10 Mistakes You Make When Quitting Porn | Porn Addiction Problems

Article Highlights:

• Quitting porn is a challenging journey filled with numerous triggers.
• Lack of enthusiasm in recovery can lead to failure.
• Recognizing that porn addiction is rarely the only issue can aid in recovery.
• Honesty with oneself is crucial during the recovery process.
• Focusing on one problem at a time is more effective than trying to fix everything at once.

Quitting porn is a rough road.
Triggers are at every turn waiting to sabotage you.
Relapses threaten your self-esteem and belief in yourself.
Sometimes the struggle is just so long and hard that the easiest thing to do is just quit trying and live.

As a chronic porn user, I notice the struggle.
Today I have compiled 10 of the major mistakes we make when trying to quit pornography.
And guys, I believe that knowledge of these mistakes is a requirement if you're going to seriously quit pornography.

The first is thinking that staying away from porn will fix your addictions.
It won't. More often than not, your porn usage goes way beyond pornography.
It could involve low self-esteem as a teen or even a traumatic event as a child.
Whether it's one year or four years, if the root cause of your porn use is not handled,
porn will inevitably creep back into your life.

Now, some men have progressed far beyond their porn addiction into sex addiction
and even acting out their fantasies on willing and unwilling participants.
So don't screw around with your recovery, guys.
You're going to have to change the person that porn made you.

The second is tackling recovery with less enthusiasm than you spent watching pornography.
Listen, recovery is not a walk in the park.
Too many guys think that some 90-day commitments to not masturbating and watching pornography will save them.
Bluntly speaking, it probably won't.

If pornography consumed your life, if you couldn't wait to get back home to launch those browsers,
if you ran back to porn every time you experienced even the slightest bit of stress in your life,
if all you think about on a weekend night is how much fun you're going to have watching pornography,
then you must be just as enthusiastic about quitting porn for it to work.

Anything less than the obsessiveness you gave to porn use will not work.
The recovery process requires commitment and self-discipline.
How long do you have to be committed to the process? Well, as long as it takes.

The third is underestimating the challenge of recovery.
Now, I struggled with pornography for about 11 years.
I experienced a few months where I decisively harnessed every ounce of willpower and discipline
that I had to apply every lesson I learned over those years into conquering porn once and for all.
You can learn more about the details of my first few months of recovery on porreboot.com.

I never relapsed after those weeks, but make no mistake.
It took me two more years to completely rewire my brain and change the person I had become thanks to pornography.
So till today, I take no chances.
I still maintain strong habits that ensure that I will never relapse.
I meditate daily. I study every book and scientific journal that comes out regarding addiction,
especially pornography addiction. And I’m always alert to potential triggers.

That’s how seriously I take my recovery.
Recovery has no definite timeline.
Maybe it will take you five years to recover, maybe a decade.
Be prepared to work as long as it takes.

The fourth is becoming a self-improvement junkie.
Now, the Internet is full of self-improvement information.
It's not uncommon in the process of quitting porn to take up an active interest in self-improvement.
I personally have a library of hundreds of self-improvement books.

I've read all of them.
And if I could change anything about my history with self-improvements, here’s what I would do.
I would have just picked two solid books and not read another until I had mastered the principles in both of them.
See, there is one pitfall with reading and watching self-improvement videos every day.
Self-improvement is often what I call mental masturbation.

Self-improvement is not a substitute for recovery.
It will make you feel good and perhaps take some limited action on certain areas in your life,
but it will not cause, it will not help you give up your pornography use.
So bear in mind that many of the self-improvement gurus you follow and study are in denial of their own porn use.

The fifth is ignoring serious relationship problems.
Now, if you're in a relationship, chances are your porn use is contributing to some of the problems that you have.
Whether it's physical problems like low libido, erectile dysfunction, or problems like infidelity or loss of attraction.
Your partner may feel neglected because porn is your preference.

Sometimes you might have depression or an increase in misogynistic tendencies.
Trying to quit porn while in a problematic relationship is like trying to put out a house on fire
by dousing it with more gasoline.
Your relationships, especially your romantic relationships, can rarely be separated from your heavy porn use.

If you are emotionally dependent on your partner,
this weakness will only magnify your problems.
Now if you have a partner that perhaps is not great at communication,
and constantly has complaints and has no inclination to support you in your recovery,
you’re better off single.

And if you have a partner who you are emotionally dependent on,
fix your emotional dependence or quit the relationship.
It’s likely that this will shift your recovery into fifth gear.

The next is assuming that porn addiction is the only problem.
Now check this out.
Porn is rarely the only problem you have.
You’re hosting a party, and porn never comes to the party alone.
It always brings friends, and the longer and harder you party, the crazier the friends it invites.

We now understand that porn changes the brain.
You can never assume that your only problem with porn is that you watch too much,
and that you masturbate too much.
So here are a few examples of some of the problems that party with pornography:

• Erectile dysfunction
• Lack of motivation
• Sex addiction
• Depression
• Sexual deviancy and change in sexual preference
• Internet addiction
• Low self-esteem and self-hate
• Increased drug and alcohol use

Porn use cannot be handled by stopping your porn use alone.
All the problems associated with it must be identified and worked on together.
The reason why you assume that porn is your only problem is because you want to come across as normal
and give yourself the illusion that you are in control.

Listen, if you love to drink and get high, drugs and alcohol could also be a problem.
Now many of my relapses occurred when I had come back from a bar or club after a night of drinking.
The truth is that recovery from your porn use may require complete disuse of drugs and alcohol.
Cross addiction is also very common.
Sex addiction can quickly replace your porn addiction.

Next is being a special flower.
Now back in the day when a man was born, he knew his place.
A prince was a prince, a peasant was a peasant, a butcher was a butcher, a farmer was a farmer,
and you had to be satisfied with your lot.

As the world became wealthier, smaller, and more connected, we are exposed to more possibilities.
We can become anything.
We are all special.
We live in a world where we are bombarded with how special everyone is.

Everyone is making money online, everyone is firing their boss and becoming an entrepreneur.
Everyone is becoming incredibly self-disciplined and getting a six-pack.
Men are learning how to talk to women and dating amazing women, finding their masculinity, and so many other trends.

Readily accessible information has led to readily accessible inadequacy and insecurity.
The raw and unfiltered truth is that we are not special.
Although we watch porn and masturbate, sitting at our masturbation stations at 1 am,
and we approach women as men and we get shut down and we get blown out.

We get angry at ourselves and we generate self-hate.
Some of us as men, we just want a girlfriend.
We just want happiness and a steady job that pays enough to cover our expenses and save a respectable amount.
And that's alright.
That's alright provided you remember that to achieve these things you still need to strive
to be the best you can be, and the best you can be is not special.

Next is dishonesty.
One of the characteristics of a chronic or compulsive porn user is dishonesty.
We lie about our porn use.
We lie about the sort of porn we watch.
We lie about even watching pornography.

If there is one thing that I'm good at, it's basically setting guys who lie about their porn use straight.
I receive emails from men who tell me that they have given up pornography for multiple months
but they are still experiencing massive urges to masturbate.
And upon further digging, I find out that they are still using Instagram, they are reading Hentai online,
or they are reading erotica.

Lying to others about your porn use is one thing,
but lying to yourself about it will keep you frustrated in your recovery efforts for a long time.

The next is trying to become Mr. Perfect.
Overcoming porn use, as you know now, is no walk in the park.
It's a rough climb up a mountain on an uncertain path.

Elevated recovery can help you climb the path in the light with information, no BS, motivation,
and some occasional hand-holding.
But the journey is one that you’re on your own with buckets full of self-belief and perseverance.
Some of us want to be the very best at what we do.
We want to pass a lot of classes, arrange our workspace just right,
pick up the girl with the perfect sequence of approach to close,
and we want to quit porn by following some sort of recovery program to the T.

Being Mr. Perfectionist will make this journey longer and harder than it needs to be.
Listen, you will fail. You will relapse.
It may not take you 90 days to quit.
You may find out that you have other addictions.
You may quit porn for good and struggle with erectile dysfunction for a few months after.
And that's okay.

You know, make the commitment and push through to the very end.
Fail your way to success.

Next is trying to fix everything.
Okay, so you have relationship problems, you’re cross-addicted to sex,
you suffer from ED, and you’re depressed.
Jumping into the mess and trying to fix everything at once
is simply going to leave you overwhelmed and stressed,
which makes this journey tougher than it has to be.

The simple solution is to attack one problem at a time.
You have to find out which problem is the most urgent.
How do you figure this out?
It's very simple: by conducting a very detailed analysis each time you relapse.

In the next video, I'm going to show you how to do that.