Why Porn Works

If you're like me, you have probably tried to stop before, and maybe you've gone days, weeks, months, and you keep going back.

Um, and the question underneath all of that, uh, typically the one that we're asking is, "What's wrong with me?" Like, uniquely wrong with me that I can't overcome this.

Uh, the reason I, I give a lot of the times, and one of the things I try to remind people of, people who quit this cold turkey, that scenario is extremely rare, and it's probably one to two percent of people who eventually end up quitting pornography.

The problem is, like most people on social media and the internet, that one percent or two percent are very loud about what they did or what they went through.

For the rest of us, that story looks a little bit different, and the point is, is that nothing is uniquely wrong with you.

You're actually doing something that works, and it's probably for a reason that you haven't quite put your finger on yet, and that's what I'm gonna get into today.

So primarily three things.

Um, what pornography is actually doing for you, why the cycle feeds itself, and the one thing that's actually gonna help you change that.

I had a therapist friend of mine on a, a recent episode who referred to pornography as a misery stabilizer, and I got stuck on that phrase because I think it's, it really did a great job of explaining what, what pornography actually does.

It stabilizes you in the midst of your misery, and, you know, misery could be a lot of different things, but the point is, is that pornography's doing something, and primarily it isn't functioning as pleasure.

It's functioning as an exit, as an off-ramp from things like anxiety, boredom, loneliness, uh, rejection, pressure, wanting to numb out from, you know, something that you don't particularly wanna feel 'cause it's not pleasant.

So, uh, y- and the reason I say that is because nobody, uh, you know, if I say, "Who wants to feel more lonely today?" Nobody's gonna raise their hand.

Um, and your brain knows that, too, and it takes the fastest exit that it knows, and here's why.

Because pornography, your brain learns over time, it works.

It just works.

When you discovered something earlier on in life when you were a kid or maybe a teenager, 13, 15, uh, pornography actually helped.

It di- it did something for you other than just sort of engage in your curiosity and your arousal.

It was a kid trying to solve a problem, uh, with what he had available, and it managed, it managed the pain.

It never healed it, and frankly, it was never going to.

Honestly, at that age, like, you don't really know that that's what's going on.

Th- the reason that we go back and look at that is because you didn't become who you are today yesterday.

20, 30 years of handling pain in one specific way does not just go away overnight with all of the common reasons that we think it will or that we even tell ourselves that it will.

Like, "Oh, I'll quit when I have a girlfriend.

I'll quit when I get married.

I'll quit when I move, or I'll quit when I have this job." You know, things I had told myself for years as well, which primarily is the reason why that just information alone never solves it either.