DISCUSSION: Are you in denial? To what degree?

[FocusIsLove]

Hello all!

After the recent forum crash, I've been in a terrible place in recovery. I've in this terrible place for a long time, at least a year. Only at times I'd get short reprieve as some sort of willpower came to me and I'd stay sober for a few days, a week, but like tiny embers in a gust, they were extinguished. I'm trying to figure out what's going to work for me to get me back on track, some kindling for that ember if you will.

In that vein, I've had an idea for a long time: make a concerted effort to regularly make discussion posts here from addiction literature. I've had concept in my head forever, but never could organize myself to do it. Now though, I feel like I am in the right place, and time, and most certainly I have the need. I am going to post a new thread next Monday, and the following and see how this goes. If this sort of thing seems like something you want to see in the forum, please chime in with a reply, or let me know that the discussion is a good idea. I have explained enough, now to the topic I hope to discuss!

Denial.​

I think all of us have had to have gone through this. How can we not?

Either you were
* Part of the culture that only ever looks at porn as a normal and healthy part of life, only later to discover after being dragged along in its wake, that it's detrimental to your life in far too many ways
or
* Part of a culture that was vocal about the harms of porn, but the second you open the door, the pull of the dopamine rush had you hiding and justifying your use until you finally came to terms and started to acknowledge and address it's harms.

Or maybe you are mixture of the two, or something else entirely. Regardless, I think we all have gone through the experience of getting sucked in before realizing we need to crawl, scrape, and climb our way back out.

So what?​

Alright, so we are all were in denial, so what? You might say "I on this forum aren't I? Of course I know that." But have you thought about how much you are in denial? How deep do the layers go? To what extent am I in denial? Addicts like myself know far too well how far the addiction can go, but even when we finally start to address that, we can also fight admitting how many aspects of our lives, our behaviors, choices, thoughts, words, emotions, and anything else, might be tinged by the addiction.

I know in my past relationship, which I lost due to this addiction, once I had started to acknowledge my problem, even if I knew how bad it was, I would be defensive when other people brought up my own failing, and what I wasn't doing. Then at other times I was just plain dismissive of things brought up to me that I should be wary of, or thing ways I might be acting out. Later I realized that they were really right, but I didn't want to address my own problems. I was denial.


So my question to you all is this:
1) What are 2 or 3 things that you know that you had been in denial about with your porn addiction?
2) What are some things that you think you might be in denial about right now that you haven't fully realized, whether it be because someone challenged you and you didn't want to agree, or because the thought's come up but you push it away because you don't want to deal with it?

--Formatted for copy and paste:
What are 1-3 things that I know that I've been in denial about with my porn addiction?
What things that I think I might be in denial about right now that I haven't fully realized?

 

[FocusIsLove]

Here's mine:
What are 1-3 things that I know that I've been in denial about with my porn addiction?

I know one of the biggest ones that I had to deal with is just how much I have and do use porn to cope with problems in my life. Almost every time I have some kind of argument, something bad happens, I screw something up, or stress just piles on, I use porn to escape that pressure. For the longest time I just thought I was a very flat and emotionless person, but that is far from true, I'd just been in ignorance and then denial to how much my porn use was involved.

Similarly, I used to see myself as a very level headed person, un-anxious, but truth is I was just so often coping w/ porn that it created that illusion. I know now that when I off porn, I am definitely more hot headed and irritable. I think some of that is the withdrawal, but I haven't gotten past that to see more who I am.

One that I'd been in denial about up until after I lost my relationship(and even though it should have been obvious during and before) was how much porn really affected my outlook on women and sex. I thought everything was good in our relationship when we were regularly intimate, but I recall vividly one time when my ex had told me she was thinking about how she was thinking about me and craving the next time we could be together. I fumbled up a response because I knew I couldn't relate, I always had a release valve, and even worse one involving other women and things that are impossible for her to compete with. Then after I tried to stop, I realized how much I was unable to look at women without it being sexual. Once I tried stopping I reflexively started having rubber neck to look at women I saw on the street. Any way I could get a bit of that old dopamine I was used to getting.


What things that I think I might be in denial about right now that I haven't fully realized?
One thing that I've been feeling strongly but not wanting to acknowledge is that it's likely so much easier to recover than I am making it. There are often such easy things that I could do to help stabilize in my addiction that I chose not to do. Simple things like taking 10 minutes to pray or meditate, or go for a walk. Things like staying focused on my school work so that the stress doesn't lead me to relapse, or to do something healthy like go to the gym and spend my energy there instead of dawdling on the internet until I "stumble" a trigger or two and relapse. I haven't wanted to admit: I am mentally being lazy, and I don't have to be. It's all small choices that add up.

---
So that's what I can come up with for now. I'll edit this if I think of more that things I think I currently might be in denial about. I hope that this picks up some engagement, and that we can learn from each others mistakes and experiences!

 

[FocusIsLove]

Some time has passed and it doesn't seem like this is getting any engagement.

To any onlookers who might read this, if you don't feel like responding, why? Was it too much reading, too much time'd be involved in writing, or just a topic you are uninterested in? Did you disagree with the notion of denial to begin with?