Advice shared by a forum member
I suffer from social anxiety, as you do, and I’m trying to stop this porn addiction of mine exactly for the “social benefits”. I’ve failed already so many times that I’ve lost count. What I’ve learned so far is:
1) it may be done alone but it’s hugely harder this way. Like having to run for a marathon when you are only trained for short-distance races. If you have anybody with whom you can share this issue and with whom you can talk each day, by all means do it. Even an online friend is okay. Really, anybody who cares about you.
2) Do something for social anxiety alongside your addiction recovery. Others have already posted some good suggestions but I know that they may sound too difficult at the moment. Plan to do something in your home when alone, like meditating, studying to improve the curriculum, practicing social skills via IM or Skype, getting engaged in a project that you really care about, plan a trip to a place you have always loved to visit (and if you don’t have the money, calculate what you can cut from your expenses right now to be able to travel, even if it’d take months), go to a gym or if that’s too hard, buy weights online and exercise at home, get on a diet if you are overweight (thus improving your look and social “desirability”), follow some fashion blog to learn what’s in and what’s out (I’m Italian), and so on.
Basically, choose to do anything that you genuinely believe will help in being more social. Even if you don’t go out of your home at all. The simple thought that you are “preparing” yourself will help, and will redirect some of the attention from porn that you have right now. Which brings me to the last point:
3) whatever your reasons, whatever the way you choose to overcome this addiction, however long will it take, the most important thing is committing to it. Sincerely believing that you don’t need porn at all, that you may be a sane and great man even without it, especially without it I’d add. But at the same time don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Sexual thoughts are tricky because the more you think about them, even in a negative way, the more they reinforce themselves and you’ll fail again.
A little idea could be to choose an object that represents porn, masturbation and overall all your sexual stimuli and have it close to you before you go to sleep; in the morning you take it, think about what it represents and put it away, locked up perhaps, for the whole day. Its meaning would be that you still have your sexuality, your cravings and desires but you have chosen to put them away for a little while because you need to do other things now for your future. When you will have recovered you can stop putting it away each morning, as the signal you are no more a slave of it.
Of course this may sound very silly or unimportant. Your choice. But I think it’s extremely important to be firm in telling yourself that for the moment you can’t afford to have any sexual fantasy thoughts during the day, because with time they will all add up and make it too hard to contain yourself any longer.
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