Episode 11: What to Look Out For When You Stop Viewing Porn

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 11, What Happens When You Stop Viewing Porn.

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer.

Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast episode this week. Here we are, I love this time of week. We’re here at the end of March and is still so cold outside here in Utah. Man, you guys, I'm just going to put this out there in the world, but I am planning on moving to the beach and living at the beach for at least three to four months of the year. I love Utah, I have a lot of family in Utah.

It's beautiful in the summer, and in the spring, and the fall. And some people love it here in the winter. And I have tried really hard to change my mindset and to love it, but I think it's just going to be easier for me to move to the beach. So this time next year I might be recording my podcast from either Hawaii, or Mexico, or Thailand or something.

I wanted to take a minute and just share a review that I received. First off, I just want to share with you guys, we are at 110 reviews on this podcast. That's amazing. It's amazing. Thank you so much for showing up and leaving your review here. I so appreciate it.

When you leave a review, it really helps me rank and it helps other people find this podcast. And it really helps other people find this information that they need in order to quit porn.

So those of you who are thinking like, “I want to share this content, but I don't really want to share it on my personal page or on my personal Instagram” I get it. I love it when you guys do that. And it's so helpful when you do that. And I know it helps a ton of people when you do that. But if you're not there yet, one of the best things you can do to share all this stuff is to go and leave a review for me on my podcast.

So I wanted to share one that I received that I've just been thinking about. I read it last night and I've been thinking about it all morning, all last night. The title is a godsend. And it says, “I've been through countless resources on this topic. And none of them told me that I didn't need to be ashamed of myself. I'm only four episodes into this podcast, and it's already changed my life.”

Geez, what do I even say about that? I don't even know specifically what I want to say except that first sentence, it really shook me. It said I've been through countless resources, countless resources on this topic and none of them told me that I didn't need to be ashamed of myself. What? This is baffling to me a little bit, to be honest.

And I've researched and I know what's out there. And obviously not everyone is super shame induced that talks about this. But this is why, this first sentence here is why I felt so inspired and felt so called and like I needed to focus my coaching around helping people quit pornography.

This is exactly why, because there was not a message out there that was, “Hey, you don't need to be ashamed of yourself with this. And you can quit and not be ashamed of yourself.” There are people saying that, you can find people who say that, but it's still so taboo that it's not said publicly a lot. And it's not really pushed out there.

And so if you get nothing else from this podcast, what I want you to understand is that you do not need to feel ashamed of yourself for this habit. Shame isn’t required. Shame doesn't help you change. Shame keeps you stuck. Shame keeps you hiding and avoiding. And you can quit and feel worthy, and feel good, and feel proud of yourself even before you've totally quit. And that's actually the best way to quit.

So if you haven't left me a review yet, I would love that. Again, that would be so helpful for me. You can just go do that on Apple Podcasts. Just scroll to the bottom. It's really easy, it just takes a minute.

Let's get into the content for today. Today, what I wanted to talk about was what to look out for when you stop viewing porn. So what happens when you stop viewing porn? Because I kind of want to warn you. I want to warn you a little bit and I want to make sure you're prepared so that when you stop viewing porn and this happens you're not caught off guard. You’re not caught by surprise.

So what happens when you stop being porn? Or when you stop buffering in general? Anytime you quit a buffering habit this is what happens, is you feel terrible. You feel terrible. And the reason why is because anytime you quit a buffer, remember, if you haven't listened to the buffering episodes, that's fine.

A quick recap, a buffer is anything that you do to escape negative emotions. So you're using porn as a way to escape feeling bored, or feeling lonely, or feeling sad, or feeling shame, or whatever emotion is that comes up for you. And so when you stop viewing porn, you're going to feel terrible because all of those feelings are going to surface. You're not going to be pushing them away or avoiding them anymore and they're all just going to come up and bubble up to the top.

So I want you to be careful not to romanticize this, “Okay, I've quit porn. And I'm stopping, and I'm motivated, and I'm committed, and I'm going to feel amazing, and whole.” Or thinking when you do quit that that's how you should feel, you should feel great. That's just not true.

When you stop viewing porn, when you stop looking at it after being in a habit for a while, after using it to avoid negative emotion, it's going to feel awful. This is a great message, isn't it? You are going to feel awful when you quit porn. And stay with me because I want to walk you through and I want to give you some tips and tricks. And just prepare you for this when this happens.

So remember, you feel awful because you start feeling all of the feelings that you've been running away from. So if you use porn as a way to escape doing work, you know that feeling when you have stuff you really don't want to do and you really want to avoid. And it's just like, “Oh, that's just miserable. I hate doing that.” When you stop being porn, you feel all of that, “Oh, I hate this. I don't want to do this.”

If you're using porn as a way to escape loneliness, when you stop viewing porn, you're going to feel really lonely. When you view porn as a way to avoid shame. When you stop viewing porn, you won't be distracted from all of those negative thoughts that you have about yourself and you'll feel a lot of shame.

And, and this is okay. Okay, this isn't a problem. This isn't anything that you can't handle. This is what, in my program we call this the river of misery.
My clients start quitting porn and they feel terrible, we call it we're just in the river of misery. It's like in order to get from where you are to where you want to be, you have to go through this river of misery.

And why it's so miserable is because all of your crap comes up. All of the stuff that you've been telling yourself and all of the negative thoughts that you have about yourself in your life, you see them very clearly instead of avoiding them, right. So maybe like, “I don't have good work ethic. I don't like my relationships. I don't like myself.” All of that comes up and it feels pretty miserable for a while.

It's miserable because the only way out, the only way out of this habit and the only way through the river of misery is that we have to sit with ourselves in all of this stuff that comes up. I really want you to think about this. What would that be like for you to just sit with yourself in all of this?

And what I want to offer to you is that doing this, sitting with yourself and all of this yucky, negative thoughts about yourself and your life, that is one of the most loving things that you could ever do for yourself. Letting all of that come up and seeing all of that stuff that you've been buffering from is one of the most loving things that you could ever do for yourself.

So I want you to think about it this way, right now, in the middle of a buffering habit, in the middle of a porn habit where you're buffering, and escaping, and avoiding all of your negative emotions and all the negative things that are coming up. It's like you're sitting in a dark, dirty, kind of disgusting room.

Okay, there's rats running around everywhere. And there's pizza boxes on the floor, and food crumbs, and piles, and piles of laundry. And in the buffering what you're doing is you're keeping the lights off, and you're staying in bed, and you're just not looking at it and you're pretending like it's not there.

But staying in the bed, keeping the lights off, and just laying there looking at the ceiling, looking at the darkness, that doesn't mean that it's not there. Or you can turn on the lights, and you can see the mess. And you can recognize it, and you can look at it, and you can notice it. And then eventually you can start to clean it up so that you can get out of the room. And so that you can live in a clean space. And so that your life can actually get a lot better.

But remember, just because the lights are off and you're sitting on your bed in the dark, it doesn't mean that it's not messy. And turning on the lights and getting up to see it all, it might be a little bit of a shock. And eventually you'll get yourself up to start cleaning it up. Which is going to be a little bit more effort than laying in the bed. But eventually it's going to be a way better result for you to turn on the lights and look at it than just laying in the dark and creating more of a mess and just ignoring it all.

And so here's the thing, you are not avoiding anything by viewing porn. You're not making anything go away by viewing porn. It's like you're just sitting on that bed in the dark, it's all still there. And it still comes up throughout the day, right? If you're laying on your bed and you get up to walk across the room, you're going to trip on all this stuff. And you might step in something gross. It's all still there and it comes up throughout the day. And it gets worse and more messy. And you have more rats and more cockroaches come in and when you avoid it.

So I want you to be careful if you're thinking, “Well, you know what? I
just need porn for a little bit longer. I just need it for a little bit longer because my life is really hard right now and it really helps me in my life.” It doesn’t. All you're doing is avoiding the stuff. What will help you the most in your life, no matter how busy you are or what's going on, what will help you the most is to take a look around, see what's really going on. Start to pick things up.

Every week in my program, if you're a part of my program, I send out an email. It's like an accountability email, a check-in email. I like to get feedback from you guys, and hear your wins, and hear your insights. And I had a couple of clients messaged me almost the same thing this last week.

What they said to me was, “I'm realizing that this is way less about pornography and way more about how I talk to myself. And yes, I can learn how to manage these urges, and I can learn how to clean. But what I really need to do is change how I talk to myself so that I will actually start cleaning and start doing the work.”

And yeah, this is the thing, you guys. Porn isn't the problem. Porn is a manifestation of a deeper problem of stuff that's going on in your head, stuff that's going on in your belief systems. And what you think about, what you talk to yourself about, and what you like about your life, and what you don't like about your life. And instead of looking at that, and changing it, and working on feeling better, we just avoid it. Which doesn't actually help anything.

And when we stop viewing porn, all that stuff that we've been escaping and running from comes up to the surface. So all those negative thoughts about your spouse. You have to really own those, and you have to accept those and you have to see those. And then you get to choose to do something about them instead of just trying to escape it and avoid it and not think about it.

So yes, all of that icky stuff comes up. When you stop viewing porn, you feel terrible. But this is human life and this is exactly how human life is supposed to go. And it's not a bad thing. We get to go through this icky, hard, bad stuff in order to get something better.

It is a blessing to be able to do this. It really, really is because the opposite, the only other option here, instead of going through the river of misery, the only other option is to stay in the pond of misery. You can either go through the river of misery or stay in the pond of misery, right? The pond of misery is a little bit more calm. It doesn't feel as rushed and as intense. But there's no way out of the pond of misery.

At least in the river of misery there's a way out. There's an end, there's another side. So that's a question you get to ask yourself, “Do I want to sit here in this pond of misery? Or am I ready to go through the river of misery and address all of that stuff that comes up in order to get to the other side? In order to get to a life where pornography isn't even a temptation anymore.”

Do you know that’s possible? It's 100% possible for you, you just got to go through this fire, or through this river. And why this is so loving. This is so loving for yourself because it's an opportunity for you to sit with that yucky, human part with all the negative stuff that comes up. And it's an opportunity for you to love that yucky human part of yourself.

Because a lot of people avoid this and avoid going through this river of misery because what they do is they take that and they turn it into another reason to hate themselves. Or to think really negatively about themselves. They see all this stuff bubbling up and then they hate themselves for all that stuff bubbling up.

Imagine being in that messy room. What if you turn on the lights and you said, “Look at this disgusting mess, you pig. How could you have let it get this way? What's wrong with you? Why are you like this?” Of course you would want to just lay in bed and avoid it if that's what you say to yourself when you do turn on the lights.

So it's the same with you when you stop viewing porn and all that stuff bubbles up. Instead of, “Oh, what's wrong with you for thinking about your relationship that way?” Or “Why can't you just get it together with your work? Why are you so unmotivated? Why are you so lazy? Why did it take you so long to ever look at this stuff?” That's a terrible way to talk to ourselves.

But many of us, we just naturally talk to ourselves that way because we haven't been aware of it. And we haven't consciously decided how we want to talk to ourselves. So here's the thing, if you're going to go through this river of misery, if you're going to come join my program and you're going to let me take you through it, I want you to use it as an opportunity to practice radical unconditional love for yourself.

Okay, you guys, recap. The recap is you will not feel better when you quit porn. You will feel worse, at least until you get to the other side of the river of misery. But that's what is required in order to get to the other side. In order to get to a life without porn you have to go through the river of misery. The only option here, the only other option is the pond of misery.

And lastly, when you're going through this river of misery, the most important thing is to use it as an opportunity to love yourself unconditionally and radically. To love yourself even with all of that negative, yucky stuff. All those negative thoughts that you start having about yourself, to love yourself even there.

All right guys, this is what we do in my program. I help you clean up all of that stuff that comes up when you do quit porn. Help you get to the root of it and change the root of it so that you never go back to it. If you're interested you can come join, just come to my website sarabrewer.com/work with me. We'll talk to you next week. Have a great week everyone. Bye bye.

If you’re ready to apply what you’re hearing in this podcast and finally overcome pornography for good, I’d love to be your coach. I’ve created a virtual program with the intent to give you everything that you need to quit. Once you join, you have lifetime access to the content and lifetime access to individual support through coaching calls and coaching boards. For more information check out sarabrewer.com/workwithme.