There are three categories when taking inventory: time, money, and relationships. Let’s first talk about time because when it comes to a sexual behavior disorder or hypersexual disorder such as addiction to pornography, masturbation or sex addiction that is the first thing that people feel they want to get back. You may have heard this term from 12-step programs and while most think of taking inventory as a thing you do when you struggle with addictive substances or substance abuse it can also be used for behavioral addictions like porn addiction.

While there are many factors to consider, engaging in sexual behaviors or behavioral addictions like porn can have very similar brain activity and effects of using illicit substances or substance use disorder including impaired control. The proportions of compulsive internet pornography use is rising and the negative impact of pornography is costing many lives to be ruined and poor mental health outcomes.  Literature has shown that taking inventory is an important step in recovery.

Time

The first factor is excessive time as this is generally the biggest negative impact of pornography and can cause a lot of depression or anxiety. This is especially true with addictive pornography or compulsive internet pornography use. The relationship between pornography use and mental health issues is massive so it’s important that you keep track and know that increased frequency of pornography use can cause a lot of trouble down the line such as poor mental health outcomes.  In this blog, I want to go through an exercise that is in our sex and porn course. Here’s how we do that.

What I want you to do, in your journal is to keep track of your sexual addiction and risky behaviors for 3 days. If you have already quit sexual intercourse, masturbation or addictive pornography then try to remember back to the last 3 days before you quit and keep track that way. I now this can be triggers to think about sex and porn so keep that in mind.

Prevalence of Pornography Use

I want you to keep track of all the time that you have spent on your addiction and what negative feelings came of it. Now some people think it’s just the excessive time engaging in that specific addictive behavior like compulsive pornography or viewing erotic material. Like for example, time spent masturbating or time spent having sexual intercourse or porn viewing on a phone. But I want you to think or all the factors and aspects of pornography use as well as the negative consequences your behavioral addictions have had on time.

How much time did you spend before, preparing for the addictive behavior. For example, scrolling through porn videos until you found the right one. How much time did you spend seeking out an opportunity. We know loss of control is a major factor in porn addiction and sex addiction so it’s important that you consider all aspects of pornography use and factors including the amount of anxiety this is causing. Sex and addictive pornography can take up more time than you think. I’ll give you some examples.

Sex

If your addiction is sex, how much time each day did you stop what you were doing to think about or fantasize about sexual activities? How much time did you spend seeking out someone to have sexual intercourse with, ways to act on sexual impulses, or risky behaviors? Other factors and aspects of pornography use to consider are when you had loss of control, what happened? How much time did you spend with anxiety due to past behaviors? According to the Kinsey Institute, 15% of men are estimated to have had sex with a prostitute so if you struggle with a sex addiction and have sexual intercourse with sex workers, you are not alone.

Masturbation 

If your addiction is masturbation, how much time did you spend fantasizing about masturbating? For example, did you zone out in a work meeting dreaming of masturbating? Did you spend time online engaging in chat rooms, watching porn or message boards? Add everything up each day.

Frequency of Pornography Use

For compulsive pornography addiction or compulsive internet pornography use, how much time did you spend each day seeking out erotic material, pornographic material, watching porn videos or even think about watching porn? Excessive pornography use can really take up a huge amount of time. How much time are you feeling conflicted about problematic pornography? College students who struggle with addictive pornography report putting off assignments for porn. Porn addicts often find themselves going deeper and deeper into unintended areas that can cause mental health conditions such as increased anxiety levels or depression and just poor mental health outcomes in general. Porn addiction can definitely bleed out into other areas of your life so think beyond just watching porn.

Once you’ve kept track of 3 days worth of activity, add it up and divide it by 3 to get a day’s average. Once you have a one day average you can times it by 7 to get your weekly average or times it by 30 to get your monthly average. When you have a monthly average you can times it by 12 to get your yearly average and so on. You will find how sex and porn, especially compulsive internet pornography use really do take up a lot of time.

Money

Once you’ve done the time activity I want you to then focus on the money part of it. Now this isn’t just money you spend on your sexual intercourse or porn addiction, it’s also adding up money lost in productivity. Losing time and money can cause a range of mental health outcomes especially anxiety, so it’s important to get this right. Let’s start with money spent and then we’ll move to money lost.

Human Behavior 

For example, if you spend money on the internet in any way, add it up whether it’s chat rooms, web cams, porn sites, money on pornographic material or literature, Only Fans any subscriptions, money spent on escorts or sexual intercourse, and so on. For some, this is normal human behavior but for others this is a compulsion. So again add it up in a way you can find an average so not necessarily just over one day, you’ll need a week or months worth of data to get an accurate amount. But beyond money spent also add up how much you are losing in lost productivity.

Have you taken time off work to engage in your risky behaviors or watch porn?

Have you been fired?

Turned down a client, and so on. Think of the impact of pornography and make a note of the lost income as well, if that applies to you.

How much anxiety has this caused?

Relationship between pornography use, sex and your social circles 

And last, let’s talk about relationships. I want you to take inventory of how many relationships you have sacrificed for your addictions. Start with intimate relationships and then also think about family and friends.

For example, have you had a breakup due to too much or too little sex or have you ever been in appropriate with someone that it caused you to lose them. What cheating or infidelity. Once you think about intimate partners then think about any friends or family members you may have lost. For example, I had a client who was addicted to porn accidentally left a porn site up on his computer when his 6 year old niece came to visit she wanted to play games on his computer, He didn’t realize this and she was exposed to the pornography. He did not tell the sister out of embarrassment but the child ended up telling his sister a few days later which caused a big fall out between them and now he is no longer able to see his niece.

The relationship between pornography use and family can come out in ways you would never expect. These consequences can lead to mental health consequences such as anxiety or higher levels of depression and a lifetime of negative feelings if not worked through.

Mental Health Outcomes

The relationship between pornography use, sex and masturbation and poor mental health outcomes is strong. Now I want you to remember that this is an exercise for you to understand your addiction and what it’s costing you but not an exercise that should bring you increased anxiety levels, higher levels of depression or shame. In fact, it should be the opposite – it’s going to take a lot of strength to work through this activity so that you can see your addiction for what it is so be proud of that strength and courage you have.

You’ve likely been living with repeated patterns of failure and have been experiencing the negative impact of pornography but now that you’re here you can stop that once and for all. Once you have all this information I want you to start thinking about what real life will be like when you have more time, more money and you have repaired or accepted those relationships. Because that’s what’s going to happen. Your daily life is going to better after this and this is the only way for you to know where you stand and how deep you are in this. If you struggle with mental disorders such as anxiety or high levels of depression, these too will get better with more time, money and repaired relationships.

The Relationship between pornography use, sex and mental health

In order to get help you need to know your starting point and understand normal human behavior. This way, when you talk to a mental health professional they can meet you exactly where you are right now. It’s always equally important to focus the mental health consequences you’ve been struggling with so knowing how to improve your money, time and relationships should go hand in hand with also improving any mental health disorders such as impulse control disorder, higher levels of depression, compulsive pornography use or anxiety. the negative impact of pornography use can be troubling.

There are numerous treatment options for sex and pornography addiction so when you seek treatment be sure the program is right for you; on that matches your personality, religious beliefs and understands what negative feelings you’ve been harbouring all this time. It’s also important to make sure the healthcare professionals you work with understand effective treatments for those who struggle with compulsive behaviors, hypersexual disorder or addiction to pornography and not just mental health consequences, mental disorders or mental illness in general. Other things to consider when seeking effective treatment is past trauma or sexual abuse. According to the Kinsey Institute, In studies conducted mostly in developed countries, 5–10% of men report being sexually abused as children (World Health Organization, 2004)

If you struggle with a substance use disorder or substance abuse as well please seek treatment for that too.

Treatment 

Here at CSPMA we provide you with all the resources, literature and materials you will need to kick your sex, masturbation or pornography addiction for good. The proportions of compulsive internet pornography use is on the rise so it’s important to know that the impact of pornography can deeply affect your mental and physical health. Our program offers online support and resources that help with your physical health, mental health parameters and your social circles. We help people from all socio-economic backgrounds and do acknowledge one’s religious beliefs and how that might play a role in the recovery process. The relationship between pornography use and poor mental health outcomes is strong so we want to help you through this. We have students of all ages so whether you’re a college student or retired, we’re here for you.

While there are many factors and aspects of pornography use to consider, we know that sex, porn and masturbation can lead to tremendous mental health consequences and long term negative feelings and we are here to help so that you can understand the human behavior side of sex rather than the addiction.