How to Stop Watching Porn

Watching porn can be a sign of a healthy sexual appetite. However, if you find yourself watching it excessively, this might signify that you have a porn addiction.

While having a porn addiction might seem harmless, it can be detrimental to your general well-being and can have some serious negative effects on your romantic relationships. People with porn addictions often use it as an unhealthy coping mechanism for stressors in their lives or as a replacement for having a healthy sexual life.

Pornography can actually affect your brain in a similar way to addictive drugs—flooding your reward center with dopamine in a way that provides gratification but can make it all-too-easy to come back for more.

To stop watching porn, it's important to first understand and embrace your reasons for giving it up, take action to limit your access to pornography, and even enlist help from an accountability buddy. Read on to learn more about these strategies and others below.

Signs of a Porn Addiction 

A person who has an uncontrollable desire to watch porn at any time of the day and in any space, especially where it might not be considered appropriate, might have a porn addiction.

Here are some other signs that point to porn addiction:

• You find that it’s impossible to stop watching porn even when you desire to stop
• You experience immense guilt or shame about the time and resources you put into watching porn
• You start to neglect work and personal relationships to spend that time watching porn
• You find it difficult to enjoy sex or any sexual acts without involving porn
• You notice that watching porn has begun to interfere with your daily functioning

There has been some controversy around recognizing porn addiction as a real addiction. However, there is enough research to point to people having real struggles with porn. Like with any addiction, if porn addiction is ignored, it can have negative consequences.

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How to Stop Watching and Overcome Your Addiction

If you think you might be dealing with a porn addiction, below are some tips to help you to stop.

Understand Why You Are Giving It Up

You don’t have to have a porn addiction in order to decide that you are giving up porn. You could be doing so for religious or ethical reasons. You could also be doing so because it’s causing a rift between you and a romantic partner, or simply because you just no longer want to watch porn.

Coming to terms with the reason you are giving it up helps you stay accountable whenever you are tempted to watch it. As long as those reasons are more important to you than watching porn, they will be a strong motivating factor.

Accept That You Have a Problem If There Is One

If any of the signs of a porn addiction listed in the section above resonate with you, then you might be dealing with a porn addiction.

Many people keep a porn addiction problem to themselves as they feel they’ll be judged by society, but remember that you are not alone. It's important to focus on the things you can control, and the things you can't control will follow.

Get Rid of the Porn

This includes any physical or digital evidence of pornography content in your life. You need to make a clean sweep of all of that kind of content. There’s no excuse to hold on to any of it, even those vintage porn magazines that might have some sentimental value.

Have someone you trust create the passwords that keep pornographic content on your devices blocked. That way, if you find yourself desperately trying to access pornography, you won't be able to remove the filters yourself. This is a major step to breaking the hold that pornography has over you.

Get an Accountability Buddy

This could be a close friend who you trust or even an app on your phone that reminds you of how long you’ve come in your recovery journey and why you are doing it. Taking things one day at a time isn't just for people with drug and alcohol addictions.

Rewarding yourself and celebrating even for the small wins is one of the most important things you can do for yourself as you work to undo your habits.

Join a Support Group

A support group helps you remember that you are not alone. It also eases your recovery journey if watching porn isn’t just a habit that you want to quit but has risen to the level an addiction.

These groups provide a safe, anonymous, and judgment-free zone for you to share your struggles with pornography and hear from other people who are going through similar experiences. If you have difficulty sharing your struggles with others in fear of being stigmatized, a support group is a great place to find acceptance and understanding.

Don’t Beat Yourself Up If You Fall Off the Wagon

Trying to break a habit or recover from a porn addiction is a journey, and it's not usually a straight path from addicted to not. On that journey, you might find yourself slipping back into old habits. Whenever that happens, don’t waste any time beating yourself up.

Keep trying to find the coping mechanisms that will work best for you, and don't fixate on the relapse. You can't change the past, but you can always change what you do moving forward.

Replace Watching Porn With a Different Habit

A trusted way to rid yourself of a bad habit is to replace it with a more desirable habit whenever you begin to feel the urge to indulge in that bad habit. For instance, going for a run when you feel the familiar urge to watch porn is a great way to healthily distract yourself. You might try a meditation, or engage in deep breathing, which convey some serious mental health benefits of their own.

Soon enough, the pornography urge will fade, and you may have some healthy new habits to enjoy instead!

Treatment for Porn Addiction

If you think you have a porn addiction, then simply trying to stop watching porn will prove to be incredibly difficult. So the first thing to do when considering treatment for porn addiction is to speak to a therapist. They will be able to recognize if you do indeed have an addiction and plan the next steps to take with you.

This typically includes a combination of psychotherapy and, in some cases, medication. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a commonly used approach with people who are living with addictions. CBT aims to help you recognize and change negative thoughts and behaviors.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is another popular form of psychotherapy used in addiction treatment. ACT focuses on helping you identify and accept the urges associated with watching porn and use value-based interventions to manage urges and symptoms.

Keep in Mind

If you or someone you love is displaying signs of porn addiction, it’s important to get help, as it’s challenging to overcome addiction alone. However, it’s also important to remember that watching and enjoying porn in healthy doses is perfectly fine, and can even be a great way to spice up your sex life. As with all things, finding the right balance is key.