Overcome Porn: The 40 Day Challenge Sample

Day 4: Finding your triggers

Today is all about finding your triggers.

Yesterday Matt Fradd talked about writing down your exit strategies–what to do when you feel the temptation to look at porn. But this can be difficult to do if we don't know what our triggers are (1 Thessalonians 5:22).

Dr. Peter Kleoponis explains, “A trigger is a person, place, thing, emotion, or experience that can easily lead one into viewing pornography. Some triggers can be easy to identify, such as a day at the beach with young girls running around in bikinis. […] While there are countless triggers out there, we can divide them into two categories: sexual and non-sexual.”

Sexual triggers include things such as pop-up ads, TV commercials, lingerie catalogs, sexual scenes in TV shows, movies, video games, etc. Advertisers, TV producers, and pornographers know that sex sells, so they use sex to sell—but such content could easily become triggers for pornography use. For some people, just the sight of a computer, cell phone, etc., could be a sexual trigger. Even memories of past pornography can be a trigger.

Non-sexual triggers can be harder to identify; however, they are far more powerful than sexual triggers. They are usually rooted in painful emotions. Some people then turn to pornography to cope with these painful emotions.

To help identify non-sexual triggers, Kleponis uses the acronym BLAST.

• B: Bored or Burned Out
• L: Lonely
• A: Angry, Apathetic, Afraid, Ashamed, or Abandoned
• S: Sad, Stressed, or Selfish
• T: Tired

Kleponis further explains, “Once you understand what your sexual and non-sexual triggers are, it’s not difficult to develop strategies to prevent you from falling into pornography use. Remember, the pornography use is the symptom. Understanding triggers can help you uncover and effectively deal with the root causes of it. This can contribute to lasting sobriety.”

A good exit strategy (1) plans to avoid needless triggers, and (2) has a plan for how to respond to triggers when they come.

Action Step

In this video, Matt Fradd talks about Dr. Kevin Skinner’s “pornography activation sequence,” including the first step of the sequence: triggers.

Reflection

When a trigger comes along, what will you say to yourself and what will you do?