Tools to Help You Quit Porn
Ask yourself why you want to quit porn. Write down your reasons to help motivate you to achieve your goal.
Identify Why You Want to Quit
Often people turn to porn and masturbation as a way to regulate emotions, alleviate loneliness, or in an attempt to escape a stressful situation. If you began watching porn as a child, addressing past experiences might help you discover why you watch porn today. Follow the link below for more.
Identify Why You Watch Porn
Know How Severe Your Habit Is
Not everyone who watches porn is addicted to it. Figure out how severe your habit is by following the link below.
Friends who know about your goals can help keep you accountable for your behavior. Talking to someone you can trust will also help you realize that you are not alone in your fight to overcome porn.
Talk to a Friend
Exercising regularly, journaling, talking to a friend, trying a new hobby and challenging yourself to get out of your comfort zone are all good ways to regulate emotion.
Healthy Ways to Regulate Emotion
Fortify and Reboot Nation are communities of people who support each other as they overcome porn. Talking to a trained therapist can also help you identify and overcome both your porn habit and any underlying issues.
Support Groups & Therapy
More Resources
Why Do You Watch Porn?
Quiz to Identify the Severity of Your Habit
Fortify & Reboot Nation
“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”
Quitting porn is not an easy challenge. Though using the above tips will help you live porn-free, you should be realistic about your goals. Learning new habits takes time and your brain's craving for porn won't leave overnight. By preparing for possible failure, you'll be ready for difficulties and know how to respond positively. Quitting porn isn't impossible but it will take time, effort, and resilience.
Focus on one day at a time:
Instead of focusing only on your long-term goal, focus on what you want to achieve each day. Breaking your goal down into manageable, daily challenges will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed. Any day you don't watch porn is in itself a victory.
How to Respond to Difficulties
Don't overreact:
It's common for people to give up completely when they fail once. It is also common for people to "binge" after a failure. Instead of giving up and throwing the whole effort away, recognize that failure-even 100 failures can be informative and that they don't prevent you from trying again. Stay calm-failure is not a dead-end!
What went wrong?:
If you experience a difficulty, re-examine what was the triggering situation. If you know what you did wrong leading up to the slip, then you can make changes to prevent it from happening again.
You're not alone:
If you have an accountability partner or a good friend, tell them about your failure. They'll be able to help you keep a calm head and to figure out what to do differently next time.
Remind yourself:
Remind yourself every day why you want to quit. Writing down why you want to be porn-free will keep you motivated when quitting becomes difficult.
Map your successes:
Keep track of your day-to-day successes. Did you not watch porn today? Did you catch yourself starting to slip back into old habits but stopped yourself? Those are successes that you should write down.
Reward yourself:
If you meet your daily goal, then reward yourself! Treat yourself to something you enjoy as a reward for overcoming a challenge.