If you are feeling unhappy with the way you use Internet pornography and are finding it difficult to gain control of your usage, here is the fifth of Porn Recovery UK’s tips to help.

Being in touch with your body and your feeling mechanisms is really important. As an addiction to pornography increases, some people become aware that they feel less sensitive in their body. ‘Feelings’ can become minimised and centred on genital satisfaction alone. For other people the process has happened so gradually that it is almost unnoticed until pointed out to them. As you are working on resensitising your mind to its own internal conversations about sex, why not also start to work on your body as well?

When working on the physical body, different people find very different things pleasurable. Thankfully, though, this part of the process is really quite easy to work out for yourself. Allowing yourself to feel things can be done many times a day and in many different ways – for example, allowing yourself to focus on the warmth in your hands from holding a cup of hot tea can feel great, as can having a warm bath or allowing the shower water to stimulate your chin or back often feel comforting. Then there might be the pleasure of allowing yourself to feel the sensation of stroking a pet, or hugging a friend or partner. If that feels difficult, then stroking some nice material would do. People also like the sensation of cool and cold things on their body, in their hands or mouth. You can experiment in so many ways with touch and feeling sensations. Slowly dropping a chain or necklace on your arm; feeling clean sheets; nice warm socks or cool flip flops after your feet have become hot in shoes all day … Go on, experiment and know what good you are doing yourself.

Click to read all our tips for porn recovery

If you are feeling unhappy with the way you use Internet pornography and are finding it difficult to gain control of your usage, here is the fourth of Porn Recovery UK’s tips to help.

How about replacing pictures with words? One of the difficulties with Internet pornography is the way it can interfere with your own inner sexual conversation. Users often don’t even notice the way they stop using healthy, creative sexual fantasy and begin to become passive recipients of pornography. It becomes part of the desensitization process; porn really is the junk food of the sexual world. Once you use just pictures and become a passive online porn user, masturbation can begin to take a long time – it often has to because users spend so much time ‘holding off’ while they look for ‘just the right clip’. But many users of porn who grew up when magazine formats were the main media found the letters pages exciting. Reading erotic materials, even in works of the great writers of fiction, can be a good way to refocus on the inner personal sexual conversation; creating the pictures in your mind begins to put you back in charge of your sexual world.

Click to read all our tips for porn recovery

If you are feeling unhappy with the way you use Internet pornography and are finding it difficult to gain control of your usage, here is the second of Porn Recovery UK’s tips to help.

Try to alter your routine of use on your computer. Often, patterns of behaviour build up that you don’t even notice. If you alter them, you have a chance of becoming much more conscious of what you’re doing. If you use your computer alone, and it’s a laptop, try taking it into a public space – even the living room might count as a ‘public’ space! Switch your computer off when you finish using it. This way you will always have a few moments to think about what you are going to use it for when you next switch it on. Remember, if you change your routine you will notice what you are doing and this can be an important step for change and recovery of your negative habit with porn.

If you are feeling unhappy with the way you use pornography and are finding it difficult to gain control of your usage, here is the first of Porn Recovery UK’s tips to help.

You need to decide what your relationship with porn is going to be. Do you want to stop using it altogether? Is your goal simply to stop using Internet porn? Are you happy to view or use softcore sex videos or erotica on the Internet but still view hardcore sex on R18 rated DVDs from sex shops? Psychotherapist and author of Turned On: Intimacy in a Pornized Society Duncan E. Stafford says: ‘The first step in recovery is to decide what you really want to do. If the impetus for change comes from within you, then you are far more likely to be successful.’ So, sit down with a piece of paper or a blank word document and write your goals for change. Keep the list somewhere so you can go back and look at what you have decided.