A journey to find my best self

Notthepope

New Member
I have lately really been trying to discover the best of me that I can be, yet through that, all pornography addiction still haunts me. Today I again found myself engaged in PMO. I am engaged in so many places that I yearn to be my best, I am someone who as a religious person and a religious leader seeks to find the best in everyone and also myself. It is with myself that I am constantly coming up short. I have sought many different avenues in my journey of addiction from counseling to close friends but I recently came across this forum and really wonder and think, well one more place of support and connection can't hurt, can it?

I am not sure what exactly I am looking for here in this space other than to connect with a community of people who are growing and learning how to as the name says, reboot. My story is long and my weeds are deep, but I hope that I can experience something new and seek to reboot here.

So I guess that's my introduction. Let me take it a little further. My name is JP, I am 25 years old, married and raising an almost 2-year-old son. I work close to home as a pastor in a local church and as a teacher locally in our school district. I have been engaged as an extrovert, ENFP, type 7 enneagram in many different avenues that involve people my whole life. I am energetic but also deeply reflective. I love discovering new things about others and myself through spaces that create community, books, writing, and unpacking all of this in quite spaces, (the best place being driving, I love driving places to clear my head.)

My struggle with PMO began when I was 11 or 12 with online content. Was pretty minor but grew and grew into heavier content as I got older and older. I have really connected well with counseling again and again in my life but it has always been moderately helpful. I have shared with close friends who have tried eagerly to connect as accountability persons but has always never been as often maybe as I need and often fizzles out. I now really only have one distant friend where we periodically check in with each other, which is amazing but not quite enough. Being someone who was raised religiously I was hopeful marriage would be that place where I would escape this struggle, but quickly found that often it did not help much in that area. Lucky, I find for myself, is that I have a wife who is very supportive in my journey towards rebooting, but still hurting her everytime I engage with porn is hard for both of us. I really am seeking to reboot and discover a different life away from this.

I guess my goals then are to create a community of people that I can have as support when I am in a place of relapsing. That as I seek to reboot myself I can have a place to go in the difficult places where I find addiction eating me alive. I hope to be able to reboot myself as hope for me and hope for others, that I might pour not just into myself but also be a source for others to come to and find freedom.

This is me and I hope that this forum can be a safe place to grow and meet some other rebooters like myself.
As I often write,
Grace and peace,
JP
 

Notthepope

New Member
Back here again after a lot of relapsing and really finding myself in a really low place with my addiction. I know lately, I have known more days giving into looking at and engaging with porn than I have to stay away. I am really wanting to better myself but keep finding it so much easier to slip into my habits again and again. So day 1 starting over again and trying today to be real with myself again and ultimately real with whoever might read this. How do I better shift my habits? How do I be honest in a productive and not superficial way? Yeah that's where I be today.
 
Hello JP,

I'm Andrew Wiggin and I'm 22 years old. I'm also very religious, like yourself; I was raised Roman Catholic (and still am through God's grace) and even spent a year in the seminary.

I'm not a psychologist, nor a doctor, nor a priest, but like you I've been struggling with porn since I was a small kid, but really became an addict three years ago, after I finished High School. Maybe talking can help, even though I'm just another soul trying to be better, like you, and who still fails again and again.

I found this forum like 2 months ago, and was doing quite well. I had been able to stay away from porn like two weeks and along with it I had not smoked one cigarrette in like 3 months (smoking being a less urgent vice I need to get rid off in comparison to porn, of course)

I was doing great, but after an attack of sadness I went back to smoking and along with it I fell back into porn. I spent the last month deep in the mud. It's really hard to get out of there, specially for someone like me who has never told anyone about this issue; I only bring it up in confession. The priests and their advice and prayer have been really really helpful, but at the same time I've realized that since we are not only soul but also body, you really need to pay attention to your habits, your schedule and whatever It is that triggers you and leads you to want to look at porn.

I think one step in the way to break with your habits is this. Identify what situations are the ones that lead you to desire to look at porn, and avoid that.
For me, as an example, is movies and social media. I love movies and I love keeping in touch with friends, but through these two things I always end up giving way to see some images that, even though not pornographic, they are quite sensual and if I give into that, then when the bigger temptation comes I'm not strong.

The other thing that has helped me Is having a journal in which I write those situations I'm telling you about, so I'm more aware of what it is that leads me towards the wrong path.
And also, I can't exaggerate on the importance of having a strict schedule, of doing excersise and socializing; talk to your wife every chance you get, cultivate real love, meditate on the beauty of love, on how incredible it is that you can dedicate your life to her, and how that love between you has created life itslef... Just take a deep look into your little-boy's eyes, think how he resembles you and your wife, think and imagine if you have ever seen something more beautiful than your family, and then ask yourself if it is worth to risk all that for this vice we are struggling with.

I'm not married yet. I have a beautiful girlfriend, and everytime I fail I ask myself time after time if this horrible vice is as powerful as the love I have for my girlfriend and the thought of a future family.

It's not. This thing isn't stronger than us.
You are stronger than it is.

And I'm here alongside you in the fight.

Grace and peace, brother.

Andrew Wiggin
 
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