Taking back my dignity

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Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
canguro said:
Hey Escape, thx for your comment, hope your doing okay! Didn't visit your journal for some time as I am not very active at the moment.

Fucking sucks to loose your best years to depression! What helped you get out of it (at least to as far as you are now)?

I agree with your claim about pleasure only partly. Yes, we think about the pleasure. And this can be enough to get addicted, without having to deal with depression etc. BUT:
1. when you feel down all the time this short time where you feal pleasure will feel even more precious and you will get back to it even more, as you have to cope with other problems in life, because it helps you forget about them. So while you think about the pleasure, behind it stands the problems you don't want to face.
2. when you watch porn long enough you will eventually escalate to stuff you don't feel comfortable with and you hate yourself for watching it and still you do. So where does this pleasure come from? It comes from the relieve of the addiction! And this is nothing less than the ending of the pain that abstaining from your drug causes you!
3. So there are different factors here, the factor of unhealthy coping, the factor of relieving the pain from the abstinence of your drug and so on.
When you use coping to justify your porn use, that doesn't mean that utcis not a factor. Only that you use it as justification. Then you need to find more healthy mechanism.

But what I initially said is, that when you are abstinent long enough, that your withdrawals end, porn use will no longer give you the pleasure it did, because one big factor is gone. And when you realize and accept that porn use will never again be able to give you that pleasure it did, when you were addicted, you won't crave it any longer, or at least less.
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Just as I said: pleasure puts pain on hold for a little while and then when the pleasure is gone, the pain returns. In the end you realize it's not worth it to use a few moments of pleasure that in the long run create more problems than what we already have.

Regarding what helped me get better with my depression: I still battle depression but it's not as bad as it used to be. I used to be very depressed and suicidal. I don't know how to explain it. Back then I was in a very bad place in my life. I was dealing with mental wounds from bullying in the past, I drank too much and binged porn. I suffered from very severe social anxiety (that stupidly never tried to treat) and I isolated myself from everybody. When I was about 24, I started addressing the bullying's repercussions. And, I don't know, it made my depression better but my life has never been even close to what I want it to be. I still deal with depression because of addictions and loneliness. Most days I am pretty okay, a little bit depressed but functional, but I have my deep depressive episodes especially when my porn recovery is going like shit. I don't know, I believe that if our depression is created by our life circumstances, working on them is the thing that will treat the depression. I'm sure I will feel way better without being addicted and lonely.
 
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canguro

Active Member
@96LostWanderer
Hey man, thx for checking on me, funny thing you are doing this today, because today is the day I found the courage to look at this site again after I relapsed a few times (five times in three days) the last weeks. But I am more stable again and continuing my journey.
How are you doing? Did you make progress?
 
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canguro

Active Member
Like I mentioned, I relapsed five times in three days the last weeks. With this I brought back a lot of craving and porn thoughts and threw myself back a long way. I have to accept that and can´t ignore it.
What was the main problem?
Dealing with stress. I had so much stress recently because I moved homes and also at work. I didn´t know how to cope with that and that lead to my relapses. Atm I am feeling relatively stable, the last relapse is more than two weeks ago I think and the cravings and porn thoughts are getting less again. Although I feel like the pictures of the porn I watched are burned into my memory and they are still coming up all the time, but less intense and with less desire. Straight after my relapse they were through the roof. So I have to find a way to cope with stress. The rest of the time it was sport and running in particular when I felt stressed. Now in winter I can´t necessarily go out for a run every day, not only because it is cold, but also because I don´t even have enough warm sport clothing to do that. Also when it is so cold I can´t run fast, which I need to clear my head. I have to find a way to deal with this.

Also: Fuck everyone who says there is no porn addiction. When I relapsed my brain was so flooded with dopamine, I was literally shaking and couldn´t think of anything else. This drug is the worst. We have to beat it!
 
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Deleted member 22651

Guest
Sounds like a rough couple of weeks, and yes porn is definitely an addiction and a drug that brings nothing good to anyone other than the people making money off our addictions.

Something I use to help me stay on top of things like this is creating a "Failure PreMortem Plan". It works by thinking of yourself not achieving your desired goal in a few months time, then you think of all the reasons you will fail from there you know exactly what could happen and you set up a plan to help you overcome these issues before they come up. It worked well for me in a lot of areas I wanted to improve.

Learn from where you went wrong and come back better. You can do this and we will beat this addiction one way or another
 
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canguro

Active Member
@Lord Gohan
Thanks for the vid, I really resonate with the message.
"True change is identity change." That's so true and that's why we have to become a person, in whose life there is no place for masturbation to this filth, instead of just not PMOing.

Creating this plan also seems like a good idea. It's pretty logical to think of possible problems that can occur on the way and how to deal with them beforehand, but in reality we are just to lazy and when the problems arrive we are unprepared. But at the same time it is hard to keep a clear mind when you experience heavy addiction symptoms. (I think that's an appropriate term)
 
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canguro

Active Member
Thanks @Seer, really appreciate it.

No porn thoughts till now, but I have to take care of masturbation, it got way out of hand. Atm I am fapping maybe every 3 days. Feeling the need to fap is always connected with porn thoughts, so as long as I masturbate so often, porn thoughts won't go away.
 
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Seer

Member
Agreed, I'm the same. Some rebooters seem to be relieved by M. Every time I M, I feel the want for P to be far greater.
 
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canguro

Active Member
Work was horrible today, I am so done. I am so close to a relapse. I will go for a run now, if I don't feel better afterwards I don't know if I can withstand. Fuck this.
 
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Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
canguro said:
Relapsed.
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I know exactly what you're talking about, because my last relapse came from exactly the same reason: I felt miserable and I wanted soothing. I could've continue but I couldn't stop the urge to comfort myself. You know, for some people it could be really difficult to escape this self-medication thing, for some reason, I don't know, some people seem to be better at this, I am among the worst, I have no clue how to deal with my life without self-medication. Sometimes I feel like I will find something, sometimes I feel like I might never escape this.
 
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canguro

Active Member
Went to martial arts training on wednesday and did more did more sport overall the last week (everyday). That's certainly helping me to get in a motivated mindset and I can't wait for spring to arrive, then I'll go running every day I don't work out again. This, more sunlight and warmth should help my mood. Atm I have not much urges, but I was on sick leave the last days, so I didn't have much stress, my main problem when it comes to relapses. I still have to find more healthy ways to deal with stress than to numb myself with porn.
 
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Deleted member 22651

Guest
canguro said:
No urges today. But work was stressful. This is really a big problem. I have to either learn to deal with the stress or look for new job.
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I feel like this is a good problem to have. Weigh out the pros and cons of your job and see what you get, if you get more cons and the stress is too much and effecting your life too negatively then you have your answer. Or a something simple I do every year to make the decision easier is just flip a coin, on one side you stay and endure the stress, on the other you leave, when the coin is in the air, you'll know what you want to do.
I've had 4 jobs in the last 3 years because of the coin flip approach and they get better and less stressful every time.

If the stress isnt making you better in any way then its probably time to leave. The way I see it is, you dont owe a company anything, they can always replace you, so why not do something thats better for yourself?
 
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