08 May 2018
BY: Team Mentriq
MENTAL HEALTH
Comments: No Comments
It is a tough road to tread when someone is trying to quit any kind of addiction. Suffering from pornography addiction creates many difficulties for the person, and yet the person is unable to quit. There are many attempts, but due to something or the other, the resolution is overlooked. Sometimes, it is because of sheer temptation, or else sometimes it is because of a stressful situation. The resolution starts breaking down and it presents a cycle.
Thus, it becomes necessary to break the cycle down. It can happen by looking at long-term and short-term goals and being prepared for everything. It needs commitment and preparation. Thus, helping you to get rid of this addiction for a long time.
Hence, below are few tips on how to prepare yourself to overcome porn addiction:
Look for the Why:
Most of the times, we jump to the decision to quit because of our guilt, which lasts for few days. The temptation is overwhelming, and soon we indulge ourselves again. The truth behind it is, it satisfies our fantasies and we find a certain enjoyment along with excitement. When we decide to quit, our mood starts to fluctuate and people start noticing it. There is always a tendency to fall back to what we were doing, and we do after few days.
The decision to quit is a huge decision and step. Thus, when we make that decision it is important to understand the why. There are always two “why’s”, one which will make you continue with your addiction and the other which will make you want to quit. We need to look for the right ‘why’ and which one is stronger. The best way to do this is to write down the reasons behind the two and see which “why” is overwhelming the other. There will always be one “why” which is stronger than the other, which can become your motivation or entry to the cycle again.
Removing Temptations:
When we are trying to maintain a diet, we always remove the chocolates or the junk foods from the fridge. Similarly, it is important to identify and remove the temptations in this case also. It is important to first find out your trigger points, and why these trigger points occur. Thus, for some these trigger points can be sitting idle at home in the weekend, and some extreme levels of stress. When these conditions happen, the automatic trigger takes over and the person resorts to the internet.
After identifying the temptation spots, it is also important to remove them. Thus, one needs to look at things they like to do, apart from watching pornography or indulging in sexual behaviour. For some, it might be reading a book, or playing video games, or going out to party. It depends on person to person, of what they like or dislikes, but one needs to identify them. After identification, the temptations should be removed and replaced by things what they like to do.
Ready to Work on Self:
Quitting any addiction is not only about sheer willpower. Most of us believe that with willpower we will be able to quit the addiction. To quit we must understand that it is also about working on oneself. People need to realise that why they have started this addiction. Mostly, people who are indulged in self-abuse activities, it happens because of low emotional intelligence. We are not able to understand our own emotions and mostly we don’t know how to process them. There is a tendency for us to fall back to the nearest possible and easier solution than to actually understand what is happening.
Identifying and replacing temptations will not help for a long-term commitment. One needs to understand why it is happening to them and how can they actually deal with the emotions. It is not possible that your life will become easy. But, it is up to us that how we tackle the emotions which are being evoked. This can be done through introspecting oneself and understanding oneself and increasing the level of emotional intelligence.
Planning Ahead:
It is very important to plan ahead. When we make the resolution, the situation allows us to take the liberty of the resolution. When things are going fine, it is easy for everyone to cope up with their resolutions. We do not consider the situations when the things will not go right. Thus, it is important to first think about the situations which can cause the trigger to happen. Hence, it is important to have a plan B, for those situations. Resorting to the activity in hard times will again put you in the loop.
Porn addiction is a serious mental illness. Hence, if you or someone you know is suffering from porn addiction, then please visit a mental health professional immediately.
To take our test on Sex Addiction Click here
To take our test on Porn Addiction Click here
Read our Previous Blog on Understanding Porn Addiction