Levels of behavior with pornography

Level 1
This is the person who watches pornography three or four times a year. In fact, if you can count the number of times you’ve watched porn in a 12 month period on one hand, then this is the level you are at.
Due to the highly sexualized world we live in, there is of course always a risk of increasing involvement with pornography. If you have well established healthy ways of managing your emotions, stress, and family life, you are in a good place.

Level 2
At this level- you are not addicted either. However, you have watched porn and masturbated to it 6 to 12 times in a year. In some of those cases, you were not simply aroused. One or more sessions may have been triggered by curiosity due to something you came across online or perhaps because of a reference someone made. At this level, you may have watched porn to medicate/feel better about some undesirable situation in your life.

Level 3
At this point, pornography is quite likely to become a problem. You are viewing porn at least once a month, possibly for a few months or years. You know you are at level three when you try to stop yourself each month, but no matter how hard you try, you always end up slipping. Usually, you binge for a while, then try to quit again.
This is the point where many men begin to use their willpower and count down the days which they have spent off porn. It’s not an out of control problem yet, but it does take an effort to quit since the porn you are watching at this point is no longer soft core porn- your tastes are gradually changing.

FANTASY is what moves you from level 3 to level 4.

At Level 3, when you are not watching porn, there is a very high chance that you are fantasizing or sexualizing your encounters with other people. When you fantasize intensely for prolonged periods of time- away from your device, you release chemicals which make you feel good- a feeling that only gets better by watching porn.

Level 4
At this level, pornography is having an obvious effect on your life. You may start noticing that porn is affecting your career, your family or your school work.
Your fantasies are out of control at this point. When you are not watching porn, you often find yourself fantasizing about porn and sex.

You are watching pornography a couple of times a month and you have been trying to different ways to stop. Usually, nothing works at this point and you start getting worried about why it seems so difficult to quit.
This is the point where you may search for “how to stop watching porn” online.

In my experience, this level is also your final chance to end your porn use on your own. Beyond this, your entire life, whether you realize it or not, will begin to be dictated by your porn addiction. The reason why is that left unchecked, your behavior with pornography begins to generate deeper psychological issues.

Level 5
At this point, viewing pornography is a daily habit and a major part of your life. You are watching porn and masturbating just to fall asleep. You sexualize every single woman ( and sometimes even men) you see.

Level 5 is when you stop growing and developing as a person. Your career, your relationships with people- everything is set up to maximize porn use.
For instance, you spend a lot of time alone in front of your computer or phone. You never initiate a social meet up of any sort for dinner or a movie. All your hobbies are solitary and you never step out of the comfort zone of those who were already in your life when you reached Level 5.

Anytime I speak to a man at Level 5, I find that he has paid a heavy price for his porn addiction.
Some of the things he has sacrificed at this point are:

1) Career: He has lost a job, or severely underperformed at his career due to his porn use.
2) Relationships: Intimate relationships have ended. Either due to his partner leaving him because of his incessant porn use or due to him sabotaging the relationship due to his inability to fully commit. He always feels that there is a “better” woman out there..always wondering if perhaps he can “upgrade”.
3) Education: Mediocre to failing performance in academics

When you try to quit at this point, you begin to experience strong withdrawal symptoms such as erectile dysfunction, irritability, extreme daytime fatigue, headaches, problems sleeping and social anxiety- worrying more than often about peoples opinions.

Level 6
This level is characterized by feelings of being completely out of control. Every single day of your life involves thoughts of pornography and in an age of free porn, you are spending money on porn in the form of paid sites and cam sites.

Depression and hopelessness are two common feelings at this level. This doesn’t mean that you have no desire to quit. On the contrary, you do want to quit, but your self-doubt and lack of hope are overwhelming. Many men at Level 6 continue using pornography, even after being caught with it.

The type of pornography you are viewing has drastically escalated to violent material including bestiality, gore, snuff ( death), incest, rape, extreme violence and other depraved material. These are the only genres of pornography that can elicit an orgasm and sometimes even an erection. Staying in Level 6 leads to acting out.

This means seeking real-life sexual encounters to satisfy your addiction. This can range from seeking female, male or transgender escorts via different websites and apps, searching for random hookups, or in some cases, predatory behavior towards vulnerable people.

At Level 6, every aspect of your life is filled with lies as you need to do so in order to cover up your secret life. A man at Level 6 can maintain this behavior for years-even decades. When discovered, there is always a very high price to pay. Relationships fall apart in traumatic ways, careers are destroyed, sometimes, men end up in jail.

The good news about Level 6 is that the stakes are so high when you get caught, that it can trigger a very strong emotional desire to quit.

The bad news is that in Levels 5 and 6, you are delusional in your beliefs- that is, while you may acknowledge that your behavior is out of control, you don’t see its true impact on your life. You have also incorporated compulsive lying and manipulation into your day to day life since your behavior must be maintained in secrecy.
..............................................................

In my opinion- this is VERY important. After years of porn use and masturbation- lets say you started between the ages of 8-14 and carried on for 12-15 years, you truly have no concept of what a life without pornography looks like.

Porn is your first relationship.

Its comforted you as a teen when you were anxious.
It kept you company when you were lonely.
When you were stressed and overwhelmed, porn was always there to take off the edge.
On restless nights it helped you fall asleep
It taught you about sex and perhaps even gave you some sexual confidence
It was always there for you when your heart was broken

Unfortunately, porn overstayed its welcome…

But how do you let go of the one thing you could depend on for years?

What would life look like?

the incredible damage porn has had on their families, finances, careers, relationships, self-esteem, social life and on their emotions, some break down and cry. It’s like being possessed against your will and knowledge by a different personality which pretended to be you for years…and one day realizing who you really are for the first time.

The loss, self-betrayal, and lies you told yourself become evident. You see the man you could have been if porn didn’t get out of control in your life.

At that moment, most men decide that they are done for good. This is when the recovery process truly begins- when you have actually FELT what it’s like your greatest self.

Understanding these levels are so important to your recovery. This is why I have never paid much attention to the all the “fapping/not fapping” movements. It is a willpower solution that only helps men at Level 3.

To effectively recover, you or the person guiding you in your recovery must first determine what level you are at.

Once I determine what level a man is at, I know the exact steps needed to help him recover.

He will be able to identify his boundaries, develop the right amount of self-awareness, control fantasies, dialogue with himself, anticipate urges, deal with strong emotions of sadness, loss or hopelessness, accurately examine his rationalizations and much more- depending on the Level he is at.

Withdrawal symptoms are also experienced differently at each Level. The effects of withdrawals are physical and emotional.

Finally…

I would REALLY like to know your thoughts on what level you are at

 

want you to take a moment and imagine a world where you could...

Dramatically decrease you frequency of viewing porn and masturbation in less than ONE hour per week.

Authentically change your behavior. People close to you actually see a positive difference in your personality and behavior due to the lack of porn and masturbation in your life.

Continually grow your discipline in a natural way till you have zero urges to watch porn (say waaa!) Say goodbye to spending hours per week in tube sites or live video sites. You’ll see consistent discipline that spreads to all areas of your life.

Have extra hours in your day to create an amazing life, build new skills and spend time enjoying life away from porn knowing that your life is actually more exciting and stimulating without porn. Since porn is out of your life, you have time for the stuff that truly matters (and that you enjoy!).


Feel confident in your decision and commitment to overcome porn for good. No more second guessing or wondering if you will relapse. You know that what you're doing is efficient and effective and you have the months and years without porn or masturbation to prove it!


Transform your energy which you reclaim for porn toward building an extraordinary life on your terms. You’ve achieved what most people aren’t willing to do: make a serious effort to quit pornography and masturbation, believe in yourself, and flip your life around. Yep. For real.

I have Read one article, it's below,

Would you like to know the ONE thing which everyone who has been trying to quit porn for over two years misses?

If you haven’t been struggling with this for up to two years- no worries, this will be helpful to you as well.

See, when I was trying to end my habit with porn, I always assumed that a combination of willpower, discipline, spiritual faith, perhaps a filter and my BIG goals would be the solution.

I tried everything because I BADLY wanted out of my porn hell. I was so sick and tired of sexualizing every single woman I came across, tired of feeling like a pervert 24/7, tired of a life that revolved around my next masturbation session.

I was so scared that I would end up being a fuck up in life. It’s so depressing to KNOW that despite what the outside works think of you-you are truly a FRAUD

At one point, on the outside, I was viewed as a charismatic, well-spoken, 21 year old with lots of potential in my career and in college. Inside, I was the guy who spent an entire lecture staring at girls in class and wondering what sort of face they would make if we had anal sex.

The funny thing was- at that point, I was still a virgin.

Well, I tried all of those approaches mentioned for a few years and if you did as well, you can probably relate to some of these results:

Willpower: This could get me through 30 Days, but I’d always end up edging or touching myself and eventually masturbating. A typical example was once when I was so sexually frustrated after 30 Days that I ended up waking up one morning and kinda rubbing myself against my bedsheet until I orgasmed. In my mind, the justification was “You didn’t touch yourself, so you didn’t masturbate”. Of course, I felt really bad as soon as I was done and ended up watching porn a few days later. Have you ever experienced that before?

Discipline: This is pretty good. You have these moments when you are super focused on killing it in your career, and you make sure that NOTHING gets in the way of your progress. Often, you might be too busy to masturbate. Unfortunately, you don’t know how to sustain self-discipline. After all, it’s not a part of your lifestyle just yet. Eventually, you get stressed and feel like you deserve to relax. At that point, you either break a boundary with your diet, some substance or your time management, “chill out” and end up watching porn again.

Filters: Nothing much to say here. We bypass it, use a different device, download another browser, or uninstall it when our “addict” takes over. “The filter sucks” is our excuse every time.

Goals: Ah…. our goals. Whether its dating goals, financial goals, career goals, self-improvement goals or relationship goals…you believe that you want that goal bad enough to quit. You tell yourself over and over again “This is SERIOUS, man! I NEED to achieve this- there is NO TIME for this porn BS!”. All to no avail-your addiction was present in your life BEFORE your goals.
There is only one way for your big goals to bypass your porn habit. That way is ROCK BOTTOM. Totally screwing up your life thanks to porn.

Spiritual Faith: I was raised as a Catholic. Though I am no longer religious, at one point, my porn addiction was so intense that I dropped to my knees and prayed to every saint I could remember to deliver me from my behavior. Some of you do the same thing. Then your promptly binge on rape-themed porn for two hours.

As I told a client this morning: “Jesus only saves 5-9% of addicts. The rest gotta save themselves”. (That’s an actual statistic and there’s a very interesting story behind that. I’ll tell you about it another time.)

O.K- enough foreplay for now, lol.

The ONE thing that every man who’s been trying to quit porn over two years misses in his recovery toolkit is ACCOUNTABILITY.

We don’t use accountability because we are fucking MEN.

We think we’re so damn capable of ending our porn use on our own that we will go for DECADES without ever IMAGINING that someone else knowing about your addiction could be the ONE thing we’re missing.

The dictionary definition of accountability is:

“The obligation of an individual to account for his activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.”

This means to tell people who have invested in you what you have achieved. It is your DUTY to demonstrate your effort, your responsibility, your achievement and your progress.

You don’t HAVE to be accountable.

You GET to be accountable. Its the SUPERHIGHWAY to quitting porn.

Please read those last two statements again.

There are three parts to accountability:

1) Visibility: When others know what you want, you can all appreciate your goal together.

2) Clarity: Know what you want allows you to move towards it with PURPOSE

3) Activity: Others knowing your goal allows for action because when you take a step towards your goal, they get inspired to become better accountability partners!

Here’s the magical thing about having these three parts of accountability present during your journey to quit porn:

Visibility + Clarity = FOCUS. You know what you want and you actually see it become a reality.No more self doubt.

Clarity + Activity= PROGRESS. You are clear about what you are doing and never waste time with useless action.No more browsing forums, reading a ton of books and watching endless videos to put it all together.

Activity + Visibility=ENCOURAGEMENT. Others support you, and give you positive feedback as you move forward.