How to overcome porn addiction. Pornography addiction brings up such a sense of overwhelming helplessness whether you have the addiction or you know somebody who has this addiction or you are in a relationship with someone who has this addiction. It can bring up those feelings in all parties, and it tends to lead to people doing the wrong thing. They get a little panicky and start ordering and making rules and kicking people out. That is understandable, but it can sometimes make things worse.

Let’s talk from a doctor’s perspective about what typically causes porn addiction so we can understand it, and how to overcome porn addiction. If we can understand it, then we can fix it. That’s medicine in a nutshell right there.

 So what it causes porn addiction?

In my experience, pornography addiction covers up something else. People get very busy and very involved in this inanimate stuff, as a way to cover up something within ourselves. Those three things

that people cover up are three emotions, actually.

Anger, neediness, and sadness.

These three emotions, more than any other emotions, cause terrible conflict in people. My 20 years of experience everybody who’s come in with pornography addiction has conflicts with one or more of those emotions. What is that about? What do I mean by conflict?

 Anger

Anger, for instance, people who feel anger especially toward someone they love or care about, it can bring up tremendous guilt as if they shouldn’t have this anger; as if it’s not normal to have this anger. Or they think if they express this anger, it’s going to lead to hurting that person.

So they get very busy burying the anger emotion. They won’t admit it to themselves; or dare say it, ever. They get very involved in burying it. So pornography is a way instead of saying to your significant other, “Hey I’m really annoyed or angry that you’ve let our sex life slide.” or “Hey, I’m really upset that you aren’t interested in sex anymore,” or, “I’m upset we don’t have a closer relationship.” Instead, they just pretend that angers not even there, and they’re going to use pornography instead.

Oh, by the way, a lot of the times people who are bearing anger accidentally let their spouse find out about the pornography use, so then the spouse ends up getting punished, right? The act of anger does get acted out but not because the anger was talked about, but because you tried to bury the anger, and it seeped out. It’s like, oh let me punish that person for whatever it is they’re not doing for you as opposed to simply talking about it.

 Neediness

The other emotion that people tend to cover up with pornography is neediness. Neediness is another emotion people get conflicted about because neediness brings up a lot of shame because they equate it with clingy, having no empathy, you know people who go after people who are too needy. They have this whole scale about how certain needs are trivial. It’s a whole mess of things, and none of it’s true.

Neediness is a normal human emotion; in fact, it’s the cornerstone of all relationships. That’s what a relationship is, “I need you. you need me.” A relationship is shared neediness. If you think neediness brings up or equates to all these negative things you’re going to get busy burying it. You’re going to hide it; you’re not going to talk about it. Instead of saying you need more sex or more intimacy, you’re just going to go to this inanimate object that doesn’t care if you’re needy or not and use that instead.

 Sadness

The third emotion that people with pornography addiction tend to have conflicts with and thus, cover-up is sadness. Again, like anger and neediness- sadness tends to be equated with weakness. Some people think if they feel sad or they start feeling sad, they’re going to turn to jello or a puddle on the floor. (These are the terms I’ve heard.) It’s as though they’re never going to be functional again, so they fight sadness like it’s a plague. They don’t understand, or they won’t accept that sadness is a normal human emotion.

They bury it, instead of saying, “I’m sad or upset that our intimacy isn’t where it used to be.” Or, “I’m sad that we’re not as close as we used to be.” They just walk to the inanimate object that doesn’t care if they’re sad and use that instead of being in the relationship.

By using pornography to cover up these three emotions, they effectively, at least for the short-run hide that emotion from their loved one. But they’re hiding it from their loved one because they are conflicted with it. The loved one, most of the time, in my experience, is fine with them having anger and neediness and sadness. They don’t want the other person to leave them.

By the person who is using pornography burying the emotion and leaving to go off to this other source, it’s a way of putting a wedge between you and your significant other and that causes more problems than actually saying what the emotion is.

That’s pornography addiction understanding 101.

Pornography addiction tends to cover up the three enemy emotions- anger, neediness, and sadness. These emotions are normal; they’re as normal as rain, leaves, and the sky. These emotions are biological, physiological; we all have emotions. If you can get used to and comfortable with these three emotions, then you don’t need pornography to cover them up. And that is how to overcome porn addiction.

I wish you all the best.

If you have any problems or troubles, give me a call at (757)340-8800.

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