Porn damages your brain.
Here's how to heal it.
I'm Dr.
Trish Leigh.
In this video, we're going to talk about three things.
Number one is how porn damages your brain.
The quick and dirty.
The number two.
How it changes you.
How it changes.
How you feel.
How you act, how you perform, et cetera.
And then lastly, number three, is your brain tip strategy for the day.
Let's talk about how you can heal it so that you can feel
and perform better, faster so you can ride off into the sunset.
OK, so first of all, how does porn damage your brain?
Well, there's science that proves that
pornography consumption does three things to your brain.
Number one, it knocks out the frontal lobe.
It decreases frontal lobe activity.
And what that does is it decreases your ability
to think it makes it difficult to remember.
It cuts the brake line basically on your ability
to make good judgments, which includes going back into the screen.
It makes it so that you lose motivation.
It increases anger and irritability.
Social anxiety increases.
It takes out that frontal lobe.
Number two, it decreases sensitivity in the reward center,
so it desensitizes the reward center in the middle brain.
What that does is, is it makes it so that you need incredible
amounts of stimulation and arousal to feel good.
And that has implications in your relationship, in your ability
to have healthy sexual relations with human beings in the real world.
It creates porn induced erectile dysfunction.
It makes it difficult for you to feel good in the world where
there's not massive amounts of dopamine like there are in the screen.
So then thirdly, the neural pathways
between the reward center and the frontal lobe are impaired.
So that's kind of that cutting of the break that I was talking about.
What what it also does is makes it so that the reward center
can't communicate with the frontal lobe and vice versa, making it difficult
for you to be able to leave the screen behind
and to be able to find dopamine from the activities in your real world.
So how does that change your behavior?
This is number two.
What it does is it creates hypersexuality,
so it makes your brain look for sex everywhere
so we can get those dopamine hits when you're not in the screen.
So when you consume porn, you're getting this deluge of dopamine, a flood,
and it makes you feel good and it takes the edge off
when you go back into the world.
Not only does your dopamine go low, your cortisol,
the stress neurotransmitter hormone spikes.
So now your brain looks all over the place,
usually on people's body parts, by checking people out.
Or you may want to watch movie scenes that include sex.
You may fantasize and have euphoric recall of what you've seen before.
It pops into your mind because it's looking for the dopamine hit.
So what that does is it makes you hypersexual, checking lots of people out
and changing your behaviors when you're in the world
because your brain needs the dopamine from sex.
So that includes objectification of women and fantasy
and just the desire to go back into porn for that dopamine hit.
It invades your thoughts.
So what it also does because of invading your thoughts,
there is a cycle to this whole thing so that when your brain is craving
dopamine and it's jonesing for it, you will have more anger and irritability,
more anxiety, more moodiness, more depression.
You won't be able to think you'll have that Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Nobody knows what version you're going to get of of yourself.
You don't know
what version you're going to get because you're not in control of your brain.
So what that does is it makes it so that your brain goes through the cycle.
You'll be triggered to think about pornography.
It gives you a dopamine drip, which makes it almost impossible
not to go into the screen to get the dopamine deluge
after you feel guilt and shame and you wish you didn't have to do that .
That's the essence of a compulsion.
We know porn consumption becomes hypersexuality behavior disorder.
If you continue to watch with frequency, consistency and increasing intensity,
if you're ramping up the stimulation, your brain's moving in the wrong direction.
What that leads you to is edging, which is when you let your brain linger
in a state of dopamine and then increase it into new genres
that leads to porn induced erectile dysfunction.
So not only does this create cognitive thinking problems,
no, or nor does it also include
psychological or mental health issues.
It also shows up in physical issues.
People have more health anxiety than ever, and they don't trace it
back to their porn use, and we know that it's connected.
So if you don't believe me about the science, go to TruthAboutPorn.org
It is a nonprofit organization that lists all the most current research,
and they're always adding to it fascinating, mind blowing ,
but also a call for the need to be able to figure this stuff out for yourself.
OK, so one last thing that it does is
it changes your behavior and it does increase in anger and irritability.
It makes you less attracted to your partner.
We just think about it logically through oxytocin, another neurotransmitter
you're linking your brain to the screen, to the
the actors that you are, the performers that you're watching on the screen.
That is what your brain needs to be aroused.
Your partner usually doesn't fit the bill there.
So then when you go to be with your partner, you're less attracted
and you actually think it's your partner's fault.
It's because you've coupled your brain
to the screen into what you're watching, the acts and the people.
So we know science shows there's two times as likely of break ups,
and that's on the rise because consumption is on the rise.
So what to do about it is the real question
How do you heal your brain?
Well, clearly you need to stop hitting the easy button for the dopamine
deluge going into the screen for all that dopamine through sex.
So you have to unlink your brain
to going to sex for mood
regulation, for taking the edge off anxiety and to feel better.
You have to create healthy sexuality in your life
while you find healthy ways to regulate your mood.
There's healthy or adaptive behaviors, and there's unhealthy,
maladaptive behaviors.
So adaptive working out, doing your hobbies, getting on purpose
in your work, finding work that you love every day you're jazzed up to go do it.
Having relationships that feed you.
And you know, once you break the cycle of going into the screen,
your relationship can feed you in a in a better way.
And having lots of relationships with friends and with family
and with a partner connection, intimacy, vulnerability so that you can really feel
connected in the real world and not isolate into the screen.
Your hobbies figure out what you like to do and go do it.
Don't say to yourself
that you don't have time to do it or you're not motivated enough to do it.
Planet into your week.
When you do all these things, what you do is you tell your brain brain.
Dopamine is in the real world, not in the screen.
It's the reverse of what you're doing right now.
And when you do the reverse of what you're doing right now,
you get a different outcome.
You get a healed brain through the beauty and the wonder of neuroplasticity.
You can, in fact, heal your brain back
to optimal or too optimal in the first place.
You may have a brain that's better than ever.
We know that a porn addiction starts in childhood and adolescence
for most people, which means your brain has never fully developed
the capacity that it could without porn.
Now is your chance, my friend.
I want you to take that chance.
OK, if you're looking for help on that journey, go to DrTrishLeigh.com
on my website.
There's programs of different shapes and sizes that can fit your needs.
I would love to be part of your journey if it feels good.
And until then, control your brain or Adobe control you.