The SHOCKING Truth About Porn Addiction's Grip on Your Mind

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this video on the cognitive aspects of recovery from porn addiction. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this video, we're going to review how feelings, behaviors and thoughts or cognitions interact. We'll review cognitive or thinking errors that may have led to porn addiction and cognitive and thinking errors that may have been developed from porn addiction and identify practical tools to address them. Remember from the last video, your thoughts about a situation impact how you feel, your feelings about a situation impact how you're thinking about it, and your feelings and your thoughts work together to impact your urges and your behaviors. So you may be feeling anxious, and if you have thoughts that are saying, yes, there's something scary, we need to fight or flee, then guess what? You're going to be motivated to fight or flee. Cognitive distortions or unhelpful thoughts about self, relationships and sex may develop in youth and contribute to porn use. Due to beliefs that porn use is not a problem. Most 10 year olds are not thinking that porn use is a problem. Even though we know it's doing a lot of damage to their brain. They don't know that. They're just, they're curious. They may start watching porn, hopefully later than 10, because of beliefs that they're inadequate or beliefs that relationships are doomed and they might as well just turn to porn because that's the only way they're going to get their needs met. Cognitive distortions may also develop because of porn use. Since what you see in porn is rarely an accurate presentation of real life. Your beliefs about yourself, relationships and sex impact your feeling about those things and your behaviors in relation to those things. In the next few slides, we will examine common cognitive distortions that contributed to your use or may have developed as a result of your use. And suggestions will be provided for identifying and modifying your personal beliefs to be more accurate and helpful. We'll start with the first cognitive distortion. That's emotional reasoning. And we talked about this again some in the last video, but it's important enough to talk about it again because a lot of people addicted and not use emotional reasoning to guide their life. Because they feel anxious, they assume there's a threat which prompts a behavior. Emotional reasoning is basically believing something based on their feelings, not their facts. If I have a feeling that you don't like me, then I'm going to look for evidence to support that feeling and that creates a belief. Some of the feelings that may guide your behaviors. I feel ashamed, therefore I must be bad. I feel excited, therefore this must be good. And we all know that some things that are really exciting are still not good for us. I feel anxious. Therefore, something bad is fixing to happen. What fears, guilts or resentments caused your porn use? Thinking back before you started using or when you before you started using heavily, what fears, guilt or resentments drew you to thinking about using porn? Whether it was as an escape or as in a release or whatever, what fears, guilts or resentments resulted from your porn use? Do you resent the porn makers for making the porn and making it available? Do you fear that you're not going to be adequate in relationships or in sex because you can't do what they're doing on the screen? Feelings are caused by beliefs. So what beliefs trigger or maintain those feelings? If you are afraid that you are going to be inadequate in your performance, okay, so what is, what are the beliefs? You feel anxious. The belief is you're belief is that you're going to be inadequate. What are the facts for and against those beliefs in the current context? When you were 10, yeah, you probably weren't skilled at all, and that's developmentally appropriate. Now that you are, however old you are, you have some skills and most people learn along the way. You don't just start life knowing every position in the Kama Sutra. That's just not the way it works. And it's important to recognize that. To recognize that the people that you're seeing in porn, that's what they do all day, every day. So yeah, they're going to have some skills that you probably don't have yet. Doesn't mean you can't develop them in the right situation. Inaccurate schema means interpreting situations and reacting based on your past experiences without considering the current facts in context. Remember, feelings aren't facts and thoughts aren't facts. Only facts are facts. So you must identify the facts for and against your beliefs in the current context. If you've been in relationships before and they've gone badly and your partner didn't want to have sex with you or didn't like how you did it, or whatever, that's a past. That's a past situation that may inform your present now. When you get into a new relationship or think about getting into a new relationship, you may remember that which triggers anxiety because you're telling yourself, maybe I'm not going to be competent, maybe I'm not going to be adequate. That's the past. But we need to look at the present and say, what are the. What are the facts? I have to support that belief. I may be with somebody who likes the way I have sex, who likes the way I look, who likes the way I do things. And you can't judge one relationship from another. Likewise, what you've seen in porn is in your past. What you've seen in the movies is in the past. And it's important to identify things, facts, for and against your belief in the current context, and figure out, am I judging myself or having beliefs that I should be able to do something based on what happens in the movies versus what happens in actual real life. Some inaccurate beliefs. I love her and I would forgive her if she did this. Therefore she will forgive me. Don't know about that. Possibly she could forgive you, possibly she won't. And mind reading and jumping to conclusions about what someone else will do will create inaccurate schema. Sometimes seeing things in movies and in porn, not just. Not just porn, but in movies in general, you see somebody making a mistake, seeing. See something, somebody doing something, and their significant others forgive them. And you assume, hey, that's the way it always goes. No, not so much. It's important to look at the facts in context with this person at this time. Another inaccurate belief. I had to use porn because nobody wants to be with me. So you've got some extreme words there. I had to. Well, you didn't have to. You could have been celibate, you could have masturbated, you could have done a lot of different things, but you didn't. You chose to use porn because nobody wants to be with me. How accurate is that belief? Maybe you haven't found anybody recently who wants to be with you, or maybe you've had bad relationships in the past that broke up. But how accurate is it to say that there's nobody out there in the whole world that wants to be with me. Women will always reject me. Again, you may have been rejected in the past. All of us have been rejected in the past. And it hurts. It can be embarrassing, it can be humiliating. But it doesn't mean that every person out there that you want to date or get into a relationship with is going to reject you. There are some. I should be able to do it like they do in the movies. Well, no, we've already covered that one. That's just. That's not true. And everybody like this expects this. Everybody who is a woman expects this. Everybody. We can't say that about humans. Even as a. A therapist, I work with people and I have interventions that I use, and a lot of these interventions that I use, and not every intervention works for every person. Humans just aren't wired that synonymously. So it's important that we recognize that and recognize that each person you interact with is an individual. What expectations do you have about yourself? That's one list. Expectations about your partners, another list, and expectations about sex. This is going to be sort of your shoulds list. I should be this, I should be that, your partner should be, should want, should do, and sex. You know, what are your shoulds there? Which of these shoulds or expectations may have caused your porn use, caused you to feel insecure and inadequate, or like it's not worth the effort of trying to connect with a real human being in real life and so you turn to porn? Which of these shoulds your expectations developed from your porn use? About what you should look like, how you should perform, what your partners should and shouldn't do, should and shouldn't want. Which of these expectations is accurate based on the facts in context? Another cognitive distortion is personalization, and that's believing events or people's reactions are caused by you or are a rejection of you. For example, she rejected my advances, so it must be me. That just proves nobody ever wants to be with me. Some extreme words in there. And you can't say everybody. You can't say nobody when you're talking about people because we're all different. What have you personalized that caused your porn use? Maybe you were rejected so you feel like you are inadequate and you feel like nobody will ever want to be with you, so you have just resigned yourself to porn. What things have you personalized that resulted from your porn use? For example, maybe you learned some pickup lines or some ways of interacting with other people from porn. And yeah, that may have resulted in some rejection or some different responses than you really wanted. Was that you they were rejecting or was that the behavior that you learned for each of those personalized beliefs? What are three other explanations that are not about your acceptability as a person? Now, your behaviors may have been unacceptable, but you can change those. What are three other explanations that either have nothing to do with you at all, it was them, not you. Or maybe that had to do with your behaviors, which can be changed. And yet another distortion is blaming. It is very, very easy to play the blame game. Point your finger. But unfortunately, the three finger rule for every, every time you point out you've got two fingers pointing towards them, three fingers pointing towards you, you got to take responsibility for your part. Some examples of blaming. Well, she rejected my advances, so she must be a lesbian. It's her. She was asking for it by the way she was dressed. That's never true. I watch porn because you won't have sex with me. Life is too stressful. The website, the website tricked me into watching and now constantly tempts me to come back. And yes, I know there are some really annoying popup ads that can show up in benign video games and places you wouldn't expect them. So there are a lot of ads that can be triggering. However, it doesn't mean you have to respond to them. You have other choices. What blaming thoughts do you have toward yourself about your porn addiction? What blaming thoughts do you have towards yourself or toward your partner about your porn addiction and maybe even your current situation? If you're not in a relationship or the status of your current relationship, what blaming thoughts do you have towards others that caused your porn use, like the porn manufacturers and the ad companies? What are the facts for and against your beliefs in context? And what part of the situation are your responsibility? What choices did you make? Did you communicate with your partner? Were you responsive to each other's needs? Were you responsive to your own needs? And I know some people may have shuddered a little bit when I said choices, but. But it's true. When people start a 12 step program, they admit that their lives have become unmanageable as a result of their addiction. And they admit they're powerless over their addiction. They know if they're an alcoholic that going into a bar is not a good idea and certainly drinking is a bad idea because once they get started, they can't stop. However, they are not powerless over their ability to choose whether or not to go into that bar. All or always. Or nothing. Never. These are those extreme words. I will always fail in relationships, women will always reject me, and I can never be sexually satisfied in real life. These are common phrases that we use in American culture. We tend to talk in extremes when that's not really accurate. So what all or nothing beliefs do you have about yourself, about relationships and about sex? Again, you've got three lists there. What are the exceptions to this belief? If you say something happens all the time, think of exceptions when it hasn't happened. When you say something never happens, think of exceptions of when it actually has happened and what parts of this belief are changeable. For example, if you believe I will always fail in relationships, all right, part of it means having a healthy other partner, but part of it may be doing some self work on your relationship skills in order to have a more fulfilling and enduring relationship over. Generalization means taking one specific situation and assuming all similar situations will be the same. If a woman dresses or acts in a certain way, it always means fill in the blank. Now, if your partner dresses in a certain way in order to try to excite and entice you, okay, that's one thing. But if you see somebody else dressed in that way, it doesn't mean they're necessarily trying to excite and entice you. Maybe that's just how they dress. A real woman will always. Nah, yeah, that's just not true. My partner was willing to give me a blow job, so she must also be okay with deep throating. No, not necessarily. My partner was willing to try X when we were on vacation, so she must be willing to do it all the time. Again, gotta communicate. She may have been willing to do it on vacation because she was feeling extra spunky. She may have been willing to try it on vacation and figured out she didn't like it, never wants to do it again. It's important to communicate. What overgeneralized beliefs about yourself, relationships or sex do you have? If you say I failed once, I'm going to fail all the time. That's an overgeneralized belief. How can you make your beliefs more specific and accurate? By increasing awareness of facts in context. Yes, I failed in the past and this is why I am older, wiser, have more skills now, therefore, facts in context. I am not guaranteed to fail this time. Catastrophizing causes people to expect the worst outcome. She broke our date, so she must be dumping me. She didn't orgasm, so she's going to dump me. If I ask a woman out, she'll laugh in my face and humiliate me. If my wife finds out about my porn use, she will divorce me and I will never see the kids again. Now these are all worst case scenarios way over here. And it's important when you start catastrophizing to stop and think to yourself. Okay, let's first look at probability. Is it a possibility? Sure, anything's a possibility. But what is the probability that this could happen? What catastrophic beliefs do you have about sex and relationships? What are the facts for and against this catastrophe happening? What's the probability it will happen? And what's your safety plan if the worst case scenario does happen? Sometimes bad things happen, so it can be helpful to have a safety plan or a backup plan. However, it's also important not to regularly go to the worst possible scenario. The worst case outcome. You may ask somebody out and they say, no, no thank you. Okay, that's probably hopefully what's going to happen most of the time? Yeah, there's going to be the occasional person out there who is just completely insensitive and full of themselves, but that's on them. Minimizing the positive is yet another thinking error that we have. She went out with me but didn't have sex with me, so she must not like me or the whole evening is a failure because I didn't get laid or I couldn't perform. All right, certainly those are disappointing outcomes, but let's take a look at that. What positive things do you minimize? If you went out with somebody and it was a good night, even if you didn't have sex, that's good. That's progress and being realistic. Facts and context about what actually happens in real life and timelines is also really important. If you couldn't perform for some reason, all right, that's humiliating. I get that. However, you don't know what the other person's reaction is going to be. You don't know how they feel, and you're minimizing the impact of the connection between the two of you. Set aside from sex, what's the big picture? What went right? What was or were the problems? And what can you learn from the experience, both good and bad? When bad things happen, there's always. Well, not always. Most of the time there's some positive aspects of it, even if it means, hey, I got out by the skin of my teeth. And it's important to recognize that and learn from our experiences. Minimizing the negative is another problem. We need to be realistic when things happen. Acknowledge the negative, acknowledge the positive, and take them both in tandem. So minimizing the negative would be something like, I didn't take her seriously at first, but eventually I did. So you're minimizing the fact that you were ignoring your partner's needs, wants, and feelings for a while, but then you eventually came around. Yes, I lied about porn use, but at least I wasn't having an affair. Minimizing. Yes, I left or went to sleep immediately after we finished having sex, but she was satisfied. That may not work. Minimizing the negative is often a way to make yourself feel better and invalidate the other person's feelings and beliefs. What beliefs do you have from watching porn or from prior interpersonal experiences that encourage you to minimize your negative behaviors? That is, it encourages you to fail to take responsibility. What might motivate you to minimize the negative? And I'll give you a hint. Fear. When you realize that you've done something wrong or you know that you did something you probably shouldn't and you feel a little guilty about it. A lot of times you don't want to own up to that. So you minimize the negative. You look for the sunshine and ignore the the negative. Finding balance is the resolution to this. Take responsibility for your actions and the negative impact it has on your life and your relationships. Learn from it. Yeah, we all make mistakes. If you made a mistake, okay, learn from it. Do what you need to do to make amends if possible, and then don't do it again. You also may need to prepare to rebuild trust if the other person is willing to. If you ignored a person's boundaries and feelings and then minimized it, or even if you didn't minimize it, if you ignore their boundaries and feelings, the other person has lost a level of trust in you and they may or may not be willing to try to rebuild that. Minimizing personal power is another thinking error that I often see in recovery from addiction or mood disorders. Examples. I can't stop using porn. I can't improve my relationships. I can't find someone who will like me. None of those is accurate. You can. There are very few things you can't do. You can't live forever and you can't birth a baby if you're biologically male. But most other things you. You either won't choose not to or don't want to do. I don't want to stop using porn or I won't do what I need to do to stop using porn. It's not that you can't stop using it. You're just choosing not to engage in recovery behaviors. Change your language. When you hear the word can't and use the word I won't or I choose not to or I, I don't wanna and consider a compromise. What aspects can you change? All right. We talked earlier about addiction, admitting that lives had become unmanageable and we are powerless over our addiction. That's 12 step. If you don't believe in 12 step, no problem. But it's a good example here. You can't change if you're an alcoholic. You can't change your propensity to engage in addictive patterns of drinking once you start drinking, but you can change your access to it. You can choose whether or not to go into the bar. Same thing with porn. If you are addicted to porn, then watching porn is probably not something you're going to be able to control. However, you can change the environment so you're not tempted to use it and what will you do instead? If you are not using porn, what are you going to do instead? If you are working to improve your relationships, what are you going to do? And it's important to consider when you stop doing one thing, what are you going to do instead? The availability heuristic. This is the first thing you think of, and it's either the most emotionally powerful or the most recent. And airplanes is what I like to use as the example for this, because a lot of people think that flying on an airplane is so dangerous. And in reality, it's a lot safer to fly on an airplane than to drive a car. And that's those facts in context coming back to bite you in the butt. Again, the availability heuristic pops up with that because people hear about it on TV and it's devastating to hear about this plane with 80 souls on it crashed in the middle of blah, blah, blah. And that's devastating and it's terrifying. So that is what goes to the forefront of their mind. Likewise, if you've been in relationships, even if they aren't extremely emotionally powerful, you may remember what happened in your last relationship more vividly than prior. How does watching porn skew your beliefs about yourself, relationships, and sex? That is, how does your emotional reaction to porn impact your beliefs and feelings about sex in real life, about yourself and your ability to perform in real life, and about how relationships should be? How did prior unpleasant experiences cause you to start believing that things would always go badly in a relationship? Egocentrism is another thinking error. In egocentrism, everyone thinks or believes the way that I do. And so the person who is behaving egocentrically thinks it's the woman's fault that I don't have. It's all women's fault that I don't have a partner. And everybody knows that. You know, egocentrism can often be punctuated with the phrase, well, everybody knows that everyone ghosts re everyone ghosts. And relationships are hopeless. Everybody knows that if I want it, then they want it. If I'm horny all the time, well, they are too. But just being these are egocentric because they are your thoughts about things, and you're assuming that your partner or everybody else has the same thought and agrees with you. What egocentric beliefs do you have that caused you to use porn? Like, everybody thinks it's fine. What egocentric beliefs did you learn from porn? And this could be a lot of times it has to do with inter how you interact with your partner. And porn tends to be very egocentric with the dominant leading what's going on without a lot of concern for the submissive? How can you be more aware of other people's beliefs and feelings about situations? Mind reading and jumping to conclusions without communication is another big issue. These thinking errors generally start with the phrase I know that I know that she wants X or I know that she doesn't want X. I know. I know that she said no, but she really wants it. I know she will reject me. I did X or I know that I did X and she hates me now. What are the what's the evidence that you have for and against the beliefs for I know that she wants or doesn't want? Have you done a yes, no, maybe list? Do you actually know or are you assuming? I know that she said no, but she really wants it. Well, unless you have some other safe word, then no means no and you're jumping to a conclusion and being egocentric in the process. I know that she will reject me. What evidence do you have for that? There are a lot of people out there and you don't know what other people are thinking. Feeling, wanting, needing. In what ways has mind reading or jumping to conclusion caused you to use porn? That is, you assumed rejection or you assumed relationships were doomed or were going to be too much work, so you took the porn route instead. In what ways did porn reinforce mind reading? For example, assuming that, quote, a real man knows what a woman wants, how can you improve your communication with your partner? And that doesn't mean just in bed. That doesn't mean just during sex. That means improving communication across the spectrum. Women typically are motivated by a connection, by an emotional connection with their partner. They are not typically motivated by just pure sex drive. And it's important to remember that. So the better you communicate and the more effective you are at empathizing, understanding, validating not only their needs, but your own, the more the stronger your relationship will be. I've created the mnemonic after as a final tool for you. Changing cognitive distortions or unhelpful thoughts takes time. In general, I encourage people to work on one cognitive distortion at a time. Start becoming more aware of it. So if you tend to use all or nothing words, spend a week or two becoming aware of when you use extreme words. And when you do it, examine the facts for and against your belief in order to determine how accurate it is. Be aware of the triggers. What triggered that belief in your head, what made you think of that? Explore past issues or events that caused the development of the unhelpful belief, and then restructure your thoughts to be more accurate and encouraging. Not everybody who uses porn had an unhappy childhood, but if you were in an unhappy situation, then that dramatically shaped your beliefs. Children tend to think in extreme concrete, personal, and guess what, egocentric ways. However, as an adult, you're able to think differently now. Children literally were not wired to to think about options and exceptions and all that other stuff. You're different, you're older now, and you do have the ability to engage that higher order thinking. Some of your unhealthy beliefs may have also come from interactions and just from watching porn. It's not always about trauma when people develop addictions, it's not always about trauma. Part of your recovery will revolve around changing your beliefs and expectations, which will help you improve your mood and trigger positive behaviors.