It can be extremely difficult to see a loved one suffer with an addiction. Having an addiction has detrimental effects on a person’s life. There are many challenges to overcome when trying to support someone with a porn addiction. If you’d like to learn how to help someone with a porn addiction, the best ways to help are listed below.
Best ways to support someone with a porn addiction
The first thing that you should do is to educate yourself about addiction. In order to support someone with an addiction, you need to have a basic understanding of how addiction works. When someone has an addiction, they have no control over their own habits and behaviors.
Even if an addicted person wanted to stop, the urge to continue is overpowering. Their thoughts, their actions and their daily lives are consumed by their addiction. When you educate yourself about addiction, you can become a better source of support for your loved one.
Educate yourself.
Reading this article is a good first step, but understanding addiction in general and porn addiction specifically can help you become a better source of support for the addicted person.
In a person who becomes addicted, their brain is constantly changing and adapting. Addiction changes how the brain makes decisions when it comes to impulsive behavior, stress, and self-control. These changes are long term and can often last a lifetime even after receiving treatment.
The longer that a person is addicted, the more their brain changes and adapts. Because of this, they receive less pleasure and enjoyment from their addiction substance. They have to consume more to reach the same level of pleasure, because their brains have adapted.
Mental Health Challenges
In addition to changes in the brain, it’s common for an addicted person to have other health conditions as well. The most common conditions include mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, hypervigilance and insomnia.
Some of these conditions are a result of unresolved trauma. Trauma occurs when we experience a very stressful and frightening event that is out of our control and is almost impossible to cope with. There are different types of traumas that many people face, such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse or neglect. Natural disasters, accidents, injuries and illnesses are also types of traumas that people experience.
Unresolved trauma could be the underlying condition that causes addictive behavior to continue. These underlying conditions typically need to be addressed and treated in order to manage and discourage addictive behaviors.
Understanding how addiction works will help to reduce the shame surrounding it. It will also help loved ones provide better support to those who are struggling with it. To help someone struggling with a porn addiction, first, try having a conversation with them.
Start the conversation.
Have a conversation about some of the behaviors you have noticed. Try to figure out if the addicted person has noticed their own obsessive behaviors.
Be sure to approach the conversation from a place of understanding instead of from a place of judgement. During this conversation, be the safe space that’s needed to allow them to be vulnerable enough to share their innermost thoughts and feelings.
Here are some questions to consider that may help guide the conversation:
- Do they feel in control of their actions and habits, or have they lost control?
- Are there habits negatively affecting their life? (Issues with their job, family or friends?)
- Are they able to think about anything else besides porn, or have they lost interest in everything else?
- Can they stop watching porn, if they wanted to?
- What are some of the hardest challenges that they’ve experienced in life?
- Have they been able to overcome those challenges and heal from those experiences?
After the conversation, you should have a better understanding of what the addicted person is going through. You should also know whether or not they are ready to make a change.
Change may not happen overnight, but choosing positive habits every day can have a major impact. Moving forward, you can become their accountability partner and encourage them to pursue healthier habits.
Encourage healthier habits.
Encouraging an addicted person to choose healthier habits can include helping them set and achieve their goals. For example, the main goals can be recovery, overcoming the addiction and getting their life back on track.
Overcoming addiction is no easy feat, but with commitment and support, a successful recovery is possible. In order to achieve success in recovery, often times, an entire support system is needed.
A support system may include an addiction support group, individual therapy or couples’ therapy. Therapy can help identify triggers, the root causes of addiction and healthy coping skills.
Support groups are helpful for meeting people who share similar goals in recovery who can be there for long-term encouragement, support and guidance. These resources can be found on social media groups, apps or websites.
Keys to long-term recovery
Beyond having a therapist and support groups, it’s important to have friends, interests and hobbies that support long-term recovery. Try sharing and exploring your own interests and hobbies with the addicted person. Invite them to events in the community, such as concerts, comedy shows, sports games and volunteer opportunities.
Encourage them to take an art class, take a dance class, join a church, join a gym or join a book club. Doing this will help improve their mood, reduce stress and combat depression.
When we enjoy hobbies and interests with our friends, it provides meaning to our lives and has a huge impact on our mental health and happiness. Healing from addiction means saying “no” to many things, but also saying “yes” to better things.
Being an accountability partner and encouraging an addicted person to pursue healthier habits is important and necessary. However, it’s also important to remember that your own self-care and your own needs are still your priority.
Supporting someone who has a porn addiction can be a taxing experience. It can begin to take a toll on your own life, which is why it’s important to take care of yourself first. One of the things that you should do is to set healthy boundaries for yourself.
Establish boundaries.
Having healthy boundaries helps you to find a balance between providing support to the addicted person and creating space for yourself. You are protecting them and yourself from their destructive behavior.
For example, you can set a boundary that the addicted person cannot view porn around you or within the home. With effective boundaries in place, you can build trust and a sense of responsibility. This helps the addicted person become responsible for their own actions and behavior.
If at any point the boundaries are crossed, it’s important to establish and communicate the consequences. The consequences can be to take away their phone, computer or any device that can be used to view porn. You can also create some space or distance from the addicted person by spending some time apart.
Having consequences in place allows the addicted person to see the need for change. They may not see a need for change if they are comfortable with no accountability while surrounded by people with no boundaries.
When there are no boundaries in place, they will continue to take advantage of other people. As a result, the addicted person cannot see the harmful effects of their addiction and unhealthy behaviors.
They have to see and feel the negative impact of their addiction and unhealthy behaviors to begin to see the need for help.
Taking steps toward recovery
To support someone with a porn addiction, first, try educating yourself about addiction, then having a conversation with them. Next, try encouraging them to pursue healthier habits while establishing boundaries for yourself.
These steps are necessary to achieve success in recovery for the addicted person and for those who support them. Committing to treatment and recovery can be a very difficult process for everyone involved, but with the right people, resources and mindset, the process gets better over time.
If you’re married or in a romantic relationship with someone who is struggling with addiction, please download our Marriage Repair Handbook and visit our resources page.
Disclaimer: This article is provided as general information, not medical or clinical advice, and may not reflect the unique circumstances in your situation. It does not create a therapeutic or doctor-patient relationship, and it’s not a substitute for seeking medical care. This site is a collection of articles that act as part of an advertising network for a marriage course. Do not take action based on this article without seeking medical advice from a physician or other qualified health care provider.