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NEW Tuesday Morning Telemeeting!

Beginning Tuesday, March 13th at 7:00am CST, we are starting a second weekly Castimonia Telemeeting!  The Telemeeting will be held weekly every Tuesday at 7am (central standard time).  At this time, this Telemeeting is only for men who struggle with any type of sexual impurity.  A women’s only meeting might be formed in the future for women who struggle with sexual purity.

I look forward to hearing from you this coming Tuesday!

Tuesday Morning Telemeeting
 Time: 7:00AM – 8:00AM (CST)
Location: Telemeeting Call In Center Call In
Phone Number: 641-715-3818 (US Residents)
Access code: 407885
Click here for International Dial-In Numbers

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The conversation we’re not having about porn

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/05/26/the-conversation-were-not-having-about-porn

By Alexander Rhodes

Alexander Rhodes is the founder of NoFap, a platform dedicated to providing tools and support for people who want to quit porn.

Recently, a nonbinding resolution declaring pornography a “public health crisis” passed by unanimous vote through Utah’s state House and Senate, and was signed by Gov. Gary Herbert. In response, droves of Internet commenters tore into the legislators and the activists who pushed for its passage. Often, they discounted the resolution as theocracy or moral policing masquerading as public health policy, ignoring any evidence-based merit it might have.

While people are entitled to their skepticism regarding the backgrounds or motivations of those behind the resolution, this does not address the reasoning behind its arguments. In reality, criticisms of pornography transcend religion and morality.

Internet pornography is a very recent development, especially when compared with humans’ evolutionary timeline — and our brains have yet to adapt. Porn producers are hard at work each day developing audiovisual experiences that are ever more abundant, ubiquitous, novel and stimulating. Just as fast food franchises hacked our appetites by developing synthetic flavors, aromas and textures that target our brain’s reward system — leaving us with an obesity epidemic — porn producers are learning to hack our libidos with new technologies like HD video and virtual reality. It’s not unreasonable to pause and ask ourselves how their handiwork might be affecting our lives.

The negative effects of over-consuming Internet pornography is a well-documented phenomenon. Combine this with porn’s wild popularity and you have a recipe for a genuine public health concern. Individuals with porn problems are members of relationships, families, workplaces and communities, so individual porn problems trickle up to become societal problems. After all, we treat drugs, alcohol and gambling as serious issues not because everyone who partakes in them has an addiction but because the problematic few have a deleterious effect on our communities as a whole.

In recent years, discussions on pornography’s effects have been popping up throughout the Internet. The frequency of these conversations has escalated as the first generation of people raised on Internet porn is reaching adulthood and beginning to experience the detrimental effects of going through puberty using porn.

Thousands of individuals, often young and male, are reporting that using porn multiple times per day trained their brains to associate their sexualities with pixels on their computer screens, rather than sexual activity with human beings. They are reporting that they have a decreased interest in seeking out human partners, and if they do so, they often cannot achieve sexual arousal during partnered sex, have a decreased sensitivity to pleasure or cannot experience an orgasm without porn or porn fantasy. Interestingly enough, when these people remove one variable from their lives — using porn — most of the time their symptoms are reduced or reversed.

Their discussions have finally drawn the interest of researchers, clinicians and journalists. In reaction to their complaints, some good research is underway on the effects of porn addiction, such as the 2014 University of Cambridge study that used brain imaging to show that the porn-addicted brain reacts to porn cues the same way the drug-addicted brain reacts to drug cues. Yet some critics say there’s not enough evidence to support the idea that porn addiction is a public health problem, or even a real disorder. While there is already plenty of research available that confirms the existence of porn addiction, further research will require funding, ethics committee approval and willing test subjects.

These things require public interest, which requires open discussion about the subject — discussion that has been previously restricted to online forums and confidential sessions between clinicians and porn-addicted clients. If “Internet gaming disorder” is documented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, why not “Internet pornography addiction”?

Utah’s resolution doesn’t call for an explicit ban on porn, but the open language calling for “policy change” is sufficiently vague to leave us all wondering. Is the best approach to porn addiction through legislation? Certainly not, if that legislation leads to outlawing people’s right to consume pornography. Intimacy, sex, love and what we do with our genitals during our free time aren’t areas for a government to regulate. However, legislation aimed at raising awareness, facilitating open discussion and enabling research is worth exploring.

Pragmatically, the resolution in Utah is great for the porn-recovery community. It served its purpose of sparking discussion about this under-discussed topic. While Utah’s declaration may cause disagreement, at the end of the day we don’t serve society when we avoid complicated, taboo subjects for the sake of comfort. We need to talk about these things openly to solve problems and progress as a species. And yes, that includes porn.

 

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Episode 52: Step 7 in Sex Addiction Recovery

tep seven

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Jorge and Doug discuss how to best work Step 7. They discuss the importance of humility in the process of recovery and how difficult this step can be.

Email us at puritypodcast@castimonia.org for more information, and remember that you are not walking on this road of recovery alone.

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Codependency

A friend in the program once defined codependency as this:

When someone sticks their foot up your [rear] and you turn around and ask them if their foot is OK.

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Pornography ‘desensitising young people’

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-36527681

By Katherine Sellgren
 BBC News education and family reporter

Most children are exposed to online pornography by their early teenage years, a study warns.

About 53% of 11- to 16-year-olds have seen explicit material online, nearly all of whom (94%) had seen it by 14, the Middlesex University study says.

The research, commissioned by the NSPCC and the children’s commissioner for England, said many teenagers were at risk of becoming desensitised to porn.

The government said keeping children safe online was a key priority.

Naked images

The researchers questioned 1,001 children aged 11 to 16 and found 65% of 15- to 16-year-olds reported seeing pornography, as did 28% of 11- to 12-year-olds.

They also discovered that it was more likely for the youngsters to find material accidentally (28%), for example via a pop-up advertisement, than to specifically seek it out (19%).

More than three-quarters of the children surveyed – 87% of the boys and 77% of the girls – felt pornography failed to help them understand consent, but most of the boys (53%) and 39% of girls saw it as a realistic depiction of sex.

Some of the children’s approach to sex was also informed by pornographic scenes, with more than a third (39%) of the 13- to 14-year-olds and a fifth of the 11- to 12-year-olds boys saying they wanted to copy the behaviour they had seen.

The report also found:

  • More boys than girls had viewed online pornography through choice
  • 135 (14%) of the young people who responded had taken naked and/or semi-naked images of themselves, and just over half of these (7% overall) had shared these images
  • Of those children who reported seeing online pornography, the greatest proportion (38%) had first seen it on a portable laptop, 33% through a mobile phone and just under a quarter (24%) on a desktop computer
  • Nearly 60% of the children and young people surveyed who had seen online pornography reported seeing it for the first time at home, followed by 29% who reported doing so at a friend’s house

The report is published a week after expert witnesses told the Women and Equalities Committee that girls were wearing shorts under their school skirts to avoid sexual harassment and warned that online pornography was giving children unacceptable messages about sex and intimacy.

Young people’s concerns

One 11-year-old girl told researchers: “I didn’t like it because it came on by accident and I don’t want my parents to find out and the man looked like he was hurting her. He was holding her down and she was screaming and swearing.”

A 13-year-old boy said: “One of my friends has started treating women like he sees on the videos – not major – just a slap here or there.”

“It can make a boy not look for love, just look for sex, and it can pressure us girls to act and look and behave in a certain way before we might be ready for it,” said one 13-year-old girl.

Another 13-year-old girl said: “A few of my friends have used it for guidance about sex and are getting the wrong image of relationships.”

Dr Elena Martellozzo, who co-led the research, said: “Although many children did not report seeing online pornography, it is worrying that some children came across it accidentally and could be sent it without seeking it.

“If boys believe that online pornography provides a realistic view of sexual relationships, then this may lead to inappropriate expectations of girls and women.

“Girls too may feel pressured to live up to these unrealistic, and perhaps non-consensual, interpretations of sex.

“There is a huge task ahead for parents, teachers and policymakers.

“We found that children and young people need safe spaces where they can freely discuss the full range of issues related to sex, relationships and the accessibility of online porn in the digital age.”

Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, said it was worrying that many children were exposed to pornography.

“Only now are we beginning to understand its impact on ‘smartphone kids’ – the first generation to have been raised with technology that’s taken the internet from the front room, where parents can monitor use, to their bedrooms or the playground, where they can’t,” she said.

“We know from the research that very many children are shocked, confused or disgusted by what they see, and it is our duty to help them to question, challenge and make sense of it.”

NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless said: “A generation of children are in danger of being stripped of their childhoods at a young age by stumbling across extreme and violent porn online.

“Industry and government need to take more responsibility to ensure that young people are protected.

“Some companies have taken the initiative when it comes to online safety, and we will continue to put pressure on those that have not yet done so.

“Age-appropriate sex and relationship education in schools, dealing with issues such as online pornography and children sending indecent images, are crucial.”

A Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokeswoman said: “Keeping children safe online is one of government’s key priorities.

“Just as we do offline, we want to make sure children are prevented from accessing pornographic content online, which should only be viewed by adults.

“In the forthcoming Digital Economy Bill, we will bring in legislation that will require companies providing pornographic material online to make sure they have a robust age-verification system in place, so that those accessing their websites are over 18.”