Are you finding yourself constantly watching porn to masturbate so you can feel better or escape your thoughts and feelings? Do you find that when you feel anxious, bad or depressed you have the strong desire to get online or on your phone and watch porn to masturbate? Has your porn use or masturbation gotten you into trouble with your partner or spouse? Do you often feel guilty about it? Do you find the need to hide your behavior, or lie about it to your partner?
Do you find yourself wanting to masturbate instead of having sex? Are you constantly looking up on the internet for porn addiction and wondering if you have a problem?
As a clinical sex therapist, relationship and mental health counsellor I work with people you are dealing with chronic anxiety, long-term low grade depression and generally bouts of feeling bad. Unfortunately, in the world right now “porn addiction” is the catch all phrase to address issues for people struggling with chronic masturbation and porn watching.
When people feel very bad, consumed with anxiety and worrying thoughts that can alternate with feelings of being depressed and blue and cut off from people they look for ways to cope. One of the common ways that men learn to cope, usually from early adolescence is to masturbate. Masturbation releases all the feel good hormones that temporarily bath your brain. Providing short-term relief from chronic anxiety thoughts and feelings as well as depression. But because it is only temporary, the feelings build up and then the need to cope increases. The person chooses porn and masturbation.
Framing this as porn addiction is overly simplistic, political and just not helpful. People are distracted by the sex part of the behavior and can’t see it for what it is, a very unhappy anxiety ridden person that is desperately trying to regulate their internal emotional world. There are many in the mental health world that will sell “porn addiction”. However, it is not recognized.
Framing this as addiction distracts the underlying issues of mental health issues and how to deal with the negative thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. What is worse is the negative stigma that follows because of how the person copes with their anxiety and depression.
So many people’s sexual intelligence is not comprehensive and that further compounds the feelings of guilt and anxiety, especially if the compulsive behavior is affecting the couple. The partner of a the person overusing masturbation and porn will blame herself. She will feel sexually and intimately neglected and rejected in the relationship. She will feel understandably hurt and rejected. She is not clinically trained and will not know how to make sense of this. She will blame herself and then her partner. She’ll be googling all the articles on sex addiction and feel scared and overwhelmed.
If you are finding yourself struggling with anxiety and depression and are over using sex and porn to cope, there is help for you. It is very scary to confront this issues because of how the meaning attached to sex and porn use. There is so much stigma around mental health and porn use that reaching out can be overwhelming and embarrassing. But know that if you can find the courage to reach out, there is nothing to be ashamed of. Don’t let your fear, shame and embarrassment prevent you from getting the help you deserve.
If you would like to learn more how we can help you, please contact us via whatsapp or call at +6590307239 or email tammy@allinthefamilycounselling.com