I feel you, man. My experience with rebooting presents similarities to yours. I, too, use to relapse a lot with short streaks. It's taken me a lot of time to get this streak now. If you read some old posts, it's a sad show. What helped me to make it to almost 2 weeks was reading success stories for motivation. It all started with a post on nofap that made me pissed off, it was one of those "This was me before/This is me after 150 days on nofap" or something like that. The "Before" part was something I would write. "I had social anxiety, I couldn't stare people in the eyes, nobody took me seriously, people registered my shit energy and thought I was weak" this type of thing. So far exactly how I am when I binge. The "After" part is what I'd never had and I got so mad, I said: "Wtf bro, am I going to live my life in the before part? When the fuck am I going to stop being mediocre? I want to experience what is this guy saying!" And I got this determination in me, I was so motivated but then... I relapsed on Day 12. I was very embarassed, because I had come here to write the most motivation shit ever, like "I'm going to do this, I will never relapse, never ever again, watch me!" Then I fell. I didn't even want to come here to say it. I spent 2 days in depression and then I remembered: "Yo, what the fuck are you doing? Didn't you get mad after reading that thing?" So I came here I wrote "Day 2" and I started again. And I beat that streak. I've been reading success stories, everything I could find where guys talked about "this is how I was/ this is how I am now after a year on nofap" I motivate myself with this. I read it a lot because I really need to drill this into my head: "This could be you if you stop living for porn". But bear in mind that this is my situation. Porn fucked up my mental health and turned me into a mediocre guy. And I know that without porn, the chains are off and that won't turn me into a superman right away but it will open the door for me to start the superman journey. You can't when you are locked up inside.I relapsed twice today, once after waking up and then again about 15 minutes ago. I don't have much to say. I've been avoiding making posts on here after relapsing, because it's just embarrassing and I feel pathetic saying the same shit. Right now I feel hopeless. That's definitely the dominant emotion. I've been more down in the dumps before after previous relapses, right now I just feel numb. Like it doesn't matter at all what I write here or tell myself. But I just can't imagine giving up on quitting. I'll never be "okay" with my porn viewing habits again (although I was for years). But this trying to quit and making no headway sucks.
I feel you, man. Urges are my biggest problem too. Actually, the craving, not necessarely urges and I'll explain what I mean by this. It's what "Easy Peasy" method talks about, they call it "brainwashing". It's the "Porn is something important in my life" type of thing, that's where the craving for it comes for me. And when I crave it, urges are pretty much a torture. It becomes very frustrated because I'm forcefully depriving myself from porn and when you think about it, at the end of the day, I don't need porn but I still can't do something to change this in my head... I don't know, I will probably keep crave it and probably I will only escape by going through the suffering of craving it. Or else I won't. I've been trying different things said around the Internet and I still feel deep in this shit. Honestly, I don't really feel that I've made any significant progress, I still feel just like 3 years ago when I came here... Once in a while I get a longer streak then I come here and speak as if I found the ultimate solution, writing motivation stuff and shit only to relapse and feel embarassed about talking as if I have the cure.Day 0 again
I feel pretty much at the mercy of my urges at this point and am just hoping they don't come on too often. I've been resisting stupid-ass urges to "search up something" for no reason, with varying levels of success. Sometimes it feels better just to give in so that I can start over. But there has to be an end point. I don't want to declare it right here right now, and then come back in 12 hours and tell you guys I failed again. But I've gotta stop. At this point I'm just trying to use the parts of my day when I'm NOT focused on P and use them as wisely as possible. Even if I've relapsed, I should try to get to bed early and get good sleep, so that I'm in a better state of mind tomorrow. That sort of thing.
I'm about 15 minutes off of my last relapse. That's pathetic. But I'm back here, which means I still care about quitting and I still want to be done. How to take this feeling into my inevitable next wave of urges? That's the question. I can only try my best. Sorry everyone.
I get where you’re coming from on this very heavily. I don’t even have that long of streaks to even look back onto. One thing I noticed when I have p cravings. My mind convinces me that I am not just a voyeur but a participant. It is a weird feeling and logically speaking I will break out of it and remind myself what my mind is trying to get me to do. It is not to participate but to be a voyeur.I feel you, man. Urges are my biggest problem too. Actually, the craving, not necessarely urges and I'll explain what I mean by this. It's what "Easy Peasy" method talks about, they call it "brainwashing". It's the "Porn is something important in my life" type of thing, that's where the craving for it comes for me. And when I crave it, urges are pretty much a torture. It becomes very frustrated because I'm forcefully depriving myself from porn and when you think about it, at the end of the day, I don't need porn but I still can't do something to change this in my head... I don't know, I will probably keep crave it and probably I will only escape by going through the suffering of craving it. Or else I won't. I've been trying different things said around the Internet and I still feel deep in this shit. Honestly, I don't really feel that I've made any significant progress, I still feel just like 3 years ago when I came here... Once in a while I get a longer streak then I come here and speak as if I found the ultimate solution, writing motivation stuff and shit only to relapse and feel embarassed about talking as if I have the cure.
We're still trying, yes. Without trying, there is no success. But my biggest fear is that I will keep trying for life, until I'm old and still writing "Day 1" here. The "Relapse/Restart" treadmill. I hope I'm wrong.Yeah I feel you man, everything you said resonates with me. We're still trying though, which counts for something.
I feel you, man. I know exactly what you're talking about as I can relate to it very much. I don't have much success either, I'm only on day 4 but I've realized some things.Day 0
Sorry I've been absent lately, it's just that I'm making no progress and it really sucks to keep coming back here and writing the same stuff. But I'm sure as hell not going to make any progress if I give up on this community and the support and understanding it provides. I just don't feel the motivation right now and I have very shitty impulse control in everything. It's so hard for me to just say no to myself. Right now, my porn consumption feels like it's at an area where it hasn't gotten much better or worse in the past few years but stayed about the same. But that is fucking unacceptable. I'm not okay with my porn habits. They make me sick. I feel stuck with them but that's just not true. But like, where is the real "me"? Someone with my body and brain was sure comfortable watching porn very recently. How do I know that's not the real me? How do I get rid of that version of myself?
I never want to think I'm at the point where I need professional help. But I have no idea how to help myself it seems. I need to grow the fuck up.
But like, where is the real "me"? Someone with my body and brain was sure comfortable watching porn very recently. How do I know that's not the real me? How do I get rid of that version of myself?
I feel you, man. I've written something similar in my journal. I don't know if "something to click" really exists, I think we fight this second by second, living in the moment and trying to disrupt the repetitive nature of this habit. We need to do things differently and break those patterns. How do you relapse? What's the repetitive thing in your way of relapsing and what can you do about it? It could be a thought pattern. In many cases a relapse starts in the mind long before it actually happens and it could be repetitive, starting the same thought pattern that leads to relapsing.I haven't been posting here because 1) I'm notoriously bad at sticking to things and 2) I've made no progress at all since first making an account here.
But I realize I can't do this alone. And I'm only going to get better by sticking to it, and that includes sticking to posting here and holding myself accountable. I haven't given up.
I feel like I've always been waiting for something to *click* and then all of a sudden I just don't need porn anymore and I know that I'm cured forever. But that's not really how it goes. I don't know if this will be the last time. I could relapse within the hour of posting here (wouldn't be the first time) or I could never again. I don't know the future. I know that right now, I am trying to do the right thing and I want to stay in the mindset of doing the right thing as much as I can. I feel good about myself when I'm in this mindset. I feel like I can make good decisions as long as I'm in it. That's the only goal.