You’ve told yourself before that you’re done watching porn. Heck, you’ve told yourself that more than once, but if you’re searching for how to stop watching porn, you already know it’s not as simple as just deciding to quit. Between how easy it is to access and how normal it’s made out to be, breaking free can feel much more challenging than you expected.
You’re not alone with this problem. With compassionate support from Begin Again Institute, you can learn how to stop watching porn, break the addictive cycle, and build a better life in recovery.
Understanding Pornography Addiction
Compulsive use of pornography is an addiction not unlike the addictions people face with alcohol, gambling, or substances. It shares all the same hallmarks of other types of addiction, including:
- Compulsively seeking out addictive behavior
- Multiple failed attempts to cut down or stop watching porn
- Growing a tolerance to pornographic material and needing more extreme images to get the same feelings
- Loss of interest in hobbies or activities outside of pornography
- A feeling of dependency on pornography
- Experiencing withdrawal symptoms when pornography use stops suddenly
Pornography addiction affects the brain’s reward system. Viewing pornography provides a spike in dopamine, the brain’s primary reward chemical. When dopamine levels spike, it encourages you to repeat the behavior.
So why do you seek out dopamine? Porn addiction typically stems from unresolved trauma. Something happened to you, and your body and mind responded by searching for a way to feel better. Pornography and dopamine filled that need, and before you knew it, an addiction developed.
If left untreated, pornography addiction can cause devastation in your relationships, work, and mental health. But you can learn how to stop watching porn and achieve recovery.
The Impact on Relationships and Personal Life
One of the most devastating aspects of pornography addiction is how it can harm your relationships and interpersonal life.
Pornography addiction can lead to:
- Reduced intimacy with your partner
- Creating a lack of trust
- Distorted perceptions of sexual intimacy
- Poor communication
- Feelings of guilt or shame
- Interpersonal conflict
These things vastly reduce the quality of your life. Learning how to stop watching porn is the first step, but it often takes substantial self-work and professional help to achieve a strong and lasting recovery.
How To Stop Watching Porn: 5 Steps To Break the Pattern
Breaking the pattern of watching pornography isn’t easy, but it is possible. Learning how to stop watching porn is a process, and it doesn’t always happen immediately. But if you follow the steps listed below, you’ll be on the right path to a better life in recovery.
1. Accepting the Problem
The first step in addiction recovery is understanding and truly accepting that you have a problem. Without being able to recognize porn addiction, you’ll never achieve the mindset required to break free from the pattern once and for all.
“The best way to start winning the battle with porn addiction is to start being honest with yourself,” said Ed Tilton, President of Begin Again Institute. “Start to be honest with your behaviors as it relates to cravings and about the consequences of the addiction.
“The lies that we tell ourselves often become the strongest delusions and hardest behaviors to change. Once we find honesty with ourselves, we are more likely to be honest with others. Through that honesty, we start to acknowledge a desire for change and a new freedom in how we see choice.”
Take a moment to recognize how porn is negatively impacting your life, and acknowledge that your porn use has become an addiction.
2. Setting Goals for Recovery
The next step is outlining your personal recovery plan. What do you hope to achieve from learning how to stop watching porn? Breaking free from the addiction itself is a common goal, but it typically isn’t the only goal. Do you want to improve your relationships? Achieve better mental health? Regain lost motivation or productivity?
Outline your goals for recovery and what it means to you. Planning for your success is critical to finding the strategies and treatments that could work best for you.
3. Avoiding Triggers
Like all other addictions, a pornography addiction often has a number of different triggers and situations that lead to the behavior and could lead to relapse. By working to identify the situations that lead to porn viewing and taking steps to avoid them, you’ll help protect yourself from the behavior you’re attempting to avoid.
4. Finding Healthy Alternatives for Coping
The fact of the matter is that most people use pornography for a purpose. For some, it’s a means of preventing boredom. For others, it can become a crutch for avoiding your challenges in life. Whatever the case may be, finding healthier and more productive alternatives gives you the outlet you need to achieve recovery.
Healthy alternatives to viewing porn may include:
- Sports or exercise
- Reading
- Spending time with friends or family
- Meditation
- Prayer
- Journaling
- Exploring outdoors
Whatever your alternative is, set aside time each week to engage in other dopamine-producing activities that you enjoy. Make them your new habit.
5. Get Support
As effective as the strategies above may be, they don’t always account for the struggles that people face when learning how to stop watching porn. Recovery is a journey. You should expect to face setbacks, temptations, and difficulties on the path to recovery.
Seeking social support from friends, family members, or mental health professionals is often the best way to deal with these challenges. Structured support systems, such as group therapy, support groups, or check-in buddies, can all be vital components to your long-term success.
The fact is that you don’t need to try going it alone. Having a support system can help you overcome roadblocks on the path to recovery, meet your goals, and stay accountable to your ideals.
“Recovery is a lifetime process,” said Matt Wenger, Executive Clinical Director at Begin Again Institute. “The best steps to take to avoid relapse are to engage in ongoing trauma therapy, maintain a rigorous recovery program, engage in authentic and supportive communities of other recovering addicts, and live a life of transparency.”
Seeking professional mental health support is an effective, private way to conquer a pornography addiction. Programs like Begin Again Institute’s 14-Day Intensive can help jumpstart your recovery.
Dealing With Underlying Issues
A commonly overlooked aspect of learning how to stop watching porn is addressing any underlying mental health concerns. In other words, people attempt to stop the negative behavior without addressing its cause.
People living with porn addiction often have other mental health concerns like:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Emotional trauma
Any one of these underlying concerns can directly feed into a porn addiction or lead you to turn to pornography to feel better. Yet this pattern quickly leads to a worsening of both conditions and leaves you feeling worse than ever.
People who have survived trauma often feel as though they are left constantly on guard, and the surge of dopamine from pornography use can alleviate this feeling. It temporarily calms the fight or flight response, only to return in greater measure after the fact.
At Begin Again Institute, our trauma-informed approach teaches you not only how to stop watching porn but how to achieve emotional well-being. This often means working one-on-one with a therapist or finding mental health support that can help you on the path to recovery.
Taking Action and Moving Forward
Learning how to stop watching porn isn’t easy. But when porn addiction runs out of control, it can lead to devastating consequences throughout your life. There is a path to recovery with pornography addiction treatment at Begin Again Institute. Contact us today to get started.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to stop watching porn?
There’s no single timeline, since it depends on how long the pattern has been in place and how deeply it’s tied to a root trauma. You must first identify and process that trauma, then your healing can begin, and you can change the negative behavior.
What happens when you stop watching porn?
You may experience withdrawal-like symptoms. These symptoms are part of your brain resetting its reward system after relying on the dopamine spike porn provides. These symptoms typically ease over time with healthy coping strategies and support.
Can you stop watching porn without professional help?
Some people make progress on their own using strategies like avoiding triggers and building healthy routines, but many find it difficult to sustain long-term recovery without support. Working with a therapist or treatment program gives you the tools to address the root cause, not just the behavior itself.
Edward Tilton is a proven behavioral healthcare leader with an established track record in the recovery industry space. As an accomplished healthcare leader, Ed has diverse management experience including clinical and business operations, expansion of program development, and clinical service offerings.
