Thought Control - Overcoming Pornography

Overcoming pornography isn’t just pushing a new thought into your mind to supersede the thoughts that have naturally occurred.   I think we’ve all heard the analogy of the stage of your mind and how we can become totally free from the plague of our unwanted thoughts by just changing what’s on the stage.   While I think this is a worthy attempt to advise and assist those struggling with pornography or any other issue, it falls short in actual practice.   There was an experiment called the pink elephant or white bear experiment that gave us a pretty good indication of what trying to push thoughts out of your head or trying not to think a certain thought does.   If you’re not familiar with the pink elephant experiment, let me tell you about it, from the perspective of bacon.   I love bacon.  You have probably heard me talk about bacon on the podcast before, but if you haven’t it is one of my top favorite foods.  The smell of it is inviting, the flavor is the most amazing combination of salty and umami, the crunch of it in a BLT sandwich is the most perfect feeling in the world.   Now that you are hopefully fully in the grips of a desire to eat bacon, let’s try the experiment.   Starting now and For the next 60 seconds, you are not allowed to think about bacon.  Each time you think about bacon then you have to pay me a dollar.  (Feel free to venmo me at theselfmasterycoach)   Part of the reason you’ll need to pay me a dollar is to raise the stakes of the experiment.  The higher the stakes in this bacon experiment, the more difficult it will be for you to force your thoughts to stay away from the crispy, chewy, warm, savory bacon that you’ve conjured up in your mind.     As you try not to think about the bacon I’ve asked you not to think about, you might find your mind wandering back to that unwanted thought. You might find that the smell of bacon in the morning greeting you from bed just pops into your mind.  You might realize that you’re thinking about your favorite kind of bacon, thick or thin, Maplewood or smoked.   Just make a tally mark each time you do think of the delicious, amazing bacon that you’ve eaten in the past, or count on your fingers each instance of all the future bacon you’ll eat as it pops into your mind.   Any time you think about the bacon in your food and on your plate, you might also notice how much money you lose to me.  Notice how, when you lose money, you don’t like it.  So, you try harder not to think about the mouthwatering, flavorful treat that you’re not supposed to think about.   Ok, experiment end.  How did you do?  If you are like most people you probably found that bacon came to mind a lot more than you might have wanted it to.   Now, you don’t really have to Venmo me, but you also might have noticed that if you took up the challenge for real and really intended to send money if you thought of the bacon, how much more difficult it became because of the loss factor.  This is essentially the pink elephant or white bear experiment.  In a series of experiments, researchers found that participants were more preoccupied with thinking about a white bear, despite being asked to not think of one.  The conclusion was that trying to suppress thoughts “has paradoxical effects as a self-control strategy,” which can lead to obsession or preoccupation despite desiring and working toward the opposite.  In other words, when we try not to think of something and actively work to distract ourselves from that thing, we are more likely to become obsessed with it and it is more likely to become the focus of our minds.  What does this have to do with pornography? You probably already have some sense, but I’m going to