Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): With pornographic content at every corner of the Internet, porn addiction is a growing problem for the current generation. Porn addiction is a behavioral form of addiction, that is causing more problems today than ever before. If you’re currently in your room freaking out about your porn problem, then let us assure you that you’re not alone in this.
The Growing Problem Of Porn Addiction
Porn addiction refers to an addiction where a person becomes extremely emotionally dependent on porn videos. Addicted to the point that it interferes with their daily life, relationships, and also their general ability to function. Unlike other forms of substance abuse, it is quite easy to get addicted to pornography. It happens without any realization.
The journey to becoming addicted to pornography normally follows similar patterns as other drug addiction. For instance, at some point in their teen/ adult life, an individual watches pornographic content. That is all it takes and soon they begin to experiment with pornography in day to day life. This experimentation might soon progress to abuse and then soon, the individual becomes dependent.
He/ she will end up viewing more and more pornography, exploring different genres and categories. Around this time is when the person starts experiencing physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms when attempting to stop. That’s part of the reason why at such a stage someone it find porn a lot more stimulating that the relationship that they have in real life. That is just an illusion, a bad one, and is causing a lot of problems worldwide.
While some might realize the problem at hand and decide to stop. There will be others who will get addicted due to a variety of genetic, environmental, and psychological factors.
How To Quit?
If you resort to the Internet looking for answers, which most of us do. You’ll likely be swamped with hundreds of articles and research telling you what works and what doesn’t. But, what these articles and blogs fail to understand is that not everyone’s the same.
Not every person with an addiction problem behaves the same way. What works for a particular individual, might not possibly work for someone else with the same problem.
Sometimes, what works for the majority might not work for an individual and this is completely normal. Everyone’s progress and recovery is different, you must understand that before you begin your journey towards recovery. But there are steps that work to help you quit porn which can help you a lot if you prefer a methodical approach.
Right now one of the most prominent recovery options for individuals dealing with porn addiction is cognitive behavioural therapy. In simple words, that is what is trending today. It is one of those treatment programs based on psycho-therapy. It helps in learning how to identify self-destructive and disturbing behavior and thought patterns. Patterns of behaviour that can have a negative impact on an individual and their emotions. CBT also provides opportunities for changing them.
This form of therapy focuses on changing the negative thoughts that automatically arise in one’s mind and can contribute to worsening emotional difficulties. These random negative thoughts if constant can have a detrimental influence on one’s wellbeing. Cognitive behavioural therapy helps in identifying these thoughts and replaces them with realistic and objective thoughts.
The 4 Pitfalls of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
While a therapy like this can have quite a few positive effects on a recovering addict, which it clearly does. It also does come with its own set of drawbacks. But the porn that we have today is much bigger of a problem that CBT is capable of dealing with, add to that the modern lifestyle. In such a way, the pros of this practice outweighs the cons.
1. The process can be extremely time-consuming
For CBT to be successful, one has to devote a significant chunk of their time from their day religiously. The process of this form of therapy consists of a lot of what you can essentially consider as “homework”. There are assignments you’ll need to complete during your time in therapy. These assignments come from the developments made between the therapist and you. This will generally involve the rehearsal of new skills and coping strategies first practiced during a therapy session. Here, the plan is to restructure the existing destructive belief systems.
If you’re committing to this therapy, expect to spend at least 1-2 hours per day working on these therapeutic elements. Depending on the various levels/stages of the addiction, some might even need to double their time commitment. For a therapy session to be useful, it is important for the patients to commit and finish all their assignments to the best of their abilities. This requires a lot of time commitment that a lot of us in this fast-paced and dynamic world cannot afford.
2. It only addresses current issues and completely ignores the underlying causes
The goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is to address issues which the individual is facing currently. This method tries to break the individual out of their negative thought process. It restructures the thoughts toward something more positive in nature. But this method fails to take into consideration the chronic issues which often lead to the negative thinking cycle. As a result of this, when things get tough or when something from the past springs up on the individual unexpectedly, he/she is unable to cope with it and ends up relapsing.
For someone with a fragile mindset, this kind of situation can occur quite frequently and lead to deteriorating effects on their mental and physical health.
3. Cognitive behavior therapy generally makes people feel worse before recover
Under CBT, individuals have to confront the issues which create the difficult feelings they experience in their day to day life. The initial confrontation of fear, anxiety, and any other issues leads to a high surge in negative thoughts and feelings. As a result of this, it is common for physical actions associated with the negative emotions to get worse too. For someone who stress/binge eats when sad or tense, the habit might get worse during this period.
The results from therapy here begin to show only after the completion of the first couple of sessions. If during this period the mental health of the patient deteriorates and they decide to give up during the initial phase when symptoms are worse, it could leave the patient in a position even more vulnerable than when they started therapy.
4. People with learning disabilities and complex mental health needs cannot benefit from CBT
Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on restructuring issues like anxiety by changing how thoughts are processed. With complex phobias or mental health concerns that need to be dealt with extreme care and observation, CBT isn’t useful. Main reason being the various elements of risk concerning the situation.
Plus, this method of therapy is primarily based on experimental therapy which cannot be grasped by individuals with learning disabilities. By implementing a hands-on approach, the cognitive challenges faced by the person involved are overcome through the element of actual practice, even though quite effective generally in most cases, the method falls short in helping people with even minor learning difficulties.
Children can also get hooked on porn today, and CBT will be very difficult for them to understand and benefit from. The best thing in this case will be to identify if your child is watching porn and using tools to block access to that.
The Truth about CBT
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approach majorly relies on the will of the patient. If you’re unwilling to put together a plan or work on the assignments for the next session, only then will the results from the cognitive therapy will be noticeable. Everyone participating in cognitive behavioral therapy requires to be fully cooperative with the process to produce the required results.
These cons that entail this particular technique of therapy have led us to believe it is quite ineffective and inconvenient in getting the required results. Instead, if you’re someone trying to recover from a troublesome porn addiction, it might be best to give porn blocking apps and software a try. These are convenient, efficient, and make the job much easier for you. Read along to find the top 4 best-rated porn blocking apps on Google Play.
4 Best Porn Blocking Apps for Android
You can get any one of these to start out with, and these will work for you just fine.
1. BlockerX
BlockerX is also a great porn blocker for iOS and Android, which can be the answer to your pornography addiction problems. It will help you in limiting your compulsive porn usage. Its solution consists of strict content blocking, combined with a platform for users to connect with peers and friends, to gain support in overcoming addictive behaviors.
2. FamiSafe
This is a complete parental control and monitoring tool that also doubles as a porn blocker on Android phones. You can use this app to block any website and/or app that you think is inappropriate or contains pornographic content. It also allows you to set keyword alerts on the devices that alert you in case of misconduct.
3. Adult Block
Adult Block is an advanced and light-weighted blocker for pornographic content and adult websites. This app will identify the elements of the page and perform a text analysis using its auto expected dictionary and uses the nudity scanner to block pornography and all adult contents.
4. Safe Surfer
This porn blocker by Safe Surfer will make sure that you can browse the web without any trouble of running into pornographic content on all Android devices. The app works on all the leading web browsers, like Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.
To Conclude
With the help of these apps, you can start your journey of addiction recovery without having to take time out of your day. This is extremely useful as that might not be an option for many with busy schedules.
However, while the blocker app does it’s job. You can still make an effort to implement positive behavioural changes that can help with the progress. No one knows you better than yourself. So, take some time out to figure out the triggers in your day to day life and begin eliminating them. Quitting porn doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to force yourself to go to therapy unless recommended by experts. A simple solution can go a long way!
