Hypofrontality isn’t a word you see every day—but it might hold the secret to why you keep looking at porn.
Neuroscience now knows that willpower is a function of the prefrontal lobes of the brain. Scientific studies have also confirmed that using porn over and over actually reshapes these areas of the brain, literally eroding our willpower and our moral compass.
Neuroscientists call this hypofrontality. Hypofrontality is a state in which there is decreased blood flow to the prefrontal lobes of the brain. Hypofrontality is observed in schizophrenia patients and is also observed in all manner of addictions.
What Is Hypofrontality?
In his ebook, The Porn Circuit, Sam Black explains what hypofrontality is for the porn viewer.
“Compulsiveness is a good descriptor of hypofrontality. Many porn users feel focused on getting to porn and masturbating even when a big part of them is saying, ‘Don’t do this.’ Even when negative consequences seem imminent, impulse control is too weak to battle the cravings.”
Compulsiveness is one way to describe hypofrontality. The porn-addicted brain has trouble thinking logically. When impulses and desires come from the midbrain, instead of being moderated, the brain feels these desires as compelling needs. The prefrontal region is supposed to be able to weigh consequences and situations and judiciously shut down cravings, but hypofrontality means the addict’s ability to do this is impaired.
To the addict, when the craving for porn surfaces, their whole body gears up for action. As unhindered hormones are released and neurotransmitters fire, the craving consumes them. The heart begins to race, blood pressure rises, and the addict is consumed by a single thought: “Just one more time.”
Another way to put is simply “lack of willpower.”
What Causes Hypofrontality?
Compared to other creatures, humans have a very well-developed prefrontal region. When our prefrontal lobes are working properly, we have “executive control” of the processes in our brains. It is where we do our abstract thinking, make goals, solve problems, regulate behavior, and where we suppress emotions, impulses, and urges.
But the more one masturbates to porn, the more dopamine is released in the brain. Eventually dopamine receptors and signals in the brain fatigue, leaving the viewer wanting more but unable to reach a level of satisfaction. The viewer becomes numb to things once considered pleasurable. “To escape this desensitization, people, and men especially, expand their pornographic tastes to more novel stimuli,” Black writes. This leads, again, to more fatigue.
Desensitization impacts the prefrontal cortex. As dopamine receptors decline in the brain, so do the amount of neural cells in the prefrontal lobes.
How Do You Regain Your Willpower?
To bring the prefrontal lobes back into working order, a two-pronged attack is needed: (1) the old neural pathways must be starved, and (2) new neural pathways must be built and fed, increasing dopamine levels in a way that builds up the prefrontal cortex.
1. Starve: Stop All Pornography and Fantasy
Don’t give in to the urge to look at porn. As the prefrontal lobes are given plenty of time to rest, executive control will be strengthened over time.
This advice feels to many like a catch-22. “You tell me I’ve killed my willpower by looking at porn. So now the way to increase my willpower is by willing myself not to look at porn. How does that work?” Isn’t that like telling the alcoholic to “just stop it”?
The big difference between “just stop it” and a conscious effort to rewire your brain is this: The man being told to “just stop it” has no hope that the cravings will ever be different. When he hears “just stop it,” he hears, “Live with these intense cravings the rest of your life and never give into them.” To the addict, porn is life. Telling him to stop is like telling him to die.
However, informed by the process of how our brains can change, the addict can avoid porn and fantasy knowing that real change is possible. Hypofrontality can be cured. Change is built into the very fabric of our brains. Change is exactly what our brains are designed to do. When this person abstains from porn, he thinks, “Okay, this really stinks for now. I feel terrible. But I will not always feel this way. In fact, I aim to reclaim my brain so I can experience real, lasting pleasure again.”
You can learn more about brain chemicals and porn addiction. Here are some helpful tips for avoiding pornography:
Redirection
When you feel the urge, get into the habit of distracting yourself with another activity that you can start immediately. This can be as simple as a breathing exercise or journaling your thoughts. It can be as involved as making a meal or going for a jog. It will be difficult to do, but each time you choose to redirect, your brain will build new neural circuits.
Avoid All External Triggers
Remember, you’ve carved a grand-canyon-sized gorge of neural circuits in your mind. It is easy for everyday experiences to become triggers. If the trigger is a specific channel on TV, refuse to visit that channel. If the trigger is a type of person you see walking down the street, choose to bounce your eyes away from that person. Learn what your triggers are and for the first several weeks or months, completely avoid them—no exceptions.
Avoid Internal Triggers
External triggers are things you experience in the world. Internal triggers are emotions or states of mind. For some, when they feel lonely, this has become a trigger for porn. Porn has become their release valve to make themselves feel good. Identify what your internal triggers are (loneliness, boredom, exhaustion, anger, etc.), and create an escape plan when these emotions pop up. Call a friend. Journal your thoughts. Do something creative.
Avoid SUDs
“Seemingly Unimportant Decisions.” These are the rationalizations you say to yourself to get you one step closer to porn. “I’m just going to see what’s on TV.” “I’m just going to check my e-mail.” “I’m just going to get on Facebook.” Get honest with yourself and learn what your SUDs are. Be ruthless against these rationalizations.
Avoid Inactivity
Fill up your social calendar to the brim. Refuse to give yourself an open window. Check out our post on 50 Things to Do Instead of Watching Porn for help!
Finish the Fantasy
When the thought of looking at porn enters your mind, immediately finish the fantasy: imagine yourself having just orgasmed and the feeling of regret or shame that normally follows. Vividly experience the emotions.
Destroy Fantasies
As a fantasy or thought enters your mind, picture the image being eliminated. Draw a red X over it. Smash it with a hammer. Put it through the shredder. Flush it down the nastiest-looking toilet you’ve ever seen.
Make Yourself Accountable
Pornography thrives in secret. When you’re not only honest with yourself, but also with a trusted ally, you’ll find your willpower is much stronger than it ever was in isolation.
2. Feed: Build Up Your Brain
Much like a muscle, the more you exercise the prefrontal cortex, the stronger it becomes. The goal is to engage in new habits that will increase your dopamine and dopamine receptors.
Meditation
Making a habit of meditation has been shown to increase dopamine release by up to 65%.1 Even after only 11 hours of meditation spread over a month, changes are observable.2 (See here for a Christian approach to meditation).
Exercise
Aerobic exercise has been shown to increase dopamine receptors3 and decrease cravings4 for those bound in addiction.
Socializing
Porn-watching is a very anti-social habit. By reforging connections to real people, and spending pleasurable time together, you will establish new neural pathways of pleasure.
Accountability
Accountability isn’t just about starving your brain from porn. It also helps you build deep and meaningful relationships that fill the void in your life you used to fill with pornography.
Change Is Gradual, But It Will Come
Summarizing these above two points, Sam Black writes in The Porn Circuit:
Whatever rewarding activity is pursued, it needs to be an activity that is reoccurring. Building new rewarding neural pathways requires time and ongoing repetition…
Neurons that fire together wire together. Repeating a pleasurable activity instead of the compulsive activity, such as porn use, forms a new circuit that is gradually reinforced instead of the compulsion.
Neurons that fire apart wire apart. When a person refuses to act on a compulsion, like porn and masturbation, it weakens the link between the activity and the idea that it will provide relief.
The prefrontal cortex is one of the things that makes us unique from other creatures on Earth. By reclaiming it we are reclaiming more than our willpower. We are reclaiming our humanity.
1http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0926641001001069
2http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120614/IBMT-linked-with-positive-structural-changes-in-brain-connectivity.aspx
3http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2959886
4http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17949827
Question: Does the bible condemn pologomy as sin? Abraham had more than many others. NT only says those in leadership in the church shouldn’t but no one else. Reason for the question is that if a man desires to be with more than one woman his he allowed to without his conscience bitten down by religious bible badgers.
Great question.
While there’s some disagreement about this among Christians, here’s my take…
I would call polygamy a “wisdom” issue, not a “sin” issue. Nowhere does the Bible condemn polygamy outright, but it does show, again and again, how those who engaged in polygamy were caught in unwise traps as a result—even most of the examples of polygamy from various patriarchs and kings are actually negative examples.
The Law of Moses allowed for polygamy provided certain regulations were met (Exodus 21:10; Deuteronomy 21:15–17; 25:5–10), and in most cases, and compared to some of the risks of widowhood, infertility, or famine, polygamy had (and has) some advantages in specific circumstances. For this reason, when Christian missionaries enter into an area where polygamy is practiced, the proper response is not to tell men to start kicking their 2nd and 3rd and 19th wives to the curb. These are legitimate marriages that ought to be honored.
That said, the Law of Moses also spoke about the trouble associated with multiple wives (Deuteronomy 17:17)—again, not as a sin issue but a wisdom issue. Accruing multiple wives is often associated with a covetous spirit, and sure enough, those who gathered more and more wives were often men of power who were controlled by all kinds of lusts. Polygamy was often a power-play or a sign of serious discontentment.
This is one of the reasons why elders and deacons should be “one woman” men (1 Timothy 3)—they set an example for the rest of the church about wise and holy living—an example set for us by our first parents, Adam and Eve (who were a monogamous couple), and Christ and his bride the church (also a monogamous couple).
I would never counsel a person to take more than one wife because Scripture speaks of lack of wisdom in it. In all of this, also, is one’s culture. If you grow up in a culture that practices monogamy, it would be terribly unloving for a husband to take more than one wife against all his wife’s wishes—that’s a heart issue that definitely touches on the matter of sin.
Hi, Luke
Thank you for the must-read article. Very helpful ! As for the mentioned porn-avoiding approach -Destroy Fantasies, in Buddhism, it is termed 白骨觀(Bone View) viewing human bodies as Bone-structured like through X-ray and 不淨觀(Not clean view) viewing human bodies as the combinations of blood, organs and bones. The pictured image is quite disgusting so the erotic fantasy in mind can be abruptly ended. That’s how Buddhist monks eliminate their lust when the desire is way too strong. If interested in this approach, you can Google Image with those two Chinese phrases.
BTW, if you don’t mind, I would like to translate and share this article with a Chinese Porn-Quitting community where there are over one million registered members struggling to quit it. Of course, your name and the source will be mentioned. Thanks again !!
Share away! Very interesting information, for sure.
Excellent Article. These are all great tools & strategies. I wish something like this article was around earlier in my fight in this struggle. I feel impressed to share strategies I had come up with on my own before I really understood how porn effects the mind. This whole mess of wanting to resist happened just as I was trying to connect with God & change my life so these starting strategies may seem ridiculous but they were effective for me in the early days of the fight before discovering helpful resources, or rather before God lead me to more substantial relationship with him.
Im 26 & Ive been dealing with this addiction since the 2nd grade. I didnt even start fighting it until 2011, when the wake up call hit me, when something finally made me admit that I have a problem & I need help.
I read these analogies of 2 dogs or 2 wolves fighting, but Ive come to think of it more like God awakening the man he wants me to be, & that man starting a war with the beast that sin has placed in my heart.
Now in the beginning I noticed I pretty much gave in to the impulse immediately, so step 1 was to resist the impulse as long as possible before giving in. Sometimes it was 5 min. sometimes an hour or longer. Eventually I got to the point I could resist for a few days at a time or even a whole week before breaking down & watching porn. I adopted the idea that every minute counts in resistance. But I soon discovered that sometimes, hell many times a week or 2 of victory would be followed by what ive come to call the Binge. During the binge I would give in to my impulse at least 2-3 times a day for a week or more before I could get a hold of my self again. At first I was tempted to accept this as how my life would be, 2-3 weeks of freedom, then Binge, repeat until death. But God kept prompting me to go further & keep fighting. So during a Binge I would do anything I could to prevent or reduce the number of times I would give in. So setting goals like only giving in 1-2 times a day, limiting the hours of the day in give in, limiting how many days the binge lasted, limiting the categories of porn I watched, limiting myself to only pictures. Sometimes I would even watch war movies like Terminator & others imagining that the man that God wants me to be as the resistance & porn as the ultimate enemy. I know this is ridiculous but as in any war sometimes you have to do what ever you have to. Also during this time I would go workout for 2+ hours so I would be too sore or tired to give in more then once or hopefully not at all. Other things I tried were, over eating just a little to cause discomfort, eating things that cause me to have gas, going some where out in public to avoid being alone, playing video games, & reading the bible. I did mention that some of these maybe ridiculous right.
So yes the beginning is rough, & there are times when its still rough as a single man. But as God has become more involved in my life I am able to experience more periods of freedom through him, & while im still struggling & still fall down sometimes I can now say that I have hope to truly become the man that God wants me to be.
Thanks for sharing, Struggle.
The lie that holds us in the binge is the belief that we might as well sin big if we’re going to sin at all; if we’re going to be racked with guilt and shame, we might as well plunge headlong into sin and get the most pleasure out of it.
We need to reject this lie when we notice it. Paul speaks squarely against this in Romans 6.
Simply an astounding article!! Everything is true and it recalls me the story: You have two wolves inside yourself. One is a good one and the another a bad, they are fighting against each other. which shall win the battle? THE ONE YOU FEED!! :)
God or no god it’s addiction same like smoking drinking etc …. and masturbating from time to time is normal if you want to keep healthy life sex is not that safe too though if you rely on watching porn and getting off same stuff like drug addict lol
I have no doubt the porn is addictive, but there’s no medical evidence that avoiding masturbation is unhealthy for you.
All I can say is thank you, your articles have helped me once again to get closer to God, I came here during my first days of battling porn and masturbation now after 112 days through this and still going I am proud to say that each point of hardship you will face in this journey is worthwhile.
My life dramatically changed compared to the life of despair and self guilt 112 days back, now after a very long time of struggling I can finally see a light out of this, God is merciful people if you stop and give him space into your life, I know that “The heart is willing but flesh is weak” but if you have the will and believe then it’s possible.
Never give up a chance to change your life for the better because the fruits are worth your pain, be patient and pray. All is possible
So good to hear, Paul. God is good!
Thanks god I found this article, now I now why my porn addict destroy my social live, keep up the good work bro, thank you so much.
mine is worse than i ever thought it has reached to a point whereby i do it every morning it has even affected my rship with my girlfriend and worse than all i have injured my penis inner parts such that a yellowish fluid is oozing from it i dont know what to do coz am feeling weak and useless
Hi Stephen, two major suggestions for you. First, install accountability and filtering software on any computer, smartphone, or tablet that you use, and talk to a mentor about holding you accountable for your online porn use. Second, I suggest taking part in some sort of “no porn” challenge like those run by the NoFap group on Reddit. These men have found that quitting porn and masturbation has actually fixed various sexual dysfunctions.
Be patient, and be strong! It may take a while, but you can find healing and freedom from this.
thank God for this article, I really appreciate these steps. hv tried some of this steps it really help. hope to continue in trying because God has helped me too.
Thank you for this article. I was looking for help, trying to find a way to overcome this pathetic habit and juvenile existence, and your words have helped. Thank you.