pornography and social anxiety - Beyond Porn Addiction

Porn and Social Anxiety: What’s the Connection?

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(Last Updated On: August 27, 2019)

Many men who use pornography often admit to having difficulties forming relationships with people. This can take a few different forms, but a typical example is feeling uncomfortable around other people, especially women. How do these two concepts of porn and social anxiety work together?

pornography and social anxiety - Beyond Porn Addiction

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What is Social anxiety ?

A simple description of social anxiety is feeling uncomfortable around other people. People who experience it can feel that they don’t really have much to add to conversations, and feel they don’t really know how to make conversations flow. Along with that, men who experience social anxiety may also find that they wonder about how much other people are interested in what they’re saying. Taken together, talking to other people can be quite difficult. When men think about talking to a woman who might be interesting or attractive to a man, these thoughts are only intensified.

 

The pornography world

Contrast this with what men experience when they look at pornography. Firstly, pornography shows a world in which people generally interact easily. This is because there really isn’t all that much talking, and if there is, it’s focused on sex. Secondly, the scenarios in pornography are often orientated towards making men feel better about themselves. The women in pornography seem very interested in making men happy and satisfying their needs.

Put together, it’s no wonder that men often find watching pornography much easier than talking to people in the world. With this in mind, men naturally follow the easier path. Pornography gets more of their attention, and social situations get less of their attention.

 

Discomfort

Most men are embarrassed about using pornography and find pornography difficult to talk about. The last thing they want is their use of porn to come out in conversations. In other words, they feel ashamed and guilty about the porn they use. This shame and guilt makes conversations with people, especially women, even more complicated. This can lead to men seeing pornography as an easier choice, resulting in them using pornography even more. Porn never asks men to be vulnerable.

In this way, the link between social anxiety and pornography use becomes circular. Each one reinforces the other; the pornography use becomes more attractive, and relationships with people in the world become even more problematic and compromised.

 

Porn and social anxiety – what causes what?

It’s important to note one other thing. What I have been saying here doesn’t imply that pornography use causes men to be anxious in social situations. Social anxiety existed long before pornography and it certainly exists in people who don’t use pornography. For anybody to suggest that pornography actually causes social anxiety would be oversimplifying the matter significantly.

It would just be as inaccurate and simplistic as saying that anxiety around socialising causes pornography. However what it is fair to say is that in the right circumstances, porn and social anxiety interact to make each problem bigger.

If porn and social anxiety is somehting that you are struggling with, I offer individual counselling and couples counselling in Richmond in Sunbury.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Now, read about who owns your sexuality.

– Tim Hill

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Tim Hill

I do this work because I believe that with the right help and support, people change – I see it all the time. Whether you are battling something big or small, I believe that change is possible even when you don’t know how to change, when things seem hopeless or when the odds are stacked against you