Prevention feels like it should be difficult. We live in a culture that is saturated by sexualized images and ideas. And many of us are past being able to prevent a sexual addiction or bad habits with pornography – because we’ve already become addicted and are now fighting for our lives.
But I don’t want us to think that prevention is all about catching a kid when it comes out of the womb to keep porn from getting to them. Yes, we need to develop good habits before pornography makes an impression on us, but what about those people onto whom porn has already latched and made a big, ugly mark ? How can we ever beat something as monolithically large as pornography?
We need a strong, daily dose of re-prevention.
Every day, we have to wake up and re-prevent porn from getting into our lives. For me, that looks like shaking up my daily habits when I feel like I’m susceptible to temptation to watch porn. It means not taking a shower if I think I’m going to try to watch porn in the bathroom. It means going outside to shoot some hoops instead of watching TV, even if I’m already dog-tired from the day.
How can you practice re-prevention? Know your triggers (Tweet This!) – become painfully aware of the things that make you want to watch porn. It’s especially helpful to remember the old acronym HALT: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. When I am any of these four things, I know I’m more likely to want to seek the false comfort of porn.
Do you have routines you get into where you’re more likely to watch porn? Shake them up! If you tend to go to bed early and watch porn in your bed, stay up late reading a book on your living room floor. If you come back from class before lunch to hop on your computer, go to a buddy’s room in another dorm instead. Re-prevent that routine of temptation from tripping you up!
Re-prevention keeps the often-ubiquitous influence of pornography off your daily schedule, reducing that influence from further attacking and damaging your life and your thoughts. Practice re-prevention every day, and pretty soon THAT will become your routine. Get an accountability partner and text them every day at the same time. Get X3watch for your computer or phone. Let somebody know every time you plan to be by yourself. Replace your bad habits with good habits and start practicing re-prevention today.
It’s Not Prevention – It’s RE-Prevention by XXXchurch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.