7 Surprising (and Negative) Effects of Porn
Published January 28, 2012 | 
ChurchLeaders.com recently posted a brief, yet eye-opening article about some of the negative effects of pornography. Here is a synopsis.
1. Porn Contributes to Social and Psychological Problems Within Men
2. Porn Rewires the Male Brain
3. Porn Turns Sex into Masturbation
4. Porn Demeans and Objectifies Women
5. Porn Squashes the Beauty of a Real Naked Woman
6. Porn Has a Numbing Effect Upon Reality
7. Porn Lies About What it Means to Be Male and Female
I encourage you to check out the article in its entirety to read the descriptions given for each of these negative effects. Thank you, ChurchLeaders.com, for adding a much-needed voice to the awareness of this issue!
Posted in Purity, Sexual Addiction | 
addiction, character, emotions, intimacy, love, lust, masturbation, porn, Purity, Recovery, sex, sin, Spouses, temptation | 
2 CommentsEscaping the Porn Trap
Published January 4, 2012 | In this screen-cast, we answer the questions:
- How big is the porn problem?
- What is porn addiction?
- What is the cycle of addiction?
- What is the way out?
We hope it will be helpful to you in your journey to walk in purity.
Posted in Purity | accountability, addiction, behavior, character, confession, emotions, Grace, intimacy, lust, porn, Purity, Purity Report, sex, shame, sin, temptation | Leave a commentFeeding our Appetites
Published August 14, 2011 | One thing that I have heard before that wasn’t encouraging to me at the time, but looking back I understand…
Once we act out, we find it easy to redouble our efforts. Like any appetite, once we feed it, it is quelled for a time. This is true of our sexual appetite. When we indulge ourselves, the sexual hunger is satiated and doesn’t bother us for a time. It could be a few days or even a few weeks or months. Our efforts to avoid temptations and maybe avert our attention from objects of temptation come easy for a time after acting out.
It isn’t easy when the siren’s call to dash ourselves on the rocks grows from a whisper to a shout. The hardest part of recovery is growing to the point where we are able to withstand temptation when the hunger hasn’t been fulfilled.
We have to remember that the thing we actually hunger isn’t sex, but intimacy, connection and pleasure. The false intimacy and connection of pornography, and the fleeting pleasure of masturbation always leave us flat. And like any appetite, it only grows as we indulge it.
Like I said, that is tough and may not sound encouraging right now, but I felt that it would be helpful to you in the long run. Stay strong and use the time when the temptation is low to build real intimacy, connection and healthy sources of pleasure into your life. That is the best way to combat the temptation to come.
If you don’t have face-to-face friendships with others who can encourage you, start out by joining our forums for strugglers at The Purity Report. It is a safe environment to begin talking about your temptations in a structured way and receive prayer and encouragement.
Posted in Purity, Recovery | addiction, behavior, character, emotions, growth, intimacy, lust, masturbation, porn, Purity, Recovery, relationships, sex, temptation | Leave a commentOperation Integrity – Emotional Triggers
Published June 21, 2011 | We became entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
You’re blessed when you get your inside world–your mind and heart–put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
Matthew 5:8 The Message
“No matter what we do or where we hide, we can’t escape our essential design. We long to be free of shame’s restraints, immersed in the passion of giving and receiving. We long to live a sacrificial life that matters today and tomorrow.”
- Dan Allender Ph D
It is a good idea for us to review our Step Four inventory along with our sponsor or counselor. When doing this review with an open mind and heart, we can begin to see how difficult emotions can be triggers for our addictions. While emotions can be our triggers, our character defects are the building blocks of addiction, and our self-centeredness is the cement which holds our addictive nature together. We will never find the freedom to recover and live well until we remove all of these addictive components from within us.
In reviewing our inventory, we can see how our character defects began innocently when we were children. They were our means of survival. We learned to manipulate to get our needs met. We lied to protect ourselves. We hid our emotions to avoid embarrassment and shame. We rationalized things in order to escape ugly realities that were too much for us to bear alone. Our character defects are really ineffective tools for coping and control. They are our methods of minimizing pain and diffusing threats that we see coming our way. Without realizing it, our character defects have become a kind of strategy to care for ourselves when are afraid that no one else will.
We may feel afraid when we think of losing our defective coping mechanisms. After all, we have, at least to some degree, subconsciously thought that our character defects were important for us to survive. Thinking this way, we will subconsciously mourn the thought of having our character defects removed from us. Because letting go of our character defects can be painful, it is important that we lean on those who have been working at recovery longer than we have. Those who have more experience will understand our pain and fear. Fearing the loss of a coping mechanism is understandable, but it is essential for us to grieve these losses without complaint so that we can effectively move on down the path of recovery.
Exercising courage makes it possible to learn new and healthy ways to live our lives without resorting to the addictions that we have relied on in the past. With courage, we trade our destructive emotions and addictions for the simple gift of gratitude. Gratitude posts a guard at the door of our hearts, which is to be accessed only by God and those whom He allows. Gratitude will help us to be thankful for life as it is, not how we wish it or expect it to be. Today and every day, we stand at a crossroad. But we don’t stand alone. Our recovery fellowship stands with us. Even better, the Source of all power, God, has joined the battle for us to live a new way, to become new people, to be free.
Insights and Inspirations for Christian Twelve Step Recovery?
By David Zailer and The Men and Women of Operation Integrity
Chapter Six Segment Five
Copyright David Zailer, 2008
Operation Integrity
24040 Camino del Avion #A115
Monarch Beach CA 92629
1-800-762-0430
operationintegrity@cox.net
Posted in Recovery | accountability, addiction, brokenness, character, emotions, growth, Recovery, relationships, shame | 2 CommentsPure and Angry
Published June 20, 2011 | 
It is normal to start feeling anger and irritation once you set your acting out behaviors aside. Now that you aren’t medicating your feelings, they will come to the surface. The first, and easiest emotion to identify with, especially for men, is anger. We easily recognize this one.
In counseling, I learned that anger is always a secondary emotion. It is a surface-level emotional response to a deeper feeling. The same counselor gave me an acrostic that helps me dig underneath my anger. It is GIFT, which stands for Guilt, Inferiority, Fear or Trauma. These are big buckets that help me categorize what I am feeling and share it with my accountability team and when possible with my wife.
For me, the first three are the usual suspects (guilt, inferiority, fear). Once I began digging into those more deeply and regularly, I learned some of the nuances of my emotions (I have been so ignorant of this part of my soul for most of my life). For instance, inferiority is more accurately feeling invalidated as a man for some reason. That is an enormous trigger for me – it makes me angry and can quickly put me on the dreaded “autopilot” to acting out with masturbation or pornography.
Anniversary Thoughts
Published June 1, 2011 | 
Today is my ninth wedding anniversary. I wanted to share some of my random thoughts about the day:
- I love her more today than the day we married – love grows when it is tended
- Marriage has been the single largest catalyst for change in my life outside of God himself
- Unconditional love is my greatest value, and my greatest challenge – it is not a fruit of the flesh
- False intimacy is no substitute for real intimacy (into me see)
- Intimacy does not equal sex – physical intimacy is intimacy in its shallowest form
- Love is both a verb and a feeling. I need to “feel it” often, and “do it” when I don’t.
- My wife doesn’t want me to “fix” her when she is upset, just hold her and tell her everything is okay. Why is that so hard for me to do?!
I could go on and on.
Marriage is under a lot of fire these days. I can understand why – our culture is primarily self-centered. Good marriages require that we be other-centered. It is counter-cultural and counter to our human nature.
Marriage is a supernatural bond that only works when we love the way God loves – unconditionally, sacrificially, deeply and passionately!
Posted in marriage | emotions, family, intimacy, love, marriage, relationships, Spouses | Leave a commentPurity Bytes Podcast – Episode 3 – HALT
Published February 2, 2011 | 
The Purity Bytes Podcast (on iTunes)
Byte-sized chunks of wisdom about sexual purity…
Episode 3: H.A.L.T.
Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired
In this episode, we talk about four common triggers for addictive behavior.
Processing “Slips” in Recovery
Published December 18, 2010 | Don’t Let Your Lust Go Unaccounted For!
A while ago we blogged about identifying the biggest triggers for our lust. The point of that blog post was to encourage us to proactively identify what the main triggers for our lust may be and put guardrails in place to safeguard us from them.
Triggers can be very different from person to person, but generally fall into two categories:
- Physical Triggers (people, places, things)
- Emotional Triggers (feelings, thoughts, circumstances)
One of the most important aspects of recovery from porn/sex addiction is taking the time after a “slip” to process what happened. What were the specific triggers leading up to this particular episode?
Using the categories of physical and emotional triggers, we can gain valuable insight into our addiction after giving in to sin. Looking at it differently, you could say that it is discovering what the enemy used to gain access to our lives in this instance. Furthermore, over time we will see patterns emerging. This information about our addiction is absolutely necessary if we are to find real, lasting freedom from sexual sin.
Here are some questions that may be helpful when looking back and processing a fall. When answering them, don’t think just about the exact time that you acted out, but think about the last week or so leading up to it.
Physical Triggers
- What places did I go to that triggered lustful thoughts and feelings (including places online)?
- What people did I encounter that triggered lustful thoughts and feelings?
- What things did I come across that triggered lustful thoughts and feelings (including things online)?
Emotional Triggers
- What specific feelings have I wanted to escape or numb myself to? How long have I had these feelings?
- What has my mood or attitude been like? What has contributed to my mood or attitude?
- What feelings of anger or frustration have I been feeling? What is the cause of that anger or frustration? Who is involved?
- What feelings of resentment am I feeling? Who are those feelings directed toward?
- What stressful circumstances have I been dealing with? How have these contributed to the feelings I listed above?
- What have my predominant thoughts been focused upon? How do these thoughts mesh with the feelings and circumstances I listed above?
- What thoughts have specifically led to fantasy and arousal? How long have I been entertaining these thoughts? What feelings and circumstances have been in play since I have entertained these thoughts?
The next step is to decide what you are going to do with this information. How can you use it to help protect yourself from giving into sin in the future? What do you need to pray for wisdom and strength to guard against? Where do you need to specifically shore up your accountability? What do you need to avoid altogether?
Taking the time to carefully and courageously reflect upon our physical and emotional triggers is a non-negotiable aspect of recovery from addiction. Make a pact with yourself and your accountability network that you will always take the time to complete such an inventory when you give in to your lust. Don’t wait days or weeks to process your slip. Our addictive minds quickly cover up all of this junk when we act out. Take advantage of the time fresh from a fall, when your emotions are still raw and your conscience is screaming, to reflect upon what happened. You will not regret it!
How Can I Save My Marriage? Part 1
Published December 17, 2010 | 
This is part 1 of a multi-part series.
I’ve never had to rescue my marriage from the jaws of divorce so everything I am about to write can be chalked up to idle speculation and whimsy.
Last year I watched two dear, close, married friends casually realize that they were no longer in love with each other. They were happy and successful at the time and they just sort of grew apart. You know how it is, things change, people change, it just happens. It was nobody’s fault really and the divorce proceedings were quite amicable. Remarkably, their friendship has actually been strengthened by the whole thing.
Last year I watched two dear, close, married friends emotionally rape each other for a while, tire of it, and then do the only sensible and humane thing. They wrestled their wedding vows into a sack, dragged them off into the woods squealing and thrashing, bound them to a stump, and blew their collective brains out.
One of these two stories is true and it really doesn’t matter to me which one. I don’t want either to be the story that my kids recite about themselves when catching up with long lost friends. So, in the event that they do face difficult times in marriage, I want to go on the record with how I believe one can be saved.
1. Believe That Love Is Not An Emotion
I heard a man say once that love is not an emotion. What he said was:
“Love is an act of the will, accompanied by emotion, that leads to action on behalf of it’s object.”
If this is true then we’ve been taught a lie. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been told that love is something that happens to me and not the other way around. It’s something I “fall” into and “fall” out of. That love is quite unpredictable and equally out of my control. I’ve been taught that love is an emotion.
But love is not a feeling. It is grander and more noble a thing than that. Another way to say it is that love is not merely biochemical. It is not a rush of endorphins or the perfect cocktail of serotonin. It sort of sounds silly until you realize that some of the most epic and inspiring acts of love are those that are expressed in direct opposition to personal feelings. Like when a wife forgives her husband’s infidelity, not because she is feeling at all loving or sentimental, but because she is honoring the love she felt in the past and choosing to believe she will feel it again in the future.
Let me tell you about emotions. Emotions go on vacation. They leave and forget to bring you with them. Or they blend in with the scenery like a chameleon so that you cannot detect them. Or they go to work and they stay there, sending your husband home every night without them, so that it seems like he is only alive when he is away from you.
But love? Love is different. Love is an act of the will, accompanied by emotion. It is more intricate, more ornate, and more holy than a simple feeling could ever aspire to be.
If you want to save your marriage then the first step is to believe that love is not merely an emotion.
Reproduced with permission of dewde.com
The 5 Common Types of Sexual Addiction – Part 2
Published September 19, 2010 | Psychological deficits
The second most common type of addiction-psychological-is created when sex is used to “medicate” against painful memories or relational experiences from childhood in adulthood. In other words, we all have emotional/relational needs that must be met developmentally: affirmation, attachment/bonding, gender affiliation, trust, responsibility, honesty, and others. When these needs are not met or when we develop scarring as a result of abuse or neglect, the result is pain. You could call this “soul pain” and a soul in pain will seek medication. So, the addict has chosen sex as his “poison” to cover up the effects of this psychological pain instead of facing the pain and growing through it.
For me, the main sources of pain were my relationships with parents and peers. My parents loved me and I knew that, however, they were limited in what they could give me and sometimes what they gave me was harmful. My dad was a bit relationally stunted and passive: he was very fun and likeable but unable to connect on a heart-to-heart level with me or show me how that was done as a male. My mother, also fun-loving and caring, had an anger issue and would sometimes get controlling and violent. My peers were merciless from 6th grade through 10th when I was bullied and called names that were terribly feminizing and confusing.
The net effect was that I had a love-hate relationship with men, looking for them to rescue me, while waning in my ability to respect them. When it came to women, I was not interested in anything other than friendships because that felt like healing and not something that would consume or violate me. And as far as peers were concerned, I’ve had to work through trust issues and take risks to be “fully-known and fully accepted” (the very definition of intimacy).
Furthermore, the confusing attractions towards men came from the need to be affirmed in my own masculinity and have a sense of mastery over life-something that good looks, big muscles, a sense of freedom and adventure and all the other things I was attracted to in males was trying to give me in a false or counterfeit way. Part of this root came also by way of comparison/contrast in my relationship with peers and being a “late-bloomer.” Puberty came later than normal for me and this, coupled with having to shower after gym class every day in 7th and 8th grade, created a sense of inferiority, jealousy and strife around things s_xual and anatomical. The mix of this psychological deficit and the regular practice of masturbation with the images of the other, more developed and endowed boys, made for a very powerful longing for what I didn’t seem to have and an attachment to what they appeared to.
You may learn more about Jayson Graves and his excellent counseling ministry, Healing for the Soul by visiting their website – www.healingforthesoul.org.
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