4 themes of porn & sex addiction

In this video, I share 4 themes of pornography and sex addiction that upon noticing them have really helped me in my personal growth. I hope that by sharing these discovers they may help you too! 

Four distinct themes of porn and sex addiction: 

1. I can't catch anticipation (they feeling I was after) 
2. After years of misuse, I became reliant on my behaviors for baseline dopamine (addiction) 
3. I learned to objectify people and this really screwed up relationships
4. I learned to see sex as a solo act of consumption instead of fundamentally an act of relationship with someone else (how did I get it so wrong) 

here's what AI said this episode is about..

As I lay bare my struggle with porn and sex addiction, you're invited to witness the raw transformation that reshapes the meaning of pleasure and connection in one's life. This episode is a tapestry of vulnerability and hope, threading my personal narrative with the universal challenge of breaking free from the shackles of compulsive behaviors. We confront the paradox of the never-ending chase for an illusive 'perfect' experience, and how it can consume us, leaving a void where satisfaction should reside. It's a profound examination of the addict's mind, where anticipation's fleeting high supersedes any actual fulfillment, a cycle all too akin to the gambler's plight.

Venture into the heart of addiction and its insidious impact on our capacity to savor life's true joys. We dissect the journey of rekindling a damaged dopamine system and the quest to reclaim the essence of sex as an intimate, relational act, not a solitary conquest. Shining a light on the often-overlooked power of co-regulation exercises, we share how such practices can fortify the bonds of intimacy, fostering a deeper connection that transcends mere physical gratification. Join us as we navigate through the complexities of addiction, and emerge with a newfound understanding of what it means to connect, love, and feel alive again.

⬇️
⬇️
⬇️
Watch this episode and many more on my Youtube channel! 👀
Instagram/ Braxtongilbert

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

Yo yo, what's up. Hope you're doing well today. This is a short video that I'm titling the four themes of porn and sex addiction. These are four touchstones, I guess you could say, that have been really, really helpful for me in my journey of healing and just really good summaries, I think, of ways that addiction to internet pornography and also, if you're further past that, into sex addiction a good look at what's some of the mechanisms that are at play in that dynamic.

Speaker 1 0:39

The first one constant consumption with decreased reward. I can't catch anticipation. One of the things that have helped me so much in my healing from this addiction has been becoming aware of what I'm actually after. This was, I would say, maybe six months ago that I started to tease apart what was driving me and the consumption of pornography and no matter what I discovered online, no matter what type of stimulus, no matter what type of stimulus, no matter what extent of my internet pornography habit grew, I just quite couldn't get what I was looking for and that was a theme that persisted. It was a frustration and irritation that persisted in my own behaviors and at some point I recognized that this is a searching behavior that is rich with anticipation. The goal of this behavior is not actually to arrive anywhere and to get anything, but to be in the act of searching for the reward itself. That may sound like a koan or a tongue twister or a Buddhist concept, but I think what I realize is that what I'm actually addicted to is the anticipation. Well, what I realize is that what I'm actually addicted to is the anticipation, the feeling of discovering the next perfect source of erotic stimulation, whether that's in the form of a certain person, website, sex worker, pornographic, you know, talent, I mean, whatever it is. It's not the thing itself that I'm after, but the feeling of anticipation in pursuing the thing, and once I realized that there was never going to be an end to this, that I was. I was after the search itself, after the anticipation itself. That was the thing that I loved, much like a gambling addiction. I liken it very much to a gambling addiction that you're not after the win, you're after the feeling of anticipation that you could win, because you don't win, you never really win, and after you know the house always wins. But why do you spend all your money and time gambling? Because the feeling of anticipating a reward feels so good, and so the thing that I recognized in being that number one of this list is that I can't catch anticipation. The thing I really am after here with this addiction is the chemical state in my brain of anticipating a reward, and the reward itself is only valuable in the anticipation that it generates. And so by seeing that, I realized that this whole thing is a hoax. This whole thing is a never ending dog chasing its tail. And I say constant consumption with decreased reward. Uh, and I say constant consumption with decreased reward, and, uh, that's like just the, the. The difficult part of it is, the more you chase, the less rewarding it is. And, as a byproduct, the harder the more I chase, the less rewarding the the discoveries were. And so I chased even harder and increased consumption, and, um, to no avail. To no avail because, again, the point wasn't a actual reward or a paradise that I was going to discover. There was no promised land. It was just the pursuit of the illusion of a promised land that gave me the anticipation that I became reliant on in my brain.

Speaker 1 4:45

Another way to think about that is chasing the perfect body image. There's an illusion that you can get there, you can arrive, and if somebody begins to modify their body. Maybe it's through plastic surgery or weight loss or starting to build muscle. You know, there's a thing I saw one time it was like a little comic and it's. It showed a muscle guy and it said like the day you start lifting is the biggest you'll ever be, because as you become more obsessed with your body image, so you become more critical. And then the idea of the perfect body becomes more and more elusive. And so, uh, you can never. If you are focused on trying to become the perfect body becomes more and more elusive, and so you can never. If you are focused on trying to become the perfect physique or the perfect physical appearance, it just becomes more elusive. And in my experience, the same exact thing is with the perfect quote, unquote the perfect sexual experience it only becomes more elusive. And again, that anticipation the idea that it does exist out there and that you're on the path is what is so invigorating, though, take my word for it, it's all an illusion Brings you to the second thing.

Understanding Addiction and Its Impact

Speaker 1 5:54

My dopamine system has become and I'm using language saying I, me, I do that. I'm doing that more now to not try to act like I know what works for everybody, but I hope that by sharing what I've discovered about myself. Maybe you can find it relatable and it'd be helpful for you, but I'm going to use I me language. Those are my pronouns. Dopamine my dopamine system has become reliant on anticipation behaviors for baseline production. My dopamine system has become reliant on anticipation behaviors, like I said earlier that searching and seeking behavior that was pornography and sex addiction behaviors. They were all searching and seeking behaviors that were rich in anticipation, much like gambling addiction, just a constant state of anticipation. My dopamine system system has and had and still is recovering. My dopamine system became reliant on anticipation behaviors for baseline production. This is where the behavior, the pornography, the addiction started to rear its ugly head, when it's no longer an exciting thing to do to add a cherry to the day, a cherry on top. It's not something that makes the day. You know you've had a great day and some pornography is a little bit of extra entertainment for the end of the day. This is a theme that arose after years and years of addiction, years and years of neuroscience, I believe at Stanford University.

Speaker 1 7:50

Defines addiction and I'm going to butcher this, but I get the gist of it is correct. Defines addiction as the narrowing of things that you can receive dopamine from, like the narrowing of activities that bring you dopamine. You can think about it like if you had a well-balanced life and you started smoking crack. Crack would be like this insane dump of dopamine. The more you smoked crack, the more your brain would orient itself to just receive dopamine from smoking crack. Watching football, playing games with friends, going to work, responding to all your emails in your inbox, saving $100. None of that would really even make any result of dopamine in your brain. It would pale in comparison to the dopamine that is smoking crack.

Speaker 1 8:26

And so, um, in this scenario you would, when you desire dopamine, you would think crack instead of anything else, and so, um, this is where it gets real hairy is that my brain almost became reliant on the sexual seeking behaviors to generate dopamine in my brain and I'm a very creative person, very hardworking person. But after a while it became to where, uh and I've learned this as I've stopped watching porn is that my brain has deflated a lot without that extra um, uh, um, external source of of dopamine, and so I'm definitely finding myself gradually increasing what feels like my dopamine baseline in my brain, my sense of kind of uppity-ness and engagedness with my activities in my day, but that's the ugly part about it. First it's fun and then you need it to feel okay. Then you need to feel like yourself. It's at first it's fun and then you need it to feel okay, then you need to feel like yourself, just like a gambling addiction and anticipation. I see a very common thread with the dynamic of being a gambling addict with being a sex addict, specifically in the anticipation portion, number three and I do want to take a quick little pause here to say this is difficult stuff to share, and so I hope that you can hear this from a lens of being human and understanding that I'm sharing these things, because I do hope that it helps you and I hope you're on the same journey that I am. I hope you're not just watching this for entertainment and curiosity about somebody's personal struggles.

Speaker 1 10:08

But anyways, here's the third thing, the third theme that arose from pornography and sex addiction, seeing people primarily through the lens of sexual objectification and failing to be able to experience who people are instead of what they have. That I can potential to be objectified sexually for my own personal gratification and every person's brain, because I think that attraction has the element of desire to be to derive personal enjoyment from someone else's sexual attractiveness to you. But the pornography just exploded. That just made that to be such a like a subconscious training after years and years of consuming material that essentially is people being paid um, you know, crowdsourced fantasies, being people being um motivated by big checks to allow themselves to be objectified and, worse, on camera consuming. That altered my brain through the lens of sex and caused me to see potential partners mainly through the lens of their sexual, their potential to be physically objectified. And I know I'm kind of splitting a hair here, but I think it's an important one.

Speaker 1 12:36

That's screwed up, because choosing somebody based on their really solely based on their sexual physical characteristics is very shallow. It's very surface level. It doesn't get the whole picture. It doesn't take in consideration who somebody is and your attraction to them, their personality, the way they um posture themselves toward life, the way that you feel around them. It's it's just hung up on the physical appearance and uh and that is something that I have really not been aware of until recently, not been aware of just how deep that subconscious training has been through the consumption of pornography for a decade plus now Just a subtle notion that people's value are in partners, sexual partners value are in their ability to be objectified for my own personal sexual gratification. What a dark concept, what an insidious idea to take root slowly but surely. That was the.

Speaker 1 13:39

That's the third theme here and the fourth theme of pornography addiction, sex addiction Specifically. I would say pornography addiction is easier to grasp this idea with, but it does apply to sex addiction as well. Defaulting or default to seeing sex as a solo act of consumption and entertainment instead of fundamentally an active relationship to another. Jesus Christ, this stuff is difficult to talk about, about man. It's one of the reasons too that I do. It is uh, or I'm doing. This is because the uh, it's therapeutic, it's therapeutic to talk about sheds a lot of light on this consumptionamentally. Years of pornography, addiction and other things fundamentally positioned sex in my brain to be about personal consumption, personal consumption, fundamentally about personal consumption, and that's so wrong. It is partially about personal consumption, partially about entertainment, partially about self-pleasure, feeling good in my body. But those are all things you can do by yourself in my body, but those are all things you can do by yourself. Sex, fundamentally, is a relational act. It's an active merging of two people. Fundamentally, it is something that involves another person. I'm speaking like I know these things, but I'm just beginning to learn them.

Speaker 1 15:37

The way that I compare and contrast this point is the way that makes sense in my head is like if you had a gaming setup I'm not much of a gamer. If you are, I hope you're having fun. Not much of a gamer, but I imagine a gaming setup could get really intense. Your chair, you'd have a huge screen. You could have like a VR headset with surround sound and your chair could shake with all the explosions. And maybe you're playing a war game or something and the non-player characters or the you know other characters that aren't real people in there that are shooting back at you could be so realistic and it could be so intense. And you could even have a paintball gun that shoots bullets at you rubber bullets so that when you do get shot, you feel it. You could get really, really intense with the setup you could create for your own game. But at the end of the day but at the end of the day, you're just playing with yourself.

Speaker 1 16:30

No matter how immersive and cool and engaging and electric this experience is, it's just a self-focused curling your attention inwards. It's all about feeling good. It's all about your own enjoyment, your own entertainment. You compare that setup with playing checkers with somebody else. There's an element to playing checkers, even though it's just a boring old board game with no bells and whistles. There's an element to that that is connection. You're enjoying being with someone else and experiencing them while they're experiencing you through this medium of this checkers game.

Speaker 1 17:16

No matter how good the personal setup VR gaming, ultra HD, simulated war blasting game that you have set up, where it's just you playing in an artificial world no matter how good and immersive and intense and high quality that experience gets, it still lacks the fundamental quality of connecting with somebody that you get by playing a game that might be something as simple as playing checkers. That is where my brain is beginning to. Initially it's cracked open, but now it's stretching and opening and beginning to under, beginning to seek to experience connection through sex and that's really crazy. I mean it's really, really crazy to um, really crazy to um to be doing. But it is what I'm doing and the major takeaway on this one, the fourth one, or really just this whole theme, whole thing is uh, I'm beginning to approach sex as a space of nourishment and love, exchange and connection. It's like what the heck man Do? I really need connection that badly? Is that something that's really important to me? And what is it like to connect? What does it feel like to really connect with another person?

Speaker 1 18:47

And I'm learning acts of connection, even something small. I've been doing like a co-regulation practice that I learned on Modern Wisdom podcast sitting face-to-face with my partner, closing my eyes, our foreheads together, hands on the small of their back, eyes closed, and taking 20 breaths where I, as the, the man, follow along with the woman, because she has smaller lungs, she'd have a hard time keeping up with me, but I'm just paying attention to her, I'm following her breathing and I'm regulating my breathing, my nervous system with hers and I can feel that's kind of a checkers game. In a sense. I can feel the quality, the aspect of that act itself that is connecting to her and even that, in an odd way, feels like more of a connection than I've been able to generate or open myself up to, even in the sexual container. My aim would be to create, to use the technology of sex to experience even higher amounts of connection.

Speaker 1 19:50

One thing that I heard Alex say, walsh say about using sex for entertainment instead of connection. Is you're using an iPhone to bust nuts or crack nuts? Not bust nuts, you're using an iPhone to crack nuts. If you really were using an iPhone to crack open walnuts, you'd be like dude this is. I mean. Obviously you can use that for that outcome, but the technology that's available is so much more than just trying to do that.

Speaker 1 20:16

So I know that I'm sexually have been the equivalent of trying to use an iPhone to crack open walnuts and I know, just like that co-regulation practice, that there is a depth of connection that's available through sex, but it's it's really me taking the time to unhook myself from these selfishly gratifying, self-focused, entertainment based approaches to sex, which are things that, as I've highlighted in this video, have subtly creeped in insidiously in my life through my own decision to engage in so much pornography.

Speaker 1 20:54

So I hope that this video has been helpful. I hope that highlighting these can be helpful for you on your journey. If you're on this journey of healing sexually through porn addiction, sex addiction, I do want to encourage you and say that, paradoxically, when you stop chasing this thing down so hard, the idea of having even better and even more perfect, and even more and even more paradoxically, what you have with your relationship relationship, if you're in a relationship with somebody becomes juicier, becomes more rich, becomes more deep, becomes more nourishing. And I'm finding that what I have, what I have been chasing so hard, might have just been a behavior to try to fill something, maybe fill a void of sorts that is there because of the lack of true, sincere connection in my life. But hey, what do I know? I'm just a work in progress. Uh, thank you so much for listening to this episode or watching this video. I hope this helps and I hope you have a good day.