Hello, I am a recovering Catholic from porn addiction. I would like to share my insight on my journey that the Holy Spirit has definitly led me to due to prayer. For anyone out there struggling, this is for you. To use ‘curing a disease’ as an example, God not only gives us prayers but also doctors, medication and other avenues to work towards our goals of recovery in becoming the best version of ourselves, the person God made us to be! Anyways let me share with you all some things I have learned on my road to recovery.
4 Needs:
Positive Self Image
Self Care
Healthy Relationships
Meaning and Purpose
All of these things, as you can probably tell can be rooted in our faith however from a practical aspect “when the bullets are flying” in this culture we live in I can further define these in our cultural environment.
Self image includes our self esteem, what we see ourselves as, worth etc. Positive affirmations, and acknowledging and accepting Gods love and grace for us gives us a better self image.
Self care is broken in three types: Physical (working out), emotional (journaling, counseling etc), and spiritual (prayer, mass, sacraments).
Healthy Relationship: We have a basis need to connect with other folks. For men, we have a need to hear what people see in us that they value. For women, a need to feel loved. These can be cultivated in many different ways.
Our meaning and purpose: As we know as Catholics, this should be fairly simple, but we need to keep it in the forefront and sometimes falls by the wayside. Our role to follow in Jesus Christ’s example and to spread the truth, not just verbally, but by our EXAMPLE is paramount. We see the good and bad in our culture and see the simple cures that are found in Catholisim.
A good get well plan for these items includes our constant awareness and stuggle to identify triggers, that temp us. As Jesus said, if your right hand causes you to sin cut it off, or if your eye causes you to sin pluck it out. Therefore it is our responsibility to see what situations and environments we put ourselves in that cause these tempations to arise. As you will see, many of these triggers are not just external but also internal, stemming from the following emotions. Bored, Lazy, Angry, Stressed, Tired, Depressed.
Once we can identify our triggers, this is what we can’t do… avoid them. I don’t mean go to the websites and “face them head on”. I mean we can’t live a life of constant worry, fear, and anxiety. We must recognize them and face them by confronting them fully knowing that they are there once we are initially tempted. We then must honestly state that we want to give into them, we acknowledge that these temptations are there, but we don’t want to any longer becasue it is a sin, unhealthy etc. Then what we must do is replace that habit with another habit. i.e. pushups, drawing, journaling, something healthy. After we have faced and replaced that behavior we have to connect with somebody immidiately to fill the void that these addictions have been trying to fill i.e. loving our neighbor. This closes the loop circuited in ourselves built into us from God. Continual exercise of this and you will begin seeing improvement and your habits will erode away slowly. Constant confession is always helpful and don’t get down on yourself. Remain faithful and through time you will come out stronger than when you entered these trials in the first place.
For more I would suggest signing up here, it helped me a ton:
candeobehaviorchange.com/
If you have any more questions I would love to help, feel free to reply or PM me. I have done this program which has scientific studies to back it. This past decade, science has made a huge jump in research of the brain and this program is a product of that. Keep in mind that our science advances do not conflict with the faith but improve upon it, as the pontifical academy of sciences can show
casinapioiv.va/content/accademia/en.html
Science advances coupled with our faith, prayer, and sacraments is a sure way to beat these temptations and struggles as well as mold the future of our world grounded in truth.