Pornography and Stress: An Endless Cycle – Part 2

Continued from Pornography and Stress: An Endless Cycle – Part 1.

While not always, this inability to cope and to practice healthy behaviors for dealing with stress often springs from childhood trauma, abuse, abandonment or a failure to effectively bond in early childhood relationships, primarily with parents. The individual becomes highly sensitive to stress and feels a profound need to maintain control of himself or his circumstances. In order to escape the crushing weight of trying to micromanage life, the individual often begins to explore substances or behaviors that promise to calm the brain and the body and provide a release from the constant, overwhelming tension.

For some, the stress of actually having a relationship with another person, and engaging them emotionally and intimately, is more than the individual can bear. The vulnerability and possibility of rejection or abandonment is terrifying, despite the possibility that the relationship would provide the desired sexual encounter. The relationship highlights an often unseen, but deeply held belief, that the addict is not right, not lovable, not acceptable, and not able to be him or herself without fear of judgment or rejection. For this individual, the porn experience is again a source of comfort and escape—sexual release is possible, but in the absence of vulnerability or pressure. Porn or cybersex become preferable to actual relationships.

To say that stress leads to porn consumption would be both correct and incorrect. Many people experience high levels of stress — personal or professional — and yet have no relationship with pornography. Yet for those who are accustomed to using porn to combat life battles, stress and porn consumption correlate directly. They go hand in hand — often in ways that the addict can’t even identify. Before even becoming consciously aware of distress, he is engaging in porn to ward off the threat.

Addict Patterns

What the study fails to mention is that the more a person relies upon an addictive substance or behavior in order to cope with adult life and relieve stress, the lower their resilience to stress becomes. Suddenly smaller upsets and stressors cause an elevated stress response and coping with life becomes increasingly difficult. Addicts continue to combat the negative emotions or pressures with their drug of choice (in this case pornography), but soon, if they are paying attention, they will notice they are requiring their fix in greater quantities and with greater frequency. Suddenly no amounts of stress or pressure or disappointment or emotion are bearable, and their lives have come under the total and complete control of the addiction.

The one battling an addiction may not appear nervous or anxiety-ridden. In many cases, the addicts themselves do not realize the way in which their lives are dominated by fear, stress, people pleasing, the feeling that they can’t be themselves, and a need to control circumstances and people.

Bad Medicine

The recommendation that men (or women) who experience stress or anxiety should take in a few pornographic images as a remedy, even perhaps at work before the start of the day, is a patently irresponsible way to deal with the data on porn consumption and stress relief. Illicit drugs also have relaxing or beneficial properties. Marijuana relieves stress, Oxycodone provides a pain-free high, and cocaine gives that feel-good boost that can keep you working without food or sleep for hours. Substances and behaviors have beneficial, even pleasurable, side effects, which is to say they have the power to help us almost immediately combat the regular challenges of adult life.

But that doesn’t mean we should use them. The recommendation in Men’s Health Magazine issues forth from an ignorance about the toxic effects of porn. Since we know that illicit drugs and prescription opiates often present a danger greater than their benefits, researchers, or those commenting on the research, typically don’t suggest them as a means of relieving work stress or helping an individual to deal with relational pressures.

If the individual has a weakness for porn or is inclined toward a sex addiction, “treating” stress with porn will only, in the end, create more stress. Individuals with a tendency to abuse substances or engage in destructive behaviors to combat stress and anxiety need help in going deeper into their own psychological and spiritual issues. Therapy is a clear starting point.