Hi if you need an accountability partner, I’m with it, care to exchange numbers?
A way back to the light
- Thread starter 46and2
- Start date
Day 16 and still in recovery thank God! I'm going away on holidays for a week so I'm taking extra care to be aware of triggers. But I'll be hanging our with some good friends so I don't think there'll be any time to worry about porn; I'll be off enjoying real life. I've had some urges today but I've found that rather than fight the thoughts I just surrender it. That doesn't mean giving into it of course but rather acknowledging the thought and associations with no judgment and then just let it go. I choose in that moment not to give my power to pornography but give it to the strength of this community and the faith that something better waits on the other side of the choice I never had the courage to make until now. Much love everyone and stay strong.
Day 24 and still doing well. Just arrived home from a week of holidays so too tired to do a long post. I had a moment in holidays where I browsed escorts but I didn't MO to it nor did I look at any super hard-core material. I don't know if this means I should reset my counter or not but I don't want to get all worried about it so I think because I didn't Fap that I can keep my counter. If anyone disagrees I would like to hear your opinion but I'm still feeling good and will remain extra vigilant to triggers. Much love brothers!
I would still call it a success. It means you were able to exercise your will power NOT TO PMO!
Keep up the good work.
So it's with regret that I must surrender up a relapse to the community. I'm heading off to see a friend just to get away from my room and my negative thoughts but I'll offer more on my relapse tomorrow. What can I say; I made the wrong decision again.....so frustrating and yet I must take full responsibility for my actions. Hope everyone is doing well!
Think about what triggered you so that you can make better decisions the next time.
Don't spiral down into binging on Porn . Take care brother
Hello brothers! So it is with a heavy but hopeful heart and indeed a great deal of shame that I post for the first time in weeks. The last month has been pretty shit but only because, once again, I made the wrong decisions. And boy did I literally fall apart at the seams! Excessive porn use, excessive weed use, cigarettes, hardly eating but when I do nothing but shitty fast food and playing video games way too much. Avoiding being around people and totally isolating myself from the world. What amazes me is that I get absolute zero joy from these fucking pointless activities but clearly they provide a way to numb and out and give me all the resons to avoid being a responsible human being who takes care of himself. Yet we all know the cycle because those numbing agents just lead to more fucking numbness! And so here I am again hoping that I can recover and through doing so find a far better way to live. Because my mental health is absolutely fucked man; it feels like I'm at the bottom of the barrel. I just can't keep going down anymore. In an effort to really cultivate a better way of Being I've signed up to an online course available in my country that offers ways of understanding and dealing with depression. In this latest attempt at a recovery that is something new I'm bringing to the fore. My meditation practice, exercise, eating right, sleeping well etc are all fucked too and so these also need to be built up over time. What can I say my brothers except I hope I have the strength and courage to go the full way this time because I honestly don't know how many fucking relapses I have left in me. Much love all. And so I'll continue by starting at Day 0 with a goal to be clean today and nothing more
EarthWalker
Respected Member
Hi, just want to say while all emotions are helpful. We need to feel all our emotions. About shame. I hope you reconsider your perceptions and beliefs about shame. In my view our society has some values inverted. Like in terms of acceptance, admitting stuff, like if you confess to something then bad things will happen to you. While the opposite is true. When we confess our faults we get to correct them. We cannot heal what we do not admit or accept.
I am finding big relief when I confessed to my faults. Self-acceptance. It is an ongoing process with many layers. My view is that we are programmed by society to view this as something shameful. Social stigma is totally unproductive. We are dealing with maladaptive coping mechanisms that ironically our society also helped to co-create.
The good thing is that we don't need to play by society's rules in our inner world. The other great thing is that when we fix our inner world we are also fixing the outer part (society). As mentally healthy individuals make for a healthy society.
In my view it takes courage not weakness to openly talk about how our life is messed up. It is also in my view a sign of maturity to take ownership of all our thoughts and emotions and our life.
There is nothing shameful about relapses. A child does not get born tabula rasa. We inherit a whole lot of shit from our parents and society at birth. Why do new borns nowadays have cancer and stuff? Because emotional trauma is also generational. Addiction is a great example. My father was a very heavy alcoholic. In part why I am having a harder time to clear this addiction is also ancestral. As my father's father also collected a lot of shit from his father, etc. So the buck gets passed down the line. Then people wonder why the higher cancer rates each year. Our organs also hold emotions. Emotional traumas are a big deal. They are encoded in the physical as well. If they are not cleared they manifest as a series of progressively worse physical symptoms.
Hats off to you man. This was a bit longer than expected but felt the need to comment on the shame part. There is nothing shameful about this work in my view. There is nothing shameful about relapse. You are working on yourself. You admitted your problems. This is commendable. In my view shame to shame this work.
Felt like sharing this image from FB.
Much love
EW
I am finding big relief when I confessed to my faults. Self-acceptance. It is an ongoing process with many layers. My view is that we are programmed by society to view this as something shameful. Social stigma is totally unproductive. We are dealing with maladaptive coping mechanisms that ironically our society also helped to co-create.
The good thing is that we don't need to play by society's rules in our inner world. The other great thing is that when we fix our inner world we are also fixing the outer part (society). As mentally healthy individuals make for a healthy society.
In my view it takes courage not weakness to openly talk about how our life is messed up. It is also in my view a sign of maturity to take ownership of all our thoughts and emotions and our life.
There is nothing shameful about relapses. A child does not get born tabula rasa. We inherit a whole lot of shit from our parents and society at birth. Why do new borns nowadays have cancer and stuff? Because emotional trauma is also generational. Addiction is a great example. My father was a very heavy alcoholic. In part why I am having a harder time to clear this addiction is also ancestral. As my father's father also collected a lot of shit from his father, etc. So the buck gets passed down the line. Then people wonder why the higher cancer rates each year. Our organs also hold emotions. Emotional traumas are a big deal. They are encoded in the physical as well. If they are not cleared they manifest as a series of progressively worse physical symptoms.
Hats off to you man. This was a bit longer than expected but felt the need to comment on the shame part. There is nothing shameful about this work in my view. There is nothing shameful about relapse. You are working on yourself. You admitted your problems. This is commendable. In my view shame to shame this work.
Felt like sharing this image from FB.
Much love
EW
And so here I am day 1 of my latest attempt to heal from years of self-neglect and self-hatred and, let's face it, a highly selfish degree of destructive behaviours! So my accountability partner is a very good guy; I went missing for almost a month with very little word to him (deep in my addiction spiral and full of shame) and still he plugged away and sent messages until I finally worked up the will to come back to the forum and start journaling again. And so I made him a promise that no matter how bad things get that I will stay on the forum and continue to journal; we often encourage each other at the beginning of a reboot to figure out where we went wrong in the last attempt, something different we can do this time! So given that history has dictated that I may possibly relapse again in the future ( I'm not trying to be pessimistic or defeatist, I'm just being rational) I decided the new lesson I will bring to this reboot is not to abandon the journal or forum if I relapse; because doing that reinforces the shame cycle and leads to a deeper more harmful spiral. So yes as I move forward and come up against a possible relapse I will immediately surrender it up to this group! Much love my friends and stay strong!
Day 2
Without weed and porn to numb me I'm finding myself confronted with strong emotions. Last night I cried for some time before i could fall asleep. Thinking about all that I've given up, all the people I've lost and pushed away, all the missed opportunities, all the life I've wasted. I see my old college friends man and they're doing so well, they're getting married and they have great careers.....one is even making films and receiving recognition for being creative. I don't resent these people, I know they worked hard for what they have and I wish them every success. I resent myself for pissing away the time I've been given on this planet. That's all I'd like to share today, stay strong brothers!!
Without weed and porn to numb me I'm finding myself confronted with strong emotions. Last night I cried for some time before i could fall asleep. Thinking about all that I've given up, all the people I've lost and pushed away, all the missed opportunities, all the life I've wasted. I see my old college friends man and they're doing so well, they're getting married and they have great careers.....one is even making films and receiving recognition for being creative. I don't resent these people, I know they worked hard for what they have and I wish them every success. I resent myself for pissing away the time I've been given on this planet. That's all I'd like to share today, stay strong brothers!!
Day 3! So this is the morning that I've began to feel some relief to the bout of depression I've been sitting in the last month or so. It most definitely has everything to do with not smoking weed and not using porn. There's so much work to do but at least for the first time in a while it no longer seems so overwhelming.
guiganvoger
Active Member
I'm currently struggling with the same two vices. It's tough to change two habits at the same time. For now I have only still managed to kick the porn for a week. I'm in solidarity with you man!