![]() First I need to give credit to the originator of this metaphor, a friend and mentor Dr. Stephen Finn. Dr. Finn is a psychologist in practice here in Austin, Texas and is on faculty at UT Austin. He has mentored many psychologists over the years and is a world-renown expert on psychological assessment. If you are interested in psychological assessment you may find his website, www.therapeuticassessment.com, of interest. Now that I have given credit, let me explain what "saucering" is.
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3/16/2014 4 Comments Sexual Addiction-- How Your Brain's Normal Circuitry Gets Hijacked by the Pornography IndustryYou may not know it, but the porn industry has figured out how to hijack your brain's normal circuitry to make you addicted to their product. And they are quite successful! Just as McDonald's uses our brain's cravings for calorie-dense food (that came from eons of living through food shortages), the porn industry uses our brain's natural mechanisms for bonding and procreation to make us crave highly sexualized, ever changing pornographic material.
Here's how it works (I am paraphrasing from Sam Black, author of The Porn Circuit):
So you can see how our brains are wired for partner sex. Each sexual experience, which based on mother nature was supposed to happen with another person, was designed to bond us emotionally to that person. To create powerful feelings of pleasure, excitement, affection and desire/craving. But that system gets hijacked by porn and turned into a powerful reinforcement system which leads the person back to porn for more and more "fixes". For more information brain circuits involved in pornography, download The Porn Circuit for free. Below are other findings from brain researchers that illustrate how the brain responds to pornography: Cambridge Neuropsychiatrist Valerie Voon, in the UK documentary Porn on the Brain, demonstrates that the brains of chronic porn users closely resembles the brains of alcoholics. She explains that her research has shown that a particular area of the brain, the ventral striatum, “lights up” when a porn addict sees porn. This is the same area of the brain that responds when an alcoholic sees a drink. So the same areas of the brain that get hijacked in alcoholism, leading to addiction, are being hijacked in people who repeatedly use pornography. And in an interesting book by Dr. William Struthers (Wired for Intimacy) brain research is quoted as demonstrating that viewing pornography and masturbating changes the singular cortex. This area of the brain is responsible for helping us have willpower and make hard moral and ethical choices. The singular cortex is actually weakened in people who view pornography habitually. The sad fact is that pornography habits make it harder for us to avoid going back to pornography! It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Gary Wilson, in his TEDx talk, explained why people who use porn frequently eventually have to find more and more extreme images/experiences to get the same result. As noted earlier, porn causes a release of dopamine in the brain. After using the same kind of porn over and over again the brain actually begins to wear out! It stops the production of dopamine to that stimulus (or anything that is too similar), which leaves the person craving their dopamine "fix" but unable to get it. The only way to get the high back is to find something that is more extreme than the original porn. Think of this like an alcoholic developing tolerance to drinking-- at first two drinks gets them tipsy, but in a year or two it takes 4, then 6, and so on. So the tolerance to the original level of stimulation drives them to more and more extreme types of porn just to get the same feeling of pleasure. For more information on the consequences of this particular aspect of porn addiction see the article "Why Does Porn Seem Hotter Than My Partner?" (http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/why-does-porn-seem-hotter-than-my-partner/) One of the most important things I have learned as a therapist in this situation is that chronic pornography usage can actually cause impotency in real-life sex! The brain gets so used to responding to porn that it gets confused when we have a real-life partner. Men can actually experience impotency or other erectile problems when they try to have sex with a real person, because they have conditioned their genitals (and brain) to respond only to a virtual person! For more information on how to undo the porn habit and the hold it has on your brain (and your body), you may want to look at The Porn Circuit: Understanding Your Brain and Break Porn Habits in 90 Days. The take home point is that Mother Nature never anticipated the internet. So our poor brains are not doing a very good job of keeping up. Circuits and chemicals that were designed to help make us get together to procreate and bond to partners are going haywire when exposed to types of stimulate they never anticipated. If you want your relationships to last you may need to learn more about the detrimental aspect of pornography and how to put those same circuits and chemicals to use in favor of your relationships rather than against them. |
AuthorKrista Jordan, Ph.D., ABPP Archives
September 2018
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