The tangle is the bunch of emotions, thoughts, and experiences that has become knotted together over the years, like a handful of headphone cables stuffed into your pocket, or a multitude of Christmas light strands thrown into a box at the end of the season. When you pull on one strand of the tangle, it has a direct impact on all the other strands. And often when you pull too hard, you end up exacerbating the problem instead of making it better. 

My role as a therapist is to help the client stop from yanking at the various strands (which is the equivalent of doing things in their life that makes things worse) and instead inspect the tangle carefully and delicately begin to piece apart the mess causing their distress. I provide an objective set of eyes to see what each thread might be, where each starts, and each ends. 

Pornography use and dependence are common threads in the tangle that individuals come to therapy seeking support for. Their pornography use has been and is a problem, but tangled up with it are a myriad of thoughts, feelings, and experiences that either fueled the problem (such as anxiety, depression, etc.), or were spawned by it (relationship problems, self-esteem issues, etc.). Because this is the case, it’s important to note that just because the “pornography thread” is pulled out of the tangle doesn’t mean that all the work is done. There’s more to keep untangling in order for the individual to become completely whole and to become the best version of themselves. 

The action item regarding “the tangle” is to consider what all the threads might be that you need to sort out in order to become the best version of yourself. One way to explore this is to consider what might have caused your pornography dependence as well as to consider what the effects of your pornography usage have had on your life.