HealthyGamerGG - "Why Can't I Stop Watching Porn?"

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

In today's video, we embark on a thought-provoking exploration into the intricate reasons why individuals often struggle to break free from the grip of pornography addiction. Addiction can be an overwhelming challenge, and our aim in this insightful video is to unravel the complex web of factors that contribute to this issue. Learn more from Dr. K in his Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/46EUiJk Not sure which module to start on? Take our quiz: https://bit.ly/47dGzKj Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The root of the problem is emotions, which means if you want to quit pornography, due to feeling desperate, you're doomed to fail. Because that desperation is what fuels the pornography. I'm feeling so lost. I'm feeling so helpless. That's when your brain is going to reach for the pornography. How do I stop watching pornography permanently? I'm 17.

I live in India and I'm preparing for an engineering entrance exam to pursue my dream of becoming an astronaut. There are four months left and I really ruined my preparation by procrastinating an addiction such as video games, pornogic, etc. I did get rid of my video game addiction, but pornography, I just can't seem to stop watching it. I've tried the easy-peasy method, which I believe is the best possible method to quit pornography, but I have been unsuccessful.

I want to get rid of this addiction as soon as possible. Whenever I try to quit, it's just a couple of days until I change my mind and relapse. I'm making this post as a last hope for quitting pornography because I really cannot focus on my studies, and my efficacy drops sharply due to this addiction, which I cannot afford at this period of time. The first thing to understand, I want you all to pay attention to the language, permanently, get rid, can't seem to stop watching it.

I want to get rid of this addiction as soon as possible. I cannot afford at this period of time. So the first thing to understand is that when we get addicted to something, the addiction creates a desperation to fix. I need to fix it now. It needs to be fixed forever. So the goal becomes, how do I fix it permanently? be. And the moment that we let the desperation fuel our desire to overcome an addiction is the moment we lose to the addiction. Because if it's being fueled by the desperation, what happens when

the desperation eases up a little bit? What happens when you have a good day and you feel less desperate? So you are setting up a fuel which will run out. Hey, all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. K's guide to mental health. It combines over two decades of my experience of both being a monk and a psychiatrist and distills all of the most important things I've learned into a choose-your-own-adventure format. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today. Second thing to understand is that pornography is primarily a emotional regulation technique. So if we look at the data on pornography and how it affects our brain, people do not watch pornography because they're horny or lustful.

This is a common misconception. They're not like the hornyest people on the planet. Or horny people can watch a lot of pornography, but people who tend to get addicted to pornography are usually not horny when they watch it, okay? Different things. What tends to happen is we use pornography for emotional regulation. So the key thing about sexual activity is that sexual activity has a very powerful effect in the brain. So if we look at the purpose of the human brain and body, it is to procreate, which is why if you look at sort of like fertility and like things like that, like you'll see this situation where if the body can afford to mate, it will because that's

ultimately what the goal is. So you'll even see in some situations like, you know, anglerfish where the male angler fish will attach to a female and all of the male anglerfish's organs will atrophy and it will become one giant testicle and pump sperm into the female anglerfish. So we see some highly specialized adaptations based on sexuality. And in the human brain or mind, what we end up doing is sex will override everything else in our head. And so when sex, like when I'm feeling bad, if there's an opportunity for sex, hey, let's push that out the window because, hey, there's sex. So when we see pornography, it triggers these kinds of changes in our brain.

It triggers a strong amount of emotional suppression. And then the other thing is that oftentimes with pornography, there'll be some amount of masturbation, there'll be some amount of orgasm, which will release dopamine and will calm down our hippocampus even more. We also sort of slow down our brain, right? There's post-nut clarity. So there are all kinds of physiologic and neuroscientific changes from watching pornography. But the root of the problem is emotions, which means if you want to quit pornography, due to feeling desperate, you're doomed to fail. Because that desperation is what fuels the pornography. I'm feeling so lost. I'm feeling so helpless. That's when your brain is going to reach

for the pornography. So how do you quit permanently? You do not quit permanently. The way to quit permanently is by letting go of the word permanent. You can't be sober for a year. You can be sober today. You can just resist now. So if you really want to conquer this, stop thinking about tomorrow, stop thinking about a month from now, stop thinking about all the time that you've wasted, stop thinking about how important it is that this get taken care of. All of those thoughts are not helpful. And in fact, they are harmful. Regret about the past, negative emotion. Fear of the future, negative emotion. Desperation for change, negative emotion. negative negative, negative, just feeds the pornography. Instead, one really simple thing. Don't watch

pornography today. Don't watch pornography now. This moment in time, do not watch. When tomorrow rolls around, don't worry about tomorrow. We're going to worry about today. Not today. Not today. Not today. Those of y'all who procrastinate, leverage your procrastination. Procrastinate with pornography. I'll watch tomorrow. I'll let myself watch tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Keep putting it off. keep putting it off. And as you put it off, other things will start to happen. You won't need it quite as much. You'll start to unwire yourself. Now, a couple of other practical tips. Number one, number one cause of relapse is not actually strong negative emotion. It is boredom. So when you need that spurt of dopamine, your brain will make you bored. If you struggle with pornography addiction

and video game addiction and some other kind of addiction, boredom is the problem. Bortem is a dopaminergic craving. So if you want to quit pornography, you better have your day packed from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed. The more you can structure your day, the less vulnerable you will be to pornography. Because pornography squeezes in in the gaps. Right now, I've got 15 minutes. Let me watch some porn. I've got an hour before bed. I'm done with dinner. Maybe I'll game. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want to go to sleep yet. Porn. Porn will fill in whatever gap you have. So if you've got a gap in your day, porn will fill it. Number two is structure your day as much as you can. Number three is remember, the root of pornography is emotional regulation. As long as you do not have alternate emotional

coping skills, pornography will be your default. This is where stuff like meditation works really well, or doing something like seeing a therapist, things like that. Like, you need some way to regulate your emotions because the trash has to be taken out. And porn is really good at taking out the trash. So you've got to take out the trash in some other way. Now, the key thing that people trip up with here is that when you try to take out the trash, you have to remember that while you are building a new emotional coping skill, it will be less effective than anything else you do. It will be the biggest waste of time. This is what people miss about emotional coping skills. Any new coping skill, you're going to be level zero and you're like a level 92 pornography watcher. Your brain knows exactly what's going on.

Knows exactly what it's looking for, knows exactly where to find it. You even know based on what kind of pornography you watch, right, depending on what kind of mood you're in, whether you need something a little bit more hardcore, a little bit less hardcore. It's interesting, right? And that's because your brain knows we need a stronger, so this is also interesting. If we look at why pornography is addictive, we need a super normal stimulus. And a super normal stimulus is something that is like more than what we're used to. So we see brighter colors. We see 4K. We see surround sound. We see VR. All this kind of stuff is more, more stimulus engages our brain more. So if you really want to kick it, you got to procrastinate. You got to pack your day because boredom is really going to be what screws you. You got to start to learn

alternate coping skills. Meditation is probably number one. That's why it's so hard. Why does all the bad stuff feel so good? What a great question. So in our society today, all the bad stuff is what feels really good. Playing video games, using drugs, pornography. The bad stuff. Eating unhealthy food, food that is high in carbohydrates and fat and processed. Why does the worst stuff feel so good? It's because the world that we live in today is so accessible and easy. We have such an abundance of those things. And back in the day when we evolved, the things that made us feel the best were a rarity. Right?

If you look at calorie density, for example, we used to eat stuff like cassava. I mean, a lot of the world still does. Right? We'd eat these different tubers and we'd forage and berries and stuff like that. We didn't have like animal farms. We had to go out and hunt. So there was a very natural balance between, are yearning for something and the availability in the world.

The reason that life has become harder is because life has become abundant and easy. And the easier it gets, the harder things become for us. When I have food delivery, grocery delivery, I can work remotely. I can always find new friends online. I don't need to leave the house. I don't need to leave my computer. I don't need to learn how to repair relationships because I can just block someone and start talking to someone new.

So the easier the world has become, the harder things have become for us. Because when we wired, when our brains evolved, they evolved in a certain kind of environment where we could not gratify our desires 24 hours a day. It was physically impossible. And so now what's happened is the burden has shifted to us to self-regulate. So we're quickly entering a world where EQ or emotional quotient is more important for your long-term success than I.

IQ or your intellectual capability. Self-regulation is what correlates with success, not intelligence. I mean, intelligence does correlate with success, but what we really see is that self-regulation and conscientiousness are very important. And so the stuff, the reason all the bad stuff feels good is because it didn't used to be bad, because it used to be rare. But now that it's become abundant, it becomes harmful. Sex is not harmful. Food is not harmful. It is the abundance of those things that is harmful. And so what's changed is that the availability has increased, which means we need to be more restrictive to compensate. So we have to evolve as human beings to survive in this world today.

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