Clarifying Your Values: Vital Toots to Beat Sex Addiction

Clarifying Your Values: Vital Tools to Quit Porn Addiction

In sex addiction recovery and porn addiction treatment, there are several key tools that can assist you. Below are several such devices that should be closely adhered to in your recovery.

The first important tool is to substitute destructive, obsessive behaviors with value-boosting activities.

Put time aside to do some soul searching, and ask yourself what the most significant values in your life are. What is most important to you: family, work, relationships, spiritual beliefs, financial security, self-worth? No matter what your values may be, you probably are experiencing a clash between your core beliefs and your sexual behaviors. Take note of the large gap that separates them.

If your days are filled with actions that echo your personal values and beliefs, instead of behaviors that only provide self-gratification, is it possible to lead a truly wonderful life?

Try to imagine your porn addiction as a controlling, at times overpowering, attachment that you rely on for pleasure and sanctuary when you’re unable to find satisfaction in other aspects of your existence. The more you rely on the addiction, the more important it becomes in your life. But as you constantly turn to it, the number of damaging problems it creates start to add up, and in turn you feel you have no choice but to return to the addiction’s false refuge.

If internet porn is a source of comfort for you, and interferes with achieving meaningful involvements in relationships and activities, the addiction has confined you.

However, don’t become hopeless. Addiction can be overcome; many people can attest to that fact. Before an individual creates a “game plan,” (which should be done in time), it is important to construct a powerful basis of understanding-the values you most strongly embrace-and decide upon motivational goals. These will embolden your spirit as you travel down the path towards sex addiction recovery.

If you feel that you’re at a personal crossroads and an important life change must take place, it’s important to find some things out about yourself. Reach inside and seek out the values and beliefs you hold dear but have left behind. Think about what’s most important to you.

Now consider creating some additional values that could give your existence a renewed sense of purpose. Once you realize how the addiction is destroying what you feel is most significant, the way to escape your addiction is often revealed. By utilizing your personal beliefs and values as tools, you can try to conquer your addiction.

Why are Values Important in Sex Addiction Recovery?

As you focus intently on achieving sexual highs, much to the exclusion of others in both a personal and professional capacity, your true values can be seen. You are indicating either that you believe there is nothing wrong in what you’re doing or that your other values are not as important as the fleeting sexual satisfaction that is achieved from porn addiction. When you think about the distinctions between being stimulated by a desire for self-pleasure and being inspired by your true values, it creates quite a different picture.

In “7 Tools to Beat Addiction,” author Stanton Peele describes those values that help battle addiction:

Achievement – completing positive and socially valuable goals, such as in athletic participation, success at work, or providing for your family.

Activity – being energized and fully involved with the world that surrounds you.

Health – opting for an overall healthy lifestyle, including eating well and exercising.

Consciousness – being observant, alert and constantly aware of your surroundings; utilizing your intellect to make sense of your daily experiences.

Responsibility – accomplishing your obligations; understanding the spiritual components of “duty.”

Community – being consistently concerned in everything around you and participating in the well-being of your community.

Self-respect – caring not only for yourself but, by extension, all people.

How do Values Battle Sex Addiction?

Addictions sometimes stop when the person’s usage hinders their parenting abilities.

Usually, the addict is more concerned with their children’s welfare than the self-gratification they achieve from addiction. If you have kids, a fulfilling job and a basic sense of self-respect, it is harder to defend the rationalizations that often keep addiction in place.

For people who take pride in clear thinking, the “Erotic Haze,” which is essentially like standard intoxication, is not appealing. Cogent choices are impossible to make when you’re imprisoned in an addiction cycle.

People who believe in accomplishment as a central value wouldn’t waste endless hours viewing porn; rather, they’d embark on productive, stimulating lives that will enable them to succeed in their goals.

During this period of self-discovery, you should try to develop new approaches of looking at the world in a way that keeps pace with your traditional values. Take the time to actually recognize how your addiction is harming your life and is in opposition with the key beliefs that are important to you.

Appreciate what you feel is most significant and true, and work on changing your behaviors so that you come to recognize instances where your values are damaging to yourself and others. Promote your values as primary indicators of your true self and ideals.

Harness and utilize these values as fuel for your porn addiction treatment and sex addiction recovery.

Dorothy Hayden, LCSW, is a Manhattan psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in sex addiction, pornography addiction, and sexual deviation. She is the author of 45 articles on her website,  [http://www.sextreatment.com], the blog  [http://www.porn-no-more.com]  and the e-book, “Total Sex Addiction Recovery – A Guide to Therapy.”