One of my favorite questions to ask a new client is pretty simple, but I almost always get surprised reactions. Consider the question yourself: “When is the next time you’ll look at pornography?” 

Often a client will look at me funny and say, “Well, hopefully never.” 

It’s not intended to be a trick question, but one that is intended to help you understand yourself and your resolve to change. The truth is, while ideally you won’t fall back into old behaviors, your past suggests you will. The truth is, your past relapses have shown there are certain patterns you are prone to follow that can help you recognize when you’re likely to relapse again.

Autopilot & The Path of Least Resistance

The problem is that you are blind to elements impacting you which ultimately lead you to relapse. Right now, you’re looking at only the short time leading up to the relapse, not the hours, days, even weeks that led up to it. You’re not looking at key pieces of your surroundings, how you were feeling at the time, who was or wasn’t around, and the ways you spoke to yourself. You’re not looking for danger early enough, and because you’re not looking for danger, it easily sneaks up on you and catches you seemingly by surprise. 

In order to change, you must challenge what you have always done. You need to make adjustments to the mindless way you have approached your life. Your thoughts, feelings, and subsequent actions can no longer be simply automatic. Challenging mindlessness and automatic thoughts requires no longer allowing yourself to be reactive to the world around and within you. This means no longer taking the path of least resistance by giving into the autopilot mode and the neural pathways your brain has created. 

Your thoughts, feelings, actions, surroundings, self-talk, physiology, and interactions with others-- are all core elements you must become more acquainted with if you are to gain the upper hand. With all these elements to look out for, how do you know where to start?

You begin with challenging your autopilot mode, the victim mindset, and your tendency to take the path of least resistance. While these are separate topics, they are extensively overlapped. To understand each, picture an above ground kids pool--you know, the ones with flimsy plastic sides.

The water in the pool will just sit there unless it is moved around by someone playing in it. In other words, the water is not able to act for itself, but can only be acted upon by an external force. If I make a pathway for the water to go by pushing a sidewall down, the water will flow through the opening. The water is not acting in and of itself, but is being acted upon by gravity. It would have stayed just sitting in the pool, but now that it has a path lower than where it was, that is where it will go. 

Water will always take the path of least resistance. By use of pressure or displacing it with something like a rock tossed into it, we may force it to take a certain direction, but then it goes right back to where it was, taking the path of least resistance. The longer water flows over an area, it will eventually erode away the ground beneath and carve out a waterway. This is how canyons are formed. The more water that travels there, the deeper and wider they become.

Everyday, you and I have the chance to choose to be reactive or proactive with what’s happening around us and within us. The problem is, it’s much easier, often more enjoyable, and provides the quickest relief or reward to take the path of least resistance. For instance: 

• If you feel bored--under stimulated--you turn to pornography rather than go rock-climbing because pornography is the path of least resistance and is therefore much easier than climbing or even gathering your gear to go climb. 
• When you feel lonely and desire human connection, you turn to pornography rather than talk to others or try to build friendships because pornography provides a quick, safe yet counterfeit sense of connection wherein you can’t get rejected by the person on a screen. 
• When you are stressed about an upcoming project for school or work, you turn to pornography instead of just jumping in and getting it done because an escape into pornography numbs the stress--at least temporarily. 

A big reason you are where you are is because you’ve consistently chosen the path of least resistance.

But not only that, like water flowing over soft ground, taking the path of least resistance time and time again has carved neural pathways into your brain turning these choices into second-nature. It’s automatic–even compulsive–like some kind of autopilot system that takes over when we’re faced with loneliness, boredom, stress. And the longer and longer you let this autopilot system run, the more ingrained it becomes and thus harder it is to break. 

As a quick exercise while you’re reading this, cross your arms. You have a certain way you cross your arms--it’s an autopilot response you don’t have to think very hard about. As you sit there, notice which arm is on top. 



Now uncross your arms, and try to cross them with the opposite arm on top. For most people, this will feel really uncomfortable and hard to do. That’s because you’re challenging the neural pathways that have been formed as a result of doing something over and over and over. 

The biggest challenge you have when it comes to being on autopilot is how subconscious and second-nature it is. It’s like what happens when you’re headed to work and 15 minutes later find yourselves there without really recalling the drive in. It’s the muscle memory that you developed in writing your name with your dominant hand. It’s second-nature. No thought required. But as you become more aware of our autopilot system, the ways you are being reactive and how you’ve been programmed to take the paths of least resistance to get to porn, the more you can do to challenge it.  

✏ Reflect. What are some of the ways you have allowed yourself to be reactive to or “acted upon” by emotions, thoughts, situations, etc.? How have you taken the path of least resistance by giving into FADS?