Bringing it around full circle

[LetItGoAlready]

HI WIP,

I have no doubt many of the concepts in Collins' book are "adapted" from the work of others. I suspect there's a lot of borrowing and repackaging of ideas in this field. In fact, I know there is. I once attended a talk by Dr. Robert Glover, author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, and he flat out said that no one in the self-help field has an original idea. They're all borrowed ideas that build upon an original idea someone came up with long ago. I'm sure he was exaggerating, but I appreciated his honesty that he himself had not come up with any original ideas when he wrote his book.

I'm pretty sure everyone on this forum, if they were motivated to do it, could write a self-help book based on their personal experiences and integrating the strategies they've used successfully during recovery. Of course, in order to have credibility, you would need to have a good amount of days clean behind you, but other than that, everyone here has the life credentials to speak with expertise on the subject of porn addiction.

Certainly resonates with a core belief that I've suffered from for years that I don't deserve success, happiness or fulfilment. To your point on self doubt, that belief's about as conducive to recovery as shooting holes in your own boat.

Haha. I love the idea of shooting my boat full of holes when I buy into the belief that I don't deserve success. It's a great visual!

I hope that you can keep hold of your belief that "it can get so much better" for you. I'm sure it can!

I appreciate the vote of confidence, WIP, and I wish the same for you.

 

[Artemus]

Amazing, your journey sounds eerily similar to mine, same age, same story thereabouts.  Just wanted to pop in and share my bit of encouragement to your cause as you did mine.

 

[LetItGoAlready]

So, today is my 19th day clean and also my 15th wedding anniversary. When I look back over the past 15 years, I realize how very much I have been blessed to be married to woman who fills my life with love and kindness. She has such a capacity for love that she wears it on her sleeve, literally. T-shirts with quaint little sayings like "live, laugh, love"... Scarves decorated with little pink hearts... And the thing is, she wears these things with no irony whatsoever. She actually believes in the power of love - for herself and others. 

I, on the other hand, have a somewhat more complicated relationship with love. And not just because I'm an average male with a culturally-mandated aversion to displays of affection around other males. But because I started life with a significant love deficit. Apparently, I did not get what I needed to feel loved as a child, and I have struggled to connect with that feeling for virtually my entire adult life.

I eventually came to understand after reading about something called attachment theory that I had an insecure attachment style, meaning that my relationship style suggests that the bond I had with my parents as a child was not reinforced in a normal way. Typically, people with this type of attachment style have difficulty forming close relationships and allowing themselves to be loved by others -- or even loved by themselves.

While this may sound like a litany of complaints about how unloved I feel, that isn't my attention at all. These are the basic facts as I understand them. The building blocks upon which I've built my so-called life. Part of my journey has been to peel back the layers. To understand how these feelings have become fertile ground for addiction. But the other part of my journey has been to gradually give in to the idea that I can feel loved and to try to embrace it fully.

Today I'm looking back on that journey and realizing that I have actually come a long way in my relationship with love. I've learned so much from my wife - and my daughter - about having compassion for myself and others. About being worthy of my own love and theirs. In many ways they've saved me from myself, and for that I am eternally grateful.

 

[J01]

That was a wonderful post of gratitude, self-awareness, and humility.  Best wishes as you continue your restart! 

 

[LetItGoAlready]

Amazing, your journey sounds eerily similar to mine, same age, same story thereabouts.  Just wanted to pop in and share my bit of encouragement to your cause as you did mine.

Artemus - Thanks for popping in! There's a comfort in knowing that other people have had the same experiences. Makes it a little less lonely, I think.

That was a wonderful post of gratitude, self-awareness, and humility.  Best wishes as you continue your restart!

Thanks, Jixu. I appreciate the kind words. Best wishes to you, too, my friend!

 

[Andrew1973]

So often we focus on the negative things in life without looking back and reflecting, with gratitude, about the progress we?ve made as people. There are two unifying qualities about our being here together - 1) the obvious addiction to PMO, but more importantly 2) the realisation of that fact and determination to do better for ourselves and those around us. So often we can get caught up in the regrets regarding slips, the self loathing, but here, it?s great to read an authentic and uplifting account of how a much more important facet of your life has developed as you?ve gone about life?s journey, and not just the narrower PMO journey (which after all is only one aspect of our being). Happy anniversary and well done on your growth and ability to appreciate it and those who have helped you get there LIGA.

 

[LetItGoAlready]

it?s great to read an authentic and uplifting account of how a much more important facet of your life has developed as you?ve gone about life?s journey, and not just the narrower PMO journey

Thanks, UKGuy.  I really appreciate your thoughtful post. I agree, it's easy to lose our perspective. We become so focused on how we're doing in recovery that we end up putting a lot of emphasis on this one very narrow measure of our progress: our days clean from PMO. It never hurts to pull the focus back once in awhile to remind ourselves that there's a lot more to life than this one aspect, as you said. And when we consider the people who've traveled life's journey alongside us, we can also be reminded that there's a lot to be thankful for.

 

[LetItGoAlready]

Day 21... It feels like a contradiction to be counting days after just writing that days clean is a narrow measure of our overall progress - but whatever. I'm just going to let that thought go.

Today I listened to Matt Dobschuetz's (aka The Dobber's) podcast, and it was about being "all in." He went on to describe the many people in his private coaching practice who weren't "all in" because they seemed to be holding something back. Some people didn't show up to meetings. Others made excuses for why they couldn't commit fully to their recovery. And others left a "back door" for themselves that they could easily exploit when the going got tough.

This got me to thinking about my own recovery of late. Am I really "all in" right now? I feel pretty good about my reboot this time, but if I'm being perfectly honest, I'm not even sure what being "all in" feels like. Does a person who's "all in" possess an unwavering certainty about their recovery because they are doing everything possible to prevent a relapse? And when do they decide that they're "all in" exactly? Does it just suddenly hit them one day like a Newtonian apple? "Fuck it. I'm all in!" Or is it something that dawns on them more gradually, like, when you were learning to ride a bike as a kid and slowly mastered the mechanics of it over time?

For me, the answers to these questions are not crystal clear. So, I'm going to turn the question over to all of the fine gentlemen of RN. What does it mean to you to be "all in," and how do you know when you are?

 

[Andrew1973]

This is a good question LIGA. Reflecting on my past my high points of 'all in' have been after a lengthy period of relapse where my shame has heightened and my quality of life (usually through lack of sleep, grumpiness with SO/kids etc) has diminished to such a point that I am helpless and have to forcibly change. There might have been a near miss or fear of being found out thrown in there for good measure. At those points, my motivation is high as I'm still very connected to the feeling of failure, shame and despair - and I want to get as far away from those feeling as fast as I can. That usually heralds the start of a 'streak', but the challenge I find is that with the passage of time, those feelings of revulsion diminish, the lure of PMO starts to build, often facilitated by emotional triggers, and I find myself less 'all in' than I was. Time can give rise to complacency. Complacency gives rise to relapse.
Part of my plan in restarting after my recent slip is designed to overcome this. I can't testify to its effectiveness yet, but logically it made sense to me. I am committing to 20 minutes meditation each morning that I split into 4 x 5 min sections:
1) Getting grounded - observing my breath and bodily sensations
2) Observing my thoughts, feelings, moods non judgementally - noting that they are not me - especially highlighting any trigger thoughts/emotions.
3) Reminding myself why I have chosen this journey (Trying to maintain the reasons why I was 'all in' at the forefront of my mind). In short those reasons are to be whole, to not cause pain, to fulfil my potential
4) Feeling grateful for my success yesterday and the help I have received from others to achieve it (you guys feature highly there), connecting with my inner 'self' and the knowledge of what is 'right' for me (and we all know that if we do that, the answer is never PMO), recommitting for the next 24 hours.

Like I say, it's a new approach - 2 days in, so far, so good - but it was designed with the very goal of trying to remain all in at all times. Will keep you posted as to its effectiveness. Cheers.

 

[LetItGoAlready]

Hi UKGuy,

At those points, my motivation is high as I'm still very connected to the feeling of failure, shame and despair - and I want to get as far away from those feeling as fast as I can. That usually heralds the start of a 'streak', but the challenge I find is that with the passage of time, those feelings of revulsion diminish, the lure of PMO starts to build, often facilitated by emotional triggers, and I find myself less 'all in' than I was. Time can give rise to complacency. Complacency gives rise to relapse.

I loved your thoughts here on being "all in." As you said, it's very much something you feel in the moment, usually after a hard fall back to PMO. And while it can certainly sustain a person for a period of time, the motivation will eventually flame out on its own. It always does...At least for me it does.

I think where I'm getting hung up is with the idea that maybe there's some magical formula that drives some people to succeed where other people fail. I guess there really is no magical formula to being "all in," though. It's just a momentary push to get us going again, and then we're back to figuring out how we stay in the fight with only occasional bursts of motivation and all the other shit that falls in between.

I have to say, your daily recovery plan is so much more grounded and realistic than any plan I've ever come up with, and I like that it's not overly goal-oriented. It literally takes it one day at at a time. Thanks for sharing that!

 

[LetItGoAlready]

Day 1. Yes, as painful as it is for me to admit this to all of you, I'm back at Day 1.  I finally gave in yesterday, but it's not as if there weren't any warning signs. While out in public, I've been allowing my gaze to linger a little longer than I should have, a very potent trigger for me. And there were other signs, too. I chose to ignore all of them and relapsed to P.

Even when I knew that I could pull back from looking at P at any time and tried to reason with myself that it wasn't worth it, that I would pay for my sins in shame and disappointment, that it could take me days or even weeks to recover my momentum, etc., I went ahead and did it anyway. Basically, I sped through every checkpoint I had set up for myself and left a wreckage of gates and guardhouses behind me.

I'm not feeling a lot of love for myself at the moment, but if there's one thing I know, it's that the worst thing I could do right now is retreat into isolation. So, here I am, trying to get back on the horse or the wagon or whatever stupid equestrian metaphor seems appropriate here, and holding myself publicly accountable.

On the bright side, I did make it 24 days without P or M. It's the best streak I've had in awhile, so it wasn't a complete failure. Hopefully I can build on that momentum in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

 

[TheNorman]

I've said it before as have many others (probably much more eloquently than me): If you succumb to PMO every 25 days that's still 48 total better days than before right?
You saw the signs before your fall, now you can see them from further away and pump the brakes or pull back on the reins or dig in your spurs or some other horse metaphor.

As for your gaze, I think it was Leonidas who said it best in regards to looking: "First looks on god" meaning there are attractive people and it's normal to see them and appreciate that, but it's that second look that isn't about appreciation anymore, it's about objectification and that's the look that gets your chimp brain going. In early days I avoided seeing anyone at all but now I'm quite comfortable around people because if I see someone I don't react like I'm doing something wrong just by seeing them because that's not realistic or sustainable, I just see them at a glance and move on. It actually becomes easier the more times you do it because (for me) it feels very empowering.

 

[Andrew1973]

Hey LIGA, I feel for you my friend. My experience last week was identical in terms of 'the wreckage of gates and guardhouses'.
Norman is bang on - focus on the success over the past 3.5 weeks, not the one day of 'failure'. The success isn't just about what you didn't do in that time, it's about what you did do, and I can tell you that your presence here since you joined has been valuable and is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
I don't think you need any advice from me, but I am pleased to report that my new daily routine seems to be keeping me really grounded, so as you choose which horse metaphor is right for your restart (loved that one Norm!), it's an approach that might be worth a try. I think the key benefit is that it's binary - you either do the meditation every day of you don't. If you do, it keeps you grounded, grateful and recommitted each day. If you don't, then...well, that's the power of choice!
Whatever you decide, we're all here behind you! Take care.

 

[LetItGoAlready]

TheNorman,

Thanks for putting things into perspective. Perspective is exactly what I need right now. I'm trying not to do what I always do when this happens and look at the events of the last few days through the lens of perfectionism. Yes, from the outside, after many years of trying, 24 days seems like a pretty puny streak. Believe me, I could spend days pummeling myself for not even making it a month without slipping. But on the other hand, I did feel like the streak was pretty strong for most of those 24 days, in part because of the healthy habits and boundaries I put in place this time. So that's progress.

As for objectification and second looks, I have a lot of work to do in that area. I've been rationalizing to myself that a look here or there isn't going to hurt, but it's a "gateway" to P for sure. I think recognizing it as a type of edging behavior is a good place to start for now. But in addition to that, I really need to challenge those thoughts that are giving me permission to look and maintain an awareness of them.

UKGuy,

success isn't just about what you didn't do in that time, it's about what you did do, and I can tell you that your presence here since you joined has been valuable and is greatly appreciated.

I liked your thoughts on measuring success during a reboot. You do have to take what works and leave the rest behind. Also wanted to say how much I appreciate your thoughtful contributions to this community.  The feeling is definitely mutual.

I don't think you need any advice from me

I'm far from having any kind of mastery over this addiction, so any recommendations for tools to help pull myself from the "wreckage" are appreciated! I do think meditation has been hugely beneficial in helping me to reframe my thoughts, so I see the value in incorporating it into my daily routine. I probably need to spend less time on guided mediation and more time building mindfulness around my reasons for being on this journey and my commitment to continue. I really like that about your new plan, so I'm going to be thinking in the days ahead about what I can do to reconnect with my motivation.

 

[LetItGoAlready]

Quick update on my status since I haven't check in awhile. I'm just starting to pull out of a nosedive that carried me through weekend. In fact, I can't even assign a number to today because I was up until the wee hours of this morning acting out to P. So I guess it's Day 0 for me.

My plan for the time being is to come here and check in as often as possible - at least once a day if I can - so I can stay accountable.

Be well, everyone.

 

[Andrew1973]

Sounds like a catalyst to 'all in' LIGA? Hope so - let me know if you want any more info on the meditation - happy to share my discoveries so far and explore solutions together.
Take care and be kind to yourself.

 

[LetItGoAlready]

Sounds like a catalyst to 'all in' LIGA? Hope so

Thanks, UKGuy. I wish I could know for certain that I'm on the upswing, but it still feels like I'm on shaky ground at the moment. I had a busy day at work yesterday and today, which is creating some stress.  No matter how much time and effort I put into my daily practice in the morning, it all seems to unravel by the evening when I finally have a moment to myself. I'd say there's almost a sense of entitlement to it, like I've earned the right to act out after a hard day at work. It's a trap I've set for myself many times before, but one I know I can avoid simply by retraining my focus and not chasing the thought too far down the rabbit hole.

let me know if you want any more info on the meditation - happy to share my discoveries so far and explore solutions together.

I am interested in expanding my meditation practice, and I may very well reach out to you for ideas. I've been implementing some of your strategies in the mornings, including reflecting back on my journey and reaffirming my commitment for the rest of the day. I thank you for those ideas because I think my routine has grown a bit stale!

 

[workinprogressUK]

it all seems to unravel by the evening when I finally have a moment to myself. I'd say there's almost a sense of entitlement to it, like I've earned the right to act out after a hard day at work. It's a trap I've set for myself many times before, but one I know I can avoid simply by retraining my focus and not chasing the thought too far down the rabbit hole.

Isn't that internal "justification" a really common cognitive distortion, LIGA? I'm probably using the wrong terms, but I think it's something a lot of us have to work on.... I certainly do! That inner voice that tells me I deserve some sort of treat or reward every time I do something healthy or hard. I think Leonidas writes about it a fair bit, too. Ties in to things like willpower depletion and how winning one internal, emotional, battle often prompts us to let go on another? Maybe it's as simple as finding yourself another reward?

 

[LetItGoAlready]

Hi WIP,

Isn't that internal "justification" a really common cognitive distortion, LIGA?

Certainly seems to be a common theme with folks here. I really wish that my little reptile brain could see the deception from a mile away and know not to fall for it again, but this darned meatball in my head is precisely what got me into this mess in the first place. I'm still learning how to detach from those thoughts and not buy into them. It's a hell of a lot easier to do when you catch the thought early vs trying to detach from a thought that has gained considerable momentum and has pulled in your libido for support!

Maybe it's as simple as finding yourself another reward?

I'm sure you're right about that, WIP. It probably is as simple as finding another reward. Unfortunately, all of my other rewards for good behavior at the moment have some sort of addictive-compulsive aspect to them: watching TV, playing video games, sugary treats, etc. There's clearly room for improvement.

 

[3rdprecept]

Hey LIGA

I'm new to this forum but not new to recovery from various addictions. PMO has been with me since my earliest memories.  I've recovered from narcotics addiction 12 years ago.  The thing that I learned about relapse in Narcotics Anonymous is that hard drugs can and will kill you. Most addicts in NA at their lowest hoped to OD and die, but as long as there is breath there is hope.

I have 4 days off PMO. I'm hurting and in pain physically and emotionally. I learned to stop using hard drugs one day at a time and at times I had to hold on to my recovery breath by breath.

I don't want to PMO today even though my brain and body is screaming that it needs to. Slowly I will heal and learn to live without PMO and the pain it causes.