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Dr. Trish Leigh Podcast
#Episode 161: Process in Quitting Explicit Matter: What You Need to Know — Dr. Trish Leigh
00:10:45
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So you finally figured out that porn is at the root of your problems. You have finally realized and recognized that it's causing anxiety, depression, erectile dysfunction, sexual arousal, dysfunctions of all kinds. It's probably impacting your mood, anger, irritability, productivity, focus, porn induced adhd, the list goes on and on. But you've realized it and you've recognized it and now you want to commit. That's awesome. And I want you to commit, but I want you to realize quitting porn is a process, not an event. I'm Dr. Trish Leigh, brain health and sex addiction recovery coach. In this video, I wanna share with you the process that must unfold if you are going to be able to overcome porn use and sex addictions of all kinds for the long run. So. So let's dive in. Okay? When you commit, it's actually an event and a process. Committing is, in that moment, you have made a very big decision and it's imperative that you do it. So you realize, all right, porn is destroying my relationship. It's making it so I can't meet someone, it's giving me social anxiety. And you go, I commit. That is an event. That's a one time occurrence. You're committing in that moment and that will get you this far. And it's a very important step. But I want you to realize that anything worthwhile, it basically requires commitment over and over and over and over. It is a process that unfolds with recommittal happening at every single step. So committing at that outset, the event is very important, but you have to recommit to every single step in the process. Now let's go to what is that process? In my world, that process involves unwiring, rewiring and hardwiring your brain to no longer need porn. Now let's talk about unwire. To start off, what are we unwiring? We are unwiring the need for high levels of dopamine. Now, your brain goes back to porn. It may go back to other sexual acting out behaviors. It's for the dopamine. But why do you need dopamine? You need the dopamine because first and foremost, when you were young and you found porn, it lit your brain up with a deluge of dopamine. And in that moment, it recalibrated your brain to need more dopamine. But why does it need it? Ultimately, it ends up needing it for mood regulation. We know this from scientific studies that people go back to porn to offset stress number one and boredom number two. And I think of Boredom as lack of overstimulation in today's digital age. So it's actually not boredom at all. It's just the fact that your brain doesn't have 19 things to do over stimulation. So it's mood random regulation. You're going back to porn to feel good so that you don't have to feel bad. Now we know that this is external mood regulation. I've seen thousands of brains that are addicted to porn, and you know what I know about them? I know that they have lost the muscle memory of feeling good by themselves. I can see it in the distinct porn addiction brain pattern. It shows the need for an external source to slide the brain into neutral. That's what dopamine does. It slide you into neutral for a time. And if you keep doing it too much, it slides you into neutral semi permanently. And when you're in neutral semi permanently, you have low motivation, you may have anhedonia, you don't feel good about anything, you feel depressed, and you have sexual arousal dysfunctions. Neutral your get up and go. Got up and went. So this is what a brain looks like. Looks like after it has seen and felt that dopamine deluge over and over and over. It needs something outside of itself to feel good because it's lost the ability to feel calm by itself. This is the essence of porn addiction. We are unwiring this pattern that you have inadvertently been wiring into your brain over months, years, decades. For most people, it has to be unwired. So we're unwiring the dopamine dependency that's necessary for you for mood regulation to not feel bad. When we get to compulsion and addiction, it's so you don't feel bad. In your real life, it's not even so you feel good, it's so you don't feel bad. And guess what's causing it. This is going to blow your mind. Porn is causing the dopamine deficit in your life. So what it means is now you go back to the hobbies you used to love, but there's not enough dopamine there because your brain's been taught all the dopamines in the screen. Now you go to your work that you used to love. Nope, not enough dopam there either. All the dopamine's in the screen. You go to be with your partner, not enough dopamine there. You know where it is. It's in the screen. So now your sexual satisfaction goes down. You're not able to perform well, your productivity goes down at work because there's no driver there. You stop doing the things you love. And you know what this does to you? It keeps you in the negative feedback loop, the downward spiral of going back into the screen. That, my friend, is what we're unwiring. Number two, what are we rewiring? We're rewiring two very important things. Number one, we're rewiring your brain back to the healthy optimal level. And honestly, if you found porn when you were young, you may have never experienced this optimal level. Let that sink in. Let me say it again. If you found porn when you were young, your brain is underdeveloped. That's what one scientific study calls it. Honestly, I don't love the word, but it hits underdeveloped. It never developed into the healthy optimal performance pattern. So you've never experienced your full potential because porn' keeping you from it. This girl's on a mission to help you reach your full potential. And if porn's in the mix, you won't be able to. So when we rewire your brain back to healthy optimal levels, first of all, you're going to feel and perform better than you ever have. It's going to blow your mind and secondarily, it's going to help you achieve your goals. So we have to rewire your brain back to those healthy levels. Now, how do we do it? I do it for people, or with them rather. But I do it with people by using advanced technology. The way I can see how a person's brain is performing is on something called a QEEG brain map. It is the first step when I work with someone. It's a way to visualize all the dysfunction in their brain, all the areas and the levels of the pattern that I've been talking about. Once we see what your brain is doing and how far it is away from the optimal pattern, then I can set very specific protocols just for you. Exactly what your brain needs to shift it back into the healthy mode, maybe for the first time ever. And the best part is it's all measurable. There's charts and graphs and data. I'm a data girl. I love science. There's data that shows us that your brain is improving, which helps you to feel calmer, more relaxed, not need something to regulate your mood. Your sexual performance improves your sexual satisfaction. And now you're digging on your honey, you're loving your work again. And you're back to the hobbies that feed real world pleasure for you. Breaking the dopamine dependency, rewiring your brain to healthy levels. Rewiring your leisure back into your real life. Sound too good to be true? It's not. This is the process. And if you take the process and you recommit to every single step along the way, you will get where you want to go. Now that's rewire. After you've done that, you've essentially set yourself up with a lifestyle that will never need porn again. You're getting healthy levels of dopamine from many, many healthy sources and you are good to go. Except guess what will throw you back into the screen faster than you can say Dr. Trish Lee. Stress. Stress will throw you back in. It's the thing. Remember mood regulation. You're using porn to offset stress. So when times of stress come in, it can be the death of a parent, it can be an argument with your partner, it can be financial distress that's happening in your life, it can be a relationship that has conflict in it. Stressors outside of you will trigger in your mind the need to go to something outside of yourself to offset that stress, to offset the internal anxiety that you feel because of the stress outside of you. But guess what? In the hardwire phase, you will build the skills to be able to recognize when stress is coming in and then to be able to manage it and mitigate it, offset it, offload it so you don't feel the internal anxiety anymore like you used to. And of course I want you to build the foundation, the hardwiring is the foundation of the lifestyle. Which means you build a lifestyle where financial distress isn't a thing that you are subjected to regularly. You now know how to engage in healthy conflict with your partner so that you have a stronger interactional style and communication skills. So you don't have arguments anymore, you have discussions. And guess what else this process gives you? It teaches you the patience, perseverance, resilience. You can stay in a thing and you know you're not going to die. That's the gift of porn addiction recovery is you learn to let a process unfold. And you learn. You might not know what's around every single turn, but you know you can handle it. Because when you have a healthy brain in your head, it leads to strong emotional regulation skills which lead you to strong self regulation skills which makes it so you don't need porn anymore. That is what can absolutely happen. So I want you to know you have to take the event of committing, then you have to engage in the process of continuing to recommit over and over and over so that you can move yourself through a process that ends up giving you the lifestyle that you want and the skills to protect it long term. You have to commit, go through the process, and then protect what you've built. When you do that, your life is waiting for you with your full potential. And it would be my honor to be part of it. So if you need help in this journey, please go over to Dr. Trishleigh.com. my team and I, we help people with this all day, every day. I'm on a mission to help you overcome porn, reach your full potential, rock out your best life. So I hope to see you over there. And until next time, control your brain or it'll control you.