You don’t have to feel ashamed and hopeless about pornography and masturbation. Porn therapy in Queens can help you find the strength to quit.
Being human, you have sexual longings and desires. Sexual feelings are part of human physiology, and everyone has them. When you act on your sexual desires by using pornography and masturbation, if your morality tells you that you shouldn’t be doing that, then you will feel shame. Our physiology and our morality are two distinct things, and just because you have sexual longings and urges, it does not mean that there is something wrong with you or that you are a terrible person. It just means that there will be tension between your morality and your physiology, and if you act upon your impulses, the result will be that you feel shame.
Shame means that you feel bad about yourself and leave you feeling like there is something wrong with you. As Brene Brown says, shame causes us to hide and avoid.
Identifying The Toxic Shame Cycle in Porn Therapy in Queens
The reason shame is so toxic is that it creates a vicious cycle for the person struggling with pornography and masturbation.
How the Shame Cycle Creates a Toxic Environment
A person will have an impulse to use porn or to masturbate. That impulse often feels like it comes out of the blue, but this is a mistake. The impulse to use P&M is always the result of some negative thought or feeling. These can include feeling hungry, bored, angry, and ashamed. The thought can be triggered by location, events, or people. We can be reminded of a euphoric memory that creates a longing to feel whatever that was once again. Once the impulse to use pornography or masturbation enters into us, and we act upon it, if it runs counter to our morality, then the result is to feel bad about it, which creates more shame. The shame causes us to hide and avoid leaving us vulnerable to using more P&M, which only repeats the cycle.
Our brains quickly become conditioned to repeat this negative cycle of using porn, masturbating, feeling shame, hiding, and avoid, use porn again. The reason we become conditioned in this way is that when we use porn and masturbate, the pleasure neurotransmitter Dopamine is released into the brain and into the body, which acts like a drug and feels really good. The more you use pornography and masturbation, the more you condition your brain to expect a Dopamine hit which only pushes you to want pornography and masturbation more and more. Once this negative cycle has been firmly conditioned, it takes learning new tools and skills to decondition from this habitual cycle. These tools and skills can be taught by a skilled therapist who has experience in helping people overcome pornography and masturbation.
Using Mindfulness Techniques to Help Quitting Porn in New York
Therapy can help you decondition your brain from needing and expecting the Dopamine hit you get when you use porn and masturbate. Overcoming pornography and masturbation is not easy, but it is simple. It is essential to learn a new way to think about your porn habit and masturbation. A powerful technique to help overcome P&M is mindfulness.
Mindfulness requires a person to first acknowledge when the urge to use porn and masturbation arises. As opposed to willpower requires a person to push the feelings and urges to use porn away, Mindfulness asks that a person simply notice that he or she has the urge to use porn and sit with the urge. This allows the urge to make its way through the body until it passes.
How do you do this? Stop, Drop, and Breathe.
1. Stop and notice that you are having an urge.
2. Drop your focus down into your body and notice where you feel the tension in your body to use pornography.
3. Now breathe into the tension and allow it to be until it passes. A typical urge takes roughly 90 seconds to run its course.
Once you are able to allow the urge to pass through you, the brain learns that when it feels the urge to use porn, it does not always get a reward. This helps the brain decondition itself from porn and masturbation. Another way to recondition your brain from using pornography and masturbation when an urge arises is by telling yourself something new. You may tell yourself that you want it but that you just can’t have it. But this statement is false because you CAN have it if you want it. Nobody is stopping you from having it. It is available and accessible if you want it.
Accessing ‘The Real You’: Identifying True Personal Wants & Needs in Porn Therapy in New York
It is more reasonable to say that there is a part of you that may want and need pornography and masturbation; however, it is probably more authentic to say that the true “You” doesn’t really want to use pornography and masturbation. The Real You can see that porn and masturbation does not truly satisfy you and leaves you feeling low. In truth, you really DO NOT want them. So, instead of allowing yourself to believe that you do want porn and masturbation, you need to retrain your brain and tell yourself that you are choosing not to use pornography and masturbation. You are not saying “NO” to pornography and masturbation, rather, you are saying “YES” to choosing something else. You are saying yes to behaviors that are more in line with your values and morals and with who you’d ultimately like to be.
When you tell yourself that you are saying no to something you want but just can’t have, you feel deprived, which often leads to more pornography and masturbation. We feel deprived when we can’t have something we want. So, stop telling yourself that you want pornography and masturbation but that you just can’t have it. Instead, tell yourself that you really do NOT want it and that you are instead choosing to say yes to a more wholesome and healthy way of life for yourself, which is more in line with your values.
So if you are ready to overcome your porn and masturbation habit, consider finding a therapist who can give you the tools and teach you helpful skills that you will need to start living more in line with your true values and morals and with who you truly wish to be.
Find support with Help Quitting Porn in New York with Porn Therapy in Queens
Follow these simple steps to begin your therapy journey:
1. Read more about us!
2. Make an appointment to find out if porn help in Queens is right for you.
3. Live a happier and more confident life without having to indulge in pornography or masturbation.
Other Services Offered
As well as conveniently located in Flushing Queens, my office has ample parking and is close to public transportation. My proven methods can be just the extra support you need to take your relationship to the next level, as well as seeing clients virtually online. I work with Loren Aryeh Leib Ecker, LCSWR, to offer Marriage and Couples Therapy.