Porn is easily available on the internet, and once you start watching porn, you never know when it becomes a problem in your life. This could indicate the beginning of a porn addiction.
It can alter your brain and change your behavioural practices. This is when the line between a healthy sexual life and an abnormal one becomes blurry.
If your loved ones struggle to overcome this, it can put you in a tough spot.
They often undergo feelings of guilt and shame. So how to help someone with a porn addiction? It gets easier for them if they feel like they have a safe space for them to speak about it. If you want to help with porn addiction, the best thing you can do is show them that you are there for them and offer your full support.
What is Pornography Addiction?
Porn addiction is a behavioural addiction that is marked by an ever-growing craving to view pornographic content. In the past, a person going through a pornography addiction would satisfy his or her craving for pornographic content by watching pornographic videos, magazines, and pictures. Now, the means available have since grown thanks to the internet, allowing unidentified access to limitless pornography at all levels of specificity.
In addition to the internet, a range of other resources, such as social media, promote porn addiction by providing a platform to view pornography at any time. Several studies estimate that international rates of consumption of porn can range from 50% to 99% of men and 30% to 86% of women.
Signs of Porn Addiction
There’s no straightforward way to identify porn addiction, but there are some indications that point to problematic use. Like with other addictions, porn addiction creates difficulties in an individual’s life. Here is an informative article on what a porn addiction looks like.
To decide whether or not you have a harmful relationship with porn, extreme usage usually replaces your daily activities, which can lead to a loss of control.
Porn addiction may also damage relationships with friends and family.
Some signs that you are a porn addict are –
- Spending heavy loads of money on pornographic material, sometimes at the cost of essentials
- Engagement in risky sexual activities
- Using porn as a coping mechanism for emotions like pain, anxiety, and sadness
- Always have the urge to watch porn anytime and anywhere
- Feeling irritation at being recommended to reduce porn consumption
- Unable to quit porn despite trying
- Experiencing guilt and shame following porn use
- Moving on to more extreme and violent forms of pornography to find pleasure
- Finding sexual intercourse to be less enjoyable
- Hiding porn habits from partners and others
Research indicates that the greatest predictors for porn use include being a young man, negative mood states, frequent internet use, religiousness, and sexual boredom.
Though there is no straightforward method for “how to deal with a porn addiction”, there are ways that your loved one can get the help they need. It can start with you! You can help with porn addiction by offering your support and being there for them.
6 Steps to To Help Someone With Porn Addiction
One of the biggest difficulties with overcoming this addiction is that many people still assume it is normal behavior, despite the fact that it has negative consequences.
Coming to terms with the fact that extreme porn viewing is indeed a problem and an addiction is the first step to recovery. Though there is no easy way to destroy the pornography urge, there are many ways how to help a porn addict.
Steps to Help Someone Addicted to Porn
Step 1 – Understanding
Addiction can be seen as a symptom of an underlying mental health condition. When the suffering from these disorders causes shame and guilt, a part of our brain will often push us to try to numb and escape the overwhelming pain.
When our sexual desires become obsessive, it is most likely because there is emotional pain that is fueling the addiction. To help someone get through porn addiction, it is best that not to look at porn addiction as a cause – but instead as a symptom.
Step 2 – Change the way of living
In order to deal with porn addiction, it is necessary to develop a recovery mindset and change your lifestyle accordingly, which replaces your desire for porn. And this directs you to live a life of purpose, achievement, association, and service. Especially as human beings, if we do not choose a healthy lifestyle, then we will be controlled by our sexual urges. Sexual media like porn easily become the pacifier that deprives us of our abilities.
How to help someone with porn addiction is to empower them by listening and understanding them and giving them the space to open up, as well as getting them interested in volunteering, sports, activities, church, etc.
Step 3 – Dont control them
When you try to control them, it will actually increase the temptations, because negative feelings like shame, critique, and control are not the resolution to addiction but its reason.
Addiction originates from a feeling of unworthiness and loneliness. Therefore, to help with porn addiction, we need to handle them with care and go through the process of loving, understanding, and showing empathy for the pain they carry inside.
Step 4 – Self-care
If you want to help your partner or any close member to quit porn, you have to first work on yourself. Learn mindfulness practices and make it a habit to engage in physical, mental, relational and, spiritual routines that improve your well-being. Bond with your family and plan fun activities together, make friends that help you feel needed, attend therapy if needed and begin your own recovery process.
Step 5 – Set boundaries
In most cases, porn addicts are oblivious to their damaging habits of tactics and manipulation. People are often trained on these tactics when they were young by those who were hurt and suffering. You can help by breaking the loop, and this often needs blunt, compliant declarations of self-respect and maintaining proper boundaries.
These are not limitations about every little thing this person does, but expectations about how we should be treated by them.
But since you are helping someone deal with porn addiction, it is important to hold these boundaries in combination with understanding and self-care.
Step 6 – Intervention
If you want your partner, friend, or family member to recover, sometimes you have to be straight up to them about it. Sometimes, you need to directly talk about what is acceptable and what is not, and they need to get help.
Hopefully, you can help them see the light, and they will go voluntarily. But, in some cases, they may not be ready to acknowledge and face it, and then a decision must be made by you and should be managed very delicately and personally.
Each person’s journey to recovery can be different, and what works for one won’t work for another. That’s why a strategic and personalized approach is necessary. By regularly evaluating challenges and understanding you can develop strategies that address the specific needs and triggers of everyone. Most methods like CBT, Internet filters, accountability buddies, and talk therapy can help to deal with porn addiction.
How to Talk to Someone about Porn Addiction
According to a study, 17% of women mention that they fit the definition of being addicted, which means that any of the partners could impact a relationship.
If you have discovered a pornography issue in your relationship, you need a solution. Here are some things to keep in mind on how to help someone with a porn addiction.
- Suitable time and place to talk – Fix a time to discuss this issue when both of you are free and in a relaxed state of mind. Since it is a sensitive topic, choose a time to talk when you can get the utmost privacy.
- Keep away distractions – Find a calm place to talk and keep away things that may distract you, like your phone.
- Mention your concerns and ask questions – You can start off by mentioning why you are concerned. Think about how your actions make you feel and ask open-ended questions to draw out your partner and stimulate them to talk.
- Pay attention – While you need to express your feelings, it is also necessary to give your partner or the person suffering from addiction the space to open up. Listen to what they have to say and acknowledge that you understand.
- Set expectations – Try to work toward coming to an agreement as you move through the conversation. You need to set expectations that your partner will stop lying and that they will get professional treatment to address their addiction. Be firm and consider seeking counselling if you cannot reach an understanding together.
Is Porn Addiction a Real Problem?
While obsessive porn consumption may not be an identified condition, that doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue that can carry serious negative effects.
Here are some pieces of evidence on how porn addiction is a real problem
- If a person visited one porn site per day, it would take 84 years for them to view all the porn websites on the internet. That shows the increasing number of porn content on the web.
- Roughly 11% of people in the United States watch porn every day.
- PornHub reported more than 100 million visits per day in 2023.
- Studies show that 61% of individuals who reported compulsive pornography use also experienced depressive symptoms.
- 56% of divorces involved one party having an “obsessive interest in pornographic websites”
- The average age at which children first view pornography is 11 years old, and 93% of boys and 62% of girls are exposed to porn before they turn 18
- 88.2% of pornographic scenes analyzed contained some form of physical aggression
- 31% of young men and 18% of young women reported that they had viewed pornography that involved physical or emotional violence against a person
Why is Porn Addictive?
Humans are inclined to develop addictions to substances or behaviours that enable the brain’s dopamine centre, to cause pleasure. Pornography activates dopamine levels causing pleasure similar to drug or alcohol use.
A person addicted to porn will need more stimulation over time to achieve the same pleasure. This can direct some individuals to seek out more extreme or even violent sexual acts.
Other chemicals like norepinephrine, oxytocin, vasopressin, endorphins, and serotonin are also impacted by pornography. This combination can lead to issues such as cravings and brain shrinkage. Prolonged use can impair a person’s ability to make sound choices.
FAQs on How To Help Someone With A Porn Addiction?
1] How to help someone with porn addiction?
Ans. Start by listening and understanding them. Assure them that they have a safe space to open up and talk about it, and then work on overcoming the addiction together. Help them to get professional help and take measures to prevent a relapse such as installing the BlockP porn blocker.
2] What to do about porn addiction?
Ans. Recovery from porn addiction can take a long time but you will see the benefits of it, like a better state of mind, more energy levels, stronger relationships, etc. All it requires is the right care and healthy habits
3] How do I stop my porn addiction?
Ans. Developing healthy habits and coping mechanisms is an essential step to stop porn addiction. You can participate in activities such as exercise, meditation, or other hobbies instead.
4] How to stop porn-addicting websites on Chrome?
Ans. You can restrict access to porn websites on Chrome by using SafeSearch or by downloading the BlockP Chrome extension. Identify the content you want to block and make use of features like AI blocking, focus mode, customizable filtering and many more.
