Overcoming porn addiction is nearly always a lot more than just deleting your porn files and throwing away your magazines. This usually just leads you to stop for a short time until something happens and you start using it again convinced it could never be as bad as before. This leads to a relapse and a sense of shame and guilt as you feel you have failed.
Pornography itself is not the root cause of this addiction you see, it is simply a manifestation of an emotional, psychological issue that has been plaguing you perhaps unseen in your life. Solving these root causes can be the way out of addiction to a happier and healthier life!
However, sometimes it is very difficult to solve these long standing problems immediately. The good news is that at least understanding them is incredibly beneficial to you overcoming porn addiction. This takes a certain level of insight and introspection on your part. It also takes a huge amount of brutal honesty that might be difficult to articulate even to yourself.
So what are the root causes of pornography addiction? These will be very personal and unique to you in all of its nuance and detail. There are however a few common themes such as:
- Depression – Ranging from just feeling low and sad to full blown clinical depression where you find it hard to get out of bed
- Low Self Esteem – Feelings of low self worth to self loathing can be attributed to getting started on pornography
- Sexual Abuse – Some sex and porn addicts have a history of being sexually abused. This can manifest in addiction and poor understanding of good sexual relationships.
- Poor Sexual Relationship – A marriage without much passion and excitement can lead some men and women to porn to satisfy themselves – but that can become an addiction and make the real life situation a lot worse.
- Boredom and Lack of Direction – A very common cause of addiction is not have a goal and dire in life. Boredom sets in and this fantasy of porn can become a habit, then an obsession, then an addiction.
This is by no means an exhaustive list but these themes are often recurring in porn addicts. Often solving your porn problem goes a long way to solving these psychological problems as well making this a joined problem – you cannot have one without the other!
One exercise that might be helpful is to sit alone without any distractions and think of the triggers that lead you to porn. The situations or events that make you crave pornography. These triggers are often a manifestation of this deeper problem. Being able to identify them and plan for them will help you practically and emotionally. You can find these triggers by thinking about the times when you desperately needed porn and consider what situation or event happened just prior to this. These will be unique to yourself and will be a direct link to those root causes.
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