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Anxiety Help and Pornography Issues

anxiety help, pornography, counselingGet anxiety help when dealing with pornography issues. These two issues are often combined and often not separated in people’s minds. Pornography can often be a symptom of something else going on. For example, when you feel anxious, you might cope with that anxiety through using pornography. This isn’t something most people recognize they are doing, but something they automatically do. 

 

Anxiety Can Lead To Pornography Use

 

Let’s talk about how anxiety can lead to pornography use. It’s common that when you are feeling uncomfortable emotions that you want to avoid them. Most people do this naturally and without thinking. It can be as simple as getting a soda or something sweet to eat. Consuming these things gives you a hit or natural chemicals (i.e., dopamine) that helps you deal with your uncomfortable emotions. 

 

This can be taken to an extreme level. Drugs and even alcohol can play the role of numbing your discomfort – let’s use anxiety here. When you feel anxious, you smoke marijuana. It helps you calm down and ‘feel better’. The same can be said of pornography use. When you use pornography a flood of dopamine is released. Your uncomfortable anxiety seems to go away periodically. You learn to use this every time you feel anxious and eventually can become addicted. 

 

What To Do When My Anxiety Is Pushing Me To Use Pornography

 

One of the best things you can do when you are anxious is to learn how to cope with it in a healthy manner. Instead of trying to get rid of it – which usually leads to avoiding it and then becoming addicted to something (Related Article: Coping Or Avoiding: Why Knowing The Difference Matters) – try picking it up. This takes you being able to recognize your emotions, feel them and then cope with them (Related Article: Emotions 101: How To Be Healthy and 3 Principles Of Emotional Health). 

 

When you are able to recognize your emotions, or anxiety, then it puts you in a position to feel it. When you feel your emotions, or anxiety, then you are in a position to let it go. This is the healthy way to deal with it. You will want to see, however, if your anxiety is a secondary or primary emotion (Related Article: How To Be Emotionally Healthy: Primary Versus Secondary Emotions). 

 

Focus Specifically On Your Pornography Issues

 

Getting help for pornography issues can also help your anxiety problems. When you are using pornography, you are numbing yourself from feeling and aren’t able to build emotional muscle. You need to put yourself in a position to feel so you can pick those emotions up and build muscle. This helps with your ability to handle anxiety better. See these related articles; Pornography Is An Avoidance Issue, Not A Sex Issue, My Spouse Is Using Pornography, What Do I Do?, and Pornography Counseling: Find Recovery And Healing.  

 

Get anxiety help through a trained counselor in Orem, South Jordan, Spanish Fork and American Fork. We do telehealth therapy as well

 

Written by Triston Morgan, PhD, Utah Marriage and Family Therapist

Utah Therapy

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