you know, I never did get your book.  I emailed you as you requested to remind you.  I am still very interested in reading what you have.  I have gotten so busy I totally forgot to follow up with you.  If you could send that to me that would be wonderful.  Thanks, Paul 
eTherapySolutions

 Putting the 'addiction' part aside, is it a good thing to stay completely away from masturbation (and maybe... pornography)? I know according to my belief system, there's no reason to stay completely away from it. I am just curious to hear your opinions.

I find that a person involved in pornography and masturbation is limiting him or herself in life, from being the best that is within them. These are very selfish activities that do nothing to make the world a better place, or the individual a better person. If the person is in a relationship with a significant other, these activities never bring any good into the relationship, just conflict, hurt, and feelings of betrayal. So I do feel that even if a person isn't addicted, these activities are not healthy - and to the contrary, they distract the individual from really manifesting their best. From a spiritual perspective, I believe that God has shared with us the power to create, and it is a sacred trust. We can lower ourselves to our lowest animal state and have sex with every available candidate, or we can learn to control our passions instead of letting them control us. Sexual relations between a husband and wife are meant to be a sacred bond between them, that is where the greatest joy in sex is found. Just some thoughts. Arden

I would  say That masturbation has got a bad rap. being addicted to any thing can be a problem but there are may time's when it has saved the day. even in relationships when one partner or the other is unable to perform and I don't think that god cares one way or the other.

On the other hand I wouldn't want it for my only means of sexual pleasure as it can be very isolating and keep us away from some great relationships ...  Rex

Dear Jaycee2000, I've been struggling with such an addiction for many years. I am 44 and I truly empathise and sympathise with your situation. Sexual cognition is one of the most illusive features of the human condition. Conventional science has little to offer regarding it, other than a "make the best of it" attitude. But here are some thoughts. 1: you're not going out and using others as humans as kleenex to satisfy your addiction, you have not become a sexual predator this shows that you have heart (eventhough you might think it's more due to your shyness) 2: You are loved. People love you, never forget that, and learn to draw strength from that and offer yourself compassion and tolerance. 3: You have EFT if I had that tool at your age I would probably have beat it (the addiction I mean) by now. 4: The tipping point is a phenomenon that occurs when a build up of actions produce a critical mass that results in a manifestation, it's like a seed that takes it's time to sprout and when it does it grows fast. You're time will come. 5: Everything you are going thru now somebody else is feeling (me for instance) the more you help yourself the more you will have to offer others who have similar problems. Just the courage you have displayed by talking about your challenge has made me feel less alone, I thank you for that. 6: As I said before sexual cognition is a great mystery, not surprising you find it challenging, that being said the more agitated you become the more it is likely to assert itself, this has been my experience, so work on relaxing. 7: Keep an EFT diary, rate the intensity of your reactions and after you tap rate the response. DON"T GIVE IN TO DISCOURAGEMENT! If the great thinkers of our race had done that we would still be swinging from trees. You are your own scientist your own study LET CURIOSITY AND EXPERIMENTATION BECOME AN ANTIDOTE TO FEAR! keep your diary (pardon the pun) handy, note down before and after your sexual release sessions (for want of a better term) any detail that allows you to perceive what you are feeling more acutely. Conscious awareness is is one of your greatest tools, along with EFT of course 8: KEEP TAPPING!!!!!!! Every effort every dead end every thread will teach you something, honour that. 9: Regardless of your addictions you can always help others even a bit and chances are you are a kind hearted soul, do what good you can.Self-endorse FOR EVERY EFFORT your make to keep yourself going BUILD ON THE POSITIVE. Give yourself BIG PATS ON THE BACK for every effort. We are human we can't control outcomes, our inherent nobility does not come from guaranteed successes but rather thru our willingness to press on in an uncertain and harsh realm towards our goal of personal and collective evolution. What makes our species great is not that we are successful or right ( which, let's be honest to date I'd say we have a pretty piss-poor record) it's that we try. 10: After every orgasm wrap yourself in your own embrace, hold yourself as if you were holding a newborn and remind yourself that you are a child of the Universe and the very fact that you are here is proof that you are supposed to be here. You may be a mystery, even to yourself, but you are no mistake. LOVE YOURSELF and good luck young man.

I can understand what you're dealing with as I too am currently experiencing the same problem.  Like you, I'm shy around most women and I don't have a girlfriend.  Infact, I'm in my mid 20's and have never had a sexual encounter of any kind.  When I was younger, I didn't have an interest in sex because I was more involved with friends and other things.  So I waited but the opportunity never came along.  The longer I waited the more nervous I became of looking awkward.  I used masturbation to satisfy my needs and everything seemed ok for a while.  But lately, I've been preoccupied with sexual thoughts and feelings that are result of my frustration of being a virgin at my age.  Luckily, it hasn't affected my personal life or job performance but I know it's only a matter of time before all that changes.  I now find myself masturbating more and wasting time that I could be using to better myself.  Not only that but I have some unusual fetishes that I'm pretty embarrassed about, which I think contributes to my shyness around women. 

Therefore, I'm trying an experiment to see how long I can go without masturbating.  I feel that if I can learn to live without masturabtion completely, I can overcome my addiction to my fetishes and stop being constantly preoccupied with sexual thoughts.  Can anyone suggest any particular beliefs I should focus on?  And if anyone is interested in helping me out with this in depth then let me know, I'm usually online with AIM or MS messenger.

I have been reading this thread with great interest.

Let's say that for whatever reason, you couldn't get food, but only had access to cookies.  So you would only have cookies to eat.  Soon, you may get so used to eating cookies that despite ill-health, it would be hard to go out, buy food, and learn how to prepare it, even if you had the opportunity.

EFT does not take away natural urges.  And in my experience, fetishes become the main focus mainly in the absence of loving, caring relationships.  So one thing I suggest is to visualize meeting a partner, and tap on any blocks that come up.  Do this step by step.  The first step is meeting someone.  Examples of this could be:

Going to a bar
Attending a church or prayer group
Joining a club
Putting an advert in the local paper
Putting an advert on the internet
Joining a dating agency

The second step would be to take the person's phone number.  The third is to make a date, and so on.

Hi am new to the forum, greetings to all.

Hi, I realize it has been seven months since you added your post, I haven't checked in on this forum for a while. You asked if anyone was interested in helping you to let you know. I would be happy to help you as I have seen great results in helping others with masturbation (and pornography). I hope that you found help and the problem is history. But if for some reason you are still struggling, feel free to contact me, I am here to help. You can be free of this problem! God bless you! Arden

A couple of case histories from the last two days. Yesterday I worked with a young man struggling with a masturbation addiction. We have had a few visits, identifying aspects to his addiction. But he still had occasional relapses. Upon further investigation, even though he was not aware of it at first, he had number of justifying beliefs driving the behavior. For instance, there was the belief that masturbation was OK if/because: My brother did it first, I’m a sex addict, I’ve been rejected, I feel rejected, I feel unloved, it is going to be the last time, I am a man - that is what men do, I’m bored. Each of these rationalizing beliefs made it OK to masturbate, even though he didn’t want to on a conscious level. He also had the belief it helped him feel loved, it is fulfilling, and life is boring without it. Once these beliefs were identified, with EFT they were easily cleared. I had him do a visualization at the beginning and end of the visit. At the beginning he indicated his desire for masturbation was a 6 out of ten, by the end it had dropped to 0 out of ten. With EFT we are really able to clear what is driving the undesired behavior amazingly fast! This morning I visited with a gentleman who has made significant progress with his pornography addiction. It used to be out of control in his life. He has gone five months with very little pornography pull in his life. He had one minor relapse about a month or so ago. I say minor because he went to a web-site where girls were dressed in a revealing way, but he didn’t allow himself to go to genuinely pornographic sites after that. We quickly got him back on track. This morning he mentioned he had seen a news article about a school teacher who had done modeling, and one of the pictures apparently was of her in a thong. He had mentioned this was a weakness for him in the past - girls in thongs. We had addressed it, but there was still something there pulling at him. I had him focus in his mind this news article, and he said the pull to go to it was around a 3 or 4 out of ten. I coached him through a round of tapping on this, and the desire went down to a one. He said there was still something about the thong, so we went through a round of tapping on “the thong trigger”. After that he said the pull hadn’t changed, there was still a little something there. He said that somehow thongs were fascinating because they allowed you to see pretty much everything, but they were still considered clothing. So, I had him say the phrase, “It’s OK to look at girls in thongs because they are still wearing clothing.” On a gut level he said that landed true. So, I coached him through a round of tapping on this rationalizing and justifying belief, bringing in correct affirmations that he was only deceiving himself, it wasn’t OK to look at her, thongs aren’t really clothing, and it is a sad statement about this school teacher that she is posing in a thong. She is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, it is a tragedy she is in this picture. As we tapped through this, the desire dropped to a zero. But there was still a hint of curiosity when he thought about the news lead. So we tapped on the curiosity, and once we were done with that, he felt no desire to see the article, but to move past it quickly. Once we identified what his system was using to make his wrong choice seem right, it aligned with the truth, and all inappropriate desire was gone. A powerful process, a liberating process.

 Thank you for sharing these two case studies with us, Arden. They were very interesting to read. Gives hope to a lot of people out there :-)

Hi, I thought I would post a partial write-up I put on my blog - showing different aspects of a pornography addiction. A man came in for his third visit. The first two visits were on a Wednesday and Friday, this was the following Monday. He had not looked at pornography in those days. That was not remarkable, because it had only been five days. What was significant was that he reported almost no desire to view pornography. There had been opportunities where he previously would have looked, but he chose to do other things with relative ease, the desire to see pornography was not nagging at him. I asked him how strong the desire to see pornography had been over the weekend. On a scale of 0-10, the strongest he had felt a pull was at a 3, and he indicated was easily dismissed; he said before once he was triggered even a little bit, it would keep nagging at him until he gave in. This time he easily chose an appropriate activity. I asked him what had triggered him up to a 3, and he said it had been a magazine, not even a pornographic magazine - Better Homes & Garden or something like that. But on seeing the magazine, the thought went through his mind, "I wonder if there is any skin in there?" Previously lingerie magazines and catalogs had been one of his weaknesses. So, on seeing a magazine, even a innocent magazine, he was triggered with some desire to "find some skin." I had him vividly imagine the situation he was in when he saw the Better Homes & Garden magazine, and see if he felt some of that pull. He said he felt it at a 3 or 4. So, we tapped though EFT focusing on that, and he indicated that the pull dropped down to 2. I asked him if he could think of any event where he had been looking at a pornographic magazine that would bring up emotional intensity of any kind. He said he had bought a magazine once - it was the only time he actually spent money on pornography, and he felt really guilty about that. I asked him how strong he felt the guilt. Out of ten he said he felt guilt at a 5 or 6. So, we tapped through EFT on that, and the guilt came down to a 3. I asked him why he still felt guilt, and he said, "Because I bought it." So we focused on that phrase while tapping through the EFT points, and he said the guilt came down to a 2. I asked him why he still felt some guilt, and he said, "I because I contributed to the pornography industry with my money." So we focused on that as we tapped through the points. He then indicated he no longer felt any guilt. I then had him imagine he was walking across a parking lot and saw a magazine laying on the ground 10 feet away, as he visualized this he felt curiosity triggered at a 3. So we tapped on being curious about what he might find in that magazine. He said that came down to a zero. Then I had imagine that as he walked by the magazine it was a Playboy, and the centerfold was blowing back and forth in the wind - how strong is the desire to pick it up? He said that felt like about a 2. We tapped on that and it quickly came down to a zero, he didn't want to pick it up. He said he remembered a time when he had gone into someone's bathroom and had found a Playboy magazine. I had him visualize that, and he said it triggered him at a bout a 2. We tapped through that trigger, and it also quickly came down to a zero. Once these memories and triggers are identified, with EFT they can easily be cleared so they no longer bring up the craving. I have seen it over and over again. What matters most it what happens in real life outside my office - and what I have seen is that once we clear these triggers, people come back and tell me what used to be a problem situation is no longer a problem. Then the former addict is really free to take his life in new, positive direction.

Hi there, Porn addiction certainly destroys both your personal and professional life. However, it is very important to understand that in many cases porn addicts have been diagnosed with some kind of psychological disorders. There are many viable means of help available online. You just need to find the right place for you. Here is one useful resource on porn addiction . Hope it helps. Good Luck!

I don't deal with this issue personally, but I have read this topic with interest.  I wonder, Gary has shown in his videos how folks suffering with other types of addiction have had results tapping away the desire for the addictive substance.  His theory about addictions being a form of self-medication for anxiety might be some help here.  What about using that approach?  Is that what you do, Arden?

Hi WVgal, Yes, it is essential to address the underlying anxiety. For some this is simple, for others it can be quit complex. But it is universal they are using to self-medicate anxiety, escape anxiety, or stress, or rejections... something like that. With EFT we can address that, and once it has been cleared, the drive for pornography isn't there - they don't need it any more. There are other aspects - there are beliefs and patterns, there are triggers that need to be addressed. Once all the aspects that have been driving the craving have been addressed, the former addict simply doesn't want pornography any more. Does this answer your question? Feel free to ask if you have any other questions. You can check out my blog at http://wholesomelives.wordpress.com