Ep. 14 Perfectionism and Porn Addiction

No More Desire ™ Porn Addiction Recovery

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to addiction and perfectionism lately. About how alike these two mental illnesses are.

I’m going to tell you how perfectionism and porn addiction feed off of each other, and how all addictions, to an extent, find their origin in guilt and shame addiction - something you may have never heard of.

Both porn addiction and perfectionism have something in common, and that’s that they both originate in guilt and shame. This guilt and shame can become alluring to “the natural man” (the pleasure-centered brain). It can come to crave it over time.

Feeling shameful or guilty about a bad behavior is not what motivates an addict to stop. In truth, it is the shame and guilt that drive us addicts to engage in our addiction in the first place. (Don’t try to make sense of our addict brains - God knows we certainly can’t!).

Perfectionism feeds off of this guilt and shame, just as pornography addiction does. And because perfectionism increases stress, it can cause us to feel a need to cope in unhealthy ways.

What Porn Addiction and Perfectionism Have in Common

Perfectionism, I think, lingers in most of us. It comes in different forms and is centered upon different subjects depending on the person: work, school, relationships, etc. But while it may be varied, essentially perfectionism is the belief that making mistakes causes us to be unworthy of love.

When we are perfectionistic, we avoid mistakes at all costs, or refrain from admitting to our weaknesses, because we believe that others would reject us if they knew we were flawed.

The saddest part is, if we were open about our flaws, most people would love us more for that honesty. Not less.

Perfectionism is simply guilt and shame taken to the umpteenth extent. We feel shame and guilt so often and so intensely growing up, that it becomes a part of our personality.

This is similar to pornography addiction. We escape to porn because we are unwilling to face our insecurities, flaws, and trauma. We don’t want to let others in, as we know from experience that letting others in can get us (or them) hurt. We don’t want people to see our mental and emotional pain, because we believe these broken parts of us make us unworthy of love.

So, at the end of the day, perfectionism and addiction come from the same root: the fear that we are not enough. This is shame.

“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies.”

- Psalms 18:2-3

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