Thanks for your reply wecandoit.
My back has a bad day, so i lay down a little and the last days, i thought a lot about rebooting and my journey so far, so that i wanted to make a "short" summary about my thoughts on rebooting, all the advice that i can give people and what has helped me so far.
I am now nearly seven months porn free. Ive got pied and actually start getting erections. My cravings are as good as gone. My perception and feelings about sex and women has changed. My depressions are on its way healing. I am more able to take actions in all areas of my life.
My rules are
Dont touch, dont fantasize, dont peek, watch out for triggers.
Take it as serious, as if you would with any other drug addiction, because at the bottomline there really is no difference. The urges we are experiencing are not our real libido or sex drive, but cravings, like with any other addiction.
How i deal with cravings
Grab a pillow and hug it, as if your life depends on it, try napping, listen or watch to gabe deem, noah church and gary wilson and read ybop.com. This gets your mind elsewhere and reminds you constantly, why you are doing this. Watching a series can be beneficial, if you definetely know, that it wont have triggers ( that might mean rewatching a lot, but still it gets your mind off of it). Be careful on trying to be hyper productive. Pressure and frustration often worked as a trigger for me.
You can really start killing it in life, when your cravings stopped and you start becoming stable.
How i dealt with fantasizing:
Look at how to deal with cravings, but also i found this strategy called the "rabbit hole technique". Ive found it on the "the brain rebalanced radio show" on youtube.
When it comes to fantasizing addicts are like dogs and fantasizing about porn and sex is like a rabbit hole. Once you start to scoop around in it, you will loose yourself in it, until you might not come out of it and relapse. The deeper you go, the harder it will be to find a way out. So as soon as you see the rabbit hole you have to look away and avoid the temptation to go in there as soon as possible by looking at somewhere else.
So in other words, when you are becoming aware that you are fantasizing, once you allow yourself to go into it, you start loosing yourself in the rabbit hole. So as soon as you become aware of yourself fantasizing, youve got to look away. Look around at your surroundings. When you see something, a chair for example, start thinking about a chair. Start thinking about wood, start thinking about trees. Start thinking about what else you can do with trees, until you passed the rabbit hole. When you allow yourself to go deeper into it and you pass a certain point, you wont be able to find out again.
Or, when you able to, try to think about something else ( to imagine how your life will be, when you are done with this shit for example ) or try to do something, that gets your mind elsewhere. Meeting with friends, who know about your condition and dont judge you for your mood you have at the moment can be really helpful. When you are with someone, there is much less mind space left for fantasizing.
Try to become aware on why you are relapsing. What increases your cravings? what triggers you?
Relapses are common, work on getting the behavioural and psychological strategies and make up to get back on track each time.
Try to think about, what you wanna do with your life, what goals you have. If you dont got any, its time to get some. Recovering from addiction, does not just mean stopping the unwanted behaviour, but changing your life and the circumstances, that got you into this addiction.
Also a good starting point is to realize, that your life cant go on like this. You need to realize and accept that. This really had been a turning point in my mindset. The reasons differ from person to person, but people, who got into addiction definetely got some points, they ve got to change in their lifes. But as said, main focus or even your only real focus should go into overcoming this addiction. But start thinking about this stuff and start to work on it, when you feel like the decreased cravings allow you to push yourself a little. Visualize it or think about it, when you are feeling down or hopeless. Imagine how your life would be, when youve reached your goals. You ve got to learn how to motivate yourself to stay on the path.
Also you have to find really good reasons for yourself, why you wanna drop porn and remind yourself of that everytime things get tough and cravings are strong. Guys with PIED i feel like don't have such a difficult time with that. But there are still so many other reasons and they have got to be psychologically as strong as your cravings and withdrawals to overcome those.
Masturbation really is a difficult and maybe one the most controvers topics. Everyone has to figure out for oneself how one responds. MO can lead to PMO, because of the chaser effect. Not MOing can lead to PMOing, because the cravings become too strong.
I handled it by using MO as a last solution or my parachute, when i knew i was about to open my laptop. For me that happened like once a month, at the beginning maybe a little more often. But i also had to start cutting out MO to eventually getting results. This became easier after a few months into my reboot, but it was still difficult, maybe as difficult as to stop watching porn. I also belief, and gary wilson also talkes about this in one of his interviews, that a lot guys, myself included, have developed a addiction to masturbation due to their porn addiction. The both are so heavily linked together, that some guys really need to stop both, at least for a long time, maybe forever. This often occurs with guys, which developed pied i feel like.
This is just what has worked for me so far. I highly recommend quitting masturbation to any porn addict.
I hope, i can help someone with this.
This is all i got. My back pain got better. My mind is more free now. I noticed that, when thinking about sex or women, which i try to avoid, i actually dont feel too much aroused, but i feel a little bit anxious and mich more caring.
Kick this addiction in the balls.
