Reading: Twelve Step Program

How to Break a Porn Addiction (12 Steps Based on AA Program) Linked Source

 

How to break a porn addiction? This question might constantly cross your mind if you are unable to control the urge of watching porn.

Just like any other addiction, porn addiction can cause havoc in your life. 

With the easy accessibility of pornographic content on your laptop, tablet, and smartphone, porn addiction has become more prevalent then it was ever before.

Behavioral addictions, like porn addiction, can have a major impact on all aspects of your life since you feel like you have lost control over your behavior.

If you are wondering how to stop watching pornography forever, there are ways to recover from it. This 12-step porn addiction treatment plan is based on the AA program and has been effective in helping addicts recover successfully:

1. Admitting Your Powerlessness over Porn Addiction

 In the first step, you have to admit that you are powerless over your addiction, that your life has been so affected that you have lost complete control. Your addiction has started to harm your relationships, career, and overall health.

The good thing is that the minute you start thinking, “I need help for porn addiction,” you have already taken a major step.

To strengthen your commitment, it is recommended that you take a powerlessness inventory. Write down all the ways porn addiction has affected your life. Add examples of the harm it has caused you and how you have harmed others.

This can even be an ongoing process throughout your recovery as revisiting the fact that you are powerless over this addiction would work as a motivation for you to strive harder to get that control back over your life.

2. Believing A Higher Power Can Restore Your Sanity

In the second step, you need to have complete belief that the higher power would help you restore your sanity. The wordings might be difficult to digest because no addict wants to admit that they have lost their sanity.

Ask yourself or even others, “Is it normal to watch porn?” and you will realize that normalcy doesn’t include repeatedly watching porn to an extent that it begins impacting your life.

To know how to break an addiction, you need to admit how badly it has a control over you and that a power greater than you can help restore the state of psychological wellness and normalcy in your life.

Indeed, this “higher power” might have different meanings for everyone. It completely depends on your experience and beliefs who or what that higher power can be.

Keep in mind that this step is mostly about admitting the fact that you need help to recover from your addiction. You tried before but failed, which means you need someone’s help to assist you through this journey successfully.

Read more about porn addiction: how to help someone with a porn addiction, porn addiction facts, porn addiction effects, porn addiction causes, and porn addiction symptoms.

3. Turning Over Your Life and Will to the Higher Power

In order to successfully stop watching porn, you need to be highly committed to your recovery plan. This step is linked with the first step.

After admitting that you need help to break the porn addiction, you have to give the control of your life to the higher power. This step is about showing your willingness to make positive changes in your life.

To help you with this step, it is recommended that you keep repeating the following prayer:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

You must have complete belief that the higher power will assist you towards the right direction and transform your life for the good. 

4. Taking Moral Inventory

How to stop watching porn forever? By taking a complete moral inventory of your life. 

This step requires you to critically evaluate the decisions you made, the harm you caused, the lies you told, and anything else you did because of your porn addiction. It is important for this list to be comprehensive and fearless. 

Taking a personal inventory of self will help you in facing your fears, which you were otherwise avoiding because of guilt and shame. 

This list can also include the thoughts and feelings you went throughout your life due to your addiction. It will help you in understanding your emotions better, which will drastically help in your recovery process.

5. Confessing Your Wrongdoings

This is a difficult step, particularly for a porn addict, but is the most important one. In this step you have to confess your addiction and your wrongdoings to the higher power, your therapist, or the people you love.

One of the major side effects of watching pornography is that you are bound to harm your relationships, especially your partner.

However, it is essential that you carefully select the person you want to confess your wrongdoings to. This is mostly because you need the right kind of support in order to break this addiction.

This step also aims to remove isolation. With addiction, it gets easier to isolate yourself from everyone around you due to the constant fear, shame, and guilt addicts feel.

However, the most effective way of breaking free from addiction is surrounding yourself with the right support.

6. Believing the Higher Power Will Eliminate Your Character Defects

Next, you must have strong belief that the higher power will eliminate your character defects to break your porn addiction.

Again, you can create a list of your character defects or utilize the same list you made earlier. Beside the character defect you want to remove, add in a positive character trait that you would want to adapt.

As you make the list, your resolve will strengthen when you evaluate all the negatives in your character. It will help you stay motivated and give you a list of positive character traits that you want to work for.

7. Asking the Higher Power to Eliminate Your Shortcomings

While you already showed your humility when you first realized you need help to get rid of your porn addiction, this step again calls for you to expand further your humility throughout your recovery journey.

This step encourages you towards self-introspection and to remind you that you are powerless over your porn addiction and need the higher power to eliminate your shortcomings.

You must be willing to change and adapt the positive character traits you listed in the previous step, and have the desire to eliminate all the negative traits. 

With this, you must once again place your belief in the higher power to assist you make these changes.

8. Creating A List of Everyone You Harmed

Getting help for porn addiction requires you to realize the harm you have caused others. While your porn addiction has harmed you in many ways, you need to realize that it also affected the people around you.

Before you start seeking forgiveness for your actions, you need to first determine the people you have hurt and how you have hurt them. This is the first step towards making amendments.

This step encourages you to create a list of the people you have caused harm due to your porn addiction. Write in the names of people and next to it write down the ways you have harmed them.

9. Making Amends

This is the hardest step for porn addicts in this entire program. Here, you have to make amends to all the people you have harmed because of your porn addiction with the exception that these amends wouldn’t cause further harm. 

All addicts in their recovery program face major problems in this step. Moreover, it is the point where you would be most vulnerable and close to relapsing.

This will be the most difficult, yet humbling experience in the process but will also be the biggest step forward in your recovery.

Reach out to the people you added in the list you made in the previous step. Make sure that this step doesn’t cause them further harm before you proceed.

10. Continuously Taking Personal Inventory

This is the step which must be constant in your life in order to ensure that you don’t relapse.

You would have made major progress in your recovery by now. However, the many effects of watching porn videos include getting strong urges to watch such videos again.

You might tell yourself that since you have been so good, it won’t hurt to watch just one video. Don’t! This is when you are in danger of relapsing, and this is the sole purpose of this step.

By constantly taking self-inventory, it becomes easier to identify the urges before the harm is done. You will be able to take the right steps to prevent these urges and continue with your recovery journey.

11. Continuously Seeking Guidance through Meditation and Prayer

Aside from taking constant inventory and examining your thoughts and emotions, it is essential that you seek guidance through regular meditation and prayer to overcome your shortcomings.

This step encourages you to meditate and pray regularly to help you with clear thinking and stopping any negative thoughts and urges from leading you towards your addiction again.

It is recommended that you offer gratitude and practice meditation for a few minutes every day to maintain your resolve of eliminating porn addiction from your life completely.

12. Reaching Out and Helping Others

By now, you would have understood and made tremendous efforts to stop watching porn forever. However, there are still many addicts out there in need of help and guidance.

This step encourages you to reach out to other porn addicts and share the effective steps and tactics that you employed to get rid of your addiction. 

It is your time to give back, and to aid the struggles of porn addicts.

This will also work as a reminder for you about why you can’t go back to your former life and why you made the decision to opt for this path of recovery.