Porn damages your brain we know that. We also know how you can heal your brain from porn. In this blog post, we’re going to talk about three concepts surrounding those ideas. 

Number one is how porn damages your brain. The quick and dirty, then number two how it changes you. How it changes, how you feel, how you act, how you perform, etc.  Then lastly, number three is your brain tip strategy for the day.  

Let’s talk about how you can heal your brain so you can feel and perform better, faster so you can ride off into the sunset. 

This blog is a transcript of the above video. View for ease of understanding these concepts.

How does porn damage your brain? 

There is the science that proves pornography consumption does three things to your brain.  

Number one, porn knocks out functioning in the frontal lobe. It decreases frontal lobe activity, and it decreases your ability to think. It also makes it difficult to remember. It cuts the brake lines on your ability to make good judgments, which includes the decision to go back into the screen. 

It makes you lose motivation. It increases anger and irritability. It increases social anxiety. 

Number two, it decreases reward center sensitivity in the midbrain which makes you need incredible amounts of stimulation and arousal to feel good. That has implications for your relationships because pornography interferes with your ability to have healthy sexual relations with human beings in the real world.   It makes it difficult for you to feel good in the real world where there are not massive amounts of dopamine like there are in the screen. It also creates porn-induced erectile dysfunction. 

Thirdly, the neural pathways between the reward center and the frontal lobe are impaired.  It also impairs the reward center’s ability to communicate with the frontal lobe and vice versa. Therefore, making it difficult for you to leave the screen behind and find dopamine from the activities in your real world. This takes us back to the cutting of the brake lines that I was talking about before.   

How does that change your behavior? 

This is number two. It creates hypersexuality which essentially makes your brain look for sex everywhere so it can get those dopamine hits when you’re not in the screen. When you consume porn, you’re getting a deluge of dopamine in a flood, and it makes you feel great. Conversely, when you go back into the world not only does your dopamine go low but your cortisol, the stress neurotransmitter hormone, spikes. Now your brain looks all over the place for dopamine, usually on people’s body parts by checking people out or you may want to watch movie scenes that include sex. You may fantasize and have a euphoric recall of what you’ve seen before it pops into your mind because it’s looking for the dopamine hit. It makes you hypersexual. You will begin checking lots of people out and changing your behaviors when you’re in the world because your brain needs the dopamine flood. 

There is a cycle to this whole thing. When your brain is craving dopamine and it’s jonesing for it you will have more anger, more irritability, more anxiety, more moodiness, and more depression. You won’t be able to think.  You’ll have that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality where nobody knows what version of you they’re going to get. YOU don’t even know what version they’re going to get because you’re not in control of your brain.  

What that does is it makes it so that your brain goes through the cycle. Your brain triggers you to think about pornography. It gives you a dopamine. Repeat. This makes it almost impossible not to go into the screen to get the dopamine deluge after you feel guilt and shame, and you wish you didn’t have to do that. 

That’s the essence of a compulsion. 

We know porn consumption eventually becomes a hypersexuality behavior disorder. If you continue to watch with frequency, consistency, and increasing intensity. If you’re ramping up the stimulation, your brain is moving in the wrong direction. What that leads you to is edging. That is when you let your brain linger in a state of dopamine and then increase it into new genres. This leads to porn-induced erectile dysfunction.  Not only does this create cognitive thinking problems, and psychological or mental health issues, it also shows up in physical issues. People have more health anxiety than ever, and they don’t trace it back to their porn use. 

One last thing that it does is it changes your behavior. 

It causes an increase in anger and irritability. It makes you less attracted to your partner. If you just think about it logically. Through oxytocin, another neurotransmitter, you are linking your brain to the actors who are the performers that you’re watching on the screen. That is what your brain needs to be aroused. Your partner usually doesn’t fit the bill there. Now when you go to be with your partner, you’re less attracted and you actually think it’s your partner’s fault. It’s because you’ve coupled your brain to the acts and the people on the screen. 

Science shows relationships are two times as likely to fail when there is porn addiction involved. Breakups are on the rise because porn consumption is on the rise. 

The real question is, what can you do about it? How do you heal your brain? 

Well, clearly you need to stop hitting the easy button for the dopamine deluge going into the screen for all that dopamine through sex. 

You have to unlink your brain from going to sex for mood regulation, to take the edge off anxiety, and to feel better. You have to create healthy sexuality in your life while you find healthy ways to regulate your mood. There are healthy or adaptive behaviors and there are unhealthy maladaptive behaviors. 

What is adaptive work? 

Examples might include, working out, doing your hobbies, and getting on purpose in your work. Finding work that you love every day that you’re jazzed up to go do it. Having relationships that feed you.  Once you break the cycle going into the screen, your relationships can feed you in a better way. You will be able to have lots of relationships with friends, family, and with a partner. You can experience connection, intimacy, and vulnerability so that you can really feel connected in the real world and not isolated into the screen. 

Think about your hobbies. Figure out what you like to do and go do it. Don’t say to yourself that you don’t have time to do it, or that you’re not motivated enough to do it. Plan it into your week. When you do all these things, what you do is you tell your brain there is dopamine in the real world, not in the screen. It’s the reverse of what you’re doing right now. 

When you do the reverse of what you’re doing right now you get a different outcome. You get a healed brain through the beauty and the wonder of neuroplasticity. You can in fact heal your brain back to optimal or to optimal in the first place. You may have a brain that’s better than ever. 

We know that a porn addiction starts in childhood and adolescence. For most people that means your brain has never fully developed to the capacity that it could without porn. Now is your chance, my friend. I want you to take that chance. 

If you’re looking for help on that journey. I have programs of different shapes and sizes that can fit your needs. You can find them all right here.  

I would love to be part of your journey if it feels good. Until then, control your brain or it will control you.