Brain on Porn (Social #2) - DeYtH Banger (a book to read TXT) 📗

to know what his triggers are. What sights, sounds, or events tend to get the motor going? When one becomes aware of his triggers, this will allow him to be more vigilant

At this step of the activation sequence—actually, at every step—if one wants to make a U-turn, he needs to turn on his “thinking brain”, the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex (which I’ve written about in previous chapters of this book). This is the part of the brain that deliberates, that chooses between wise and unwise actions. One can turn on his prefrontal cortex in several ways, but one of the easiest is to speak aloud and label what is happening: “This is a trigger.” By doing this, a person stops being a passive participant, stops letting his habits stay in the driver seat, and helps himself to snap out of it.

2. Emotional Response

After the initial trigger comes an emotional response to that trigger. It could be a sense of excitement or curiosity or anticipation. The emotion might be something very acute—a sudden feeling

 

 

or sensation—or it might be something that builds slowly over time.

3. The First Thought

This comes almost simultaneously with the emotion. It might be “I want to watch some porn right now” or “No one has to know” or “What will I see if I look up ___?”
When the initial emotion and the first thought spring to mind, if one wants to make a U-turn at these steps, again, the thinking brain must be activated. One must speak aloud the truth about the matter: “I feel frustrated, and my habit now is to rush to porn because it feels comforting” or whatever the scenario happens to be.

4. The Chemical Release

If one keeps moving down this highway, the body will begin gearing up for watch

ing pornography because this is what the body has been trained to do. The body will get ready for climax, and the brain will release chemicals associated with memory, telling itself, “Remember where you got your fix the last hundred times? That’s where we need to go next.” Even before pornography is consumed, the body is already anticipating the event.

5. Body Language

Once the chemicals are released into the system, the body begins to change. Heart rate increases, palms become sweaty or cold, eyes dilate, there is a tingling in the groin or the feeling of butterflies in the stomach, or the muscles tense up.
If one has been mindlessly driving down the porn highway up to this point, these physical sensations should serve as a big caution sign. The “gotta have it” feeling should alert someone that it is time to make an immediate U-turn.

Once again, he should activate the thinking brain: speak aloud the truth of what is happening. “My body is gearing up to look at porn because of a chemical release. I need to make an immediate decision to do something different.”

6. The Battle

At this point, the decision to look at porn or not still needs to be made, and a battle will ensue. Dr. Skinner calls this the “second thought”. Pro-versus-con judgments will bounce through the mind like a lightning-speed game of Ping-Pong. This is the brain’s backup system trying to throw on the brakes and decide what it really wants to do.
The mind might think, “No one has to know”, “This is the last time, then I’m done”, “I’m free to do what I want”, or “I’m eventually going to give in to this, so I might as well get it over with.” There might be opposing thoughts such as “What if my girlfriend finds out?”, “My

family would be so disappointed”, “There are better things to do”, or “I hate the power this has over me.”
Whatever thoughts win this battle will determine the behavior.

7. The Behavior

Assuming nothing has interrupted this activation sequence, the behavior is consuming porn.
Two Key Strategies
When it comes to making U-turns on this porn highway, there are two key strategies to employ. The first is for when you find yourself on the highway already, and the second is for changing your habits to avoid getting on the highway in the first place.

Strategy 1: The Thinking Brain

I’ve already mentioned the importance of activating the thinking brain: speaking aloud to yourself key truths, no matter where in the activation sequence you happen to be. One reason this strategy is so powerful is that you use verbal cues to wake up to reality and think about what you’re doing. But this strategy will be more powerful if you do your homework and prepare for those moments, rather than assuming you will know how to think on your feet in the heat of the moment.
Having spoken to countless people who have broken away from the grip of porn addiction, I offer here some of the best experience-tested ideas I’ve heard.

1. Educate yourself. Learn as much as you can about the impact porn has on your life: all the things porn is robbing from your life, the way it negatively impacts your brain, your body, and your relationships—even your most cherished relationships. The more you fill your mind with this information,

the more likely this information will come to mind to interrupt the activation sequence.

2. Write down your negative and positive motivations. What do you lose by constantly pursuing pornography all the time? What is it costing you? What could it cost you? What is it costing society? These are negative motivations. What do you stand to gain by becoming a porn-free person? How will your life improve? What kind of man or woman do you hope to become? These are positive motivations. Keep a shorthand top-ten list of these motivations on you at all times—in your wallet or in your purse—and pull it out when you find yourself in an activation sequence.

3. Write down your exit strategies. It is one thing to take your thoughts captive. It is another to know what to do next. Before another activation sequence begins, write down what you


Note: It's possible to be done... the only thing which you need is action, action... - So Keep going!

plan to do. Think action verbs here. Get up. Walk. Run. Call someone. Write a letter. Go outside. Write down your plan for predictable moments of temptation.

4. Finish the fantasy. This might sound counterintuitive, but it is so practical. When something triggers an initial thought, our mind gets stuck in a rut of anticipation. Thoughts are focused on what is coming or what we could be doing. Instead of staying in that rut, finish the fantasy: picture yourself following through with the action—walking to your computer, binging on porn for a few hours, masturbating, and then feeling like a miserable failure as a result. When we do this, it pushes us past the feeling of anticipation and the rush of excitement to the reality. We’ll then be in a better state of mind to think, “This is not the kind of person I want to be.

5. Think about sex. Australian author Frank Sheed wrote that modern man practically never thinks about sex. He might dream about it, joke about it, write songs about it—but he doesn’t think about it. What is the nature of sex? What is its purpose? Is it merely to “get off”, or does our biology reveal a more meaningful purpose? As we look at the way the human brain is wired and the way our sexual organs are designed, we discover that sex is about both openness to new life and bonding to another person in love. It is a breathtakingly more exciting picture of sex than what Playboy, Cosmo, or Fifty Shades of Stupid paints for us. These are the thoughts we can use when the activation sequence is underway. We can think, “This is not what my sexuality is for, just objectifying self-pleasure. My sexuality is for the creation of life and the creation of love.

Strategy 2: Change Your Habits

Ideally the best way to escape the porn superhighway is never to get on it in the first place. This means avoiding as many triggers as possible.
Now, it is important to note that no one can actually avoid every potential trigger. One of your triggers might be frustration, and you are certain to enter potentially frustrating situations. If seeing a racy ad on TV or in a magazine is one of your triggers, unless you plan to live in a cave somewhere, you will likely run into sexualized media on occasion.
Still, there are many triggers you can avoid. Is one of your triggers being alone on your phone with the bedroom door closed? Change something about that habit. Resolve not to shut your door, or never to bring your laptop into your bedroom, or get accountability software such as Covenant Eyes on your computer and have a good friend start receiving regular e-mailed reports of your Internet.

activity. In other words, get rid of the option of anonymity and secrecy.
Is one of your triggers a certain kind of music? Stop listening to it. Is one of your triggers a certain channel on TV? Get rid of your cable subscription. Do you have porn stored somewhere in your home? Throw it out. Do you have unlimited access to the Internet through your phone? Put some kind of filtering or accountability program in place. Do you pass an “adult” store on the way home from work? Go a different way.
All of this might seem over the top, but if porn were easy to quit, you probably wouldn’t be reading this chapter right now. A lot of people try to quit without closing all the access points to porn. To quote Dr. Phil, “How’s that working for you?”
Remember this mantra: “When you’re at your best, plan for your worst.” Right now, if you have a resolve to avoid porn, remember: a day will likely come when


you won’t have that resolve, so make sure you have protections in place.
If you understand the activation sequence, try to prevent triggers, and then activate your thinking brain when the triggers come, you can be successful.
Lastly, when you are making your plans to quit pornography, it is important to set small, measurable goals. Don’t make promises like “I’ll never watch porn again.” Freedom is one day at a time. If you view freedom from porn as a destination, you’ll almost certainly remain disappointed. This is because freedom is not so much a destination we reach as much as it is a daily decision we make. Your goal today is not “I’ll never look at porn again.” Instead it’s “Today I resolve to be the person I want to be, and one thing that means is this: today I will not get sucked into pornography.” Real freedom is a lifetime of todays, a lifetime of moment-by-moment choices. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will be anxious for itself.

Freedom Is Possible

French novelist Virginie Despentes has reportedly said that consuming pornography does not lead to more sex; it leads to more porn. Much like eating McDonald’s everyday will accustom you to food that (although enjoyable) is essentially not food, pornography conditions the consumer to being satisfied with an impression of extreme sex rather than the real.
Porn promises freedom, but it enslaves us. It promises excitement, but it ends up boring us. It promises us “adult” entertainment, yet it makes us increasingly juvenile. It promises intimacy, but leads to isolation.
The good news is that freedom is possible and something so much better awaits us on the other side.

 

 

APPENDIX 1

Quick Findings from the Experts

I hope that in addition to helping you to understand more about the destructive nature of porn on individuals, relationships, and society, this book will help you to explain these things to others. To that end, in addition to the many research findings already discussed, in this appendix I have provided findings concerning porn’s effects on (1) the brain, (2) emotional health, (3) sexual tastes, (4) sexual violence, (5) erectile dysfunction, (6) marriage, and (7) adolescence.

Porn and the Brain

1. When researchers compared brain scans of porn users with scans of nonusers, they found that the more