Graceful Freedom: Overcoming Pornography

“Everyone says, ‘God's right here, He can help you. He hears you; He sees you, He knows you.’ Then why as a child am I experiencing this abuse? I felt God left me. I felt abandoned by Him.” Talissa Thomas didn’t always feel forsaken by God. As a child, she enjoyed going to church and prayed often, yet being the pastor’s kid, she felt pressured to put on a good face. She says, “I felt like sometimes I was in a fishbowl where everyone was kind of like looking in on me. If I did something wrong, I kept it hidden because I didn't want anyone to know or think less of me.”

In middle school, Talissa had even more to hide: a growing dependence on prescription drugs. It started with taking pain pills for ongoing health issues. Then, she needed Xanax to help with depression. Quickly, she depended on both. She recalls, “That was an escape from like the real world and when that high, when that attention went away, then I was left with a lot of shame and guilt because I was living this double lifestyle.”

Then, in junior high, a distant relative started physically and emotionally abusing Talissa. She asked God to make it stop, but it didn’t. Talissa says, “I felt so abandoned and so isolated. Everything I was learning about Him was so further from the truth than what I was experiencing.” Despite her continued dependence on prescription meds, Talissa maintained the appearance of being a good Christian, all-the-while growing further from God. Then at 17, while online, she discovered a new way to appease her pain: pornography. She recalls, “I watched my first pornography film and then it was like endorphins being released. It was literally like the same high I felt from taking the opiate and prescription medication. I would feel that same sensation of just calmness and just feeling good and like nothing else matters in the world.”

By the time Talissa left home to attend a two-year Christian leadership college, she’d completely swapped her pill addiction for pornography. She recalls, “The cycle that I was going in literally felt like I was like going deeper and deeper and deeper into the hole. I would go on binges where I wouldn't sleep at night. I would go in the church bathrooms and watch pornography. I would have to pull over on the side of the road to watch pornography. The pornography completely took over my life in a way that I would have never dreamed or experienced.”

Even as her addiction grew, she told herself it was harmless. Talissa says, “I would be like, ‘I am watching pornography, but I'm not sleeping around.’ And so it was like this whole line that I tiptoed my whole life. Like I'm not harming anybody. That's what was in my head, I’m not harming anybody but however, the whole time I’m harming myself.”

After graduation, Talissa started interning at a church. However, keeping up the façade became overwhelming. She says, “I can't tell anybody what's going on because it would just obliterate like everyone's opinions of me. I was like, ‘God, like I am so exhausted. Like I know this is not what you have for me and I don't know where you're at.' I feel so abandoned, so isolated, so defeated, so depressed, and the list goes on and on. And so, I don't know, I think it was just the feelings of that just like, I just have nothing else to give. Like I just need to tell someone my story.”

So, one night she decided to confess her addiction to her roommate, also an intern at the church. Talissa recalls, “It was so scary to say and to finally admit it, but at the same time it was kind of a sense of relief. Like, oh my gosh. Like I finally have told somebody like how bad this progressed. Like, I didn't feel as alone.” Her roommate suggested Talissa go to Mercy Multiplied; a program for women struggling with trauma and addiction. Talissa recalls saying, “Absolutely not! I was like, I'm gonna need God himself to come down from Heaven, appear to me in person and tell me this is what you need to do for me to do it.”

Talissa says that practically happened when the next Sunday God spoke to her through her pastor’s message. She says, “God for some reason laid it on his heart to speak to women specifically struggling in addiction and sexual addiction. And I remember sitting there in my pew and being like, He hears me. For so long I didn't know where God was for so long. I wondered if He saw me. And in that moment, I had never felt so seen or so loved even in the brokenness that I was in.”

The next day, Talissa confessed her addiction to the church leadership. They prayed for her, encouraged her, and helped her apply to Mercy Multiplied. She says, “I had told myself so many lies; ‘so many people are gonna be disgusted with you, Talissa, so many people are going, not even gonna wanna talk to you.' However, I went in there and it was the complete opposite. I felt so loved.” Through the program, Talissa says she was delivered from her addictions and rededicated her life to God. She says, “I let God know, I need to forgive you for these things because those were barriers from keeping me to getting like closer to Him. Because I had this resentment built up. Like, ‘where were you when I was going through this?’ He hadn't gone anywhere. It was me who kept going further and further away from Him.”

Today she is happily married with a growing family. As a behavioral therapist, Talissa is helping others struggling with trauma and addictions walk in the freedom only God provides. She says, “You are more than what you're experiencing, that you are more, and you deserve more and you're worthy of more than the addiction or that trauma that you're experiencing. God is so good, and He will walk you through it. You don't have to feel alone or isolated or abandoned because God is everything but that and He's there for you.”