EFFECTS OF PORN ON THE BRAIN, YOUR RELATIONSHIPS AND YOUR LIFE
The Mind as a Tool
In a culture that has begun to identify the mind as self, we need a shift to understand that the mind is merely a tool. We are not defined by it and we do not need to be controlled by it. This tool can either become your best friend or your worst enemy. During a time where imagination has taken a backseat to the views and beliefs of technology and political agenda, creation of the mind has become a sad, atrophied muscle.
Effects of Porn on the Brain
With the emergence of porn becoming readily accessible at the tip of your fingers, we have become a society addicted to the intensity of pixelated gratification. Whether the occasional or habitual viewer of porn, it may be having a greater effect on your life than you know.
1. Negative Emotion Dopamine Release
What is Dopamine
Dopamine is all about seeking and searching for rewards— the anticipation, the wanting, the gratification. Dopamine provides the motivation and drive to pursue potential rewards or long term goals.
Beyond drugs, food and adventure, sexual excitement releases the HIGHEST levels of dopamine and opioids. Reproduction is hard wired as job one in our genes and therefore has the highest output for such drives.
Negative Dump
The amount of dopamine that surges through the brain during porn activity has been recorded in staggering amounts. Although often referred to as the “pleasure molecule,” dopamine can also be released in high intensities due to emotions opposite to pleasure. These bursts of dopamine have detrimental effects on the brain, psyche and spirit at large.
Huge surges of negative dopamine release from porn are due to
Negative emotions such as: shame, guilt, disgust, embarrassment, anxiety & fear
The drive to seek and search
The excitement of newness and things that violate expectation creating emotions of shock, awe, and surprise.
“Many of these emotional states (anxiety, shame, shock, surprise) not only elevate dopamine, but each can also boost stress hormones & neurotransmitters (norepinephrine, epinephrine, cortisol). These stress neurochemicals increase excitement while amplifying dopamine’s already powerful effects. Over time a porn user’s brain can mistake feelings of anxiety or fear for feelings of sexual arousal. This helps explain why some porn users escalate into ever more shocking or anxiety invoking porn – as they need that extra neurochemical jolt just to become sexually aroused, or to orgasm.”
~Sourced from www.YourBrainonPorn.com
2. Coolidge Effect
Another draw that porn provides is the sheer amount of novelty. One can scroll through pages and pages of arousing images and videos. They can have multiple tabs open. They can fast forward to the peak of each video. And they can do this endlessly, if so desired. Just think about the unhealthy amounts of dopamine that are surging through the brain during such activity. But the main issue with novelty goes much deeper and can be further elucidated by the Coolidge Effect.
“Here’s how the Coolidge Effect works: The rat’s reward circuitry is squirting less and less dopamine with respect to the current female, but produces a big dopamine surge for a new female. Does that sound familiar?
Not surprisingly, rats and humans aren’t that different when it comes to response to novel sexual stimuli. For example, when Australian researchers displayed the same erotic film repeatedly, test subjects’ penises and subjective reports both revealed a progressive decrease in sexual arousal. The “same old same old” just gets boring. Habituation indicates declining dopamine.
After 18 viewings—just as the test subjects were nodding off—researchers introduced novel erotica for the 19th and 20th viewings. Bingo! The subjects and their penises sprang to attention. (Yes, women showed similar effects.)
Internet porn is especially enticing to the reward circuitry because novelty is always just a click away. It could be a novel “mate,” unusual scene, strange sexual act, or—you fill in the blank.”
~Sourced from www.YourBrainonPorn.com
This effect is having a huge impact on human connection. Driven to seek dopamine through novelty creates higher levels of infidelity, preference of porn over human connection and inability to reach climax with a non-novel partner.
3. Negative Spiritual Imprint
These are just some of the known scientific consequences of porn. This doesn’t even cover the spiritual ramifications that porn has on our psyche and what we are manifesting in our lives.
With reproduction being hardwired in our DNA as our top job, orgasm is the MOST powerful natural reinforcer that we have. Being so, our brain automatically tries to remember everything associated with this powerful experience, like an imprint. What it is doing is linking that big moment of climax with whatever you are experiencing in that moment and imprints it into your brain and psyche stronger than any other day to day experience. In the case of regular porn uses it is imprinting voyeurism, searching/seeking, endless novelty, fetishes, multiple porn stars, multiple tabs, strange acts, fear, pain, shock, surprise, anxiety, etc.
To sum it up, this is what porn provides to you:
A disillusioned version of what sex is and should be.
Unlimited supply of novelty that drives your brain to become addicted to newness.
An elevation of dopamine for abnormally long periods of time creating addiction and depletion in your brain.
A boost of stress hormones & neurotransmitters due to negative emotional states that porn induces.
Negative associations of arousal making healthy intimacy difficult.
Instead
If not porn then what? Remember that thing we call The Imagination? Remember creating entire worlds and characters with the imagination when you were young? Well if you are lucky enough to have been born after 1995 then you should still have cultivated the part of the brain when you were a child.
In one study it was found that children that were read to often had healthy development in the frontal lobe and occipital lobe, responsible for imagination. However children that were mainly engaged in screen time showed little to no development in those regions of the brain.
Why do we want to cultivate the imagination?
An interesting consequence revealed by the study showed was that children and adults that do not have an active imagination lose the power of creation. If one cannot imagine a better future, one cannot create it. If one cannot imagine who they wish to be, they will never become that. In essence you have a race of beings perfectly programmed to do as they are told without question, without the ability to imagine anything beyond what is right in front of them. This ties in very closely with the concepts of manifestation and law of attraction. Think about it!
Pleasure Rituals
As I have discussed before, the most powerful time of creation and manifestation can be done during our self pleasure rituals. Imagine what you are sending out into the universe when you release to the imagery of a woman being demeaned, disempowered and abused versus creating within the mind your godliness being with a woman of strength, power and beauty. What you manifest depends greatly on what you are consuming and putting out into the universe. Check out my blog: 5 ANCIENT TANTRIC TECHNIQUES TO HELP YOU FUCK LIKE A GOD for amazing sexual mastery techniques that you can incorporate into your pleasure rituals.
Mission
One of my missions is to help people remove the need to seek porn for gratification, as a replacement for human connection and as a way to fill the emptiness they may feel inside. Imagine how different your brain, your relationships and the larger picture of your life would be if you could reach a point where you no longer sought out porn. If you would like to discuss more ways of creating a porn-free life, please reach out.
