I started struggling with addiction before the age of 10. So, as I focused more and more on overcoming it in my teenage years, my line of thinking was basically, “I have a problem with looking at pornography. I can’t stop doing it, and it makes me feel horrible. I need to stop this problem.” Reading that, what do you take out of it? Probably that I was dealing with a pornography problem. Well. That’s exactly what I thought was going on. So, I was surprised when I finally went to see a professional specializing in sex addiction recovery, and they told me that my problem was rooted in needs.
Huh? The issue was pornography right? But this therapist man was claiming that my issue wasn’t pornography. Rather, pornography was the medicine. And while this medicine functioned as a great pain relief at first, it soon took the road of all great pain relievers that get overused. It started making things worse.
Let’s illustrate what therapist man was telling me with an example. Let’s say you decide that you don’t like the effort and time it takes to give your body sleep, so you decide you are done with sleeping. While you have more time, and you don’t have to deal with bedtimes anymore, you also get really really tired. Eventually, your body is going to take over and get sleep isn’t it? It doesn’t matter how hard you fight your body. In the end, it is going to go to sleep. That’s because sleep is a human need; the body needs it to survive. Well, it turns out there are more needs than just the physical ones like food, shelter, and sleep. The human mind and body also needs things that are less corporeal (I had to Google that word to make sure I knew what it meant, so don’t feel bad about Googling it yourself). So when you are missing things like connection and intimacy (a.k.a needs), your body tries to provide a substitute. Hence, sexual compulsion.
Now, what are these, not-so corporeal, things? Thank you for asking! I would love to share. My therapist (thus far referred to as “therapist man”) gave me a list of 9 essential things that each human needs. Luckily for you and me, I wrote them down and took a picture.
- Belonging – being part of something larger than yourself
- Purpose – something meaningful and important to you
- Trust – a sense that you can be vulnerable with others without negative consequences
- Safety – feeling safe, it’s different from trust in that it is dependent on context* (see note)
- Connection – a sense of closeness, understanding, and mutual support with others
- Autonomy – freedom to do the things you desire to do
- Respect – being treated with equality, fairness, and balance
- Self-expression – ability to express opinions, emotions, sexuality, etc. without fear of recourse
- Play – spontaneous and creative activities without the pressure to accomplish any certain goal
Steve (a.k.a my therapist, a.k.a “therapist man”) said this is just one way of looking at needs, but I like this list.
So what were the implications? The implications were that I had to change the view I had of compulsive pornography use. Rather than thinking, “I can’t stop doing this because I feel an irresistible urge all the time” I switched my internal messaging to, “I’m participating in pornography addiction because I’m not meeting all of my human needs. So, which of my needs are being neglected?”
Okay, let’s slow things down for a second. I don’t want to give the impression that this process of addressing needs is easy. It took me a lot of help, a lot of reflection, and a lot of work to be able to determine what my missing needs were. The list of needs I have worked on since is too long and too specific to bother with sharing, but I discovered that this unmet needs idea was correct. As I started addressing my fundamental human needs, my life began to shift away from addiction. And this helped me more with overcoming the harsh effects of addiction than any attempts at simply changing my undesirable behaviors through effort and willpower.
One unfortunate thing to note is that addiction does create some deep imprints. In its overzealous efforts to help people meet their needs, it overwhelms the body with dopamine and screws with the whole system. That being said, taking care of my deeper human needs put me in a position with enough strength to actually start addressing the behavioral side of my sexual compulsions.
Even if you are not in the throes of addiction, needs are supremely important. Evaluate your life to make sure you are taking care of them. As you put in the time to work on them, your life will improve. And we love improvement.
Peace.
*Note: You can have trust with someone but still have “unsafe” experiences with them. I might feel like I can open up to my classmate and tell them anything, but if I woke up at 3 am and saw them standing over my bed with a pair of pliers and a crazy grin, not even a crazy high amount of trust would make that situation feel safe.