Journey working through a lot via self love and healing toxic shame

J

joyfulhealingmetta98

Member
Hello Everyone,

I've been a long time lurker on this community and finally decided to start a journal to help keep myself accountable, provide some insights that might help others on their journey, and learn from everyone here.

I'm in my 30's and have been using porn to numb my emotions and escape from life since my early teens. I've been aware of its negative consequences in my life for about 10 years now. I've been on a journey of healing working with a psychotherapist for 5 years, and although I have made insane amounts of progress in many areas of my life, dealing with the pornography issue has been an ongoing challenge and one I've not been as successful as I'd like to be with.

A lot of the work I have been doing has been about complex PTSD, self-parenting, healing toxic shame, and increasing mindfulness so I can better understand my emotional responses and how those developed in response to situations earlier in my life.

DAY 1
Yesterday was a challenge; feeling a lot of pressure from work, from my family life, from literally every aspect of life. Escaped via the old way, so today is Day 1. Going to work on avoiding pathways to distraction and escape to begin with by keeping myself occupied and focused on being in a productive mode of being throughout the day.

Reading Healing the Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw right now. A few things stood out to me:
  1. Mistakes = successive approximation. We learn to walk by falling down. A mistake is not a condemnation of your personality to eternal failure. What did I learn from yesterdays mistake? When I'm feeling discomfort in my state of being, I need to be more aware of where I am turning to, and try my best to make it something healing and not numbing.
  2. I need to love myself and accept myself. A problem that is originated and motivated by toxic shame cannot be cured by increasing the toxic shame. Big challenge for me. Working on some self-love meditations to develop this skill.

Thanks for reading, will keep up with this thread and with the forum!
 
J

joyfulhealingmetta98

Member
Day 2
Yesterday was relatively easy; simply avoided the old habits of going on sites to see what has been added or browsing pictures on Google Images. One thing that was a big victory was that I ended a 60 hr fast (trying to lose some weight), and although I got quite hungry, I was able to remain with the discomfort and recognize that it will end without me having to act on it immediately. Solid lesson for this journey.
 
J

joyfulhealingmetta98

Member
Day 3
Yesterday was easy; was out of the house from 6AM to Midnight for work. Today, not so much. Partner left me home alone and I quickly found myself picking up my cellphone to go to old habits. I caught myself and came on here to try and break the pattern. So what was going on emotionally? Feeling extremely overwhelmed by multiple challenges in life and trying to escape from that. Not trusting myself to be able to handle the discomfort. Minor slip-up and not going to beat myself up over it, but focus on learning from it instead. Taking positive action and trying to stay productive for the rest of the day to avoid it happening again.
 
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