Porn can damage your mental health. Stop now!

Stress can cause a human being to turn to pornography, and without initially thinking about the long term consequences, people end up becoming addicted. Overwhelmed by stressful thoughts, people do not realise that quick fixes are like burying your head in sand, which will help you to ignore the problem, but that problem will always come back the moment you bring your head back out. At this point, you would be ignoring one problem, while at the same time creating a new one, porn addiction.

Effects of Porn

Over 85 studies have concluded that porn use is linked to poor mental and emotional health. Porn is also linked to reduction in grey matter in the brain. Grey matter contains most of the brain’s neuronal cell bodies, and it allows individuals to control movement, memory and emotions.

Trauma and Porn

Although watching porn on a regular basis can itself lead to mental health issues, trauma can be one cause of people resorting to porn to soothe themselves. According to Bessel van der Kolk who is a clinical psychiatrist and best-selling author of ‘The Body Keeps the Score’, trauma is when your body gets stuck in being frozen, or in heartache and gut-wrenching feelings. Reclaiming your body is a very central issue of overcoming trauma. The core issue is not the traumatic event itself, but it’s the fact that your body got stuck in heartbreak and gut-wrench. He recommends yoga as a very powerful tool to combat trauma. In this video, he relates trauma that many people are feeling today having a link to the COVID-19 pandemic. Be sure to check it out, it is full of wise advice.

Fill your day with activities, and have a schedule. This will prevent you mind from wandering off into bringing  back old stressful thoughts, and having space to utilize porn. 

Porn risks

Porn causes people to develop a secret life, and withdraw from society. Individuals who utilize porn on a regular basis also tend to be insecure in real life activities, as they are always concerned over their own sexual performance and body image. Porn is like a silent killer, which slowly damages self esteem and loss of personal integrity.

Academic Achievement

Porn takes up so much time and energy that it can actually affect grades of students. Many researches performed showed that consumption of porn can lead to poorer grades.

Too much Porn

The brain responds to stimulation, be it chemical from addictive drugs or otherwise. It may be hard to realise that the stimulatory effects of porn on the brain are generally the same as consuming drugs. This means that an individual who consumes porn can feel a hangover and depressive symptoms too. Just like drugs, individuals who are addicted to porn crave it intensely, and over time, under constant exposure the human brain requires more stimulation to get the same desired effect (habituation symptoms).

How to treat Porn addiction

If you have noticed a connection between porn and an unhealthy mind, below are a few tips to help you get rid of this addiction.

  • First of all, remember that you are not alone. You can talk to a therapist and do not be ashamed to talk about porn related issues with your friends.
  • Reboot your brain, which means get rid of all artificial sexual stimuli. This will help your brain dopamine receptors which are desensitized, to restore and get replenished. Dopamine is also released under other conditions which are not porn, and you will start to feel a lot more happiness in doing normal day to day activities.
  • Suddenly stopping may not be very easy, and it requires a lot of strength, but do not give porn more power than it should have. Do not let it control you, no matter how strong the urge is. Distract yourself by going to other people when the urge hits.
  • Hack your habit cycle. Identify cues that trigger your porn, and then substitute them with something else.
  • Tackle the root of the main problem, and do not give way for another problem, in this case, porn.
  • Exercise regularly, and gain full control of yourself
  • Pray regularly

Disconnect yourself from fantasy, and reconnect yourself with reality.

Hamdaan

3 thoughts on “Porn can damage your mental health. Stop now!”

  1. Jayzhinn Kanyasa

    This is biologically helpful to the people who has been in this habit of watching porn. The other effect of watching porn is that it leads to masterburtion and masterburtion has got other side effects to the human body system.

  2. Modern science allows us to understand that the underlying nature of a porn addiction is chemically nearly identical to a heroin addiction

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