3 Tips To Break Porn Addiction That Don't Involve Praying
I wrote about Why Men Need To Stop Watching Porn in the past. The data itself is convincing enough. If you need more information as to why pornography is the absolute worst thing you could do for your family and your role as husband and father take a look here.
That being said, I’ve rarely gotten push back from men about the need to end their porn use. What I have gotten push back with is whether or not freedom from porn use exists. I know many men who feel plagued by their lust and desire for porn. One of the recurring themes that come up are the reality of ever being totally free.
The men I talk to are men who pray daily, go to frequent confession, and fast from food regularly. Yet, they are filled with such shame because the devil is convincing them that their vice is a special kind of vice that God will not heal.
For many of us, in the heat of battle against lust and temptation, what causes us to give in is not the temptation itself, but our exhaustion from fighting for so long without any end in sight.
Many of us go to confession, longing to hear a message of hope and freedom and many times instead we are given the same advice - prayer, fasting, frequent confession. And if we fall again - more prayer, more fasting, more frequent confession. It is disheartening to hear that you need to pray more when you feel as though that’s all you’ve been doing, and fell anyway. If that is the formula to success, and we are still struggling - we begin to wonder - maybe we’re the problem.
If you’ve ever been tempted to accept the idea that your yo-yo fight with porn will last the rest of your life, keep reading. Here is the message of hope you’ve been looking for. Freedom from lust and pornography is possible.
Keep praying, keep fasting, keep going to confession. But let’s add some more strategies to your battle. Sometimes we need to change more than just our prayer lives for God to work in our healing that bring about freedom.
1) Start Saying “No” To Creature Comforts
Fighting the temptation to watch porn isn’t fought only in the moment the temptation comes. That battle is completely unwinnable if you are used to giving in to all other types of bodily desires and comforts on a daily basis.
If you’re used to sleeping in, eating whatever you want whenever you want, spending hours on your phone, and playing video games as your way to escaping responsibility - when the moment to say “no” to porn comes you won’t do it. Because you can’t do it.
If you’ve trained yourself to say “yes'“ to every other bodily comfort throughout your day, it’s unreasonable to think you can say no to one of the strongest biological urges you’ll ever experience. If you’ve trained yourself for comfort, you shouldn’t expect sudden heroism.
You must train up your will to be able to meet the temptation in the moment.
Here’s a game plan to prepare for the moment of temptation:
Set an alarm and wake up earlier than is comfortable
Don’t eat that second dessert
Exercise - especially when if you don’t feel like it
Set a time limit for phone usage
Set limits for playing videos games
Do your homework on time
Go to bed at a reasonable hour
These can all seem like trivial non-spiritual practices, but each one of these require you to set your comfort aside. If you train yourself to the point that you can say “no” to the temptation to roll over when you hear your alarm, you will be better equipped to say “no” when lust and the desire for porn arises.
2) Understand Your Psychology
Though winning the battle of the moment is an absolute victory, that is not the end goal. The end goal is freedom from porn and lust. We don’t want to spend the rest of our lives moving from battle to battle.
We need to think of lust and porn use as the bad fruits in our lives. And in order to stop bad fruit from growing we need to uproot the entire tree, not just pick off the fruit as it comes. It’s easy to get so focus on the bad fruit of our lives that our striving for holiness becomes behavior management. But that is not holiness and that is not freedom.
If we trained up our wills, but don’t understand our psychology, we will spend the rest of our lives picking the bad fruit, but never chopping down the tree (shout out to Dr. Bob Schuchts for this analogy)
Porn and lust have as much of a psychological component as they do a spiritual one. When the devil tempts you to lust and porn, his footholds are in your psychology. Understanding your psychology can aid you in identifying what is at the root of your lust and desire for porn. When you know the root, you can pull out the tree and stop the bad fruit from growing.
There is a reason why temptation towards porn comes in tandem with loneliness, anxiety, boredom, and shame.
Ask yourself:
What triggers led up to the moment of temptation?
What emotional desire does porn satisfy?
What other emotions are you experiencing when tempted?
What is at the root of those emotions?
Understanding the “why” behind lust and porn use will help you see that your porn use isn’t because you are too weak. Lust and porn are a symptom of something much deeper that God desires to heal. A with that healing will come the freedom you long for.
3) Be More Vulnerable
Stocism and self-reliance are typically held up as masculine ideals, but that’s all nonsense. As much as grassroots movement, even those in masculine Christian circles, pride themselves on the attempted reclaiming of masculinity, very few actually put enough emphasis on the need for men to emote and establish authentic relationships.
It’s as though we believe that our emotions and need for brothers to journey with makes us less manly.
The only exception to this seems to be on the field, pitch, or court. When it comes to athletic competition, men pour their hearts into the team and loving look to those alongside them as their brothers.
There is no stoic at the end of a championship game.
There is no self-reliance on a championship team.
This is one of the lessons that sports teach every generation - unfortunately it doesn’t permeate into other aspects of our lives.
If you are in the middle of a battle and struggle with porn - but are determined to handle it alone, you aren’t entering an arena to fight, you’re entering a Colosseum to be slaughtered. You can’t win alone. You aren’t meant to. That’s because lust and porn carry with them the lie that we are not good enough and inherently unlovable. At the core of our lust, on some level, is the belief that we unworthy of love and belonging.
If we’re Catholic men, surrounded by other men we look up to, we are deathly afraid of revealing our struggle because we fear being disqualified. The devil wants us to believe that we carry with us this inner leprosy and that if others knew, they would turn their backs.
This is shame.
We feel ashamed for struggling with lust and porn, we wish we had more virtue, and we fear that others will ever find out. And instead of running to our brothers and letting them know that you need prayers and support, we carry the burden alone.
In order to beat lust and porn we need a team of brothers alongside us that we’re willing to be vulnerable with.
The devil loves to work in darkness. When you bring your struggles to light by confiding in brothers, he is weakened and God can begin to do His work in your life and in theirs.
Don’t Forget To Keep Praying
At the end of the day God’s grace alone will bring healing and freedom. This is primarily reached through prayer and union with Him in the Sacraments.
But sometimes, God chooses to also work through other means. God can be found in everything we do.
God is working in you as you work to train your will. God is there as you search your heart for what is at the root of the lust and porn in your life. Sometimes, God even reveals to you the things that are at the root of your sin. God will also work through your fellow brothers in Christ as they show you that you are worthy of love, even if you haven’t reached the spiritual perfection you desire.
Continue to journey to freedom. Don’t shy away from the practical, physical, and psychological work necessary to beat lust and porn. Never quit.
Verso L’alto - Renzo