Pitfalls from the Past are Still Dangerous

Great question. I'm not exactly a poster child of recovery, but I think without doing this deep work real recovery and freedom from this addiction is simply impossible. This doesn't remove lust as a motive. It's not an either-or, it's a both-and. And, sure, one can probably overdo the "deep work" stuff. Maybe.

I don't know what threads you have been reading, but why would any of them encourage you to re-imagine previously watched porn? Looking into your past doesn't mean reliving your porn addiction. It means asking questions about why you were led into a porn addiction in the first place. What is your past? What is your story? What were your parents like? What was your childhood like? These questions sound stupid. I would have written them off myself and have for a long time. It wasn't until some tiny cracks opened that became gaping fissures and the whole thing opened wide for me.

I've shared this before, but for me, there were two cracks. I'll just describe one of them, though both of them are important. One is that I realized I couldn't remember my childhood and, when I made some random Internet search on the topic, all the articles said "if you can't remember some period of your life, it may be due to trauma you experienced." The undeniable fact staring me in the face is I can't remember my childhood. I've always thought this was because I just had a bad memory, or maybe some people can just remember their childhoods better than others, or whatever. I wrote it off. But when I learned that trauma may be a cause, that's when I became curious and really dug into it. Turns out, though memories are fuzzy, I was bullied in the public school for 8 straight years. That's a huge element to my story. Eight of some of the most formative years of my childhood I spent in fear of being beat up about 8 hours every weekday. What does that do to a kid? How does that shape his personality? His dreams? His desires? What does that trauma do to someone's subconscious identity?

Porn addiction is a symptom in my case. It's not the main thing. I'm not minimizing its seriousness. Is it sin? Absolutely, and I'm responsible for doing it. But porn is a symptom. Let me explain. My childhood bullies taught me an important lesson. I am worthless. I have no value. I have no power. I never realized it before, I thought maybe it was some sort of acceptable humility, but for my entire life I have deferred to others, I've never thought myself deserving of anything good (I'm not talking in a theological sense), and I've felt like I deserve bad things to happen to me. When I walk up to a circle of men, I feel inferior. I feel like I should not be accepted, that I should be rejected. These are subconscious thoughts. I've never thought in my head, "I am worthless." I've never thought in my head, "These guys around me are better than me." But I have acted that way my whole life. I let people take advantage of me. I over-commit to please others. This spins itself out in so many ways I've not even plumbed the depths of it.

One way it spins itself out is it created a porn addiction. Since I am worthless (shame), why not use porn? I'm already (subconsciously) convinced I'm garbage. Since I have no power, why not use porn to simulate the fantasy of having power? The bullies all had the hot girlfriends--I never had a girlfriend, I was denied the opportunity--in porn I get the hot girl. This dynamic has been unconscious my whole life. One element of defeating porn for me is to say, "I have value. I have power. I am worthy of good things. Other men are not superior to me. We are equal before God. Jesus has paid for my sin and given me value." And so on. Just saying, "I'm just full of lust and I need to stop looking at porn," it's all just white-knuckling if one has not come to terms with why the addiction came about in the first place. It is lust, but the lust has a why and a shape for a reason.

I'd highly recommend you listen to this podcast: https://adamyoungcounseling.com/podcast/ Start at episode 1 and work through them. There is not a person on this forum who couldn't benefit from listening to this podcast, although it comes from a self-consciously Christian perspective. Also, Jay Stringer's book Unwanted is good along the same lines.

 

I understand what you mean by looking into the past and risking being tempted by calling to mind all of the things that lead you to sin and why they are appealing to you.
I think it's a matter of making sure that analysis stays just that-- analysis. Asking questions. It shouldn't be a slideshow of all the "good times" and things you're attracted to without any additional breakdown.
We are supposed to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. In order to take something captive, we do have to get a grip on it in some sense. It can't just flutter around in our head while we wait until it leaves or try to shoo it away. There's a proactive element to it and I think that's what some people in this group are intending to do when they talk about past childhood experiences and temptations. Especially when some things that we are attracted to are not out of the blue but are responses to events from our childhoods.
To better avoid temptation, you have to study the playbook of the enemy forces. And the playbook is often found in the past events that led you to make that first ever decision to deliberately seek out porn. If you can address the root instead of "white knuckling" it like Wilderness Wanderer mentioned, then you can fight off temptations with more direct and specific rebuttals. It's not just "I am a child of God, I will not grieve the Holy Spirit, etc..." (although those are good reasons), but it is also additionally, "I don't have to turn to porn to be fulfilled in X, Y, or Z because God did this and that, etc." God doesn't want us to engage in PMO just because he said so. It's because it is harmful! And it is easier to see how it is harmful when we ask ourselves what harm we are attempting to heal when we turn to PMO. We must understand why it is a salty band-aid on a bullet wound and not the harmless stress reliever that the flesh thinks it is. And those answers are going to vary based on individual backstories.

I'll go into my own experiences with this but you can skip reading it if you believe it's not good for you to do so:
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I've dealt with being bullied, rejected, and ignored as a kid during a developmental part of my childhood and looking back into those experiences has helped me connect the dots on why I have certain fantasies or temptations. I have found that I've consistently used PMO as a substitute for the intimacy and satisfaction that I feared no one would ever want to give me. I know that I chase fantasies of being "irresistible" to one or more parties for this reason as well. It is a shameful thing to come to terms with, but also very freeing once I did. Knowing where my desires come from helps me pray better for God to fill those gaps and show me how I can turn to glorifying Him in the midst of loneliness and heartache instead of turning to the flesh.
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Of course, there has to be a balance. If someone is relishing in their fantasies under the guise of just "examining" it then they are being dishonest and that's wrong. Intention is the key here.
Perhaps it's unwise to try and analyze something while it's tempting you? Fight against it in the moment and wait to examine it once your head is clear.

 

@CPilot, thanks for your response. Much of what you say is spot on, but I see a couple of avenues to answer that may help. I quote very specific portions of your post:

I will have to explain the second small crack that opened up for as a fissure that I could no longer ignore. I had great parents. They provided for me--or so I thought--in every way. They were unaware of the bullying (I think?), so I couldn't fault them for what my bullies did. They kept school and my education a priority. They paid my entire way through college. They paid for a couple of expensive extracurricular activities. They let me "go my own way" in terms of college degree and career. Even in my adult years, they continue to provide for me (monetarily) as they only had one child. Are my parents perfect? No parents are perfect. But with my parents, I have no cause to complain. My parents are probably better than most!

This is what I thought until I read a book about emotionally immature parents. My goodness, I cannot describe to you how "set on edge" I was as I read this book and it unfolded to me the deficiencies in my parents. I still love my parents, I can still appreciate all the ways they provided for me, but we also need to be real about the deficiencies and weaknesses of our parents, and that's what this book--for the first time in my life--allowed me to see. And after it was clear to me, there is no way to un-see it.

I am no expert on it, but I have been learning that there are different kinds of trauma. You speak of some having "very sad, horrible, hurtful and abusive childhoods." I don't think that's the right way to see it. The fact is, some of the worst trauma is subtle and therefore practically invisible. I say it's the worst because, hey, if you are a soldier in war and experience trauma in war, that's pretty bad, but at least it makes sense. My counselor distinguishes between Type A trauma and Type B trauma. Type A trauma is the war trauma, the sexually-abused-by-my-cousin-as-a-child trauma, and my being bullied by kids in school trauma, and your being teased in school, too. Type B trauma is the subtle trauma that I'll try to explain here shortly. Now I'm not talking about finding trauma under every bush, as though it's everywhere. But the fact is there is trauma that is subtle, difficult to spot, and you can life your whole life not knowing it's there. I can say that with experience because that was me, and I was shocked when I learned about it.

Honestly it will be difficult to summarize, because I've read several books and listened to 10s of podcast episodes on the topic. But here goes: As a baby, your brain is incapable of emotionally regulating itself. When sad, baby cries. Mom must come to comfort the baby because the baby's brain hasn't developed the pathways to be able to come from a place of emotional disregulation (sadness, crying, etc.) to a place of being emotionally regulated (content, happy). The first 2 years of a child's life is most important in this respect, and usually the relationship with mother is primary. Here's the crazy thing: by using our eyes and looking in each others' faces, our brains are capable of "syncing up" to become a single circuit with feedback passing through both brains. An emotionally mature mother, one who is capable of soothing her own emotions, actually has developed brain pathways between her thinking part of the brain and her emotional part of the brain. But those pathways aren't there when you're born. As mother comforts and soothes baby thousands of times in those early years, and beyond, the child begins to develop those pathways himself in his own brain. The skill of learning to regulate your emotions is a skill you develop only by interacting with someone else regularly who is emotionally mature. This is the brain science. Brain scans actually show this difference in the brain. It's crazy.

My mother is emotionally immature. She always was and still is. I just kind of assumed she had a tendency to be rude on occasion, and lacking in understanding. That wasn't it. It's that she's actually emotionally immature. And I would say exceptionally emotionally immature, like, strikingly so. She can't manage her own emotions. She is unable to read emotions in other people. When she detects something of an uncomfortable emotion in herself or someone else, she loses control, she can't handle it, she tries to pretend it isn't so, explain it away, and get away.

What does this do to a child? It means that when I was in an emotionally disregulated state (sad, anxious, depressed, angry, anything)--through my entire childhood and into adulthood--my mother was unavailable to me and unable to help me. If I went to my mother because I was sad, she would be unable to help. She would explain the reason for my sadness away. "It's okay, don't let that bother you. Look, here's a piece of candy." Instead of learning to handle my emotions, instead of developing those brain pathways, I learned that I couldn't go to my mother. So I developed what is called avoidant attachment (see here for attachment theories, at the bottom of the page there are links to two specific kinds). When I experience an uncomfortable emotion, I don't know how to handle it, so I go off by myself, isolate myself, and try to figure it out--which could, literally, take days, even weeks. Do you think this has an effect on someone's marriage? You better believe it! And it all stems from Type B trauma of my mother not being there for me. Yes, in a very important way, my mother was not there for me. When I was emotionally distraught, she shoved me away. Not intentionally--I don't believe for a second that she understood what she was doing--and in this sense "it wasn't her fault." I don't blame her, I don't hold this against her, etc. But I do want to be fully aware of what happened as a result of her emotional immaturity. She was not a perfect mother, and her emotional immaturity had a very significant, negative effect on me. There are specific dynamics to it, to my mother and me and our relationship, but I'll skip getting into those here.

What's the upshot of all this? I was emotionally immature myself! Also--and this is significant for the story of porn addiction in my life--I had never learned to have a deep, emotionally healthy connection with anyone in my life. If you can't learn that from your mother, chances are you aren't going to learn it. Ah, so combine the emotional immaturity of my mother and myself with the being bullied. Being bullied meant I could never have a girlfriend, but others did. What I'm about to say is not true, but in the mind of myself as a child developing under these circumstances, this is what I came to believe: If I can get myself a hot girl, I will finally be able to achieve an amazing relationship with real connection. Basically, the hole created by the emotionally shallow/void relationship with my mother was filled with the idea of having an attractive girlfriend/wife. (I don't want to give the impression that my mother wasn't around--she was always there for me, but she was never able to emotionally connect with me.) Being emotionally immature myself, I didn't realize what the problem really was, and so I developed the wrong solution in my own head/imagination. But when I came across porn in college--mind you, one year after moving out of my parents' home--the "emotional connection" piece was inappropriately met with porn, with hot women looking straight in my eyes in a way no one ever had before. Porn became my plastic substitute for a healthy and deep emotional connection with another human being, the sort of connection my mother never provided for me. Eventually, I learned to regulate my emotions (or at least try to) with porn. Any time I experienced an uncomfortable emotion in college (stressed because I'm behind on writing a paper?) I went to porn to regulate my emotions and feel better.

There's a lot more to all of this, but I hope the above acts as a serviceable summary. Personally, I think most adults in the world are emotionally immature. Which means most children have experienced Type B trauma. The dynamic will be different from mine. Emotional immaturity manifests itself in different and unique ways.

When you look back at yourself as a child, I have a suggestion for you. Is it really right to judge your childhood-self as "prideful" and that you deserved the taunting and bullying? I would encourage you to be curious here and seek to be understanding of your younger self, to love and understand your younger self. I do not mean by this to suggest we aren't sinners as children. Of course we are. But is anyone ever really justified in teasing a child? Why weren't your parents there to stop it? What about another authority figure, like a teacher? Do you know that most children who suffer sexual abuse blame themselves for the abuse? "I dressed too revealingly. I was flirty back then." Someone who sexually abuses a child is at fault, no matter what the child did. Someone who teases another child is at fault, no matter what that child did. I have come to realize that I may have been bullied because I was so emotionally immature in school (this is a theory, not a fact)--but even if this is true, does it justify the bullying? No.

So let me suggest that instead of dismissing the teasing and bullying with a "well, I was prideful so I kind of deserved it"--instead, realize "hey, I was teased and bullied and that wasn't right. Maybe I contributed to it with some of my behavior, fine. But how did that bullying affect me? What did it do to me?" I noted in an earlier post on this thread how my own bullying affected me. I subconsciously learned from the bullies that I'm worthless. I only uncovered this idea of worthlessness, and all the ways this has been affecting my life for decades, just in the last 6 or so months. And I'm in my mid-40s. Approach your childhood with curiosity and a gentle goal of understanding yourself as a child, rather than judging yourself and dismissing your childhood's significance.

Incidentally, I should note: Much of what I'm saying has been abundantly confirmed by my professionally trained counselor. I'm not making this stuff up. My counselor is showing me the way in all of this.

 

Thank you, @Faithe , for giving a small window into your own story. I hadn't give much thought to how the porn dynamic would be different for a woman, but I can see how that could come to develop. Interestingly, it sounds like your childhood has a number of touch points with my own.

Your idea of "every thought captive" is helpful, especially applied to this sort of work. It helps me to think of it like this: Imagine if you broke your arm. It would be in pain. It would be appropriate to pray that the break wasn't serious and to ask the Lord to relieve the pain and heal it. But are you going to stop there? Probably you will go to urgent care, get some x-rays done, and be put in a cast or whatever. You aren't going to just walk around with a broken arm and pray every time it hurts and assume that's that.

At least in some ways, a porn addiction is like a broken arm. The spiritual dynamic is certainly greater when it comes to porn (lust, etc.) than having a broken arm--having a broken are isn't exactly a sinful condition. But as Christians, at least in my circles, we have treated things like porn addiction entirely and exclusively from the spiritual side. "Pray about it. Stop lusting." It is lust and it is sin and we certainly ought to stop and we certainly ought to pray about it. But what percentage of getting free from a porn addiction is spiritual vs what percentage is physical and emotional? That's an uncomfortable question but one that needs to be asked. Another uncomfortable thing is that unbelievers break free of porn addictions (which is not, of course, the same as becoming sinless). Unbelievers break free of alcoholism, too. All I'm saying is that we do ourselves a disservice in truncating our lives to only the spiritual aspects of porn addiction, and I wonder if this is why so few people break free of it.

How can it help to ignore the full-orbed dynamic in someone's life that leads to the development of this addiction? A porn addiction is very much a physical, neurological, brain-based, emotionally-enmeshed addiction. If we're going to "take every thought captive" as Christians, then it means taking the true statement that "every truth is God's truth" and wrestling with this element of our porn addiction. To pretend that merely praying and merely trying to stop lusting is going to work is tantamount to telling a child in pain with a broken arm to stop crying and pray about it.

 

Thank you. Yes, it's different for women and it can make it more difficult to find support for such a thing since there's a weird stigma where women are expected to be objects or victims of porn but not consumers themselves. The dynamics that men deal with are different than women so there's usually some stories on here that I can't relate to as well. (But it does seem like most people I've read from on here, men and women alike, trace it back to childhood which is interesting and strange). But I'm glad I've seen a few other women on this site and know that I'm not alone with my particular experiences. I need to start getting more involved in that circle, though its much smaller, so that I can relate more as I continue on my journey.

Anyway, with that being said, I think you make a good point about treating PMO addiction with a focus on the physical makeup of the brain as well. In 1 Timothy 23, Paul tells Timothy, "Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses". It's clear that the Bible still wants us to have "practical" solutions for injuries and problems. Prayer isn't fairy dust that we sprinkle on to make everything better (although it does connect us with God). We still have to live life as it exists in this fallen world.

Funnily enough, "take every thought captive" can be spiritual but also physical/emotional. Thoughts are in our brain. And the brain can be affected by therapy, medication, experiences, and our own thoughts. Porn addiction leaves literal imprints in the brain with how it affects our experiences. Though prayer is important (even the most important), it is not our only tool. Self-analysis, therapy, and other non-spiritual actions are valid options as long as you use them wisely and with purpose.

 

Jesus wants the little children to come to him. We cannot enter the kingdom of God unless we are like little children. There is an innocence to children even though they sin. God acknowledges this innocence and he depicts it in a positive light.
I wouldn't blame your child-self too much for where you are now. Are you more responsible for what you do now as an adult? Yes, absolutely. But you were a victim first, an innocent kid who didn't fully grasp what was happening or how to respond best. Children naturally have knee-jerk reactions and make bad decisions. Yet the Lord wants us to emulate them anyway, because of their innocence.

Your experiences as a child may have led to porn addiction. But there was a decision you made when you were old enough to know better, no longer a child, that put it into full swing. Take responsibility but have sympathy and pity on that child that came before. He didn't know who he would become or what he would do when he was older. He did not intend to create the problems you wrestle with today.

 

We all have to find our own ways to healing and recovery.

 

I think so, yes. I think it's unwise to relish in temptations under the guise of "analysis" and it's also unwise to navel-gaze and just make yourself miserable by thinking about how awful your temptations and past are.

Romans 7:16-18 says, "And if I do what I do not want to do, I admit that the law is good. In that case, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh; for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out."

We are no longer mere sinful creatures giving into every instinct but a new creation wrestling with the old flesh still tethered to us. We will not part ways with this flesh until we either go to be with Jesus or he returns, whichever comes first.
We are walking battlefields.

Analysis, depending on how it is done, has shown to be very helpful and edifying for some here. But if going down a certain path with analysis causes you to stumble, then you should not feel pressured to do it or feel uncertain about using it in your journey.

I think a good couple of questions to ask would be,

1) Does the concept of deep self-analysis concern me because it causes me to stumble, or because something else in me resists it?

2) If deep self-analysis causes me to stumble, then how can I pray to God to reveal to me the motives of my flesh and reasons behind my temptations without necessarily engaging in a thought process that causes me to spiral (essentially a prayer for clarity and wisdom)?

Whether you choose to pray to God to reveal these things to you as needed, or pray to God and then try a little analysis (prayer should always be part of the picture regardless), I think it's important for you to understand the deeper-seated needs behind your struggles.

You mentioned selfishness a lot. I will suggest that we do not engage in selfish behavior for its own sake. The selfish thief steals bread because he wants to eat better-quality food than he has at his disposal. The selfish gambler cheats because he wants to be known as a wealthy man in town. The selfish alcoholic abandons his family to go to the bar because he wants to block out the world. Not even Adam and Eve sinned just for the pleasure of it. It was doubt that led them there.
Do people get addicted to PMO because of the dopamine hit? Yes. But that's probably not the only reason (and if it is, then that's fine and that's your own valid experience). There's probably a hole that the flesh is trying to fill. It is easier to more effectively let Jesus fill that hole if we can identify that hole in the first place. Of course, God already knows what we need. It's more for our own peace of mind than anything else. So that we know what to pray for. Nevertheless, the Spirit intercedes. You should do what you believe to be effective and cathartic for you.

In my experience, I have found it helpful for my own thought process to not only pray to God to help me heal from PMO and all the physical chemical addiction stuff in my brain and the spiritual aspects, but to also heal from the loneliness and mismanaged boredom/depression that often leads me to engage in PMO in the first place.

 

I think you make valid points and I understand where you're coming from. As with every recovery strategy, I think is one of those things that boil down to personal preference based on personality and past experiences. It's not objectively bad or good, but how good/bad it is for each of us really varies. I think it's okay to disagree or to find a particular method unhelpful. As long as God is put first, I trust that he can help each and every one of us on this journey through any method he chooses or allows for us to use. The Bible is full of people who grew in faith in a variety of unconventional ways.

I think this was a good discussion and I'm glad I could learn from your insight. I'm also glad that you found it to be beneficial. It's important to support each other even if we view things differently and in this case I am happy to support you and fellow siblings in Christ whether we engage in the "self-analysis" strategy to varying degrees or not. And of course it is possible for views or methods to change over time; I know that I have adjusted a lot over the years and this year has been the most success I've had yet (an entire month streak at one point... the progress that is currently groundbreaking for me may be considered unimpressive to someone who is way ahead of me, but I suppose everyone has to start somewhere). Thank you for your open mind and points you made!
God bless.