Feelings

Are you wondering why it’s important to acknowledge your feelings when dealing with porn? Feelings are a direct link to your needs, telling you whether they have been met or unmet. When your needs are fulfilled you are likely to experience feelings like happiness, joy, and interest. When your needs are unfulfilled you are more likely to feel sad, unhappy, dismayed, and troubled.

Feelings become the doorway to awareness and are valuable information about what is happening within you. In any given moment, you can check in with yourself to see what you are feeling and then use that feeling as a bridge to the need that is being met or not met.

Garry:

The pleasurable feelings I experienced when looking at porn indicated there were needs of mine being met. Later, I would often experience unpleasant feelings like sadness and guilt. These were indicators that there were needs of mine that weren’t being met. They were like the oil light coming on in the car telling me to start looking for the needs. Understanding my needs wasn’t always easy because I had a lot of conditioning that told me not to feel. I had to first tell myself it was okay to just feel whatever it was that I was feeling without judging myself for it.

Victoria:

I found that understanding my feelings proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated as well. I often labeled myself as a “feeling” person but became aware that what I called “feelings” were actually judgments and deflections of my feelings. For example, if someone asked me how I felt about Garry’s use of porn I would have said something like “Well, I feel like maybe there is something wrong with him.” This is a judgment about Garry, though, and didn’t describe what I actually felt. Even though I used that word, I had put my fears and concern onto Garry.

If I had been in contact with the actual feeling, it would have sounded more like this: “I feel scared when I think of Garry looking at porn.” I used to push my feelings away because I didn’t know what to do with them. Now that I see them as a valuable key to understanding my needs I am much more comfortable in welcoming them all.

How you are likely to feel when your needs are being met:

How you are likely to feel when your needs are not being met:

As part of exploring this issue of pornography we conducted an on-line survey and interviewed people personally. The results gave us an idea what feelings people were experiencing as well as what needs they were trying to meet by looking at porn. And we learned more about the experiences of those who were stimulated by others looking at porn. The following is a list of some of the feelings I heard. Remember that people are likely to experience one set of feelings when their needs are being met and another set of feelings when those needs have not been fulfilled.

The following are the feelings people reported when some of their needs were being met by looking at porn:

The following are the feelings people reported when some of their needs were not being met by looking at porn:

The following are the feelings people reported when they didn’t value porn and were in a relationship with someone who looked at it. Most of their feelings were related to their needs not being met.

What category (or categories) are you in? Do you resonate with any of these feelings? Remember these feelings are the doorway into understanding what needs have or have not been met.

Next - Exploring Needs.