This project is to help individuals recover from pornography addiction.
People in recovery struggle with shame and tuning in to the underlying unmet needs that drive addiction. This project aims to differentiate itself from other recovery apps available by intentionally designing around these difficulties.
These intentional considerations include growth minded relapse tracking, learning resources, and facilitating the creation of a support network. These work in tandem to undermine ‘all or nothing’ and shameful thinking.
“The road to recovery is paved with relapses. Disclosure is a productive way to handle a relapse. Disclosure is learning from relapses – not shaming yourself with them. Disclosure is connecting with other people – dissipating shame. Whether you know it or not, shame isn’t helping, which is why Disclosure is designed to help you stave it off.
Other applications’ advertising ranges from panacea to simple relapse tracker. Disclosure sits in the pragmatic middle. There is no magic bullet to overcoming compulsive pornography use, but we can do better than logging relapses as little more than ammo to be used in the machine gun of self-loathing. Disclosure takes recovery out of the dark and into the light. The light of honestly and authentically assessing your own progress. The light of the information you need to decide on next steps.
If you want to walk two steps forward, without shame forcing you one step back, Disclosure is that way forward.”
Disclosure plans to have four main features.
- Relapse Tracker
- Recovery Team Manager
- Additional Learning Resources
- Recovery Principles Practice
Relapse trackers already exist, but they have a few problems as presently constituted. All relapses are treated as the same severity, binges are ignored completely, recovery metrics obsess over sobriety streaks, and logging relapses are unconnected from the introspection required for recovery.
Disclosure hopes to mitigate these problems by adjusting the logging procedure to include records of intensity, the degree of agency involved, what triggers and unmet needs contributed, and additional notes on the relapse circumstances. Each of these help users reframe a relapse as a learning opportunity instead of a shaming opportunity. This end will be furthered by reporting sobriety streaks as a rolling average and giving users the ability to view progress at the individual or episodic relapse level. An episode is just a grouping of multiple recent relapses into one event for reporting (proximally representing binges). This episodic reporting option can reduce the shame and discouragement associated with a binge and increase motivation to tackle binging behavior.
Many apps have community features designed to facilitate a recovery team. These are vital as, “the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety – it's connection” (Johann Hari). However, existing solutions have problems. They lack responsiveness in crisis moments, struggle to move beyond superficiality, and don’t properly address the issues with isolation. These problems all result from the online community emphasis.
Consequently, Disclosure will facilitate user-directed recovery team building. Having users create their own recovery team directly undermines isolation, increases individual ownership thereby increasing responsiveness, and fosters deeper real-world connections. Once a recovery team is started, Disclosure can start reminding users to check in with team members daily, when triggered, and after logging a relapse.
Addiction resources are plentiful. Many existing apps have entire suites of video content and learning material. Disclosure isn’t looking to compete in that regard. That gamified brand of content gives the illusion of progress, but merely wastes time in exchange for common sense and gold stars. In contrast, Disclosure will include a curated eclectic list of resources that are useful. In this way, users can further pursue the topics uniquely beneficial to their recovery journey at their own pace, instead of being force-fed placating cookie cutter advice.
Unlike other mobile apps, Disclosure will include the ability to practice memorizing recovery principles. By placing recovery principles in working memory, they are available in times of need. These principles include an intervention strategy and common triggers.
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- Lembke, Anna. Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
- Washton, Arnold. Willpower Is Not Enough: Understanding and Overcoming Addiction and Compulsion
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