One day, just looking. Next day, lost control.
Is porn addiction a thing?
When I first started counseling, the presenting problems were mostly related to depression. Occasionally, I would get a call from a guy, who would find it very difficult to say what he wanted to say, and end up asking - “do you know any male counselors?”
It took me a while to realize the problem was with my responses and as there was no training offered in Colombo for sex/porn addiction, I had to do the research by myself and figure it out. Soon, I found the ‘right’ tone and approach and started helping a number of people with internet porn addiction. This was a time when Sri Lanka was said to lead the world in searching for “sex” - on Google. Not true, by the way. If you are interested in finding out why not, please have a look at “Searching for ‘Sex’ in Sri Lanka” by Nuwan Senaratna.
Now, the point of this article is to share with you some insights I learned along the way in studying addiction and treating it.
In my experience, in Sri Lanka, porn addiction is growing. There are no official numbers, but I have my counseling data which tells me that a massive increase has taken place around 2008 onward peaking during the Covid years. As many young clients have indicated, “most of the class are in it”.
But are they all addicted? No, but a fair number. The first step is to find out if someone is really addicted. There is a simple questionnaire that solves the problem of figuring this out. And if it is in the affirmative, we carry on with counseling.
The first roadblock we face is denial. A counselor has no chance of helping someone who is in denial. So we work on that until the client sees the situation clearly and is ready to take the next step. Then we find the client has some neat cognitive distortions that eagerly come to their assistance when they want to act out. Here are 5 common distortions (there are many more):
Justification - No one can turn away from it when it’s in your face.
Rationalization - It’s not possible to masturbate without porn.
Magnify - Boss was being a complete ass today, I thought I was going to have a heart attack from all that stress. I need to relax.
Minimization - It’s not so bad. It’ll take only a few minutes.
Normalization - Everybody does it / all men look at porn.
Many people believe that the most significant component of addiction counseling are the tools or techniques. Not true. On the internet, you may find hundreds of "sobriety tools" as well as workbooks for addicts. Bookending, the 3-second rule, and rubberbanding are some examples. Will they follow through? Not unless sobriety is more appealing than the desire. Sobriety must be attractive. This is the most important aspect of a counselor's job - make sobriety look so good that any other lifestyle will look worse than Medusa on a bad hair day.
Creating a vision for the future is important - but it’s not the kind of vision/mission statement a company might come up with after a lot of brainstorming. This vision is personal. Asking the client to write his/her eulogy is a good way to get them to think about their life and what they want it to be. Vision takes form here.
As the counseling process progresses, we talk about values and what ‘positive sexuality’ means to the client, and how to maintain daily disciplines that are conducive to a balanced life.
Counseling for sex/internet/porn addiction is a skill all counselors in Sri Lanka should develop. I teach a short course (1 month/online lectures) in Addiction Counseling. You can find more details here. This course is for counselors only. If you are an addict, don’t enroll in the course - get counseling. You can overcome!