Sadly, wrestling with pornography addiction is increasingly commonplace. But how do people find pornography? And why do they keep going back to it?
In the final of this series revisiting Reclaim, Troy and Melissa Haas of HopeQuest, shared their testimony and expertise around pornography addiction, and what it takes to overcome it.
Prefer to listen? Listen to the full episode here.
Juli (00:01.742)
Hey friend, welcome to Java with Juli hosted by me, Juli Slattery. This podcast is a ministry of the ministry, Authentic Intimacy, and we exist to help people make sense of God and sexuality. Well, we are wrapping up a mini series of some of the teachings from Reclaim today. We’re going to be sharing a breakout session from Troy and Melissa Haas, who are the founders of HopeQuest. If you’ve listened to Java with Juli for a while, then you might be familiar with Troy and Melissa.
And they’ve shared about Troy’s former struggle with pornography and how they fought to rebuild their marriage. But today you’re going to hear something a little different. Troy and Melissa used the time at this Reclaim Breakout to talk about how people get addicted to pornography, the situations and events that can lead to it, and how to start taking steps to get free from an addiction.
This is a grace-filled and encouraging conversation whether you struggle with pornography or not. I’d encourage you to lean into it because I know you’ll be encouraged.
Troy
We started an organization called Hope Quest and Hope Quest helps men and their families impacted by addiction experience freedom and hope. And we do that by having a Christ-centered, clinically effective residential addiction treatment program. As clinical as clinical can be and respects that side of things, but it’s also as Jesus as Jesus can be and takes that side of things seriously. So if you know someone that wants Christ-centered, clinically effective residential addiction treatment.
We help folks from literally all over the country. About half of our clients, their primary issue is substance oriented. About half of our clients, their primary issue is sexually oriented. Many of our clients are poly addicted, which just means they’re addicted to any and everything that kind of works for relieving their stuff. And most of our clients have some sort of co-occurring mental health disorder, anxiety, depression would be the two most common things. So there’s that program. And then on this other end of the spectrum,
Troy (02:00.29)
We’ve written curriculum and have groups that are meant to be in churches for men who struggle. So this is peer-led support accountability for men who struggle with pornography and sex addiction and for betrayed spouses. So that’s kind of that and everything in between what HopeQuest does. And then the other thing we wanted to ask you guys, so just out of curiosity, how many of y’all would say your primary interest in being in this particular breakout is because of your role as a parent in a child’s life. Is there any? okay. And what was our other, what’s the other thing that you were wanting to know?
Melissa
I think that’s primarily okay, because we don’t want to out anybody else. Right.
Troy
Yeah, and we wanted to just make sure if there were a lot of folks that wanted to really kind of camp out on and talk deeply about how to help kids. We’ll mention that, but we probably won’t spend a ton of time there and we can answer some questions later. But Melissa, I’ll let you take it away.
Melissa
So we’re going to talk about understanding and addressing struggles with pornography today. And again, we have 45 minutes. So this is going to be a more 50,000 foot view. But I want you to hear me say and hear us say right away that sexual addiction, pornography addiction, is a pretty normal human response to pain. Now, I’m not saying that to excuse it or say it’s not sinful.
Melissa (03:30.24)
I want us to understand that at a biological level, it makes sense why we turn to sexual things to cope with pain. I’m hoping in saying that, that you can just take a breath, if you happen to be here for yourself, that you can take a breath and understand that you are still greatly loved and accepted if this happens to be the way you learn to cope.
Okay, you are still very greatly loved and accepted if this happens to be the way you learn to cope with pain. And so we’re going to endeavor to talk about what makes you vulnerable, what makes a person vulnerable to developing a pornography addiction and how a beginning dabbling in pornography becomes a stronghold or an addiction. And then some things you have to do some non-negotiables for breaking free. And we’ll address a little bit about protecting the people that are vulnerable in your life from pornography. So, sweetheart, why don’t we start with just a little bit of, if you were to say one thing, or if you were to just talk about the things that you think made you vulnerable to developing sexual addiction that you really didn’t have power control over, what would you say are the top contenders?
Troy
I think one of the things that we just, if you were just in our last breakout, we talked about shame. And I think shame and just this deep pervasive sense of something’s wrong with me. I’m uniquely screwed up. I’m a bad and worthless person. If you really knew me, you wouldn’t love me. That belief that I carried as long as I can remember, I think made me especially vulnerable. And I think the biggest reason it made me vulnerable was it caused me to be hidden and isolate and keep secrets.
Troy (05:31.744)
And that’s important because the next reason that made me very vulnerable is what I would call early childhood sexualization. And in my generation, that primarily happened through childhood sexual abuse. A lot of folks in my generation experienced childhood sexual abuse and that was how they got introduced to sex and sexuality. These days, it’s not that the childhood sexual abuse doesn’t happen.
But these days, most folks are exposed at an early age to sex and sexuality through pornography. It is pervasively available in our world today, primarily because of this thing right here and the worldwide web that that brings. But that early childhood sexualization did several things for me, to me. One of those was it taught me that sex was a way to feel better and forget about my problems for a moment. That experience of just sexual release made me feel better and made me forget about my problems. The other thing that I learned in that early childhood sexualization was the belief, it wasn’t a true belief, but the belief that the way you connect with another person on a really deep level is through sex. And so we’re created for connection. God wired us to want to connect and need to connect. And what happened for me is I learned early on, again, falsely, that the way you connect with people is through sex. And that just became this kind of defining context of most any relationship that I had growing up.
Melissa
So I want to add some things to that story because they happen in a context growing up. So if you have early exposure to porn, but you have a very connected family system where your parents have been talking about sex and you’re not afraid to go to them and say, mom, I saw this and I felt this way or dad, saw this and I feel really bad and something weird happened and I don’t know what to do, then the early exposure to pornography actually probably will not result in a problematic development of a pornography addiction. Because what makes us most vulnerable to developing a problematic relationship with pornography is early exposure to pornography that is kept secret in an environment where children do not trust their parents for whatever reason to tell them. Right? So that might be because they don’t trust their parents can handle it. Mom’s already anxious and gets freaked out over little stuff. So I’m certainly, or dad’s really anxious and critical and gets freaked out over little things I do. I’m certainly not gonna tell him that. Or mom or dad are not there, they’re busy. So I’ve never even developed a relationship of confiding in them. I don’t go to my parents for comfort. I handle my own problems by myself. I don’t see them as agents of comfort or wisdom in my life. I don’t trust them for that, so I keep it secret.
And so the setup for developing pornography addiction is not just thoroughly exposure. It’s in an emotionally absent environment, emotionally under connected environment. And I don’t trust the people that I’m in my home with to let them into this inner experience, to this experience at all.
Troy
And just to kind of give you a little bit more of my story to help you understand this, both my parents, my parents are 91 years old, they’ve been married for 72 years. They grew up in the depression. And so they really both experienced poverty and want and need in a major way. So one of the vows my parents, my mom in particular had made was, my son’s not going to experience that in life.
Troy (10:03.064)
So one of my mom’s primary missions in life was just to make sure that I had all the stuff that she didn’t have growing up, whether that was just the ability to have nice clothes or the ability to do stuff. My mom’s mission was to provide everything that she didn’t have for me. So my mother worked not because she necessarily wanted a career and not because my mom and dad were chasing the American dream of, you know, finances. My mom worked primarily so there would be enough money for her to give me any and everything that I wanted or needed. So the good news of that for me was I actually was fairly spoiled as a kid. But the reality was mom was busy because the way my mom loved me was giving me things.
Troy (11:03.786)
And what I didn’t know and she didn’t know was I had all this stuff going on and I was scared and lonely and I desperately didn’t know what to do and I desperately needed and wanted somebody to talk to and there just wasn’t anyone there. And again, that’s not because my mom was neglecting me. My mom was actually, I mean, my mom worked so hard at a job to be able to buy stuff for me. And then when she wasn’t at work, she was cooking for me and cleaning for me and and just making sure I had all the cool experiences. And my house was the house that all the kids in the neighborhood liked to come to, because my mom would cook and provide sodas. just my parents were the cool parents that everyone loved. But what my parents weren’t was emotionally available for me to talk to. And so I’m experiencing sexual abuse, and there’s no one to talk to. And I’m experiencing bullying at school, in elementary school, and there’s no one to talk to.
I experienced heartbreak. Imean, my first little, I actually got in trouble in first grade for like doing, I was kissing other girls at school in the first grade. I had my first like legit crush, like in the fourth grade. And I bought her a gift for like Valentine’s Day, a little, you know, $5 necklace. I saved up and bought her this necklace and
Melissa
Right.
Troy (12:32.288)
I went to give it to her and she did not respond like I had hoped she responded. She thought I was weird and crazy and she saw my gift for her and she ran away. But it was heartbreaking for me and I remember just crying and being so sad. My parents were both at work and I remember just going into my house and just laying in my room and just sobbing, feeling rejected, feeling unloved, feeling alone and not having anyone to talk to again.
My parents are wonderful, wonderful people. They just weren’t emotionally available and primarily they weren’t emotionally available because their parents weren’t emotionally available to them. They didn’t know. My dad grew up on a farm in a German community. My dad didn’t even speak English until he went away to the first grade. And so they just weren’t emotionally available. So all of that was a recipe for me to develop a problematic relationship with pornography and sex.
Melissa
And I’ll just add this, I grew up in a really conservative Christian home. And so there was a lot of protection in my home, but there wasn’t a lot of connection or discipleship around sexuality. It was just the message, don’t do it till you’re married, right? So when I was, as I shared last night, babysitting for the lady down the street who read Harlequin romance novels, and I started reading those, it really distorted what I believed about sex, but I didn’t talk to my parents about it.
I didn’t share or check out my beliefs or what I was reading or the way I was feeling with them. So again, I’m the oldest of six kids. My mom was busy. I learned very early to be self-reliant so that I didn’t bother her. And so I served. And I see this pattern a lot with people in ministry. You serve and you minister and you help others, but no one is taking care of you. In fact, you may not even be aware you have needs. I didn’t, I wasn’t aware of my needs for a very long time.
Troy (14:34.158)
And you had a belief system in your home that said, you’re not supposed to have needs, you’re supposed to serve others. And it’s kind of unspiritual to have needs. And certainly unspiritual to have negative emotions.
Melissa
That’s right. And I firmly believe that’s why we saw so many ministry failures, moral failures, because people are serving and doing, but not aware of what their own hearts need. And so they end up leaning out to meet their needs self-reliantly. And sex and pornography is an easy way to do that. So, go ahead.
Troy
I was just going to say. That just kind of describes why someone would be vulnerable to a pornography addiction.
Melissa
So how does it become an addiction though? Because looking at pornography or pornographic images is one thing, but how does it become problematic, compulsive?
Melissa
So what we know about the brain is what fires together, wires together. There’s this little hormone in our brain called dopamine. Have you heard about it? Dopamine is actually the learning hormone.
Melissa (15:43.764)
It lays down markers along neuropathways. Remember that. That was helpful. Remember that. That was pleasurable. And so if you have an experience, and we’ll use food because that’s way easier to talk about than sex, right? So let’s say I go to a restaurant and I have this awesome hot fudge brownie with ice cream on top. And it happens to be on a day when I’m super stressed. And I mean, it just feels so good.
Right? My brain lays down a little dopamine marker in that neural pathway. Remember that. Remember that on a stress day, you could go there and get that hot brownie with ice cream and you will feel so much better. Right? So if I have the time and the money to repeat that behavior, if I have access to that brownie and I do that multiple times, I create a neural pathway that my brain just marks as when you feel stress, do that. It’s like a tab in my brain and eventually it’s muscle memory, right? I don’t even have to think about it. I feel stress, I’m not even maybe aware of the stress. I find my car turning to the restaurant that serves that brownie with ice cream on top. And I don’t even think about it. I’m kind of like in a dissociated state, right?
I’m just there, I pull up, I go in, I my brownie, I feel better, I go home, I do the next thing. That’s how addiction develops. And while at first it is a choice, I choose to go, eventually it’s no longer a choice. My brain suggests it, I go, I don’t even have a pause. This part of my brain is now offline. My prefrontal cortex is offline.
My amygdala and my mesolimbic reward system are communicating with each other internally. It’s an internal memo. And I just find myself doing the same behavior without really any thought or mindfulness.
Troy (17:48.206)
Now we’re not saying that because something’s not a choice doesn’t mean it’s not wrong or you’re not responsible. And by saying it’s not a choice, it’s more better said this way, it feels like there’s not a choice. What happens is I get triggered and because of this neural pathway and because of this pattern, the next thing I know, I’m looking at porn and I’m like, my God, how did I get here again? Because I had told myself I’m not coming here again.
I am done with this. I am not gonna do this anymore. I am finished with this behavior. I’m just not gonna go here again. And then tomorrow, stress happens, craziness happens, and all of a sudden I’m here again. And I’m like, holy smokes, how did I get here again? That’s what we mean by this pattern where there’s this neural pathway that develops and addiction is simply us walking down that same pathway over and over and over again till it becomes habitual and until it becomes automatic. And that’s what we mean by that.
Troy
And then on top of that, we throw in another hormone called adrenaline. Now here’s the interesting thing about adrenaline. know, adrenaline is that fight or flight hormone, that hormone that when we know something’s not right or something’s wrong or something’s dangerous, it kind of courses through our system to try to help us find safety.
But what happens is, for example, most of us know that pornography is wrong, especially if we’re a believer, we have a relationship with God, we’re a follower of Christ. We don’t want to do that. And so there’s this natural response as our body does these things that we know we don’t want to do or we know we’re supposed to avoid, but adrenaline’s created in that. And that adrenaline simply becomes a part of that neurochemical cocktail that makes this pathway all the more appealing. And then what happens?
It creates an intensity in the experience that makes it even more addictive and even more habitual. And then ultimately what happens, this is why addiction always escalates because now I need more dopamine and I need more adrenaline. So I’m going to do something more dangerous or more cutting edge or more out there. And things just kind of keep ramping up because of that and deepening that neural pathway.
Juli (20:15.852)
Hey friend, if you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know that it is listener supported, which means we really rely on your donations as we create resources, this podcast, our blog posts, events, webinars, and the courses that we run. I just want to take a moment to say thank you for your continued support of this ministry. Your generosity really does make all of this possible. And if you are not currently supporting us and you want to make a donation, you can either donate one time or set up a reoccurring donation and you can do that through the link in the show notes. And thanks again for making everything that we do possible because of your support.
Melissa
So that is true for every addiction, but sexual addiction has an actually another hook. And that is unmet emotional needs that we get met in vicarious ways through pornography and sexual content. Okay? So if I grew up feeling inadequate, you know, I’m not all that, I’m insecure about who I am, who I am as a man or as a woman, then as you guys know, because Hollywood capitalizes on this, media evokes emotion. Right? How many of you can watch Bambi without crying? I am not one of those. Right? It’s because you have no heart, honey. It’s all right. But if you watch a good movie, right, your emotions get involved. You start living vicariously in the movie, right?
Melissa (21:59.134)
And for pornography, I can experience emotions that I would experience in a quote, real relationship, not real, fantasy, right? With no risk and no work.
Right? There’s no risk. I can’t get hurt. Pornography will never reject me. Pornography will never tell me I left the toilet seat up or that I forgot to take the trash out. Pornography will never tell me I’ve gained weight and I don’t look awesome. Pornography will never, ever reject me. There’s always time. It’s always yes.
Troy
And I don’t ever have to invest anything into that relationship I have with porn. It never requires anything of me. I don’t have to be caring. I don’t have to be loving. I don’t have to be vulnerable. I don’t have to sacrifice. It gives me everything I need without requiring anything from me.
Melissa
Right? So I experience a pseudo relationship with no work and no risk emotionally. Except there is all the risk and all the danger because if I am turning to pornography, if I’m bonding with pornography, I am harming myself and others. I’m harming my relationships with God. I’m harming my relationship with my spouse if I’m married. I’m harming my relationship with my future spouse if I’m not married.
Melissa (23:32.822)
Right? So it feels like a no risk, all my needs get met endeavor, but really I am sabotaging and harming me and my relationships. So I don’t know that, so when I think about our story, when Troy’s sexual addiction was exposed, I could get my head around why he did what he did. As I learned about addiction and I learned about the processes in the brain and I learned about how he was trying to get legitimate needs met in illegitimate ways. I could have grace for his struggle. Didn’t change the impact. Didn’t change the grief I experienced or the consequences we experienced as we lost our missionary career and our friendships and all of the, and the dream of our, all of those things. But I could at least understand it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t because I was somehow lacking as a woman.
And it wasn’t because I somehow didn’t measure up. But the impact, the bigger impact on our marriage was how can I trust you not to harm me again? Right? So I could wrap my head around what was going on for him. But then the big question mark for me was, can I trust that you won’t harm me again? Can I trust that? Because that was a relational wound, right? The breaking of trust.
So as we think about relational impact, as we’re talking about the grace and truth part of this, addiction, there’s grace for that. There’s healing for that, and there’s hope for that. And the truth part is, it does have consequences. So we want to really work on relational repair. Which brings us to, how do we break free, honey? This is where the rubber meets the road.
Troy (25:36.226)
If you want to break free yourself or help someone break free from a pornography addiction, the single, the single most important step is to involve other people. Now, that is also the single most scary step.
Because part of what fuels this pornography addiction is a belief driven by shame that says, if you really knew me, you would not love me. And now you’re asking me to tell someone my deepest, darkest, most shameful secrets. And in my mind, I know the only result of that is going to be they’re gonna reject me. They’re not going to love me. But I’m telling you the only…
There is not a path forward that doesn’t start with involving someone else. You can ask God for help. I’m not suggesting that prayer is inept. I’m not suggesting that God won’t help. But I am suggesting that because the relational nature of pornography and the unique role that shame plays in the development of pornography, this deep sense of I’m defective, I’m uniquely screwed up, if you really knew me, you wouldn’t love me.
Troy
There’s not a path forward that doesn’t ultimately involve other people in walking with you through this journey out of pornography addiction. So that’s the starting point. you might say, well, gosh, Troy, tell us, how were you so brave as to cross this horribly difficult threshold? And what I would say to you, I was not brave at all. I was horribly scared. I begged God, as I mentioned last night, I tried everything I could think of for years to break free. But what God did for me was God let me get caught. God facilitated my exposure so that I didn’t have a choice but to involve other people.
Troy (27:47.778)
And I’m just, I guess, mindful of the fact that God will give you people that will love you and will walk with you if you will just trust him and surrender to him. I know it is scary. One of the scariest things in the world is letting someone else know what’s going on in your internal world when you’re struggling with pornography or sex addiction.
Melissa
And I will just add with a smile on my face that if you are not brave enough, God will be brave for you. If you can’t work up the courage, He loves you enough to expose you. And I hear that story all the time, right? Because He loves you enough. From a perspective of the way your brain works, the second step is you’ve got to stop reinforcing the behavior, whatever it takes.
Remember that dopamine again, right? If I keep reinforcing the behavior, I will not break free. So I have to get to a place what recovery community calls sobriety, right? But basically, I have to stop doing the behavior and I have to do whatever it takes to stop doing the behavior. Because every time I reinforce it, the way this flesh, this flesh container works is it just keeps me in the addictive cycle.
Right, so I’ve got to tell somebody, I’ve got to invite other people into my journey, and I have to put whatever blockades I need to, to stop reinforcing behavior. It is a must. It would be no different than if I cut myself in an artery and I was trying to live, stay alive, right? I have to stop the bleeding.
If I put a bandaid on that sucker and don’t stitch it and it leaks out, I’m gonna die. Slowly or more slowly, but I’ve got to stop the bleed out.
Troy (29:41.226)
And let me say this about that. Some progress is better than no progress. So for example, for many of us, I acted out sexually every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. So when I first got into recovery and I was able to go a week, that was a big deal. That was a big deal. Now, I’m not suggesting that Melissa should be or would be cool with me saying, hey honey, I’m only gonna look at porn and be sexual with myself once a week.
Melissa
Yeah, no, that’s not gonna work.
Troy
But that’s progress towards a goal of stopping the ongoing behavior and stopping that pattern of acting out that fuels those neural pathways.
Melissa
So a piece of that is beginning to be able to understand what is your trigger in the first place. Do you even know? So one of the first things we work on when people come to us for treatment is what is happening in you? Because part of the addictive cycle is I no longer pay attention to what is happening. I just have a solution. I’m not even paying attention, right? So the first thing we always work on is emotional awareness. What are you feeling?
Melissa (31:08.696)
For most people, the trigger for acting out is usually some situation that makes them, that reminds them of something they feel shame about or something they feel inadequate about. They failed in some way, they experienced some kind of rejection or they feel some kind of shame. And it comes for you so quickly. If you are not mindful of it, your brain will automatically put you on the relief track.
Right? So you have to build in a pause button. And that pause button is like being mindful of what is happening in me, in my body. For most people I work with, and especially this is true for guys, because guys, you’re not taught to feel, right? Boys, they’re playing baseball, they fall instead of crying and carrying on their dads like, are you bleeding? You’re fine, get up, go, safe, go. Right?
So boys are actually taught to disown their pain. So a lot of men carry around extraordinary pain in their souls and they can’t understand why they keep acting out. Right, so if you don’t get in touch with what’s happening in you, you cannot create the pause that you need to make a choice. So we always work first on what’s going on.
Melissa
And for men, I always start in their body. Where do you feel that in your body? Most guys will say, there’s pressure right here in my chest. I feel it. Or in my gut. feel it in my gut. And I’m saying, awesome. You’re noticing whenever you feel pressure on your chest or when you feel that hit in your gut, that is when you are vulnerable to acting out. That is when you need to make the call.
If you wait until you’re already in the act of getting online to search, you will act out. You are already in the addictive cycle. You are already in the hunt. You have to catch the cycle at the emotional stage. I am noticing my chest feels tight. I’m noticing my gut feels tight. I need to make a call. So let me speak to women here for just a minute. For women who struggle with pornography,
Melissa (33:30.048)
A lot of women are caught in the dilemma of wanting connection but not feeling safe. A lot of women who struggle with pornography addiction have sexual trauma or trauma with men, under-nurturing with men, under-nurturing with fathers. That’s not always true. I’m speaking broadly, but that’s a pattern I see that shows up in my office. And so pornography is a way to feel connected to a man while feeling safe.
Or if your trauma happens to be with your mom, connected to a woman, why feeling safe, getting nurturing needs met. So if I am not aware of what drives my porn use or why I turn to it, I have this emotional, legitimate emotional need for nurture, for connection, for comfort, and it’s become sexualized. And so if I don’t look for that, if I don’t find corrective experience, appropriate healthy relationships, where I can receive comfort and nurture and acceptance. I’m going to be drawn to pornography in those moments when I feel lonely, rejected, and unseen, unimportant. Right? So I’ve got to find ways to get legitimate emotional needs met in healthy relationships so that porn is not as powerful.
Remember, pornography is not only giving us pleasure, but it is vicariously, we’re attempting to meet legitimate emotional needs in it while remaining safe, right? Not getting hurt emotionally.
