In last week’s post, we discussed the fact that in today’s increasingly digital world there are two distinct categories of compulsive/addicted porn users. First, there are the traditional trauma-driven addicts that we have seen for many years. Then there is a new category of compulsive/addicted porn users that is driven more by “conditioning” than unresolved trauma.

Early in the healing process, treatment for these two groups is, in most respects, the same. The primary focus is on identifying and halting the compulsive/addictive behavior. As treatment progresses, however, the approach diverges. This divergence is necessary because although the two categories of compulsive/addicted porn users may look the same on the surface, they are quite different beneath the surface. The underlying issues driving the behavior are just not the same. Thus, the longer-term treatment approach is also not the same.

In last week’s post, we discussed both short-term and longer-term treatment for traditional, trauma-driven porn addicts. This week, we examine the treatment approach for digital-age conditioned addicts.

Treating “Conditioned” Porn Compulsivity/Addiction

As stated above, this new and rapidly emerging cohort of porn users looks, on the surface, incredibly similar to traditional trauma-driven porn addicts. Both groups are preoccupied to the point of obsession with pornography, they have repeatedly tried and failed to either cut back on or quit, and they are experiencing directly related negative life consequences. However, the behavior of conditioned users is not driven by unresolved trauma. As such, these individuals lack the trauma-driven need/desire to numb and escape from their emotions.

Typically, conditioned porn compulsives/addicts start using porn at a young age (often before puberty kicks in) and they don’t move beyond it. For them, porn becomes both sex education and sexual fulfillment. As a result, their ability to form meaningful real-world romantic attachments does not develop (or does not fully develop). So rather than being trauma-based, their compulsive use of pornography is more about conditioning and developmental deficits.

With pornography, there is no risk of rejection, there is no risk of committing an embarrassing social faux pas, there are no strange odors or unexpected physical sensations, and users get a constant and constantly changing barrage of hyper-stimulating sexual intensity that no real-world girlfriend or boyfriend could possibly match. So it’s easy to see the appeal of porn, especially with younger users who are just becoming sexually aware.

Over time, these (often quite young) porn users become conditioned to porn to the point where real-world interactions can’t and don’t match up. Eventually, porn becomes their go-to sexual outlet. As occurs with any compulsive or addictive behavior, this becomes highly problematic over time, especially when these individuals find themselves wanting a real-world romance. Often, they find that no matter how much they want a lasting real-world intimate connection, they can’t seem to manage it because they don’t know how. They never developed the skills they need because they were too preoccupied with pornography. Worse still, they no longer respond with automatic arousal to the close presence of an attractive potential partner.

So, what does treatment look like with this group, and how does it differ from treatment for traditional porn addicts? As stated in last week’s post, in the early stages of recovery, the approach is the same as with traditional porn addicts, with a focus on stopping the use of porn, breaking through the addict’s denial about his or her porn use, managing crises, and developing countermeasures to help prevent relapse.

That is where the similarities end.

One primary reason for this is that conditioned porn users typically find it easier than traditional, trauma-driven porn addicts to quit and stay quit. Conditioned users are generally more able to walk away from porn use, even extremely heavy porn use, with a relatively modest amount of intervention and support. And when they do quit, many of their most obvious porn-related problems (in particular porn-induced erectile dysfunction) tend to abate within a few months. Basically, the rewards center of their brain is able to “reboot,” returning to a pre-porn baseline, relatively quickly. With trauma-based addicts, this process tends to take much longer. Thus, treatment of conditioned porn users can typically move from initial intervention to secondary issues more quickly.

More importantly, the secondary issues requiring treatment are different. Rather than focusing on the resolution of unresolved early-life trauma, as eventually occurs with traditional porn addicts, treatment moves into the who, what, when, where, why, and how of real-world relationships. This is because, as stated earlier, conditioned porn users tend to struggle with developing and/or maintaining healthy real-world connections. They just don’t know how to successfully navigate the often-confusing waters of dating and sexual exploration.

Dr. Rob Weiss believes this developmental shortcoming occurs because these individuals did not learn the necessary skills during childhood and adolescence (for any number of reasons, including and perhaps primarily their disproportionate focus on pornography). Then, suddenly, they “wake up” (usually in their 20s or 30s) feeling alone and desirous of a real-world relationship with absolutely no idea how to make that happen.

Please note: Not all conditioned porn users are completely bereft when it comes to forming healthy real-world relationships. Some are quite adept socially. But it seems that the majority need to be walked through romantic/sexual social development to some degree.

Rather than developmental trauma driving the addiction, as we see with traditional porn addicts, conditioned users appear to be driven by conditioning and developmental delay. Sure, conditioned addicts are likely to also have some unresolved early life trauma (doesn’t everyone), but related to their porn use, that trauma might not be clinically significant.

For these individuals, the driving factor for compulsive porn use appears to be the supernormal stimulus provided by pornography, which the user turns to during key developmental stages because it’s just plain easier than learning how to get one’s needs met with real people. As a result of this over-focus on pornography, relational development is delayed.

As a result, conditioned porn users tend to respond well to much of the early-stage treatment used with traditional porn addiction. But other aspects of treatment for traditional porn addiction, most notably trauma work, can be overkill. These individuals are better served in the longer-term with developmental work, including socialization exercises, accountability with peers, and age-appropriate socialization.

When the porn goes away and conditioned porn users are walked through healthy development, their issues seem to clear up. There is relatively little fight to stay away from pornography. They are able to put the porn down and move on. Traditional porn addicts do not experience this. For them, walking away from porn is an agonizing process—two steps forward, one and a half steps back. Often, there are multiple slips and relapses before they develop even a small amount of real sobriety. And nearly always, a considerable amount of outside support (individual therapy, group therapy, 12-step recovery, and, eventually, trauma work) is needed.

This entry was posted at-  https://sexandrelationshiphealing.com/blog/treatment-for-porn-compulsivity-addiction-part-2-digital-age-conditioned-users/ on January 11, 2021

Written by Scott Brassart

Scott Brassart is a writer, editor, and content creator. As Director of Content Development for Seeking Integrity and Sex and Relationship Healing, he oversees the creation, production, and dissemination of online information, treatment manuals, books, and other written materials. A graduate of Brown University (BA), Emerson College (MA), and Indiana University School of Law (JD), he has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years.

 He is the author of Sex and Porn Addiction Healing and Recovery and coauthor with Kristin Snowden of Life Anonymous: 12 Steps to Heal and Transform Your Life. He has also written two novels, and written, produced, or directed a half-dozen short films. In recent years, his work has focused almost entirely on mental health issues, with an emphasis on healing from substance addiction, sex/porn addiction, and paired substance/sex addiction.

Seeking Integrity and Sex and Relationship Healing was created to help people and organizations understand, address, and redress behavioral health changes. This includes clinical treatment for adult intimacy disorders and related addictions, most notably sex, porn, and relationship addictions along with co-occurring substance and sex addictions .

Ethics involves the application of moral principles to promote good and prevent harm when coaching a person in recovery. Ethical decision-making within our service and advocacy activities is an assessment of the ratio of potential benefits to potential harms in any course of action—with a particular emphasis on “first do no harm.”

Such decision-making involves asking ourselves three questions.

First, what parties could benefit or experience harm in this situation (and what is the degree and duration of such benefit or harm)? In our advocacy roles, it is helpful to assess such potential benefits and harms related to ourselves, our families, organizations with whom we are associated, the recovery advocacy movement, and the community.

Second, are there any laws, policies, or historical practices that offer guidance in this situation? This question illuminates the complexities between law and ethics: actions may be legal and ethical, unethical, and illegal, legal but unethical, or illegal but ethical.

Third, what ethical values are most applicable to this situation and what course of action would these values suggest? Self-disclosure as an ethical issue has been explored in both professional and peer recovery support contexts , but little attention has been focused on ethical concerns related to self-disclosure within the context of public recovery advocacy.

Several traditional ethical values inform decisions related to disclosure of our personal recovery stories in public or professional settings.

• Beneficence is the ethical command to help others and not exploit the service context. It invites us to share our story as a means of helping individuals and families suffering from addiction and commands us to focus that story on those in need rather than as an act of self-aggrandizement or a means of pursuing our own interests.
• Nonmaleficence is the ethical command to do no harm. In the context of public recovery storytelling, it forces us to assess the timing and the intended and unintended consequences of our public disclosures on ourselves and other parties.
• Honesty demands that the recovery story be a truthful representation of our experience. Honesty and candor challenge us as advocates to speak truth to power even when lacking confidence in the authority of our own voice.
• Fidelity calls upon us to keep our promises. It asks us to remain faithful to pledges we have made to individuals and organizations. It asks us not to make promises that we cannot keep and to adhere to commitments made in the context of our story sharing.
• Justice requires that we acknowledge disparities in recovery opportunities and resources and calls on us to seek equity in such opportunities and resources.
• Discretion calls upon us to protect our own privacy, the privacy of our family, and the privacy of others in the presentation of our story. Public recovery storytelling is an act of public service; it is not public therapy or a platform for airing personal grievances.  
• Self-protection calls upon us in our service roles to avoid harm to self, family, and others. It is an acknowledgment of the legitimacy of tending to our own safety and health. It is a recognition that risks of harm to self and others exist within the public storytelling arena.

There are also values deeply imbedded within the history of communities of recovery that can inform recovery storytelling within public and professional arenas.

• Humility reminds us of the dangers of ego-inflation and that we speak not for ourselves but for the experiences and needs of all people seeking and in recovery. (See earlier blog on distinction between recovery rock stars and recovery custodians)
• Gratitude is a call to give credit where it is due and to express our thanks to individuals and organizations that made our story possible. We offer our own story in thanks for the meaning we drew from the stories of others at a time we were most desperate for the hope they offered.
• Respect/Tolerance is a recognition of the spirituality of imperfection—that we are all wounded in some way, that through this shared brokenness and healing, we can experience profound connectedness. It is an extension of humility and empathy—seeing ourselves in the lives of others and respecting multiple pathways and styles of recovery.
• Service is the call to carry a message of recovery to all those who continue to suffer from addiction and related problems. We do that as an act of altruism and as a perpetual step in our own self-healing.

There are many decisions involved in public recovery storytelling. Filtering these decisions through a model of ethical decision-making and core values of recovery can help minimize risk to self and other parties.

Reprinted from Blog – The Ethics Of Public Recovery Self-Disclosure

By Bill White, Bill Stauffer, And Danielle Tarino

Accessed on Dec 10, 2020