Why Should I Quit Porn? 5 Reasons - Thrive Beyond Pornography (Formerly The Self Mastery Podcast)

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Why Should I Quit Porn? 5 Reasons

Episode 210 • 10th September 2023 • Thrive Beyond Pornography (Formerly The Self Mastery Podcast) • Zach Spafford

Episode 210

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Zach Spafford: Hey everybody. Welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. I'm your host, Zach Spafford, and this week I wanna talk about should I quit porn and give you five reasons. Now, generally speaking, I don't think too many of the people that I work with or too many of the people that I talk to need I. A reason to quit porn.

And I am not here to tell you that you have to quit porn. I never take that stance. Not because I don't believe that it's morally not really who I want to be, but because it is not, I don't I, we beat this drum, like we beat this drum a lot and I don't really wanna keep beating this drum too much.

But I do wanna address this topic because I think when it comes up, This is one of the biggest issues when people are like, well, why should I quit porn? A lot of people, they, they struggle with this idea. Maybe not you, maybe not everybody that I work with, but should I quit porn and have five reasons for quitting porn?

I think that's a reasonable place to start. I don't think that's problematic, but I do wanna make sure that you're not here and you're hearing this and you're not going, oh, just another guy who's mad at porn. I'm not mad at porn. If you choose to view porn and that, I'm not mad at porn. What I want you to understand is that there are some very valid reasons why leaving porn out of your life is a good idea, and that's something you just wanna talk about, discuss, give you a little bit of space to understand this and maybe understand a little bit of my perspective on why I do this.

Okay? So number one reason is the impact on your mental health. The first reason to consider quitting porn is its impact on your mental health. There's a number of studies out there that have shown a connection between excessive pornography consumption and negative mental health outcomes. A lot of individuals report increased anxiety, depression, and reduced self-esteem as a result of their porn habits, and that may be for a lot of underlying factors.

That may be because you have this religious bias against pornography. That may be just because you feel like it's not right. That may be because your wife's upset that you view porn. I don't know what the underlying reasons are that you have this bent up. Away from pornography. But what you wanna understand is that as you are dealing with this, understanding why you may want to quit is a valuable question.

And by quitting porn, you may experience improved mental wellbeing and a clearer state of mind. A couple of things, right? So one, we live in a world and we live in a timeline. When you can be entertained constantly, and one of the things that has come out of that, one of the things that we've started to understand about that is that when you are constantly using the dopamine processes within your brain, you become dopamine depleted.

That is a mental health issue. That's something that's. Wearing on you. And the more that you engage with pornography, the more likely it is that you are being dopamine depleted. And I listened to a great podcast by a guy named Andrew Huberman. He talks about this in detail. There's a book called Dopamine Nation, and I can't remember the author just off the top of my head, but I'll try and link to those in the show notes.

But I want you to understand that this isn't really just about eliminating a. Habit that people think is bad for you. It's really about understanding, okay, well why is it bad for me? And I wanna just clarify this for you. The mental health issue that most people that I deal with are, that they're struggling on is their self-confidence.

It's self-confidence and dopamine depletion. Those are the two keys. And I wanna talk a little bit about self-confidence for a second. The three keys to self-confidence are being capable of feeling any, feeling, the ability to believe what you want to believe about yourself, i.e. That you're a good person and the capacity to trust yourself to do what you say you will.

Most of us who are struggling or who have struggled with pornography use, we are capable of feeling any feeling. We just don't practice it very often. But if you're saying, okay, I'm avoiding bad feelings because X, Y, and z I don't practice it very often. I'm not very good at it. I don't really like the way that it feels.

This might be a good place for you to practice, become more capable of feeling. Unhappy or even happy. A lot of times people choose pornography even when they are happy as a way to level out their feelings or get to a place where they're comfortable, right? The ability to believe what you want to believe about yourself, you know that you're a good person.

Whatever it is that you're, say, thinking about yourself negatively, that you don't like thinking about yourself, that's where you know a little bit of the rubber is meeting the road on self-confidence. And I have a whole podcast on self-confidence. I can link to that in the show notes, but I want you to just understand.

These are the three keys that are starting to drive you into a negative health space. Negative mental health space. The last one, the capacity to trust yourself to do what you say you will. How many times have you said This is the last time, and then you go back to it? How many times have you said, I'm never gonna do this again?

And you go back to viewing pornography. This is starting to erode your capacity to believe. Your ability to do what you say you will. That's what we're trying to eliminate. That's what we're trying to improve when it comes to working on your mental health. So all of these factors, all of these, and these are, this is a really brief treatment of this, but understanding that viewing pornography is not just about a moral negative.

This is really about how is this impacting me mentally in a way that I can now address those issues. Concretely and start to improve my mental health and probably leave porn behind for good. The next one is relationship enhancement. Reason number two for should I quit porn or Why should I quit Porn is relationship enhancement.

The reality here is that pornography can have a significant impact on your intimate relationships, and it might even lead to unrealistic expectations, maybe communication issues. Hiding really hiding is gonna be a huge one in this process. Keeping you from really being able to share with your partner or with the person that you love the most, what's real and what's true, and what's.

Actually going on for you when you're alone with yourself, and that's where you start to strain your relationships, that's where you start to realize that maybe that person's not choosing me, maybe I'm tricking them into choosing me. And that starts to devalue and decrease your satisfaction within your relationship.

By quitting porn, you can actually focus a little bit. More on building healthy and fulfilling relationships with real people, but also you can start to tell your partner what's real. Now, quitting porn doesn't come before telling them. Quitting porn comes as a process within telling your spouse what's going on for you.

That way they get to really choose you, and you get to know that they know who you are. This is, these are common issues among my clients and whether they're real or perceived, our expectations of our relationships can be impacted by viewing porn specifically. Many people who don't s see their partner as beautiful or attractive anymore because of the porn that they viewed.

That can be problematic. And then of course, then we stopped talking to our partner about what it looks like too. Be intimate. We stop telling our partner what's going on internally for us because we don't wanna hurt their feelings. We start managing them and managing people's not really a good idea because you can never manage them enough.

I. So it's okay to start to figure out a healthy reality here. If you're being impacted by the way that your porn viewing has made you perceive your partner, you may find that setting aside pornography as a tool that you have been using to manage yourself can actually enhance your relationship by allowing you to see things a little bit more realistically.

Importantly, at least one thing that happens almost universally is that when we view porn, We are being fed. False validation. Like you never go to the internet and say, Hey, internet, I would like you to show me some pornography. And the porn, the internet goes, no, not tonight. I don't feel like it. The internet just gives you what it is that you want.

So I'll talk about this a little bit more in reason four, but it's important to know that sometimes when we are not getting the validation that we want in our relationship, we seek porn, which is always validating when we want to enhance our relationships. We will seek to see ourselves more clearly and face the parts of our behavior that aren't making us desirable to our partners.

As we see those behaviors, as we look at ourselves, honestly, as we start to say, okay, is this behavior desirable? Is this behavior me being a good person? Is this behavior me showing up in our relationship? As we start to do that, as we start to question our behaviors and address them in meaningful ways to make ourselves into more the person that we would expect ourselves to be.

So a good question to ask yourself is, would I be okay if my child's spouse was behaving the way that I'm be behaving? That's a good way to look at yourself and see, okay, can I address this undesirable behavior in myself so that. I can improve my relationship. We might start to, you'll start to see that you may not like the behaviors that you're engaging with.

And as you start to address those behaviors will tend to improve. So an example of this, of my own life is I used to accept and seek duty sex all the time. It's gimme gimme, gimme, gimme. And I really, I was a taker. I was a net taker in our relationship around this particular item. Now I don't.

Engaged with duty sex at all. If Darcy, and she won't it's been a long time since she came to me and was like, I need to manage you with sex, because we've worked through this pretty significantly. But if she came to me and was like, I need to just manage you through sex, I would not take it. And for a long time I didn't take it when she would try.

And it wasn't a very long time. It was like maybe 3, 4, 5 months where I was saying no. And she was still trying, but she got the hang of it pretty quick too. But what that led to was, Better, real, more meaningful sex where we were desiring each other and engaging with each other from a, from an equal and level playing field.

Because she wanted me and I wanted her because we were both looking at and working through our undesirable traits, by asking ourselves do would I be okay if my. My child's spouse was behaving this way. That's what's gonna happen as you start to address your porn struggle. It's oh, I'm gonna enhance my relationship.

And not only is it gonna be a self-reinforcing cycle where I can see myself more clearly validate myself and my partners no longer trying to manage me, but we also get better and closer intimacy. Okay? Reason number three, reclaiming time and productivity. Reason number three relates to really just getting yourself out of this drain on your behavior, drain on the way that you're engaging with the world.

I can't tell you how many of my clients are like, yeah, I was supposed to do this thing, whether it was schoolwork or a project or some sort of work related issue. And they're like, yeah, and then I just. Looked at porn instead, because I didn't wanna fight with my brain and I didn't wanna fight with what was going on, and I didn't wanna really start that project.

So I just looked at porn, quitting porn, I. It can really free up your time, allow you to focus on more personal and professional issues that you would actually like to resolve, grow in those spaces, and potentially lead you to a more rich, full and meaningful life. And what you might wanna ask yourself in the context of this particular issue is, what has it cost me?

To view pornography. How much time have I lost? How much money have I lost? How much have I lost in relationships? The more you can start to address those things, the more likely it is that you're gonna say, okay, is this the most productive or meaningful way that I can use my time? Now, that doesn't mean that you don't.

Have fun. Watch Netflix, or you don't scroll the social media. What it means is you're starting to just ask yourself and work through what am I wasting my time on, and is this. The way that I do wanna waste my time. I actually have a client who was spending 10 hours a week. It was usually one whole workday that he would do this and he would choose to seek porn for 10 hours in a single day, porn and arousal as he was doing the work that reduced significantly, we were probably down like 90, 80, 90% from what he was doing.

Now, the truth is he wasn't perfect. He was in a place where he was able to reduce his pornography viewing by 90%. Now, that might seem like it's just not enough to some of you who are listening and you're saying, Hey, I wanna be perfect. That 90% was in the time that we worked together. I fully expect that he'll be able to do this continually and get to a place where he's reducing again, 90% and then again 90%.

It doesn't all have to be immediate. What you have to recognize is that when you're starting to take back your time, your productivity, It's a process. It's a process of getting new habits. It's a process of creating new ways of dealing with yourself. It's a process. And he wasn't perfect by the time.

And of course within my program, it's a lifetime program, so you're not, he's not gone from the program. He just is worked through the individual sessions and he is like, oh, I'm in a great place. I'm happy with where I am. I'm gonna keep working on this, but maybe in the background, I'm gonna come to the open coaching calls instead of the individual coaching calls.

That's really what it was. So, Understanding that you are, as you quit pouring, you're actually gonna take back a lot more time. You're gonna have a lot more time for the things that you really do like. When I say really do like, the things that drive you towards your values, the things that make you feel great or make you feel whole, those are the things you're gonna have time for.

And as you utilize the habits that you learn, you're going to enjoy those things more. You're going to engage with those things more, and you're going to have more time on your hands to do what it is that you wanna do. Okay? Reason number four. This is about reducing dependence on external validation, and we've, I talked about this a little bit in reason number two.

Pornography often provides a false sense of validation through these unrealistic portrayals of intimacy. Like when you view pornography, oftentimes the woman is looking at you as though she desires you or the man, like whatever kind of pornography it is that you're watching over time. This actually can erode your self-esteem and make you reliant on those external sources for approval.

'cause what you're doing is you're saying, I know I can get a false "yes" from anybody on the internet, but in reality, in life, in real life, I can't get a, I can't get a real, yes, these people don't actually love me. And so I know it's a false sense, but I can't get this false sense of validation anywhere else.

And quitting porn can be a pivotal step. Reconnecting with your true self and learning to derive validation from within. I know that sounds hard because it is hard. I wanna be self validated. I want to know that I'm being the kind of person that I want to be. I want to understand myself and be solid in the way that I present myself to the world.

One of the things that I have had to work on personally is being the person that I like. Not seeking to have somebody tell me that I'm good enough. And that's tough for me because, when I worked at a corporate job, it was very I was very into making my boss look good so that he would review me well, speak highly of me to my colleagues and to his bosses so that I could move up in the world.

And I know that maybe that's just normal, but I went after that validation hardcore. And if I wasn't getting that validation, I would go in and say, Hey, am I doing a good job? When I, as a entrepreneur doing what I do now, there's nobody to say, Hey, you're doing a good job. Except, well, I mean my clients do, but I know that I'm being solid in myself because I'm doing something that I would say, yep, that's good.

I'm doing the things that need to be done. I don't need somebody externally to tell me what to do or tell me how what I'm doing is great. When it comes to pornography, external validation is all that pornography is. Because it's and obviously it's not real because they don't really love you. They really don't want you.

What they want is to get paid or they want to be famous or whatever it is that they want. They're doing it for themselves, but they're giving you something. For they, for them to feel good or for them to deal with their own stuff. And when you start to see that and you start to want to reduce your dependence on that external validation, then you will start to see that validation wasn't really fulfilling.

And I'm sure you've seen this, I'm sure you've looked at this in your own life and you go, oh yeah, I'm not really fulfilled by viewing pornography. It just feels good in the moment and then afterwards I feel terrible. So it, this is really about breaking free from the cycle of seeking validation in the wrong places and discovering that your self-worth comes from within.

You are worthy, you are worth something. You are, by your very nature of existing, you are valuable and you are a meaningful part of society. You're a good thing. Letting go of other people having to tell you that letting go of someone who is falsely presenting themselves as desiring you from telling you that can be a freeing and valuable experience.

Okay. Reason number five is the ethical and moral consideration. And I don't wanna go into this too deeply because I don't re, I don't want anybody to feel bad about what's going on when they choose porn. But some people choose to quit porn because they believe it's exploitative and it objectify individuals who are in the industry.

Others may have a moral or religious belief that conflicts with pornography, use quitting porn. Really needs to be about aligning your values and your principles with your behavior. So I'm not here to tell you, Hey, porn bad. You're a horrible person for viewing porn. What I want you to recognize is that the more you are willing to align your behavior with your values and your principles, with the person that you want to be with your religious or moral beliefs, the more likely it is that you are going to be fulfilled in that process, meaning, The more likely or the more you seek to align yourself with the values that you want to live, the person that you expect yourself to be, the more likely it is that you'll actually stop viewing porn.

Too often what I hear people say is I'm an addict and I'm supposed to quit because my wife or my bishop or my church leader or somebody external from me is telling me that I have to do this. And the more that you can say what is it about this behavior that doesn't? Align with my values, doesn't align with the person I wanna be.

That's a much more solid ground to stand on when you're trying to quit something that's been behaviorally probably part of your life for a very long time. So I want you to take a look at these ideas. Again, I don't want anybody to feel bad about why they're choosing porn. I don't think that's a valuable place to be, but I do think if you want to understand.

Why it might be valuable for you to quit porn, to a lot of viewers there, and you're just like, no, I know I have to quit porn. But I want you to take a step deeper and ask yourself why? And I hope that you look at these five reasons and you don't beat yourself up because of them, but that you look at them objectively and start a process of integrating some of these ideas into the way that you're engaging with this problem so that you can be more aligned with yourself personally, ethically, morally based on your principles, based on your values. So I hope that's been helpful. I hope that you have found this content helpful. Please feel free to reach out to me or set up a consult. I would love to meet with you. I want you to have these tools that you need to eliminate pornography from your life.

And that may start with just changing some of the things that you're doing simply. By looking at it from a new perspective. Alright, my friends, I will talk to you next week.