How To Deal With Porn Addiction Triggers (Face or Avoid Them?)

Scandinavian Bob here hi.

How do you deal with porn addiction triggers?

This video / blog post is about PMO addiction triggers and whether or not we should avoid all kinds of triggers or try to learn how to master the art of facing them.

Porn addiction and your prefrontal cortex (PFC)

This is your prefrontal cortex (see video).

Let’s call it PFC from here on out.

Now, the PFC is the part of your brain that is responsible for self control. It is like your brain’s police. You know, it’s the part of your brain that prevents you from punching your boss in the face when he’s being unfair and stupid. 

Every porn addiction decision you make strengthens of weakens your PFC...

Now, did you know that every time you are presented with the choice of either following your plan or falling for temptation you have the opportunity to either build your PFC stronger or let it get weaker?

Yes, that’s right.

if you are presented with a trigger and a craving and you choose to not relapse, you build the strength of your PFC and your willpower muscle a bit.

However, if you choose to go against your own intentions and you give in, your PFC actually becomes weaker. 

Should I avoid porn addiction triggers, then?

So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at a common question I get and that is, "Should I try to avoid porn triggers and urges or not?".

Ok, that’s a very good question.

Some YouTubers say that we have to avoid porn triggers in order to not relapse, while others say that we have to learn to handle urges - so that we don’t relapse as soon as we are exposed to a trigger? 

So who’s right? 

You have to both avoid porn triggers AND learn to face them...

Well, they are both right.

You see, as with so many things in life, it’s not an either or thing.

Remember how the PFC has the ability to become stronger?

Well, this means that your reboot is not static and as you keep walking your NoFap journey your PFC will be able to handle more triggers before giving in.

Eventually you will have to learn how to face a porn addiction trigger...

Listen, at some point in life we have to be able to handle triggers because it is literally impossible to live in today’s modern world without getting exposed to a trigger every now and then.

On the other hand, if you are stuck in a relapse cycle and your prefrontal cortex is very weak then just being exposed to a trigger for 10 seconds or so may be enough to make you relapse again and again, day after day.

Here is the solution...

So here’s what to do...

You need a replacement activity for when those urges hit, in the beginning of your journey.

A couple of years ago, back when I was pmo rebooting, my replacement activity was turning off the computer and going for a walk. Or if it was raining I went for a drive.

Whenever I got hit by a really strong craving I would resort to my replacement activity...and most of the time it worked. 

Mostly avoid porn triggers in the beginning of your journey, but then build up your capability to be able to face them...

However, I knew that it is not a lifelong solution, since I can’t just keep shutting my computer down in the middle of me working on some projects for the rest of my life.

On the other hand, if I didn’t do it, I knew I would relapse sooner rather than later. 

In your first week, surf your porn craving for a a few seconds, then resort to a replacement activity...

So here’s what I did...

For the first 7 days I would surf the urges for about 10 seconds, and if they didn’t go away during those 10 seconds then I would remove myself from the computer and do my replacement activity.

And by the way the urges almost never had time to go away in just 10 seconds so I had to use my replacement activity a lot during those first 7 days. 

However, during those 10 seconds of feeling the urges, but NOT feeding them and not relapsing, the PFC already started to get a bit stronger.

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In your second week, surf the porn cravings a bit longer...

So, from the second week I increased my urge surfing time to about 20 seconds.

I would surf the urges for about 20 seconds, and if they did not go away during those seconds then I would go and take my walk. 

Now, believe it or not, but some of the time, 20 seconds was enough for them to go away, however, most of the time they did not, so I had to go for that walk.

This way you build the strength of your PFC...

But again, this is how I kept building my prefrontal cortex, as I kept adding about 10 seconds or so every week...

...sometimes a bit more.

But I kept doing this until I no longer had to do my replacement activity at all.

So, as you can see, they are both right.

You should avoid your urges and you should also be able to handle them, but it depends on where you are with your brain health. 

If porn addiction triggers make you relapse, remember, you need to build your PFC...

If you constantly keep relapsing you need to build your PFC, and you do this by having a replacement activity and then slowly starting to build up your PFC like I just described. 

Now, I still relapsed a few times after starting this, but the frequencies of my relapses drastically reduced as I kept working on it.

You can almost become bulletproof...

And once I got up to about 5-15 minutes of urge surfing I was pretty much bulletproof and I could stop doing my replacement activity altogether.

If you don’t know how to surf the urges I’ll leave a link to a video I made about exactly how to do that under this video. 

And remember that after you are exposed to a trigger the craving hits, and no matter what shape your brain is in, you always have a few seconds of time to choose how you are going to respond.  

Or as the famous Viktor Frankl said, 

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Alright, I hope you found the video informative, and if I ever helped you in some way and you feel that you’d like to help me by giving a little something in return, you can always buy me a cup of coffee.

Thanks for reading,

-Scandinavian Bob

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