New Year's Resolution to Overcome Pornography Addiction

Setting a New Year's Resolution To Overcome Porn Addiction For Good in 2026

Are you one of the thousands of men who set a New Year’s resolution to overcome your pornography addiction in 2026? If so, good for you! I know what you’re going through because I’ve been there before, probably about a dozen times… If you’ve set a goal to overcome porn addiction before and failed (multiple times), you’re not alone. It can sometimes feel hopeless trying to overcome an addiction on your own. But don’t let that convince you that it’s not worth giving it another shot! As someone who has been in recovery from porn addiction for 7 years now, I can tell you that it is worth it to find freedom from porn.

I’m here to help you out and I have a few tips for you that might help you keep your resolution for good this time, rather than giving up on it by January 19th (which is the date that most people give up on their resolutions).

Find Some Healthy Coping Techniques

If you’ve been in recovery from porn addiction for a while, you understand the importance of having some healthy coping techniques to go to for times when you start feeling negative emotions that can be triggering like boredom, stress, loneliness, fatigue, hunger, sadness or anger. For those of you who haven’t started recovery yet, it’s important to recognize that porn addiction isn’t the cause of your problems, it’s a symptom of underlying issues that you haven’t addressed yet. Porn addiction is what you go to when you’re feeling those heavy emotions because you aren’t in a good enough space to deal with them without an unhealthy coping technique.

Some healthy coping techniques that are essential for me when I’m feeling triggered by negative emotions:

  • Reaching out – I have several friends in my recovery network and a sponsor who I can call at any time to check in with them and let them know what I’m going through. Most of the time just voicing my situation out loud is enough to take away the power of any trigger I’m feeling.
  • Reaching up – I believe that it’s important to maintain a consistent relationship with God, so what better time to reach out to Him than when I’m struggling and feeling triggered? Maintaining a connection to my Higher Power is a huge part of my recovery and helps me remember who I truly am.
  • Meditation – Meditation is a great tool for overcoming triggers when they arise. I try to do at least 20 minutes of meditation every day, but I also add in a meditation from time to time when I’m feeling super stressed or triggered. It helps me ground and recenter myself and usually cuts my stress down significantly, helping me deal with triggers from a stronger position.
  • Exercise – this one is pretty obvious because consistent exercise is just an important part of leading a healthy life. But people who struggle with addiction tend to live an unbalanced lifestyle and neglect taking care of their bodies. Exercise is even more important to someone living in recovery because of all the physical and mental benefits it brings.
  • Healthy Eating – the same goes for healthy eating. It’s crucial to recovery to fuel your body properly, which in turn makes you feel better. For a lot of people, hunger can be a big trigger, so eating healthy food on a consistent basis can often prevent those types of triggers.
  • Journaling – emotional journaling helps to get your thoughts and emotions out of your head and onto paper where you can observe it better and process things in a healthier way than shoving them further inside or just letting them stew where they can gain more power. Becoming an observer of your thoughts and emotions can help you get to the root of what might be causing your triggers.
  • Looking at Pictures of family and friends – I read an article a while ago that said that humans get a good dose of dopamine when they look at pictures of their loved ones. Sometimes when I’m feeling down I’ll just open up my Photos app on my phone and scroll through photos of happy memories with my family. It’s enough to give me a good mood boost that counteracts the negative emotions.

These are just a few examples of healthy coping techniques that will help you avoid triggers, or overcome them when they arrive. You can’t always control when the triggers come, but you do have control over how you react to them. The techniques that I listed above will keep you in a stronger place mentally, emotionally and physically so the triggers that do come won’t feel so powerful. And with the New Year upon us and the pressure that brings for us to become better versions of ourselves, it’s even more important now to be taking care of yourself so you don’t run back to pornography and cause even more problems for yourself.

Figure Out What You Value

Growing up in a strict Christian household, I was always told what my values should be. Things like honesty, loyalty, obeying religious commandments, frugality, the sanctity of marriage, and family connection were just some of the numerous values that I was assigned from my parents and church leaders. But nobody ever stopped to ask me if those were things I wanted for my own values. And I never really thought about it. 

But once my life almost fell apart due to my addiction, I found a good therapist at Desert Solace who challenged me to spend some time thinking about what things I value and to truly adopt those as my own. Because I wasn’t actually living my life in harmony with the values that I thought I had, which in turn ended up causing me a lot of internal conflict, my therapist thought it would be important to internalize my own values instead of the ones that were given to me.

It turns out that my values were mostly the same as the ones I was given when I was younger, but the difference this time was that I was the one making the choice and I knew why I valued those things. I finally understood the importance of having values and living by them.

Once I knew what my values were, I could sit down and create some boundaries that would dictate my behavior in ways to protect those values. That brings me to my next tip for keeping your New Year’s resolution to quit porn for good: boundaries.

Set Some Boundaries

Many addicts grow up in households with very few personal boundaries. But to live in recovery, you have to learn to set some boundaries to protect yourself from sliding back into old destructive patterns.

First, you might not know what a boundary is when used in the recovery sense of the word. I’m sure you’re aware of what a boundary is in the everyday world – something like a fence or a border that isn’t meant to be crossed without permission. Well, recovery boundaries can be seen as a type of fence that you place around the things you value to protect yourself from breaking those values. But in this case, it’s a set of behaviors that you will or won’t do to protect your values. 

For instance, if I don’t want to view pornography on my laptop because I value my connection with my wife, I can put into place a whole set of boundaries that will protect me. I could set a boundary that I won’t use my laptop unless I’m in a public space or with someone else; I could install some web filtering software; or I could check in with an accountability partner before getting on my laptop to make a commitment. These are just a few examples. I have quite a few boundaries that I stick to in my recovery that help keep me safe. I can give you a whole list of my boundaries, but I’ll save that for another post.

One important part of this is your perspective on the boundaries you set. I know a lot of guys who look at boundaries as restrictions. Eventually, they become resentful of the boundaries and that resentment builds up until they stop respecting the boundaries they set. I look at my boundaries as a type of safety net and I’m grateful for the safety they provide. That way, I’m much less tempted to break a boundary because I have respect for them.

Start Attending 12-step Meetings

Going to 12-step meetings is a major part of  my own recovery and studies on porn and sex addiction show that they are very effective in helping someone overcome their addiction.  If you’re struggling with a porn addiction that you’ve never been able to overcome on your own, I highly suggest you get out of your comfort zone and go to a meeting. There are several different 12-step groups that are devoted solely to helping men overcome porn and sex addictions. Sexaholics Anonymous is one of those. There is also SA Lifeline and SLAA. The LDS church also has an Addiction Recovery Program that hosts meetings as well. 

When you’re trying to change addictive behavior, it’s really important to surround yourself with other people who understand what you’re going through and want to help you change. When I was struggling with my own addiction, I thought I was alone. I believed that everyone else had it figured out except for me. Once I started attending meetings, I saw what a lie that was. I gained strength hearing the stories of the other men in those meetings and more importantly, I built a support network of people I can reach out to whenever I am struggling.

Most 12-step meetings happen on a weekly basis and they typically don’t take time off during the holidays so don’t give yourself that excuse not to attend. If you can’t make a meeting in person, there are plenty of online meetings available.

Find a Good Therapist or Rehab that Specializes in Treating Porn Addiction

Some guys aren’t willing to accept that they can’t get over their addiction on their own. They usually delude themselves into thinking they just need a bit more motivation or effort to cure themselves. It’s easy to fall into the trap that porn isn’t a serious addiction, but most of the guys we see in our inpatient center have been addicted to porn since they were in their early teens. Porn addiction can be as hard to overcome as a heroin addiction. If your loved one were addicted to heroin, would you tell them to just try harder? 

Porn addiction is a serious problem that requires serious help like a therapist or sometimes even a rehab center where the addict can get professional help. Our therapists are CSAT-trained (Certified Sexual Addiction Therapy) and have years of experience helping men overcome their porn addictions for good. If you’re considering finding a rehab for your sex or porn addiction, make sure you find one like Desert Solace that specializes in treating sex addiction only. Most rehabs treat drug and alcohol addiction and throw in a porn/sex addiction program as an afterthought. Don’t leave your recovery to chance. Contact us or give us a call and we can discuss options on how to help you with your porn addiction.

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