Reclaiming the present

Fappy

Respected Member
thats great! and yes, as long as you channel that obsessive energy into somethng constructive and beneficial to your life or reboot, it can work wonders. if you feel as if what youre doing is wrong or you feel you shouldnt be doing it, stop it.
 
It happens. Do not blame yourself. Instead, try to be honest with yourself and understand what were the reasons why you did for the last several times. When you identify the reason(s), it will be easier for you to alter your behavior in future, so you do not relapse because of these reasons and will be able to achieve more sustainable periods without PMO.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
Thank you, Iwantthesecondchance. I'm focusing on keeping myself occupied, getting out of the house, and staying away from any triggers.

There's a noticeable difference in the levels of internal energy from the 13 day streak to now. I'm not a fan of feeling this lethargic.

Day 1 complete.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
Day 4 done. All in all I had a shit unproductive day for other reasons, but I absolutely do not want to go back to watching porn again to feel better.

On the positive side, I downloaded bumble yesterday and started messaging a cute girl after god knows how long. Not really putting pressure on that or anything, but it's some progress from jerking it to pixels on a screen.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 7]

So far so good. I'm kind of nervous because last time I relapsed was around day 13. Half the time the fear of the cravings is worse than the cravings themselves.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 10]

Spent a couple of days at a friends place, had absolutely zero urges. It's only when I'm back home alone that the urges are more present. I think I'll be able to cope with them though, so all is okay.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 12]

Another day with no porn, I've masturbated 2-3 times over the past few days. Soon I'll be at day 13 which was where my last streak stopped. Not sure whether I should start hard mode or not.
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 14]

This is the day I relapsed last time. I'm pretty confident that this won't happen anytime soon. I'll keep checking in since porn is a bit of a sneaky bastard though lol.

So far, what is working for me is focusing on always having something to do, breathing through and talking myself out of those brief periods where urges come up, and masturbating whenever I feel like I'm going nuts but trying to focus on "real" past sexual experiences instead of porn fantasies.
 

MattMan17

Member
Happy Birthday man! And congrats on a new longest streak; keep pushing yourself and you'll make it a porn free year for sure!
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 17]

Things are going well. My energy level is pretty good and I'm not feeling any urges. Unfortunately haven't gotten proper morning wood/ spontaneous erections yet, but I'm prepared to be patient and give my brain time to recover.

I've noticed that it feels easier to keep my mind focused on doing positive things rather than just focusing on simply avoiding porn. Just thinking about not looking at porn feels as if I'm inevitably going to relapse, whereas focusing on doing a bunch of things that benefit me (like eating healthy, productive work, exercise, etc.) helps channel that energy that I would've otherwise spent on PMO.
 

MattMan17

Member
That’s great, keep it up! And definitely try and focus on that positive energy such as eating healthy, exercise, etc. It sounds like it’s really helping, plus you should feel better overall with exercise and eating well, which will hopefully continue your staying focused on not thinking about avoiding porn!
 

Dannybou

Active Member
[Day 18]

I really don't feel like I'm going to be consuming porn any time soon. But it's best not to be overconfident about it so I'll keep checking in.

Long, random rant - I was thinking and reading about the nature of addiction. There's a biological component to it, with dopamine hits from porn/drugs/whatever creating neurological pathways, DeltafosB keeping you on the hook, etc. (the YBOP book summarises this well).

The other component is psychological. This is abstract, but what I currently understand is that addiction, whether it's porn, cigarettes, the internet, whatever fills some void in my life. It's as if there is a limited amount of energy/ emotion within a person. Ideally, one would spend this energy on things like human connection or pursuing the goals that he/she has. But pursuing relationships is complicated, takes effort and dealing with a certain amount of crap. Pursuing goals involves a lot of mentally straining, often boring, repetitive work. Addictive things are easy and accessible and give me convenient excuses for failures at relationships or goals.

Instead of being conditioned to push through the difficult bits to enrich my life, I was conditioned to adopt this hierarchy of behaviour:
  1. Be automatically good at everything in my life. If that doesn't work, pretend that everything in my life is fine and I'm completely happy.
  2. If being awesome at everything isn't working out, or if I can't pretend anymore, move to a cycle of addiction and self-loathing. Now I can blame porn or whatever else for sapping me of energy and spend my time criticizing myself even though that's getting me nowhere. When I'm not watching porn, smoking, wasting time on the internet or criticizing myself, I can alternatively waste time fantasizing about an ideal future where my problems are fixed and everything is awesome like in 1.
  3. 3. is truly putting in the mental effort to change on a day by day basis and improve the stuff I want to improve. 3 very rarely happens. I usually just alternate between 1 and 2.
But here's the thing: even if one stays with 1 and 2, it's not like that behaviour is relaxing, or that I'm doing less work or spending less energy. The total energy spent is the same, I'm just blowing it all on behaviours that are familiar but ultimately make me miserable and keep me in a shitty loop.

So the only way forward is to stay the fuck away from 1 and 2 and to attack 3, over and over again, until my brain reconditions itself. That would also help me stay away from any addictive behaviour.

Rant over. Back to 3, hopefully.
 
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