What many men call normal, for me always felt like an addiction. I was introduced to porn at the age of 12 when we found some magazines in the paper waste of a friend’s house.
We soon found out where his father had hidden more magazines and video tapes. We spent hours and hours looking at the pictures and never ever talked about how we felt about them. Each boy would be isolated doing his thing, no communication, no connection.
I remember feeling empty, with a sense of guilt and raciness after those experiences, yet I would crave for more because I didn’t have any intimacy in my life. No cuddles with my parents or friends and I was way too shy to enter a relationship.
So the images of naked skin gave me the illusion of people being close, meeting each other. In truth, I was craving intimacy – meeting people and being met by people – not sex.
When I had my first sexual experience at the age of 19, it was a disaster. I had all these ideas and images disturbing me and setting me up for how to act, what to think, how to sound and the reality didn’t match at all with what I had seen on screen and paper.
I felt lonely and not met, nor could I meet my partner.
My friendships had changed by that time and since we neither had Internet nor cellphones, I didn’t have access to porn for a couple of years. But when I had the opportunity of visiting a big town, I would sneak into a porn movie theatre and this then confirmed to me that I was addicted to watching porn.
On the outside everything seemed fine. I had finished my studies at University and was working as a therapist, my body looked healthy from daily Hatha-Yoga sessions; I was married and had a great, well-functioning social network.
But why was I still watching porn? I had tried countless disciplines to let go of this habit.
By this time, I could already clearly feel that porn was actually looking at people being heavily abused, although I would still fool myself and think it would be less harmful if I didn’t watch aggressive porn.
What struck me most was the fact that I was working as a therapist often with women who had suffered sexual abuse. Although many clients found a momentary release through their sessions with me, they never experienced true healing from the sexual abuse.
Physical symptoms, fears and suicidal thoughts would come back time after time. But how could my clients heal from sexual abuse when I needed to heal this within myself to then be able to truly support their healing?
Sometimes I would have watched porn in my lunch break and then returned to treat clients that had been sexually abused. The images of sex sometimes were so strong in my mind that I had difficulties focusing on what my clients were sharing with me in the sessions.
I felt ashamed to touch my clients because it felt like I was somehow harming them. I couldn’t help it, but even without touching, in the moment when we looked at each other’s eyes, the energy of the pornographic images I had let into my body flooded the room and I could feel that I had absorbed the energy of the porn by watching it and this was actually abusive to my client and myself.
Nobody had ever told me that this was possible, but it was so awkward and real that I didn’t need proof of this other than my lived experience.
I started questioning myself as a therapist and the modalities I practised (which were mainly new age, shaman, spiritual, alternative therapies). If I was neither able to let go of the addiction, nor able to prevent the harm I was causing my clients in an environment that I was responsible for holding – one that is meant to allow healing from abuse – then something was genuinely missing and going wrong in my life.
Soon after this I began to get to know Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. Although porn addiction was never a topic of the Esoteric healing sessions, the addiction just fell off my shoulders within one year.
The more intimate I became with my natural self, the more normal it became to really meet people and be met by them, including other students of Universal Medicine.
I decided to let go of all the new age modalities I had practiced before I had experienced Universal Medicine at once, especially all shamanistic ceremonies and sessions and instead began only to work with the Universal Medicine therapies that I had learned.
After this decision I watched porn two times and both experiences were so disgusting that from that time on I never touched porn again.
It was clear everything had changed. I have experienced that the Universal Medicine modalities don’t work through mental explanations or behavioural regulation or discipline, they simply re-awaken the ability to feel and be energetically aware of everything that one engages with.
I began to realise that the modalities that I had practiced and experienced before I had come across those taught by Universal Medicine, all the new age, spiritual and shamanistic therapies, seem to work with energy in a way that casts a fog around our energetic awareness in the most deceitful and evil way to make us think we are dealing with the energetic root causes of our issues.
This goes on until our bodies show us the truth by displaying symptoms of exhaustion, illness and sometimes chronic disease and mental and emotional ill-health.
When I decided to become an Esoteric practitioner and applied for accreditation through the “Esoteric Practitioner’s Association” (EPA*) I found out that a prerequisite for becoming an Esoteric practitioner is to commit to never watch porn as well as a number of other prerequisites such as not drinking alcohol.
It was the first time in my life I had heard of this or come across an organisation that considered how what the practitioner does will directly impact upon the quality of healing that is offered to a client.
No healing modality that I ever came across, neither at University nor around the world during my studies of alternative medicine, ever asked that I not watch porn, or engage in other activities, because of the harm it would cause me and my clients.
This made sense of my experiences of the Universal Medicine therapies and the power of healing that they brought to me and others. It was the final confirmation for the stupendous quality, care and space that Universal Medicine and the EPA* offer, something that is not seen or matched anywhere else worldwide.
My experience has informed me of how important the quality I live in is to offering healing.
I would want such a safe space for every single person on earth, so that nobody ever again has to suffer unseen energetic abuse through the side effects of their practitioner’s lifestyle choices.
More and more men are starting to talk openly and honestly about porn addiction and the effects they observe it is having on their lives and on their loved ones. This is the way to end the illusion we have allowed the porn industry to abuse us with.
It was the true love I had for my clients and for myself that allowed me to ask the right questions that brought me to meet Serge Benhayon. And it is his enormous love and care for humanity that allowed me to change and create a safe space in my clinic.
The women and men that now come to see me, some of whom may have been sexually abused, can now finally start to truly heal in my clinic because they are never going to be imposed upon by an abusive energy that was there before I understood what my porn addiction was doing and they are offered an environment where they can feel safe and supported through the loving ways I now choose to live every day.
* The EPA (Esoteric Practitioners Association) is a branch of Universal Medicine. It was instigated by Universal Medicine to monitor and accredit the modalities that were founded by Universal Medicine.
By Anonymous, Germany
Further Reading:
Porn addiction – what are we missing out on?
Behind Closed Doors
Our secret medical history
679 Comments
It makes perfect sense looking at the amount of soft porn that is currently seen in our society that we have many many people craving intimacy but not sure of what this is or how to actually get it.
It is a wonderful thing to be able to look back and give to ourselves the love and understanding that perhaps we did not feel we had as children. In this there can be no blame or judgement. Just simple observations which can lead to even deeper understandings and even more love.
Such a great insight into how captivating and insidious porn really is and how this is encouraged and considered a normal thing for me to do is simply very scary. The objectification of any sex is not acceptable and is feeding a source of abuse.
Anonymous, thankyou for the honesty with which you shared about the destructive effect pornography has on us as a whole from the obvious down to the details of life that we least expect.
To consider the truth of ‘unseen energetic abuse through the side effects of practitioner’s lifestyle choices,’ is so very needed. Yet, we choose to be blind and unfeeling to what is there to be seen and felt, especially if we feel vulnerable and are there in need. Discernment, greater self empowerment and trusting what we feel without overriding our senses is the 1st step to finding true support. Anonymous, your blog goes a long way to address the addiction of porn and the unseen energetic abuse that comes with it. To write so openly takes a lot of courage, thank you for sharing.
This is such an important topic to raise, and the honesty in the sharing is immensely healing to read. It is a conversation about porn we need to really develop, as to date we haven’t recognised the harm of porn on how we relate to others in our relationships. Also how it affects our behaviours and crucially how it will never satiate our desires, but instead feed even more of the same in a hollow search for love and intimacy.
Its true, we haven’t recognised as a society, the huge harm that pornography wreaks on relationships and an individual’s health. A porn addiction impacts every part of one’s life and every relationship.
The damage that pornography is doing to individuals and society at large is untold and will show itself to be one of life’s great challenges in decades to come.
The quality we live is the offering of healing that we can tap into every day. The difference being the choice to say yes to this level of responsibility or choose the comfort that is so instant and before long has us questioning and realising how little it does heal.
I used to think porn was ok if it was consenting adults and all that, but I still couldn’t get around the fact of how it truly felt, but not really knowing about energy I would, like many other things I felt, just ignore or bury that feeling. So its great to have the truth about porn and the awful energy that surrounds it exposed for what it truly is.
The saddest part is we think our acts last just for one moment, that we can dip in to something and then leave it again. We like to believe that no-one will know – but what your beautiful words clearly show Anonymous is how every choice, every act carries with it an energy and so does everything we say yes to too. So when we go for a lie, for something that is incredible hard and heavy like pornography we should know the choice is not just ‘for Christmas’ as the saying goes but for life. To reconfigure these things takes honesty, awareness, healing and time. So what do we say yes to today that may be just as toxic as pornography?
The healing power of Universal Medicine is indeed remarkable if indeed we respond with love, truth and wisdom to the messages being delivered; as you did Anonymous. Thank you for sharing your experiences, love, truth and wisdom.
Your honesty enlightens a trap in which many people are involved nowadays. As you reveal here, is the search for intimacy what lies behind this self destructive addiction? Thank you for offering your experience for more people to get inspired with it. The quality you bring now to your clients is felt in your words. Only when we heal our issues and make other choices, we are able to offer a true different way to others.
We cannot truly support another, especially not as a therapist, if we indulge in behaviours that take us out; in this case it was watching pornography but it equally applies to the consumption of alcohol, taking drugs and the myriad of offerings that allow us to check out and not be present in our body.
What is out there in the pornography world is diminishing of both women and men, and very harmful. I remember the videos I used to watch were full of dominance over women and every time after I would have to switch off the video straight away because it just felt so vile.
Thank you for sharing your development and evolution around this topic, a much needed conversation to be had and I truly feel that this blog could be shared in many ‘off the shelf’ magazines as it can provide such healing for all.
We really can become addicted to so many things, so easily… The pleasure response chemicals in the brain just get triggered, and so the addiction starts… To be able to wrest ourselves out of the grip of something so physical is a great step forward.
It’s powerful how you knew right from the start Anonymous, that something about Pornography didn’t feel great. The way we treat it with guilt, suspicion and shame tends to distract from our true feelings. It keeps the conversation about what is right and what is wrong, when our body knows the truth all along. Why don’t we come out of the closet and simply say this is seriously harming us? My feeling is this is because there are many of us who still secretly enjoy the adrenalin rush. It’s not until we actually feel the complete and utter devastation pornography causes that we will stop sponsoring it to continue.
The addictive and hooking nature of porn is not fully recognised in our society, in fact many still regard it as harmless, though deep down we all do know and can feel that porn is deeply destructive. Every cell in our body knows the truth yet we can chose to override this by listening to the wayward desire of the sprit and in doing so cause more pain to ourselves and humanity.
Thank you Anon for a very honest sharing, of how porn controlled your life and affected those who came to your practise for healing. It was great for you to feel the harmful effects of the ugly energy of porn passing through you and the harm it was doing to your clients. It is beautiful to know that now you can offer true intimacy to yourself and with integrity offer true healing for your clients.
To speak openly about porn (and many other behaviours we deem as normal) and not take it as something that we do and is part of life and society but see it as the crutch it is we use to get through life is very much needed to break the behaviours we are caught in as a whole of humanity.
We all know when we abuse ourselves but it takes honesty to admit it and self love to heal it.
Thank you for your sharing and lifting a lid on what is happening within our world of ‘support’ services. As a community we do need to look deeper into this and realise that as a practitioner if we have not healed an issue within ourselves we are not then able to truly support another with this.
‘So the images of naked skin gave me the illusion of people being close, meeting each other. In truth, I was craving intimacy – meeting people and being met by people – not sex.’ How awesome that you recognised what was truly going on here. This is a great article. Porn and the watching of it is on the increase and it is being indulged in by younger and younger people. There is also an element of violence that has infiltrated this area so that the images are becoming much more extreme and the parameters of what is accepted and “normal” are changing. So how come these boys and girls at school are in such dire need of intimacy? As adults we need to look at how we are living and how much quality time we are spending with our children as they grow up Are we really meeting them or do we just get by with a superficial kind of relationship? If we tell them we love them do we really stop to consider what love truly is?
You know, I have actually stopped using the phase “I love you” because I know that often I do not treat myself with love, so how can I lie to another and tell them that I love them when I don’t hold that love within?
Beautiful to recognise that what we really crave is intimacy, and that when we find ourselves by connecting with our true essence we actually find it, intimacy with ourselves you might say, which takes away that need of others, such that in our own fullness we can enjoy others in a much more fulfilling way.
What an amazing turnaround Anon, and such an important sharing for the world from someone who has seen it from both sides and truly can feel the different energies and choices so clearly. Thank you for being so honest. How wonderful to truly know that you are now offering by your own renunciation, true healing, for both the women and also the men who have not yet seen their way out of those choices you once knew.
What you share is absolutely massive. It is complete energetic responsibility, all we do in life effects others. We can not hide our way of life or our choices not matter what we present on the outside, all is felt and all has an effect. And the massive realisation that we cannot offer healing support to others if we are not healing ourselves.
A very open and frank account of porn and the effects it has on others and yourself. I am reading a lot more articles in the news around porn and it’s impacts. How people younger and younger are not only watching porn but bringing what they have seen directly into the world. Some people as young as year 7 are playing at porn movies on each other. I remember still being a kid at that age and I’m now 44. It doesn’t seem to be slowing down and it looks like we are walking further away from a place that truly supports us around this addiction. Many think that porn itself is ok and yet are we truly looking at the impacts or the outplays? Or are we protecting ourselves and are own behaviours.
A beautifully honest and exposing sharing Anon. Only by expressing what is truly going on in our lives can we begin to bring change and healing. What a gift to your clients to take such responsibility!
I really think it is great Anonymous that you have taken the time to express your experience around this very important topic and one that isn’t talked about nearly enough. There is so much pornography that is readily available for everyone and anyone to see these days. We need to keep talking about this, making sure we are exposing what is really going on and the impacts to our younger generations.
Whether it is pornography, sugar, exercise, meditation, television, rage, whatever the addiction… Universal Medicine is quietly there always offering that incredible connection to ourselves that can heal whatever and where ever it is that we have ended up in our search for meaning.
It saddens me that many people miss out on true love, true intimacy and true connection all because they settle for a false form love that in truth never ever satisfies.
No one has ever taught us the true way to make love, as the images and pictures of sex in the world all feel empty and cold. If these are the only images available, what we learn just does not add up to what we know how love feels. I was not able to truly feel love until I have first met myself in intimacy in as many moments as possible in my every day.
The integrity in the way you live that is a requirement of the Esoteric Practitioners’ Association calls for you to be completely honest and truthful to yourself in all that you do.
So utterly amazing to read about your experience through this level of honesty. It is so much easier to bring understanding to acts such as porn addiction when we are given an explanation from the person about how they are feeling and why they choose it. It leaves no room for judgment as everyone can relate on one level or another. If we all communicated more and allowed ourselves to be as vulnerable as you have, there would be so much more access to healing.
What an amazing article, pornography is deeply harming. It hooks us in through the hurts we haven’t dealt with showing us a false “intimacy”. Of which the true form we don’t allow. And as you share, it is incredible what an effect it has on the services we can provide.
Everything we do and partake in has an effect, either supporting people or harming them. There is no middle ground.
Great reminder, thank you Katie.
There is so much that you have shared here, the state of affairs with regards to pornography in our society today, but also your own journey with it. With porn being so prevalent amongst men, it is not surprising that men are becoming more and more addicted and young men are getting more and more bombarded with unrealistic images of women.
I love the integrity and responsibility that the EPA asks of all it’s members. There is no code of ethics that touches this in the world. There is not one that comes anywhere close, it may look like it in words, but not the lived integrity of the EPA, it’s members, and foundation it has been built and stands on.
As Children we can sense pornography a mile away and as we grow up and become an adult those feelings and images don’t go away on their own. They fester within the body until the time comes to heal them. I can remember as a child being in the presence of men where I felt very uncomfortable. It wasn’t until later that I realised it was the energy of pornography. Pornography goes on everywhere and sometimes it can be quite shocking to sense that particular men are doing porn but what I am learning is not to react but observe and then I see more.
Addictions, the obvious and the not so obvious, are so debilitating. Like you Anonymous I am grateful for the teachings, inspiration and healing powers of Universal Medicine.