Anonymous Candeo Student
This is an excerpt from a Candeo Student’s communication with his Candeo Coach. Candeo Students often express that finally understanding how their addiction works makes a huge difference in their recovery. We have the Student’s permission to share this on our blog:
The story of my struggle against porn addiction is way long, full of grief, loss, pain, suffering, betrayal, anguish, resent, remorse, failure, sins, and the list goes on. Actually let me tell you the real reason I finally decided to look for a way to quit pornography. For the past six years I had been watching porn and masturbating secretly at night on my laptop. First few years, I actually liked it. But after a while I began avoiding it considering the fact that it was a sin. But the more I avoid it, the more I did it. I attempted to take my life once too, but somehow God saved me. After a while, there came a point when I said forget it, I can never overcome this addiction. I will just have to live with this for the rest of my life. Than something tragic happened just 4 months ago.
My aunt died, of lung cancer. She was a non-smoker and her age was 35. I was shocked!! She was my best friend, my guardian, my inspiration. She was a kind of a person who will put the needs of others before her. She actively participated in charity drives, raising funds for orphans, helping the poor by providing them with food, shelter, clothing etc. For such a benevolent person to leave this world with so much pain was awful. My world toppled upside down. I first desired to be a rich man with lots of wealth , cars, and of course women. But now, I just wanted to dedicate my life to helping others who are in need. But as long as I was watching porn and masturbating, I couldn’t see my self becoming a benevolent person like my aunt. So for the past 4 months, I had been extensively browsing the internet for fixing my addiction and I finally found Candeo. And with the blessing of God, and my aunt, I have been porn free for almost a month. I have been actively participating in performing good deeds, like giving charity, helping out disabled in the public, helping my mom, playing with my little cousins, and many more smaller things.
I’ve just started level 3 of the training today. And I have to agree things are beginning to make sense. All these years I had been fighting with myself to stop this addiction and often would be successful in controlling this addiction for few days. It is what you call the “control phase” where I would just dig in and try with all my strength to control all my thoughts and where my eyes go and try to do everything as perfect as I can.
Then after several days the battle would wear me out and the control cycle would break and then I enter into the release cycle where I give in and look at porn because I’m tired of fighting. I would stay in the release cycle until I get so disgusted with myself that I vow never to look at porn again and then I head back to the control cycle. Back and forth, over and over for years and years.
Probably the most helpful content in the Candeo recovery training would be the Funnel and how it explains all of the brain science behind my addiction. Now it makes sense why when I’m watching porn, every thought of my future, my parents, my studies, my God, my health are blocked out till I release. I was very impressed by the results I got from the exercise and assignment at the end of level 2. It just got to me that all these years when I watched porn, I never once smiled or felt happy while watching it. I just felt satisfied for few moments. But as I did the exercises to really connect to people, it really made me happy and smile. I am really optimistic about this program now and so far it is showing some great results. Thanks for helping me.
Some time back, an individual struggling with porn addiction left a message on one of our blogs. Porn was creating a major barrier to having healthy, fulfilling relationships. See if you can relate—
This has been my reality for as long as I can remember. I was wondering if anyone else has had/does have the same problem. My porn addiction has progressed since the age of 10, I am now 23. Without going into all the details of my life, by the time I hit my 20′s my addiction had completely taken over all aspects of my being, taking me away from enjoying almost everything else. This can also be said for my love life. It got to the stage where I’d quickly become bored sexually with new partners. Even for women that I was in love with, when it came to sex, I ended up choosing porn over them.
I’m single at the moment as you’d probably expect, stuck in a position where my addiction has resulted in me conditioning myself to only respond/get some form of sexual gratification from pornography, despite how empty and unfullfilling it really is. It’s a sad state of affairs and I know that along side my desire to break free from my addiction, I also want to find love. I have no troubles attracting women, but I have stopped hooking up with any because despite how much I may like them, I just no longer desire sex with a real person. I will add that having a high sex drive makes no difference if it’s only directed towards porn, as is my problem. Like many others out there, I’m living proof of how destructive sex/porn addiction really is. Thank you for reading and letting me share my story with you.
You might me wondering, “How in the world can this guy be so caught up in porn that he can longer have a relationship with a real person?” If you’ve spent much time on the Candeo website, you know that we focus heavily on brain science. This individual’s story is a perfect example of the power of a neuroscience principle called, “Context-Based Reinforcement.”
This simply means that when we consistently repeat a specific behavior in the same environment or set of circumstances, over time that behavior becomes deeply reinforced in the brain and becomes an automatic habit. Put a “high reward” into the mix, and the habit can quickly turn into an addiction (a destructive behavior we keep repeating in spite of the negative consequences).
Back to our example—for 13 years, the individual turned to porn as his primary sexual outlet. Mixed in with the porn viewing was the high reward of sexual climax. In previous articles, I’ve talked about the powerful brain chemical-release triggered by climax. When a certain activity is repeatedly linked to climax, that activity becomes deeply rutted and dominant in the brain—Context-Based Reinforcement. Over time, this individual built a sexual circuitry in his brain that linked sexual climax to the fantasy of pornography instead of a real human being in a long-term committed relationship. He literally “re-wired” his brain, making healthy sexual intimacy nearly impossible.
The good news in all of this is that the brain is neuroplastic—it’s moldable, shapeable and changeable. Just because you have used Context-Based Reinforcement to build specific brain circuitry over time, that doesn’t mean you’re forever stuck or trapped. You CAN change your own brain—you can shrink unwanted sexual behavior circuitry while building new healthy sexuality circuitry. Using the right knowledge, tools and skills, the individual in our example can get to the place where he is able to enjoy healthy sexual intimacy in a long-term committed relationship. The amazing thing is, the same type of brain process that got him into this mess in the first place—Context-Based Reinforcement—can be used to get him out!
This is what the Candeo program is all about—helping people harness and direct the amazing powers for positive change that already exist within the remarkable human brain.
