How Can I Get Rid Of My Porn Addiction

Sensitised Pathways Remain Even When You Quit Your Addiction

Thus, its really DeltaFosB that causes sensitisation and it does this by creating stronger and more powerful nerve connections in the brain. Long after an addict has quit using and DeltaFosB levels have returned to normal, these sensitised pathways remain. This explains why alcoholics who have been sober for many years may still suffer from strong cravings when they walk into a pub.

There Are Other More Specific Lies That Your Addiction Voice Can Throw At You As Well

In addition to the prediction, there are other more specific lies your addiction can try to pull on you as well.

Some common lies the sensitized pathways were whispering in my ears, back when I was struggling with my own addiction, a few years ago could look something like this

• Come on, just one last time, then I’ll start a new life on Monday
• Just a few more times wouldn’t hurt, besides, everybody does it
• We’re not going to relapse, just check this one thing quickly

Now, your job is to become super aware of your inner voice, and recognize all the lies the sensitized pathways are whispering to you.

It takes some practice to become aware of the lies, but with a little effort you’ll be able to do it fairly quickly.

so, it’s clearly a big, fat, life.

What Is A Support Group

There are common misconceptions about support groupsincluding about what they can and cannot do. A support group can be defined as a group of people who share concerns or experiences. These groups meet regularly in order to provide each other with advice, comfort, and encouragement.

While support groups can be important in the recovery process, they are not meant to provide treatment. Instead, their focus is on providing peer support, allowing members to share their stories, celebrate each other’s successes, and talk about coping strategies that may help.

Family and friends are still an important source of support for people in recovery, but they aren’t always able to understand what the person might be going through. Support groups help fill in an important gap in social support by providing the opportunity to talk to people who have been in the same situation and may be better able to empathize and offer tips coming from a lived experience.

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Understand The Nature Of The Battle

There is more knowledge about how the brain works now than ever before. Sexual addiction is not just a moral problem it is also a brain problem.

We can develop a brain problem with moral implications that cant be healed by moral solutions alone. We cannot just read our Bibles more, pray more or attend more small groups. We must be transformed by the renewing of our minds, and we must find healing for our wounds.

So where is healing found?

Delete Your Browser History

Those of you with a background in psychology will recognize this as a type of Pavlovian conditioning. Pavlovian conditioning as defined by Wikipedia :

Classical conditioning refers to a learning procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus is paired with a previously neutral stimulus . It also refers to the learning process that results from this pairing, through which the neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response that is usually similar to the one elicited by the potent stimulus.

The only way around this is to delete your browser history.

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Access The Wound That Makes You Return To Unhealthy Addiction

We live in a broken, fallen world. You can grow up in a perfect family with tons of support and still get hurt. Some people can process their pain relationally with others, but many of us cant do that. We dont know how. We find ways to numb our pain, and those can become addictions.

Ultimately, you must go on the journey of exploring your own life and ask, “Where have I been wounded and how do those wounds affect me today?”

Have you been hurt by abuse? Divorce? High school? If we dont identify these wounds, well end up treating the symptoms rather than the root problems. You must explore your own story with safe people. Discover where youve been wounded and allow yourself to process that pain. Then you can find healing.

Go Through The Steps To Freedom

The Steps to Freedom in Christ is a spiritual and moral inventory of your life written by Neil T. Anderson.

We have found that a weekend retreat works the best to complete the Steps.

• It allows men to focus on what the Holy Spirit is saying and not be distracted.
• We strongly recommend disconnecting from smart phones for the weekend.
• It takes about 6-8 hours to go through the Steps. This is why the weekend retreat works well, but you can also do it weekly in your continued meetings

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Disordered Eating And Food

Support groups for problematic food-related behavior include:

• Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous: A 12-step program for those who have had an eating problem, including overeating or bulimia.
• GreySheeters Anonymous: A 12-step program for compulsive overeating.
• Overeaters Anonymous:A 12-step program for overeating, undereating, anorexia, bulimia, and other problem eating behaviors.

Nerve Cells That Fire Together Will Wire Together

Sensitisation and learning are governed by this simple principle: nerve cells that fire together will wire together. When nerve cells experience pleasure, nerve cells carry that message to the reward centre by join together. Overtime, this pathway that carries this message becomes fixed. When a memory or cue activates memories related to this pleasure, a powerful craving arises because the pathways that allow this pleasurable cue to reach your reward centre are well established.

This is illustrated by the image below:

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It Can Affect Your Partner’s Self

When a partner observes their partner drawing away physically, preferring instead to turn to pornit can be a heavy blow to their self-esteem.

Questions around their abilities in bed, the interests of their partner, and what other areas they may be falling short might consume the significant other of a person with this hypersexual disorder.

Have Goals You Keep Working On

When your trying to overcome an addiction, or even just stop a bad habit that is very powerful, it is absolutely crucial that you have some goals that you keep working on.

And by this I mean that can, and should not, be your only goal.

Why?

Well, because

only trying to build your life around something that you want to get away from is not a productive way to go about it. It makes your life empty and, on top of this, it actually also increases your risk of failing with that one thingeven though that’s the only thing you’re trying to achieve.

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There Is Hope And Forgiveness In God

In 1 Corinthians, we read: No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it .

And Proverbs tells us: Those who conceal their sins do not prosper, but those who confess and forsake them obtain mercy .

There is no disputing Gods love. Its a love we cannot even fathom. Because of this immense love, He will forgive us if we seek forgiveness.

Just as it keeps you from true intimacy with your spouse, it keeps you from an intimacy with God.

How Desensitisation Occurs

To understand desensitisation, you must understand how individual nerve cells communicate. Dopamine-producing nerve cells affected by desensitisation originate from the beginning of the reward circuit and make connections with other nerve cells in the reward centre. Nerve cells send messages using chemicals such as dopamine. Nerve cells bond to each other to form a reward pathway.

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Meet The Coolidge Effect

Internet porns endless supply of sexual novelty is an unnatural stimulus exploiting something thats been termed the Coolidge effect. This effect is best explained by an example. When you drop a willing female rat into a males cage, the male will continuously mate with the rat until he becomes bored. However, when you drop a different female rat into the cage, the males sexual appetite is awoken once more. You may repeat this process over and over again until the male rat collapses in exhaustion.

Why do the males become bored with the same female? Well, because the brain excretes less and less dopamine in respect of the current female, but a surge in dopamine occurs in the males brain when a new female is introduced. This mechanism helps promote genetic diversity and ensures no female goes unfertilized.

Find A Sponsor And Call Them Daily

A sponsor is someone who holds you accountable for your sobriety and helps you work through the 12-steps. Two months of attending weekly SA meetings, I found they alone were not helping me stay sober. I had to find someone who I would commit to working the program and building a personal relationship. In SA meetings, senior members whove accumulated decent sobriety usually volunteer to take on new members. If you choose not to join SA, find someone from your social circle you can rely on: this can be a friend, Imam, spouse, family member etc. I highly recommend getting the White Book and Step-into-Action and working through these with your sponsor.

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Neuroplasticity: How New Reward Pathways Arise

Forming new brain pathways in this manner is known as neuroplasticity. This is how we learn and how we become addicted. Overtime, old brain pathways weaken. This is known as forgetting or breaking a bad habit. Creating or weakening brain pathways is often known asrewiring the brain. Thus, neuroplasticity allows the brain to adapt as a result of experience.

Although they didnt know it, they had been seduced into pornographic training sessions that met all the conditions required for plastic change of brain maps.

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How To Join A Support Group

For most support groups, all that is required to join is a desire to begin recovery. Most people join a support group by simply walking in the door of a meeting near them. No invitation is required and there are no dues or fees. For members, there is often a voluntary collection.

That said, there are “open” meetings for members and non-members as well as closed meetings for members and prospective members only. Depending on the type of meeting, you might come across some of the following codes that indicate a more exclusive support group or additional services offered:

• American Sign Language

• Al-Anon Family Groups from Al-Anon

You can still find a meeting the old-school way by looking up a phone number in the white pages of the local telephone book or online.

Some databases are detailed and allow you to see which meetings are for newcomers or are wheelchair accessible, non-smoking, or LGBTQ+-friendly, among other characteristics. Other pages are less detailed and may only have phone numbers or listings for you to contact the meeting organizers.

The following is a list of official mutual support group websites and their meeting listings. If you cannot locate a face-to-face meeting near you, there are many online meetings available.

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Can Affect Daily Functioning

Being glued to a screen displaying pornographic material can be very obstructive to your daily flow. It can hinder productivity in the workplace, at home, and in social settings.

The overwhelming need to watch others engage in intercourse can become more important than the meeting scheduled with a client, attending the doctors appointment, or even taking much-needed time to relax and enjoy the day.

The Reward Circuits Of The Brain

The reward circuit of the brain is also known as the limbic system or primitive brain. This refers to our evolutionary ancient structures contained in the brain. These structures are involved in almost all emotional and physical function you may think of. These structures essentially keep us alive.

Changes in the reward circuits may affect any aspect of behaviour and may even physiological functions. The reward circuit shapes are moods and colours our emotions. Fear, joy and rage all arise from these evolutionary ancient structures. Most of our desires and drives arise in the reward circuit, such as hunger for food, power or sex. The reward circuit also allows us to become addicted to certain behaviours.

Alterations to the reward circuits are responsible for most mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression and social anxiety.

Reward circuit structures such as the hypothalamus and the Amygdala influence or control major functions such as male sexual behaviours, erections, the autonomic nervous system and endocrine system. The bottom line is that chemical or structural alterations to the reward circuit may result in wide and varying effects.

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Understand Lapse Versus Relapse

A lapse is where you mess up, but you quickly recover and use it as a learning experience to improve your prevention plan. A relapse is where you give up, binge, and donât care.

Know that lapsing is part of improving your prevention plan. Donât conclude you have lost all your progress or all the work youâve done doesnât countâbecause it does. Look forward with a positive attitude and know that you are one day closer to recovery.

When you have a lapse, ask yourself:

• Why was this trigger different?

• Have you been stressed out lately? How were you feeling emotionally?

• Did going some time with no scripture study weaken you?

• Have you not exercised a lot recently?

• Is something in your prevention plan not helpful?

• What can you do differently next time?

Write down what you are learning and keep going!

For Families And Codependents

These meetings are for those who have relatives and friends with addictions and problem behaviors. In addition to these groups, there are often links to family recovery groups for specific addictions or behaviors on the sites for the programs dedicated to them.

• Adult Children of Alcoholics: Find an ACA meeting by location search. They also have online meetings and phone meetings.
• Alanon and Alateen: Search for an Al-Anon Family Group meeting by location in the United States and Canada. You can also use the site to find online meetings, international meetings, or phone meetings.
• Codependents Anonymous: A 12-step program for recovery from unhealthy relationships.
• Families Anonymous: Get a PDF file of FA meetings by state. This is a 12-step program for those who have a family member with an addiction or problem behavior.
• Nar-Anon: A 12-step group for friends and families of people with substance use disorders.
• Recovering Couples Anonymous: A 12-step group for couples who want to restore and maintain their relationship in recovery.

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Increase Your Intake Of Omega 3 Fatty Acids

In the bookUnchain Your Brain, a book about overcoming addiction, there is one chapter where the brain experts, Daniel G. Amen and David E. Smith, talk about how getting more omega 3 in your diet can help with your impulse control.

They have even done studies on addicts specifically on this.

One study found that the addicts who had lower omega 3 levels had significantly more relapses on their road to recovery.

Pretty interesting, huh?

Since making sure to get enough omega 3 is both easy as well as healthy, this is a practical tip that is worth knowing.

Here are some foods that are rich in omega 3 fatty acids

So make sure you include some of those the next time your writing your shopping list.

Of course you could also use a good omega 3 supplement, like I personally do.

You might ask

Get Some Online Accountability

Use software to monitor your online activity. Covenant Eyes is a great resource. It allows you to receive your accountability partners reports weekly for the sites they visit and the searches they make. It lets you know when you need to follow up with each other on questionable activity. Finally, it allows you to celebrate with each other in putting online struggles to death.

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Dont Beat Yourself Up If You Fall Off The Wagon

Trying to break a habit or recover from an addiction is a journey. Unfortunately, on that journey, you might find yourself slipping back into old habits. Whenever that happens, dont waste any time beating yourself up.

Do your research, try more coping mechanisms and treatment options and get back on the wagon.

Sex Addiction Disordered Relationships And Abuse

Support groups for sex addiction, disordered relationships, and abuse include:

• Love Addicts Anonymous: A 12-step program for those who have “distorted thoughts, feelings, and behavior when it comes to love, fantasies, and relationships.”
• Sexaholics Anonymous: A 12-step program for those who want to “stop lusting and become sexually sober.”
• Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous: Find a meeting by searching by state or province. This is a 12-step program for those with “an addictive compulsion to engage in or avoid sex, love, or emotional attachment.”
• Sexual Compulsives Anonymous: A list of International SCA meetings in-person and online. This is a 12-step program.
• Sexual Recovery Anonymous: A 12-step group for those who desire to stop compulsive sexual behavior.
• Survivors of Incest Anonymous: A 12-step program for those who are over age 18 who were sexually abused as a child.

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