410 - Social Media, Porn, & Mental Health w/ Ben Bennett

Pure Desire Podcast

Pure Desire Ministries

Sexual Addiction Recovery, Religion & Spirituality, Celebrate Recovery, Sexuality, Porn Recovery, Porn Addiction Recovery, Health & Fitness, Aa, Education, Betrayal Trauma, Recovery, Biblical Recovery, Christian Recovery, Healing, Sa, Christianity, Self-improvement

4.6 • 682 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, we dig into the intersection of pornography use, social media, and mental health, exploring how these modern influences are shaping our perceptions of intimacy, relationships, and self-worth. We discuss how most people's journey with porn typically begins, early signs that it’s negatively affecting mental health, and how social media plays a significant role in fueling these behaviors. Our conversation addresses common mental health challenges linked to problematic porn and social media use, such as anxiety, depression, and self-esteem issues. We explore how these habits can distort a person’s understanding of relationships and sexuality, and the shame and guilt that often accompany these struggles, exacerbating mental health issues. We discuss the underlying personality traits that make someone more vulnerable to using porn or social media as coping mechanisms, and the role isolation plays in worsening emotional distress. We offer practical advice on how to recognize when porn and social media use are negatively impacting mental health and relationships, and the first steps toward healing and recovery.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello there, good listener. I am your host, Nick Stumbo, and you are listening to the Pure
0:10.1	Desire podcast. You're bivocally based and clinically informed approach to healing from
0:15.0	betrayal trauma and breaking free from compulsive sexual behaviors. Today you are joining us for episode 410 and joining me
0:23.8	throughout the series as my co-host, Heather Cole. Heather, welcome back. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
0:29.5	Very good. Good. Good to see you today. We have a good conversation on tap. How's everything else in your
0:34.5	world? Going well. It's good.
0:37.9	It's always interesting for us from recording these because I asked you that question like an hour
0:41.8	and a half ago for the first episode we did today.
0:45.2	But for our listeners, this is like a whole week difference.
0:47.4	So in real time, I hope that your May is going awesome by the time this one comes out.
0:52.6	It's going great.
0:53.9	Well, the month of May is Mental Health health awareness month, and so throughout this month,
0:58.3	we're doing a series on mental health and really looking at all the connections that
1:01.6	has to things like addiction and recovery and pornography use, because as we so often find when
1:07.0	someone comes to a pure desire group, they don't just bring the betrayal from
1:11.9	sexual addiction or their own sexual behaviors. Usually there's an array of other things
1:17.6	that are part of it. Mental health, so frequently one of those things as well as struggles
1:22.6	or issues with social media. And so today we really delved into those connections. Yeah, this was a really great episode.
1:28.5	I appreciate Ben's perspective on a lot of things and even his way of talking about anxiety and
1:36.4	depression and other mental health issues that seem to be present when people engage in
1:41.7	pornography use and social media use in a way that really does negatively
1:46.4	impact their mental health.
	...

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