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The Truth About Money, Power, and Sex

The Truth About Money, Power, and Sex

A common misconception I see men believing in is the idea that good education, good looks, and solid spirituality implies a healthy relationship with money, power, or sexual behavior.

I’m here to tell you, brother, that oftentimes this is not the case. Society tends to operate under the assumption that success comes to those with a combination of good looks, intelligence, and good morals.

Simply put, many of us define success as access to money, power, and sex. Whether you’re upfront about it or not, this combination tends to be the driving force for the majority of men in the Porn Reboot program as well as most of society at large.

Oftentimes people hide these three main desires behind the term “freedom.” They want the freedom to live by their terms, to spend as much time with their family as they want to, to be free from worries about things like finances and health, and so on. 

In their pursuit of freedom, men go to school, build up their skills, take care of their bodies, learn to carry themselves well, associate with the right people, establish a place in their church, and more. Working toward all of these things is a positive thing to do. They’re chasing after success and working to become the best possible versions of themselves.

Ultimately, though, what these men hope for after achieving their definition of success is the freedom to purchase any material item they want, to influence or control situations to their advantage, or to fulfill their deepest sexual fantasies with whomever they please. This again boils down to the desire for money, power, and sex.

If you’re honest with yourself this description probably applies to you, too. There’s nothing wrong with the pursuit of these things, though, brother. They’re natural desires and something that everyone in the world works for. But it doesn’t matter how much you achieve if you cannot build a good relationship with these things once you have them.

Again, the idea that men who have these things have a good relationship with them is a misconception. There are plenty of men who have millions of dollars but squander their wealth, men who have more power than you can imagine but use it to cause harm, and men who have their choice of whatever woman they could want but go about their conquests in an abusive way.

Good relationships with money, power, and sex are skills that must be developed. They aren’t necessarily an inherent part of us. Unfortunately, society doesn’t often teach us how to build good relationships with these things. Too often we take our pursuit of them to the extreme. 

Our parents, mentors, and teachers told us we need to be smart, knowledgeable, moral, and spiritual. We must follow all of society’s rules. They said that if we adhered to all of these then good things would happen to us. We would find the right woman, have access to sex, experience marital bliss, and have financial prosperity.

But they didn’t teach us the most important part: understanding how money works and what a good relationship with it looks like; understanding power and how it should be wielded; and understanding the truth about our natural sexuality. These are things that weren’t spoken about and it fell on us to develop an understanding for ourselves. 

How often have you seen celebrities, politicians, athletes, high standing religious individuals, famous pastors, or people with great intelligence, incredible beauty, or good character lose everything to money, power, or sex? They pursued these things to an extreme and ended up failing because of it.

You may have secretly or even openly judged them but are you honestly any different? 

I know I’m not.

As you know, I fell prey to my sexual behavior for many years. Fortunately, during my mid-twenties I developed a system to help me control it. That system was the early beginnings of the porn addiction recovery system that’s still in use today. It changed my entire life and helped me eliminate the control that porn addiction effect had over my life.

Despite this newfound control over my sexual behavior, I still struggled in other areas. I made a decent amount of money in my sales position but squandered it due to my lack of financial understanding. I was a poor leader at the company I worked for, burning many bridges by letting my imagined power get to my head.

While I had learned to control my problem with porn and masturbation, I didn’t have a good relationship with money or power. I had to develop an understanding of what positive demonstrations of these things looked like before I could build a healthy relationship with them like I had with sex.

So now I ask you, brother, how is your relationship with sex going? If it were perfect you wouldn’t be here reading this blog. You’re likely struggling to control your behavior and now realizing that its impact on your life is getting worse.

Or maybe you’re like me at the beginning where you have gained control over your sexual behavior but now you’re struggling with your spending habits or lashing out at your subordinates in the office. You have one part of the equation solved but there are still two more sides to the triangle that you need to even out.

But here’s the thing: eliminating your behavior with porn and masturbation removes a significant roadblock. Men who struggle with porn addiction problems and compulsive sexual behavior cannot develop healthy relationships with money or power, either. Once you control the sexual part of the equation you free yourself up to control the other two aspects.

The skills of managing money, power, and sex are not innate for some men, brother, but the ability to learn them is out there. It’s up to you to take responsibility for learning how to build healthy relationships with these things for yourself.

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The Truth About Triggers

The Truth About Triggers

There are three main approaches to traditional porn addiction recovery that I like to refer to as the “Big Three.”

They are the religious approach, the 12-step approach, and the therapeutic approach. Each of these works for different people based on personality, background, needs, and so on. However, they also tend to create obstacles where none should actually exist.

I have a hard time with the Big Three because each of them applies archaic and out-of-date methodologies to a very modern problem. For example, problems like alcoholism are relatively predictable. Alcohol has been the same substance for centuries. Flavors and brands may change but the substance itself remains the same.

On the other hand, porn addiction is a modern problem because it’s constantly evolving. What was mostly magazines and VHS tapes a few decades ago is now the most expansive library containing whatever you could possibly want to watch, anytime, anywhere. It’s not the same beast that it was 20 years ago, and it’ll be a completely different beast 20 years from now.

The way that high-speed on-demand pornography has rewired men’s brains is something else entirely. It creates changes that feel as though they’re permanent. Men watch their sexual preferences change as their pornography use progresses. They begin fantasizing about things they would have never imagined themselves attracted to before watching porn.

Applying one of the Big Three methodologies to your porn addiction recovery often neglects this reality. It uses old approaches that don’t take a comprehensive approach that’s required for your recovery. They focus more on porn use and less on the important tools you can use to overcome it.

For example, triggers are a hot topic in these traditional approaches. You’re taught to think that triggers are the main cause of your porn use and compulsive sexual behavior. There’s this belief that if you have a problem with pornography, you need to avoid any potential triggers that could lead you to relapse.

Leaning into this belief about triggers means that if you have a problem with pornography and see a scantily-clad woman that you’ll experience an uncontrollable urge and have no choice but to relapse. Do you realize how ridiculous that is?

I understand that triggers are a real thing and they do create a biochemical reaction that leads to arousal. Men experience a biological response when they see something sexual that falls within their arousal template. But the belief that you have no control once you’re triggered is absolutely unreasonable. 

Accepting this belief means your life becomes a quest to avoid triggers. That’ll make you a wildly useless person, though, because triggers are inevitable. What are you going to do, shut yourself away in your house for the rest of your life?

You have a choice in how you respond to triggers. It might not feel like it at the beginning but you do. You lose control over that choice as you fall deeper into your pornography addiction and compulsive sexual behavior. But you can regain that control if you use the right system and approach.

That’s exactly what the Porn Reboot program is designed to do. It’s built to help you build a solid foundation for recovery and then equips you with the tools and skills needed to maintain what you’ve built. It’s not a program that teaches you that you’re a victim to circumstances and need to spend your time avoiding triggers. It’s a program that empowers you with the ability to recognize that pornography isn’t something you want as part of your life.

I’ve seen it time and time again with men who use our system. Over time they realize that they prefer not to watch pornography. They build a life that is so fulfilling and preferable to the way they were living before that the idea of watching pornography or engaging in those old compulsive behaviors again is abhorrent.

Whether you believe it or not, brother, you have a choice when it comes to your porn addiction symptoms and compulsive sexual behavior. Sure, compulsive behavior with pornography, sex, and masturbation is real but your response to it is one hundred percent your choice. And regaining that choice is the most important thing you could possibly cultivate within our system.

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Unveiling The Truth About Suffering

Unveiling The Truth About Suffering

I came across something on social media the other day that hit me: the topic of suffering.

When I first got into a relationship as a rebooting porn addict with serious porn addiction problems, I was scared. So scared. In fact, I had a mental breakdown at one point. I met a genuinely good woman, innocent, well-raised, feminine, beautiful, caring, and so out of my league that I was convinced God was playing a cruel trick on me.

Would I hurt her with my behavior? Could I keep my commitments? Could I, a filthy-minded porn addict who had acted out in the most disgusting ways, deserve such happiness? What if she found out about my past, the drunken weed- and porn-filled nights that I woke up from? Should I tell her? How much? And what if I lost her?

These thoughts hurdled through my mind with such intensity that I was rendered useless for weeks. While driving to work one morning I randomly and inexplicably burst into tears. I remember pulling over to a gas station, bewildered and confused, and calling my mother. I was sobbing uncontrollably out of nowhere and didn’t understand what was going on.

That relationship did a number on me. My heart literally hurt whenever I was with her during our first year together. The pressure of my shame and low self-worth crushed me from within. I went through the motions of daily life like a zombie with dread in my heart and a seemingly permanent lump in my throat.

I couldn’t handle intimacy.

I couldn’t handle someone loving me.

I wasn’t worthy.

A part of me craved intimacy while another part was terrified by its potential. I was scared of the long, four-hour calls at night. I feared cuddles and long hugs. Hand-holding was so alien to me. I remember hearing the words “I love you” on the phone for the first time and they elicited this internal reaction akin to an addict living in secrecy for years.

When sex is exclusively used for pleasure and escape from your irresponsible reality, intimacy in any form is a threat to your existence. Eventually, I became convinced that if I did not take drastic measures I was going to lose my mind.

I went on a long silent meditation retreat and what followed were the most painful days of my life. No access to the internet, no phone, no books. Just 11 days of silence and 10 hours of meditation per day.

My urges, which I thought were under control at that point, rose with a vengeance. I had wet dreams almost nightly. I woke up with panic attacks and fear so severe that I wet the bed on two occasions. All I could do was whisper to myself, “Please, God, make it stop.” 

When the sun rose each morning it was a sweet relief from my agonizing, lonely nights. But after a few hours, the sleep deprivation sunk in and all my fears gathered like a dark storm. They enveloped me almost the entire time I spent at that retreat.

I learned the true nature of pain and suffering.

Have you ever experienced a mental pain so intense that you would have one of your limbs sawed off in exchange for relief?  That’s what it felt like. That’s how painful it was during the last few days of the retreat. I slowly realized the pain was not going away, either. Not any time soon.

There was no way I could continue living with this insanity but I had to accept that it might never truly leave me. It was my hell on earth, the price I had to pay for my years of compulsive sexual behavior and running from the pain.

Something peculiar happened when I returned from the retreat, though. As I slowly accepted the insanity and suffering, I stopped resenting it. As I saw with it, it became slightly more bearable. But the moment I tried to run from it, it became intense again.

I realized that if I stopped struggling, stopped wishing it would go away, then I could manage it. It was still painful but it was bearable moment to moment. I finally experienced some relief. 

The sense of relief has grown throughout the almost 15 years that I’ve been porn-free now achieving porn addiction recovery completely. I still experience some unwelcome visits from time to time. Occasionally I have nightmares and wake up with feelings of pure terror and panic. But those are fewer and further between the more time goes by.

I know I’m not the only man who goes through this. Many men are forced through that experience of their self-made hell. I want you to know that if you’ve experienced this, or you’re in the middle of it right now, it’s okay. You don’t have to walk alone. You’ll have to do the work on your own and come to your conclusions in solitude, but I’m here to walk by your side.

I will keep you company through that landscape of irrationality, fear, dread, depression, and temporary madness. I’ll be there until you arrive at your destination of understanding. The understanding that I had to come to myself. The realization that while pain is a requirement of the human condition, suffering is only optional.

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How to Stop Feeling Bad About Relapses

How to Stop Feeling Bad About Relapses

Relapse is a common concern for men when they begin their reboot.

Most come from past programs with abstinence-only approaches that make you feel like you’ve failed if you have a slip. I see it differently, though. When you’re learning how to stop porn addiction, relapses are part of the process. 

If you’re like the majority of men early in the Porn Reboot system, you likely attach a lot of emotion to relapses. You feel a lot of guilt and shame if you start watching porn again, even if only for an evening. You might find yourself trapped in a negative thought spiral that keeps you stuck for longer than you should be.

I prefer men in the Porn Reboot program to remove all emotion from the relapse experience. You don’t need to assign big feelings to it when it happens; simply recognize that you made a mistake and determine how you can best avoid it moving forward. In this way, I like to see the process of viewing slips as data. This makes it easier to get back on track instead of digging yourself into a hole.

Men who are prone to feeling big emotions after a relapse will struggle with this at first. Learning to detach emotions from slips feels like a huge challenge. But when you start to rationally view slips as data, it becomes easier to not feel guilt, shame, or anger because you’re busy processing the experience.

For example, when you experience a slip you can immediately dissect what happened. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep because you stayed up too late watching YouTube videos on your phone. You watched the videos because you felt frustrated that work took longer to complete than usual and you wanted to feel a bit of relief from that stress. 

This gives you multiple points to adjust so that you don’t have to slip in this same manner again. If you finished your work in time, you wouldn’t have felt as stressed or frustrated. If you recognized that sometimes you’re going to have bad days at work, you might not have sought relief from YouTube videos. If you still needed some time to de-stress, you could have achieved it by reading a book or meditating for a few minutes instead.

Breaking down your relapse in this way makes it almost impossible to feel bad about it. Sure, the goal of the Porn Reboot program is to eliminate your out-of-control behavior with porn, sex, and masturbation. But expecting it to go away immediately is only a recipe for disaster. Assigning big emotions to something that’s almost guaranteed sets you up for failure, too.

Viewing slips as data is a far more efficient approach to your reboot. If you haven’t already, I recommend practicing it as you learn how to stop porn addiction. You’ll become more effective not only at avoiding slips, but you can apply this reasoning to other troublesome areas of your life. You don’t need to feel bad about relapses when they simply offer you more information on how to avoid them in the future!

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10 Lies You Tell Yourself About Porn

For those quietly battling porn addiction symptoms, the fight can be brutal.

Multiple relapses over the years, the guilt, betrayal of loved ones, the erectile dysfunction the jump into acting out in real life

It’s a rough journey, alright!

Sometimes, its easier to deal with everything by unconsciously telling ourselves lies. These lies grow and overtime turn out to be the greatest hindrance to our progress.

This post will help you identify the most common lies we tell ourselves about our porn use.

 

1) Powerless Lie: I can’t stop watching porn. I can’t quit.

This another lie and a red flag for low self-esteem. Most frequently told when you feel that you are completely powerless to control your addiction.

You CAN quit. You are more powerful than you imagine. Perhaps you grew with some rough experiences that knocked you down a few notches. You can still rise.

Willpower is a muscle- it gets tired, but it will get you far enough to see the mountaintop in this tough climb. Once you have a glimpse at freedom, you will do whatever it takes to get there!

A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind. – Elly Roselle.

2) Downplay Lie: I must have recovered.

This!

This was one of the biggest obstacles in my porn addiction journey.

I would quit porn and masturbation for a few weeks and feel amazing then the thoughts would begin to slowly creep in well, I haven’t felt the urge in so long- I must be fine! Phew- thank God it’s not an addiction!

Well, guess what downplaying led to?

I fell right back into the porn and masturbation cycle.

Another variation of this lie occurs when you quit watching porn, but then try to masturbate. To your surprise, you find that it’s almost impossible to do so without watching porn. Back to porn again. Both are lies we tell ourselves to rationalize the addiction.

3) Whitewash Lie: I was drunk., I was high, It was right there.

In my college days, excessive drinking and smoking was a one-way ticket to the masturbation station.

No matter how much I wanted to quit, putting myself under the influence invariably led to a relapse. For those trying to give up porn, the effects of alcohol and drugs on the process of quitting cannot be emphasized enough.

Once your inhibitions are lowered, or certain senses chemically heightened, the last vestiges of restraint fly out the window.

4) Minimize Lie: Just 5 minutes.

I’ll only look at this anime porn on Tumblr for 5 minutes.

Two hours later and 30 Firefox tabs later, you’re exhausted and disgusted from your porn binge.

The time trap always escalates. You play down and attempt to minimize the actual amount of time you know you will spend on porn.

5) Inflation Lie: I’m stressed

I feel like crap, so I deserve to watch porn. It’s been a crazy stressful day, screw it, I need this.

Another common lie where you inflate a rough situation into an excuse to binge on porn.

You haven’t developed alternate means of coping with stress, so when you experience above-average stress, you automatically return to the thing that soothes you.

Solution: Work on developing positive habits that you can turn to the moment your triggers kick in. Meditation has worked very well for me.

6) Implication Lie: My significant other isn’t into what I want.

My girlfriend doesn’t give blowjobs and she doesn’t like anal.

Yeap- I used that one too, and it nearly cost me my relationship.

It’s easy to blame or implicate someone for your porn habits. An easy, but a weak lie.Its also one of the top lies we tell ourselves before, during and after we act out porn fantasies in real life.

In our program Porn Reboot Intensive, I emphasize that taking responsibility is among the first steps to giving up pornography.

7) Privilege Lie: I’m a late bloomer.

I’m a late bloomer, and I missed out. I married early, that’s why I’m acting out. Wow. I feel like I’ve used every lie so far!

As a guy who teaches men how to meet and attract women, I’ve noticed that this lie is most common among the “Get Girls” crowd in the community.

Men who gain success later on in life develop confidence and improve self-esteem through self-improvement or career success tend to develop a sense of entitlement when justifying their porn or sex addiction. If your habit of having with women outside of your relationship is fueled by porn, it’s time to start cutting back.

8) Standard Lie: A man’s biology dictates that he should sleep with many attractive women as possible, or every guy does it.

I am guilty of this lie as well. While the statement is true, painting the picture of porn as a normal, standard part of a man’s lifestyle as an excuse for porn addiction constitutes lying to yourself.

Not every man watches porn and masturbates on a daily basis. In fact, some of the most accomplished men in history stayed far away from pornography.

9) Non-acceptance Lie: I don’t watch porn anymore.

I used this lie for too long. My rationalization was that spending the same amount of time that I used to spend on porn browsing Instagram for chicks in bikinis was obviously not watching porn.

The reboot process is sabotaged the moment you replace your addiction to porn with something else. Its the equivalent of someone addicted to cigarettes trying to quit by switching to e-cigarettes. It doesn’t work.

Quitting porn by rebooting involves completely avoiding and isolating yourself from any habits that that may potentially lead to a trigger.

10) Negating Lie: There is nothing wrong with porn, or playing out my addiction in real life.

If you say this, but one day you are attracted to women, and the next you’ve had sex with more sex workers or prostitutes from Craigslist than actual women, you’re lying to yourself.

Porn use escalates as our brain craves more stimulation. Negating the effects of pornography is the singularly most devastating lie you can tell yourself.

What are some of the lies not included here that YOU frequently tell yourself?

I’d love to know. Leave your comments below.

 

 

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