BlackSpiral, I would be curious to hear more about how others here might go about finding and understanding the root problems so that they can then deal with them one by one as you described.
I call this learning how to recover. Before I could find my root problems, I had to learn how to do it. "In the Shadow of the Net" by Carnes helped. My therapist helped. Reading Blackspiral's Journal helped. For me, I have two different types of triggers. Visual and emotional (or both). When I was white-knuckling, I only had boundaries and a plan for the visual triggers. Stay away from certain types of movies, web sites, etc. This did noting to address my underlying issues, and I kept slipping.
What worked for me was to examine each urge to go view porn. I took note of what I had been doing before each one. For example, during work one day I had a very big urge. I thought back to a time that day that I had not felt the urge, and mentally walked myself through the day. I recognized that I was agitated and angry during a meeting, and felt very down afterward. I took note of what made me angry and why I was feeling down. In this case a co-worker was belittling me and it made me angry. I was down afterward because I did not defend myself publicly. I am not the kind of person that will or can be mean to anyone in public, even to defend myself. I have always looked on this as a strength. In this case it made me feel depressed.
A few days later I had another big urge. Again I traced it back to a meeting where this same co-worked angered me. It was as if a light bulb came on in my head. This toxic co-worker was pushing my buttons, which made me angry and depressed.
So a new boundary went up. I was to have as little interaction with this toxic person as possible.
This helped, but I knew that since I would have to deal with this person from time to time I had to also have a plan to deal with it. This was a big change for me. Previously I had viewed my boundaries as my plan. I knew I did not what to just lash out at this person in public, and I also figured out that dealing with them in private would not my feelings of depression. What I did was think about the last few times that my buttons had been pushed, and came up with some polite ways to let this person know that I was not going to react, but also that I was not going to allow the toxic behavior to continue in my presence.
My plan would need to include 1) a way to publicly deal with the toxic person when they pushed my buttons. 2) figuring out how to keep from getting angry and depressed.
The amazing thing to me was that by just recognizing this issue, owning it if you will, the anger did not happen as often. When a meeting occurred and this toxic person pushed a button, I simply stated that "this is not the time nor place to discuss this" and then asked the meeting chair to please move on. By refusing to allow my buttons to be pushed I was able to avoid the trigger.
At this point I got very lucky in that had just read in Carnes about repair and growth. I realized that I needed to understand why I even had a button that could be pushed at all. When I examined this particular button honestly, I realized that I really was suppressing a lot of anger.
Anger at myself for failing to be the good man I wanted to be.
Anger at myself for allowing hateful things to happen to myself and others.
Anger at myself for not reaching out to my brother before he died.
This list goes on, but the main theme was that I was angry at myself, even for things beyond my control. I did not deal with this anger, I just suppressed it. This is a root problem for me. I finally understood that I was an emotional mess, and needed to fix it. This is one example. I have many issues--more than one root problem. This is where I am now. Fixing my anger and other emotions that I suppressed. This is where therapy and family support have saved me. I continue to read more about anger management, toxic relationships and suppressing emotions.
This was a hard process, and I am continuing it when urges to view porn arise. In short I:
1) examine what was happening before the urge occurred.
2) discover what the trigger was (visual or emotional or both)
3) set or redefine a boundary to deal with the trigger.
4) modify my plan to deal with the underlying emotional event
a) identify the emotion
b) examine any barriers I have (suppressing anger, etc.)
c) figure out how to break down the barrier by reading and learning
d) implementing a fix
This is a long post. There is a lot involved in learning how to recover, and it took me months learn and understand this.
I still have a long way to go.
