‘I’m able to express my true self. This is really me.‘

The process of quitting porn develops and stregthens skills that can contribute to you feeling more responsible and more in charge of your life. Recovery teaches you to recognize feelings when they happen, tolerate emotional distress, and delay gratification. You come to know yourself better-know what is really important to you and why. Rather than succumbing to your impulses, you are able to cope with them through taking care of yourself in life-affirming ways.

The Porn Trap

CLOSING THOUGHTS

This book was quite a challenging read! Not only does it make us question our own relationship with pornography, but it also exposes the risks and consequences it can have on our personal lives and its broader impact on society. Personally, I believe this book is a must-read for everyone. As the book aptly points out, we now live in a society where you don’t necessarily have to look for porn, porn is looking for you. It’s an eye-opening reminder to be more mindful of the content we consume and its potential effects.