- sadness
- boredom
- loneliness
- frustration
- anger.
What triggers these negative emotions in the first place?
This will be different for different people.
Some triggers are emotions themselves, for example, feeling bored, or living with a constant feeling of stress or anxiety.
Some triggers are caused by something that happens, for example, having a bad day at work or an argument with a partner.
Some triggers come from situations, for example, sitting in the room where you’d usually look at adult pornography.
Some triggers come from habits, for example, viewing adult pornography at the same time of day.
Negative feelings can trigger some people to go online and view sexual content to make themselves feel better or help them cope. They try to replace the negative feelings with more positive feelings of excitement, arousal, and adventure.
This might feel like it helps in the short term, but using pornography in this way is a bit like a sticking plaster – it is only a temporary fix and the issues behind your negative feelings might still be there.
It is important to remember that we are in control of our own behaviour, even if it sometimes doesn’t feel like it. Even if something has triggered you to have a strong emotional reaction, you still have a choice of how to make yourself feel better. You have a choice whether to go online and view pornography, or whether you manage your feelings in a different way.
How to manage your triggers
If you want to view pornography then there are a range of techniques that you could use to help stop yourself. Check out our information on fantasy management.
Exercise 4: Keep a trigger diary
Over the next week, we encourage you to keep a diary, completing the diary each time you go online. You can have more than one diary entry each day.
Sometimes it can be difficult to know what triggered your feelings before you went online. It can help to think about what you were doing or whether something specific happened before you went online. You might need to spend some time reflecting on this.
| Day | Time | How I was feeling before I went online | What did I do online? What type of content did I view? | How long did I spend online? | How did I feel when I was online? | How did I feel after I stopped being online? | Ideas for what I could have done instead |
| Monday | |||||||
| Tuesday | |||||||
| Wednesday | |||||||
| Thursday | |||||||
| Friday | |||||||
| Saturday | |||||||
| Sunday |
- Are there any patterns between how you were feeling before, during, and after you were viewing adult pornography online?
- Are there any patterns between your feelings and the length of time you spent online, or what you did online?
- What triggers can I identify?
- What are some things I could do instead of watching pornography?
- What have you learned from completing this exercise?
