There is no dramatic exercise that undoes years of training. What works is small repeated redirection over time. You are not going to wake up one day and discover that you stopped scanning. You are going to notice, every so often, that you walked past a group of people and didn’t do the old thing. Or that you had a whole conversation with a woman at work without your attention going sideways. Or that you looked at your partner and actually just saw her.
The small practices that help: when your attention goes to a body, redirect to a face. When it goes to a face, redirect to voice or expression. When you meet someone new, ask their name early and say it out loud — this is a surprisingly effective trick for seeing a person as a person. When you catch yourself ranking, notice it without judgment, and return to whatever you were doing.
Over months, these redirections add up. The neural pathway you built through porn use weakens through disuse. The alternative pathway — seeing-personhood-first — strengthens through repetition. You cannot force it, but you can let it happen by giving it the conditions to happen in.
And the reward is real. You become easier to be around. Your marriage or your next relationship runs on less background static. You meet your daughter’s friends and can actually see them as kids, not a category. Your life gets bigger, because it contains more full people in it.
You cannot force the shift. You can let it happen through small repeated redirection: body to face, face to voice, category to name.
Next person you meet — regardless of gender — say their name out loud within the first thirty seconds of the conversation. Notice what it does to your attention.