Addicted to Porn: Chasing the Cardboard Butterfly Page #8

I do love you. I'm not perfect.

But I cannot compete with that

no matter what I do. I can't."

My... perception of myself

changed so drastically.

I still struggle with some

of the residual from that.

And... And...

I don't feel like I had the...

You know, men are supposed

to be nurturing to their wives,

and make them feel beautiful, and all of

those things, and I didn't feel any of that.

They want to know that

there is a man that they desire,

that they respect,

that looks at them,

and treats them differently than

any other woman in the world.

That there is something special

or unique about who they are

that can somehow touch this man

the way no other woman does.

So, woman who have that need,

women who have that desire

in a world where

pornography is the norm

are totally hopeless to feel

special in a real relationship.

Here's an

interesting thought.

It takes alcohol less than 24

hours to leave your system.

Cocaine takes about

two to four days.

But pornography can never

be purged from the mind.

Essentially, the person's

carrying around their drug.

So, memories of

previous viewings,

of previous images

can be replayed any time.

And so, a person that is not in

recovery will re-play those images,

and that will trigger

an intense desire to revisit

and to escalate with time.

Just what is it that keeps drawing

people into the deep chasm of porn

and holding them there?

Many experts and those that are

stuck in the throes of addiction

have a simple term for that psychological

process that holds so many captive.

The shame cycle.

You know, secrets have shame attached

to them. As long as a person has

that secret behavior

and the shame,

I think it acts really like a magnet

to draw them back into that behavior.

A person's feeling bad

about what they're doing.

"Gee, what would

make me feel better?"

It's torturous.

I've worked with too many

spouses and partners of folks

who've been struggling with

sexually compulsive behaviors

to not see it as a completely

traumatic experience for them.

And so the trauma that they're

going through is very real.

And when we go into a trauma state,

what do people tend to do in their trauma?

They don't tend to reach out.

They tend to close in.

They go back and revert to whatever it was,

historically, that they used in the past

to take care of themself.

It's exactly how it works.

Once you...

Once I would, you know,

go all the way, so to speak,

and look at porn,

and masturbate,

and get what I was after,

I would feel terrible.

I'd feel awful about it,

and at that point, that shame just

kept building up inside of me,

and building up and building up

to the point where I was looking to

not feel ashamed of myself anymore.

And what would I do?

Go back to the only way that I knew

how to make myself feel better.

It's both a consequence

and a precursor.

It's a byproduct

of what I've been doing.

It's the shame,

and it leads me back into it.

And then by doing it,

it builds up the shame,

and we call it the shame cycle.

We call it the addictive cycle.

It just keeps playing

itself back out.

It's a self-defeating cycle,

self-defeating process.

And it's the one thing

I can go to

to alleviate the pain that I

feel as a result of doing it.

It's insidious.

One of the biggest

costs that's there

is in the struggle with

my own sense of identity.

I maintain

to the people around me

that I am

this one particular person.

And my way of viewing myself,

I see myself

much less of a person

than what I portray

to those around me.

Every time I participate in

behavior that I deem to be wrong,

that I believe

to be something that

people who are important to me

would disapprove of that behavior,

the gap between

who I see that I am

and who I portray to other

people becomes larger.

And the larger that gap, the more my

sense that I am a poser, an impostor.

The more my sense

that I am a fraud.

The more of a sense that if people knew me,

they would reject me.

And so, the walls

and the barriers to intimacy

become higher,

and stronger, and thicker.

So it really is a shame cycle,

and it continues over. If anybody found out,

you know, that I struggle with this...

How do I come clean with this?

When I'm in my deepest shame,

it's when I'm in those places

where I have

my biggest vulnerabilities.

And human beings are fairly vulnerable

when it comes to our sexuality.

Being naked with another person

and being seen.

"Do I perform well? Do I measure up?

Am I doing the right things?"

And anything that's outside

of the quote-unquote "norm",

the consequence to the human

being that's experiencing that

is gonna be despair, and hurt,

and confusion, and fear.

And I have no desire for anybody

to know this about me,

and I'll do anything and

everything to throw a mask on,

so you don't see

this part of me.

I think that shame and stigma

are really damaging

and dangerous.

You know, as a kid,

I was born with one hand,

and I grew up being different.

I know what it's like

to be different.

And I know what it's like to be stigmatized

and excluded as being different.

That's what I see happening with people who

are called porn addicts and sex addicts.

They're shamed.

They're said they're different.

They're told, "There's

something wrong with you,

and you need to stop."

The DSM-5,

otherwise known as the "Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders",

is the standard classification

of mental disorders

used by mental health professionals

in the United States.

In it, you will find such

disorders as schizophrenia,

anorexia, bulimia, hoarding,

even gambling addiction.

What you won't find is any

literature on sexual addiction,

more specifically,

addiction to pornography.

Ask those in the field,

and you'll get a myriad of answers

ranging from "a void

of scientific proof,"

"society being behind the curve

in understanding its own nature."

Or the DSM simply lacking

common sense.

One thing is apparent.

There is a clear need to begin discussing

and understanding this issue

and its very real existence,

how ever it is to be labeled.

Problematic porn use

looks like addiction.

Is it?

That's the question.

That's the question

at the heart of it.

Is it addiction

in the same way

that addiction to drugs exists?

Is there a tolerance?

Does it take more of

that drug of choice

to bring about the same

kind of behavior?

Are they engaged in things that,

in behaviors that are harming

them or harming somebody else?

Do they repeat 'em?

Do they lie to cover it up?

Do they make efforts to stop

and are unable to stop?

Do they make promises to stop,

and then they go back,

um, to that same old behavior?

When I see all of these

things taking place,

then I say, you know, there probably is

an addiction going on with that person,

whether they

recognize it or not.

And then there is the DSM-5.

In the DSM-5,

the new manual for addictions,

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