Stop masturbating? If you are already in the habit of it, you’re probably finding it pretty hard to stop: addiction can take hold very quickly! You may even think that you can’t live without it anymore, which is absolutely false. So, here are a few words of advice to help you break out*:

1. Avoid over-dramatizing the situation or blaming yourself excessively. (“I can’t do it, I’m so bad, I fall again and again, I’ll never be able to stop it I’m not capable, etc.”). This can continue to paralyse you, and make you lose all self-esteem, or any confidence you have in stopping.
2. Try to identify your deepest desire, the one which masturbation is trying to compensate for. Task yourself with responding to it positively, by developing your qualities. If you believe, entrust this project to God. If you don’t, maybe entrust it to people who do, for example via the live chat’ on this website. Entrust your heart and your body to God, as well as your deepest desires, your interior wounds: loneliness, lack of affection, etc. If you are involved with porn, you can also pray or ask for a deliverance prayer on this website. Masturbation is presenting you with a challenge: forge your true personality!
3. Avoid temptations: porn videos or pictures, daydreams, erotic gestures. Don’t tempt the devil in you. To help, read also: I’m obsessed by pornographic images, how do I get rid of them?
4. Share the weight of your problem. Ask advice from a good friend, a professional, your local priest or why not ask a psychologist to accompany you? When you’re able to express the problem you’re facing, and the difficulties you have in resolving it, you’ll lighten your load by 50%! Dialogue and advice can help you break the isolating and vicious cycle of masturbation.
5. REDUCE progressively acts of masturbation. It’s easier to walk up a mountain progressively than to arrive at the summit in one go! SLOWLY, BUT SURELY.
6. Take up commitments in positive activities. Give your energy to cultural activities, sport, social or Catholic activities. It’s not by wrestling with your faults that you’ll overcome them, but rather by developing the qualities you have.
7. Don’t listen to people who push you into having sex in order to avoid masturbating. Pornography and debauchery – or sexual vagrancy – are much more dangerous, much more destructive than masturbation.
8. If you fall, stand your ground: after a time of liberation, there will be moments where temptation comes back in force. Perhaps you’ve courageously managed to renounce casual sexual relationships, but you slip into the habit of masturbation? You’re asking yourself whether you’d be better off taking up sexual encounters again? Masturbation is compensation on a temporary level. No need to worry. It’ll fade out once you’ve discovered love in all its strength!

And, going from small victory to small victory, you’ll end up breaking out of it! If you fall again, tell yourself that you’ve lost a battle, but not the war!

So, what do you think about it? What do think about this advice? Come and talk to us via the live chat’! (Free and anonymous listening service) :

To go further, about porn addiction:

• What’s wrong with masturbation ?
• Masturbation, what’s the problem?
• How do I break the habit of masturbation ?

 

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Source: response freely adapted for Sosporno.net/Sosporn.org from the booklet for teenagers Succeed in your sentimental and sexual life, Brother Jean-Benoît Casterman, Editions des Beatitudes.