Ok, so I’m going out on a limb here… addressing something that most people just want to pretend isn’t there.

That’s not my nature.

If you can’t look at something, you can never fix it, so brace yourselves!

As my practice turns more and more towards middle-aged men, I have had my eyes opened to a real and very deeply buried source of pain and conflict for many men.

It is usually after 2 or 3 sessions that the truth comes out. Once my clients realise that they are safe and there really is no judgement here (I’ve heard it ALL – honestly!), they begin to get real… with themselves as well as me.

After a second session with a client – let’s call him Jake – I got this furtive text:

“I really need to talk to you about something that’s come up since our last session but it’s very embarrassing.”

“No embarrassment here,” I replied. “We are all doing the best we can with the resources we have. There is no judgment.”

Jake is a tougher case than most. Absolutely crippled by anxiety for decades now – and about to turn 50 – I suggested the full package of 3 sessions to him. I call it ‘belt and braces’!

True to form, the second session peeled off a layer that was hiding the real problem.

With some of the tougher cases, we do homework! Aaaaaaaaaaargh!!

If you’ve read my previous posts about thoughts, you’ll understand the importance of knowing what you’re thinking.

Most of us run around oblivious to the driving force of our own thoughts. We are bombarded by random, often destructive and negative thoughts (most of which we believe are true) that drive our behaviours, feelings and experience of the world.

Unless we notice them, we remain a prisoner to them. Part of Jake’s anxiety was his obsessive thinking (we call it ‘thought loops’ or ‘rumination’).

Between sessions, his homework – bit by bit – was to notice the thoughts, log them and count them.

A week after our 2nd session – and after a week of logging his thoughts — he had noticed the following:

“Ever since our session, I have realised that I am addicted to porn. I am constantly thinking about sex, fantasising, looking at porn. I feel so guilty and ashamed and I realise this is really a trap I am caught in. I think this should be the focus of our 3rd session.”

Anyone who’s followed me for a while knows my favourite saying:

“It’s NEVER what you think”.

Porn addiction doesn’t just come from the obvious. It usually comes from deeply traumatic, upsetting, shameful events from our childhood… the ones we want to avoid thinking about and ever feeling again.

Once an event like this happens and those feelings are stuck in our bodies as ‘trauma’, anything can re-trigger those painful feelings.

And we will do anything to avoid those feelings.

Like ALL addictions, the behaviour – regardless of what it is: gambling, food, alcohol, drugs, sugar, gaming, social media, cigarettes – is always driven by the desire to avoid feeling bad. We will use any behaviour that makes us feel good (for that moment).

There’s loads of information online about the neurology of addiction – dopamine responses, etc, so I won’t go into it here.

Suffice to say, we get a lovely feeling from that behaviour and once our brain logs it as a welcome respite, the behaviour goes into autopilot and becomes a habit. Our favourite ‘go-to’ if you like.

And so it is with porn.

For Jake it went back to some difficult childhood moments… things that he had long forgotten and things that many of us will have gone through too.

Feelings of wanting to fit in; not being able to get out of doing something you don’t want to do because of peer pressure; feeling trapped in a familial situation and/or having no control over events around you… It really can be anything.

The feelings of guilt and shame from these experiences carried on through his life until one day he found porn and for that moment, he felt great. From that moment on, it became his feel-good ‘drug’ of choice.

In doing further research on the topic, porn is apparently a huge big deal and there are loads of organisations and self-help information online to help men with this problem.

The quickest way though, in my humble opinion, is to get to the root cause and heal it so that the emotional driver is no longer there. Once that’s gone, the behaviour then becomes a CHOICE, not a habit; not an addiction.

Once there’s choice, there’s freedom. And a sense of empowerment and control. Who doesn’t want that!

For more information, call for a quick, totally confidential, chat. No pressure, sales pitch or obligation.