The Porn Circuit | Covenant Eyes Internet Accountability and Filtering

CHapter 6: Habits of Freedom
People in recovery have fresh memories of their obsessions, and they must be on guard to
dodge and block the cues, triggers, and temptations that face them daily. Because the memories
of pornography and the neural pathways that were created for porn will remain, vigilance must
be part of everyday living.
It’s vital to be aware of people, places, and things that contribute to unhealthy thoughts
and exposure to temptations. This requires a personal inventory. What may be tempting to
one man or woman may not be for another. For example, a person may have to allow some
friendships to fall away if those friends actively push porn or leave it lying around their homes.
A convenience store or video store that sells porn must be bypassed. The point is to create
boundaries that insulate a person from temptation as much as possible.
A person should learn to associate porn with something negative or toxic so that they know
how to block when a punch (in the form of a trigger or cue) is thrown at them. Porn has plenty
of negatives, but it must be perceived by the individual as ugly. Porn is demeaning and abusive.
It steals away the intimacy of a marriage. It creates the demand for sex trafficking and modern
day slavery.
Learn to hate porn. As Weiss writes, “You will never destroy an enemy you embrace.” 19
Positive Thinking
When I was very young, I quickly discovered that you never used the word “can’t” around my
great-grandmother, whom everyone called Mam Maw. “Can’t,” she said, is a convenient excuse
for a lack of patience, perseverance, and hard work. She had grown up in hard tack farm life,
drove teams of mules through plow fields during The Great Depression, and survived two
husbands. If she asked you to weed her flower garden, for instance, you would never say,
“Mam Maw, I can’t get this done before dark.” You knew what she would say next: “‘Can’t’
never did anything.”
Florence “Flo Jo” Joyner, the world’s fastest woman who captured three gold medals in the
1988 Summer Olympics, offered an even better mantra: “Believe, achieve, succeed.” 20
Studies show that the Little Engine Who Could had the right idea. Telling one’s self, “I think
I can,” produces results. Positive thinking often begins with positive self-talk or unspoken
thoughts that are optimistic in the face of challenges. Positive thinking lowers rates of
depression and distress and improves coping skills during times of hardship or stress. It can
even increase lifespan. 21
Twenty years ago, Dr. Robert Brooks found that many of his patients were swimming in an
ocean of feelings of inadequacy. So he encouraged his patients to swim to what he calls “islands
of competence,” areas of their lives that are sources of pride and accomplishment. Encouraging
patients to focus on strengths rather than weaknesses and on optimism instead of pessimism
had a ripple effect that helped them confront situations and issues in their lives that were
The Porn Circuit | 40