Is Sleep Deprivation Contributing to Your Porn Problem?

In Porn Escape: Confidently Walk Free from the Prison of Pornography , I briefly refer to the importance of a good sleep routine in resisting porn urges, explaining:

It’s been clearly demonstrated that a lack of sleep has serious negative consequences for a person’s willpower. 

 This is confirmed by a recent study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, in May 2015, which indicated that sleep deprivation could affect your ability to say no to porn:

To preserve self-control, it is important to balance personal effort and choices in such a way that the ability to maintain self-control remains stable while replenishing necessary resources. Unfortunately, the energy resources that allow for better self-control are more quickly depleted than replenished. As such, it is common to run low on the necessary energy reserves for self-control as each day progresses. Better understanding how sleep habits could reset and contribute to a stable set of daily energy reserves necessary for self-control opens the possibility of a new research agenda and could be one step toward overcoming the natural imbalance between available vs. used energy stores. In addition, good sleep habits could refuel a person’s ability to make more difficult choices instead of opting for the easier choice or the easier task.

For a more easily digested explanation of the study, see the article How Sleep Affects Your Willpower from the Huffington Post. The article explains:

There is ample evidence from other areas that support the sleep-willpower connection. Researchers who study decision making know that that self-control plays a role in whether or not we choose to do something. So it's not surprising that our decisions, judgements, and attention can all be compromised when we don't sleep well. Without sleep, the capacity for us to engage our prefrontal cortex is diminished. At which point the other part of our brain -- the reward center -- has more influence over our decision making. 

As I explain in Porn Escape, if you want to overcome porn permanently, it's vital you learn to transfer control from your limbic system to your prefrontal cortex.   (Read more about your frontal lobes and limbic system here.)

So, what do you need to do?  Get enough sleep.  Try for eight hours if you can.  Take a nap at lunchtime or during the afternoon or just before the times you might be tempted to view porn.

But what if porn is causing you sleeping problems?  Try leaving your laptop or tablet at work for a few weeks.  It won't kill you.  You might feel a lot better for it.

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