10 Mindset Shifts to Stop Watching Porn: Unchained Series, Part 1

Welcome to Part 1 of the Unchained Series. If you follow the steps, this will be the last resource you’ll ever read about quitting porn.

I tried to stop watching porn for years.

Other addictions like alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine, social media, etc. were relatively easy for me. I went cold turkey and never looked back.

But this one was different…

Welcome to the last resource to stop watching porn you’ll ever read.

We’ll cover why porn is so hard to quit, the benefits of quitting porn, and the no-bullshit changes required to quit porn forever.

Why Is Porn So Hard to Quit?

If you’re like me, you discovered porn at an early age.

You then, without intending to, discovered that it made for a pretty decent escape mechanism from negative feelings.

You went about your life reinforcing this. Lonely? Porn. Sad? Porn. Angry? Porn. Bored? Porn. Stressed? Porn.

You also began to use it in isolation, despite it starting as an exhilarating high with your friends. You developed a pseudo-relationship with it.

For me, other vices were more “casual.”

I’d do some blow at a party, but would never anxiously go out and purchase cocaine by myself on a Tuesday afternoon if I were feeling lonely.

Porn became a deeply-embedded emotional coping mechanism.

I had over a decade of conditioning my mind that it was the antidote I needed.

Why Do Men Get Addicted To Pornography?

Men’s sexual circuitry is highly-visual. We tend to isolate and are naturally more prone to addiction.

When women are struggling, they tend to do a better job confiding in friends and family and channeling their energy into work or health.

As men, we tend to channel our energy into vices and addiction.

Should I Quit Porn?

If you’re here, I assume you’ve read up on the dangers of porn.

The impacts on the nervous system, sexual function, relationships, our view of women and sex, and dopamine.

Plenty of resources are widely available and comprehensive in their explanations of porn’s impacts.

For now, let’s just look at the biggest three impacts I’ve noticed over a near-lifetime of use:

1. Brain Dysregulation
   
   Dopamine and serotonin are two neurochemicals that impact just about every bodily and mental function, with far-reaching effects one might not even be aware of.
   
   Obvious things like mood, energy, and motivation are impacted, but less clearly-related effects exist like forgetfulness, clarity of skin, and “dead” eyes.
   

2. What Stimulates You
   
   When I’m watching porn or have recently quit, my brain requires more stimulation to feel normal.
   
   I binge social media, dating apps, and mindless YouTube.
   
   When I’m clean, all of that shit is too much, while things like books, podcasts, and business-related videos bring me tons of satisfaction.
   
   It’s a subtle, but powerful difference.
   

3. Masculinity
   
   Theo Von couldn’t have said it better: “I feel like porn creates a leak in my masculinity.”
   
   Between the psychological conditioning of porn and the physical impacts related to dopamine, porn creates a docile, low-energy man.
   
   We’ve all experienced it—binging porn, and the next day we just feel off. We feel weaker, softer, more needy, even a bit slimy.
   
   After a few weeks clean, we start to regain our power. We feel strong again.

I decided that these effects weren’t worth the brief highs and escape I got from porn.

Couple that with how great life is without it, I knew it was time to quit, forever.

Benefits of Quitting Porn

Before getting into the mindset shifts, let’s quickly run through some of the key benefits of quitting pornography.

1. A Healthy Nervous System (A Healed Brain)
   
   Heavy porn use overtime leads to a dysregulated nervous system. The brain naturally will down-regulate its natural production of dopamine.
   
   This leads to life being a bit dull, uninteresting, and us feeling less alive.
   
   Dysregulated, we’re much more prone to depression, anxiety, fear, and low motivation.
   
   Healthy, we find ourselves in a great mood and with great energy the lion’s share of the time.
   

2. See “Life in Color” Again
   
   Building on the previous point, an addiction counselor once described porn recovery this way.
   
   With a healed, healthy dopamine function, find joy in the small things.
   
   With porn: higher-stimulation is need to interest us (Tik Tok, Instagram, more porn).
   
   Without porn: the basics are immensely gratifying (journaling, a cup of coffee, a hike).
   

3. Genuine Connections
   
   Given dopamine’s role in forming relationships, when we’re dysregulated, we struggle to form bonds.
   
   Even if we ignore porn’s effects on our views of women and sex, the very ability to build relationships of any kind is hindered.
   
   If you go on a date, for example, a healthy brain lends itself to forming a connection with the person, whereas a dysregulated one will struggle.
   
   This goes for friends, family, and coworkers, too. Healthier brain = better relationships across the board.
   

4. Reclaim Your Power
   
   This may sound “woo-woo”, but it’s grounded in biology and psychology. Porn conditions us for weakness and inadequacy.
   
   Physically, it disrupts our hormones and neurotransmitters.
   
   Healthy hormones create a powerful man.
   
   Healthy levels of testosterone, dopamine, and serotonin facilitate a man’s great mood, sex drive, motivation, lovingness, and ability to shine his light in the world.
   

5. Confidence and Self-Respect
   
   It’s no secret that porn use destroys our sense of self-respect, which is the one of the pillars of confidence.
   
   Most of us have seen this first-hand: fresh off of a binge, we’re at our lowest. Go a few weeks clean, we’re on top of the world. Imagine that feeling, intensified, and available 24/7.

Want to quit porn for good? The Unchained Mental Rebuild is a free eBook with 34 hard-hitting journal prompts to rewire your mind, rebuild your confidence, and take back control. Get it sent straight to your inbox—free.

How to Stop Watching Pornography: The 10 Changes Required to Quit Porn

Let’s get into the ten shifts that underpin leaving this habit behind for good.

After much trial and (tons of) error, I know these to be rock solid.

They are sure-fire gamechangers for those that feel they can’t stop watching porn.

We’ll shift from unhelpful (or downright destructive) mindsets to healthier, winning ones.

1. From Unconscious → To Fully Conscious

Our conscious and unconscious minds learn in different ways.

The conscious brain is the logical, rational one. You tell it a new fact, reinforce it a few times, and it’s got it down.

The unconscious mind is trickier. It learns through patterns, associations, and emotionally-intense experiences.

That said, it’s a bit slower to change.

I remember having relapsed on porn again and angrily asking:

“Why would my own mind do such a destructive thing to me? Why does my mind seem to want to hurt me?”

After much reflection, I realized that our minds never mean to hurt or sabotage us. They’re simply doing what they’ve come to learn is a good way to cope.

Get this: through countless repetitions, you’ve trained your brain to think “we feel a shitty feeling, all we need is porn to remove ourselves from it.”

At the deepest level, feelings like loneliness are a threat to our survival.

So, that means:

Your mind feels a “life-threatening” feeling. It discovers something that provides a flood of dopamine and (what it interprets as) a pro-creation experience.

From near-death to reproducing? Driven by survival and reproduction, that’s the greatest win our primal brains could possibly experience. And it happened without any effort?!

Yeah, it’s going to remember whatever you did to make that happen, and save it for later.

Repeat this over thousands of iterations, and you are where you are now… addicted to porn. Dependent on porn to cope with emotions.

The mind is simply doing what it thinks is best for you. But how do we reverse this?

Conditioning it the other way.

2. From Avoiding Emotions → To Facing Emotions Head-On

I love how frank this Reddit post is.

“We need to stop hiding away from uncomfortable life situations. We need to stop using porn in order to escape from reality.

We must learn how to handle life and emotions without the need of porn.

We need to understand that one of the reasons we relapse is because we're pussies that can't handle negative emotions.

We use porn as medication. We use porn to hide away from life. We use porn to temporarily relieve anxiety, stress, loneliness, boredom, anger, etc.”

That is the reality, my friend.

I like to look at it as the boy response versus the man response.

The boy hides and escapes, while the man faces life, emotions, and difficulty head-on.

To tie this back to the prior point of conditioning our brain to do what we want it to do, we must gain small victories in this area, day in and day out.

With each successful confrontation of our emotions, we’re training our unconscious minds that negative emotions are okay, won’t kill us, and don’t require escapism.

3. From Willpower → To Ease (quitting is actually easy)

Something that changed the game was the realization that quitting porn doesn’t have to be difficult.

It’s like the cyclist huffing and puffing to get up the hill while the motorbike effortlessly flies past.

With different tools, we can achieve the same thing more easily.

I had to drop the idea of willpower, white-knuckling, and brute-forcing it.

The rest of the mindset shifts will help us understand how quitting porn can be easy, but it involves disengaging from the fight altogether.

Take away the addiction’s power, we don’t even need willpower to resist.

How do we take away its power?

We stop obsessing over it, fearing it, identifying with it, and giving it power.

The counters, tracking, obsessing over relapse, overidentifying with anti-porn movements (I did it too), beating yourself up, and journaling in detail about relapses.

This is all reinforcing porn as an insurmountable beast in your mind.

4. From Aimless → To Mission-Driven (channeling energy into something greater)

Now we’re in the realm of game-changing tools to quit porn forever.

Studies confirm that a sense of meaningless can contribute to a porn addiction.

Porn is a contributor, but more importantly a symptom of a meaningless life. It’s bi-directional, porn leaves us unable to build meaning, but the meaningless life drives porn use.

Easy solution: create meaning in our lives.

I want you to do an exercise. This is something every man should do regardless of whether he wants to quit porn or not.

Take out a pen and paper, or your Notes app.

On a new page, at the top, title it “LIFE VISION.”

You’re going to write, in as much detail as possible, exactly how you want your life to look:

1. Five years from now (long-term vision)

2. In the coming weeks and months (short-term vision)

For the long-term vision, Debbie Millman’s “Remarkable Life Essay” is great:

“So let say it is Winter of [2030]. What does your life look like? What are you doing? Where are you living? Who are you living with?

Do you have pets? What kind of house are you in? Is it an apartment are you in the city are you in the country? What does your furniture look like?

What is your bed like? What are your sheets like? What kind of clothes do you wear?”

For the short-term vision, write exactly how you want your life to look and change in the coming weeks and months.

How will you grow? What will your work look like? What will you study? What are your habits? How’s your health? Your relationships?

Then, you’ll commit to making your vision a reality, everyday, without failure.

5. From "Recovering/Abstaining" → To Free

After relapsing, I’d vow to stop watching porn. For the following days and weeks, I’d frame myself as “recovering/abstaining” from porn.

I also would fall into the trap of fantasizing about how my life would be “once I was free.”

Free from addiction, the withdrawals, and the fucked up dopamine system.

This mindset is destructive.

Why? Because it takes us out of the present moment, and frames our quitting porn as a temporary effort that may not last. It’s yet another form of escaping reality.

Here’s what we must do:

1. Decide when we will quit porn. An exact day.

2. From that day on, we are free. Full stop. Nothing else.

There is no recovering. No withdrawals. No abstaining. We’re simply free, that’s it.

Two powerful affirmations when you’re ever fearing relapse, are tempted, or are feeling like shit as your dopamine system re-balances:

1. “I’m free, how great is that!”

2. “I’m sexually healthy.”

That is it. Free and healthy.

For more on this topic, and a very helpful (free) book on quitting porn, see Easy Peasy.

There is no longer fear around withdrawals; we simply reframe to gratitude that we’re free from this destructive habit at last.

6. From Following Triggers → To Interrupting The Cycle

The cycle of porn addiction, based on Dr. Patrick Carnes work, is as follows:

1. The Trigger

2. Fantasy

3. Ritual

4. Acting Out (Porn Use)

5. Numbing (Denial)

6. Despair (Shame/Anxiety/Depression)

Most porn-watching experiences unfold in this way:

We experience a trigger, whether internal (a negative emotion) or external (an attractive woman in the gym).

We then follow that trigger into the territory of fantasy. We are consumed by thoughts of sex, and we have the grand idea to watch porn.

This is when dopamine starts dripping, and are brain knows a flood of dopamine is imminent.

We engage in our routine (ritual), whether that means getting home and opening our laptop, retreating to the bathroom, or otherwise.

We act out, and watch porn.

We regret it, and try to numb or deny it, before we’re hit with intense feelings of shame, despair, and powerlessness to our addiction.

We want to avoid these feelings, and the cycle repeats.

What am I getting at? We must become aware of and interrupt the cycle.

The only point at which the cycle can be stopped is at Stage 1: The Trigger.

After that, the cascade of events is nearly guaranteed to unfold.

Learning to identify triggers and interrupt the cycle (ideally with healthy habits) is key.

You’ve heard the advice—when triggered, get out of the house. Exercise. Go socialize. Journal.

I once questioned this advice to an addiction specialist, arguing that late at night, these things weren’t possible. He lovingly called me out on my shit—”Okay, so find what works.”

7. From Fighting Old Habits → To Building the New

This is related to our previous shift of moving from willpower to ease.

Again, we must take the focus and power away from porn. Instead, we’ll channel our energy into building new habits, and a new life.

Take Elon Musk—the guy is constantly looking ahead.

If he were still busy fucking around with the details of his payout from selling PayPal, he’d never have looked ahead to things like Tesla and SpaceX.

This is about identity.

Instead of telling ourselves “Okay, I gotta go 30 days clean now,” it’s about identity shifting.

We’ve shifted our identity entirely, to “I’m simply a man who doesn’t engage in that.”

You see the difference? One sets us up for failure, the other empowers us.

It’s not about “being clean,” it’s about simply moving on to a new life.

Remove the fight, and instead, build.

8. From Fantasy World → To Reality

Having discovered porn at an early age, our developing brains grew up thinking that this shit was normal.

It’s normal, expected to have unlimited women all day without taking any risks whatsoever.

Any 12-year-old boy can now see more nude women in one sitting, without effort than the world’s most powerful man could in his entire life 100 years ago.

This is a deeply embedded, unconscious belief and expectation.

We’re going to unroot it, and dwell in reality.

It may hurt a bit, but we must begin to live in the real world.

I’m not saying that novelty and sex are out of the question, but they certainly ain’t coming without risk, effort, and rejection.

Porn conditions us to expect big rewards from no risk. We’ve got to re-condition our minds to be rewarded from effort.

I used to see a beautiful woman in public, not talk to her, and go home and find a pornstar who looked similar, and jerk off.

Little did I know, I was conditioning myself for inaction. We backed down from the fear, but we got a big reward.

We’ll start conditioning ourselves the right way: action = reward.

This plays into every aspect of life.

We get gratification from hard exercise, long focus sessions, and taking all of the risks that come with navigating the dynamics of real relationships and sex.

Real women, in real life, are far different from the paid actresses from the movies.

Accepting this is part of growing up, and “leaving home” (psychologically).

In real life, there are two choices:

1. End your addiction to novelty and sex, and channel the energy into leveling up, health, and your goals.
   

2. Take lots of risks, weather lots of rejection, and learn how to build real relationships with real women.

That is it. No more free, unearned dopamine, sex, or “relationships.“ (And please no fucking AI girlfriends.)

9. From Surrendering Everything → To Choosing Freedom

I remember telling myself, after relapsing:

“I never want to sacrifice my health, vitality, mood, energy, drive, success, money, relationships, time, masculinity for a fucking screen again.”

Just like when I quit alcohol because it was simply holding me back from greater things, porn had to go, too.

We hand over our fucking balls, our life energy and zest for life, a great mood, a naturally healthy brain and hormones, and so much more… for what?

Every time I fuck up my mood, motivation, drive, and energy… I’m losing out on money, success, fulfilling relationships, and joyful experiences. I’m literally handing money over.

Instead, I choose freedom. I choose to see life in color.

10. From Shame & Disgust → To Self-Respect & Boldness

It’s time to choose the fruits of life, and elevate our energy.

What does that mean? We stop carrying around these low, heavy energies of shame, disgust, lack of self-respect and confidence.

Whether we admit it or not, this addiction causes us to carry those energies around.

In exchange, we can choose gratitude, joy, confidence, and boldness.

Many a semen retention forum will tell you how, after some months clean, people just seem to gravitate toward you. It’s like everyone wants to be your friend.

This is fucking real, it’s not some woo-woo shit. It is a direct consequence of the shedding of those negative emotions in exchange for positive ones.

It’s so beautiful, how the power is in our hands to choose.

There is no magical force controlling you or forcing you to watch porn, despite it feeling that way at times.

It’s your unconscious mind simply doing what it thinks is right.

Through reconditioning and shifting our mindsets, we can win.

We can become empowered. We can trade the SHIT vibrations of shame and fear for HIGH vibrations of joy and health.

Moving Forward Into A New Life

It’s simply a moving on.

Leaving behind the boy behaviors and replacing them with the man’s.

The process doesn’t even have to be that difficult, and can actually be enjoyable, rewarding, and build a deep sense of self-respect.

Be proud of yourself, your progress, and your willingness to become greater.

We all slip up, make mistakes, and fall down sometimes.

Be sure to catch the rest of the series, including Part 2, A Timeline for Recovering From Porn Addiction.

My goal is to provide outsized value, all for free, to help you level up. If you did get value, be sure to send this post to a friend.

I’d love to connect with you, so please reach out and share your journey with me on Instagram.

To your growth,