Episode #181: Is Masturbation Damaging Your Brain? (Part 3 of 7)

You might think masturbation is harmless — maybe even healthy. But your brain tells a different story.

When tied to porn, masturbation hijacks your dopamine, reshapes your reward system, and leaves you feeling anxious, unfocused, and disconnected. Over time, it blocks your ability to experience real intimacy and lasting satisfaction.

The good news? Your brain can heal. With neuroscience-backed strategies, you can rewire those patterns and reclaim clarity, energy, and real satisfaction👇🏻

Using qEEG Brain Mapping, I help you see where your brain has gone off track. Then, through personalized neurofeedback, we target the areas that need regulation and recovery. And with coaching, we walk the path of healing together — step by step, shame-free.

Watch Is Masturbation Damaging Your Brain?⚠️ If you’re in recovery, skip the full Jubilee episode for now. This series breaks it all down safely with science and solutions that give you hope — not setbacks.

Shoutout to Jubilee Media for opening space for this raw discussion, and to LovecommaNectar for helping bring these conversations forward.

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Hi. I am Dr. Trish Leigh, a Cognitive Neuroscientist, and Sex Addiction Recovery Coach. I am on a mission to help people heal their brains from porn use.
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🎯Porn Destroys Your Relationships.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Masturbation has many healthy benefits, does it?
Welcome back.
I'm Dr.
Trish Leigh, cognitiveneuroscientist and author of
bestselling porn addictionrecovery book, Mind over
explicit matter.
I have recently been on JubileeMedia's The Middle Ground and
had an invigorating discussionwith porn performers and people
from the NoFap community.

(00:20):
And we had to agree or disagreethat masturbation has many
healthy benefits.
Well, what do you think I said?
Masturbation has many healthbenefits.
Agreeers, please step forward.
Well, you know what I said, ifyou followed me for any amount
of time, is that this is a majormisconception for many people.

(00:43):
People who consume pornographyand couple it with masturbation
want to hear that it's good forthem, right?
And you can find professionalsonline who are eager to tell you
masturbation is healthy for you,but there's a major distinction.
The major distinction iscompulsive masturbation versus

(01:04):
masturbation that's notcompulsive.
So if porn use is in the mix,and let's just talk about how it
unfolds for most people.
Most people find porn whenthey're young.
Research shows the younger youfind it, the more you consume it
over time.
It's a fairly recent study.
And actually they parsed it out.
People who found porn at the ageof 10 consumed more porn over

(01:25):
time than people who found it at11.
Just that one year of braindevelopment.
Really wild, right?
But here's the idea is that alladdiction develops in a similar
way.
It starts as use and then thatuse becomes abuse, which means
you're using too much.
You're doing a thing or you'reusing a substance when you
shouldn't be.
So in the case of masturbation,now you have to masturbate in

(01:46):
the mornings before you go towork.
You should be getting ready, butinstead you are masturbating so
you can get that dopamine hitbefore work.
Or perhaps you're using it assleep medication.
We talked about this on themiddle ground that many people
masturbate before bed to getthat dopamine flood to knock
them out.
But it's a type of insomnia.
It wakes them up three hourslater or 3 a.m.
and Now they're up because theirbrain cannot catch the sleep

(02:10):
cycle and the circadian rhythms.
So this is a big, hugemisconception.
Compulsive versus non.
Use becomes abuse becomescompulsion.
Compulsion is now you need to dothis to not feel bad.
And once you've kind of goneover that edge into compulsion,
now if you don't masturbate, youfeel angry and irritable.

(02:31):
You feel sluggish.
You can't think.
You need your hit.
But then, of course, that leadsto dependency and addiction and
then of course that leads totolerance building and
escalation so now you need moreof it and it becomes the
downward spiral that chainspeople to pornography and
masturbation it takes them awayfrom the real world
relationships and this is thepiece the porn performers aren't
understanding and I don't thinkwas necessarily characterized as

(02:55):
well as it should have been andI should have done it also is
talking about you know there'speople who are watching porn
either they're watching it onand off all day long they're
watching it every night Orthere's some people who watch
porn for hours every day.
So this is how we know it'saddictive.
And there is a definition toaddiction.
And I joked about it.
I said, you know, you don't evenhave to know what the six check

(03:17):
marks are on that list of ifyou're addicted to porn or not.
Just try to quit.
and see what happens.
That's all you have to do.
Then you know you need it.
Well, there's qualifiers to thedefinition of addiction.
And then I tell people, just tryto stop watching.
You don't even have to like tickthe six boxes.
And the discussion ensued, youknow, porn even one time a month
is shown to have negativeeffects.

(03:38):
So this is big, real stuff.
It's a compulsion tomasturbation.
Most people are addicted tomasturbation who have had a porn
habit.
They need masturbation in a waythat other people don't.
So, If you have a compulsivemasturbation habit, there are
not healthy benefits.
The number one thing that peopletalk about is prostate cancer.

(03:59):
And there's a study that showspeople who compulsively
masturbate actually have lesshealthy prostates as they age.
And that prostate cancer thingis the world's oldest excuse for
people who have compulsivemasturbation.
No, actually, I've looked intothe research and people who
compulsively masturbate haveless That's the out for people

(04:24):
who want to masturbate.

(04:51):
testosterone, depleting theprostate's ability to work well.
It's a depletion behavior.
It's a male performer.
He likened it to a gamblingaddiction.
And I agreed with him.
Gambling addiction is abehavioral addiction.
But then I went on to talk abouthow, you know, you can give up

(05:11):
gambling.
If you struggle with gambling,you go, I'm not going to gamble
anymore.
Where I more likened pornaddiction to an eating disorder.
The mechanisms in the brain arepretty similar in that, you
know, you have to eat.
It is a biological process thatkeeps you alive.
Most people want to havesexuality and they need it.
It's evolutionarily, it is inthere for them to have sex with

(05:33):
a partner.
Porn is not sex with a partner.
It's artificial.
It's high levels of dopamine,super normal stimulus, using a
screen and yourself.
It is not sex.
People often confuse porn itselfas sex.
It's not.
Not at all.
Sex with a partnerevolutionarily so that we
procreate and that we pair bond.

(05:53):
So I agreed with the male pornperformer and I likened it to an
eating disorder where you goback to the chocolate cake with
the red and the blue and theyellow dye.
So science shows those dyes areladen with chemicals and they
are harmful to you.
So when you have a compulsion tokeep eating a giant sheet cake
in your basement by yourself,when you take the sexuality out

(06:16):
of it, it becomes clear that isa behavioral addiction,
compulsion.
If a person was hiding insecret, eating chocolate cakes
with chemicals all the time,somebody would be concerned
about them because that's veryunhealthy.
That is what I like in porn too,because people are hiding their
behavior.
It is proven to be bad for them.
And we know from the sciencethat it causes erectile

(06:38):
dysfunction.
It destroys relationships.
It's at the core of mental andphysical health issues.
So, and it's highly addictive.
We know this.
So I liken it to an eatingdisorder.
All of the performers think thatmasturbation is fine.
The one female performeractually said that she thinks
masturbation is really good toenhance her sacral chakra.

(06:59):
Creative energy within yoursacral chakra.
And chakras are actually energycenters in your body that are
aligned with where there's morenerve energy.
But when you overstimulate achakra, then they're no longer
balanced.
Sacral chakra is down near thesex organs and balanced.
I pointed out that chakras,although we think of them as

(07:21):
kind of fufu energy, they'reactually linked to neurological
energy as energy centers wherethere's neurons.
And that if you'reoverstimulating one chakra, you
become imbalanced in yournervous system and the other
chakras.
And she really didn't have muchto say about that.
But that we know is anoverstimulation.
So she says that she goes tomasturbation to enhance her

(07:43):
creativity.
Now, from what I've already toldyou, you already know she thinks
she's enhancing her creativity.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.

(08:06):
without masturbation, youactually can stay in flow state
with healthy circadian rhythms.
If you stay away frommasturbation, masturbation, and
especially compulsivemasturbation, it's swinging your
brain in the pendulum effect,wired, then tired, wired, tired.
Eventually that strain braintips over into drained brain.

(08:26):
What I've studied and I've nowshown that this is the brain
pattern of porn addiction anderectile dysfunction from porn
addiction.
Porn also distorts the arousaltemplate.
So it makes you want to go backto an experience in your real
life, that which you have beenconsuming.
And we know there's an increasein punching and slapping and

(08:47):
choking and violent acts.
So if you're out there andyou're watching this, and those
are the things that you findarousing, those are
hypersexuality.
And One thing that I wasthinking when I was talking with
the performers is that, youknow, they're all looking at
this whole thing from ahyper-sexualized view.

(09:08):
And, you know, going back to theidea of hyper-sexuality, then it
accidentally and inadvertentlyputs you in a hyper-sexual place
where, you know, then...
It feels empowering to you, butit might not necessarily be
balanced.
There is a funny story of thegoldfish.
There's a goldfish that's in agoldfish bowl and he's swimming
around in the water.
And another goldfish comes andsits on the rim and he says,

(09:30):
hey, Mac, how's the water?
And the first fish who'sswimming around He says to the
one sitting on the rim, what'swater?
If you've been in ahypersexualized system for so
long, you don't even know you'reswimming around in the water.
That's what happens tohypersexualized people.
The porn performers clearly arehypersexualized.
That is their living.
They're making money off of it.

(09:51):
They are in it to win it.
If you've been consuming pornfor a long time, You're likely
in the water and you don't evenknow how it feels anymore.
Okay, so we did agree in thisdiscussion on masturbation.
The male porn performer, heasked the question to me that if
his girlfriend is performingmasturbation on him, his real
girlfriend within the context ofa sexual experience is that bad.

(10:15):
And I retorted, no, it's in thesexual garden.
Whatever two people agree on, aslong as it's healthy, it's not
hurting anybody, it's notobjectifying anybody, and it's a
shared experience, then let yourfreak flag fly is what I always
say.
Enjoy your partner in a healthyway that respects each other.
Back to the definition ofhealthy sexuality.

(10:35):
He didn't totally know what tosay about that.
He was a little stumped, notexpecting me to say that, but
that's the truth.
What you do within the contextof your sexual relationship in a
mutually enjoyable andpleasurable way with connection
that's the happiness trifecta soyou know that's not compulsive
masturbation where you'resneaking off to masturbate
because you just saw somebodywalk by and it triggered a

(10:57):
dopamine release in your brainthose are different so be aware
of that and try to enhance yourcreativity in healthy ways
recognize if you hear that youneed to masturbate for your
prostate think about this thiswhole discussion on the middle
ground The reason I wanted to doit is to invoke more thought
about your intimacy, yoursexuality, and your purpose.
So think about that one, okay?

(11:18):
Think about all the time thatyou're masturbating, you're
linking yourself to yourself.
And if you're linked toyourself, there might not be
room for anybody else.
Okay, follow me through to thenext section in this series
because the next prompt was porndisrupts loyalty in
relationships.
Let's break it down.